Divine Simplicity

 

God, say the experts, is simple, meaning he isn't a compound being made up of parts, you can't add or subtract from him, all that is in him is him. And so God loves, he is love. What does this mean? A lot, James Dolezal expounds the mystery:

First, it means we cannot posit a distinction between God and His attributes the way we might between a creature and its attributes. A man, for instance, may be wise, just, and powerful. But he is not identical with the wisdom, justice, and power by which he is such. Each of these is a part that contributes some form of being to him, and each is distinct from the man as a whole. He depends upon these qualities to be as he is. Because God is simple, this is not how He has His attributes. Properly speaking, God does not have wisdom, justice, power, and so forth—attributes really distinct from His being as God. Rather, God just is the wisdom by which He is wise, the justice by which He is righteous, and the power by which He is powerful, and so forth for all His other attributes.

Second, and more deeply, divine simplicity means that God is not composed of existence and essence. As with His attributes, God does not have existence or essence as principles really distinct from His being as God. Rather, God just is the act of existence by which He exists and the essence of divinity by which He is God. But this is not how it is with creatures. To be a human, for example, is to be a certain kind of creature. But no human being is humanity as such. Rather, each one possesses humanity as a principle determining him to be the kind of being he is. Moreover, being a human does not explain why any particular human exists. Rather, each man’s act of existence is a principle he possesses in addition to his essence. In short, it is not the essence of humanity to be. For classical theists, this is the proper locus of the Creator-creature distinction. Creatures possess existence as a gift (see Acts 17:25, 28; Rev. 4:11) that is really distinct from their respective essences, whereas God simply is His own existence, there being no composition of principles of existence and essence in Him.

All that is in God is God. He, being His own existence and essence, and so not derived from causes as are all other beings, is alone adequate to ultimately account for all that is caused-to-be. 

Reflect on this and worship.

Adoremus ad Dominum,

LSP

Happy Cooking With LSP - Yorkshire Pudding

 

how can anyone take you seriously?

Can you have too much of a good thing? No, but only if the thing in question is absolutely good. That in mind, this humble cookery blog's focusing on the X-Ring, yes, Yorkshire Pudding, so very tasty. But how do you make these "puddings"? Good question and here's my fix, backed up by experts.

nice

Get a mixing bowl, mine's made of pyrex, you maybe have some other kind and that's OK. Tip a cup of regular flour into the bowl. Add 4 eggs. Stir it all about until smooth, perhaps you use an Olde Wooden Forke to achieve this τέλος, or a whisk, or whatever, your call.

Next up pour a cup of whole milk or 3/4 cup of whole milk and 1 1/12 tbs water into the mix. Add 1/2 tsp of salt. Stir until the consistency of cream. Well done, you've just made Yorkshire Pudding batter, no small thing. So now what?

next add milk/water, don't forget salt

Put the batter aside, expert YP science says it doesn't matter if it goes in the fridge or not, I use the fridge, and let it rest. Settled science says the longer the rest the better, up to overnight, makes for a better rise, because science. But if you're turning these beasts on a schedule/dime, 30+ minutes works too.

this batter's ready to go hot

Then clean some guns, or catapults, kitchen knives and sticks if you're in the UK, wash the kitchen floor, catch up on blogs and LL's excellent meditation on Faith and Substance while the batter's resting. Admire the rus in urbe aspect of your Compound's back yard while you're at it, all is good. Next?

hot tin

Preheat oven to 425* and pour beef dripping or olive oil into your pudding tin. I use olive oil and a sixfold muffin thing; you don't need much oil/fat, just cover the bottom of each indent or, if you're going hardcore heavy metal, 8" heavy metal skillets (x2).

Well done, you've got this far, sharpen a kukri while the oven heats. When it's ready, put the oiled tin into the oven, let it heat up for around 10 minutes if you're using a Sixer muffin tin. Tin hot, experts say it doesn't matter if it is, take it out and pour in the batter, around a 1/4 cup per ripping hot indent. It should sizzle. Word to the wise, don't take the hot tin out of the oven with your hands, sayn.

Command & Control from the, er, kitchen

Too much detail? Hey, no gain without pain; fire the superhot tin into the 425* (some techologists say 450*) oven and let it do its thing for around 20 minutes. Word to the wise, don't take it out too soon or the puddings will collapse, you want a crispy exterior which upholds the rise. They should look something like this.

a bit done? Hey 4 outta six, not a bad ratio

Mission accomplished, behold the beauty of the thing and fall upon your scoff, yes, like a warrior.

