Avsnitt
-
Visit: drecarlan.com
Contact: thesummitstudyhall [at] gmail [dot] com
Material referenced:
“Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.”
-Pensées, Section XIV, #894
“The greatest of evils is civil war. It is bound to come if people want to reward merit, because everyone will claim to be meritorious. The evil to be feared if the succession falls by right of birth to a fool is neither so great nor so certain.”
-Pensées, Section V, #313 -
Visit: drecarlan.com
Contact: thesummitstudyhall [at] gmail [dot] com
Material referenced:
“Lust and force are the source of all our actions; lust causes voluntary actions, force involuntary ones.”
-Pensées, Section V, #334
“The least movement affects all nature; the entire sea changes because of a rock. Thus in grace, the least action affects everything by its consequences; therefore everything is important.”
-Pensées, Section VII, #505 -
Saknas det avsnitt?
-
Visit: drecarlan.com
Contact: thesummitstudyhall [at] gmail [dot] com
Material referenced:
“We know God only through Jesus Christ. Without this mediator all communication with God is broken off. Through Jesus we know God. All those who have claimed to know God and prove his existence without Jesus Christ have only had futile proofs to offer. But to prove Christ we have the prophecies which are solid and palpable proofs. By being fulfilled and proved true by the event, these prophecies show that these truths are certain and thus prove that Jesus is divine. In him and through him, therefore, we know God. Apart from that, without Scripture, without original sin, without the necessary mediator, who was promised and came, it is impossible to prove absolutely that God exists, or to teach sound doctrine and sound morality. But through and in Christ we can prove God’s existence, and teach both doctrine and morality. Therefore Jesus is the true God of men.”
-Pensées, Section VII, #546
“Not only do we know God by Jesus Christ alone, but we know ourselves only by Jesus Christ. We know life and death only through Jesus Christ. Apart from Jesus Christ, we do not know what is our life, nor our death, nor God, nor ourselves.”
-Pensées, Section VII, #547
“Let us weigh up the gain and the loss involved in calling heads that God exists. Let us assess the two cases: if you win you win everything, if you lose you lose nothing. Do not hesitate then; wager that he does exist.”
-Pensées, Section III, #233 -
Visit: drecarlan.com
Contact: thesummitstudyhall [at] gmail [dot] com
Material referenced:
“For a lifetime can be divided into innumerable parts that do not depend on each other in any way. The fact that I existed a short while ago does not imply that I must exist at present unless some other cause re-creates me, as it were, in the present moment or, in other words, conserves me. It is clear to anyone who thinks about the nature of time that the same power and action is obviously required to conserve anything during the individual moments of its duration as would be required to create it for the first time, had it not already existed. Thus there is only a distinction of reason between conservation and creation, and this is one of the things that are evident by the natural light of reason.”
-Meditations of First Philosophy, Third Meditation -
Visit: drecarlan.com
Contact: thesummitstudyhall [at] gmail [dot] com
Material referenced:
“…I think it proper to remain here for some time in the contemplation of God himself—that I may ponder at leisure his marvelous attributes—and behold, admire, and adore the beauty of this light so unspeakably great, as far, at least, as the strength of my mind, which is to some degree dazzled by the sight, will permit. For just as we learn by faith that the supreme felicity of another life consists in the contemplation of the Divine majesty alone, so even now we learn from experience that like meditation, though incomparably less perfect, is the source of the highest satisfaction of which we are susceptible in this life.”
-Meditations of First Philosophy, Third Meditation
“I still continued, however, to hold in esteem the studies of the schools. I was aware that the languages taught in them are necessary to the understanding of the writings of the ancients; that the grace of fable stirs the mind; that the memorable deeds of history elevate it; and, if read with discretion, aid in forming the judgment; that the perusal of all excellent books is, as it were, to interview with the noblest men of past ages, who have written them, and even a studied interview, in which are discovered to us only their choicest thoughts; that eloquence has incomparable force and beauty; that poesy has its ravishing graces and delights; that in the mathematics there are many refined discoveries eminently suited to gratify the inquisitive, as well as further all the arts an lessen the labour of man; that numerous highly useful precepts and exhortations to virtue are contained in treatises on morals; that theology points out the path to heaven; that philosophy affords the means of discoursing with an appearance of truth on all matters, and commands the admiration of the more simple; that jurisprudence, medicine, and the other sciences, secure for their cultivators honors and riches; and, in fine, that it is useful to bestow some attention upon all, even upon those abounding the most in superstition and error, that we may be in a position to determine their real value, and guard against being deceived.”
