The Divine Lamp shines again

Dim Bulb posts a great sermon of St. Thomas Aquinas in anticipation of Pentecost. I am going to revise the sidebar link to direct readers to his most recent website. Make sure you peruse DB’s stuff: it’s a goldmine, folks.

Irony of ironies

This made me chuckle. Because what Madrid did is totally different from, you know, establishing a blog on the internet and publishing on controversial topics and then requiring registration, heavily screening, and refusing to publish a significant amount of critical comments from numerous readers while choosing to remain pseudonymous and refusing to provide credentials. It’s completely different! Wholly unlike that other thing altogether, I tell you! Not even in the same ballpark. No sir.

Interaction on Mary and μακαριουσιν

μακαριουσιν

I respond to a recent criticism by TF (responding to a criticism of mine).
It’s my position that Luke 1:45 refers to the gracious bestowal of perfect knowledge to Mary by “the Lord.” Mary then proceeds to respond to this exclamation made by Elizabeth who was “filled with the holy Ghost,” by elaborating exactly that which was delivered to her by the Lord and on which she believed. The content of that includes the makariousin which is an indicative future 3 person plural active voice verb, as I am given to understand it. This is done immediately after Mary’s imperative to Elizabeth (idou = “be cognizant,” “be aware,” “behold,” “be perceiving”). It is also my position that in light of that imperative, Mary was expressing an aspect of that part of the deposit given to her by the Lord (by way of the angel Gabriel). This deposit was later recorded by Luke under inspiration as well. In your parsing of it, you split it up into bits which you wish to consider inspired and bits which you wish to characterize as “possibly” “hyperbolic.”

A number of questions arise. Are there grammatical concerns which would have rendered a second imperative in v. 47 awkward, improbable, impossible? Is it more reasonable to consider the remark (makariousin) in the context I have just laid out as also inspired or more reasonable to consider it uninspired? The entire passage of Luke 1 makes it clear that the makariousin ought also to be considered both inspired and imperative, despite your objection in isolating the parsing of the Greek word as being definitive for your case. That’s what I meant by pedantic and disingenuous. Not that you were dealing in trivia (for we are not) nor that you were being dishonest (for I don’t believe you were). Rather, you were concentrating on the trees and missing the forest.

My knowledge of Greek is not spectacular. I am not a trained scholar. You haven’t given us any reason to think you are either. Perhaps to clarify you could offer credentials, and also address my questions above. I use various resources to help me in my Scripture studies. Among them are texts of Greek instruction, but I am no expert and am an autodidact. You may respond or not as you wish.

By way of introduction…

I want to set up the next series of investigation by quoting Reginald Garrigou-LaGrange:

 2. Angelic Knowledge

There are three orders of knowledge: human, angelic, divine. The object of knowledge in general is intelligible reality. The proper object of human intelligence is the intelligible being of sense objects, because the human intellect has as its proportioned object the lowest order of intelligible reality, the shadowy reality of the sense world. By opposition, then, the proper object of angelic intelligence is the intelligible reality of spiritual creatures. Hence, the proper intelligible object of each particular angel is that angel’s own essence, just as God’s proper intelligible object is His own divine essence. [600].

This position granted, let us see its consequences. The human idea, by which man knows, is an abstract and universal idea, drawn forth, by the intellect agent, from particular sense objects. But the angelic idea, not being drawn from external sense objects, is a natural endowment of the angelic intellect, infused into it by God at the moment of creation. Hence the angelic idea is at once universal and concrete. The angel’s infused idea of the lion, say, represents not only the nature of the lion, but all individual lions that either actually exist or have in the past been objects of the angel’s intellect. Angelic ideas are thus participations in God’s own creative ideas. Infused ideas, then, which Plato and Descartes falsely ascribed to men, are, on the contrary, an angelic characteristic.

Thus these angelic ideas, at once universal and concrete, represent whole regions of intelligible reality, and each angel has his own distinctive suprasensible panorama. The higher the angel, the stronger is his intelligence and the fewer are his ideas, since they are more rich and universal. Thus, with ever fewer ideas, the higher angels command immense regions of reality, which the lower angels cannot attain with such eminent simplicity. [601] A human parallel is the sage, who, in a few simple principles, grasps an entire branch of knowledge. The stronger is the created intellect, to say it briefly, the more it approaches the preeminent simplicity of the divine intellect.

