"nothing is so low that God would not be lower"

University of St. Andrews

"So the very majesty of God consists in the fact that nothing is so great that God would not be greater, and nothing is so small that God would not be smaller.  Nothing is so long that God would not be longer, but nothing is so short that God would not be shorter.  Nothing is so high that God would not be higher, and, important for kenosis, nothing is so low that God would not be lower.
     "In view of this understanding of the divine plerosis, of the plenitude of the divine majesty, do we [even] need a kenotic theology?  No.  Only as the modulation of the divine plerosis, which expresses the all-encompassing fulness of God’s Trinitarian self-giving."

     Christoph Schöbel, "Kenosis and divine self-giving in Thomas Aquinas and Martin Luther" 49:10, The Trinity and the Kenosis of Christ, Angelicum, Rome, 21-22 February 2020.  Schwöbel appears to be channeling Martin Luther, Confession concerning Christ's supper (1528), trans. Robert H. Fischer, Luther's works 37, 228 (161-372) =WA 26, 261-509:  "Nothing is so small but God is still smaller, nothing so large but God is still larger, nothing is so short but God is still shorter, nothing so long but God is still longer, nothing is so broad but God is still broader, nothing so narrow but God is still narrower, and so on."

"His eyes look only into the depths, not to the heights"

     "Just as God in the beginning of creation made the world out of nothing, whence He is called the Creator and the Almighty, so His manner of working continues unchanged. Even now and to the end of the world, all His works are such that out of that which is nothing, worthless, despised, wretched, and dead, He makes that which is something, precious, honorable, blessed, and living. On the other hand, whatever is something, precious, honorable, blessed, and living, He makes to be nothing, worthless, despised, wretched, and dying. In this manner no creature can work; no creature can produce anything out of nothing. Therefore His eyes look only into the depths, not to the heights; as it is said in Daniel 3:55 (Vulgate): 'Thou sittest upon the cherubim and beholdest the depths'; in Psalm 138:6: 'Though the Lord is high, He regards the lowly; but the haughty He knows from afar.' Psalm 113:5, 6: 'Who is like the Lord, our God, who is seated on high, who looks far down upon the heavens and the earth?' For since He is the Most High, and there is nothing above Him, He cannot look above Him; nor yet to either side, for there is none like Him. He must needs, therefore, look within Him and beneath Him; and the farther one is beneath Him, the better does He see him [(Denn die weil er der aller hohist unde nichts uber yhn ist, mag er nit uber sich sehen, mag auch nit neben sich sehen, die weil yhm niemant gleich ist, musz er von not ynn sich selb unnd unter sich sehen, unnd yhe tieffer nemant unter yhm ist, yhe basz er yhn sihet)].
     "The eyes of the world and of men, on the contrary, look only above them and are lifted up with pride, as it is said in Proverbs 30:13: 'There is a people whose eyes are lofty, and their eyelids lifted up on high.' This we experience every day. Everyone strives after that which is above him, after honor, power, wealth, knowledge, a life of ease, and whatever is lofty and great. And where such people are, there are many hangers-on; all the world gathers round them, gladly yields them service, and would be at their side and share in their exaltation. Therefore it is not without reason that the Scriptures describe so few kings and rulers who were godly men. On the other hand, no one is willing to look into the depths with their poverty, disgrace, squalor, misery, and anguish. From these all turn away their eyes. Where there are such people, everyone takes to his heels, forsakes and shuns and leaves them to themselves; no one dreams of helping them or of making something out of them. And so they must remain in the depths and in their low and despised condition. There is among men no creator who would make something out of nothing, although that is what St. Paul teaches in Romans 12:16 when he says, 'Dear brethren, set not your mind on high things, but go along with the lowly.
     "Therefore to God alone belongs that sort of seeing that looks into the depths with their need and misery, and is near to all that are in the depths; as St. Peter says (1 Peter 5:5): 'God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.' And this is the source of men’s love and praise of God. For no one can praise God without first loving Him. No one can love Him unless He makes Himself known to him in the most lovable and intimate fashion. And He can make Himself known only through those works of His which He reveals in us, and which we feel and experience within ourselves. But where there is this experience, namely, that He is a God who looks into the depths and helps only the poor, despised, afflicted, miserable, forsaken, and those who are nothing, there a hearty love for Him is born. The heart overflows with gladness and goes leaping and dancing. . . ."

     Martin Luther, Das Magnificat verdeutschet und ausgelegt (1521 March 10), trans. A. T. W. Steinhaeuser, Luther's Works 21, 299-300, underscoring mine = WA 7, 547-548.

