The objects of our thought are subordinate to and contextualized by a higher intelligibility than they provide themselves.
"When we are attentive we *think* we are keeping to the point, we think our associations have something to do with the matter, we are organizing our 'objects' into apparent cohesion, or, in the alternative, appearing to refine them analytically. Association apes logical relevance even when it does not attain it." John Laird
To think of something as being and to think of it as cognizable are distinct.
"When Hume stumbled (transcendentally) upon 'objects' he was *always* aware (reflexively) of himself." John Laird
-- Note in possible confirmation of this that Hume's account allows no fundamental distinction between objects and perceptions. Hume only gets his result by detaching perceptions even from perceivers perceiving them at the time.
Association links things only insofar as they could be applied to many things; things are associated as kinds of things.
"Nothing would be more alarming in reality than to find that religion, when pressed, could give us nothing but just what we want." von Hugel
formal distributive pantheism: Each thing is divine.
formal collective pantheism: The whole of everything (the All) is divine.
emergent distributive pantheism: Each thing is becoming divine.
emergent collective pantheism: The All is becoming divine.
dissociable vs participating parthood (Laird)
People in practice tend to use 'instinct' as a term indicating production, either of an actual physical product or of an organized system of actions; this is what seems behind the popular distinction between instinct and reflex, despite teh fact that borders between the two are sometimes hard to see in actual usage.
That we consider possibilities for action and reject some is manifest; the only way to block this as showing the existence of a fairly robust kind of free will is to argue that the possibilities are only possibilities in a qualified sense, that they are not real possibilities but something else.
To say that something is a right tells us little until we know the nature and scope of the associated obligations.
aspects of proposition as communicated: expression, enunciation, appeal
Our moral principles are had not merely in the manner of law but also in the manner of gift.
"The craving for beauty, truth, and goodness is at once a response to reality and a discovery of it." T. M. Knox
Jn 3:22,26 -- Note that after the discourse to Nicodemus, Jesus himself goes around baptizing.
"Man is a thinking, feeling, and willing being, and this must show itself in his religion also." Tiele
"We act unconsciously as if we were infinite."
"A sentiment of kinship with superhuman powers, as well as a sense of entire dependence upon them, impels the religious man to seek communion with them, or at least to enter into some kind of relation towards them, and to re-establish such communion when he thinks it has been broken off through his own fault."
The more ethically oriented a religious movement, the more it drives toward universality.
Science as an endeavor is based on our sense of the infinite.
the quasi-animistic sense of our own bodies
We experience in our own bodies teleologies distinct from any associated with our wills.
"The man of science cannot deny his own existence as a knowing, feeling, and willing individual." G. F. Stout
"...we have no conception of the action of an individual self except as essentially including transactions between him and other beings which appear to him as bodies and embodied selves. In being aware of himself as active he is already aware of an independent not-self with which he interacts."
"The awareness of ourselves as active always involves these two constituents -- immediate experience, and the thought of what is not immediately experienced."
"Take away active tendency, and the unity of any process is lost."
The Church is part of Christ both distributively and collectively, both formally (in the sacrament) and finally (in glory).
Ibn 'Arabi's account of tawhid and Shankara's account of advaita
the numinous nature of the Church itself
the sense of being at home in Christ
Secondary qualities are not more 'subjective' but less easily understood than primary qualities.
"If every event A is conditioned by a prior event B and this by another C and so on, then no event can be adequately conditioned even by the totality of previous events, however many these may be. It can make no difference whether they are finite or infinite in number. On either alternative, change and succession finally presuppose an eternal Being without which they are incapable of existing. The world of becoming cannot be regarded as self-complete and self-contained." Stout
"More detailed examination of probable judgments fully bears out the thesis that they are and must be based on knowledge of necessary connexion. We ahve no right to assert that anything will even probably take place unless we are prepared to assert that it probably must take place. Probability in matters of fact presupposes necessity."
"When the window is broken by the impact of the stone, it is the tendency of the stone to continue in motion, rather than its actual motion, which overcomes the resistance of the glass. The actually continued motion is only such as remains after the resistance of the glass has been overcome. Similarly, when a spring is held down under a superincumbent weight, we regard this as due toa balance of opposing tendencies or forces."
"The world of physical reality is primarily known as the continuation of the content of immediate sense-experience into a sphere of existence which transcends and includes it."
"Attention always presupposes knowledge, and tends to give rise to farther knowledge. But in itself it is a form of interest and not a cognitive act."
Stout's account of judging is entirely unconvincing.
The New Testament does not make any real attempt to give us a sense of dramatis personae. The authors show no concern with giving us any sense of most of the people involved; people who are highlighted as crucially important in functional terms are kept unrevealed; each of the Apostles, for instance, is treated as very important, but we are left mostly uninformed about most of them. Only three characters emerge in the NT with fully rounded characters: Jesus Christ, Simon Peter, and Paul. Of others we sometimes get character glimpses, but only with these three do we find full character development.
Every kind of composition creates a set of limts for what is so composed.
