Modern natural science as pneumatologically Unitarian

     "Modern empirical science is joined at the hip to the modern, if inchoate, claim to the universal accessibility to Spirit, just as it is joined to the breakdown of Christian claims regarding the Trinity and its difficult distinctions.  While More would have disapproved, many seventeenth- and eighteenth-century scientists, including Newton, moved in Arian and Unitarian directions.  Breaking down distinctions at their metaphysical roots simply made more sense of a world that required pacification and the alleviation of pain.  The Spirit dissolves differences, in favor of visible commonalities of behavior.  Such dissolution is just what a conflicted polity and a tortured body demand."

     Ephraim Radner, A profound ignorance:  modern pneumatology and its anti-modern redemption (Waco, TX:  Baylor University Press, 2019), 102.

"a movement away from incarnational specificity"

"The contrast between 'incarnational' ecclesial forms and 'pneumatic' political revolution may seen tendentious, except that, as Quakerism and other movements show, the trajectory of pneumatic revolution does in fact involve the shedding of specific Christological and scriptural detail."

     Ephraim Radner, A profound ignorance:  modern pneumatology and its anti-modern redemption (Waco, TX:  Baylor University Press, 2019):  74.

"to ransom a slave you gave away your Son!"

"O God, by whom we are redeemed and receive adoption, look graciously upon your beloved sons and daughters, that those who believe in Christ may receive true freedom and an everlasting inheritance.  Through."

"Deus, per quem nobis et redemptio venit et praestatur adoptio, filios dilectionis tuae benignus intende, ut in Christo credentibus et vera tribuatur libertas, et hereditas aeterna."

O God, through whom to us both redemption comes and adoption is offered, direct, [being] benignant, your thoughts at the sons you have chosen-in-love, that upon those who believe in Christ both true liberty may be conferred and[, surpassing that, an] eternal inheritance.

     redemptio, libertas; and, beyond that, adoptio, hereditas.  Collect for the Twenty-Third Sunday in Ordinary Time.  "surpassing that," I say, on account of both et . . . et and an original sense of praestare (the verb that goes with the pair adoptio, hereditas), "to surpass or excel."
     This one begins like Corpus orationum 1310a-c (it is most like 1310a, which is found in the 8th-century Gelasian, among many others, and which asks God to look back at the works of his mercy and confer upon those [baptismally] regenerated (Blaise:  renatus, from renascor) in Christ an artfully reversed pair of nouns (redemptio, libertas; and, beyond that, hereditas, adoptio).  CO 1310a:

Deus, per quem nobis et redemptio venit et praestatur adoptio, respice in opera misericordiae tuae, ut in Christo renatis et aeterna tribuatur hereditas et vera libertas.

(Corpus orationum says nothing close to this much at no. 483 on p. 177, on the current 3rd ed. of the Missale Romanum.)

"not to know of what things one should demand demonstration, and of what one should not, argues want of education."

ἔστι γὰρ ἀπαιδευσία τὸ μὴ γιγνώσκειν τίνων δεῖ ζητεῖν ἀπόδειξιν καὶ τίνων οὐ δεῖ·

     Aristotle, Metaphysics IV.4 (1006a), trans. W. D. Ross.

I have hoped exceedingly

Lord, listen to my cry; all my trust is in your promise. | Lord, listen to my cry; all my trust is in your promise. | Dawn finds me watching, crying out for you, | all my trust is in your promise.

     Response to the reading, Morning prayer, Liturgy of the hours,

Vocem meam audi, Domine; In verba tua supersperavi.
Vocem meam audi, Domine; In verba tua supersperavi.
Praeveni diluculo et clamavi.
In verba tua supersperavi.

     Did St. Jerome coin the term supersperavi (which Lewis & Short translates, perhaps erroneously (?), as "I have hoped exceedingly" (though super doesn't ever qualify spero therein)) for the purpose of translating the ἐπήλπισα (ἐπελπίζω) of the Septuagint?  He uses expectavi whenever, in Ps 119 (vv. 43, 74, 81, and 114), he is translating יָחַל.  ἐπελπίζω ("buoy up with hope, pin one's hope on, hope in, hope besides") is present in classical Greek (Liddell & Scott), but superspero, not (I suspect) in classical Latin (though I haven't yet checked the second edition of the Oxford Latin dictionary).

Pseudo John Chrysostom? "Your resignation assumes God is dead. Do not be so certain. He who embraced death has defeated its power over us. He who went down to hell liberated every city held captive by hell's despair. Christ is risen! Open the doors of your comfortable despair, that the great storms of hope may blow life into us again."

"In the year 387, an old preacher named John Chrysostom climbed into his pulpit in Antioch on Easter Sunday.  It had been a hard year for the city.  Rome had conscripted most of the men into the army to fight distant wars in the north while women and children remained behind to scavenge for food.  The people despaired that their lives would ever get better.  Chrysostom boldly told his congregation:  'Your resignation assumes God is dead.  Do not be so certain.  He who embraced death has defeated its power over us.  He who went down to hell liberated every city held captive by hell's despair.   Christ is risen!  Open the doors of your comfortable despair, that the great storms of hope may blow life into us again.'"

