Saturday, December 13, 2014

vox Verbi

"When the word [(verbo)] has been conveyed to you, does not the sound seem to say:  The word ought to grow, and I should diminish?  The sound of the voice [(Sonus vocis)] has made itself heard in the service of the word, and has gone away, as though it were saying:  My joy is complete."

     St. Augustine, Sermo 293.3 (PL 38, cols. 1328-1329), as translated in Liturgy of the hours, vol. 2, p. 261.  I have not checked PL 38 directly, but only this rekeying.

Tuesday, December 9, 2014

God "does not create the world, he saves it".

     Alfred North Whitehead, Process and reality:  an essay in cosmology V.ii.4 ((New York:  The Macmillan Company, 1960 [1929]), 526; corrected edition ed. David Ray Griffin & Donald W. Sherburne (New York:  The Free Press, 1978), 346).  Whitehead's rejection of the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo is, of course, well-known.