Creation is a Mystery
Cosmos out of chaos
Excerpted from A Whirld of Words: A Reader's Commonplace Dictionary. Find the LINK to the Introduction and WORKS CITED below.
creation
II Maccabees, a work of the Apocrypha probably written in the second century BCE, is the first in Jewish literature to insist that God did not make creation ‘out of things that existed’, unformed, chaotic material, but summoned creation out of nothing
(MacCulloch 2010) p. 70
Bede calculates the date for the beginning of creation to be 18 March 3952 BC
(Duncan 1998) p. 133
all Christian philosophers have said that the reason for creation lies in the goodness of God. Moral evil is the necessary correlative of creation
(Gilson 1940) p. 93, 120
the whole creation is a mystery
Thomas Browne (Willey 1964) p. 179
on one point Newton could not satisfy himself, nor did he ever hope to do so. While vigorously defending the uniqueness and absolute nature of time and space, Newton regarded these attributes of the universe as consequences of the divine creation; the immutability of time, space and the universe reflected the immutability of the divine nature and purpose. He imagined that more than mechanical interaction, or in other words divine intervention from time to time, was necessary to maintain the stability of the creation
(Hall 1992) p. 219, 220
it is not God whom I reject, it is creation
Ivan Karamazov (Camus 1991a) p. 59
the ethical view of the universe involves us at last in so many cruel and absurd contradictions, where the last vestiges of faith, hope, charity, and even of reason itself, seem ready to perish, that I have come to suspect that the aim of creation cannot be ethical at all. I would fondly believe that its object is purely spectacular: a spectacle for awe, love, adoration, or hate, if you like, but in this view – and in this view alone – never for despair! Those visions, delicious or poignant, are a moral end in themselves. The rest is our affair – the laughter, the tears, the tenderness, the indignation, the high tranquillity of a steeled heart, the detached curiosity of a subtle mind – that's our affair! And the unwearied self-forgetful attention to every phase of the living universe reflected in our consciousness may be our appointed task on this earth. A task in which fate has perhaps engaged nothing of us except our conscience, gifted with a voice in order to bear true testimony to the visible wonder, the haunting terror, the infinite passion and the illimitable serenity; to the supreme law and the abiding mystery of the sublime spectacle
(Conrad 1969) p. 712
the absurd joy par excellence
(Camus 1991b) p. 93
when you know what pain is, you agree that not to have been born is better. But being born one respects the powers of creation, one obeys the will of God – with whatever inner reservations truth imposes
Artur Sammler (Bellow 1970) p. 201
Creator
without knowledge of his Creator every man is but a brute
Jerome (Jerome 1933) p. 271
art
the Grandchild of Creation
(Dante 1954) p. 106
atheism
Newton always denied that the philosopher can properly treat the creation as a 'universe machine' complete and self-sufficient in itself, perfectly stable and unchanging for all eternity. Such a notion, Newton hints strongly, is conducive to atheism, for the philosophers who maintain it confuse God and matter
(Hall 1992) p. 75
it has been said that the highest praise of God consists in the denial of Him by the atheist, who finds creation so perfect that he can dispense with a creator
Marcel Proust (Boorstin 1992) p. 1
books
books share with us the great incertitude of ignominy or glory – of severe justice and senseless persecution – of calumny and misunderstanding – the shame of undeserved success; of all the inanimate objects, of all men's creations, books are the nearest to us, for they contain our very thought, our ambitions, our indignations, our illusions, our fidelity to truth, and our persistent leaning towards error; but most of all they resemble us in their precarious hold on life
Joseph Conrad (Jackson 1981) p. 34
bucolic
‘bucolic’ is Theocritus’s own term, and he is the first to use it. It is derived from the Greek word for cowherd, which also came to be used to mean a herdsman of any kind. At a literal level bucolic song means anything – whatever the subject – sung by a herdsman. The distinction should be made between ‘bucolic’ and ‘pastoral’. Theocritus has traditionally been considered as the original pastoral poet. But pastoral, as a distinct genre, is a creation of Renaissance writers, part critical construction and part fantasy, drawn from their reading of the classics
(Theocritus 1988) p. 23, 24
Cabala
Kepler notes, 'Salianus delighted me especially when he explicated the Gospel of John at the start of his account of the creator of time and the world. For this led me to the thought that John the Evangelist, as he proved the eternity of the son of God and his divine origin, also gave us a commentary on the Mosaic history of creation and brought forth a sort of Cabala, pregnant with venerable mysteries from Jewish tradition’
(Grafton 2009) p. 118
Caedmon
pious and religious verses. English was his native language. By his verses the minds of many were often excited to despise the world, and to aspire to heaven. He did not learn the art of poetry from men, but from God; for which reason he never could compose any trivial or vain poem. Having lived in a secular habit till he was well advanced in years, he had never learned anything of versifying. A person appeared to him in his sleep: ‘Caedmon, sing some song to me.’ He answered, ‘I cannot sing.’ The other replied, ‘However, you shall sing.’ – ‘What shall I sing?’ rejoined he. ‘Sing the beginning of created beings,’ said the other. Hereupon he presently began to sing verses to the praise of God, which he had never heard. He sang the creation of the world, the origin of man, and all the history of Genesis: and made many verses on the departure of the children of Israel out of Egypt, and their entering into the land of promise, with many other histories from holy writ; the incarnation, passion, resurrection of our Lord, and his ascension into heaven; the coming of the Holy Ghost, and the preaching of the apostles; also the terror of future judgment, the horror of the pains of hell, and the delights of heaven; besides many more about the Divine benefits and judgments, by which he endeavored to turn away all men from the love of vice, and to excite in them the love of, and application to, good actions; for he was a very religious man, humbly submissive to regular discipline, but full of zeal against those who behaved themselves otherwise; for which reason he ended his life happily
(Bede 1970) p. 206, 207
capitalism
Schumpeter dates the emergence of capitalism to the time when massive credit creation via the banking system became possible for the first time. According to Schumpeter, the very essence of capitalism is expressed through the wavelike movements that the modern economy goes through; and these must somehow be accounted for in economic theory
(Swedberg 1991) p. 36
cartography
Mercator's world chart of 1569 was the first of his creations to be drawn according to the projection that has ever since carried his name. He evidently derived his projection empirically. He devised a cylindrical projection in which all meridians are straight lines perpendicular to the equator and the lines of latitude run parallel to it. This projection proved to be a boon to navigators for they could now for the first time lay down a compass course as a straight line. But it was also revolutionary in the sense that in his depiction of the continents Mercator broke completely with the cartography of Ptolemy
(Lach 1977) p. 466
Christianity
it is true that Christianity teaches us to place others before ourselves in order to gain heaven; but Christianity also teaches us to do good to our fellow men for the love of God. What a magnificent expression; man uses his intelligence to penetrate the mind of God and sees that God’s aim is order. He freely joins in this grand design and, sacrificing his private interest to this admirable order of all creation, he expects no other reward then the joy of contemplating it
(Tocqueville 2003) p. 614
chronology
Julius Africanus, one of the first scholars of the ancient world to be a Christian, tried to piece together a coherent chronology for Christian events. He placed the Saviour’s birth in a year which he reckoned as the 5,500th from Creation; this calculation became embedded in the work of later historians, such as the sixth-century Dionysius Exiguus (‘the Short’), who has often wrongly stolen credit from Julius for fixing the first Year of the Lord (annus Domini)
(MacCulloch 2010) p. 82
Church
what man is amid the brute creation, such is the Church among the schools of the world
(Newman 1960) p. 359
City of God