     See M. Craig Barnes, Extravagant mercy:  reflections on ordinary things (Ann Arbor, MI:  Vine Books, 2003), 183, as confirmed for me in detail by my colleague Sharon Taylor.  I have not been able to find this paragraph in Google behind that point, and have searched also a number of other full-text databases, but without success.  Also, it is not present in CPG 4612, the only one of Chrysostom's paschal homilies to be dated—i.e. to 387 (21 April 387)—therein.  I have not yet tried Thesaurus Linguae Graecae more broadly, but to me the English looks suspiciously contemporary.  As of 29 August 2020, Dr. Barnes hadn't remembered where he got it.  Could it be, at best, somebody's loose paraphrase or even summary (of something else)?
     Update, 31 August 2020:  "As a provisional response," says Dr. Server J. Voicu, an important (Pseudo) John Chrysostom specialist at the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana in Rome, "the passage is undoubtedly spurious.  'Christ is risen!' is a popular expression for Eastertide in the Byzantine churches, but Chrysostom never uses it" (note to me dated 31 August 2020).  (Nonetheless, Dr. Voicu allows that, pending a definitively disconfirmatory search of Thesaurus Linguae Graecae, it could be a very loose paraphrase of an ancient text.)  And by the way:  lest someone object that the famous Catechetical sermon on Easter (Sermo catecheticus in pascha), "read every year for more than a millenium during the Orthodox 'Paschal Vigil'" (Panayiotis Papageorgiou, "The Paschal Catechetical Homily of St John Chrysostom: A Rhetorical and Contextual Study," The Greek Orthodox theological review 43, no. 1–4 (Spring 1998): 93), and in many other liturgical churches today, is loaded with the acclamation, that homily falls under the "Dubia et spuria" section of Clavis patrum Graecorum (CPG 4605) and the "Spuria" section of Migne (PG 59, cols. 721-724), though Papageorgiou (above) appears to be among those who, not surprisingly, dissent.

"Let us not grow weary in well doing"

     'After lookout reports fire in the convoy, sir,' said a talker.
     He was on his feet again, with hardly time to think of this as retribution for his self-indulgence.  There it was; now the rockets were soaring into the night above the flames which he could see; now there was another sharp red glow lighting the upper works of one ship, silhouetting the upper works of another—a torpedo explosion as he watched; the length of the interval told him that this was not a 'spread' bursting as it reached various targets.  A U-boat had been deliberately marking down victims one after another.
     'Sonar reports contact bearing zero seven seven,' said the talker.
     He and Viktor were in touch with one U-boat; at any minute a false move by her captain might mean her destruction.  Behind him men were dying in the night, the victims of cold-blooded sharpshooting.  He had to choose; it was the most painful moment he had ever known, more painful than when he had heard about Evelyn.  He had to leave those men to die.
     'Depth charges away,' said the T.B.S.
     If he abandoned the present hunt he could not be sure of making contact with the other U-boat; in fact it was most doubtful that he would.  And she had done her damage for the present.
     'Sonar reports contact confused,' said the talker—that was Viktor's depth charges exploding.
     He might save some lives; he might.  But in the darkness and confusion of the disordered convoy even that was unlikely, and he would be seriously endangering his ship.
     'I am turning away to port,' said Viktor.
     'Very well.'
     The U-boat which had done the damage would now be harmless for a short space at least while reloading her tubes.  It was humiliating, it was infuriating that he should find comfort even for one moment in such a thought.  Fighting anger and baffled rage surged up inside him, a yearning to run amok, to hit out wildly.  He could feel the tension rising within him.  He could lose all patience and see red, but twenty-four years of discipline saved him.  He imposed self-control upon himself; Annapolis might have taught him that, or perhaps his much-loved father in his boyhood.  He forced himself to think as coldly and as scientifically as ever.
     'Sonar reports contact bearing zero six eight.'
     'Left smartly to course zero six four.  George to Eagle.  I am turning to port to intercept.'
     Men were dying behind him, men he was supposed to protect.  What he had to do was to solve little trigonometrical problems in his head quickly and accurately, and give his orders calmly, and issue his information intelligibly, and anticipate the submerged U-boat's movements as freshly and as rapidly as he had done ever since yesterday.  He had to be a machine that did not know emotion; he had to be a machine that did not know fatigue.  He had to be a machine uninfluenced by the possibility that Washington and London might think him a failure.
     'Sonar reports contact bearing zero six six, range one thousand,' said the talker.  'But it sounds like a pill, sir.'
     If it were a pill which way was the U-boat turning?  What depth would she take up?  He applied himself to those problems while the men in the convoy died.  He gave his two hundreth successive helm order.

     The darkness was not as impenetrable now.  The white wave tops could be seen overside, and even as far ahead as the bow from the wing of the bridge.  Day was creeping towards them from the east, an unutterably slow transition from black to gray; gray sky and gray horizon and a slate-gray heaving sea.  Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.  It was not true.  The heavens declare the glory of God.  These heavens?  As Krause noted the coming of the light the well-remembered verses came up into his mind—they had come up in his mind in the old days of Pacific and Caribbean sunrises.  Now he thought of them with a bitter, sardonic revulsion of mind.  The shattered convoy on the flank; the frozen corpses on the life rafts; the pitiless gray sky; the certainty that this agony was going to endure until he could bear it no longer—it was more than he could bear already.  He wanted to throw in his hand, to cast aside all thought of his duty, his duty to God.  Then he drew himself back from the temptation.
     'George to Eagle.  I am holding my course.  Keep clear.'  His voice was as flat and as precise as ever.
     The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.  He had nearly said that, too, while he could still square his shoulders and while his aching legs could still carry him to the T.B.S.
     'Contact bearing zero six seven, range eleven hundred yards.'
     'Very well.'
     One more attempt to destroy the hidden enemy.  And not one more only; dozens, hundreds if necessary.  While Keeling moved in to the attack, while the talker repeated the ranges, there was time to bow his head.  Cleanse Thou me from secret faults.
     'Stand by for the pattern, Mr. Pond.'
     'Aye, aye, sir.'
     Balked by the U-boat's turn; helm orders to get into position again; orders to Viktor to head her off.  Let us not be weary in well doing.

     C. S. Forester, The good shepherd (Boston and Toronto:  Little, Brown and Company, 1955), 181-184 (Thursday.  Morning Watch:  0400-0800).