It can make a surprising amount of difference to one's account of friendship whether one takes the paradigmatic version to be mother and child (Aristotle) or peers (most modern accounts). For instance, while both require equalities, the maternal case much more clearly involves one party *making* equalities *for particular purposes*. This happens in peer friendship, but more sporadically, as the peer cases presuppose a generic equality.
All things are suspended from God, all things are mediated through God, all things are completed in God.
variations on sacrifice depending on whether the consecration destruction is ontic, moral, jural, or sacral
It is right to call the Eucharist 'the Lord's Supper', because it is not a supper in imitation of the Last Supper but in very truth the Lord's Supper.
Impanation does not allow an actual parallel with the Incarnation, and this is shown by Holy Saturday. Union with divine person maintains the corpse of Jesus as properly Christ's, but nothing of the sort happens in the destruction of the bread. Further, a nature being assumed by a divine person makes it fitting for reconstitution in glory in that ature, whether the assumption is direct (Christ) or indirect (Church), and this is not a negotiable principle; but it is mind-boggling to thik of all the Hosts ever devoured being reconstituted in glory like some sort of heavenly bread museum, and all of the communion wine ever drunk being reconstituted in incorruptible glory, like some undrinkable wine lake.
Adams is right that 'commemorating by repeating' is important for the Eucharist, but fails to recognize the full importance of the Ascension and Session.
The inability to see that people who do evil things also do good and great things is a serious moral deficiency, second only to the inability to see that people who do good and great things also do evil things.
-- Ransom's depiction as Pendragon in That Hideous Strength may be allusion to the French poem, "Floriant and Florete".
"The white serpent will go in company with the half man full of wisdom through the forest of Nartes, when the white serpent will herself return and leave the half man full of wisdom." Vita di Merlini
Despite interesting touches in apocryphal gospels, the canonical four are at every point, even at only a literary level, higher than they are. This literary superiority can only be explained in two (nonexclusive) ways: superior talent of authorship, or that the canonical gospels are the telling of a true, or at least true-ish, story, by people with incetive to tell *that story*, as best they can. The apocryphal gospels give us accounts that are clearly given for other reasons than the story itself.
the liturgy (likewise rosary, Stations of the Cross, hymns, Christmas pageants) as "a kind of apocryphal gospel lived out" but not in challenge to the four (Luke Timothy Johnson)
actions that take time but if done habitually ofte put is in a better position to get the most out of the rest of our time -- commonly noted examples are reading, exercise, and prayer
Titus 3:5-7 and baptism as ex opere operato
In historical explanations, the cause is always a matrix of causes.
"The greatness of a philosophy is its power of comprehending facts. The most characteristic fact of modern times is Christianity." William Wallace
Free will explains sin ot immediately but by way of a system of probation.
The handiness of a rule informs us about the world; the handiness of a language also informs us about the world.
Every sense has its 'synthetic a priori' built into its sensory organs.
From our bodies we gain a aesthetic orietation of forward and backward, which we use in our sensing of change, and thus apply to time as the measure of change.
We receive the breath that carries us to the image.
'Making a choice' is a broader concept than 'choosing' and includes (e.g._ initial planing or preliminary decisions that are not the choice itself.
physical theory:
colloquial language [ ordinate language [ technical metalanguage [ object language of formulas
physical experiment:
colloquial language [ ordinate laguage [ metalanguage of forumulas [technical object language
construction -> expression = intension
construction + expression -> application = conceptualization + extension
Love of wisdom loves to love wisdom.
Despite its limitations, the Linnaean binomial nomenclature system has been one of the most effective cotnributions to scientific inquiry, creating in effect a perpetual honors system around discoverers being able to name their discoveries, while keeping this in a manageable and coherent form.
Acts 2:46-47 & 6:7 parallel to Jesus' growing favor with God and man (Lk 1:80, 2:40).
Discussions of sovereignty have often been hampered by equivocation on the word 'absolute' -- between the absolute as nonrelative and the absolute as maximal, between the 'universal' sense of absolute and the sense of being absolute in a domain.
God is our patria.
becoming the sacrifice we already are (Augustine)
"Biblical 'methods' are *theories* rather than methods: theories which result from the formalizing of intelligent intuitions about the meanings of biblical texts." John Barton (Reading the Old Testament)
Redaction begins from the beginning of authorship; the first author is the first redactor, redacting as the very text is being written. But redaction is still distinct from authorship.
