Friday, August 28, 2009

…implicite Deum…

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"Omnia cognoscentia cognoscunt implicite Deum in quolibet cognito."
–– St. Thomas Aquinas, De Ver. q. 22, a. 2, ad 1.

"All knowers implicitly know God in whatever they know." To know 'this' is 'this' is implicitly to know 'this' is not 'everything else', and is therefore implicitly to bracket it off from 'All'. If any objects were ontologically self-sufficient, as the All is, then no object would be 'this' or 'that'. "The understanding," Henri de Lubac writes in The Discovery of God (p. 70), "is open to an infinity of objects; a sign, surely, that it is open to the infinite itself." Nonetheless, he adds the following quotation from St. Thomas (ST Ia, q. 79, a.2) as a qualification: "No created intellect can be like an act with respect to the whole universal being; because in such a case it would have to be an infinite being. Wherefore every created intellect, by reason of the very fact that it is what it is, is not the act of all intelligible beings."

Being a membrane…

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In his dialogue with Pierre Changeaux, titled What Makes Us Think?, Paul Ricoeur (pp. 203–206) draws attention to the thoughts of Hans Jonas and Emile Canguilhem on the philosophy of biology. In Organismus und Freiheit, for example, Jonas considers the phenomenon of autointegration and the attendant notion of an individual. Jonas's point is that "the price of individuation … is the growing awareness of the otherness of the world and the growing solitude of the self." Ricoeur goes on to note one of Canguilhem's major claims in La Connaissance de la vie: "The peculiar characteristic of living beings … is that each of us make a milieu for themselves." Ricoeur then recalls (p. 207) how Jonas "attempted … to show how already in the 'simplest' true organism––existing by way of metabolism, and thereby self-dependent and other-dependent at once––the horizons of selfhood, world and time, under the imperious alternative of being or nonbeing, are silhouetted in a prenatal form." In other words, to live is to spread outward––while still maintaining an individualized limitation-space vitally separate from "everything else." As the ancients put it, "Bonum diffusum est sui [The good is diffusive of itself]."

In the same way that an organism exists only by being "membranized" (i.e., bounded-apart-from other entities) in its surroundings, so the Universe qua One-Together* exists in its ontological totality only by being bounded off from the greater "Being-environment" of God's own Eternal Being. The spatiotemporal membranes of the cosmos are analogous to the cellular boundaries of any cell in a larger organ/organism. If God were merely "some other object" in some imagined hyperspace, He would just be a part, a member, of the Universe. But the point here is that God is not just some 'bigger', even 'biggest', object. Rather, the entire existence of the Universe, as a dynamic assembly of subparts, requires a fundamental "membrane" limitation for its own proper structure. The Universe and God exist in fundamentally different ways. Just as a cell completely depends on its environment for its nourishment and sustenance, without simply dissolving into the environment, so the cosmos depends on God as the source of its "ontic sustenance." The analogy is asymmetrical in the same way that an environment, like God, does not depend on or derive from any of the cells which it engenders and sustains. Infinity is not a proper object of empirical science, therefore if the Universe is simply posited to be "infinite like God," then the Universe eo ipso ceases to be an object of empirical science. God, by contrast, is a proper object of metaphysical inquiry, and therefore ought not be penalized for failing to be "an empirical reality."

* Universum, as it was coined by Lucretius in De Rerum Natura (bk. IV, line 262), basically means "rolled/wrapped into one." This is quite amusing, considering how we often refer to the universe as "the Whole Enchilada"!

Does art happen?

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How does a work of art happen? Is an artwork an event? At what point does it begin? At what point does it end? If it did not somehow first begin in the mind of its composer, the artwork would never come to be. If it did not come to be (quite literally in medias res, in a proper medium), it would not be a work of art. Once the work of art is finished, however, is it actually "over"? To the contrary, does it not persist in a secondarily autonomous way to be admired or criticized by others?

I raise these questions merely to ponder how well art fits in the schema of "normal" (i.e., efficient) causality. Does not art embody and submit to a different kind of causation than mere physical and material events? Admitting, as I do, that the causal dynamics of art do not exclude or escape the interwoven dynamics of efficient causality, does not amount to saying art merely is an efficient-causal phenomenon. I may be able to account for all the atomic and photochemical properties in the rigorously determined causal chain of an artwork's material composition, but this does not mean I grasp the work of art as an expression or as a statement. The subject––the formal order––of an artwork is clearly distinct from its material composition; this is why we can recognize a "shabby" reproduction of, say, "The Last Supper," without thereby denigrating "The Last Supper" as a famous work of art.

