"when they think they have said enough to prove that they are brutes, they appear as proud as if they had demonstrated that they are gods."

     "The materialists are offensive to me in many respects; their doctrines I hold to be pernicious, and I am disgusted at their arrogance.  If their system could be of any utility to man, it would seem to be by giving him a modest opinion of himself; but these reasoners show that it is not so; and when they think they have said enough to prove that they are brutes, they appear as proud as if they had demonstrated that they are gods."

     Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America II (1840).II.xv ("How religious belief sometimes turns the thoughts of Americans to immaterial pleasures"), trans. Henry Reeve, with revisions by Francis Bowen and Phillips Bradley ((New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997), vol. 2, pp. 145).

Aiming low

     "Not only do the Americans follow their religion from interest, but they often place in this world the interest that makes them follow it.  In the Middle Ages the clergy spoke of nothing but a future state; they hardly cared to prove that a sincere Christian may be a happy man here below.  But the American preachers are constantly referring to the earth, and it is only with great difficulty that they can divert their attention from it.  To touch their congregations, they always show them how favorable religious opinions are to freedom and public tranquility, and it is often difficult to ascertain from their discourses whether the principal object of religion is to procure eternal felicity in the other world or prosperity in this."

     Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America II (1840).II.ix ("That the Americans apply the principle of self-interest rightly understood to religious matters"), trans. Henry Reeve, with revisions by Francis Bowen and Phillips Bradley ((New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997), vol. 2, pp. 126-127).
     For Tocqueville, there are three possible aims:  1) happiness in this life, 2) happiness in the next (both self-interested), and 3) the disinterested "love of God".  Tocqueville "respect[s certain 'zealous Christians'] too much to believe them" (125) when they say that they are virtuous in "the hope of a recompense" in either 2) the life to come or 1) this one (respects them too much to believe that they do nothing "for the love of God" alone), but thinks "the principle of interest rightly understood" reconcilable with religious belief.
     Here, however, he claims that "American preachers" tend to aim no higher than at 1) happiness in this life.

"On quite specific, practical matters where there is nothing to lose, like joining library consortia, even big rats and little mice will collaborate: but not when a hefty chunk of cheese is at stake."

     James Turner, the Rev. John J. Cavanaugh CSC Professor of the Humanities at the University of Notre Dame, on one of the two reasons why, as things stand today, we shouldn't expect a lot of collaboration between the Catholic universities and the Evangelical colleges and universities.  "Enduring differences, blurring boundaries," in Mark A. Noll and James Turner, The future of Christian learning:  an Evangelical and Catholic dialogue, ed. Thomas Albert Howard (Grand Rapids, MI:  Brazos Press, a division of Baker Publishing Group, 2008), 81.

"Less cynically, one could argue that the largest interests of Christian learning demand that Notre Dame strive to become a Catholic Harvard or Michigan and that it will not get there by swimming with smaller fry.  Notre Dame does not even club with other Catholic universities, except in superficial ways.  In the feeding frenzy of intercollegiate competition for status, differences in standing and vision will preclude continuing, extensive cooperation between Boston College and its near neighbor Gordon College or between Notre Dame and its near neighbors Goshen College, Wheaton College, and Calvin College" (81, italics mine).

This because

"the leading Catholic universities occupy a niche isolated from the niche occupied by the best evangelical schools. . . . Notre Dame is not going to hook up in any substantial way with Baylor, for the same reason that Baylor is not going to hitch its start to Mercer University, even though Mercer is likewise self-consciously 'founded on Baptist traditions and principles.'  Baylor and Notre Dame are both looking in the opposite direction:  above their current echelon in the academic rating game" (80).

     Coupled with the admission that "while Notre Dame may prefer to rub shoulders with Duke and Princeton rather than Calvin and Gordon, it does not hesitate to cherry-pick top scholars from its evangelical neighbors", I found all of this refreshingly frank.

"what to do when it is God who has said everything he has to say": "if everything is said, a thousand things remain to be done."

     "At bottom, what God has to say, and what he in fact says, in one sense is not a lot.  He perhaps says one thing.  But it is the thing that he alone can say.  In the Old Testament, it is his name (Exodus, 3, 14).  The New Testament explains this name by agapè, 'charity' (1 John, 4, 8).  Man has as his task, to say the rest.  And salvation is that he is made capable of doing so.
"Once God has said all that he has to say, and precisely because he has said everything, he gives the platform to man.  What obliges man to take up the task of speaking, is not the silence that would be due to a simple and total absence, or to the disinterest of a God situated too high or too far away from him.  It is the silence that comes from the fact that God has said everything he can say, to wit:  everything he is.  A silence of this quality is necessary for the human word to be truly authorized.  Not merely permitted, even less simply tolerated, but endowed with the very authority of God, who in fact gives it."