A further consequence. The nature of his ideas, at once universal and concrete, make the angel’s knowledge intuitive, not in any way successive and discursive. He sees at a glance the particular in the universal, the conclusion in the principle, the means in the end. [602].

For the same reason his act of judging does not proceed by comparing and separating different ideas. [603] By his purely intuitive apprehension of the essence of a thing, he sees at once all characteristics of that essence, for example, he simultaneously sees all man’s human and created characteristics, for instance, that man’s essence is not man’s existence, then man’s existence is necessarily given and preserved by divine causality. [604].

Speaking of liars…

I was reading Reginald de Piperno yesterday about the “Liars at the door.” Later, I stumbled on an article in which Elizabeth Shipp, the political director for NARAL Pro-Choice America, was quoted as saying “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say Gov. Palin sounds remarkably pro-choice,” in response to remarks that Gov. Palin had made here in Indiana at a recent pro-life event. Gov. Palin had indicated that “for a fleeting moment” she had considered and then dismissed abortion when she discovered that her son Trig had a chromosomal abnormality.

As a human person, with human failings and human emotional conflicts, I would imagine that Gov. Palin probably did have abortion cross her mind. How could a woman in 21st century, post Roe v. Wade America not have it enter her consciousness, however briefly? To insinuate that this somehow makes her “pro-choice” is typical of the lying advocates of murder at the aforementioned organization. Which brings up an interesting point: anyone notice their shiny, new moniker? “NARAL Pro-Choice America.” I remember what NARAL stands for, because they used to be comfortable advertising it: the National Abortion Rights Action League. (They briefly flirted with the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League, but apparently they realized that “reproductive rights” conjures up images of, well, reproduction, i.e., little babies. Little baby people. Little itty-bitty human people. Like the ones GE’s Voluson 4D ultrasound imaging medical device shows clearly. Just formless, lifeless cell masses, folks, nothing to see here, move along. It’s above our paygrade, anyway. Clearly it’s a matter of faith as to when human life begins. Oops! Dang! Ka-pow! As the GE video says at one point, “let your eyes decide.”) But I suppose focus-groups told them that the new name had more broad-based appeal. You know. The better to solicit funds from. (But they’re not about making money, folks, they’re about “protecting freedoms.” And I’m the greatest guitarist on the planet. No, really. Check out my vast array of studio work as a fill-in for Page, Clapton, Vaughan, and Beck. All me.)

What really gets me is crap like this:

In 1973, the Supreme Court guaranteed American women the right to choose abortion in its landmark decision Roe v. Wade. In Roe, the Court issued a compromise between the state’s ability to restrict abortion and a woman’s right to choose.

Some compromise! This is exactly like saying that income taxation is a compromise between the individual’s right to keep his earnings and the state’s desire to redistribute wealth. (If you don’t like taxes, don’t pay them. It’s voluntary.)  Oh, but wait, noone is forced to “choose” abortion, Syzygus. No, that’s the difference. Perhaps. For now. But let’s see what happens when “universal healthcare” (an inevitability) is enacted, and bureaucratic ethicists are the ones informing the people who make decisions about “healthcare,” shall we? Let’s see: we’ve rescinded the Mexico City policy. We’ve lifted restrictions on federal funding of abortions and embryonic stem-cell research (despite the utter failure that avenue has proven to be, and in the face of the numerous successes of adult pluripotent stem-cell research, which does not destroy human life). Does anyone seriously believe, in the face of shrieking radicals like Katherine Hancock Ragsdale, that the status quo is even possible? 

Then there’s this gem: “Even with Roe v. Wade’s protections still in place, 87 percent of U.S. counties have no abortion provider.” All because those “furiously working anti-choice” zealots are tirelessly trying to make abortion access impossible. Doesn’t have anything to do with most doctors realizing a fundamental disconnect between helping people, saving lives, providing good healthcare and the provision of abortion. No sir. Or ma’am. Or [insert term-of-choice for your transgendered status here].

And I like this one, too:

RU 486 should not be confused with emergency contraception, also known as the “morning-after” pill, which is a basic form of birth control that prevents pregnancy and does not cause abortion.

Howler! Mifepristone is RU-486, and mifepristone is also a “morning after pill.” But they’re not the same; you see, one acts an abortifacient, and the other (same) thing doesn’t. (Of course, either way, a conceived human person is prevented from being allowed to have its rights of choice, etc., but what are you, some kind of extremist?)