Again, it seems that works of art somehow transcend the normal bounds of temporal causation. Just what are the spatiotemporal bounds of a work of art? Does a piece of music really only "happen" while its being played? It seems that the inherent beauty of the world as a "composed heterogeneity" points towards its metaphysical origin as being transcendent to its internal, material composition. The strong anthropic principle seems to do little work here, since, analogously, while an aesthetic materialist might say we only recognize as works of art those objects which happen to trigger our sensory equipment in certain ways, yet his deflationary anthropocentrism does not negate the existence of an artist who caused the objects to be arranged as they actually are. As Mildred Bakan writes in Body and Mind (ed. R. W. Rieber, pp. 135–136):

[A physicalist] conception of the relation of physiology to the study of the mind is something like seeking to understand art by a study of the physical principles of colors and sounds. …[T]he artist's intent… functions something like a final cause, which, without violating the laws of physics and chemistry, is nevertheless not reducible to them either. The artist's intent is informed by a sense of the future and of the possible and actual coherence of his materials in terms of their felt qualities. If mind plays something of this role with respect to the body, then physiological study will not provide the clues we need.

Thinkering in progress…

Wednesday, August 26, 2009

The absence of presence…

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How can you be friends with someone afraid of life?

How can you pet a cat stuck up in a tree?

How do you dance in a minefield?

The absence of presence does not equal the presence of absence. He whose presence is absent to us may yet very well be present by his absence for us. A hug, an embrace, is an empty space, an absence of a concrete obstruction.

Think on it.

Saturday, August 22, 2009

Concerning my mental diet…

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As I mentioned in my last post, I have been reading and viewing a lot of books and movies. One book I read yesterday, in classic, truly "unputdownable" fashion, was William Peter Blatty's The Exorcist (1971). Wow, it was just so well written (except, I admit, for the cardboard cutout-like persona of Christ MacNeil, the mother of little Regan). It is certainly one of the best horrors I've ever read, and I had already seen the movie, so even "knowing what was coming" didn't help. I would also like to say it's one of the most sophisticated pieces of religious writing I've encountered. Let me post a few quotations from the book (New York: Harper Fiction, 1994), which I found most memorable:

Perhaps he [i.e., Fr. Damien Karras's Provincial] understood that faith was finally a matter of love. (p. 55)

MY BROTHER HURTS. I SHARE HIS PAIN. I MEET GOD IN HIM. (p. 100)

Fr. Merrin: "…I think the demon's target is not the possessed; it us…the observers…. I think the point is to make us despair; to reject our own humanity, Damien: to see ourselves as ultimately bestial; as ultimately vile and putrescent; without dignity; ugly; unworthy. And there lies the heart of it, perhaps; in unworthiness. For I think belief in God is not a matter of reason at all; I think it finally is a matter of love; of accepting the possibility that God could love us." (pp. 351–352)

Fr. Merrin: "…the love which He asked was in my will and not meant to be felt as emotion at all. Not at all. He was asking that I act with love; that I do unto others; and that I should do it unto those that repelled me, I believe, was a greater act of love than any other. … How many husbands and wives… must believe that they have fallen out of love because their hearts no longer race at the sight of their beloveds. Ah, dear God!" (p. 352)

Fr. Dyer: "…if all of the evil in the world makes you think that there might be a devil, then how do you account for all the good in the world?" (p. 382)

An equally impressive work for me was Blindness (2009), which I watched this evening. I am quite surprised at how harshly this film has been criticized by both critics and viewers (check out Rotten Tomatoes and IMDB, respectively, to see what I mean). I found it visually engrossing, philosophically weighty, and, ultimately, extremely touching.

The film begins with a man in his car suddenly going blind while at a stop light. Another man passing by helps him to get home, but within hours, handfuls, and then scores, of other people are suffering the same spontaneous blindness: a pure, blinding whiteness without any medical explanation. The protagonists of Blindness are an apparently ill-at-ease, but basically civil, married couple, played by Mark Ruffalo as an ophthalmologist who soon succumbs to the blindness and Julianne Moore as his wife, whose vision seems indefinitely immune to the blindness. Soon, they and other blind patients are hustled away by the government for quarantine in an old mental hospital. In Ward 1, Mark Ruffalo's character and his wife assume leadership, as he becomes a fatherly voice of reason and she is (literally) an unseen guiding hand. After not too long, however, the residents of Ward 3 start asserting thuggish and dictatorial pressure on the other two wards. This leads to a savage second-act climax, which then transitions into the film's final act.

