"In work we spin a thread tough enough for others to weave with."

Wycliffe College

      Oliver O'Donovan, Entering into rest, Theology as ethics 3 (Grand Rapids, MI:  Eerdmans, 2017), 114, as quoted by Bernd Wannenwetsch, "Ama et labora:  a conversation with Oliver O'Donovan on the sanctification of work," Modern theology 36, no. 1 (January 2020):  182 (178-185).

"[only] when I am come thither shall I be truly a [human being]."

"so far as I am concerned, to die in Jesus Christ is better than to be monarch of earth's widest bounds.  He who died for us is all that I seek; He who rose again for us is my whole desire.  The pangs of birth are upon me; have patience with me, my brothers, and do not shut me out from life, do not wish me to be stillborn.  Here is one who only longs to be God's; do not make a present of him to the world again, pure and undefiled; for only when I am come thither shall I be truly a [human being (ἐκεῖ παραγενόμενος ἄνθρωπος ἔσομαι)].  Leave me to imitate the Passion of my God."

     St. Ignatius, Romans 6, trans. Staniforth and Louth, but with modifications taken from John Behr.

"the immaterial spirit can be purified and refined by clay"

"It is truly astounding how the incorporeal mind can be defiled and darkened by the body.  Equally astonishing is the fact that the immaterial spirit can be purified and refined by clay."

     John Climacus, Scal. 14, as quoted by Inbar Graiver, Asceticism of the mind, Studies and texts 213 (Toronto:  Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 2018), 45n69, who is clearly quoting the Classics of Western spirituality translation by Luibheid & Russell, p. 169.  Greek:  PG 88, col. 869A.  (I have not yet examined any of this closely.)  Trans. Moore, St. John Climacus, The ladder of divine ascent 14.28 (New York:  Harper & Brothers, [1959]), 144:

It is amazing to see the bodiless mind defiled and darkened by the body, and likewise the immaterial spirit purified and refined through clay.

The value of the loci alieni for the elimination of "false directions within the Church"

The hermeneutic of reform "doesn’t simply have to do with failures which were absorbed from without; they can be also failures which developed from within. . . . [I]f [the Church i]s not doing well, that’s not always because it’s absorbed things from without, because it’s also failed to develop from within. . . . There certainly are sides of the Protestant Reformation and of the Enlightenment that are important for the Church, that she would not want to do without.  For example, at the [Second Vatican] Council it was the admonition from the Calvinist Lukas Fischer which warned the Catholics against a kind of Pollyannic, rose-colored-glasses look at the signs of the times.  It was because of the admonitions of the Protestant side—remember that we are very corrupt in the way we read the signs of the times and we need to examine them in the light of the Gospel—that you have that marvelous nuancing in Guadium et spes 4 to read the signs of the times [and] to scrutinize them in the light of the Gospel.  That wasn’t the initial Catholic impulse. . . . It was the Protestant reminder of the brokenness of humanity that goes into the Church and also was an admonition for scrutinizing the signs of the times in the light of the Gospel.  And that is the lesson which many, even in this alienational (so-called alienational) side—they are often less ecumenical than the integrative side."

     Fr. Richard Schenk, O.P., "Memory And Conversion - Thomistic Ressourcement And Productive Non-Contemporaneity," a lecture at the conference Thomism after Vatican II, Angelicum, Rome, 27 October 2018, from 55:02.  The loci alieni of the heading is taken from Melchior Cano via Schenk.

"AI . . . is not a creature of God"

Wycliffe College (cropped)

      "A corollary to the claim that AI is a human artifact for use—and artifacts do not enjoy God—is that AI, unlike creatures, are not objects of God’s redemptive action:  God 'saves man and beast,' as the Psalmist writes (36:6)—but not chainsaws, whose good or ill use is in the hands of human beings.  It is, of course, possible to conceive of AI being part of a human world that God re-creates and 'redeems' in this sense; but in this case, AI’s relationship to God is only through its reordered use by its makers:  human beings; and that use is itself evaluated according to how it furthers the full enjoyment of God, in love and praise, by human beings."

     Ephraim Radner, "Artificial Intelligence:  a theological perspective," Toronto journal of theology 36, no. 1 (2020):  81-82 (81–83).

