The rites of one's life should reflect one's liturgy (divine service) before God.
perversion of rites (e.g., Judas's kiss)
We pray so that we might merit the divine gifts we have received.
Reading is a playing with signs, but a structured form of playing.
Augustine recognizes the reading of Cicero's Hortensius as changing the nature of his prayers; this happens again with the Tolle lege.
Without love, no one can interpret well.
ultrasounds as ways of being with the baby
kinds of 'probable argument'
(1) A suggests B given prior experience.
(2) A suggests B as the simplest possibility.
(3) A guarantees B if not-yet-excluded impediments can be excluded.
(4) From A, approximately B can be determined.
Rule is in part by symbolic presence.
the role of self-restraint in Hanfeizi
The beast has its skin and the person has his bearing.
Harmony requires ritual that fit us together.
Societies degrade through semiotic corruption.
extensive vs. intensive persecution
The divine is such that there can be no 'number of gods'.
positions that have been taken on objective causality
(1) object is sine qua non cause
(2) object is internal formal cause
(3) object is external formal cause
(4) object is efficient cause
To move as beloved is to move as it were as a first mover; the beloved is the first mover of the lover qua lover. What moves as beloved does not, so far, move as a means to another.
There is a unity prior to number -> causation is prior to time
duty -> right to duty -> duty to respect right to duty -> right to what is required for respect of right -> duty to respect right to respect
Disregard for biological ends introduces incoherences throughout practical reason.
"We can only express a sense of wonder about the beginning. The absolute abided endlessly, deep within Himself then." (Sri Guru Granth, Raamkalee, First Mehl, Sidh Gosht 940)
"The spiritual wisdom given by the Guru is the True sacred shrine of pilgrimage, where the ten festivals are always observed. (AGGS, First Mehl, 687)
Sublime style is an echo of magnanimity.
ubi circumscriptivum vs ubi definitivum
God as that to which all are related
the Divine Liturgy a the school of true mysticism.
Augustine, DT 10: All inquiry presupposes some prior notitia; the mind can inquire into itself; therefore it has some kind of notitia of itself. For things for which we have no direct acquaintance, we rely on general concepts or form representative images; but mind knows itself before other minds (and thus is not using general concepts) and before it can receive representation from testimony, signs, or imagination. The reason is the mind's self-presence, in which the whole mind knows itself as a whole (because it is simple), although not knowing he whole about itself. And in this it knows it knows, lives, exists, in a way that cannot be doubted. It can, however, get confused if it relies too much on the senses and sensible representation, which leads to adjoining physical features to the mind. (NB that this is not some abstract diagnosis but based on Augustine's own experience of having to learn how to separate out the corporeal.)
The Pharaoh's magicians set the pattern for all generations of miracle-debunkers.
affatic sense of the external world // kinaesthetic sense of the external world
Llull's Book of the Order of Chivalry, chapter 1, lays out a program for knighthood as a profession by analogy with other professions (esp. jurists, doctors, and clerics), complete with professional ethics and training. Chapter 2 considers the knight's professional office, i.e., duties, and the ways in which one may violate such duties.
figures of speech as entes verbalis based on relation and negation
In matters of inquiry, one must often speculate in order to accumulate.
formal gifts to God (e.g., contrite heart) and instrumental gifts to God (e.g., sacrifice)
natural gifts and deemed gifts
gifts for shared having and released gifts
faith in the face of presence, faith in the face of mediated presence, faith in the face of absence
Partisan politics is often a form of escapism.
all poets steal;
they steal your feelings,
they steal your words,
they steal like princely lords
Whewell's cosmological argument and taking the world as a whole as a sign
There is nothing about deeply felt cares that makes them life-purposes; they are just cares.
Much of creative discovery is accident and repair.
Liberalism depends for its successes on a generally literate populace.
We use the past to protect ourselves from the past.
It can be difficult to outmaneuver wealthy institutions rhetorically, because they can literally pay people to play word games.
Marriage is itself a form of civic engagments, as is child-rearing.
convalescence immunity vs vaccination immunity, in matters of heresy
ontological argument for free cause: multiple possibilities -> some free cause
Mary became the Mother of God
that God might die upon the Cross,
a common-making of the style
of man and God, of Word and flesh.
"A conjecture is a positive assertion that participates in truth as it is, but in otherness." Cusanus
act of intellect vs use of reason
(faculty-use should not be confused with the immediate acts of the faculty)
Christ's washing of the feet as a picture of the Incarnation
"Action is always directed toward specific effects to be accomplished." Shankara
three means in cognition
medium sub quo: light
medium quo: impressed species
medium in quo
-- materially: reflection in mind
-- formally: expressed species/mental word
ens
by relation (intellect): verum
by relation (will): bonum
by negation: unum
-- -- by relation: idem
-- -- -- -- by negation: diversum
-- -- by negation: multitudo (De pot. q9 a.7)
ens : esse :: res : quidditas
res as being compared to being (being under relation to being)
each of the attributes of being as an order of metaphysics
Per se evidence is rooted in the apprehension of being.
