The letter from Arius to Alexander of Alexandria, also known as «Arius’ profession of faith», has been transmitted in its original language, Greek, by Athanasius (De Synodis) and Epiphanius (Panarion). Also, Hilary of Poitiers quotes a Latin translation of the letter twice (De Trinitate IV and VI). The comparative study of the two Greek versions and the Latin translation reveals small textual variants, which points to the independence of the three testimonies. The textual variant (κτιστὴν, instead of κριτὴν) is (...) the most interesting; it comes from a Greek version that has not been preserved. However, our work has been able to reconstruct this lost textual variant using an ancient and forgotten conjecture of Erich Klostermann. (shrink)

Arius maintains that the Father must produce the Son without any pre-existing ingredients (ex nihilo) because no such ingredients are available to the Father. Athanasius denies this, insisting not only that the Father himself becomes an ingredient in the Son, but also that the Son inherits his divine properties from that ingredient. I argue, however, that it is difficult to explain exactly how the Son could inherit certain properties but not others from something he is not identical to, just (...) as it is difficult to explain the precise way that a statue inherits certain properties but not others from the lump of bronze it is made from. (shrink)

The Alexandrian theologian Origen wrote that God the Father exceeds the Son in a way that surpasses the Son’s own transcendence of creation, and he apparently did so in order to oppose those who disregarded Jesus’ statement that «the Father is greater than I» . Just a few years after Origen’s death, however, when correction of his Son of God theology was well underway, Arius radicalized the latent subordinationism present in Origen’s thought by placing the Son among created things. The (...) Arian tendency to associate the Son with the created realm can be traced back to the attempts of Methodius of Olympus and Eusebius of Caesarea to counter Origen’s doctrine of eternal creation. Arius claimed that Christ is called «Son» because he is the created instrument of God’s will, and he gained sympathy for this voluntaristic view by citing John 14:28. Here was irrefutable scriptural proof of the metaphysical priority of the Father over the Son who is a separate and yet perfect creature of God. (shrink)

Both philosophy and theology are given a raison d'etre by their problems. Some of their problems they share, and some they do not. They share a concern with the nature of morality and they share the problem of human freedom. But the filioque issue and the controversy between Arius and Athanasius regarding the consubstaniality of the persons of the Trinity belong to theology, if contemporary theology will have them. The problems of reference and denotation, and of classes, in the (...) cast given them by Frege, Russell and others, are exclusively in the domain of philosophy. Sometimes the problems shared by philosophy and theology are also human problems: they intimately touch human lives and have palpable ramifications for the way men live. Camus, who said with a flourish that the only philosophical problem is whether or not to commit suicide, was saying in part that the only philosophical problems worth considering are human problems. And William James would perhaps concur; he would insist that only philosophical problems that are “living, forced and momentous” present a genuine option to men. (shrink)