A remote ancestor of modern Western psychology

"While the history of psychology as a scholarly study of the mind and behaviour dates back to the ancient Greek philosophers, who developed elaborate theories of the soul, in antiquity there was no clear-cut discussion of the peculiarity of the individual person, nor were ancient philosophers interested in the individual's inner life.  As will be shown, demonology enabled monastic writers to pursue new lines of psychological investigation of which modern Western psychology is the remote heir.
"scholars investigating the history of Western psychology have tended to focus on the nineteenth-century roots of scientific psychology.  The present book, however, shows that early monastic discussions of the inner processes of the self and how they are manipulated by demons offer an important source of evidence for the history of psychological knowledge and the ways in which it is produced, articulated, and applied in psychological praxis.  In this way it demonstrates the need to broaden the scholarly investigation of the history of the discipline of psychology to include the history of psychological knowledge."

     Inbar Graiver, Asceticism of the mind:  forms of attention and self-transformation in late antique monasticism (Toronto:  Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 2018), 28-29.

The myth of progress

"although we cannot deny all kinds of progress in detail, the many attempts which have been made to establish a teleology or progress in world-history as a whole have always proved to be unsuccessful. It is only fools—and at some point and in some way we are all fools—who will confuse the details with the whole, looking at technical development (in the widest sense of the word) and dreaming of a general progress of man and mankind in history as a whole. In spite of all the movement in his historical forms and activities, man himself is not progressive. In respect of his capacity, or incapacity, to live as homo sapiens, to make his being and his being together tolerable and stable, he is remarkably stationary, his actions and reactions being unfortunately only too similar to those of an unreasoning bullock plodding around a capstan. His pride is his hindrance, and it is one of the imaginations of his pride that one day he will achieve this modest control of his life. What is the obviously outstanding feature of world-history? Is it the occasional symphonies and euphonies? We must not ignore these. Is it the constant cacophonies ? We certainly cannot ignore these. But the really outstanding thing beyond and in the antitheses is the all-conquering monotony—the monotony of the pride in which man has obviously always lived to his own detriment and to that of his neighbour, from hoary antiquity and through the ebb and flow of his later progress and recession both as a whole and in detail, the pride in which he still lives to his own and his neighbour's detriment and will most certainly continue to do so till the end of time."

"so bleibt es doch bei der furchtbaren Tatsache, daß zwar die Leugnung von allerlei Fortschritten im Einzelnen nicht möglich ist, daß aber die Feststellung einer Teleologie, einer Progression im Ganzen der Weltgeschichte zwar immer wieder versucht worden ist, sich aber auch immer wieder als noch viel unmöglicher erwiesen hat. Es braucht Narren dazu – irgendwo und irgendwie sind wir aber alle immer wieder diese Narren – um das Einzelne mit dem Ganzen zu verwechseln und also etwa im Blick auf die Entwicklung der Technik (im weitesten Sinn dieses Begriffs) von einem in der Weltgeschichte stattfindenden Fortschritt des Menschen, der Menschheit im Ganzen, zu träumen. Der Mensch selbst ist, alles Wandels seiner geschichtlichen Gestalten und Betätigungen ungeachtet, gerade nicht «progressiv». Hinsichtlich seiner Fähigkeit bzw. Unfähigkeit, als homo sapiens zu leben, sein Sein und Zusammensein auch nur im Blick auf eine gewisse Erträglichkeit, auch nur auf eine gewisse Dauer in Griff zu bekommen, ist er vielmehr wunderbar stationär, in seinem Agieren und Reagieren einem am Göpel im Kreis herum laufenden, höchst unvernünftigen Rindvieh leider gar sehr vergleichbar. Sein Hochmut hindert ihn daran, und es ist selber nur einer von den Träumen seines Hochmuts, wenn er sich einbildet, auch nur diesen bescheidenen Griff eines Tages doch noch fertig zu bringen. Was ist das aufregend Interessante der Weltgeschichte? Ihre je und dann aufklingenden Symphonien und Euphonien? Sie sind nicht zu überhören. Ihre immer wieder durchbrechenden Kakophonien? Man kann gewiß auch sie nicht überhören. Noch aufregender und interessanter aber ist ihre jenseits dieser Gegensätze und in ihnen immer wieder siegreiche Monotonie: die Monotonie des Hochmuts, in welchem der Mensch sich selbst und seinem Nächsten schon in grauer Vorzeit und dann im Auf und Ab seiner späteren Fortschritte und Rückschritte im Einzelnen wie im Ganzen offensichtlich nur immer aufs neue zu Leid gelebt hat, bis auf diesen Tag zu Leid lebt und ganz bestimmt bis zum Ende aller Tage zu Leid leben wird."

     Karl Barth, CD IV/1, 507 (§60.3) =KD IV/1,  566-567 (§60.3).