-Discourse on Method, Part I
“For just as all the arts, though in their beginnings they are rude and imperfect, are yet gradually perfected by practice, from their containing at first something true, and whose effect experience evinces; so in philosophy, when we have true principles, we cannot fail by following them to meet sometimes with other truths; and we could not better prove the falsity of those of Aristotle, than by saying that men made no progress in knowledge by their means during the many ages they prosecuted them.”
-Principles of Philosophy, Introduction
“…we should ever bear in mind the infinity of the power and goodness of God, that we may not fear falling into error by imagining his works to be too great, beautiful, and perfect, but that we may, on the contrary, take care lest, by supposing limits to them of which we have no certain knowledge, we appear to think less highly than we ought of the power of God.”
-Principles of Philosophy, Part III -
Visit: drecarlan.com
Contact: thesummitstudyhall [at] gmail [dot] com
Material referenced:
“From all this I discover, however, that neither the power of willing, which I have received from God, is of itself the source of my errors, for it is exceedingly ample and perfect in its kind; nor even the power of understanding, for as I conceive no object unless by means of the faculty that God bestowed upon me, all that I conceive is doubtless rightly conceived by me, and it is impossible for me to be deceived in it. Whence, then, spring my errors? They arise from this cause alone, that I do not restrain the will, which is of much wider range than the understanding, within the same limits, but extend it even to things I do not understand, and as the will is of itself indifferent to such, it readily falls into error and sin by choosing the false in room of the true, and evil instead of good.”
-Meditations on First Philosophy, Fourth Meditation
“Therefore, I will suppose that, not God who is the source of truth but some evil mind, who is all powerful and cunning, has devoted all their energies to deceiving me.”
-Meditations on First Philosophy, First Meditation -
Visit: drecarlan.com
Contact: thesummitstudyhall [at] gmail [dot] com
Material referenced:
“Meanwhile whoever eventually happens to be the source of our being, and however powerful and deceptive they are, we still experience in ourselves a freedom such that we can always refrain from believing things that are not fully investigated and certain, and thereby we can take care that we are never mistaken.”
-The Principles of Philosophy, Part I, Ch. 6
“That there is freedom in our will and that we are able to assent or not assent, in many cases arbitrarily, is so evident that it should be counted among the first and most common notions that are innate in us. This was most evident above when, attempting to doubt everything, we reached a point at which we imagined some most powerful author of our origin who tried to deceive us in every way. Despite that, we experienced such freedom in ourselves that we were able to refrain from believing whatever was not fully examined and certain. Nor could there be any other things that are more self-evident and clear than what seemed to be beyond doubt at that time.”
-The Principles of Philosophy, Part I, Ch. 39
“Since we already acknowledge God, we perceive that he has such immense power that we believe it is criminal to think that there is anything we could ever do that was not pre-ordained by him. We can easily involve ourselves in great difficulties if we try to reconcile this pre-ordination by God with the freedom of our will and if we attempt to comprehend both at the same time.”
-The Principles of Philosophy, Part I, Ch. 40
“We shall avoid these difficulties if we remember that our mind is finite, and that the power of God—by which he not only knew eternally everything that exists or could exist, but also willed and pre-ordained them—is infinite. Therefore this power is sufficiently accessible to us to enable us to perceive clearly and distinctly that God possesses it; but it cannot be comprehended by us sufficiently to enable us to see how it leaves human actions free and undetermined. We are so conscious of our freedom and indifference that there is nothing that we comprehend more perfectly or evidently, and it would be absurd just because we do not comprehend one thing which, of its very nature, we know should be incomprehensible to us, to doubt something else of which we have a profound understanding and which we experience in ourselves.”
