Dashed Off XXX

 Every society that takes its faults seriously enough to criticize and work on stamping them out eventually becomes identified with those faults. We know of Roman decadence because of Roman critique of decadence, of hypocrisy in various Christian societies because of Christian critique of hypocrisy, liberal bigotries because of liberal critique of bigotry.

The cosmos by nature is poetically suggestive of the divine.

Half of survival is reminding oneself of simple, needful things.

God is the cause of common being's being common.

The sign of Babylon is that it deserves its own destruction, its own sins leading to the destruction of its future (Ps 137).

The problem of moral evil is not why God would make evil; it is why God would make us.

God requires no trade-offs, but we do.

Whether or not something qualifies as overfitting depends entirely on what you are trying to do.

Whe we reason inductively, we do not presuppose that the future will resemble the past but that not everything in what we know is accidental.

"The Master said, Study as though you will not catch up to it, as though you fear even losing sight of it.' Analects 8.17

Analects 9.8 and Socratic ignorance

The effectiveness of punishments always depends on the broader culture.

Justice is impossible without inquiring into the point of things.

The value of life depends on what is valued more than life.

sins gravely opposed to sacraments, either literally or in spirit

Sir Gawain & the Green Knight as a reflection on penance
Pearl as a reflection on infant baptism

Our bodies are signs of ourselves to ourselves.

the Divine Courtesy, the Court of Saints, and the liturgical commonwealth

We learn how to will by following examples.

The domestic church must be one, holy, catholic, and apostolic. It must be so constitutively (by sacrament, union with the rest of the Church, etc.) but in a way to be symbolic of these notes in the whole Church.

'Hooray! stealing' is neither true or false as an interjection, but it is irrational as an expression of a serious practical attitude, because the articulation of the attitude is something like 'Stealing is a hooray-type object for practically reasonable attitudes' and this is false as a characterization. 'Stealing and hooray-attitudes are a mis-match' is generally true.

Propositions generally articulate things that are not necessarily propositions.

Compassion for the wicked involves wanting them to repent.

When society recognizes and rewards the virtue of penitence/repentance, hypocrisy will imitate and strive to outdo in appearance penitence. When it recognizes and rewards the virtue of compassion, hyporcisy will imtate and strive to outdo in appearance compassion. and so forth through all the virtues. We all know this, and we all forget this.

'Murder is wrong' cannot be merely an expression of a disapproval of murder, because murder itself is a moral term; but in any case, we can prove that something is not murder and therefore not wrong, but cannot prove in the same way that it is not disapproved.

Pleasures do not naturally aggregate; they need to be integrated meaningfully. They do not merely fall together; they ahve to be actively related to each other.

Arguments from evil are fundamentally arguments that evil is part of the fundamental nature of reality. They obviously presuppose that there is evil. (Attempting to run them ad hom runs into the problem that the people don't in fact usually think God and evil inconsistent or understand in ways that require them to be so. In any case, they are only very rarely run ad hom.) Suppose, then, that God does not exist. Then the ocurrence of evil would just be a natural happening, a way the world works. Suppose God exists but could not create a world with evil; then the same thing: the world with evil is not created but fundamental. If, however, evil is not just a part or result of the way the world naturally is, so that evil is not part of fundamental reality, the argument dissipates: God can create the world, but evil occurs beyond that, as an intrusion or failure or distortion, not a natural part of fundamental reality, and the (philosophical) problem is resolved.

vague preference-satisfactions vs articulable preference-satisfactions

A difficulty all ficitionalisms have to face is that the most obvious explanation for any fiction is artificial imitation of the natural.

(1) Philosophical inquiry tends to philosophical system.
(2) This tendency is not merely apparent.
(3) Real tendencies require final causes exercising causation by nature or by will.
(4) The final cause of the tendency to philosophical system is the infinite intelligible.
(5) Therefore there is an infinite intelligible as an end of philosophical inquiry.
(6) This all call God.

The sign of genuine development of doctrine is that it makes you more appreciative of the teaching of those who came before, not less.

The young tend toward kitschy ethics.

Politicians are more like scavengers than hunters, whatever their particular aim.