here is a book that was written over fifteen hundred years ago by a mystic in North Africa. The City of God is a monumental theology of history. It grew out of St Augustine’s meditations on the fall of the Roman Empire. But his analysis is timeless and universal. A book that was to be, in fact, the autobiography of the Catholic Church. That is what The City of God is. Just as truly as the Confessions are the autobiography of St Augustine, The City of God is the autobiography of the Church written by the most Catholic of her great saints. Book Fourteen, where the origin of the two Cities is sketched, in an essay on original sin. The living heart of the City is found in Book Nineteen. The last Book (Twenty-two), which is perhaps the finest of them all, and a fitting climax to the whole work, will give the reader a broad view of St Augustine’s whole scheme because it describes the end of the City of God, the communal vision of the elect in Paradise, the contemplation which is the life of the ‘City of Vision’ in heaven and the whole purpose of man’s creation. The difference between the two cities is the difference between two loves. Those who are united in the City of God are united by the love of God and of one another in God. Those who belong to the other city are indeed not united in any real sense: but it can be said that they have one thing in common besides their opposition to God: each one of them is intent on the love of himself above all else. In St Augustine’s classical expression: ‘These two cities were made by two loves: the earthly city by the love of self unto the contempt of God, and the heavenly city by the love of God unto the contempt of self’. The earthly city glories in its own power, the heavenly in the power of God. The love which unites the citizens of the heavenly city is disinterested love, or charity. Charity is a love that leads the will to the possession of true values because it sees all things in their right order. But cupidity is doomed from the start to frustration because it is based on a false system of values. It takes created things for ends in themselves, which they are not. Hence the city that is united in charity will be the only one to possess true peace, because it is the only one that conforms to the true order of things, the order established by God. The City of God, for those who can understand it, contains the secret of death and life, war and peace, hell and heaven
Thomas Merton (Augustine and Merton 1983) p. xi, xiii, xv, xvii
commonplace
Creation may be a holographic projection, a la George Berkeley, and thus, a Creator's universal commonplace
[JS]
convention
a coherent reading of any art work, whatever the medium, requires some detailed awareness of the grid of conventions upon which, and against which, the individual work operates. Through our awareness of convention we can recognize significant or simply pleasing patterns of repetition, symmetry, contrast; we can discriminate between the verisimilar and the fabulous, pick up directional clues in a narrative work, see what is innovative and what is deliberately traditional at each nexus of the artistic creation
(Alter 1981) p. 47
corporation
not great fortunes, but great corporations are the important units of wealth, to which individuals of property are variously attached. The corporation is the source of wealth, and the basis of the continued power and privilege of wealth. All the men and the families of great wealth are now identified with large corporations in which their property is seated. A managerial revolution transformed the very meaning of property. The corporations are the organized centers of the private property system: the chief executives are the organizers of that system. As economic men, they are at once creatures and creators of the corporate revolution, which, in brief, has transformed property from a tool of the workman into an elaborate instrument by which his work is controlled and a profit extracted from it. The story of the American economy since the Civil War is thus the story of the creation and consolidation of this corporate world of centralized property. The top corporations are not a set of splendidly isolated giants. They have been knit together by explicit associations: the consolidation of the corporate world into an elaborate network of interlocking directorships; a sociological anchor of the community of interest, the unification of outlook and policy, that prevails among the propertied class. The scale of the modern corporation is usually due more to financial and managerial amalgamations than to technical efficiency
(Mills 1969) p. 116, 119, 120, 122, 124
cosmos
for the theologians of Chartres, the notion of the cosmos as a work of architecture and of God as its architect has a special significance, since they assume a twofold act of creation: the creation of chaotic matter and the creation of cosmos out of chaos. Since the Greek word kosmos signified ornament as well as order, it was plausible to view matter as the building material, the creation proper as the 'adorning' of matter by the artful imposition of an architectural order. In the Platonic cosmology the masters of Chartres could detect the design and method according to which the divine architect had built the universe. The medieval cosmos was theologically transparent. One cannot imagine a more adequate symbol of the medieval cosmos than the rose window. No invention of Christian art, the rose window occurs in Islamic architecture long before its adaptation in the West
(Simson 1988) p. 29, 35, 220
death
that we should in some sense or other survive death is no greater miracle than that of procreation, which we have before our eyes every day
(Schopenhauer 1970) p. 72
devil
good by God's creation, wicked by his own will
(Augustine 1990) p. 384
Dionysius the Areopagite
Denis, the so-called Pseudo-Areopagite, blends Neoplatonic philosophy with the magnificent theology of light in the Gospel of St. John, where the divine Logos is conceived as the true Light that shineth in darkness, by which all things were made, and that enlighteneth every man that cometh into this world. Upon this passage the Pseudo-Areopagite bases the edifice of his own thought. Creation is to him an act of illumination, but even the created universe could not exist without light. From this metaphysical concept of light, the Pseudo-Areopagite also deduced his epistemology. The creation is the self-revelation of God
(Simson 1988) p. 52
Denys the Areopagite had presented a bewildering problem to Western scholars before the time of Grosseteste. On the surface, his credentials were impeccable. It was universally agreed that the writer of the works which went under his name was the Athenian convert of St Paul, who had later become bishop of Paris and died a martyr’s death evangelizing Gaul. His shrine near Paris was the religious centre of Capetian France. His writings were believed to be the earliest Christian writings outside the Bible. His position, therefore, as a link with the Apostolic Age was unchallenged. The monks of St Denis and the kings of France who wished to glorify their patron saint, and theologians everywhere who wished to find their roots in Apostolic teaching, had every reason to promote the study of Denys’s writings. And yet, despite their labours, they had failed to stimulate interest in them. The reasons are not far to seek. Try as they might to torture the Greek into intelligible Latin, the language of those writings remained obscure, their doctrinal content was imprecise, and what was intelligible seemed perilously like heresy. They presented none of the clear statements of doctrine which could be used in the twelfth-century schools. They were too elusive and contorted in their piety to serve the purposes of public more private devotion. The calm and lucid mind of Hugh of St Victor had been able to extract from the most obviously useful and least puzzling of Denys’s works a full account of the nine orders of angels. This filled a gap in the spiritual cosmology of Christendom; but even here the main doctrine of angels had already been satisfactorily elucidated for the Latin world by Gregory the Great, who transmitted the Dionysian hierarchy with only one alteration [Gregory reverses the position of Virtues and Principalities.] Denys satisfied many of his deepest instincts. They provided the fullest account in Christian literature of the multifarious gradations of Being flowing out from God and carrying the imprint of the divine nature through all the subordinate orders of ministering spirits and earthly agents. They satisfied Grosseteste’s instinct for seeing order in a vast array of details, and they allowed him to make his own contribution to this order in developing his view of Light as the agent which carried the divine unity throughout the universe, penetrating the whole from the unchanging One to the manifold diversity of created beings. And, besides all this, Denys linked together the Greek and Latin Churches, the Apostolic age and the present day, Platonism and Christianity. Grosseteste was a natural Platonist who distrusted Plato. Denys provided a Platonism rooted in the Bible and in the Apostolic age – a Platonism that was wholly Christian. This was what Grosseteste as a scientist, philosopher and theologian most desired: the unity of God and Creation stamped with the authority of the earliest Church. He found it in Denys
(Southern 1986) p. 200, 201, 202, 203
Dis
the City called Dis – Hell’s metropolis
(Dante 1954) p. 82
at the center point of all creation,
in the smallest circle, on which Dis is founded
the traitors lie in endless expiation
(Dante 1954) p. 105
empire
in less than a century (between 478 and 404 BC) Athens gained and lost an empire. Among ancient empires bordering the Mediterranean, the Athenian empire was impressive neither for its size nor for its durability. But as the creation of a democratic state it was unique. Over the course of the Athenian experience with empire, the use of writing to hone the skills of debate and to express the principles that made arguments memorable gave rise to new habits of discourse and standards of judgment. These habits in turn provided the foundations of rhetoric, political philosophy, constitutional law, and history. Athenian democracy encouraged habits of literacy. Athens was the 'school of Hellas', as Thucydides reports the famous claim of Pericles
