"Sleepwalking into the Abyss"

"Denial, a tendency to conformism, a willingness to disregard the evidence, a habit of ducking responsibility, a blindness to mere experience in the face of the overwhelming evidence of theory:  these [left-brain] characteristics might sound ominously familiar to observers of contemporary Western life."

"if I am right, that the story of the Western world is one of increasing left-hemisphere domination, we would not expect insight to be the key note.  Instead we would expect a sort of insouciant optimism, the sleepwalker whistling a happy tune as he ambles towards the abyss."

     Iain McGilchrist, The master and his emissary:  the divided brain and the making of the western world, New expanded edition (New Haven, CT:  Yale University Press, 2019), 235, 237.

"the bishop of Syria shall be found at the setting of the sun, having [been] fetched . . . from the sun's rising"

Timothy A. Gonsalves

"God has vouchsafed that the bishop of Syria shall be found at the setting of the sun, having fetched him from the sun's rising.  It is good to set to the world towards God, that I may rise to him."

     St. Ignatius of Antioch, Romans II.2, as trans. Lake.

"I seek Him who died for our sake. I desire Him who rose for us."

"It is better for me to die in Christ Jesus than to be king over the ends of the earth.  I seek Him who died for our sake.  I desire Him who rose for us.  The pains of birth are upon me.  Suffer me, my brethren; hinder me not from living, do not wish me to die.  Do not give to the world one who desires to belong to God, nor deceive him with material things.  Suffer me to receive the pure light; when I have come thither I shall become a man [(ἄνθρωπος)].  Suffer me to follow the example of the Passion of my God."

     St. Ignatius of Antioch, Romans VI.1-3, as trans. Lake.

Being vs. being called

"pray for me or strength, both inward and outward, that I may not merely speak, but also have the will, that I may not only be called a Christian, but may also be found to be one."

     St. Ignatius of Antioch, Romans III.1, as trans. Lake. 

"In the beginning was. . . . Jesus Christ"

"by reading [the] houtos [of Jn 1:2] forward . . . as an anticipatory reference to Jesus of Nazareth . . . Barth is able then to claim that the identity of the one called provisionally the Word in v. 1 is an identity that is only finally disclosed in v. 15.  The concept of the Word appears in v. 1 as a 'placeholder' for the one whose identity is only made clear in v. 15. . . .  [T]he Word is a predicate of Jesus.  Jesus is not the predicate of a Word whose identity is already secure in himself without reference to Jesus.
Barth has thus “close[d] the door firmly on any attempt to find in John 1:1 a wholly abstract conception of the Word and, with that, an equally abstract conception of the Father’s relation to a Son who is not, in himself and as such, Jesus.  For John, there is no eternal Word as such, no eternal Word in himself that is not already defined by his relation to the Jesus who is still to come.  And that means too that the only-begotten Son is already in himself, in pretemporal eternity, Jesus Christ by way of anticipation of the event of the incarnation in time.
     "The Christological subject in [even] John’s Gospel has here been shown to be 'Jesus Christ.'  Jesus is the Word both in eternity (by anticipation) and in time (in concrete realization).  'Preexistence' is a less doubtful concept when speaking of the Johannine Prologue than it was in relation to the Synoptics.  A step [(or 'development' (238))] has been taken by John towards greater clarification.  But it is a step that remains in contact with the solutions provided in the Synoptics and ensures their commensurability with him.  For here, too, it is a human being of whom all these things are said, a human being who is proper to the identity of the eternal God. . . . As a relation already proper to the Son in pretemporal eternity, . . . Jesus Christ is something like 'the hypostatic realization in God of His electing purposes' [(McCormack himself)].  He is the second person of the Trinity.  So even when Jesus prays 'So now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had in our presence before the world existed,' this ['I'] is not to be understood in terms of a Logos who bears in himself no relation to Jesus but who is now speaking in the voice of the human Jesus as his instrument. . . . No, it is the human Jesus who prays this prayer.  And he can do so meaningfully because he is present by way of anticipation in the electing purposes of God that define him as a 'person' of the Trinity."