-The Principles of Philosophy, Part I, Ch. 41 -
Visit: drecarlan.com
Contact: thesummitstudyhall [at] gmail [dot] com
Material referenced:
“Thus the idea of God is the only one left about which to ask the question: does it contain something that could not have originated from me? By the word ‘God’ I understand some infinite substance, which is independent, supremely intelligent and supremely powerful, and by which both I, and everything else that exists (if anything else exists), were created. All these ideas are surely such that, the more carefully I examine them, the less likely it seems that they could have originated from myself alone. Therefore one should draw the conclusion from what has been said that God necessarily exists.”
-Meditations on First Philosophy, Third Meditation
“By reflecting on the fact that I doubted and that, consequently, my being was not completely perfect—for I saw clearly that it was a greater position to know than to doubt—I decided to find out where I learned to think about something that was more perfect than myself, and I knew clearly that this had to be from some nature that was in-fact more perfect. As regards the ideas I had of many other external things, such as the sky, the earth, light, heat and thousands of others, I did not have any comparable difficulty in knowing where they came from, because I did not notice anything in them that seemed to make them superior to me and therefore I was able to believe that, if they were true, they depended on my nature to the extent that they contained any perfection and, if they were not true, I got them from nothing, that is, they were present in me because of some deficiency in me. But the same would not apply to the idea of a being that was more perfect than me. To get such an idea from nothing was something manifestly impossible. And I could not have received it from myself either, because it was just as impossible for something that is more perfect to result from and depend on something less perfect as for something to proceed from nothing. Thus the only remaining option was that this idea was put in me by a nature that was really more perfect than I was, one that even had in itself all the perfections of which I could have some idea, that is—to express myself in a single word—by God.”
-Discourse on Method, Part IV -
Visit: drecarlan.com
Contact: thesummitstudyhall [at] gmail [dot] com
Material referenced:
“The present only has a being in nature; things past have a being in the memory only; but things to come have no being at all, the future being but a fiction of the mind, applying the sequels of actions past to the actions that are present; which with most certainty is done by him that has most experience, but not with certainty enough. And though it be called prudence when the event answers our expectation; yet in its own nature it is but presumption. For the foresight of things to come, which is providence, belongs only to him by whose will they are to come.”
-Leviathan, Part I, Ch. III
“Anxiety for the future time, disposes men to enquire into the causes of things: because the knowledge of them, makes men the better able to order the present to their best advantage.”
-Leviathan, Part I, Ch. XI
“No man can have in his mind a conception of the future, for the future is not yet. But of our conceptions of the past, we make a future; or rather, call past, future relatively. Thus after a man hath been accustomed to see like antecedents followed by like consequents, whensoever he sees the like come to pass to any thing he had seen before, he looks there should follow it the same that followed then. As for example: because a man hath often seen offenses followed by punishment, when he sees an offense in present, he thinks punishment to be consequent thereto. But consequent unto that which is present, men call future. And thus we make remembrance to be prevision or conjecture of things to come, or expectation or presumption of the future.”
-The Elements of Law, Ch. 4.7 -
Visit: drecarlan.com
Contact: thesummitstudyhall [at] gmail [dot] com
Material referenced:
“Ignorance of the signification of words; which is, want of understanding, disposes men to take on trust, not only the truth they know not; but also the errors; and which is more, the non-sense of them they trust: For neither Error, nor non-sense, can without a perfect understanding of words, be detected.”
-Leviathan, Part I, Ch. XI
“All that is Necessary to Salvation, is contained in two Virtues, Faith in Christ, and Obedience to Laws. The latter of these, if it were perfect, were enough to us. But because we are all guilty of disobedience to God’s Law, not only originally in Adam, but also actually by our own transgressions, there is required at our hands now, not only Obedience for the rest of our time, but also a Remission of sins for the time past; which Remission is the reward of our Faith in Christ. That nothing else is Necessarily required to Salvation, is manifest from this, that the Kingdom of Heaven, is shut to none but to Sinners; that is to say, to the disobedient, or transgressors of the Law; nor to them, in case they Repent, and Believe all the Articles of Christian Faith, Necessary to Salvation.”