(Munn 2000) p. 1, 3
entheogen
we propose a new term that would be appropriate for describing states of shamanic and ecstatic possession induced by ingestion of mind-altering drugs. In Greek the word entheos means literally ‘god, (theos) within’, and was used to describe the condition that follows when one is inspired and possessed by the god that has entered one’s body. It was applied to prophetic seizures, erotic passion and artistic creation, as well as to those religious rites in which mystical states were experienced through the ingestion of substances that were transubstantial with the deity. In combination with the Greek root gen-, which denotes the action of ‘becoming’, this word results in the term that we are proposing: entheogen. Our word sits easily on the tongue and seems quite natural in English. We could speak of entheogens or, in adjectival form, of entheogenic plants or substances. In a strict sense, only those vision-producing drugs that can be shown to have figured in shamanic or religious rites would be designated entheogens, but in a looser sense, the term could also be applied to other drugs, both natural and artificial, that induce alterations of consciousness similar to those documented for ritual ingestion of traditional entheogens
(Wasson et al. 2008) p. 139
existentialism
post-modern Existentialism – Sartre's radical negation of the idea of creation: 'Existentialism is nothing more than an attempt to draw all the conclusions from a consistently atheistic position. There is no such thing as human nature because there exists no God to think it creatively'
Sartre (Pieper 1965) p. 52
facts
Roland Barthes and Hayden White spoke of facts as having a linguistic existence only. Facts had no special claims to authority because they, too, were rhetorical creation. In 1910, the American historian Carl L Becker had already suggested that the facts were primarily constructs
(Breisach 2003) p. 75, 76
form criticism
form criticism was not concerned with literature at all, but with oral tradition – the forms of the small units (pericopes, or Einzelstücke) that are characteristic of oral tradition; although these oral forms may indeed be identified and described in their present literary context in the Gospels, they are understood in form criticism not as literary creations but as sociological products; form is conferred in accordance with the use of the tradition in the community and so is a function of Sitz im Leben, or 'social setting'
(Gamble 1995) p. 15
gnostic
the most important heresies in the early church were those that have been grouped under the name Gnostic; the name itself is largely the creation of modern historical scholarship
(Pelikan 1971) p. 81
implicit in most gnostic systems was a distrust of the Jewish account of creation
(MacCulloch 2010) p. 122
God
Spinoza's famous doctrine: every substance must be infinite, one substance cannot produce another, and therefore there is only one substance. Consequently, whatever exists belongs to that one substance which is God, while Extended and Thinking Nature are hence merely two attributes of the same thing. Accordingly, 'God is, in relation to his effects or creatures no other than an immanent cause’, that is, the totality of everything, while causality and creation are inherent in, and not external to, that one substance. God's Providence is redefined as 'nothing but the striving we find both in Nature as a whole and in particular things, tending to maintain and preserve their being'. Natura naturans, the active or creative power of Nature which is God is distinguished from the actuality and creatures of nature, or Natura naturata. Motion is declared inherent in matter and 'has been from all eternity and will remain to all eternity, immutable'. Everything which happens occurs necessarily; there 'are no contingent things'; and nothing can be otherwise than it is
(Israel 2001) p. 162
Stankevich: Schelling’s God is the cosmos, the totality of Nature struggling towards consciousness, and Man is as far as the struggle has got, with the animals not too far behind, vegetables somewhat lagging, and rocks nowhere as yet. Do we believe this? Does it matter? Think of it as a poem or a picture. Art doesn’t have to be true like a theorem. It can be true in other ways. This truth says the universe is all of a oneness, not just a lot of bits which happen to be lying around together. In other words, it says there is a meaning to it all, and Man is where the meaning begins to show. How do we get the rest of the meaning? Schelling says: by unlocking our innermost being. By letting the meaning flow through us. This is morality. Kant says: but morality has no meaning unless we are free to choose, so it follows that we are the only government of our real lives, the ideal is to be discovered in us, not in some book of social theory written by a Frenchman. Idealism – the self – the autonomous will – is the mark of God’s faith in his creations. Well, who’d have thought that God’s chosen people would turn out to be the Germans?
(Stoppard 2003) p. 16
Grosseteste, Robert
Grosseteste’s symbolic leanings are shown in his readiness to view every object in the universe as a symbol of spiritual truth. A principle of staggering magnitude, that everything in the universe – not just crops and animals, but stars and their rotations, and whatever sphere there may be beyond the stars – all exist for the good of mankind. The centrality of man in the universe was a commonplace of Christian thought. The doctrine takes on a larger dimension if everything in the universe has a symbolic value, for symbols can only be useful for mankind: angels, having immediate access to truth, could have no use for symbols. Ants and lions, and all other creatures of no obvious human utility, become the instructors of mankind; and to investigate their natures becomes a scientific duty if the maximum amount of instruction is to be extracted from them. This was Grosseteste’s plan in his earliest lectures on the Psalms, when he took each natural object mentioned by the Psalmist and gave it a universal setting in the symbolism of the universe. This was Grosseteste’s greatest discovery: nature and the supernatural are one, not only in the old sense that everything in the Old Testament symbolizes God’s purpose for man and the whole Creation, but in the broader sense that the physical objects of our sense perceptions, the general laws of nature, the symbolic meanings of every creature, the purposes of the Creator, and (so far as it is knowable) the nature of God, are all parts of a single field of knowledge. ‘All created things are mirrors which reflect the Creator’
(Southern 1986) p. 206, 211, 212, 216
Grosseteste is essentially a theologian of Creation. His theology is an examination of the paths by which the operation of God can be traced downwards to the most minute objects in the universe and upwards to the divine nature itself
(Southern 1986) p. 219
Hexaëmeron
six days of the Creation, as recounted in the Biblical Genesis
(Kennedy 1963) p. 28
historian
Shakespeare's history plays cast their audiences in the roles of historians. Taken in the order of their composition, the plays can be read as a long meditation on the difficulty of retrieving the past. The genre itself is largely Shakespeare's creation. The English history play ceased to be a popular genre soon after Shakespeare abandoned it. The vogue of the history play was intense but remarkably brief
(Rackin 1993) p. 28, 31
historiography
great thanks, laud, and honor ought to be given unto the clerks, poets, and historiographs that have written many noble books of wisdom of the lives, passions, and miracles of holy saints, of histories of noble and famous acts and fates, and of the chronicles since the beginning of the creation of the world unto this present time, by which we be daily informed and have knowledge of many things of whom we should not have known if they had not left to us their monuments written
William Caxton (1484) (Burrow 2008) frontis
Homogenocene
a new epoch in the history of life, brought into being by the abrupt creation of a world-spanning economic system. Colón's voyages marked the beginning of a new biological era: the Homogenocene. The term refers to homogenizing: mixing unlike substances to create a uniform plan. With the Colombian Exchange, places that were once ecologically distinct have become more alike. It is more often called the Anthropocene
(Mann 2011) p. 17, 25, 416
horoscope
Kepler charted the horoscope for the Creation – Sunday, 27 April 4977 BC
(Koestler 1959) p. 260
Hosanna
Mephistopheles, when he comes to Faust, testifies of himself that he desires evil, yet does only good. Well, let him do as he likes, it’s quite the opposite with me. I am perhaps the only man in all of nature who loves the truth and sincerely desires good. I was there when the Word who died on the cross was ascending into heaven, carrying on his bosom the soul of the thief who was crucified to the right of him, I heard the joyful shrieks of the cherubim singing and shouting ‘Hosanna’, and the thundering shout of rapture from the Seraphim, which made heaven and all creation shake. And, I swear by all that’s holy, I wanted to join the chorus and shout ‘Hosanna’ with everyone else. It was right on my lips, it was already bursting from my breast – you know, I’m very sensitive and artistically susceptible. But common sense – oh, it’s the most unfortunate quality of my nature – kept me within due bounds even then, and I missed the moment! For what – I thought at that same moment – what will happen after my ‘Hosanna’? Everything in the world will immediately be extinguished and no events will occur. And so, solely because of my official duty and my social position, I was forced to quash the good moment in myself and stay with my nasty tricks
