Sublime

He, O men, is the wisest, who, like Socrates, knows that his wisdom is in truth worth nothing.

ST. FRANCIS OF PAOLA (d. 1507),

Theology is second-order reflection on first-order language about God and faith. Theology is not faith, nor does it require faith. It may sometimes be, in that traditional phrase, “faith seeking understanding” (fides quaerens intellectum). But for me theology is simply showing how statements of faith and belief can be seen as rational, sensible,

Again. Although that which is sometimes potential and sometimes actual, is in point of time potential before being actual, nevertheless actuality is simply before potentiality: because potentiality does not bring itself into actuality, but needs to be brought into actuality by something actual. Therefore whatever is in any way potential has

In a very real sense, Western Christianity is Augustinian Christianity.

The first way is as follows. Whatever is in motion is moved by another: and it is clear to the sense that something, the sun for instance, is in motion. Therefore it is set in motion by something else moving it. Now that which moves it is itself either moved or not. If it be not moved, then the point is proved that we must needs postulate an

Alexander Pope: “A little learning is a dangerous thing; / Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring.”)

the other portrayals were, in a phrase of Fergus Kerr, “unavoidable anthropomorphisms.” See Kerr, After Aquinas, 77;

brevity which is the soul of wit.