Omnino Simplex

My rough translation of Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae 1.3.7. The Latin is here, the Dominican Father translation is here.

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It seems that God is not wholly simple. For whatever is from God, imitates Him; thus all beings are from first being, and all goods are from first good. But in things that are from God, there is nothing wholly simple. Therefore God is not wholly simple.

Further, all that is best is attributed to God. But with us, the composite are better than the simple, as bodies mixed from elements than elements that are their parts. Therefore it must be said that God is not wholly simple.

But to the contrary is what Augustine says (Trin. VI), that God is truly and supremely simple.

I reply that it must be said that God's being wholly simple can be manifested in many ways. 

First, by what is said above. For in God there is no composition -- neither of quantitative parts, because He is not a body; nor composition of form and matter; nor in Him are nature and supposit other; nor are essence and actual being other; nor in Him is composition of genus and difference; nor of subject and accident; thus is manifested that God is in now way composite, but is wholly simple.

Second, because every composite is posterior to its components, and depends on them. But God is first being, as shown above. 

Third, because every composite has a cause, since things diverse in themselves do not come together in one thing except through some cause joining them together. But God does not have a cause, as shown above, because He is first efficient cause.

Fourth, because in every composite there should be the actual and the potential, which is not in God, because either one part is actual with respect to the other, or at least all parts are potential with respect to the whole.

Fifth, because every composite is a thing not conjoined to its parts; and this is manifest in whole of dissimilar parts, for no part of man is man, nor is any part of a foot the foot. But in wholes of similar parts, something said of the whole is said of the part, as part of air is air and of water, water; yet something is said of the whole that is not conjoined to its parts, for if the whole water is two cubits, a part is not. Thus in every composite there is something that is not itself. But even if this could be said of what has form, that it has something that is not itself (as in what is white there is something that does not pertain to the notion of white), nonetheless in the form itself there is nothing other than itself. Therefore, because God is form itself, or rather being itself, He cannot be composite in any way. And Hilary touches on this reason (Trin. VII), saying, God, who is power, is not constituted by the weak, nor is He who is light put together from the dark.

To the first, therefore, it must be sad that whatever is from God imitates Him as the caused the first cause. But it belongs to the notion of the caused that it be in some way composed, because at minimum its actual being is other than that which is, as will appear below.

To the second, it must be said that with us the composite is better than the simple because completeness of good for a creature is not found in one simple thing, but in many. But the completeness of divine God is found in one simple thing, as shown below.

How Beautiful Is Gentleness

 Gentleness
by Archibald Lampman 

 Blind multitudes that jar confusèdly
 At strife, earth's children, will ye never rest
From toils made hateful here, and dawns distressed
With ravelling self-engendered misery?
 And will ye never know, till sleep shall see
 Your graves, how dreadful and how dark indeed
 Are pride, self-will, and blind-voiced anger, greed,
And malice with its subtle cruelty?
 How beautiful is gentleness, whose face
 Like April sunshine, or the summer rain,
 Swells everywhere the buds of generous thought;
So easy, and so sweet it is; its grace
 Smoothes out so soon the tangled knots of pain.
Can ye not learn it? will ye not be taught?

Music on My Mind

 

Life in 3D, "How Great Thou Art".

Iustinus Martyr

Today is the feast of St. Justin Martyr. From the First Apology, Chapter 45: 

And that God the Father of all would bring Christ to heaven after He had raised Him from the dead, and would keep Him there until He has subdued His enemies the devils, and until the number of those who are foreknown by Him as good and virtuous is complete, on whose account He has still delayed the consummation -- hear what was said by the prophet David. These are his words: The Lord said to My Lord, Sit at My right hand, until I make Your enemies Your footstool. The Lord shall send to You the rod of power out of Jerusalem; and rule You in the midst of Your enemies. With You is the government in the day of Your power, in the beauties of Your saints: from the womb of morning have I begotten You. That which he says, He shall send to You the rod of power out of Jerusalem, is predictive of the mighty word, which His apostles, going forth from Jerusalem, preached everywhere; and though death is decreed against those who teach or at all confess the name of Christ, we everywhere both embrace and teach it. And if you also read these words in a hostile spirit, you can do no more, as I said before, than kill us; which indeed does no harm to us, but to you and all who unjustly hate us, and do not repent, brings eternal punishment by fire.

St. Justin is one of the patron saints of the blog; I first got this weblog exactly two decades ago on June 1, although I didn't post until the next day. That's a long eon in blogging, during which blogging and, more broadly, the internet have changed in many ways. In particular, I think both have mostly become both much less fun (certainly much less rough-and-tumble) and somewhat less useful for intellectual life, but that was likely inevitable. This particular blog, anyway, still mostly does what it has always done, at least for me, giving my unruly mind a place not to be so cramped, so it will certainly continue for a while, perhaps even for another long eon.

Dashed Off XIII

 Where there are demonstrative arguments, there are probable arguments.