the devil (Dostoyevsky 1992) p. 647
human nature
the condition of having a material body and participating in the change and suffering of the creation
(Pelikan 1971) p. 76
idols
she still abided by her old impiety—still reversed the order of Creation, and breathed her own breath into a clay image of her Creator. Verily, verily, travellers have seen many monstrous idols in many countries; but no human eyes have ever seen more daring, gross, and shocking images of the Divine nature than we creatures of the dust make in our own likenesses, of our own bad passions
(Dickens 1989) p. 775
imperial
the mark of Imperial iconography in Christian art is recognizable everywhere and in different ways: appropriation of themes and subjects, borrowings of iconographic details, utilization of more remote models for the creation of analogous images. It is to the theme of the supreme power of God that Imperial art contributed the most, and naturally so, since it was the key theme of all the imagery of the government of the Empire. The official monuments of the late Empire furnished the Christian image-makers with a series of tested models, and they profited from them largely. It is, naturally, through the different applications of the general theme of God’s omnipotence – as revealed through Christ – that the influence of Imperial art made itself felt. The oldest of the subjects inspired by this theme is that of Christ confiding the scroll of the Law to St. Peter in the presence of St. Paul. The group of three figures is symmetrical, their appearance solemn. Christian iconography inherited from Imperial iconography not only formulas but subjects, and the priority of the Imperial models is proved by the fact that the Imperial images represent real ceremonies, while the Christian figurations are imaginary, their symbolism becoming understandable only because of the ceremonies of the palace
(Grabar 1968) p. 42
imperialism
imperialism provoked the crisis that destroyed the Roman Republic. Rome and Britain are archetypes of the dilemma of combining democracy at home with an empire abroad. The histories of Rome and Britain suggest that imperialism and militarism are the deadly enemies of democracy. This was something the founders of the United States tried to forestall with their creation of a republican structure of government and a system of checks and balances inspired by the Roman Republic. Imperialism and militarism will ultimately breach the separation of powers created to prevent tyranny and defend liberty. The United States today, like the Roman Republic in the first century BC, is threatened by an out-of-control military-industrial complex and a huge secret government controlled exclusively by the president. After the attacks of September 11, 2001, cynical and shortsighted political leaders in the United States began to enlarge the powers of the president at the expense of the elected representatives of the people and the courts. The public went along, accepting the excuse that a little tyranny was necessary to protect the population. But, as Benjamin Franklin wrote in 1759, ‘Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety’
(Johnson 2006) p. 63, 88. 89
irony
Herzen’s highest praise for Proudhon was reserved for the conclusion to Confessions of a Revolutionary, written from prison in 1849. The passage that made the strongest impression on Herzen: ‘Liberty, like Reason, ... manifests itself only through constant disdain of its own creations, it perishes as soon as it begins to worship itself. That is why in all ages irony has been the mark of philosophical and liberal genius, the ... irresistible instrument of progress. Irony, true liberty! You free me from the desire for power, the tyranny of parties ... respect for routine, the pedantry of scholars, adulation of important persons, the machinations of politicians, the fanaticism of reformers, superstitious fear of this great universe, and adoration of myself... You were the familiar demon of the Philosopher, when he unmasked at one stroke the dogmatist and the sophist, the hypocrite and the atheist, the Epicurean and the cynic... Sweet irony! ... You give grace to beauty and piquancy to love, you inspire charity through tolerance... You allay dissension and civil wars, you make peace between brothers, you heal the fanatic and the sectarian’
Proudhon (Kelly 2016) p. 318
Islam
in 1141 the abbot of Cluny, Peter the Venerable, was making a tour of the Benedictine monasteries of Spain when he met two scholars from opposite ends of Europe. The one was an Englishman called Robert, probably from the village of Ketton in Rutland; the other, Hermann, from Dalmatia. They were scholars on the look-out for works on astronomy and mathematics. But Peter the Venerable – whether on a sudden impulse or in pursuit of a long conceived plan we cannot tell – engaged them to prepare translations of fundamental Mahometan documents. They had the assistance of two local men, Peter of Toledo and Mahomet the Saracen, and laboured for the next few years on the Abbot’s plan. The result was a collection of documents for the understanding of Islam, which retained its value as late as the sixteenth century. The collection comprised: a translation of the Koran; a brief universal history from a Moslem standpoint; a collection of Moslem legends about the Creation, the Patriarchs, the family of the Prophet and the circumstances of his birth; an exposition of some points of Mahomet’s teaching, known as the Dialogue of Abdia; and an early work of Christian-Moslem polemics known as the Apology of Al-Kindi
(Southern 1953) p. 39
Jesus
One God. A just God. A good God. These were the three steps in the development of the greatest of all ideas. Hundreds of generations have died since the days of Moses, of Amos and Hosea. The thought of the world on almost every other subject has changed; but the conception of God which these three achieved has remained in control of man’s thinking down to this very hour. What was there for Jesus to add? Only one thought, but it was so much more splendid than all which had gone before that it has altered the current of history. He invited frail bewildered humanity to stand upright and look at God face to face! He called upon men to throw away fear, disregard the limitations of their mortality, and claim the Lord of Creation as Father. It is the basis of all revolt, all democracy. For if God is the Father of all men, then all are his children and hence the commonest is equally as precious as the king. No wonder the authorities trembled. They were not fools; they recognized the implications of the teaching. Either Jesus’ life or their power must go. No wonder that succeeding generations of authorities have embroidered his Idea and corrupted it, so that the simplest faith in the world has become a complex thing of form and ritual, of enforced observances and ‘thou shalt nots’. It was too dangerous a Power to be allowed to wander the world, unleashed and uncontrolled
(Barton 2000) p. 47
Job
the moment the Voice begins to address Job out of the storm, Job already has his answer: that, despite appearances to the contrary, God cares enough about man to reveal Himself to humankind, to give man some intimation of the order and direction of His creation. The essential role poetry plays in the imaginative realization of revelation. If the poetry of Job – at least when its often problematic text is fully intelligible – looms above all other biblical poetry in virtuosity and sheer expressive power, the culminating poem that God speaks out of the storm soars beyond everything that has preceded it in the book, the poet having wrought a poetic idiom even richer and more awesome than the one he gave Job. Through this pushing of poetic expression toward its upper limits, the concluding speech helps us see the panorama of creation, as perhaps we could do only through poetry, with the eyes of God. The entire speech from the storm not only is an effectively structured poem in itself but is finely calculated as a climactic development of images, ideas, and themes that appear in different and sometimes antithetical contexts earlier in the poetic argument
(Alter 1985) p. 87
Jubilees
the Qumran text, Jubilees, presents itself as the written version of the interview between Moses and the Angel of the Presence during Moses' forty-day sojourn on Mount Sinai: a fascination with writing and written texts is evident; the chief problem addressed by the book is the problem of forgetfulness; according to Jubilees, the thread of memory is kept alive by written texts; every generation bears responsibility for the transmission of written texts and for passing on knowledge of writing; Enoch was the first to learn the craft of writing; the Hebrew alphabet is implicit in the act of creation and in the history of Israel; Jubilees calls Hebrew the tongue of creation
(Snyder 2000) p. 159-162, 173
kalpa