A viewer of Blindness must realize it is an allegory, a very gritty fairy tale, and therefore he or she needs to suspend a certain amount of disbelief in order to meditate on the themes and concepts being unfurled and explored minute by minute onscreen. At first I assumed Blindness would be a straightforward political allegory, somewhat like Orwell's Animal Farm, and I admit it has its moments of heavy-handed "narration" and symbolism. But again, it is an allegory in the tradition of "magical realism," so I felt the director, Fernando Meirelles, was well within his rights for employing deep symbols and motifs in order to draw the reader to a very meditative viewing. Certainly, many of the characters are stereotypes––indeed, no character is ever named––but this, once more, aids in our reflection on just what roles we can and do "play" in society. By the second half of the film, the themes extend beyond mere political allegory and enter into a realm of epic spiritual and anthropological considerations.

What I found most touching about the film was how it ended on a note of transcendent hope, a hope as mysterious and "preposterous" as the affliction which sets the film in motion. Blindness is a fairy tale about faith, love, and hope (in that order). I find it strange that many viewers felt Blindness was crushingly pessimistic and depressing, even absurd, since, for me, hope, light, and the joy of sacramental redemption are its dominant themes. In the mental institution, Blindness depicts how, given human nature, the feeble attempts to create "institutional" order nearly always succumb to the primal drives of our lower natures. Only when these drives are opposed by a life-giving act of innocent death can there be any foundation for the good. The good of social order, in other words, cannot stand unless its foundations are first struck deep within the earth, no less than in the depths of a tomb. Along similar lines, Blindness makes an interesting nod in the direction of "just war theory," by suggesting that the good, by virtue of its intrinsic vitality, is, in some cases, not only entitled to defend itself with force, but perhaps required to do so boldly, prophetically, without kid gloves.

In any case, the film's message of hope shone most brightly in two scenes. In the first scene of hope, a handful of the blind are celebrating a kind of family dinner together in the dark, even as the world crumbles outside. The symbolism of wine, bread, blessing, communion, and koinonia are hard to miss. This little meal nearly brought me to tears, but it was not until the second scene of hope that my floodgates really opened.

The second scene, about which I must be discreet, so as not to spoil the film for possible viewers, concerns a startling change in one of the victim's plight. Is there a cure for the blindness, after all? As the narrator (voiced by Danny Glover's character) notes, while they feel joy for the blessing one among them enjoys, their celebration "was not entirely selfless," since, if one of them can possibly work towards a cure, perhaps they all can. That just broke me. Completely caught me off guard. Despite myself, I just began weeping. Hard. I was even doing exercise while watching the film, so I wasn't in any particularly sensitive or sad mood. But I guess the second scene resonated so strongly with a situation in my life that I couldn't help but feel myself in the secne. (Indeed, much of this scene is shot from the perspective of the blessed blind man, so we "see" the world in his eyes.)

For the sake of respecting confidentiality, I can't be too explicit, but let me just say that my best friend in the world is going through a kind of blindness of his/her own right now. It is a spiritual blindness, an all-consuming emotional confusion and paralyzing semi-despair, that I know all too well myself. I was touched by the second scene, because the blessed man surely must have felt conflicted to rejoice in his improvement while his companions still suffered in total blindness. That's how I feel towards my friend: I want to encourage him/her with my own testimony of overcoming despair, but also don't want to "rub it in his/her face" while he/she continues to bear the burden. Just as a sighted person cannot "make" a blind person see what he sees, neither can I make my great friend "feel" the happiness I know after I emerged from my own depressing blindness. Just as there is no way for a sighted friend to "reach into" a blind person's world and "make" him/her see the brilliance of the world, neither is there any way for me to "enter into" my friend's gloomy world right now and "convince" him/her that life is, indeed, beautiful. As I know all too well––and as my friend is now experiencing––for the hopeless, hope itself can be a burden, can look like a threat. Every bleeds, everybody hurts, and, as I have learned from my many accidents and injuries and surgeries, sometimes the only thing worse than the pain of the injury itself, is the pain of moving with it to seek help and the pain after surgery. Paradoxically, healing hurts! (That was something of the point of this post a few months ago.)

