Gregory on the Christian distinction

Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study

"Every finding and every possible finding of natural science is compatible with a notion of God whose radical otherness is precisely the possibility condition of his presence throughout the physical world. If the biblical God of traditional Christianity is real, then the empirical findings of the natural sciences from astronomy and experimental physics to paleontology and evolutionary biology could not diminish God's presence in and through the world."

     Brad S. Gregory, "No room for God? History, science, metaphysics, and the study of religion," History and theory 47, no. 4 (December 2008): 509-510. But the key here is the notion. It must be the traditional notion of a God "who cannot in principle be conceived as part of, alongside, or in competition with the natural world"; who "is not a 'highest being' or a 'supernatural entity' that can in any sense be properly conceived within or as a component of a more comprehensive reality"; who is "radically distinct from the universe", i.e. "metaphysically transcendent" (502-503); and so forth. So away with the profoundly meta-scientific assumptions of modern scientism rooted ultimately in "late-medieval nominalism" (Duns Scotus on univocity). "A radically transcendent God would be neither outside nor inside his creation. . . . Rather, if real, such a God could be wholly present to everything in the natural world precisely and only because he would be altogether inconceivable in spatial categories. Divine transcendence would thus be not the opposite but the correlate of divine immanence. So, too, God in this sort of view would be neither temporally prior to nor a cosmic observer of sequential events as they unfold. . . . Rather, God could be fully present to all events and every moment precisely and only because he would be altogether inconceivable in temporal categories. Divine eternity would then be not the opposite but the correlate of divine providence" (503). "The intellectually unjustified misstep that provides the foundation for scientism and ideological secularism in the modern academy derives not from science, but from the transgression of science's own self-imposed limits" precisely (506). Nothing new here, but he sure brings his fellow historians up to speed. Outstanding! Great footnotes, too.

St. John of Damascus on matter

"I do not worship matter; I worship the Creator of matter who became matter for my sake, who willed to take His abode in matter; who worked out my salvation through matter.  Never will I cease honoring the matter which wrought my salvation! . . . God's body is God because it is joined to His person by a union which shall never pass away. . . . Because of this I salute all remaining matter with reverence, because God has filled it with His grace and power.  Through it my salvation has come to me."

St. John of Damascus, First apology of St. John of Damascus against those who attack the divine images 16, in St. John of Damascus on the divine images, trans. David Anderson (Crestwood, NY:  St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1980),  23.  Cf. Second apology 14, pp. 61-62.

Yannaras on the Eucharist

"all these, and a host of other nightmarish syndromes, form the world which today greets every infant who becomes a godchild of the Church through holy baptism. And in the face of this world, all we Christians seem like complete infants, feeble and powerless to exert the slightest influence over the course of human history and the fate of our planet. This is perhaps because, through the historical vicissitudes of heretical distortions of our truth--distortions which lie at the root of the present cultural impasse--we seem to have lost our understanding of the manner in which our weakness and powerlessness 'perfects' the transfiguring power of the Church. Our power is 'hidden' in the grain of wheat and the tiny mustard seed, in the mysterious dynamism of the leaven lost in the dead lump of the world--in the eucharistic hypostasis of our communal body.
"The eucharistic community, the resuscitation of our eucharistic self-awareness and identity, the nucleus of the parish and the diocese--these are our 'revolutionary' organization, our radical 'policy,' our ethic of 'overthrowing the establishment': these are our hope, the message of good tidings which we bring. And this hope will 'overcome the world'. . . ."

Christos Yannaras, "The ethos of liturgical art," chap. 12 of The freedom of morality, trans. Elizabeth Briere, Contemporary Greek theologians 3 (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1984): 262.

Buckley on Diderot

"[The Marquis de] Sade was made of much sterner stuff than Diderot. He was a man who knew a conclusion when he saw one."

     Michael J. Buckley, S.J., At the origins of modern atheism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987), 248.

Brown on the Mediterranean as backwater

"In the eighth century the Mediterranean seaboard came to be ruled from Baghdad; the Mediterranean became a backwater to men who were used to sailing from the Persian Gulf; and the court of Harun al-Rashid (788-809), with its heavy trappings of 'sub-Persian' culture, was a reminder that the irreversible victory of the Near East over the Greeks began slowly but surely with the revolt of Fars in A D 224."

Peter Brown, The world of late antiquity, A D 150-750, History of European civilization library, ed. Geoffrey Barraclough (London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1971): 20-21.

The ODCC on the tolerati, vivandi

tolerati (Lat., ‘tolerated persons’). The technical term formerly used in canon law for those excommunicated persons with whom the faithful were permitted to have some measure of intercourse. They were thus distinguished from the vitandi (q.v.). These categories are no longer used in RC canon law.

vitandi (Lat., ‘persons to be avoided’). The technical name formerly used in canon law for those excommunicated persons with whom members of the Church were debarred from having any kind of intercourse unless there was reasonable cause. They were distinguished from the tolerati, with whom relations of a personal kind were more readily allowed. Unless he had laid violent hands upon the Pope, in which case ipso facto he was vitandus, an offender acquired this status only when he was expressly so named by the Roman see. These rulings are embodied in the Codex Iuris Canonici (1917), cans. 2258, 2259, and 2343. The category is not used in the 1983 Codex.

Oxford dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd ed. rev. (2005), e-reference edition.

St. Isaac the Syrian on what happens "When knowledge follows the desire of the flesh"

"When knowledge follows the desire of the flesh, it brings with it these tendencies: wealth, vanity, adornment, rest for the body, and eagerness for the wisdom of that logic which is suitable for the administration of this world; it is constantly making new discoveries both in skills and in knowledge, and abounds also in everything else that is the crown of the body in this visible world. As a result of this, it comes to oppose faith . . . for it is stripped of any concern for God, and makes the mind irrational and powerless, because it is dominated by the body. Its concern is wholly confined to this world . . . It thinks that everything is in its own care, following those who say that the visible world is not subject to any direction. Yet it is unable to escape from continuing concern and fear for the body. So faintheartedness and sorrow and despair take hold of it . . . and worry about illnesses, and concerns about wants and lack of necessities, and fear of death . . . For it does not know how to cast its care onto God, in the assurance of faith in Him. It therefore engages in contrivances and trickery in all its affairs. When its contrivances are ineffectual for some reason, it does not see the secret providence, and fights the people who are obstructing and opposing it".

St. Isaac the Syrian, Mystic treatises 6, pp. 256-257, as quoted by Christos Yannaras in "The ethos of liturgical art," chap. 12 of The freedom of morality, trans. Elizabeth Briere, Contemporary Greek theologians 3 (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1984), 236n2.