Liars.

Tactics, strategy, and prudence

-Korean couple in traditional garb at a game of baduk, called “go” in the West

When I was a boy, my older brother taught me to play chess, and I enjoyed it. When I was around 12, I think, I received a game called “Pente” as a Christmas present. This, I learned from my uncle, is a novel variation of the above mentioned Oriental game. I loved Pente. I took to it like a duck takes to water; I was instantly successful, unbeatable. I liked it so much that noone in my family wanted to play with me after a while. I had a best friend who played with me; eventually he, too, refused. Then, in a fit of desperation, I happened to ask his older sister to play me. She quickly beat me. Then again. And again. I played her many times over the next few years, but I never beat her. Not once.

I learned the value of humility. I learned the value of tactics. I learned the value of strategy. I learned the difference. I learned about pacing and self-discipline. I learned about knowing when to not start a game. (Partially as a result of this, perhaps, I never went to the casinos in nearby Reno when I was stationed in NoCal.) In short, I learned to begin to practice the virtue of prudence.

Ecclesiastes 1:17-18 says, “And I have given my heart to know prudence, and learning, and errors, and folly: and I have perceived that in these also there was labour, and vexation of spirit, because in much wisdom there is much indignation: and he that addeth knowledge, addeth also labour.”

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. The beginning of wisdom is the beginning of work. The vexation of our confounded sprits arises, no doubt, at least partially from the struggle to re-integrate our selves and work to order our desires, passions, thoughts, and speech through action.

We begin to tread the path in footsteps lain heretofore. There is nothing and yet everything controversial about this. We begin to have our restless spirits soothed by the Comforter as we set about to do the labour we discover as knowledge and responsibility increase. The more we do, the more we realize it is God Who is at work, in us, to will and to do. And it is we who work. The more we work, the more we suffer. The older we grow, the more we suffer. The more we suffer, the more we have the opportunity to “offer it up,” as they say, and in so doing, participate in the universal Christian calling St. Paul talked about in the eighth chapter of Romans, especially vv. 13-17.

I started this post after reflecting quite a bit on whether to post a rather lengthy reaction to what amounts to sheer hypocrisy among several online authors, some with whom I generally disagree, and one with whom I generally agree. In the end, I believe prudence dictates that I follow the course of keeping close counsel. I would rather expend my limited time continuing projects I had long ago set out to pursue. So, God willing, more epistemological investigations, more philosophical meanderings, more groundwork, and more cultural explorations are afoot.

Questions for TF

If memory serves, you subscribe to the Westminster Standards. Yet you say there is “the divinely sanctioned way in which we see Christ: the Bible and the sacraments. We see Christ in Scriptures, and we remember him and his death not through small metal symbols or statuettes but through the bread and the cup of the Lord’s Supper.”

This appears totally inconsistent with the answer to Q. 109 of the Larger Catechism, and it seems also to border on violating the teaching of WCF XXIX:V. Would you care to explain how it is that you are authorized to “see” Christ in any way whatsoever? How, exactly, do you think of Christ, and if you do think of Him, are you not “making any representation of God, of all or of any of the three persons, either inwardly in our mind, or outwardly in any kind of image or likeness of any creature whatsoever,” emphasis mine? And if you are not authorized to “see” Him by any mental means, what is the meaning of your claim of adherence to the doctrine of the Bodily Resurrection and continued abiding of our Lord in His glorified bodily state of existence? Mustn’t you form some mental image of Him if you profess the truth of that doctrine?

Politics, as usual

I simply don’t know how to reconcile this with this. We’re supposed to believe that A) Biden was “the voice of reason”? and B) that the former head of the Center for a New American Security, Michele Flournoy, now the undersecretary for Defense – and administration point person for Afghanistan policy – is going to be spearheading a policy not geared toward nation-building, etc.? This is the CNAS with Madeleine Albright and Richard Armitage on its board. The CNAS with John Nagl telling us

Currently 70,000 and projected to grow to 135,000, the Afghan army is the most respected institution in that troubled country. It may need to reach 250,000, and be supported by a similarly sized police force, to provide the security that will cause the Taliban to wither. Building such an Afghan Army will be a long-term effort that will require American equipment and advisers for many years, but since the Afghans can field about 70 troops for the cost of one deployed American soldier, there is no faster, cheaper or better way to win.  [source]

I look forward to the impending announcement of a shake-up at the SEC: Michael Milken will be replacing beleaguered head Mary Schapiro. Tension is said to be mounting there, though, as new board appointee Ivan Boesky and Milken have had minor issues in the past.