"Knowledge ought to raise itself up to fortitude, to be strengthened by it, lest it slip into foolishness." Hildegard von Bingen

Most of what is pleasant and painful is hidden to public view.

the principle of utility read distributively vs read collectively

prohairetic modalities

(quasi-)reactive attitudes to nature as personified

cognitive function, appeal function, expressive function

verismilitude values for propositions

"Reaching understanding is the inherent telos of human speech." Habermas

the lifeworld, the world made alive in the person, the always already familiar

individual situation, success-aimed action: instrumental
individual situation, consensus-aimed action: natural-resonant (acting in and with role)
social situation, success-aimed action: strategic
social situation, consensus-aimed action: communicative

No discourse is structured so that any and all assertions can be questioned, nor so that any and all assertions can be introduced, nor that every attitude, desire, or need can be expressed.

human beings as utility monsters relative to other animals

Privacy and publicity come in various orders that may be nested in various ways.

Every society protects rights with conventions and concessions that are not the rights themselves, although they may sometimes be confused with them due to the association.

the formal cause as the internal ritual or liturgy of the thing

The bishop ministers to the Person of Christ both sacramentally and socially.

the facets of prudence
(1) the humane
(2) the correct
(3) the courteous
(4) the discriminating
(5) the integral

upbuilding vs downpouring grace

resemblance qua subject vs resemblance qua object
contiguity qua subject vs contiguity qua object

formal resemblance vs instrumental resemblance
formal contiguity vs instrumental contiguity

wisdom that manifests, wisdom that reflects, wisdom that adequates, wisdom that observes, wisdom that acts

Hegemony is always a nested structure, or a system of overlaps.

The hegemon holds the greatest power-underlap of many overlapping power structures.

Marriage makes strange bedfellows.

Usury is wrong not because it is lending but because it is perversion of lending.

Most people have very few strong, stable preferences.

experience as given (evident) vs experience as evidence

contrast of retention and protention in experience (incipti and desinit)

the experience of the co-functioning of the body, of the functioning of one's body with the functioning of another
-- this being quite early, before birth and continues with mother and infant
-- as we grow, we develop a sense of functioning outside this co-functioning

intimation: something in experience as what can be possible, given what is directly perceivable, thought not itself directly perceived, or required by what is directly perceived, or required to be probable by what is directly perceived

"We could not be persons for others if a common surrounding world did not stand there for us in a community, in an intentional linkage of our lives." Husserl

Our direct experience of apparent intelligibility is what lets us identify things as evidence.

Evidence is always evidence for a possible inquiry.

Confidence is not required for bleife, but for acting on its resolutely.

Responsibility for oneself always involves some responsibility for others in some matters relating to oneself.

The difficulty with spiritual warfare is that you are always already betrayed; indeed, you may be your own betrayer.

Effectiveness of protest depends on clarity of signal.

"Culture is a system of communication." Scruton
"The truth is that repair, like every other serious social activity, has its ethos, and when that ethos is lost, no amount of slap-dash labour can make up for it. The person who repairs must love the broken object, and must love also the process of repair and all that pertains to it."
"Responsibility stems from the habit of viewing our own actions from a point of view outside ourselves. Such a habit is engendered by authoritative institutions, whose edicts and expectations we lear to internalise as we mature."
"Travel narrows the mind, providing a surfeit of impressions and a dearth of interpretations. Sometimes, however, a meaning emerges, and sometimes this meaning is the aim."
"Institutions are not things but persons: they have a life, a will and a responsibility of their own."

There are far more good things that can be done than are our duties.

iron laws of nature (no exceptions) vs oaken laws of nature (no exceptions as long as interfering factors are absent) -- this terminology is from Armstrong

Because logical positivists conflated logic and language, they are often remarkably cavalier about the notion of 'decisions' in logic.

the process of getting approximate answers by identifying paradigms and analogizing (this is common in ethics and politics)

The awareness of the aesthetic content of a work of art is not uniquely determined through what is perceived by the senses.

"Calculi without calculations seem to be gratuitous algebra." Ryle

Confirmation is not a series of repetitions, which as such may simply repeat errors. It requires error reduction by division and elimination.

'Analysis' in practice often just means 'whatever has to be done to let a method cross domains'.

Time is a formal condition of *coming to appear*, not of appearance as such.