a thousand mahāyugas (four thousand million years of human reckoning) constituted a single Brahmā day, a single kalpa; dawning with re-creation and evolution, ending with dissolution and re-absorption of the world spheres with all their creatures into the absolute
(Fraser 1981) p. 130
a kalpa is a cosmic cycle extending from the creation of a world-system to its destruction, a time period traditionally given as 4,320,000 years
(Meng 2004) p. 73
kings
to besiege the throne of heaven with eternal prayers to extirpate from creation this class of human lions, tygers and mammouts called kings
Thomas Jefferson (O'Brien 1998) p. 48
Latin
from the fourteenth to the seventeenth century, one kind of Latin – a revived classical language, purist and discriminating – played a special part in the drama of European culture. Italian humanists – scholars like Petrarch and Boccaccio – realized that the serviceable Latin used in their day for state documents and contracts; the liturgical Latin of the church; and the technical, precise Latin of the university-trained lawyers, medical men, and theologians all differed, in multiple ways, from the Latin used by such great writers as Cicero and Virgil. In turning back to the ancients, they bucked some powerfully entrenched assumptions and practices. Latin continued to play vital roles throughout the first modern age from Prague to Peru, it served as the arena of literary artistry, the vehicle of scientific communication, and the medium of common room gossip. Individuals across Europe and beyond knew Latin as intimately, loved it as passionately, and rolled it off the tongue as easily as they did their native languages. In the long term, however, the preservation of classical Latinity proved incompatible with the creation of a new intellectual world. The language that had served as the banner of modernity in the Renaissance had turned into a symbol for traditionalism and intellectual sclerosis. In Latin, or the Empire of a Sign, Françoise Waquet has sketched a nuanced story of this lost language. From the start, she emphasizes that Latin was always as much a matter of ritual as of substance. Latin had a double power: it could conceal or reveal. It prevented the supposedly vulnerable young person from reading such potentially corrupting texts as Isaac Vossius's pioneering study of ancient brothels, J.H. Meibom's 1639 essay on sexual masochism, or Gibbon's discussions of the sexual proclivities of the Empress Theodora
(Grafton 2009) p. 140, 151, 153, 158
law
law at Rome is not so much an ordinance of the State as a creation of the lawyers. Roman law was a kind of theology, equipped with dogmas and heresies, rituals and casuistry
(Syme 1984) p. 863, 868
there is as much freedom and latitude in the interpretation of laws as in their creation
(Montaigne 1958) p. 815
liberalism
Hobbes is the founder of liberalism. The right to the securing of bare life, i.e. the only natural right that Hobbes recognizes, has the character of an inalienable right of man, i.e. of a claim of the individual which precedes the State and determines the purpose and the limits of the State. Hobbes differs from full grown liberalism only by what he regards as the obstacle against which the liberal ideal of civilization is to be established in a determined fight: the obstacle is not corrupt institutions or the ill will of a ruling stratum, but man’s natural malice. Hobbes establishes liberalism in an illiberal world against the (sit venia verbo) illiberal nature of man, whereas his successors, ignoring their presuppositions and goals, trust in the original goodness of human nature, guaranteed by God’s creation and providence, or, basing themselves on scientific neutrality, hope for and improvement of human nature to which man’s experience of himself does not entitle him. For Hobbes, the basic political fact was natural right as the justified claim of every individual, while duty or obligation was a subsequent restriction of that right
Comments on … Carl Schmitt (Strauss 1965) p. 338, 344
light
de Luce – this short work contains the fullest expression of Grosseteste’s final view of the role of Light in the universe. Here light is described as the primo forma corporalis of Creation; it diffuses itself in all directions to the extreme limits of the universe in the first moment of time; it carries with it as its inseparable concomitant the matter of the whole universe; then from the furthest boundary of the outermost sphere it returns through the celestial spheres to the terrestrial, where it produces the four elements of fire, air, earth, and water. In brief, light is the splendour and perfection of all embodied things (species et perfecto corporum omnium). The light which shone on the natural world had the same source as the light which shone in Revelation and Redemption, and the expression of this centrality of light was to be found above all in the Bible. Indeed, it was his study of the Bible which convinced him that light was not only the most satisfying of all natural phenomena, but also the emanation from the divine nature which at the first moment of Creation penetrated and gave form to the whole universe
(Southern 1986) p. 135, 136
literature
the Divine Comedy synthesized the timeless and the historical because of Dante’s genius, and Dante’s use of the demotic (or vulgar) Italian language in a sense enabled the creation of what we have come to call literature
Edward Said (Auerbach 2013) p. xxiv
all the great creations of literature have been symbolic
(Conrad 1969) p. 749
the special job of literature is, as Marianne Moore puts it, the creation of 'imaginary gardens with real toads in them'
(Trilling 1976) p. 65
Manichaean
the affirmation of the reality of creation in the theology of Thomas Aquinas surges from the very depths of Christian intuition, namely, from reverence for the reality of the Incarnation of God. According to St. Thomas, the evangelist John had deliberately said the Word was made flesh, in order to exclude the Manichaean principle that the body is evil
(Pieper 1965) p. 33
maps
maps were instruments of control, spatial emblems of power, artefacts in the creation of myth; and they influenced perceptions of place and space at a variety of geographical scales
(Sherman 1995) p. 190
metaphysics
the creation of Gothic marks and reflects an epoch in the history of Christian thought, the change from the mystical to the rational approach to truth, the dawn of Christian metaphysics; medieval metaphysics conceived beauty as the splendor veritatis, as the radiant manifestation of objectively valid laws. Dante sums up the entire metaphysics of light: 'the divine light penetrates the universe according to its dignity'
(Simson 1988) p. 39, 211, 221
modesty
the knowledge that we are not our own creations
(Nietzsche 1984) p. 248
myth
myth narrates a sacred history; it relates an event that took place in primordial Time, the fabled time of the 'beginnings'. In other words, myth tells how, through the deeds of Supernatural Beings, a reality came into existence, be it the whole of reality, the Cosmos, or only a fragment of reality. Myth is always an account of a 'creation'; it relates how something was produced, began to be. Myth tells only of that which really happened, which manifested itself completely. Myths describe the various and sometimes dramatic breakthroughs of the sacred (or the 'supernatural') into the World. The method is regarded as a sacred story, and hence a 'true history', because it always deals with realities. Myth is to reveal the exemplary models for all human rites and all significant human activities. Myths reveal that the World, man, and life have a supernatural origin and history, and that this history is significant, precious, and exemplary. Myth fulfills in primitive culture an indispensable function: it expresses, enhances, and codifies belief; it safeguards and enforces morality; it vouches for the efficiency of ritual and contains practical rules for the guidance of man
(Eliade 1968) p. 5, 6, 8, 19, 20
New World
Columbus's voyage did not mark the discovery of a New World, but its creation
(Mann 2011) p. xv
parallelism
literature, let me suggest, from the simplest folktale to the most sophisticated poetry and fiction and drama, thrives on parallelism, both stylistic and structural, on small scale and large, and could not give its creations satisfying shape without it. But it is equally important to recognize that literary expression abhors complete parallelism, just as language resists true synonymity, usage always introducing small wedges of difference between closely akin terms
(Alter 1985) p. 10
poetic imagination
a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I am
Coleridge (Rees 1971) p. 185
poetry
poetry, working through a system of complex linkages of sound, image, word, rhythm, syntax, theme, idea, is an instrument for conveying densely patterned meanings, and sometimes contradictory meanings, that are not readily conveyable through other kinds of discourse. Poetry is a way of using language strongly oriented toward the creation of minute, multiple, heterogeneous, and semantically fruitful interconnections in the text
(Alter 1985) p. 113
poetry gives us a special knowledge, a penetrating knowledge, the knowledge of deep perception; it makes us perspicacious; poetry is the language of quiddity; it gives us access to the depths of our souls, to the essence of things, to the wonders of creation; poetry is the expression of our deepest nature, of all the paradox of our existence, and then, of our most fervent desires; poetry is the punctuation of our being