Church as reditus
All knowing of creatures involves conversion.
The Incarnation is divine revelation properly and preeminently; Scripture is divine revelation by divinely inspired signs of the Incarnation, the word divinely reflective of the divine Word.
"The Church is constituted through sacraments, is nourished by and extends itself through them." Staniloe
three aspects of participation: instrumetnality, exemplarity, ordering
the Church instituted by Christ, constituted by the Spirit
Pneumatology and Christology are the same thing seen from different directions, for the Spirit rests on Christ and is the Spirit of Christ.
consecration of churches an image of chrismation
Hume in T 1.4.1 is describing what we actually find in Descartes's Meditation One.
the surge of language against the shore of form
A sufficient reason for a free choice is a sufficiency for it being a free choice.
Grace is much harder to accommodate than people generally want to think.
A being 'goods' itself.
The hero, like the saint, has obligations to an institution.
'Mine' always unites me with more than myself.
The world is a self-diffusive goodness within which beings appear.
"Faith is truly a good for everyone; it is a common good." Pope Francis
State power must be visible to be contestable.
With the virtue of magnificence, one treats one's own wealth as having an element of service to common good.
1 Thess 2:13 -- the word of God (logon theou) is from the apostles
2 Thess 2:15 -- expressed either in spoken word or by letter
1 Tim 5:18 seems to refer to Luke 10:7 (the only known match).
qua-concepts and instar-concepts
Nothing can be cognized distinctly without verbum mentis.
Every celebration of the Eucharist is celebration by the relevant bishop, either in person or through a priest as proxy.
The point is not to change the world; the point is to be wise, and that means in part to stop being a fool always wanting to change the world.
Over and over again, we find that the negation of religion is something much like religion.
art deco : dwarves :: art nouveau : elves [who is the first to make this analogy?]
"The fact that the proof of a theorem consists in the application of certain simple rules of logic does not dispose of the creative element in mathematics, which lies in the choice of the possibilities to be examined." Courant & Robbins
Wine like red-blackness,
darkened like death,
brooding like spirit,
burning like anger,
boundless like mist,
storms in the face of the sea.
Homer describes the appearance of things not by color as such but by light-effect.
approximation by similarity, by contiguity, by condition
(1) There are natural corporate entities (e.g., humanity, family, church, etc.).
(2) Artificial corporate entities may be formed by custom only by particular authoritative stipulation or by general statutory stipulation.
(3) As corporate entities always involve a sphere of responsibility, they always have a head of some kind (which may be another corporate entity).
the hodegetrian quality of the Church (the Notes as ways in which the Church is sign of Christ)
humanitarian and antiquarian lines of responsibility with respect to cultural heritage
(the names are from Matthes, in slightly different context; antiquarian is not really the right term for it; it is more like a 'common treasure of humanity' line; humanitarian treats cultural heritage as instrumental to the requirements of human life)
"Burning books is not the same as burning bodies, but when one intervenes...against the destruction of churches and books one arrives just in time to prevent the burning of bodies." Lemkin
"For whatever cause a country is ravaged, we ought to spare those edifices which do honor to human society." De Vattel
An artifact of universal significance is generally more national than other artifacts, not less; the Forbidden City is more Chinese given its universal significance for all humanity, Chichen Itza is more Mexican for being a universal treasure, etc. This is because universal significance heightens, rather than weakens, the responsibilities of the possessing nation. (Note that this can cause a problem when different kinds of possession are involved, as with the Elgin marbles.)
No natural property can be expressed, represented, or ascribed without normative terms, concepts, or presuppositions.
The relation between description and what is described is at least partly normative.
All ecclesiastical offices preexist in Christ as their exemplar.
The Church is both sacramentally and socially an expression of Christ.
the episcopacy as an ampliation of priesthood
Christ physically, Christ morally (Church as the society representing Christ authentically), Christ mystically (Church as the Mystical Body)
sacramental modalities vs moral modalities for sacramental characters
religious consecration as a modality of the confirmational character
-- this would mean that it is more like episcopacy than orders, and explains why it both seems like a major sacrament but is not one, especially if it gives a 'natural real moral entity'.
-- 'sacramentum tantum : is this the profession or the consecration itself? Seems more likely to be the latter. Profession as sine qua non.
-- JP II, Redemptionis Donum, linnks profession of vows to fuller development of *baptismal* consecration, but this could perhaps be regarded as specifically concerend with the vows.
-- look more closely at Keller, "Why is Religious Profession Not a Sacrament?"
-- vows and professions are just parts of a broadly religious life under natural life; the profession on its own cannot give a modality.
-- look at Orthodox discussions of monastic tonsure
-- NB that Aquinas holds that minor orders imprint a character (III Supp.35.2); this differs from tonsure
-- the consecration itself as solemen vow/profession before God and the Church
-- solemn vow as promise with some 'traditio'
the Church as sacramentum secundum dici; major and minor sacraments as sacraments secundum esse
The important distinction in politics is not between right and left but between broad and narrow.
exemplar causes as explaining the possibility of something coming to be