It is a peculiarity of Scripture, compared to most books, that its form and content are at least as much dependent on readers through the centuries of its formation as the authors of the texts that were pulled together over time by readers (a few of whom were also authors).
the soul as the plot of the person
The history of anthropology shows that all human societies are so complex that anthropologists can find among them almost anything which they want to attribute to them.
"Those who have not been baptized into the names delivered to us have not been baptized at all." Basil
Basil's Letter 188 and double effect
The power to bind and loose includes power over natural religion, which is structured by oaths, vows, promises, and customary norms.
As we may ask our neighbors on earth to pray for us in church, so we may ask our neighbors in heaven to pray for us in the liturgy of heaven.
Human life is lived in an ocean of unorganized impressions and unplanned strivings.
Tillich's argument against the supernaturalistic theory of miracles: "If such an interpretation were true, the manfiestation of the ground of being would destroy the structure of being...."
--> Obviously this makes the mistake of assuming that the structure of being is autonomous with respect to the ground.
Tillich's interpretation of miracle:
(1) event that is astonishing without contradicting the rational structure of reality
(2) that points to the mystery fo being, expressing its relation to us in a definite way
(3) and is received as a sign-event in an ecstatic experience.
--> Obviously this is an account not of miracles but of what are often called religious experiences or mystical phenomena.
Tillich's account of revelation narrows the meaning so much as to lose sight of why we would call it 'revelation' or 'revealing' in the first place. For instance, while a Christian might say that Christianity is based on the revelation in Jesus, in the ordinary sense of 'revelation', it has never been a claim of Christianity to be based in revelation in Jesus in Tillich's sense, because it has not been claimed that it is based on ecstatic experiences rather than ecstatic experiences perhaps sometimes confirming or illustrating what it is based on. Tillich also loses the centrality of testimony and witness.
To be a mere thing is to be finite, but this does not rule out infinites but only the 'mereliness' of such things.
Every analysis can be expressed as an argument and vice versa.
While the Bible has human authors, it is not, as such humanly authored; it grew.
communication as gift-giving
the Kingdom of God as metonymic for the Holy Spirit
the Angel of the Lord as metonymic for the Son
By rejecting both the Catholic and the Reformed accounts of sacraments, Tillich manages to make his sacramental theology doubly inadequate.
In love we often obey by both participation and submission.
Reformation and tradition are not in a polar relationship.
Much of human life consists in meriting by venture what is ours by nature.
"But if anyone else was anointed with the same ointment, as deriving virtue from it, he became either king, or prophet, or priest." Clementine Recognitions 1.46
"But now, since it is free for the mind to turn its judgment to which side it pleases, and to choose the way which it approves, it is clearly manifest that there is in man a liberty of choice." 5.6
Much of the Clementine Recognitions seems concerned with the problem of evil.
condensation vs accretion theories of philosophical position formation
musing on the world as itself a proto-philosophical act
Democracy is very poor at correcting mistakes, which is why it requires systems of checks and balances to an even greater degree than other forms of government.
Freedoms of speech, of religion, and of assembly, are freedoms that protect other freedoms.
The problem with emergencies in politics is that they tend not to be temporary, and never have well defined limits.
The test for a genuinely democratic society is whether in an emergency it trusts to the cooperation of its citizens.
Accuracy of law enforcement is important for preserving liberties.
Liberal democracy does not exist to regulate violence except so far as this furthers its conception of its ends.
"The group has a personal centre. In the original community the mother is the personal centre." Macmurray
A modern city is a polypolis rather than a single polis. (Perhaps even a multiplicity of polis-fragments in loose relation to each other.)
The parables of Christ are announcements and pronouncements of a new thing, a new event, and a real and present one.
"Who of the multitude of believers can presume, so long as he is living in this mortal state, that he is in the number of the predestined?" Augustine
What is common between the 'God of Plotinus' and the 'God of Abraham'? God.
Isaiah 40:28 -- The Lord is the no-end-in-sight God.
Who does not recognize that sin is a greater evil than suffering understands nothing about sin.
When one suffers, wanting others to suffer the same is usually a sign that something has gone very wrong with your judgment.
Problems of evil look different depending on whether one views them from a royal, priestly, or prophetic point of view.
Royal, priestly, and prophetic action each require a particular kind of self-discipline.
simplicity for understanding-purposes vs simplicity for practical purposes
Nothing can be an actual horror except in contrast to the value of human life, or something else of extraordinary value.
To be a creature is to be something that must carry burdens for others, as part of a whole good greater than oneself.
Being humanly wise is to be co-wise in the context of a higher wisdom.
justification : jural :: sanctification : sacral
creaturely co-wisdom and the fit of mind and world
Every virtue is in part a co-virtue.
(1) Divine power is infinite.
(2) Divine power is most free.
(3) Every other power necessarily presupposes divine power.
Many theological errors arise from theologians taking their own culture to be more durable than sacred Scripture, an assumption repeatedly shown to be false.
The Life of Christ is a salvific character in a salvific plot, both of which express a salvific theme, with a salvific show appropriate to all three.
Most religious experiences are fairly ordinary.