Ayer-like attempts to make the principle of verification a 'proposal' are pointless; a proposal must be such that it can be successfully implemented or not, and therefore has a success description; but the success description for the proposal of verification runs into the same problems.

cosmos as the first and primordial sign

St. Therese

Today is the feast of St. Therese of the Child Jesus, Doctor of the Church. From Story of a Soul, Chapter VIII:

The Science of Love! How sweetly do these words echo in my soul! That science alone do I desire. Having given all my substance for it, like the Spouse in the Canticles, "I think that I have given nothing." After so many graces, may I not sing with the Psalmist that "the Lord is good, that His Mercy endureth for ever"?

It seems to me that if everyone were to receive such favours God would be feared by none, but loved to excess; that no one would ever commit the least wilful fault—and this through love, not fear. 

Yet all souls cannot be alike. It is necessary that they should differ from one another in order that each Divine Perfection may receive its special honour. To me, He has given His Infinite Mercy, and it is in this ineffable mirror that I contemplate his other attributes. Therein all appear to me radiant with Love. His Justice, even more perhaps than the rest, seems to me to be clothed with Love. What joy to think that Our Lord is just, that is to say, that He takes our weakness into account, that He knows perfectly the frailty of our nature! Of what, then, need I be afraid? 

Will not the God of Infinite Justice, Who deigns so lovingly to pardon the sins of the Prodigal Son, be also just to me "who am always with Him"?

St. Jerome

 Today is the feast of St. Jerome, Doctor of the Church. Jerome has a (deserved) reputation for being a bit of a testy curmudgeon, but, as sometimes happens with curmudgeons, he also got along very well with women, with several of whom he kept a close correspondence. The following is from a letter to Eustochium, the son of Paula, one of Jerome's closest friends, shortly after her death:

Be not fearful, Eustochium: you are endowed with a splendid heritage. The Lord is your portion; and, to increase your joy, your mother has now after a long martyrdom won her crown. It is not only the shedding of blood that is accounted a confession: the spotless service of a devout mind is itself a daily martyrdom. Both alike are crowned; with roses and violets in the one case, with lilies in the other. Thus in the Song of Songs it is written: my beloved is white and ruddy; for, whether the victory be won in peace or in war, God gives the same reward to those who win it. Like Abraham your mother heard the words: get out of your country, and from your kindred, unto a land that I will show you; and not only that but the Lord's command given through Jeremiah: flee out of the midst of Babylon, and deliver every man his soul. To the day of her death she never returned to Chaldæa, or regretted the fleshpots of Egypt or its strong-smelling meats. Accompanied by her virgin bands she became a fellow-citizen of the Saviour; and now that she has ascended from her little Bethlehem to the heavenly realms she can say to the true Naomi: your people shall be my people and your God my God. 

I have spent the labour of two nights in dictating for you this treatise; and in doing so I have felt a grief as deep as your own. I say in 'dictating' for I have not been able to write it myself. As often as I have taken up my pen and have tried to fulfil my promise; my fingers have stiffened, my hand has fallen, and my power over it has vanished. The rudeness of the diction, devoid as it is of all elegance or charm, bears witness to the feeling of the writer. 

And now, Paula, farewell, and aid with your prayers the old age of your votary. Your faith and your works unite you to Christ; thus standing in His presence you will the more readily gain what you ask. In this letter I have built to your memory a monument more lasting than bronze, which no lapse of time will be able to destroy....

Fire Serpent and Water Mountain IV

Previous

 Chapter Four: Brickanbreck Receives Visiting Gods

Tera came down to breakfast the next morning to find Uncle Llew already there, taking a second helping from the sideboard. The sideboard itself was practically overflowing: dark rye bread, devilled kidneys, cold chicken, smoked fish, salted pork, oatmeal cakes, bread and jam, radishes on toast, pickled goose, cinnamon pilaf, and more. Tera helped herself to the pilaf and to an apple turnover; the moment she sat down and ate some of the pilaf, she regretted it. It was not that it was bad, exactly, nor was it quite bland, but it was flat, as if it were a distant imitation of the real thing. Uncle Llew had obviously not made it. Tera's heart sank at the thought that she would have to endure several weeks of mediocre breakfasts. And in The City of the Gods, no less. She bit into the turnover. It was serviceable, no more, no less. She ate it, and then grabbed a slice of bread which she buttered and jammed.

"What are we doing today?" she said.

