Saturday, May 30, 2020

Kenosis Thomistica (i.e. Patristica, Calvinistica, etc.), that Extra Thomisticum (Patristicum, Calvinisticum, etc.)

"the Lord, i.e., God the Father, 'will execute his brief word' [Rom 9:28:  verbum breviatum faciet Dominus], i.e., [his] incarnate [Word], because the Son of God emptied himself, taking the form of a slave.  He is called 'emptied' (exinanitum) or 'brief' (breviatum), not because anything was subtracted from the fullness or greatness of his divinity, but because he assumed our thinness and smallness [nostrum exilitatem et parvitatem suscepit]."

     St. Thomas Aquinas, Super Rom. 9, lec. 5 (no. 805), as trans. Gilles Emery, "Kenosis, Christ, and the Trinity in Thomas Aquinas," Nova et vetera 17, no. 3 (Summer 2019):  856 (839-869).


"He emptied himself.  But since he was filled with the divinity, did he empty himself of that?  No, because he remained what he was; and what he was not, he assumed.  But this must be understood in regard to the assumption of what he had not, and not according to the assumption of what he had.  For just as he descended from heaven, not that he ceased to exist in heaven, but because he began to exist in a new way on earth, so he also emptied himself, not by putting off his divine nature, but by assuming a human nature."

     Super Phil. 2, lec. 2 (no. 57), on p. 842.


"He is not said to have ‘emptied himself’ by diminishing his divine nature, but by assuming our deficient nature."

     In de div. nom. 2, lec. 5 (no. 207), on p. 853.


"the Word of God emptied himself, that is to say, was made small, not by the loss of his own greatness, but by the assumption of human smallness."

     SCG IV, ch. 34 (no. 3715), on p. 855.


"He is said to have emptied himself, not by losing his fullness, but because he took our littleness upon himself."

     ST III.57.2.ad 2, on pp. 855-856.


"'He emptied himself':  he made himself small not by putting off greatness, but by taking on smallness."

     Super Gal. 4, lec. 2 (no. 203), on p. 856.


"he emptied himself:  not that he abandoned his great dignity, but he hid it by taking on our smallness".

     Super Ioan. 13, lec. 2 (no. 1746), on p. 857.

Wednesday, May 27, 2020

"the only prayers never denied are moderate ones."

     "And I believe that God will hear our prayers, since we make them with such firm faith, and will grant us our wish, it being so moderate [(mediocre)].  The wise men of old called moderation [(Mediocrité)] golden—that is precious, universally praised, welcome everywhere.  Look through the sacred Bible [(les sacres bibles)] and you'll find that the only prayers never denied are moderate ones [(que ont mediocrité requis, those characterized by the requisite moderation)]."

     Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel IV.Prologue (trans. Burton Raffel (New York & London:  W. W. Norton & Company, 1990), 384).  According to the 1994 Pléiade edition annotated by Mireille Huchon, mediocrité (juste milieu, golden mean) acquired the pejorative sense it has today only in the 17th century (1487n7).  Trans. Urquhart & Motteux:  "the prayers of those who asked moderately were never unanswered."
     And that's how it is, that's what happens to those who, simply, innocently, wish only for moderate things, and make moderate choices [(en simplicité soubhaitent et optent choses mediocres)].  Learn from them, you other lowland humbugs [391].

Sunday, May 24, 2020

The Son united the substance of our fragility with himself and "collocated" it with the Father

"the most sacred day on which your Only Begotten Son, our Lord, placed at the right hand of your glory our weak human nature, which he had united to himself"

"diem sacratissimum . . . quo Dominus noster, Unigenitus Filius tuus, unitam sibi fragilitatis nostrae substantiam in gloriae tuae dextera collocavit"

the most sacred day on which our Lord, your Only Begotten Son, has collocated the united-with-himself substance of our fragility at the right hand of your glory

     The Communicantes proper to the Ascension, Eucharistic Prayer I, Roman missal.