The title is somewhat misleading in the current situation, since these essays stem from a Neoscholastic rather than a Neopositivistic background, and are chiefly concerned with suggesting in a rough way some relations between Aristotelian or Scholastic and contemporary scientific methods. The volume includes "Questions Science Cannot Answer" by Mortimer Adler, "The Logic of Induction" by Roland Houde, "Physico-chemical Methods and the Philosophy of Nature" by Léon Lortie, and "The Evolution of Scientific Method" by James A. Weisheipl.—J. J.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Devil's Stratagem or Human Fraud:Ippolito Desideri on the Reincarnate Succession of the Dalai LamaMichael J. SweetThe institution of the Dalai Lama and the narrative of his reincarnate succession have become so familiar in the course of the past few decades as to seem almost unremarkable. But, let us imagine hearing the story of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama's succession for the first time: the prophecies of his dying predecessor, (...) the cryptic words of the state oracle, dreams, omens, a mummy turning its head and a fungus growing on a pillar (both indicating the direction of the birthplace of the new incarnation), visions in a sacred lake, and finally the discovery and recognition of a remarkable child who gives incontrovertible evidence of remembering his past life,2 followed by his enthronement and veneration as a virtual god-king—some people will take this story as a factual report, others will find it a captivating fairy tale,3 while still others would dismiss it as a sham. The process of reincarnate succession is unique to what Ippolito Desideri called "the false and most singular religious sect found in Tibet.... this hodgepodge of bizarre dogmas which make up a religious monstrosity unlike any other religion in the world that I know of,"4 and in the shock of first encounter it has appeared either miraculous, fraudulent, or diabolical to many outsiders who heard about it through the middle twentieth century, before Tibet was forcibly incorporated into China, when it could still be viewed as a remote and mysterious theocratic kingdom.5 The reception of the reincarnate succession narrative in the West, in China, and elsewhere certainly warrants a full-length treatment. Here I will focus on a small aspect of this subject, namely, how this narrative was received by one exceptional individual, the Italian Jesuit missionary Ippolito Desideri (1684–1733). In describing his understanding of reincarnate succession, applied in particular to the case of the Dalai Lama, I hope to illuminate Desideri's struggle in engaging with Tibetan Buddhism, caught as he was between acceptance and even enthusiasm for many aspects of Tibetan culture and religious life and his unswerving commitment to the faith and doctrine of the Catholic Reformation; the motive for all of his trials and labors in the Tibet mission was a burning desire to win the imperiled souls of the Tibetans for Christ. [End Page 131]Reincarnate succession has a long history in Tibet. Almost five hundred years before Desideri's sojourn, the Franciscan William of Rubruck (ca. 1220–after 1257) mentioned hearing of a boy who was less than three years old "yet was fully capable of rational thought; he said of himself that he was in his third incarnation, and he knew how to read and write."6 William, whose journey (1253–1255) to the court of the Mongol great khan Mönke occurred not very long after the institution of incarnate lamas originated in Tibet,7 was the first to introduce the figure of the infant tulku [incarnate lama] as child prodigy, which we will encounter subsequently.Aside from this one early reference, the subject truly surfaced for the first time in Athanasius Kircher's 1667 China Illustrata;8 the section dealing with Tibet was based on the account given to him by the German Jesuit Johannes Grüber, who had briefly visited Lhasa in 1661.9 Kircher's depiction of Tibet is a second- or third-hand mishmash of misinformation, fantasy, and the barest minimum of fact. The Dalai Lama is presented as a demonically inspired antipope: "He is worshiped like a divinity... They kiss his feet with incredible veneration, as if he were the Pope... by this the deceitfulness of the evil spirit is wondrously shown, for the veneration due only to... the Pope of Rome is transferred to the heathen worship of savage nations, like all the other mysteries of Christianity."10 Kircher here resorts to the principle of diabolical plagiarism, originating in early Christian apologetics, to explain the perceived resemblances of Tibetan practices and institutions to those of Roman Catholicism.11 However, he regarded the Dalai Lama's succession as a purely human deception in which a... (shrink)

It is not without a certain emotion that one opens this book devoted to the memory of a great scholar of medieval thought who worked and lived in the certainty that there cannot be a conflict between the Christian faith and science. In a significant essay, Benedict M. Ashley defends the idea of the philosophy of nature as continuous or identical with natural science. Ashley does allow, however, for so many divergences between philosophy of nature and natural science due to (...) later developments in science that this identification must be qualified. Steven E. Baldner points out some of the contradictions of Hartshorne's atomism: Hartshorne denies change and real causality. Anthony J. Celano recalls that Robert Kilwardby was very much aware that happiness as described by Aristotle is quite different from the beatitude promised by the Christian faith. The order of the divine entitative attributes in the Summa theologiae I, qq. 3-11 has baffled many a commentator. Lawrence Dewan connects it with some texts of Aristotle's Metaphysics. Jeremiah Hackett studies Roger Bacon's Moralis philosophia. Dealing with Luther's attitude toward St. Thomas, Denis R. Tanz accepts Erasmus's verdict that the weight given to Thomas in theology was an important factor in propelling Luther out of the Roman Catholic orbit. This opinion, however, confounds appearances with the real reason for leaving, namely, estrangement from several central positions of Catholic doctrine. It is a tribute to the Catholicity of Thomas that after 1519 Luther came to identify the Pope, the Church and all scholastic doctors with the Thomists and said that the Church had become the synagogue of the papists and the Thomists: Thomas had been made the arbiter of heresy. Mark F. Johnson stresses the sapiential character of the sacra doctrina. Mark D. Jordan wrestles with the question why Thomas wrote his Aristotelian commentaries. Arguing in the line of Owens's interpretation he reduces their importance with regard to Thomas's own positions. Jordan seems to think that Thomas's philosophy cannot be formulated without his theology, an explanation which is hardly satisfactory. Armand Maurer submits some reflections on St. Thomas's notion of presence. The question to what extent Albert the Great contributed to Aquinas's treatises of the morality of human acts and of natural law is examined by Ernest J. McCullough. Walter H. Principe points out how, according to Aquinas, food is assimilated into the veritas humanae naturae. Eric A. Reitan retraces Weisheipl's analysis of Aristotle's Physics and of St. Thomas' Commentary: the axiom, "whatever is moved, is moved by another" can be understood only within the context of the general science of nature. In his Liber de causis et processu universitatis Albert came to hold the same position as Thomas on the demonstrability of creation and of its beginning in time. Two final articles concern the difficulties underlying Aristotle's arguments in Physics 7 and 8, and Aquinas and Newton on causality: William Wallace connects Newton's universal gravitation with the axiom that nothing acts on itself. (shrink)