Uncle Llew looked at her with a vaguely baffled expression. "What do we do everyday?"

Tera's heart sank again, and she wondered how low it could end up going. "Surely you're not going to make me study and do exercises again?" she said in a voice that she did not want to be a whine but sounded suspiciously like a whine even to her own ears. "It's the first day. Surely there is more to see!"

Llew's baffled expression became outright astonishment, as if it had never occurred to him that there might be anything at all to see in The City of the Gods.

Easy for him to be uninterested in it, thought Tera; he was born and raised here and no doubt used to it.

"Well," said Llew doubtfully. "It is mostly like anywhere else."

"Then people to meet!"

Uncle Llew seemed even more skeptical of this, as if meeting gods was a tiresome chore better avoided. But he said instead, "Yes, we will have to meet some people. Morning is visiting time here, so we'll even meet some this morning. Before you arrived, we received requests from Bleiz Twelve-Sery and from Rhiannon Fifteen-Mury."

And who was Bleiz Twelve-Sery? Llew seemed at loss at this question, and finally said, "Hmm, well, he is someone I knew well once." Then, after a moment: "I suppose he is your third cousin four, no, five times removed. A consummate ass and busybody, if he hasn't changed any, and Davnan rarely change."

"We will endure it," said Tera with energy. "And this afternoon?"

Llew looked at her a moment, then sighed as if defeated. "Fine," he said. "I have to look around the estate to see what needs to be done, anyway, so might as well be today. The clan was supposed to keep things maintained, but a thousand years is a long time for things not to fall apart, even in The City of the Gods. We can slow change to a crawl, but we cannot stop it."

He rose suddenly, "If we are going to have a day like this, I will have to get some work done before our guests come. I will be in the basement workshops; you can call me up if you need me by means of the mirror in the drawing room." He then grabbed a knife on the sideboard and, using it on a cheesewheel, carved off a truly impressive chunk, then left, cheese and knife and all.

Tera went back up to get ready, then decided that she had made the wrong decision about what to wear, then got ready again. She was inspecting all the equipment in the loom room she had seen the day before when a long, low tone, reverberant like a bell, sounded throughout the house, followed by a voice: Bleiz Twelve-Sery Metal Hand will arrive by Platform in half an hour, as appointed. She finished what was she doing and then made her way down to the welcoming hall. Uncle Llew met her there soon afterward saying, "It is an informal visit, so we will meet him directly in the receiving room. He doesn't deserve any better, anyway."

Bleiz Twelve-Sery Metal Hand was immensely disappointing as a god. He did have some features vaguely like those of Uncle Llew and her mother, with slightly paler skin, but he had rather bulbous eyes that were permanently fixed in an opened-wide state that would ordinarily look like someone boggled with astonishment. Yet he also somehow managed to convey the appearance of someone who was entirely incapable of astonishment, for he had despite his eyes a dull expression on his face. He was also dressed in a rather shabby walking outfit. The walking outfit annoyed Tera somewhat, since the Platform made it possible to go directly from one place to another; he had not actually had to walk much of anywhere at all. She had only walked downstairs and had still made more of an effort. She stopped herself, and mentally waved all of this away. There was no point in complaining about such things, and she was beginning to sound like Uncle Llew.

"Delighted, delighted," Bleiz Twelve-Sery said as they sat down after introductions had been made. But the delight did not apparently translate into interest in Tera, because he immediately turned to Uncle Llew and said, "Llew, you are back."

"It does seem to be that way," said Llew drily.

"You have been gone too long."

"Have I?"

"Yes," said Bleiz decidedly. "You have been utterly unjust to the clan in denying us all the support of your gifts."

Llew's facial expression, which until now had been forbearingly impassive, became icily cold. "Have I?" he said.

Bleiz swiveled around to look at Tera. "Your uncle," he said in an accusing tone, as if it were Tera's fault, "was the greatest mind of the age, and did he put it to good use? He did not. He hid it all away in Mizur." He swiveled back around to Llew without waiting for a response.

Correctly recognizing that although the comment had been physically directed at Tera, it was actually directed at him, Llew said, "I hid nothing. The clan made very clear that I was more trouble to have around than they wanted."

"We did nothing of the sort!"

"My sister and I were exiled from The City of the Gods."