Adveniat,

LSP

A Mercifully Short Sunday Sermon

“Lord, will those who are saved be few?” And he said to them, “Strive to enter by the narrow door; for many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able." (Lk 13:22)

Strive to enter by the narrow gate. It grates against post-modernist Marcusian ears, against the culturally ascendant air we breathe  because "narrow gate" sounds dangerously like narrow-minded, and so bigoted, intolerant and hateful.

"After all," says our Ivy League uneducated friend, "I've got my truth, you've got yours. Coexist!"

What a broad path and it sounds alluring; so free and tolerant, so very narrative. But let's apply this logic to mathematics. Imagine a classroom full of young children, pronouns mixed. Their teacher asks, "You have two rainbows in the sky and you add another two rainbows, how many rainbows are there?"

An impetuous youngster raises zhir hand, "One!" A pensive girl, she/hers, utters "three," another adventurer exclaims four, another eight and an enthusiastic child offers up "eighty eight!" The teacher beams, "Children, all of you are right!" And each receives a delicious unicorn cupcake, don't say Lambeth Conference.

But look what's happened. In the name of freedom, these poor children have been denied the liberty of doing mathematics because they haven't been allowed to go through the narrow gate of correct addition. The logic of salvation's similar.

As with 2+2=4, there's one solution to paradise and that's Christ; He is the gate. Only He unites humanity to God, He alone is true God and true Man. He alone offers the perfect, sinless, atoning sacrifice to the Father for the forgivness of sins and He, and only He, rises victorious from the grave only to give His resurrected life to the faithful.

So to get to heaven, the end or τέλος of desire, we have to go through Christ, the door, the gate of the sheep, the way, the truth and the life. And we must strive to do so, to make the conscious, deliberate effort to conform our lives to His.

The Savior's grace, frightened and gentle readers, will supply the deficiency.

Here endeth the Lesson,

LSP

The Holy Trinity

Listen up, heathen, it's Trinity Sunday and time to reflect on the inner life of God, revealed as three persons in one divine nature. Three persons fully God yet not three Gods but one God.

Tricky, isn't it, and I'm reminded of a conversation I had with an old monk, back in the mists of time. "Tell me, Father (he was a priest religious), how do we understand the Trinity?" I was hoping for wisdom from this elder, you see, and he replied, "Well, it's like a shamrock!"

The problem, of course, is that the Trinity isn't much like a shamrock or three pieces of one awesome pizza; each leaf or slice is fully the thing itself. How?

Perhaps Aquinas helps, following Aristotle through the lens of St. John. God, from all eternity thinks, He generates or begets an idea of Himself, a perfect concept of who He is, which is everything that He is, including existence and self-consciousness. 

This thought is expressly uttered as His Word, identical in being with the Father but distinct in relationship to Him. In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God, says St. John. Here's Aquinas:

Whenever anyone understands because of his very act of understanding, something comes forth within him, which is the concept of the known thing proceeding from his awareness of it. It is this concept which an utterance signifies; we call it 'the word in the heart' signified by the spoken word. (1a.27.1)

So the Father and the Son, or Word, are one in being but persons by virtue of their relationship one to the other. And the Father looks at the Son and loves Him because He is everything that is lovable. So too does the Son love the Father. Both pour out their being, perfectly, to each other in love.

Such love, being all that the Father and the Son are, must itself be a person, the Holy Spirit. Again, identical in being with the other persons of the Trinity but distinct in terms of relationship; the Spirit proceeds. And He pours Himself back to the Father and the Son in love.

Step back from this for a moment and see that the Father, the Son and the Spirit are a community or communion of persons in love. As Augustine teaches, Lover, Beloved and Loving. God, per St. John and in no other religion, is love.

How very beautiful, LSP, you say with that faint curl of the lip as you sip the next fizzing glass of Clicquot. Not so fast, boulevardier, consider the reverse. As opposed to God is love, think of the reality behind the universe as simply its material, stars, planets, electrons, atoms, particles, gasses, forces and on. 

This, we're told, liberates us from oppressive Christianity. Really? Being in the hand of vast, implacable, natural force is freeing?

Go ahead and think that, but since when did gravity write your family a condolence letter when you fell off the pier fishing for Gar? Since when did an electron apologize for making you feel bad and then try to do something about it?

That way lies despair and the Trinity frees us from this. In the Triune God we  see love at the foundation of all that is, and therein lies fulfillment, meaning and purpose, the telos or end of our soul's desire.

May we grow into the glory,

LSP