It is not without a certain emotion that one opens this book devoted to the memory of a great scholar of medieval thought who worked and lived in the certainty that there cannot be a conflict between the Christian faith and science. In a significant essay, Benedict M. Ashley defends the idea of the philosophy of nature as continuous or identical with natural science. Ashley does allow, however, for so many divergences between philosophy of nature and natural science due to (...) later developments in science that this identification must be qualified. Steven E. Baldner points out some of the contradictions of Hartshorne's atomism: Hartshorne denies change and real causality. Anthony J. Celano recalls that Robert Kilwardby was very much aware that happiness as described by Aristotle is quite different from the beatitude promised by the Christian faith. The order of the divine entitative attributes in the Summa theologiae I, qq. 3-11 has baffled many a commentator. Lawrence Dewan connects it with some texts of Aristotle's Metaphysics. Jeremiah Hackett studies Roger Bacon's Moralis philosophia. Dealing with Luther's attitude toward St. Thomas, Denis R. Tanz accepts Erasmus's verdict that the weight given to Thomas in theology was an important factor in propelling Luther out of the Roman Catholic orbit. This opinion, however, confounds appearances with the real reason for leaving, namely, estrangement from several central positions of Catholic doctrine. It is a tribute to the Catholicity of Thomas that after 1519 Luther came to identify the Pope, the Church and all scholastic doctors with the Thomists and said that the Church had become the synagogue of the papists and the Thomists: Thomas had been made the arbiter of heresy. Mark F. Johnson stresses the sapiential character of the sacra doctrina. Mark D. Jordan wrestles with the question why Thomas wrote his Aristotelian commentaries. Arguing in the line of Owens's interpretation he reduces their importance with regard to Thomas's own positions. Jordan seems to think that Thomas's philosophy cannot be formulated without his theology, an explanation which is hardly satisfactory. Armand Maurer submits some reflections on St. Thomas's notion of presence. The question to what extent Albert the Great contributed to Aquinas's treatises of the morality of human acts and of natural law is examined by Ernest J. McCullough. Walter H. Principe points out how, according to Aquinas, food is assimilated into the veritas humanae naturae. Eric A. Reitan retraces Weisheipl's analysis of Aristotle's Physics and of St. Thomas' Commentary: the axiom, "whatever is moved, is moved by another" can be understood only within the context of the general science of nature. In his Liber de causis et processu universitatis Albert came to hold the same position as Thomas on the demonstrability of creation and of its beginning in time. Two final articles concern the difficulties underlying Aristotle's arguments in Physics 7 and 8, and Aquinas and Newton on causality: William Wallace connects Newton's universal gravitation with the axiom that nothing acts on itself. (shrink)

Recent studies indicate that mammalian chromosomes contain discretecis‐acting loci that control replication timing, mitotic condensation, and stability of entire chromosomes. Disruption of the large non‐coding RNA gene ASAR6 results in late replication, an under‐condensed appearance during mitosis, and structural instability of human chromosome 6. Similarly, disruption of the mouse Xist gene in adult somatic cells results in a late replication and instability phenotype on the X chromosome. ASAR6 shares many characteristics with Xist, including random mono‐allelic expression and asynchronous replication timing. (...) Additional “chromosome engineering” studies indicate that certain chromosome rearrangements affecting many different chromosomes display this abnormal replication and instability phenotype. These observations suggest that all mammalian chromosomes contain “inactivation/stability centers” that control proper replication, condensation, and stability of individual chromosomes. Therefore, mammalian chromosomes contain four types ofcis‐acting elements, origins, telomeres, centromeres, and “inactivation/stability centers”, all functioning to ensure proper replication, condensation, segregation, and stability of individual chromosomes. (shrink)

A historical investigation of the exclusion of Africa and Asia from modern histories of philosophy.

The essays contained in this volume illustrate the work of Fr. James A. Weisheipl, whose writing and teaching have resulted in important additions to our understanding of nature and motion.

Vaesen infers unique properties of mind from the appearance of specific cultural innovation – a correlation without causal direction. Shifts in habitat, population density, and group dynamics are the only independently verifiable incentives for changes in cultural practices. The transition from Acheulean to Late Stone Age technologies requires that we consider how population and social dynamics affect cultural innovation and mental function.

The first English translation of Fichte’s second set of 1804 lectures on the Wissenschaftslehre.