-Leviathan, Part III, Ch. XLIII -
Visit: drecarlan.com
Contact: thesummitstudyhall [at] gmail [dot] com
Material referenced:
“But whatsoever is the object of any man's appetite or desire, that is it which he for his part calls good; and the object of his hate and aversion, evil; and of his contempt, vile and inconsiderable. For these words of good, evil, and contemptible are ever used with relation to the person that uses them: there being nothing simply and absolutely so; nor any common rule of good and evil to be taken from the nature of the objects themselves; but from the person of the man, where there is no Commonwealth; or, in a Commonwealth, from the person that represents it; or from an arbitrator or judge, whom men disagreeing shall by consent set up and make his sentence the rule thereof.”
-Leviathan, Part I, Ch. VI
“And first, it is peculiar to the nature of Man, to be inquisitive into the Causes of the Events they see, some more, some less; but all men so much, as to be curious in the search of the causes of their own good and evil fortune.”
-Leviathan, Part I, Ch. XII
“From the very Creation, God not only reigned over all men Naturally by his might; but also had Peculiar Subjects, whom he commanded by a Voice, as one man speaks to another. In which manner he Reigned over Adam, and gave him commandment to abstain from the tree of cognizance of Good and Evil; which when he obeyed not, but tasting thereof, took upon him to be as God, judging between Good and Evil, not by his Creators commandment, but by his own sense, his punishment was a privation of the estate of Eternal life, wherein God had at first created him:…”
-Leviathan, Part III, Ch. XXXV -
Visit: drecarlan.com
Contact: thesummitstudyhall [at] gmail [dot] com
Material referenced:
“And this whole controversy concerning the predestination of God, and the freewill of man, is not peculiar to Christian men. For we have huge volumes of this subject, under the name of fate and contingency, disputed between the Epicureans and the Stoics, and consequently it is not a matter of faith, but of philosophy;...”
-The Elements of Law, Ch. 6.9
“Lastly, from the use of the word Freewill, no liberty can be inferred to the will, desire, or inclination, but the liberty of the man; which consists in this, that he finds no stop, in doing what he has the will, desire, or inclination to do.”
-Leviathan, Part II, Ch. XXI -
Visit: drecarlan.com
Contact: thesummitstudyhall [at] gmail [dot] com
Material referenced:
“Forasmuch as God Almighty. is incomprehensible, it follows that we can have no conception or image of the Deity; and consequently all his attributes signify our inability and defect of power to conceive any thing concerning his nature, and not any conception of the same, excepting only this: that there is a God. For the effects we acknowledge naturally, do necessarily include a power of their producing, before they were produced; and that power presupposes something existent that hath such power; and the thing so existing with power to produce, if it were not eternal, must needs have been produced by somewhat before it; and that again by something else before that: till we come to an eternal, that is to say, to the first power of all powers, and first cause of all causes. And this is it which all men call by the name of GOD: implying eternity, incomprehensibility, and omnipotency. And thus all men that will consider, may naturally know that God is, though not what he is; even as a man though born blind, though it be not possible for him to have any imagination what kind of thing is fire; yet he cannot but know that something there is that men call fire, because it warms him.”
-The Elements of Law, Ch. 11.2
“The true God may be Personated. As he was; first, by Moses; who governed the Israelites, (that were not his, but Gods people,) not in his own name, with Hoc Dicit Moses; but in Gods Name, with Hoc Dicit Dominus. Secondly, by the son of man, his own Son our Blessed Savior Jesus Christ, that came to induce all Nations into the Kingdom of his Father; not as of himself, but as sent from his Father. And thirdly, by the Holy Ghost, or Comforter, speaking, and working in the Apostles: which Holy Ghost, was a Comforter that came not of himself; but was sent, and proceeded from them both.”