Sacramental Authority VI

Acts 1 relates some of the immediate aftermath of the resurrection of Christ. Jesus spent another sanctified 40 day period, this time not to seek solace or receive the ministry of angels, but to give comfort by his Presence, to “giv[e] commandments by the Holy Ghost,” and to eat with the apostles He had chosen. He explained the Kingdom of God to them over the course of these 40 days. They still asked when Jesus would “restore” the kingdom of Israel, whereupon Jesus instructs them of the coming descent of the Holy Ghost. After Jesus’ Ascension, while the apostles and other disciples were gathered together for prayer, Peter “rose up in the midst” of the assembly, the “brethren,” and issued a decree that they were to both witness and accomplish the fulfillment of Scripture by appointing a successor to the office Judas Iscariot had vacated by his departure and suicide. Peter recognizes the necessity of seeing Psalm 68 with a fresh perspective.

“It hath seemed good to us, being assembled together, to choose out men, and to send them unto you, with our well beloved Barnabas and Paul: Men that have given their lives for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Acts 15:25-26. The passage following relates how legates, then, of the Apostles were sent to deliver the letter and tell the believers by mouth the same things in the letter. This pattern of conciliar resolution and extending the mandated mission (with which Jesus commissioned the Apostles) through delegated, authoritative ministers will be seen to continue through the rest of the Apostolic and post-apostolic period.

St. John records the words of wherein Jesus likens Himself to the Father in chapter 10 of his Gospel. Jesus prefaces His remarks by parabolic symbols. He likens Himself to the door of the sheepfold, by whom all who are His enter and exit to pasture. He tells how He will call out His flock (who will hear Him and follow Him) from the pen, and how He will pasture them and give them sustenance unto “life everlasting.” Jesus also closely relates the authority He has been given, through the love of the Father, to lay down and take up again His own life to this calling, leading, and bestowing of life.

At the end of St. John’s Gospel, in chapter 21, the Lord takes pain to demonstrate an authoritative reconciliation, even as He bestows a mandate for authoritative reconciliation upon His Apostles. Especially to be noted here is the singling out of St. Peter with words which seem striking in the context of chapter 10. Jesus said to him, “15 When therefore they had dined, Jesus saith to Simon Peter: Simon son of John, lovest thou me more than these? He saith to him: Yea, Lord, thou knowest that I love thee. He saith to him: Feed my lambs. 16 He saith to him again: Simon, son of John, lovest thou me? He saith to him: Yea, Lord, thou knowest that I love thee. He saith to him: Feed my lambs. 17 He said to him the third time: Simon, son of John, lovest thou me? Peter was grieved, because he had said to him the third time: Lovest thou me? And he said to him: Lord, thou knowest all things: thou knowest that I love thee. He said to him: Feed my sheep. 18 Amen, amen I say to thee, when thou wast younger, thou didst gird thyself, and didst walk where thou wouldst. But when thou shalt be old, thou shalt stretch forth thy hands, and another shall gird thee, and lead thee whither thou wouldst not. 19 And this he said, signifying by what death he should glorify God. And when he had said this, he saith to him: Follow me.”

I have noted all along in this series the remarkable coincidence of feeding and sustenance with authority and its delegation. There is no surprise, therefore, at the inclusion of the meal-taking (after the miraculous provision by the Lord to the fishermen’s nets) immediately prior to the mandate our Lord gives there in John 21. I am feeding you, Jesus is taken to say, now you feed the ones I have, and have called, and have lead. Remember well, also, that Jesus made it plain that He had other sheep not of the fold: those, too, would need to be sustained. Hearkening back to the Acts, then, we remember what St. Peter (despite some trouble over this later) said in Acts 15:7, “And when there had been much disputing, Peter, rising up, said to them: Men, brethren, you know, that in former days God made choice among us, that by my mouth the Gentiles should hear the word of the gospel, and believe.”

