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.

Constitution-of and Constitution-from

 Daniel Guy has an argument against creation ex nihilo:

1. Whatever is created ex nihilo is completely metaphysically dependent on God. 

2. Whatever is created ex nihilo is not constituted of (or from) anything further. 

3. Whatever is not constituted of (or from) anything further is constitutively independent. 

4. Whatever is constitutively independent is at least partially metaphysically independent, because constitutive independence is a kind of metaphysical independence. 

5. Therefore, whatever is created ex nihilo is both completely metaphysically dependent (from 1) and at least partially metaphysically independent (from 2–4). 

6. Nothing can be both completely metaphysically dependent and partially metaphysically independent. 

7. Therefore, nothing can be created ex nihilo.

This argument is much less bad than the usual arguments I've come across. Nonetheless, it is very obvious where the problem in the argument is; constitution-of and constitution-from are entirely distinct things but the argument, through (2) and (3), attempts to elide them. This is obvious in ordinary changes; bread is constituted from flour and water and so forth, but to become bread, the ingredients have to be modified (to get bread, you have to stop having flour through a process of mixture and thermal chemistry). Thus, in colloquial English, bread is made out of flour but is not made up of flour.  This distinction, however, is also relevant here, as creation ex nihilo is a doctrine specifically and explicitly about constitution-from (that's the ex), and not constitution-of. 'Creation ex nihilo' is claiming that, while the cosmos exists because of the act of creation, there are no ingredients for the cosmos prior to creation; it is not claiming that that the created cosmos doesn't have its own constitution and constituents. But (3) and (4) only have a plausible sense for constitution-of. 

Bread is a consolidated non-homogeneous foam (a) made by the baker, (b) made from the prior ingredient of flour (and water, leaven if any, etc.), and (c) made up of starch granules (and some secondary compounds) in an unstable matrix. In the doctrine of creation ex nihilo, the cosmos is a heterogeneous system (a) made by God, (b) not made from any prior ingredient, and (c) made up of things engaging in and undergoing various sorts of interactions and relations natural to them. It is dependent in the sense of (a); it is only independent in the sense that it has its own make-up and not some other make-up (c), although even there we have to be understanding this as not talking about the dependence of the cosmos on its own constituents. (Any ultimate constituents, though, would be completely independent in the sense of (c).) The 'ex nihilo', concerned with (b), does not indicate any kind of independence at all; it clarifies that the dependence in (a) is complete and exhaustive, i.e., the cosmos derives from God's act of creation and ultimately nothing other than God's act of creation. Thus the contradiction doesn't occur.

Two Poem Drafts

The second poem is an experiment. I took a very early draft (2012)of a  previous poem I'd written, "Despair", then inverted it -- literally turned it upside-down, with the last line now the first line, etc. -- and lightly revised it until it started to made some sort of sense, then reorganized it to make more sense, then revised it again. It can also be compared to the most recent draft  (2013) of "Despair", which I didn't look at until I had finished "Dread" (it is currently still the stronger poem). It's interesting to see the elements that have endured in both forks of the drafting.

 Podunk Hollow Spaceport

Many rivers and streams run through here,
the West, the Taughannock, the Quahoag, the Milky Way,
and out on Vinton's Pond the starfish gleam
near where the High Rocks rise to sky sublime.
Out near Holley they speak Italian and Rigellian.
The rockets began sometime ago,
linking planet to planet and star to star.
The whizbangs and gizmos are for sale at the corner store.
But still the quiet reigns, the unanxious calm,
and little things done well, the boring way.
The galaxy is vast beyond imagination,
the future is greater than the realm of dreams,
even here, and perhaps especially here;
but in every future on every star
the simple places are simple still.

Dread 

I crossed a glassy sea of illusions;
 my mind's boat now drifts
on shadowed seashore.
 Darkness swirls in the enveloping mist,
 in the clouds, crying out for judgment day.
 From the darkest shadows of dreams,
 a web of lightless thread,
dark and ungleaming, holds all.
But I followed a thread astray
 and now see the terror of divine judgment.
 Beneath the earth, like a mighty image,
 in iron chains water-rusting
 until they crack, twist, break,
 is the darkest god on a rocky isle.
 Gloomy, in iron chains, for long ages he sat,
 and from him came darkness,
 and the darkness blinded the light.
 The shadow of darkness sits in chains,
 a mountain peak rising up from a mighty cliff.
 In the deep silence, stars are hidden.
 Water falls through cavern stones,
dripping and dripping on holy chains,
turning god-iron into red rust;
dark shadow waits enmeshed
in rotting chains until the chains are no more,
until the shell of the earth is broken,
until the darkness of the earth knows
 the fire and light of the sun
and hungers for it.
The darkest darkness is star-exclusive night,
 and from it I trembled and fled;
 but I knew the future
 and saw the end too clearly.
 Once long ago that gigantic figure,
a lifeless light, beyond the reach of the stars,
 surrounded by chains,
 was dragged before the ancient court, and knelt.
 His crown was broken, the war over.
 He was the darkest god, the darkness-bringer,
 the fear of the night,
 but even divine wars subside,
 even gods suffer heavy defeat.
 What mortal thought can imagine
the fierce convulsions of warring gods?
 The wind tore rock from its roots,
 monsters fought in the endless depths.
 Mountains splashed like stones in the sea,
 the sea devoured longstanding lands.
Yea, it is said that a war between the gods
 shook the world in ancient times.
Yea, it is said that it will begin again.
The darkness one day will reappear
 and final judgment come.