[JS]
Protocols of the Elders of Zion
the work of many hands, drawing upon many sources, the Protocols was truly a European creation. The component parts of the myth of a Jewish-Masonic world conspiracy were contributed by a French political satirist, several priests, and a German petty bureaucrat turned novelist; Russian policemen fashioned the document, and a religious mystic prepared it for publication. The Protocols was written in French, translated into Russian, then translated back into French and into German, English, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Finnish, Romanian, Hungarian, Lithuanian, Polish, Bulgarian, Italian, and Greek. A Spanish-language edition prepared by a German publisher in 1930 carried an introduction by a Frenchman and was earmarked for distribution in South America. Without the Russian Revolution of 1917, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion might have remained the obsession of reactionary imaginations, unknown to the world at large
(Segel and Levy 1995) p. 11, 16
Psalms
Psalms, at least in the guise of cultic hymns, were a common poetic genre throughout the ancient Near East, but as the form was adopted by Hebrew poets, it often became an instrument for expressing in a collective voice (whether first person plural or singular) a distinctive, sometimes radically new, sense of time, space, history, creation, and the character of individual destiny. In keeping with this complex expressive purpose, many psalms, on scrutiny, prove to have a finely tensile semantic weave that one would not expect from the seeming conventionality of the language
(Alter 1985) p. 113
the Hebrew term for ‘psalm’ is mizmor, which means ‘something sung’. The book is called Tehilim, ‘Praises’. Through the ages, Psalms – the most original literary creation of the biblical writers – has been the most urgently, personally present of all the books of the Bible in the lives of many readers. The Davidic authorship enshrined in Jewish and Christian tradition has no credible historical grounding. The canonical collection is divided into five books, 1-41, 42-72, 73-89, 90-106, 107-150. The first three books seem to have originally been independent collections of psalms, and in all likelihood what is now the fourth and fifth books was at first a single additional book. The division into five books was clearly in emulation of the Five Books of Moses. Psalms 1 and 2 are usually considered to be a prologue to the Book of Psalms as a whole and not part of the collection that constitutes the first book of Psalms. Again and again, the psalmists tell us that man’s ultimate calling is to use the resources of human language to celebrate God’s greatness and to express gratitude for His beneficent acts. These poems exhibit an intensely spiritual inwardness. Yet that inwardness is characteristically expressed in the most concretely somatic terms
(Alter 2007) p. xiii, xv, xviii, xix, xx, xxvii
racism
the anti-racism of St. Augustine embraces all men whatsoever their state, even the pygmies, if there are such creatures; St. Augustine was not sure if there were. He even included the Sciopodes, who sheltered themselves from the sun in the shade of one foot, and the Cynocephali, who had dogs’ heads and barked. Whoever is rational and mortal, regardless of color or shape or sound of voice, is certainly of the stock of Adam. None of the faithful (nullus fidelium) is to doubt that all the above originated from the first creation. God knew how to beautify the universe through the diversity of its parts
(Gilson 1950) p. lv
randomness
the idea of randomness is an imaginary, chance, chaotic condition, indefinite, aimless, scattered, and irrational, projected into the universe by those who would avoid admitting the truth and utter connectedness of all creation; an absurd concept
[JS]
reason
reason is God's discourse in Creation
[JS]
rebellion
metaphysical rebellion is the movement by which man protests against his condition and against the whole of creation. Human rebellion ends in metaphysical revolution
(Camus 1991a) p. 22, 25
Reformation
the growing control of the laity over the clergy is a phenomenon common to all stages of the Reformation. The main distinguishing doctrines of the Reformation were salvation by faith alone and the priesthood of all believers, both of which had as a result the down-grading of the priesthood and the creation of a new hierarchy and a new elite. The key factor in the dissemination of these ideas was the printing press, without which it is probable that there would have been no Reformation at all
(Stone 1987) p. 101, 102
rhetoric
the third subject of the trivium was Rhetoric. This had been the most important subject of all in late antiquity, because the educational system was geared chiefly to the creation of public speakers who could act as advocates in court, who could make a political speech, or who could, if occasion demanded, turn a panegyric to flatter an emperor. Rhetoric was comparatively neglected in the medieval Arts course for a number of reasons. The three medieval rhetorical arts, of letter-writing, poetry and preaching, had moved into different parts of the syllabus, the first two into Grammar, the third into Theology. Preaching was for theologians, the most senior of the University’s scholars, and not for boys
(Evans 2005) p. 60
Sabbath
the meaning of the Sabbath is to celebrate time rather than space. Six days a week we live under the tyranny of things of space; on the Sabbath we try to become attuned to holiness in time. It is a day on which we are called upon to share in what is eternal in time, to turn from the results of creation to the mystery of creation; from the world of creation to the creation of the world. Six days a week we seek to dominate the world, on the seventh day we try to dominate the self. The Sabbath is no time for personal anxiety or care, for any activity that might dampen the spirit of joy. The Sabbath is no time to remember sins, to confess, to repent or even to pray for relief or anything we might need. It is a day for praise, not a day for petitions. Fasting, mourning, demonstrations of grief are forbidden. The period of mourning is interrupted by the Sabbath.The Sabbath is the presence of God in the world, open to the soul of man. The Sabbath comes like a caress, wiping away fear, sorrow and somber memories. What is the Sabbath? Spirit in the form of time. With our bodies we belong to space; our spirit, our souls, soar to eternity, aspire to the holy. The Sabbath is an ascent to the summit. It gives us the opportunity to sanctify time, to raise the good to the level of the holy, to behold the holy by abstaining from profanity. Sabbath is the world of souls: spirit in the form of time
(Heschel 2005) p. 10, 13, 30, 60, 68, 75, 82
savage
Jo is brought in. He is not one of Mrs. Pardiggle's Tockahoopo Indians; he is not one of Mrs. Jellyby's lambs, being wholly unconnected with Borrioboola-Gha; he is not softened by distance and unfamiliarity; he is not a genuine foreign-grown savage; he is the ordinary home-made article. Dirty, ugly, disagreeable to all the senses, in body a common creature of the common streets, only in soul a heathen. Homely filth begrimes him, homely parasites devour him, homely sores are in him, homely rags are on him; native ignorance, the growth of English soil and climate, sinks his immortal nature lower than the beasts that perish. Stand forth, Jo, in uncompromising colours! From the sole of thy foot to the crown of thy head, there is nothing interesting about thee. He shuffles slowly into Mr. George's gallery and stands huddled together in a bundle, looking all about the floor. He seems to know that they have an inclination to shrink from him, partly for what he is and partly for what he has caused. He, too, shrinks from them. He is not of the same order of things, not of the same place in creation. He is of no order and no place, neither of the beasts nor of humanity. ‘You are quite safe here. All you have to do at present is to be obedient and to get strong. And mind you tell us the truth here, whatever you do, Jo.’ ‘Wishermaydie if I don't, sir,’ says Jo, reverting to his favourite declaration. ‘I never done nothink yit, but wot you knows on, to get myself into no trouble. I never was in no other trouble at all, sir, 'sept not knowin' nothink and starwation’
(Dickens 1987) p. 641
scholastic method