Bleiz snorted derisively. "It was simply a cool-down! It was temporary!"

"It was betrayal," Llew said angrily. "If clan actually mattered to any of you, it would never have happened."

"Haughty Llew is haughty still!" said Bleiz derisively. "You always thought you knew better than anyone else, better than all of us together. All you had to do was make a small sacrifice for the good of the clan!"

"Being stabbed in the back and cast out is not a 'small sacrifice'."

"It was temporary!"

"So you said before," said Llew, through gritted teeth. "And Amaethon said the same. But it was betrayal."

"And that is another thing," said Bleiz, ignoring this entirely. "We have ever since had to endure Amaethon as Captain of The City. You should have been Captain."

This caught Llew off guard, and for the first time in her life, Tera saw Uncle Llew in a state of utterly baffled confusion. He sat back and in perplexity asked, "Why would I want to be Captain?"

"Again, it is all about you," said Bleiz dismissively. "It is not what you want. It is what you owe the clan."

"Owe the clan?" said Llew in something getting very near to a shout, this having pulled him back out of his confusion into his anger. "The clan who failed to protect my parents? The clan who went along with Mael's cover-up until Arianrhod and I forced the issue? The clan who sold us out for peace and the Captaincy? The clan who backed our exile? The clan who demand and demand and never give? Owe the clan? Let the Embiadwei be glad that Arianrhod convinced me to go along with it rather than give the Embiadwei what I actually owed them. And do not think that I do not know your role in it all."

There comes a moment in some conversations in which it becomes clear that someone has for the first time truly heard something that had been said, and this was the point in this conversation for Bleiz. His face went white. It was as if he had been exsanguinated. He opened his mouth, then closed it, then opened it again, as if trying but failing to get words out. Tera thought, with perhaps a tiny smidge of malice, that he looked like a bulging-eyed fish suddenly finding itself out of water. He took a long, shaky breath.

"Now, now, Llew," he said, in what was presumably his attempt at a reassuring tone of voice. If that was what he was attempting, though, the attempt was ruined by the slight squeek to it. "I always supported you. Always. Always?" The last 'always' seemed less a statement than a plea for agreement.

Perhaps he would have said more, but Llew cut through it. "All of this is pointless. I am not here for myself, but for my niece. If the Embiadwei want to be a clan, let them do so by supporting her."

Bleiz had regained some composure, and spread his hands. "But of course we will support her. She is clan."

"Yes," said Llew drily, "that does seem what people say. It's the execution that I question."

Bleiz opened his mouth to say something in response to this, but the mirror in the receiving room interrupted: Rhiannon Fifteen-Mury Wood River will be arriving by Platform in one-quarter hour, as appointed. This gave Llew the opportunity to say cheerfully, more cheerfully than was entirely warranted by politeness, "We thank you for your visit, Bleiz; it is always good to catch up. No doubt we will see you often. I will walk you out."

As he stood, he bent over to Tera. "Please let the servants know to bring out the small beer and relishes for Rhiannon," he said in a low voice. Then he walked over and stood above Bleiz. Bleiz was quite clearly not happy to be ushered out so quickly, but he rose, nodded at Tera, and walked out with Llew with what Tera presumed was his attempt at being dignified.

Tera went off to start the process of setting up small beer and relishes. When she came back, Uncle Llew had still not come back, so she simply sat and waited until his return, as the servants set up dishes and plates around her. 

Llew returned with a harried look on his face.

"That did not go well," remarked Tera.

He shrugged. "Better than could be expected."

"Perhaps you could be less hostile," said Tera.

He looked at her, amused. "Fair enough. But if I were any nicer, they would assume that I was planning something nefarious. And they would probably be right. Haughty Llew must be haughty still."

They were quiet a moment, then Tera said, tentatively, "What role did Bleiz Twelve-Sery play in my mother's exile?"

"Hmm?"

"You said that he played a role."

"Ah," said Llew, and he shrugged. "I do not know. I doubt whether it was central; he is much less important than he thinks. But you notice that he did not deny it."