-Leviathan, Part I, Ch. XVI -
Visit: drecarlan.com
Contact: thesummitstudyhall [at] gmail [dot] com
Material referenced:
“Such as accuse mankind of the folly of gaping after future things, and advise us to make our benefit of those which are present, and to set up our rest upon them, as having no grasp upon that which is to come, even less than that which we have upon what is past, have hit upon the most universal of human errors, if that may be called an error to which nature herself has disposed us, in order to the continuation of her own work, prepossessing us, amongst several others, with this deceiving imagination, as being more jealous of our action than afraid of our knowledge. We are never present with, but always beyond ourselves: fear, desire, hope, still push us on towards the future, depriving us, in the meantime, of the sense and consideration of that which is to amuse us with the thought of what shall be, even when we shall be no more.”
-Essays, Book I, Ch. III
“That which is eternal; that is to say, that never had beginning, nor never shall have ending, and to which time can bring no mutation. For time is a mobile thine, and that appears as in a shadow, with a matter evermore flowing and running, without ever remaining stable and permanent; and to which belong those words, before and after, has been, or shall be: which at the first sight, evidently show that it is not a thing that is; for it were a great folly, and a manifest falsity, to say that that is which is not yet being, or that has already ceased to be. And as to these words, present, instant, and now, by which it seems that we principally support and found the intelligence of time, reason, discovering, does presently destroy it; for it immediately divides and splits it into the future and past, being of necessity to consider it divided in two. The same happens to nature, that is measured, as to time that measures it; for she has nothing more subsisting and permanent than the other, but all things are either born, bearing, or dying. So that it were sinful to say of God, who is he only who is, that he was, or that he shall be ; for those are terms of declension, transmutation, and vicissitude, of what cannot continue or remain in being; wherefore we are to conclude that God alone is, not according to any measure of time, but according to an immutable and an immovable eternity, not measured by time, nor subject to any declension; before whom nothing was, and after whom nothing shall be, either more new or more recent, but a real being, that with one sole now fills the forever, and that there is nothing that truly is but he alone; without our being able to say, he has been, or shall be; without beginning, and without end.”
-Essays, Book II, Ch. XII -
Visit: drecarlan.com
Contact: thesummitstudyhall [at] gmail [dot] com
Material referenced:
“Beauty is a thing of great recommendation in the correspondence amongst men; 'tis the first means of acquiring the favour and good liking of one another, and no man is so barbarous and morose as not to perceive himself in some sort struck with its attraction…the first distinction that ever was amongst men, and the first consideration that gave some pre-eminence over others, 'tis likely was the advantage of beauty.”
-Essays, Book II, Ch. XVII
“…the beautiful souls are they that are universal, open, and ready for all things; if not instructed, at least capable of being so…”
-Essays, Book II, Ch. XVII
“The least forced and most natural motions of the soul are the most beautiful; the best employments, those that are least strained.”
-Essays, Book III, Ch. III -
Visit: drecarlan.com
Contact: thesummitstudyhall [at] gmail [dot] com
Material referenced:
“For if evils have no admission into us but by the judgment we ourselves make of them, it should seem that it is, then, in our own power to despise them or to turn them to good. If things surrender themselves to our mercy, why do we not convert and accommodate them to our advantage? If what we call evil and torment is neither evil nor torment of itself, but only that our fancy gives it that quality, it is in us to change it, and it being in our own choice, if there be no constraint upon us, we must certainly be very strange fools to take arms for that side which is most offensive to us, and to give sickness, want, and contempt a bitter and nauseous taste, if it be in our power to give them a pleasant relish, and if, fortune simply providing the matter, 'tis for us to give it the form. Now, that what we call evil is not so of itself, or at least to that degree that we make it, and that it depends upon us to give it another taste and complexion (for all comes to one), let us examine how that can be maintained.”
-Essays, Book I, Ch. XL
“Life in itself is neither good nor evil; it is the scene of good or evil as you make it.’ And, if you have lived a day, you have seen all: one day is equal and like to all other days. There is no other light, no other shade; this very sun, this moon, these very stars, this very order and disposition of things, is the same your ancestors enjoyed, and that shall also entertain your posterity.”