     Rémi Brague, On the God of the Christians (and on one or two others), trans. Paul Seaton (South Bend, IN:  St. Augustine's Press, 2013), 109-110.  The heading comes from p. 106, but the entirety of chap. 5 ("A God who has said everything") bears re-reading.

The remission is more than the forgiveness of sins

"In an initial approximation, one can very well say that God 'forgives' our sins.  But forgiveness is not yet remission.  Forgiveness is something human.  The remission of sins [(ἄθεσις ἁμαρτιῶν, remissio peccatorum)] can only come from God.  In truth, when someone forgives a wrong I have committed against him, he thus refuses to consider me as a wrong-doer and as definitely marked by my misdeed.  But he can do no more.  To be sure, he can turn his eyes away from what I did and attempt to forget it, and to look only to the future.  But he cannot change me, he cannot change my heart.  He cannot restore my liberty of not-sinning.  God alone is capable of that, and this is what he does by remitting my sins.  Remission is a liberation.
     "The remission that God alone is capable of granting transcends human forgiveness. . . ."

     "God forgives our sins, not in order to recuperate what we would have caused him to lose, but to allow us to recover our lost integrity.  Nor does he grant us this remission 'on condition,' for example, requiring us first of all to love him.  'What?  A God who loves men, on the condition that they believe in him. . . .'  As we saw, this sentiment comes from Nietzsche.  This is an absurd demand, for the simple reason that sin is precisely what deprives us of the ability to love, and hence, to  believe; the forgiveness of sin must first of all give us this capacity.  Thus, it is by her regained capacity to love that Jesus recognized that the sins of the woman who anointed his feet with oil were forgiven (Luke, 7, 47). . . .
     "God does not demand that we love him in return, as if, once it is assumed that we know how to love, we have to choose among different objects, all equally worthy of our love. . . . In reality, he invites us, quite simply, to love; or rather:  he allows us to do so.  And the love that he frees in us spontaneously orients itself in the direction where is can assume all its amplitude and live according to its proper logic.  This 'direction' is, precisely, God."

     Rémi Brague, On the God of the Christians (and on one or two others), trans. Paul Seaton (South Bend, IN:  St. Augustine's Press, 2013), 146-147, 153-154.

Christian fabrications

INSCRIPTIONES FALSAE VEL ALIENAE:

CIL II 233* (p. 26*, under XII. CLVNIA (Clunia)); cf. the CIL Database:

diocletiano caes. aug. galerio in oriente adopt. superstitione christi ubiq. deleta et cultu deor. propagato

http://cil.bbaw.de/test06/bilder/datenbank/PH0002993.jpg
Note that this does not match CIL II 233* exactly.

My own highly inexpert transcription of the image associated therewith (to the right):

DIOCLETIANO CÆSAR
AVGUSTI GALER[IO]
IN ORIENTE ADPTATO
SVPERTITIONE CHRISTI
VBIQ DELETA
CVL[T]VS DEORUM PROPAGA

CIL II 234* (p. 26*, under XII. CLVNIA (Clunia)); cf. the CIL Database, which, like CIL in print, cross references CIL VI 3550*:

diocletian. iovius maximian. herculeus caess. augg. amplificato per orientem et occidentem imp. rom. et nomine christianor. deleto qui remp. evertebant

CIL II 236* (p. 26*, under XII (CLVNIA (Clunia)); cf. the CIL Database:

iiii. invicti. caesaris | matri. deum | sacello | in. durii. amnis. ancone | instructe | sub. magnae. pasiphaes. numine | privatum. dianae. sacrum | fordam. vaccam. albam | immolavere | ob. christianam | eorum. pia. cura | suppressam. exstinctamque | superstitionem | dioclec. | maximian. | galerius | et. constantius | imper. augggg. perpetui

I have also seen CIL II 234*/236* (?) cited as:
. . . extincto nomine christianorum. . . .