Rhiannon made a much better impression on Tera than Bleiz had, and in fact, Tera's estimate of her was revised upward. She was far more nicely dressed, with a sapphire-studded necklace above a neat vest over a sort of belted summer dress; she wore a trim hat and soft lace-up boots. She seemed much better suited to these kinds of clothes than to the formal robes Tera in which Tera had previously seen her. When Tera had first met her at the Hall of the Fire Serpent, she had seemed very 'flat and slow', but then Tera had had no references except her mother and uncle, whom Tera had begun to understand were exceptional rather than typical. Having now seen many gods in passing the day before and an unimpressive Bleiz close up that morning, Tera now found Rhiannon quite respectably 'rounded and swift'. Possibilities might not shift around her as madly as they did around Uncle Llew, but she was easily one of the more godlike gods Tera had seen.

"I hope you are settling in well," Rhiannon said to both of them as she filled a small plate with olives and veal-stuffed cabbage leaves.

"Well enough," said Uncle Llew. "The Embiadwei seem to have done well in furnishing the place for us. Beyond that, we have not had time to do much."

"And you, my dear?" she asked Tera.

"So far I am finding it quite exciting to be in The City of the Gods," said Tera.

"Manawydan, Rhys, and I always find it refreshing to return," she replied.

"And how are Manawydan and Rhys?"

"Quite well, thank you. Manawydan is out fishing, and Rhys is currently playing soule with friends near North Landing, which gives me time to do some visiting."

"Soule?" asked Tera.

"It is a ballgame of sorts, popular here," said Rhiannon.

"Something like a ballgame and something like a chaos," said Llew.

"Yes," said Rhiannon, amused. "Did you ever play it?"

"Many times," said Llew. "I once played in a game that stretched all the way from North Landing to First Landing, had over a thousand players, and lasted three days and two nights without a moment's pause."

"I suspect you were quite good at it."

"Not so much," said Llew. "I am too easily bored. But I was very good at taking back the ball."

"I have difficulty imagining you playing a ballgame," said Tera.

"All the boys among the gods play with balls," said Rhiannon, in a tone that suggested that she thought of this as an untreatable disease to be pitied. "Which brings me, before I forget, to one of the purposes of my visit. Rhys will be playing in a game of olam, Wenovar against Muriaki, the day after tomorrow. I was wondering, Tera, if you would be interested in joining us to watch it."

"I take it that 'olam' is another kind of ballgame," said Tera.

"Yes," said Llew. "Played on a court rather than in the fields."

"It is not just another kind of ballgame, really," said Rhiannon. "It is the game. And it is worth seeing."

"Then I would be happy to go," said Tera, "if Uncle Llew can spare me."

"I have no objections," said Llew.

"And I promise we will look after her," said Rhiannon.

"Well," said Llew cheerfully, "I will hold you to that promise."

Rhiannon looked very unsettled by this comment, but she was polite enough to try to hide it behind a long drink of small beer.

Llew continued thoughtfully, as if he had not noticed, although Tera could see very well that he had, and had been amused by it, "And it is good for training, too; so it would be good to have experience with it in the company of someone who has certainly been to an olam game much more recently than I have."

Rhiannon graciously inclined her head at this. "There is a second proposal I would like to make. The day after the game, I am intending to go down to River Market, but I never like to go alone, if I can avoid it, and both Manawydan and Rhys have other plans. Would it be possible for Tera to come with me?" She looked over at Tera. "If you wish to do so, of course."

 "I would love to," said Tera.

"I have no objections to that, either," said Uncle Llew. 

"I am glad of it," said Rhiannon with a bright smile. She set her plate aside. "If it would not be considered rude to do so, I must take my leave to meet other visiting obligations."

"Of course," said Llew. "Tera and I will walk you to the Platform."

Rhiannon did something with a strange bracelet on her wrist and rose. Llew and Tera rose with her and they walked out together, across the bridge and to the Brickanbreck Platform. 

"If it works for you, come out to Bryn Abernant the day after tomorrow, early in the Forenoon Watch, and we'll go down together, see the game, and take lunch. We should be back in the mid-afternoon."

"I look forward to it," said Tera.

"As do I, my dear."

