"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."

"All the baptized in the Church have citizenship, on their sharing [1] the Creed and [2] the morality that comes from it."

 "Nella Chiesa tutti i battezzati hanno cittadinanza, se ne condividono il Credo e la morale conseguente."

      Robert Cardinal Sarah, as interviewed by Giacomo Gambassi on 12 September 2025.  Avvenire; Rorate Caeli.

A wilde faith

"The Catholic church is for saints and sinners [alone].  For respectable people, the Anglican church will do."

      Oscar Wilde, as quoted by Richard A. Kaye in "The path to Rome:  investigating the deathbed conversion of Oscar Wilde," Times literary supplement no. 6386 (August 22, 2025), 8 (7-8).  Richard Ellmann adds "alone", citing an undated letter of Reginald Turner to T. H. Bell "in Bell's unpublished MS. on Wilde (Clark)" (Oscar Wilde (New York:  Alfred A. Knopf, 1988, 583 and 621).  I have followed this trail no further.

Ouch

Source

     "Do you want to honor Christ’s body? Then do not scorn him in his nakedness, nor honor him here in the church with silken garments while neglecting him outside where he is cold and naked. For he who said: This is my body, and made it so by his words, also said: You saw me hungry and did not feed me, and inasmuch as you did not do it for one of these, the least of my brothers, you did not do it for me. What we do here in the church requires a pure heart, not special garments; what we do outside requires great dedication.
     "Let us learn, therefore to be men of wisdom and to honor Christ as he desires. For a person being honored finds greatest pleasure in the honor he desires, not in the honor we think best. Peter thought he was honoring Christ when he refused to let him wash his feet; but what Peter wanted was not truly an honor, quite the opposite! Give him the honor prescribed in his law by giving your riches to the poor. For God does not want golden vessels but golden hearts.
     "Now, in saying this I am not forbidding you to make such gifts; I am only demanding that along with such gifts and before them you give alms. He accepts the former, but he is much more pleased with the latter. In the former, only the giver profits; in the latter, the recipient does too. A gift to the Church may be taken as a form of ostentation, but an alms is pure kindness.
     "Of what use is it to weigh down Christ’s table with golden cups, when he himself is dying of hunger? First, fill him when he is hungry; then use the means you have left to adorn his table. Will you have a golden cup made but not give a cup of water? What is the use of providing the table with cloths woven of gold thread, and not providing Christ himself with the clothes he needs? What profit is there in that? Tell me: If you were to see him lacking the necessary food but were to leave him in that state and merely surround his table with gold, would he be grateful to you or rather would he not be angry? What if you were to see him clad in worn-out rags and stiff from the cold, and were to forget about clothing him and instead were to set up golden columns for him, saying that you were doing it in his honor? Would he not think he was being mocked and greatly insulted?
     "Apply this also to Christ when he comes along the roads as a pilgrim, looking for shelter. You do not take him in as your guest, but you decorate floor and walls and the capitals of the pillars. You provide silver chains for the lamps, but you cannot bear even to look at him as he lies chained in prison. Once again, I am not forbidding you to supply these adornments; I am urging you to provide these other things as well, and indeed to provide them first. No one has ever been accused for not providing ornaments, but for those who neglect their neighbor a hell awaits with an inextinguishable fire and torment in the company of the demons. Do not, therefore, adorn the church and ignore your afflicted brother, for he is the most precious temple of all."

     St. John Chrysostom, Homily 50 on Matthew, as trans. Liturgy of the hours for Saturday of Week 21 in Ordinary time.  Ed. Field (1839), vol. 2, p. 64 ll. 15 ff.(57-66) = PG 58, col. 508 ll. 46 ff.  NPNF 10 (1844), trans. Prevost:

"Wouldest thou do honor to Christ’s body? Neglect Him not when naked; do not[,]  while here thou honorest Him with silken garments, neglect Him perishing without of cold and nakedness. For He that said, 'This is my body,' and by His word confirmed the fact, 'This same said, “Ye saw me an hungered, and fed me not;' and, 'Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me.' For This indeed needs not coverings, but a pure soul; but that requires much attention.
     "Let us learn therefore to be strict in life, and to honor Christ as He Himself desires. For to Him who is honored that honor is most pleasing, which it is His own will to have, not that which we account best. Since Peter too thought to honor Him by forbidding Him to wash his feet, but his doing so was not an honor, but the contrary,
     "Even so do thou honor Him with this honor, which He ordained, spending thy wealth on poor people. Since God hath no need at all of golden vessels, but of golden souls.
     "And these things I say, not forbidding such offerings to be provided; but requiring you, together with them, and before them, to give alms. For He accepts indeed the former, but much more the latter. For in the one the offerer alone is profited, but in the other the receiver also. Here the act seems to be a ground even of ostentation; but there all is mercifulness, and love to man.
     "For what is the profit, when His table indeed is full of golden cups, but He perishes with hunger? First fill Him, being an hungered, and then abundantly deck out His table also. Dost thou make Him a cup of gold, while thou givest Him not a cup of cold water? And what is the profit? Dost thou furnish His table with cloths bespangled with gold, while to Himself thou affordest not even the necessary covering? And what good comes of it? For tell me, should you see one at a loss for necessary food, and omit appeasing his hunger, while you first overlaid his table with silver; would he indeed thank thee, and not rather be indignant? What, again, if seeing one wrapped in rags, and stiff with cold, thou shouldest neglect giving him a garment, and build golden columns, saying, 'thou wert doing it to his honor,' would he not say that thou wert mocking, and account it an insult, and that the most extreme?
     "Let this then be thy thought with regard to Christ also, when He is going about a wanderer, and a stranger, needing a roof to cover Him; and thou, neglecting to receive Him, deckest out a pavement, and walls, and capitals of columns, and hangest up silver chains by means of lamps, but Himself bound in prison thou wilt not even look upon.
     "And these things I say, not forbidding munificence in these matters, but admonishing you to do those other works together with these, or rather even before these. Because for not having done these no one was ever blamed, but for those, hell is threatened, and unquenchable fire, and the punishment with evil spirits. Do not therefore while adorning His house overlook thy brother in distress, for he is more properly a temple than the other."

Ales diei nuntius lucem

          Prudentius.  Inge B. Milfull, The hymns of the Anglo-Saxon church:  a study and edition of the 'Durham hymnal.'  Cambridge studies in Anglo-Saxon England 17 (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 1996) no. 18, pp. 149-150.