     Bruce Lindley McCormack, The humility of the eternal Son:  Reformed kenoticism and the repair of Chalcedon (Cambridge, UK:  Cambridge University Press, 2021), 243-245, underscoring mine.  Not sure yet what I think of this considered as a project of Chalcedonian "repair," I do nonetheless resonate with the specificity with which it rejects the diffusely "cosmic" character of certain Christologies.

Artificial nethermost intelligence

Aleteia

"the wealth of intelligence employed by the engineers [of such machines] does not in any way raise the machine towards intelligence.  [Quite] the contrary:  what the[ engineers] testify to is [rather] the [enormous] effort required to reduce rational tasks to the level of a natural [(which is to say, sub-intelligent and inanimate, corpse-like and inert)] operation among the most impoverished [of them all]."

"Dans la conception de telles machines, les trésors d’intelligence déversés par les ingénieurs n’élèvent donc aucunement la machine vers l’intelligence, ils témoignent au contraire de l’effort nécessaire à l’homme pour abaisser des tâches rationnelles au niveau d’une opération naturelle parmi les plus pauvres."

     Fr. Emmanuel Perrier, O.P., "Que fait l’intelligence artificielle?," Revue thomiste website, October (?) 2025.  "Artificial nethermost intelligence" is my attempt to reproduce the number of syllables in the phrase "Artificial general intelligence."

"'faith and love' . . . can be maintained only when docetism is rejected"

"Therefore adopt meekness and be renewed in faith, which is the flesh of the Lord, and in love, which is the blood of Jesus Christ."

ὑμεις οὖν τὴν πραϋπάθειαν ἀναλαβόντες ἀνακτήσασθε ἑαυτοὺς ἐν πίστει ὅ ἐστιν σὰρξ τοῦ κυρίου, καὶ ἐν ἀγάπῃ, ὅ ἐστιν αἷμα Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ.

     St. Ignatius, Trallians 8.1, as trans. Kirsopp Lake.  Cf. J. B. Lightfoot, The apostolic fathers:  Clement, Ignatius, and Polycarp 2.2 (1889), 171; Walter Bauer, Die Briefe des Ignatius von Antiochia und der Polykarpbrief, Handbuch zum Neuen Testament, Ergänzungsband 2 (Tübingen: Mohr (Siebeck), 1920), 236; William R. Schoedel & Helmut Koester, Ignatius of Antioch:  a commentary on the letters of Ignatius of Antioch, Hermeneia (Philadelphia:  Fortress Press, 1985), 149-150; etc. (I have not looked for any scholarship on this beyond (but not exhaustively!) the genre of the handy "commentary").  Schoedel & Koester, on the basis of a "study of the linking formula ('which is')":  "The basic concern seems to be the affirmation of the reality of the flesh (and hence of the suffering) of the historical Jesus. And this, in turn, is linked by Ignatius with the maintenance of true obedience and love (Sm. 6.2; cf. Tr. 2.1). For in Ignatius' mind 'faith and love' (cf. Sm. 6.1) can be maintained only when docetism is rejected."
     Cf. Romans 7.2-3, as trans. Lake, modifications mine:

[living (ζῶν)] I write to you[,] desiring [(ἐρῶν)] death.  My [desire (ἐρως)] has been crucified, and there is in me no fire of love [(πῦρ φιλόυλον)] for material things; but only water living and speaking in me [(ζῶν καὶ λαλοῦν, emended by Lightfoot (II.2 (1889), pp. 224-25) to ἁλλόμενον, from Jn 4:14 as interpolated into the long recension, welling up)] in me, and saying to me from within, 'Come to the Father.'  I have no pleasure in the food of corruption or in the delights of this life.  I desire [(θέλω)] the 'bread [(ἄρτον)] of God,' which is the flesh [(σὰρξ)] of Jesus Christ, who was 'of the seed of David,' and for drink I desire [(θέλω)] his blood [(αἷμα)], which is incorruptible love [(ἀγάπη ἄφθαρτος)].