The inside of the Platform was just an open space with a circle in the floor and mirror on the wall. Rhiannon held her bracelet up to the mirror and then stepped into the circle. She waved, and then suddenly she was gone.

to be continued

Inner and Outer Word

  Accordingly, the word that sounds outwardly is the sign of the word that gives light inwardly; which latter has the greater claim to be called a word. For that which is uttered with the mouth of the flesh, is the articulate sound of a word; and is itself also called a word, on account of that to make which outwardly apparent it is itself assumed. For our word is so made in some way into an articulate sound of the body, by assuming that articulate sound by which it may be manifested to men's senses, as the Word of God was made flesh, by assuming that flesh in which itself also might be manifested to men's senses. And as our word becomes an articulate sound, yet is not changed into one; so the Word of God became flesh, but far be it from us to say He was changed into flesh. For both that word of ours became an articulate sound, and that other Word became flesh, by assuming it, not by consuming itself so as to be changed into it. And therefore whoever desires to arrive at any likeness, be it of what sort it may, of the Word of God, however in many respects unlike, must not regard the word of ours that sounds in the ears, either when it is uttered in an articulate sound or when it is silently thought. For the words of all tongues that are uttered in sound are also silently thought, and the mind runs over verses while the bodily mouth is silent. And not only the numbers of syllables, but the tunes also of songs, since they are corporeal, and pertain to that sense of the body which is called hearing, are at hand by certain incorporeal images appropriate to them, to those who think of them, and who silently revolve all these things.

[St. Augustine, De Trinitate XV, chapter 11.]

Miracles as Signs

 I've been preparing for a busy next week, so I am behind on almost everything. But for whatever reason there has been talk of miracles in a lot of different places online, and I wanted to put down a few still-inchoate thoughts on the subject, in no particular order.

(1) A miracle is in its proper genus a sign. A sign is something manifesting something to something, or, to speak more precisely, using the terminology of C. S. Peirce, a representamen (R), an object (O), and an interpretant (I) in triadic relation. For the miracle to function as a sign, it requires three things to come together:

(a) a set of events and happenings in the world, having particular identifiable characteristics (R);

(b) something beyond itself to which it refers (O);

(c) a possible meaning or interpretation in a mind, allowing that mind on recognizing R to understand O (I). (Interpretants don't generally have to be mental, but for miracles always are.)

It's a 'possible' meaning in a mind for the same reason that signs in a closed book are still signs even if no mind actually interprets them.  But it also has the implication that R can be a sign of O even if someone takes it to be a sign of something else, or not a sign at all. This is actually quite important for miracles. To take a famous example:

"Father, glorify your name!” Then a voice came from heaven, “I have glorified it, and will glorify it again.” The crowd that was there and heard it said it had thundered; others said an angel had spoken to him. (Jn 12:28-29 NIV)

As signs, miracles are no more immune to misinterpretation, especially deliberate misinterpretation, than any other sign, and likewise, they are no more immune to a refusal to interpret. As with every other sign, the mind has to be prepared in order to become an actual I linking R and O.

(2) There is a bad habit of assuming that if you find a 'natural explanation' for a miracle, you don't need to recognize it as a miracle. This is obviously not right in an elementary sense -- the number of 'natural explanations' that have been offered for alleged miracles but that are certainly false is very large. Merely proposing an explanation does not establish it as the correct explanation. But the point goes even farther than this, because it very much matters exactly what the natural explanation explains. R is pretty much always capable of some kind of natural description because it's recognizable by our natural capacities, and all the parts of this admit of some kind of natural explanation. If water turns into wine, the behavior of the water admits entirely of a natural description, and the behavior of the wine admits entirely of a natural description. But it's also possible that the actual transformation does, as well -- for instance, assuming that it is not an instantaneous replacement of one thing by another, the transformation may well be a matter of molecules reorganizing in a way that is entirely describable by ordinary chemistry, even if it is a series of reactions and restructurings that never otherwise occur. The chemical description would in some sense be an 'explanation', but it would just explain the R's having the characteristics it does, and would be entirely inadequate to explain the actual change. 

Further, a natural explanation as to the proximate causes of a change is not a natural explanation of the meaning of the change. This plays a role in what were traditionally called preternatural miracles, which are by definition events entirely within the normal course of nature, but which involve a peculiar confluence of natural events in a context that makes it meaningful. Most of the plagues of Egypt were 'just' infestations and epidemics of frogs, gnats, flies, pestilence for livestock, boils, locusts. All of these admit of natural explanation. (Indeed, people have pointed out that some of the plagues seem naturally to follow on each other -- large quantities of dead frogs could easily lead to large quantities of gnats and flies.) But when we have done so, the matter is left exactly where it was. What makes the plagues of Egypt miraculous is their meaning:

"And the Egyptians will know that I am the Lord when I stretch out my hand against Egypt and bring the Israelites out of it.” (Ex. 7:5 NIV)

But nothing about the biology of frogs and flies explains the apparent meaning arising from Moses demanding that the king of Egypt let the Hebrews leave and then plagues repeatedly following when the king refuses.