2 Macc 15:12-14 and the intercession of saints

Measurement is not a sign but by means of signs.

objective causality & incomplete disposition to an end

possible solutions to Peirce's Puzzle about boundaries:
(1) boundaries are overlaps
(2) boundaries are (possibly vanishingly) small distinct regions
(3) boundaries are on one side
(4) boundaries are nonoverlapping superpositions (disjunctions collapsing to disjunct depending on manner of approach)
(5) boundaries don't exist

Gan (2023): If mereotopological connection is interpreted as the intersection of one set with the closure of another, all the major topological and mereotopological definitions align.

Massin on modes of location (2008)
partial-sporadic, partial-pervasive, entire-sporadic, entire pervasive

What is the alethic analogue of a boundary?
-- to give an answer, if there is an answer, would need an analogue of connection, then interior, then exterior, then boundary.

Compensatory duties are always relative to a law of compensation. (Such duties are duties of repair with respect to a specific means of measurement determined by the law.)

The only authentic reform is the reform that begins with love of good things.

"With the notion of value we are in a static order, in the order of what Aristotle called formal causality." Maritain
"Moral obligation is a constraint exercised by the intellect on the will."

"All human rights are comprehended under the formula: The human being must be treated as a person." Erhard

the aesthetic of formulas: elegance as clarity of relations in economy of form
elegance in contemplation vs elegance in use

Every permissibility requires a permitting authority, allowing for a broad sense of what might count as an authority.

the facultating power of will

The sacraments depend rigidly and constantly on God (in Thomasson's senses) and generically and historically on relevant priestly powers (including priesthood of believers for baptism and matrimony).

In concentrated learning, like acting, one must develop a process.

Most factional politics is a luxury game for the upper classes.

perceiving a historical figure in and through a fictional version

Every soul is tending toward its Ragnarok.

The human being is a transfiguring creature; it is our nature to take the world around us and make it something new, as instrument, as symbol, as reflection of ourselves, as counterpoint to ourselves.

Even heretical and schismatic sects can have true sacraments such that those who in good faith and not knowing better receive them with zeal  may be incoprorated thereby into the Catholic Church by honest desire. (This is not the same as to say that formal heretics and formal schismatics may be so; but a sect will often have people who are not themselves guilty of the heresy or schism, and, having come to it, are seeing the truth it reflects without being in a position to to see the defects in the reflection.)

Wisdom is not merely rational; it is free.

indulgences as stipendiary remissions for devotional services rendered (this is similar to some medieval accounts)

For us to say that something is a potential person, we have to be able to identify some act or process that is person-making.

slide rule as physical memory palace

Art operates not merely on formless materials but also on things that are already products of art. I set an artificial pen with artificial ink to an artificial page to produce an artificial text.

In listening to music, our imagination is both guided and free; its restlessness is given material on which to act and a framework within which it may more easily associate.

Grammar is written language's attempt to capture the fluid order of spoken language. Spoken language is more fundamentally rhetorical and poetic than written language, in the liberal arts senses of those terms.

Liguori's interpretation of 'truly, really, substantially'
truly: rejects merely figurative presence
really: rejects imaginary presence (presence by mere representation)
substantially: rejects merely virtual presence (presence by mere spiritual power)

We may and do obviously use the term 'knowledge' figuratively in non-factive cases.

Constant conjunction in experience requires an enduring self to whom such constant conjunction would exist.

formal wave vs. mediated wave

experiment -> experimental ensemble -> network of experimental ensembles -> theories

scientific research as massive parallel computation with coincidental variation

In our experience we do not find anything even approximating the appearance of a brute fact except arbitrary freely chosen results of will. Thus whenever we find anything attributed to brute fact, by analogy we should look for the relevant act of will.

Dice and coins are random because we deliberately choose them to be signs of objects that have an irrelevance to the dynamic features of their material nature.

fire on the altar as a symbol of the Ascension

Theological modernism often gets the direction of signification wrong, taking the cognitive expression as the ontic ground.

Modern states often function by trying to buy loyalty from subjects; activism is as effective as it is because it is a method of continually raising the price for loyalty.

The features of mystical phenomena include the majesty of God, the sinful states of soul, the dangers of deception, and our responses to them; it is a mistake to think that 'the mystical phenoman' are separate from these things.

the prayer of quiet as the Sabbath in us

The soul is the enclosure for itself, through which it itself moves. It is its own interior world, in which it itself abides and dwells. This is a result of its being present to itself both actually and objectively, immediately and reflectively, by direct presence and by sign.

Sometimes mystical phenomena are described modally (by how they are received) and sometiems objectively (by how they are perceived).

In mystical experience, the same thing may be experienced in different 'rotated' ways: as object of one's powers, as subject to which one is instrument, as cooperative with one in some action, etc.

The mind has both a dualistic and a monistic relation to itself; it is both united with and opposed to itself.

Social forms of phenomenology have to combine experience of with experience in.

People studying religious experience underestimate the extent to which one kind of experience can be embedded within another.