CIL VI 3550* (p. 245*, under Inscriptiones falsae reliquae, a subsection of pars V, Inscriptiones falsae urbi Romae attributae); cf. the CIL Database, which, like CIL in print, cross references CIL II 234*:

DIOCLETIANVS IOVIVS ET

MAXIMIAN HERCVLÆVS CÆS AVGG

AMPLIFICATO PER ORIENTEM

ET OCCIDENTEM

IMPER ROM

NOMINE CHRISTIANORVM

DELETO QVIREMP

EVERTERANT

I don't know how comprehensive it is, but presumably the fact that I haven't been able to get any of these to appear in Hispania Epigraphica is yet further confirmation of their inauthenticity.

There are some 63 hits on "ancient find spot" "Colonia Clunia Sulpicia" (="modern find spot" "Peñalba de Castro") in the Epigraphic Database Heidelberg at present, though none on "Literature" "CIL 2", and none on "christianor" (CIL II 234*) (though there are many on "christi").  But keep checking back as "The total number of records rises continually", and each record comes with a Bibliography.

Check also the Epigraphic Database Falsae.

Bibliography

(in progress; fill in with the references at CIL II, p. 26*)

1553:  Jacobus Strada, Epitome thesauri antiquitatum, p. 169, 12; p. 170, 1  Cf. the French of that same year:  Epitome du thrésor des antiquitez.  Source:  CIL II, p. 26* + p. IX, 14.  Unfortunately, I have yet to locate nos. 233* and 234* on these two pages.

1588/1607:  Cesare Baronius, Annales ecclesiastici, vol. 2 (1609), col. 830:

Dioclet. Iovivs. Maximi. Hercvlevs Caess. Avgg. amplificato per orientem et occid. impe. Rom. et nomine christianor. deleto qvi remp. evertebant

Diocletian. Caes. Avg. Gallerio in oriente adopt. svperstitione Christi vbiq. deleta cvltv deorvm propagato

1781:  Joseph Milner, Gibbon's account of Christianity considered, 101-102.  Milner brings this sort of thing in against Gibbon!

1862:  Eduard von Wietersheim, Geschichte des Völkerwanderung, vol. 3 (1862), p. 481.  A defense?

1876:  Arthur James Mason, The persecution of Diocletian:  a historical essay (Cambridge:  Deighton Bell and Co., 1876), pp. 217-218 and 217n1.  Note that Mason says it was Westcott who first called his "attention to the spuriousness of these inscriptions".  Did Westcott say something about this in print somewhere?

1882:  Philip Schaff, History of the Christian church, new edition, thoroughly revised and enlarged, vol. 2 (New York:  Charles Scribner's Sons, 1884), p. 69-70 and 69n3.

1886:  "Monumental evidences of Christianity" (a review), Church quarterly review 22 (April-July 1886):  406-407 (381-409).

1987:  Pedro de Palol and José Vilella, Clunia II:  La epigrafía de Clunia, Excavaciones arcqueologicas en España (Madrid:  Ministerio de Cultura, 1987):  CIL index makes no reference.

1996:  Simon Corcoran, The empire of the Tetrarchs:  imperial pronouncements and government, AD 284-324 (Oxford:  Clarendon Press, 1996):  CIL index makes no reference.

2001:  Wolfgang Kuhoff, Diokletian und die Epoche der Tetrarchie:  Das römische Reich zwischen Krisenbewältigung und Neuaufbau (284-313 n. Chr.) (Frankfurt am Main:  Peter Lang, 2001).  CIL index makes no reference.

2012:  G. González Germain, “CIL II 815:  Una inscripción falsa (más) de Cáparra,” Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 183 (2012):  304n46:  “A Clunia se attribuyen, como mínimo, tres epígrafes falsos (CIL II 233*-[2]35*)”.

     With thanks to ATLA colleague Eric Benoy and his Provost for the question that prompted this research.

"the question of the sacraments IS the question of the church drawing its life from Christ."

     "Why did Barth, a modern ecumenical theologian par excellence, not pursue the significance of the eucharistic liturgy as a decisive event in the becoming and being of the church?  Was it because he wanted to establish Jesus-history as 'the one and only sacrament' from which the church draws its life?  Though we cannot quarrel with this as a motive, it fails completely as an explanation, for the question of the sacraments is the question of the church drawing its life from Christ."

     Douglas Farrow, Ascension and ecclesia:  on the significance of the doctrine of the ascension for ecclesiology and Christian cosmology (Grand Rapids, MI:  William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1999), 251.