(3) A common temptation in apologetics is to assume that one must first establish the possibility of miracles in general, then establish that this particular case is a miracle, and then interpret the miracle. But this fails completely to have a proper regard for miracles as signs. As a sign, a miracle must appear, i.e., R must be able to relate to I.  Thus the actual path for understanding a miracle is to start with this appearance of miracle, which includes both the unusual event and the apparent meaning that can be communicated by it, then an elimination of the reasons to think it may be merely apparent. Then, finding apparent miracles that do not seem to be merely apparent, we have established the possibility of miracles in general. We do not deduce miracles from first principles any more than we deduce the existence of books from first principles; we experience them, or hear about people experiencing them, and proceed from there. First we have the apparentia, then we recognize it as an explanandum, then we determine what would be an adequate explanans. 

An apparent miracle, whether the appearance is direct experience or testimonial, can only be either: (a) illusory; or (b) an unusual natural event with no significance, as in the famous case when French peasants reported to their bishop that rocks were falling from the sky, and the bishop gathered all the evidence (which later became important for the study of meteorites) but eventually closed the investigation because he could find nothing to indicate that it meant anything; or (c) a supernatural work of some created spiritual power; or (d) a divine work. If it's illusory, it will be illusory either as a matter of physical misperceiving; or as a matter of psychological misperceiving, like delusion or hallucination; or as a matter of testimonial fiction. 

In other words, we find apparent miracles in the world, in a broad sense of 'apparent'; some of these turn out not to involve identifiable sensory, psychological, or testimonial defects, and therefore are genuine wonders, broadly speaking; genuine wonders with supernatural significance are supernatural wonders; and those that have efficacy, mode, or end appropriate to God are miracles in the most proper sense. Sorting all of this is just a matter of honest inquiry, although by the nature of the case the inquiry is often difficult. But it's also the case, that here, as elsewhere, we can accept any of these for the sake of following through the argument, and because miracles are signs, this is often enough for them to fulfill their function. Certainty is not a requirement for effective signification.

(4) Of what kind of thing are miracles the signs? They are signs of authority. In miracles worked directly by God this is obvious. But it is also the case in other kinds of miracles. St. Gregory the Great has a famous comment in which he says that the saints work miracles either by authority or by prayer. Miracles worked by prayer, of course, are actually worked directly under the authority of God; the role of the saint is merely per suffragium. They just put in the request, so the miracle is properly a sign of God's authority, and the prayer is just the occasion. In miracles worked by authority, however, the immediate authority signified by the miracle is that of the human being; but this sort of authority, of course, comes ultimately from God, and therefore ultimately signifies divine authority.

In the Desert of Zin (Nm. 20), Moses is told to make water come from a rock by speaking to it; he chooses instead to reprimand the children of Israel and strike the rock with his staff. Water comes from the rock, so the same result occurred. But Moses gets into very serious trouble over this -- indeed, it is given as the reason why God refuses to let him reach the Promised Land. And one way to interpret this is that Moses, in doing other than what God tells him, messes up the sign precisely as a sign of authority.

Profitable Sayings

 If you love knowledge, you will be a master of knowledge. What you have come to know, preserve by exercise; what you have not learned, seek to add to your knowledge; for it is as reprehensible to hear a profitable saying and not grasp it as to be offered a good gift by one's friends and not accept it. Spend your leisure time in cultivating an ear attentive to discourse, for in this way you will find that you learn with ease what others have found out with difficulty.

Believe that many precepts are better than much wealth; for wealth quickly fails us, but precepts abide through all time; for wisdom alone of all possessions is imperishable. Do not hesitate to travel a long road to those who profess to offer some useful instruction; for it were a shame, when merchants cross vast seas in order to increase their store of wealth, that the young should not endure even journeys by land to improve their understanding.

[Isocrates, To Demonicus 1.18-19.]