Drug-induced phenomena are generically interesting in that they trace out potentials for experience. Some of these potentials are not particularly interesting in themselves -- one does not need drugs to know that one has a potential for experiencing moving colors. But sometimes, while the drug-induced phenomenon is not itself important, the potential is something easily missed or overlooked in everyday experience; and in other cases, the phenomenon may have importance in a given context, as in entheogenic cases.

When people claim there are unmediated experiences of a given type, they often have weird views of what counts as 'mediated'.

One of the difficulties of evanglism in the post-medieval West is the constant need to spell out what in a more traditional society would be obvious.

the liturgical as an expression of Christ's mediatorial role, at the level both of society and of sacrament

Social justice cannot be upheld without regard for social roles.

The correct thread in early modern (and not always Protestant) antipathy to 'popery' is the essential importance of ecclesial subsidiarity.

In human life, nature and artifice intertwine.

Scripture as text transcends community-individual divides.

Faith and hope are habitual states of divine objective presence. Technically thi sis true of charity as well, but it is inadequate as a description of love's union with God by God's presence in love.

"Charity, the mother and guardian of all that is good, which binds together in union the hearts of many, regards not as absent him whom it has present in the mind's eye." Gregory the Great
"Your prayers are in the place where you are not, while your holy operations are shown in the place where you are."

Arche tou Euangeliou

Beginning of the good message of Jesus Christ, Son of God, as written in Isaiah the prophet: See, I send my messenger before your face, who will build your road, proclaimer's voice in the wilderness; ready the Lord's road, make level his rutted path.

There came John the baptizer in the wilderness, while proclaiming repentant immersion for release of sins, and there were going out to him all of the region of Judea and Jerusalem, and all were being immersed by him in the Jordan River, acknowledging their sins. And John was clothed in camel's hairs, with leather belt around the waist, while eating locusts and wild honey. And he was heralding, saying, The mightier-than-I comes after me, of whom I am not competent, having bent down, to loose the tie of his sandals. I immersed you in water, but he will immerse you in the Holy Spirit.

And it happened in those days, that Jesus came from Galilean Nazareth and was immersed in the Jordan by John. And at once ascending from the water, he gazed at the heavens splitting and the Spirit as dove descending on him. And a voice came from the skies: You are My Son, the Loved, in you I am pleased. And at once the Spirit casts him into the wilderness.

And he was there in the wilderness forty days, tested by the Adversary. And he was with the beasts and the messengers were attending to him.

[Mark 1:1-13, my very, very rough translation. Mark famously shifts back and forth between past tense and present tense; some of the more complicated syntax is my crude attempt to accommodate this in a readable form. He also uses the conjunction kai for almost everything, and in most of his sentences; I've translated it variously as 'and', 'while', and 'with'. He also famously has the quirk of using euthys (straightway, immediately, at once) a lot; he doesn't always seem to mean it chronologically, so perhaps we should take it as his figurative way of indicating that two events are closely tied together in some way or other -- perhaps less like 'at once' and more like 'Connected with this,...'.

The passage has several -angel- words, although interestingly they all do slightly different duty: euangeliou (of the good tiding, i.e., the gospel), ton angelon (the messenger, i.e., the prophet), hoi angeloi (the messengers, i.e., the angels). 

The fact that the comment at the beginning is attributed to Isaiah and not to the textually closer Malachi is sometimes dismissed by commentators as an error of memory, but when we go back and look at how these texts are reflected in this next several paragraphs, the textual interrelations seem to me to be far too complex to make this plausible; the author is not slipping but doing it deliberately. That is, the comment attributed to Isaiah is not a straight quotation but an interpretation, which seems (probably correctly even as a purely textual matter) to recognize Isaiah 40:3 as an allusion to Exodus 23:20ff. and as extended and interpreted by Malachi 3:1. All three passages seem to have some influence on the paragraphs to follow, which is not at all what you would expect from a simple error in memory. And it's a little odd that commentators never remember that the way people, across multiple cultures, read prophecy is by interpreting it in light of other prophecy. It's also worth reflecting that conjoining of multiple prophecies fits exactly with Mark's overall narrative style, with kai and euthys perpetually linking things together into unities of all different kinds.]

Standing Admonition

It is impossible to say, who would have been able to have reasoned out that whole system, which we call Natural Religion, in its genuine simplicity, clear of superstition: but there is certainly no ground to affirm that the generality could. If they could, there is no sort of probability that they would. Admitting there were, they would highly want a standing admonition to remind them of it, and inculcate it upon them. 

 And further, were they as much disposed to attend to religion, as the better sort of men are; yet even upon this supposition, there would be various occasions for supernatural instruction and assistance, and the greatest advantages might be afforded by them. So that to say revelation is a thing superfluous, what there was no need of, and what can be of no service, is, I think, to talk quite wildly and at random. Nor would it be more extravagant to affirm, that mankind is so entirely at ease in the present state, and life so completely happy, that it is a contradiction to suppose our condition capable of being, in any respect, better.

[Joseph Butler, The Analogy of Religion, Part II, Chapter 1.]