Antiquitopia

Augustine discusses why seemingly unnatural things--like miracles, omens, and portents--are in fact natural. The argument is based upon the omnipotence of God. God creates all things by willing them. The process of willing is a natural consequence of God's omnipotence. If all things occur by God's will, and all things that occur by God's will naturally occur, then all things are natural: there can be no unnatural occurrences. His argument concerning the naturalness of portents is against his favorite punching-bag throughout the City of God, Varro (he is his favorite opponent, however, because he is one of the most formidable): For how can an event by contrary to nature when it happens by the will of God, since the will of the great Creator assuredly is the nature of every created being? ( City of God 21.8) While this somewhat recapitulates my summary, it takes things a step further. It is not just that all things willed (created) by God are natural because creation...

According to the NYTimes city blogs , a plane had to make an unscheduled stop because of some mysterious straps a passenger had on his person. These mysterious straps evidently were tefillin and the "disruptive passenger" was praying.

Jesus said, "It is of no use to you to come to know what you did not know, so long as you do not act in accordance with what you already know. Too much knowledge only increases pride if you do not act in accordance with it." Ahmad ibn Hanbal, al-Zuhd (trans. Tarif Khalidi, The Muslim Jesus )

It seems my posts lately have been more concerned with what we don't or can't know more than what we know. That's the life of an antiquarian! Because of this, while I was reading through George Buchanan Gray's very lucid Sacrifice in the Old Testament , I was struck by the following sentence: Yet it is important to determine, if not the extent of our knowledge, the depth of our ignorance, that what knowledge is possible may be the more clearly and vividly apprehended. (p. 211) I find that, even though Gray cannot always give an answer, he asks great questions and discusses them with great clarity. When I find myself disagreeing with him, it is usually not because the question is poor, but, to the contrary, because we have made so many more discoveries since his book was published in 1925 in terms of material remains and textual discoveries. Yet those discoveries should teach us not just new things about what we know, but how partial are knowledge truly is and remain...

From T.S. Eliot's "Choruses from 'The Rock'" (yes, I have been reading a lot of T.S. Eliot lately): All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance, All our ignorance brings us nearer to death, But nearness to death no nearer to God. Where is the Life we have lost in living? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?

I'm reading some Bertrand Russell--his History of Western Philosophy . In his introduction he places Philosophy, interestingly, somewhere between theology and science: The conceptions of life and the world which we call "philosophical" are a product of two factors: one, inherited religious and ethical conceptions; the other, the sort of investigation which may be called "scientific," using this word in its broadest sense. Individual philosophers have differed widely in regard to the proportions in which these two factors entered into their systems, but it is the presence of both, in some degree, that characterizes philosophy. .... Like theology, it consists of speculations on matters as to which definite knowledge has, so far, been unascertainable; but like science, it appeals to human reason rather than to authority, whether that of tradition or that of revelation. All definite knowledge--so I should contend--belongs to science; all dogma as to what surpass...

I personally do not have a Latin diploma. IWU and my current Columbia use English (yes, even Columbia). Dickinson College's Latin professor, Christopher Francese, says, indeed, Latin diplomas must go : Latin is a beautiful language and a relief from the incessant novelty and informality of the modern age. But when it’s used on diplomas, the effect is to obfuscate, not edify; its function is to overawe, not delight. The goal of education is the creation and transmission of knowledge — not the creation and transmission of prestige. Why, then, celebrate that education with a document that prizes grandiosity over communication? .... I know that getting rid of the Latin diploma will not be easy. While most colleges and universities now issue English diplomas, some prominent holdouts — including Yale, Princeton and the University of Pennsylvania — still use Latin. Many students and alumni cherish the tradition. In 1961, when Harvard switched to English diplomas, about 4,000 students pr...

No one...must try to get to know from me what I know that I do not know, unless, it may be, in order to learn not to know what must be known to be incapable of being known! (Augustine, City of God 12.7) Go ahead, read it again to know what you can know and cannot know or know that you cannot know (which is better than not knowing what you can know) about knowing and not knowing from Augustine.

The first quote is inspired by the comment in the last post: And those men who think they can lessen and check our disputes by referring us to the actual words of the Bible are deluding themselves, since our mind finds just as wide a field for controverting other men's meanings as for delivering its own. (Michel de Montaigne, "On Experience," Essays 3.13; trans. J.M. Cohen) This is a broad-side attack on the entire early Protestant mentality coined by Luther, sola scriptura . And Montaigne has been proven right--there are just as many readings of the biblical text as there are readers. It leads not to agreement, but to fragmentation. Perhaps that is partly beneficial and partly problematic. The problem in Montaigne's day was at a high pitch, since he lived during the wars of religion. He also gave a nice broadside attack on traditional commentary--commentaries of commentaries of commentaries of a text. There is more trouble in interpreting interpretations than i...