The appropriation of the uniquely symbolic potentialities of what we are being forced today to call "heterosexual" marriage was very deliberate on God's part

"For Thomas, so far as the dignity of the human nature is concerned, the Word could have assumed the [(une)] body of a woman, for the Incarnation and the divine power are [both] indifferent by relation to the sex to be assumed:  'Ipse [Deus] potuit assumere quale corpus voluit'; it is for reasons of convenience (ad congruentiam) with the mission of Christ to be Head of the Church, to teach, to direct, [and] to defend humankind, that he assumed the [(une)] masculine sex. . . .  This position is far from being unanimous in the 13th century.  For Bonaventure, for example, the[se] reasons of convenience become reasons to affirm the impossibility of an assumption of the body of a woman by the Word. . . .  [And it is] the same for Thomas' teacher Albert the Great."

     Adriano Oliva, O.P., "Essence et finalité du marriage selon Thomas d'Aquin pour un soin pastoral renouvelé," Revue des sciences philosophiques et théologiques 98, no. 4 (2014):  614n41 (601-668), translation mine.  Texts cited:  .
     According to Oliva, one should never adopt uncritically—which is to say without examining the works of St. Thomas in all of their sophisticated particularity—the contemporary prejudice that he insisted upon "the inferiority of women" (614).

"The quintessential deathwork of our time . . . is pornography."

      Carl R. Trueman, The rise and triumph of the modern self:  cultural amnesia, expressive individualism, and the road to sexual revolution (Wheaton, IL:  Crossway, 2020), 98.  "A [Rieffian] deathwork . . . represents an attack on established cultural art forms in a manner designed to undo the deeper moral structure of society. . . .  Deathworks make the old values look ridiculous.  They represent not so much arguments against the old order as subversions of it.  They aim at changing the aesthetic tastes and sympathies of society so as to undermine the commands on which that society was based. . . .  [A deathwork is] a symbol of something deeply sacred to the second world being presented in a form that degrades it and makes it utterly repulsive. . . . [It turns] it into something dirty, disgusting, and vile. . . .  The major problem with pornography is not what many religious conservatives might understand it to be—its promotion of lust and its objectifying of the participants.  It is certainly both of those things, but the problem is also much deeper:  it repudiates any notion that sex has significance beyond the act itself, and therefore it rejects any notion that it is emblematic of a sacred order" (96-99, paragraph breaks ignored).
     The reference is to the first book in the trilogy by Philip Rieff entitled Sacred order/social order:  My life among the deathworks: illustrations of the aesthetics of authority (Charlottesville, VA:  University of Virginia Press, 2006).

The greatest of human friendships

"if a husband were permitted to abandon his wife, the society of husband and wife would not be an association of equals, but, instead, a sort of slavery on the part of the wife [(non esset aequa societas viri ad mulierem, sed servitus quaedam ex parte mulieris)]."

"the greater the friendship is, the more solid and long-lasting will it be.  Now, there seems to be the greatest friendship [(maxima amicitia)] between husband and wife, for they are united [(adunatur)] not only in the act of fleshly union [(in actu carnalis copulae)], which produces a certain gentle association [(quandam suavem societatem)] even among beasts, but also in the partnership of the whole range of domestic activity [(ad totius domesticae conversationis consortium)].  Consequently, as an indication of this, man must even 'leave his father and mother' for the sake of his wife, as is said in Genesis (2:24).  Therefore, it is fitting for matrimony to be completely indissoluble [(omnino indissolubile)]."

     St. Thomas Aquinas, ScG (revised and completed 1260-65) III.123.4 & 6, trans. Vernon J. Bourke.  Latin from Corpus Thomisticum.  Note that ad by comparison with that in, both of which qualify adunatur:  "in the act of fleshly union," but "towards" or "with an eye to" or "for" partnership in the whole of domestic association.
     The sacramentality of marriage:  But then note that friendship (amicitia)—which is realized first and preeminently within the life of the triune God himself (Dictionnaire de philosophie et de théologie Thomistes, 18)—is, for Aquinas, precisely what the heavenly Bridegroom seeks with us.

"the perfect friendship of the sort which exists between a man and his wife [(perfecta amicitia qualis est inter virum et uxorum)], for whom man even leaves his father and mother (Gen 2:24), cannot be had with many wives."