to go back to the beginning: it was during the years from about 1100 to 1160 that the main lines of scholastic thought were laid down. From a scholarly point of view, it was the twelfth century innovators who first introduced systematic order into the mass of intellectual material which they had inherited in a largely uncoordinated form from the ancient world. The general aim of their work was to produce a complete and systematic body of knowledge, clarified by the refinements of criticism, and presented as the consensus of competent judges. Doctrinally the method for achieving this consensus was a progression from commentary to questioning, and from questioning to systematization. And the practical aim of the whole procedure was to stabilize, make accessible and defend an orthodox Christian view of the world against the attacks of heretics within, and unbelievers – or misbelievers – outside the area of organized Christendom. In principle, they aimed at restoring to fallen mankind, so far as was possible, that perfect system of knowledge which had been in the possession or within the reach of mankind at the moment of Creation. It was generally agreed that this body of knowledge, after collapsing completely in the centuries from the Fall to the Flood, had thereafter been slowly restored by divinely inspired prophets among the chosen people, and by the efforts of a succession of ancient scholars in the Greco-Roman world. The achievements of these great ancient restorers of the knowledge lost at the Fall had once more been corrupted, and partly lost, as a result of the waves of barbarian invasion which had overwhelmed Christendom in the fifth century and continued intermittently to threaten its existence until the eleventh. But, although the tradition of learning had been threatened by these disasters, the great texts of ancient learning had survived, and it was the work of the new succession of scholars from about 1050 onwards, in vastly more favourable conditions than those of their immediate predecessors, to take up once more the ancient task of restoring the knowledge that had been lost at the Fall. As a body, the masters of the schools were the arbiters of orthodoxy under the protection of popes who showed a great reluctance to condemn the opinions of notable masters
(Southern 1995) p. 2, 4, 7
to return to the schools: their programme was based on two convictions: first, that the human intellect was created capable of understanding both the purpose of God in the Creation and the structure of the whole created order; and, second, that – even after the Fall – by the special revelation of God and by the efforts of inspired and able scholars, the main outlines of the structure and development of the universe had become accessible to human minds. By a further extension of this general intelligibility, it was also believed that the means that God had used to redeem mankind by the Incarnation and sacrifice of Christ on the Cross were also capable of being understood
(Southern 1995) p. 40
it will suffice to say that the greatest virtue of the medieval scholastic system was that it stabilized and systematized knowledge of theology and law, which were the subjects of greatest importance for the creation of a fairly orderly and basically hopeful society, and which had been immensely successful in producing works of the highest genius in Christian doctrine, devotion, imagery and order
(Southern 1995) p. 12
there is ample evidence that the great impetus to scholastic development in the early twelfth century came from the urgent need for clear and authoritative solutions to questions about marriage, baptism, and the eucharist; about authority in secular society and in the Church; about God, Creation, Purgatory, Heaven and Hell. The most important schools of the twelfth century – and pre-eminently those of Paris and Bologna – owed their huge success to their methods of answering such questions, and in the course of the twelfth century they developed techniques for accumulating, arranging, dissecting and reorganizing the materials in such a way that convincing answers could be given to almost all the important questions that were asked. This body of material and techniques formed the scholastic tradition which was available in the greater schools of Europe. Scholastic thought aimed at objectivity – at clarity and certainty which would be the same everywhere, for everyone, for ever. This was the core of the whole scholastic enterprise: to reach definitive conclusions on important problems
(Southern 1986) p. 26, 36
schools
by about 1160, the groups of schools situated in Paris and Bologna had succeeded, far more than all others put together, in laying the foundations of a transformation in the intellectual structure and in the organized practical life of western Europe. They depended for their success in this enterprise on the convergence of three distinct processes: first, on the continuing growth in prosperity and population of western Europe; second, on the continuing trust in the reliability of the knowledge amassed by ancient scholars; and finally on the possibility of assembling this whole body of knowledge in an intellectually coherent and practically effective form. In the task of establishing a firm foundation for the doctrinal and disciplinary role of the Church in medieval society, the schools had two main functions: first, to teach the formal rules for distinguishing truth from error; and second, to apply these rules to clarify the body of knowledge contained in authoritative texts. Without this body of assured knowledge it would have been impossible to construct a system of sufficient breadth for the task of organizing western Christendom, and the Bible contained the largest stock of irrefutable knowledge about the nature and purpose of the universe, the destiny of mankind, and the divine plan of creation. Consequently every certain truth known on earth could ultimately be derived either from clear and incontrovertible chains of reasoning based on self-evident facts, or from the revealed truths contained in or exemplified in the Bible, and given legislative force by persons authorized in biblical texts to do this
(Southern 1995) p. 59, 108
script
the creation of a Gothic Christian community around the Gothic biblical text was to have profound historical effects, but this was largely accidental; the Goths' political leadership finally accepted Christianity as they crossed the Danube in 376, and, not surprisingly, adopted it in the form advocated by Ulfila, who held to a pre-Nicene definition of Christianity which was also consonant with the form of Christianity preferred by the then emperor, Valens. After Valens' death, the Theodosian Dynasty decisively shifted the balance back in favor of Nicaea, but the Goths held to the faith they had received. As a result, an alien community within the Empire found itself equipped with a deviant form of Christianity, which was widely received among other Germanic immigrants into the Empire; all surviving remains of Gothic are linked to Christianity
(Bowman and Woolf 1994) p. 178
sea
the eminent naval historian Alfred Thayer Mahan shall ever be remembered as the first to point to sea power, or control of the sea, as vital to the creation and maintenance of the British Empire. In Influence of Sea Power on History, 1890, Mahan argued that Britain's national power, as shown in the rivalry between Britain and France from 1660 to 1815, rested on seaborne trade and communications protected by fleets and supported by bases and colonies spread throughout the world
(Winks 1998) p. 327
signs
ancient myths report that on the day when Ts'ang Chieh, inspired by divinatory figures, traced the first signs, Heaven and Earth trembled, and gods and demons wept. Thus, the quasi-sacred veneration devoted to the ideographic writing itself in China. Signs incised upon the shells of tortoises, upon the bones of oxen. Signs borne upon bronze vessels, sacred and mundane. Divinatory or utilitarian, these signs are manifest first of all as tracings, emblems, fixed attitudes, visualized rhythms. Each sign, independent of sound and invariable, forms a unity of itself, maintaining the potential of its own sovereignty and thus the potential to endure. From its beginning the Chinese writing system has refused to be simply a support for the spoken language. That system of writing has engendered a profoundly original poetic language. Poetic language proposes to explore the mystery of the Universe by means of signs. The earliest known specimens of Chinese writing are divinatory texts carved on bones and shells. Later inscriptions, cast in bronze vessels, are also extant. Both date from the Shang dynasty (eighteenth to eleventh centuries BC). Man, heaven, and earth constitute, for the Chinese, the Three Talents (san-ts'ai); these participate in a relationship of both correspondence and complementarity. The role of man consists not only of 'fitting out' the universe, but of interiorizing all things, in recreating them so as to rediscover his own place within. In this process of 'co-creation', the central element, with regard to literature, is the notion of wen. This term is found in many later combinations signing language, style, literature, civilization, and so forth. Originally it designated the footprints of animals or the veins of wood and stone, the set of harmonious or rhythmic 'strokes' by which nature signifies. It is in the image of these natural signs that the linguistic signs were created, and these are similarly called wen. The double nature of wen constitutes an authority through which man may come to understand the mystery of nature, and thereby his own nature. A masterpiece is that which restores the secret relationships between things, and the breath that animates them as well
(Cheng and Seaton 1982) p. x, xii, 3, 213
social reality
what's innate is that humans use concepts to build social reality, and social reality, in turn, wires the brain. Emotions are very real creations of social reality, made possible by human brains in concert with other human brains. Social reality is the human superpower; we are the only animal that can communicate purely mental concepts among ourselves. No particular social reality is inevitable, just one that works for the group (and is constrained by physical reality). Social reality is in some ways a Faustian bargain
(L. F. Barrett 2017) p. 279, 286
space