St. Peter did, in fact, preach on Pentecost, but that was primarily to the dispersed Israelites, albeit in tongues they could understand. It is also true that, as Acts 11 relates, St. Peter received a vision concerning foods formerly unclean. Immediately the man who was visited by the angel sent for “Simon Peter” to receive the Gospel. Intimately tied with this is the baptism of the Holy Spirit when St. Peter began to speak to them. The fact that God sent an angel to the man – and not immediately the Holy Spirit – is striking. The mission churches, having been initially started by Jews of the diaspora sent after the Pentecostal descent of the Spirit at the preaching of St. Peter, was also then established at Antioch.

It seems appropriate for me (although I have gone out of order) to visit that scene at the fruition of the feast of Weeks in Acts 2. Noteworthy is the significance of that name: Shavuot is 50 days after the conclusion of Passover, and so can be seen as the fruition thereof. It is the festival of bringing-in, of reaping, of gathering the harvest. In Numbers, it is called the feast of the first-fruits, a name replete with meaning in Christological terms. At this festival, then, did the Holy Spirit choose to come to rest on the company of Christ’s faithful, and, then through St. Peter, to the Jews from every corner of the globe. St. Peter used interesting illustrations to persuade and witness to these men. Apocalyptic signs are promised, prophecies are said to be fulfilled (the example used was a specific passage from Joel, about which more in a moment), and the throne of David is said to be once again occupied.

It does not seem to my humble mind any mere coincidence that St. Peter used Joel as his springboard. After all, the diasporatic Jews had just finished accusing the company of disciples of drunkenness, and this is how Joel’s short scroll begins: with a call to drunken men to awaken, lament, and repent; St. Peter turns it onto the crowd. Also astonishing to me is what comes next in Joel 1, vv 6-15:

 

6 For a nation is come up upon my land, strong and without number: his teeth are like the teeth of a lion: and his cheek teeth as of a lion’s whelp. 7 He hath laid my vineyard waste, and hath pilled off the bark of my fig tree: he hath stripped it bare, and cast it away; the branches thereof are made white. 8 Lament like a virgin girded with sackcloth for the husband of her youth. 9 Sacrifice and libation is cut off from the house of the Lord: the priests, the Lord’s ministers, have mourned: 10 The country is destroyed, the ground hath mourned: for the corn is wasted, the wine is confounded, the oil hath languished.

11 The husbandmen are ashamed, the vinedressers have howled for the wheat, and for the barley, because the harvest of the field is perished. 12 The vineyard is confounded, and the fig tree hath languished: the pomegranate tree, and the palm tree, and the apple tree, and all the trees of the field are withered: because joy is withdrawn from the children of men. 13 Gird yourselves, and lament, O ye priests, howl, ye ministers of the altars: go in, lie in sackcloth, ye ministers of my God: because sacrifice and libation is cut off from the house of your God. 14 Sanctify ye a fast, call an assembly; gather together the ancients, all the inhabitants of the land into the house of your God: and cry ye to the Lord: 15 Ah, ah, ah, for the day: because the day of the Lord is at hand, and it shall come like destruction from the mighty.

The sacrifice of the Old Covenant is finished. The sacrifice of the New has come. The assembly which was foretold has taken place. The day of the Lord has come at last. Immediately before Joel tells the message which Peter recounts – that the Lord will pour out His Spirit on all flesh – he tells of the glorious restoration of sacrifice, provision, and feeding of God’s people. The priests lamented because they could offer no sacrifice, because there was no libation to bring. So, now (with the rending of the curtain in the Temple and the earthquakes and heavenly signs at Jesus’ crucifixion) will the old system cease and the gulf between God and man be bridged. The relationship – and the Kingdom – are restored.

Dr. Liccione’s Latest

Dr. Mike Liccione’s latest in his Development of Doctrine series is up at Philosophia Perennis. There are linked antecedents and supplements in the body of the text for those who have not been following the recent discussions of abduction, etc., on Dr. L’s personal site, Sacramentum Vitae and at Dr. Scott Carson’s An Examined Life, and elsewhere. Those were of particular interest to me since my emphasis when I studied philosophy at IUPUI was Classical American philosophy (and in particular, Charles Sanders Peirce). All of it is quite fascinating to me, and I hope some of my readers will enjoy it, too. The DD-IV piece at PP is extraordinarily well crafted, in my opinion. Tolle, lege.