Saturday, March 8, 2014

The spirit of the law

"And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to observe my ordinances."

וְאֶת־רוּחִ֖י אֶתֵּ֣ן בְּקִרְבְּכֶ֑ם
וְעָשִׂ֗יתִי אֵ֤ת אֲשֶׁר־בְּחֻקַּי֙ תֵּלֵ֔כוּ וּמִשְׁפָּטַ֥י תִּשְׁמְר֖וּ וַעֲשִׂיתֶֽם

     Ez 36:27, RSV.  There is no disjunction here.  What the spirit does is ensure that we keep the law.

Friday, March 7, 2014

"every passion gathers strength in proportion as it is cultivated, and is increased by all the efforts to satiate it."

"toute passion se fortifie à mesure qu'on s'en occupe davantage, et s'accroit par tous les efforts qu'on tente pour l'assouvir."

     Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America II (1840).II.xix ("What causes almost all Americans to follow industrial callings"), trans. Henry Reeve, with revisions by Francis Bowen and Phillips Bradley ((New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997), vol. 2, pp. 155n1);  Œuvres, ed. André Jardin (Bibliothèque de la Pléiade), II (De la démocratie en Amérique), ed. Jean-Claude Lamberti and James T. Schleifer (Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 1992), 668.

Wednesday, March 5, 2014

"God alone satisfies, and goes/passes on [beyond that] into infinity."

Deus enim solus satiat, et in infinitum excedit. . . .

     St. Thomas Aquinas, In symbolum apostolorum 12.
     Too bad that's not how the Leonine edition reads.  Corpus Thomisticum re“prints" the 1954 Marietti edition, whereas the new (and standard critical) Leonine edition that Nicholas Ayo relied upon in the form of a pre-publication typescript in 1988 (Nicholas Ayo, C.S.C., The sermon conferences of St. Thomas Aquinas on the Apostles’ Creed, translated from the Leonine edition (University of Notre Dame Press, 1988; Wipf & Stock, 2005)) reads (or will read once published, if it hasn’t been already) somewhat differently:

Deus autem solus satiat, qui in infinitum excedit. . . .

Whereas God alone, who goes/passes on into infinity, satisfies.
Ayo:  "God alone, who surpasses infinity, satisfies [us]. . . ."