The Zohar gives three levels to understanding Torah: seeing the clothes (the narrative story), seeing the body (the commandments and ordinances), seeing the soul (higher mysteries); the author takes the third to be the foundational and essential principle.
kosher practice a sign of the Election of Israel (Lv 20:24-26)
The conventions of genres are constituted by and to an extent only understood within the communities that generate them.
translations, paraphrases, inspired-by retellings
A translator must see the translation as instrumental to the translated.
It is impossible really to translate wholly by one method; the diveresity of language will in itself impede this.
God made Pharaoh bold that God would not defeate a frightened weakling.
sacrifice as bringing near to God
ton Hagion kai Dikaion -- Acts 3:14
Archegon tes zoes -- Acts 3:15
Archegon kai Sotera -- Acts 5:31
euxanen (= grew): Lk 1:80, Lk 2:40, Acts 6:7, Acts 12:24, Acts 19:20, 1 Cor 3:6
Nothing is permissible except as God permits it; but God permits all the trees of the garden save one in all of our actions.
Human dignity is not a 'moral status'; it is (like humanity itself) partly unearned and partly earned, partly inherent and partly a completion of what is inherent. It affects rights insofar as it affects what is due, but it is not exhausted by its affecting what is due.
The value of freedom of speech does not, contrary to many liberal philosophers, rely wholly on reasonable procedures of inquiry and debate; this is because speech is the expression of persons and is part of their own self-governance. The reverse is in fact true: we have reasonable procedures of inquiry and debate in order to have better, more effective, freedom of speech; the procedures are means to the bene esse of freedom of speech, which is oe aspect of personal self-governance.
Dignity only grounds rights insofar as it is part of common good.
(1) the self-evident
(2) the evident
(3) what tends toward being evident
(4) what has makrs showing a connection to the evident
(5) what has marks suggesting a connection to the evident
Gn 1:31 & the glory of the cosmos
"Christian faith does not merely contemplate what God has done; it receives it as done for us." Barth
The accuracy of polling always depends on the understanding of the polled.
Large Language Models as imitating how fiction-writing works
causality, intelligibility, and sublimity as paths to God
When people say that life or the world are ambiguous, they almost always mean merely that it takes thinking.
What is sometimes called the 'problem of hell' is completely and wholly the problem of the limits of punishment, and nothing else.
How does marriage contain grace?
-- has to have two aspects: presence, but not merely presence *to* but also presence *in* (Most accounts do not recognize this and only give presence to)
-- the senses in which something can be in a contractual relationship
-- perhaps mutual habituation (marriage as habitual act) is relevant
-- perhaps analogy between the way things can be 'store of value' and presence in marriage qua sign
How does marriage cause grace?
-- Several points here -- needs to be instrumental cause, appropriate to effect, involving the covenant itself, and retaining marriage's preeminence as sign
-- the senses in which contracts and covenants are instruments
-- signs as instruments in communication
-- spouses as mutual signs within covenant
principiation as the most fundamental ground of ownership and belonging
Marriage must be:
free -- age, abduction, coercion, incapaicty
full -- disparity of cult, public perpetual vow of chastity, lack of form
faithful -- prior bond, orders, crimen, propriety, exclusion of fidelity
fruitful -- impotence, refusal to have children
--> the relationship impediments (consanguinity, affinity, public propriety, adoption, spiritual relationship) don't really fit this well
--> of course, some of these are cautionary, by ecclesiastical law, and others intrinsic, by divine institution
canon law as the shepherd's staff of the pastoral ministry of the Church
A person learning from geniuses becomes like a reflected network of geniuses; a genius learning from geniuses becomes like a very well structured reflected network of geniuses.
subsidiarity of magisteria
The local church is the universal Church sojourning at a place (cf. The Martyrdom of Polycarp).
the locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary aspects of being a man or a woman
All political instruments eventually spoil and rot, whatever the ideas behind them.
To consider being without also considering the true, the good, the beautiful, is already to begin falling into ruin.
Human society shifts around our fictions, as can easily be seen in matters of tourism; but it is not merely in tourism that it does so, but to some extent everywhere.
Canons of textual criticism like 'lectio brevior potior' seem often to rest on hypotheses about copying, psychology, and transmission that were never examined or confirmed.
Note that Palamas takes negative terms like simplicity and immutability to describe divine energies.
It is only by the tenuous connection of our intellects and wills to God that we are free at all, and we cannot obtain our true freedom short of the beatific vision.
The more democratic a state is, the more it needs a citizen body with a lot of leisure time.