as in the General Scholium which concluded the later editions of the Principia, young Newton stressed the real, ubiquitous presence of God in all space, which he (unlike Descartes) believed to be infinite, because God is infinite. Perhaps, he speculated, it is the constant (not only once in the past) volition of God that differentiates certain particles of space so that by us they are discerned as particles of matter – obviously in the composite form of tangible bodies. The constant presence of God may thus be matched by a constant creation of matter
(Hall 1992) p. 75
sport
an essential factor in the creation of the mass man
(Ellul 1964) p. 383
Stoics
what the Stoic school throughout its history primarily offered was a systematic plan of life that would, ideally, assure purposefulness, serenity, dignity, and social utility at every waking moment, irrespective of external circumstances. The Stoics take all phenomena and living beings to be the observable effects of a cosmic order, constituted and implemented by a principle they called Zeus, God, reason, cause, mind, and fate. Everything that falls outside our own mentality and character is not our business but belongs to other parts of the cosmic plan. The Stoics' hardest and most distinctive thesis was that genuine and complete happiness requires nothing except moral virtue. The Stoics' central but hardest doctrine – that authentic happiness or human flourishing depends entirely on excellence of mind and character, with nothing else making a jot of difference. The notorious Stoic doctrine that our world will end in a cosmic conflagration, during which Zeus communes with himself over his re-creation of the next world-cycle
(Long 2002) p. 20, 21, 68, 149, 181
the Stoic school of antiquity was preceded by the Cynic. Stoicism has been called ‘Cynicism adapted to the purposes of civilization’. Stoicism has no proper place in its scheme for Love. Stoicism can only picture the end of all things as the reabsorption of the precipitated matter into the fire of God, to be followed by the creation of a new world, and so on ad infinitum
(Willey 1964) p. 58, 59
storm
we sat just within the doorway watching the storm. It was grand to see how the wind awoke, and bent the trees, and drove the rain before it like a cloud of smoke; and to hear the solemn thunder and to see the lightning; and while thinking with awe of the tremendous powers by which our little lives are encompassed, to consider how beneficent they are and how upon the smallest flower and leaf there was already a freshness poured from all this seeming rage which seemed to make creation new again
(Dickens 1987) p. 254
Sturm und Drang
among the most prominent attributes of this German literary movement were a belief in self-abandonment to spontaneous feeling and passion, hatred of rules, and a desire for unbridled self-expression and self-assertion on the part of the artist, whether in life or in the creation of his works – the conception of the poet, the thinker, as a superior being, subject to agonies not known to the common run of man, seeking to realize himself in some unique, violent, unheard-of fashion, obedient to his own passion and will alone
(Berlin 2000) p. 330
tax
the great class of taxes from which revenue may be derived without interference with production are taxes upon monopolies; all other monopolies are trivial in extent as compared with the monopoly of land, and the value of land expressing a monopoly, pure and simple, is in every respect fitted for taxation; tax manufactures, and the effect is to check manufacturing; tax improvements, and the effect is to lessen improvement; tax commerce, and the effect is to prevent exchange; tax capital, and the effect is to drive it away; but the whole value of land may be taken in taxation, and the only effect will be to stimulate industry, to open new opportunities to capital, and to increase the production of wealth. The tax upon land values is the most just and equal of all taxes; it falls only upon those who receive from society a peculiar and valuable benefit, and upon them in proportion to the benefit they receive. It is the taking by the community, for the use of the community, of that value which is the creation of the community. It is the application of the common property to common uses. When all rent is taken by taxation for the needs of the community, then will the equality ordained by nature be attained. No citizen will have an advantage over any other citizen save as is given by his industry, skill, and intelligence; and each will obtain what he fairly earns. Then, but not till then, will labor get its full reward, and capital its natural return. The tax on land values is the only tax of any importance that does not distribute itself. It falls upon the owners of land, and there is no way in which they can shift the burden on anyone else
(George 1979) p. 408-421
Tenth Century BC
belief in the periodical destruction and re-creation of the universe goes back to the tenth century BC
(Fraser 1981) p. 623
theological
it sums up and evaluates belief about God, its grounds and its content. It is human language about God, merging into God’s language about himself and his creation
(C. K. Barrett 1982) p. 116
tree of the knowledge of good and evil
the act of procreation is related to the world as the solution is to the riddle. In this act the inner nature of the world most distinctly expresses itself. That act is the kernel, the compendium, the quintessence of the world. It is the solution to the riddle. It is understood by the 'tree of knowledge'. 'The tree of knowledge has been pluck'd – all's known'
Don Juan, I.128 (Schopenhauer 1966) p. 570
university
the University, in the sense of that word now current, was wholly a medieval creation. If we define a university as an organized and articulated body of masters and students, in which higher instruction is given by a body of masters who follow a statutory syllabus and test their pupils by a long and searching examination before admitting them to a degree which is a fair certificate of learning, then we may say that this is an entirely medieval creation, which has survived intact in all essentials to the present day
(Knowles 1962) p. 175, 176
Victorian
the particular intersection of imperialism, manly virtue, and veneration for the ancients is a distinctive late Victorian creation
(O'Donnell 2000) p. 102
wealth
accumulations of wealth. The objects of the state and inheritance taxes are: first, to prevent accumulations in the hands of those who contributed little or nothing to its creation, and second, to lighten the burdens of taxation weighing so heavily upon the backs of the masses
Representative C.W. Ramsmeyer, of Iowa (Myers 1939) p. 299
week
the seven-day week, has its origin in the Hebrew calendar. Moses gave the week its final shape, by linking its days with those of the creation and the seventh with the Lord's day of rest
(Daniel-Rops 1980) p. 183, 184
words
the word, like a god or a daemon, confronts man not as a creation of his own, but as something existent and significant in its own right, as an objective reality. As soon as the spark has jumped across, as soon as the tension and emotion of the moment has found its discharge in the word or the mythical image, a sort of turning point has occurred in human mentality: the inner excitement which was a mere subjective state has vanished, and has been resolved into the objective form of myths or of speech
(Cassirer 1946) p. 36
world
two important preoccupations of the author that serve to tie the whole of the Heliand together are the beauty of light and the power of God’s words. The world is light, for the author, a creation caused by God’s first spoken words, ‘Let there be light’. The world is most frequently referred to as ‘this light’, heaven is called ‘the other light’
(Murphy 1992) p. xvi
writing
writing should derive from the Creation, and not attempt to add to it. With me it's still as it was for Gibbon. When George III met him he said, 'Always scribble scribble scribble, eh, Mr. Gibbon?'
(Bellow 2010) p. 138, 509
zero
the zero is something that must be there in order to say that nothing is there; zero came to be the great stumbling block for the medieval arithmeticians in the West, it was often regarded as the creation of the Devil; in Sanskrit the zero was called sunya, 'empty' (also sunya-bindu, 'empty-dot') after its physical meaning: the position (originally on the accounting board) is empty – the modern custom of indicating a missing word or line of verse by a row of dots [ellipsis, '…'] goes back to this Indian practice; in the 9th century the zero was introduced into the West through Arabic, and was transferred into learned Latin as cifra and ciphorum [cipher], as Leonardo of Pisa [s.v. Fibonacci] wrote it
(Menninger 1969) p. 400
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My beloved grandmother had most all , her books on horoscopes All my houses were in Aries ♈️. A fire sign. I was a stable person. At least according to her, she was correct. She compared her horoscope’s with the National Enquirer. She told me after reading it , she asked me to file thirteen. Meaning it went into the stove in her home. She then explained to me she was Taurus ♉️. Her birthday was in May She hugged me and said, Linda. I love you. You listen well and don’t argue. Well sometimes. I do now She was a school teacher. She gave a lot of citizenship tests for in coming, American’s. I admire school teachers an awful lot. The lady that raised me was a school teacher. She taught in one room school houses in Minnesota. Her daughter my sister is a school teacher. Learning for me, myself and I is a lot of fun. Goodnight 💤 😴.