     St. Thomas Aquinas, Expositio super Isaiam ad litteram (1251/52, i.e. before the Commentary on the Sentences) 4.1.136, trans. Robert St. Hilaire.  "what, for Aquinas, is [truly] essential to marriage, the communion of life between the spouses and [their] perfect friendship, is the sole true reason for avoiding polygamy.  If, three years later, in the commentary on the Sentences, he evokes also the good of children and mutual aid, this is because he expresses himself [there] in a manner more complete.  [But] the early commentary on Isaiah manifests already very clearly the conception of the essence of marriage that we encounter [again and again] in the course of his teaching" later on (Adriano Oliva, O.P., "Essence et finalité du marriage selon Thomas d'Aquin pour un soin pastoral renouvelé," Revue des sciences philosophiques et théologiques 98, no. 4 (2014):  611 (601-668), translation mine).
     Against the argument that this conception of the true essence (or first—as distinguished from consequent—perfection) of marriage renders it vulnerable to the reformulations of our time would have to stand, among other things, the fact that "male and female have different operations," and that "the vice of sodomy," as "entirely unnatural," can "in no manner stand with the stated end" (135 and both often elsewhere in the Thomistic corpus).  More important still:  "things that are ordered to some one thing are said to be united together in their ordering to it [(in ordine ad aliud)]. . . .  And so, since by marriage two people are ordered to [1] one single generation and education of children, and also to [2] one single domestic life, it is clear that in marriage there is a union, because of which a man and a woman are called 'husband' and 'wife'; and such a union, by the fact that it is ordained to some one thing [(ex hoc quod ordinatur ad aliquod unum, most distinctively that 'one single generation . . . of children')] is marriage" (In IV Sent. 27.1.1.1.Resp., italics mine).

PSEUDO St. Catherine of Siena: "What is it | you want to change? | Your hair, your face, your body? | Why? || For God is | in love with all those things | and He might weep | when they are gone."

YOUR HAIR, YOUR FACE

What is it

you want to change?

Your hair, your face, your body?

Why?

For God is

in love with all those things

and He might weep

when they are

gone.

     Daniel Ladinsky, Love poems from God:  Twelve sacred voices from the East and West (New York:  Penguin Compass, 2002), 203.  From the prefatory "Genesis of these poems" (xiii-xiv) a strong indication that this one, though attributed to St. Catherine of Siena, is inauthentic:

Penguin Random House

Any liberties I have taken with these poems was an act, I hope, void of self-interest and done with the sole intention of trying to help emancipate our wings. Several translators have been helpful to me with this work, though most of what is in this book could be said to be an avant-garde portrait of these remarkable historic figures. I have used and mixed whichever of their colors I felt were the most genuine, the most relative to the present, and were the most capable of bringing the reader into the extraordinary experience of these great souls. For their experience of God foretells our own.

What to say to academia about these poems? Well, I think scholars have made important contributions to unveiling God, yet millions of people continue to be persecuted by frightening untruths stemming from archaic concepts of Him that took root in many of us as children. I hope there is enough benevolence—and reality—in my interpretations of these poems to alleviate some of that suffering; truth frees and makes us laugh. We need to know that God is the source of all humor and that God is Infinite Intelligence, a Beloved that does not defy our deepest sensibilities and the innate, glorious compassion of the heart. . . .

"No one could ever paint a too wonderful picture of…God." But I feel He doesn’t mind that I tried. In studying the lives of these wonderful saints, I can’t imagine any of them saying "no" if they were asked if we could freely adapt their words to a few blue-grass tunes or whiskey-soaked jazz. I think they might shout, "Go for it, baby; set the world on fire if you can, kick ass for the Beloved with some great art."

     My suspicions have been confirmed in correspondence with two specialists in St. Catherine studies dated 6-7 October 2021, Dr. F. Thomas Luongo, Associate Professor and Chair, Department of History, Tulane University ("it doesn’t sound like anything Catherine would say. She is not exactly the patron saint of body-positivity!"  "I don’t think it’s something that Catherine or any other fourteenth-century author could have written"), and Dr. Karen Scott, Associate Professor of Catholic Studies and History, DePaul University ("Ladinsky's text is in no way a real translation of authentic texts by Catherine of Siena").

"the utter sufficiency of revelation on its own"

Truett, Baylor

"[Albert] Outler[, who invented the so-called 'Wesleyan Quadrilateral,'] was a brilliant historian but a dilettante in philosophy.  Despite his vast learning, he had no real need for issues in theory of knowledge, and this shows up dramatically in the original version of the thesis.  Hence he completely missed the extent to which Wesley was a medieval figure in his treatment of Scripture.  For Wesley, Scripture mattered because it mediated divine revelation; and, like Aquinas, he was more than ready to come to the aid of revelation with sundry appeals to the tradition of the church, philosophical arguments of one sort or another, and experience—religious and otherwise.  This, of course, looks like the Quadrilateral; but the resemblance is entirely superficial.  Outler misread both the content—involving as it does an appeal to revelation—and the structure—involving as it does a keen sense of the utter sufficiency of revelation on its own."

     William J. Abraham, "What Should United Methodists do with the Quadrilateral?," Quarterly review 22, no. 1 (Spring 2002): 86 (85–88).