As always, just some notes, jottings, and ideas; take with grain of salt.
Validity requires only truth-preservation, not that the conclusion assert no more than the premises. (It is simply that the latter scenario is the easiest to prove truth-preserving.)
observation, colligation, iteration, erasure (cf. Peirce on the general elements of reasoning)
outward vs inward element of sacrifice
language, culture, and genealogy as tradition
the Church as exhibiting infallibility in principle, in consensus (confidelity), and in convergent terminus
Logos as the source of all merit
the need for a constition to recognize extra-constitutional powers
Simply having words down on a paper does not establish a right; there must be custom among the people.
With saints, at least generally, one must start with learning, not admiration.
the Church as a society oriented toward virtue
- requires at its source
(1) principle of peaceful union
(2) direction to good
(3) instruments of action
- requires for maintenance
(4) orderly succession
(5) instruments of sanction
(6) defense against external danger
- and in addition, for all of these
(7) means of improvement
(8) means of reformation
The Liturgy of the Word is catechetical (and note that the older equivalent was called the Liturgy of the Catechumen).
truly, really, substantially
truly: at least by sign
really: not merely by sign but at least with what signifies
substantially: not merely with what signifies
One of the crucial truths of government is that rule of administration is not rule of law. There is not a tinpot dictatorship that does not have as full an administrative apparatus, as elobrate a ssytem of administrative proceeding, as active an officialdom, as one could want. But this is all merely a parody of the rule of law.
Laws unenforced fade in promulgation.
Worry or frustration about things out of one's control can easily become a moral defect.
purity as a form of intrinsic rationality
the Eucharist as figure of conversion to God
(1) we are not merely made signs of God
(2) we are not merely recipients of grace
(3) we do not merely have something of God's presence in us
(4) we also put off the old Adam and put on new Christ
The Calvinist account of Scripture gives to it the features Catholics give to sacraments.
Hesed: Eucharist
Din: Reconciliation
Rahamim: Confirmation
Hod: Unction
Nezach: Orders
Yesod: Baptism
Malkhut: Matrimony
The sacrament of Orders is the sacrament of Apostolic Succession, apostolic succession as a sacrament.
(1) the aspect of the sacrament in its prefiguration
(2) the aspect of the sacrament in the Passion of Christ
(3) the aspect of the sacrament in its place in the sacramental ministry
(4) the aspect of the sacrament in its relation to other sacraments
(5) the aspect of the sacrament in the relation of other sacraments to it
The line between the rational and the irrational is drawn between planning and refusing to change one's plans.
Testable predictions are only of value if they are rational predictions.
modal operators as searches
immaculate conception -> perfect mediation and redemption
(1) somatic homogeneity
(2) nuptial meaning
(3) mutual self-giving
(4) internal fidelity
(5) sacramental bond
plasticity of scholarship
All expiation is cooperative.
What is implicit in faith is drawn out by the impetus of love.
translation as communication among scholars
order of ordinations
image of God -> Baptismal character -> Confirmation character -> Ordained character
(successive transformations of image, which makes one priestly)
That the image of God is a proto-character explains why marriage, without conferring a character, has a hieratic side: it is a natural venue for the priestly character, the proto-character, we have by nature.
Men who play chess with the devil will lose; but it is harder to avoid the game than one might think.
(1) Human beings have a natural desire to know the causes of effects, as seen in wonder.
(2) This natural desire would be in vain if the human mind could not attain to a first cause of things.
All long-enduring human customs have an intrinsic rationality. It is sometimes limited and sometimes unlovely, but nothing can be human for long and lack rationality completely.
the natural inclination to attribute personal attributes to moral principles
materia plenaformis (seminal principles)
forma plena virtute (active power)
virtus plena effectibus (causation)
rhetoric as the study of rational cascades.
Everything grasped by the intellect is either nonbeing, or potential, or actual.
Intellectual cowardice is too often mistaken for intellectual humility.
A moral vocabulary and language requires a habitation appropriate to it, and a history by means of which it can be shaped.
Descartes's entire approach is an attempt to build a logic of discovery (see esp. the Principles).
apocalyptic literature as indirect moral discourse
People regularly confuse certainty with authority; this is a very bad habit.
skepticism as an autoimmune disorder
Giving thanks is a human way of multiplying good.
The horizon of the past is constantly changing.
the Church as the general motive of credibility
In charging human beings to subdue and have dominion, the Lord gave human beings a role, a participation, in His work of adornment.
"For art was the especial gift of the Children of Ilúvatar." Ainulindale B
The sacraments are enigmas of glory.
sexuality as otherness within
Invalid sacraments may still be occasions of grace, if there was innocent intent; they just aren't themselves acts of grace.
Greatness lies not in battle, but in endurance and in victory, even if sometimes that victory is the victory of death.
Shaftesbury's account of ridicule makes the adornment the test of the adorned, like judging a man by his clothes.