Fortnightly Book, May 4

 Maurice LeBlanc's third Arsene Lupin book, L'Aguille creuse, in English The Hollow Needle, was serialized in the magazine Je sais tout in 1908 and 1909, and was brought out in somewhat revised book form shortly after its serialization finished. I know very little about this book; I don't think it's one of the ones I've listened to in audiobook. Nor is it easy to find much definite about it online. What I do know is that in it, Lupin is on the trail of the legendary lost treasure of the Kings of France. His major opponent, Isidore Beautrelet, also is widely considered to be one of the best 'schoolboy detectives' in the genre (he's in high school, and it seems generally agreed that he is both more likable and more plausible than most boy-genius detective characters).

Prin Abraam Genesthai

 The Judeans answered and said to him, Do we not say well, that you are a Samaritan and have a demon!

Jesus answered, I do not have a demon, but I honor my Father and you dishonor me. I do not seek praise for me; there exists the Inquirer and Judge. Amen, amen, I say to you, if someone keeps my word, he shall absolutely not see death, unto the perpetuity. 

Therefore the Judeans said to him, Now we know that you have a demon. Abraham died, and the prophets, and you say, if someone keeps my word, he shall absolutely not taste death, unto the perpetuity. Are not you greater than our father Abraham, who died! And the prophets died! Whom do you make yourself!

Jesus answered, If I praised myself, my praise is nothing; it is my Father praising me, of whom you say, He is our God. But you have not known him, whereas I know him. And were I to say I have not known him, I would be like you, a liar. But I know him and I keep his word. Abraham your father exulted that he should see my day, and he saw and he rejoiced. 

Therefore the Judeans said to him, You are not yet fifty years, and you have seen Abraham!

Jesus said to them, Amen, amen, I say to you, Before Abraham came to be, I am.

Therefore they picked up stones that they might throw them at him. But Jesus was concealed and went out of the temple, leaving through the middle of them, and thus departed.

[John 8:48-59, my rough translation. 'Judeans' could also be translated as 'Jews', but in John is used exclusively for people associated with the Temple worship in Judea, who are contrasted with Samaritans (as here) and Hellenistic Jews, and sometimes (but not always) Galileans. The particular Judeans here are not initially hostile; they are explicitly said (verse 31) to be Judeans who had been believing in Jesus. 'Demon' is daimonion; in ancient Greek, it literally means a semi-divine intermediary between gods and men, good or bad, but in a Jewish context gets the negative association. 'Perpetuity' is the literal meaning of aion, which likely refers here to the Messianic age. I think the Judean comments should be understood throughout as being in a sarcastic or derisive tone, and indeed in an increasingly sarcastic or derisive tone, which is why I've given them exclamation points rather than question marks. 

'Praise' is usually translated 'glory'; it is doxa and its cognates, and that has to do with fame, report, celebrity, honor, public recognition. While I think we tend to think of 'glory' with a primarily visual tone (shining) and secondarily an auditory tone (praising), doxa (like Latin gloria) is usually the reverse -- it means primarily praising (as it does here, linking to the notion of testifying or givine witness in verse 14), although the association with shining does also exist (and in fact here also has this association, carried over from verse 12). Both associations, of course, have to do with making excellence known. (This is also linked to its less common association with weight or felt heaviness, in something like how we might say that we are giving weight to something.)

Verse 58 is widely read as a reference to the I Am of Exodus 3:14; we don't have any Greek translation of Exodus that translates it just by ego eimi (the LXX has ego eimi ho on, I am Being, which is then shortened to ho on), but it's very difficult not to read it as such a reference here because: (1) The switch of tenses (Before X became, I am) is odd, indicating that special emphasis is put on the 'I am', and that this is not an inadvertence, nor just a 'present of past action', is seen by the fact that Jesus keeps using the aorist with both Abraham and the Jews (and the counterfactual case in which he would be wrong), but the present with himself -- e.g., the Judeans did not know God, but Jesus knows God, where the distinction in tenses is clearly not incidental or purely grammatical, and is clearly intended to indicate that Jesus in the present is superior to what the Judeans ever were. (2) The immediate and extreme reaction of the Judeans to it, in which they try to execute him on the spot for blasphemy, while in itself it could possibly be just a reaction to Jesus claiming superiority to Abraham, is more consistent with their taking him to be associating himself with the divine Name. (3) John 8:17 already explicitly referred to the passage in Deuteronomy discussing the punishment (stoning) for those who propose or worship strange gods, so the passage itself sets this association up. (4) The Church Fathers who discuss the verse (e.g., Chrysostom) seem consistently to have read this verse as a statement of divinity, and indeed, the notion that it is not is historically rare, which at the very least is evidence that any other reading is not an obvious one.

'Leaving through the middle of them, and thus departed' is missing in most manuscripts, and is often regarded as an insertion (from Luke 4:30) rather than original to the text; 'and went out of the temple' is also  missing from some manuscripts, but is much more common and usually thought to be original.]