-Essays, Book I, Ch. XIX
“Evil appertains to man of course. Neither is pain always to be avoided, nor pleasure always pursued.”
-Essays, Book II, Ch. XII -
Visit: drecarlan.com
Contact: thesummitstudyhall [at] gmail [dot] com
Material referenced:
“Since God foresees that all things shall so fall out, as doubtless He does, it must then necessarily follow, that they must so fall out”: to which our masters reply: “that the seeing anything come to pass, as we do, and as God Himself also does (for all things being present with him, He rather sees, than foresees), is not to compel an event: that is, we see because things do fall out, but things do not fall out because we see: events cause knowledge, but knowledge does not cause events. That which we see happen, does happen; but it might have happened otherwise: and God, in the catalogue of the causes of events which He has in His prescience, has also those which we call accidental and voluntary, depending upon the liberty. He has given our free will, and knows that we do amiss because we would do so.”
-Essays, Book II, Ch. XXIX -
Visit drecarlan.com
Contact: thesummitstudyhall [at] gmail [dot] com
Material referenced:
“…of all forms the most beautiful is that of man; therefore God must be of that form. No one can be happy without virtue, nor virtue be without reason, and reason cannot inhabit anywhere but in a human shape; God is therefore clothed in a human figure.”
-Essays, Book II, Ch. XII
“I know not if or not I am wrong, but since, by a particular favour of the divine bounty, a certain form of prayer has been prescribed and dictated to us, word by word, from the mouth of God Himself, I have ever been of opinion that we ought to have it in more frequent use than we yet have; and if I were worthy to advise, at the sitting down to and rising from our tables, at our rising from and going to bed, and in every particular action wherein prayer is used, I would that Christians always make use of the Lord’s Prayer, if not alone, yet at least always.”
-Essays, Book I, Ch. LVI -
Visit: drecarlan.com
Contact: thesummitstudyhall [at] gmail [dot] comMaterial referenced:
“God knows all things; not only things actual but also things possible to Him and creature; and since some of these are future contingent to us, it follows that God knows future contingent things.”
-Summa theologiae, Question 14, Article 13
“Now God knows all contingent things not only as they are in their causes, but also as each one of them is actually in itself. And although contingent things become actual successively, nevertheless God knows contingent things not successively, as they are in their own being, as we do but simultaneously. The reason is because His knowledge is measured by eternity, as is also His being; and eternity being simultaneously whole comprises all time. Hence all things that are in time are present to God from eternity, not only because He has the types of things present within Him, as some say; but because His glance is carried from eternity over all things as they are in their presentiality. Hence it is manifest that contingent things are infallibly known by God, inasmuch as they are subject to the divine sight in their presentiality; yet they are future contingent things in relation to their own causes.”
-Summa theologiae, Question 14, Article 13 -
Visit: drecarlan.com
Contact: thesummitstudyhall [at] gmail [dot] comMaterial referenced:
“The beautiful is the same as the good, and they differ in aspect only. For since good is what all seek, the notion of good is that which calms the desire; while the notion of the beautiful is that which calms the desire, by being seen or known. Consequently those senses chiefly regard the beautiful, which are the most cognitive, sight and hearing, as ministering to reason; for we speak of beautiful sights and beautiful sounds. But in reference to the other objects of the other senses, we do not use the expression "beautiful," for we do not speak of beautiful tastes, and beautiful odors. Thus it is evident that beauty adds to goodness a relation to the cognitive faculty: so that "good" means that which simply pleases the appetite; while the "beautiful" is something pleasant to apprehend.”
-Summa theologiae, Question 27, Article 1
“I answer that, good is the cause of love, as being its object. But good is not the object of the appetite, except as apprehended. And therefore love demands some apprehension of the good that is loved. For this reason the Philosopher (Ethics IX, 5.12) says that bodily sight is the beginning of sensitive love: and in like manner the contemplation of spiritual beauty or goodness is the beginning of spiritual love. Accordingly knowledge is the cause of love for the same reason as good is, which can be loved only if known.”
-Summa theologiae, Question 27, Article 2 - Visa fler