The strength of Latin and Greek is that they served simultaneously as languages of high speech and of common speech (in the sense of common rather than colloquial).
the world as an ascetic economy (Origen, Butler)
Price is not the only measure used in buying and selling; people also consider estimates of quality and overall value by classifying into folk economic categories. (Not in Rubin's sense of 'folk economics', which shows neither any grasp of heuristic character, nor any ability to distinguish cognitive tendency and prevalent opinion.)
Saruman errs by preferring to be a Power to being one of the Wise.
We think ourselves decent for lacking slaves; but our society is structured in such a way that we only lack slaves because we have substitutes for what slaves would do. We may thank God for that, but we should still be suspicious of the fact that our decency looks largely accidental.
Hume in effect concedes Malebranche's main vision in God argument, but simply goes skeptical on the conclusion to be drawn. (Treatise 1.1.7)
"The best defense against hypocrisy is love" Kierkegaard
God alone are we asked to love more than ourselves. Angels we are to love as ourselves; saints as ourselves; the Virgin as ourselves; no matter how high a thing may be above us, or in what way, except for God we are to love them as ourselves.
To love well, one must win one's way to love.
Love 'faiths' everything, hopes everything.
Augustine: marriage as union for procreation is nonfradulent sexual companionship (every association abhors fraudulent companionship) -- it is that kind of sexual partnership in which the partners do not defraud each other or themselves
Remedy for concupiscence arises fo rAugustine not from marriage as such but from conjugal chastity, which he understands as involving a desire not merely for children but for children who are children of God.
For any human court to claim unrestricted jurisdiction over human rights, which is to claim jurisdiction as extensive as human reason, is a violation of human rights. This is a sometimes difficult truth, but it cannot be ignored.
Many philosophical evaluations of reasoning fail by not distinguishing what's good in the market and what's good in the workshop.
To love our neighbor as ourselves we must love them in a way we can love ourselves, and we must love ourselves in a way that we can love our neighbor.
'Knowledge by acquaintance' is just acquaintance.
the Eucharist as source & summit of preaching -- it is the sacrament of preaching (cf. Presbyterorum Ordinis 5)
When talking about bodily integrity rights, people often conflate two different kinds of rights: bodily integrity and bodily dominion.
In marriage one is not merely human but elect.
Privative terms are domain-relative.
Occasional causation reequires that the intention fo the effect include the occasion. Occasionality links to disposition.
Time is the serially enumerable relation of change to change by means of change.
intrinsic & extrinsic title to dissent
time as the quantitative measure of incomplete actuality
To use instruments to discover things that cannot be sensed requires that scientists use the principle taht what begins to exist (in the instrument) has a cause.
reading as a reparative activity
Mathematics arises not from sense but from experience; it requires deliberate intellectual experiments involving sense and imagination.
Bias is just the word for the influence of the merely contingent and accidental on reasoning.
Heroes of any kind are presented in minimally counterintuitive (minimally schema-inconsistent) ways, regardless of character (consider Victorian treatment of Newton, our treatment of Einstein). This is a storytelling function: no one is heroic or a role model except within the context of at least a basic story; and the greater the need or desire to emphasize their importance, the more purely heroic their role-performance or activity must become, hence the MCI. This in turn gives them a sort of social dominance in terms of exemplarity or influencel contributing to social cohesion by way of honor and shame (e.g., Einstein or Newton as paradigms for scientific honor).
inheritance as the link between genealogy and covenant (cf. Galatians)
Nature knows no inefficiencies because inefficiency presupposes art. In this it is different from, say, inefficacy. What acts in a way to which skill is not relevant cannot be inefficient.
Politicians teach people by example what kind of power to seek.
Etiology is as useless as fortunetelling without an accurate understanding of its object; structural & functional analysis comes first, etiology comes after and at most revises.
Text is context put in a frame, or, rather, text and context are distinguished only by the frame.
Since history is complex and ever more complex, too much for anyone to grasp in full, historians need ways of establishing acceptable simplifications.
Eucharist as simultaneously Passover, Shavuot, and Sukkot
When you think in centuries you must be able to build products of mind that can last.
Without strong traditions of honor and virtue-conducive institutions, democracy is passive-aggressive savagery, each person out for himself or herself, but by whining rather than beating; and in such a society the most savagely passive-aggressive begin to dominate others. THis can, however, be resisted, dampened, or redirected by traditions and institutions.
Validity doesn't tell us that a claim is a reason for another claim, but only that they have a structural link. Validity is nothing more than a structuring of claims with cretain formal properties.
Positive law can only prohibit thinkable crimes.
Where authority is found, pretense at authority, flim-flam, will grow; and, if unchecked, utnil the true and the sham are hard to distinguish.
To prove anything requires modal assumptions.
Odyssey: Coming home to the home we know
Aeneid: Coming home to the home we don't know
Rule of Benedict as spiritual georgic
Freedom to act and not to act is completed in the good, on both sides.
simultaneity as a spatial concept (Dooyeweerd)
Christ is the true central basic motive of Scripture; salvation history (Dooyeweerd) is secondary and not exhaustive: Christ is more than even creation-fall-redemption can encompass.
Every gift opens to reveal a responsibility.
computing as executive rather than legislative logic (Plana)