Again, the reason I wept as deeply as I did towards the end of Blindness, is because I felt like the character who had come through the darkness and was now plagued by a new, bittersweet burden: the burden of at once encouraging his erstwhile fellow blind companions with his new sight and discouraging them with the "taunt" of incredible hope, since perhaps his blessing was only his blessing, and they dare not face the "threat" of resurrected joy. How do you cheer up a friend who cannot see your smile? How do you accompany someone who cannot really hear your voice as a reliable guide back towards joy, since your voice and other cheerful sounds are drowned out by the hissing of confusion within? How do you enter a place of danger when the one you want to help orders you to stay out, lest your added weight and motion cause the whole cave to crumble around them? How do you accompany and encourage someone who is trapped in his or her own world? I honestly don't know. But it is what I pray for: that my dear friend, and anyone else suffering a similar malady of semi-despair and emotional exhaustion, can hold on by faith––guided by the distant echo of love from a time and a world seemingly long past and irretrievably gone––and can at some point reach out in hope for a hand which can only be offered but not forced. After all, to the blind, a helping hand extended too forcefully or suddenly feels like a surprise punch.

Hence, perhaps the only help that a former blind man like myself can offer to the now-blind, is to step back and simply "be there" for when the blind him-/herself dares to walk forward in hope. Jesus called Lazarus out of the tomb, but Lazarus still had to walk out on his own two legs. Jesus did not go into the tomb to pull Lazarus out, as if he were still a powerless corpse. Rather, Christ spoke a word of love and life into the tomb from outside the, and then left it up to Lazarus himself to emerge from his own darkness to new life and light. Indeed, had Christ gone into the tomb with Lazarus, Lazarus might have assumed he should stay in the tomb with Christ! Yet, paradoxically, by keeping His distance, Christ gave Lazarus a goal towards which he could walk in freedom. The more Christ or His disciples might have tugged on Lazarus to "hurry" him into new life, the more Lazarus would have felt like a passive corpse. I hope I can do the same for my dear friend, and for others who are tempted to take up residence in the tomb of isolated darkness: not tug or force, but simply "be" as a beacon of hope, and as one who has survived similar scars. Indeed, my smile––any smile––is but a scar carved by joy.

Friday, August 21, 2009

The eye of a storm…

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The center of a raging storm is its weakest area.

The harder a stomach is after an injury, the greater the internal bleeding is.

The more fragile a gift is, the stronger its wrapping must be.

The harder a person's defenses are, the worse they are inside.

Now consider the opposite conditions in each example.

NOTES: A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr.

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p. 127 When you tire of living, change itself seems evil, does it not?

p. 178 "Nayol [~Nature] is without speech, and therefore never lies." -- Thon Thaddeo Pfardentrott's assistant

p. 266 Destiny always seems decades away, but suddenly it's not decades away; it's right now.

p. 305 …the unreasoning fear of suffering. Metus doloris. Take it together with its positive equivalent, the craving for worldy security, for Eden, and you might have your "root of evil…."

Thursday, August 20, 2009

For the record…

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No, I have not been washed away by Typhoon Morakot; I am high and dry. Sorry to leave you all (well, at least unBeguiled) hanging. The real damage is in the south, especially in Pingdong and Tainan, but I'm in northern central Taiwan. I am hoping to get a shuttle bus from a church next Wednesday morning to aid in the relief work down south. Here's a video produced by that church, Banner Church, about helping. I'm amazed how conscious people outside of Taiwan are about the aftermath. I hear more about it from friends abroad than I do from people here, probably because the media have "amplified the signal" so that Taiwan is now a concrete reality for many people (for a while, at least), and because, in my local, daily environment, the typhoon is gone and but a memory for those of us unharmed. A sad irony or a testament to the strength of modern society?

As for why my blogging has dropped off, well, partially it's just one of my periodic slow phases, and partially it's because my mind is on a number of "life issues," which rather drain the blog-juices. I'm also reading a lot and watching quite a few movies, so as to get rid of some books and pass the time without navel-gazing. On top of that, my reentry into the world of Inyourfacebook (as I like to call it) has siphoned off my random personal updates and passing trivia, which I'd normally post here for "posterity." But don't leave me, I'll come through yet! heheh

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

NOTES: How Free Are You? by Ted Honderich

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Ted Honderich, How Free Are You? The Determinism Problem (2nd ed., OUP, 2002)

CH. 1
CH. 2
p. 13 What is the difference between a cause and the set of things that included it, which set of things we can call a causal circumstance?

14 …we can take an effect to be an event that was preceded by a causal circumstance––such a circumstance being something that would still have been followed by the effect whatever else had been happening. …events are necessitated events, events necessitated by their causal circumstances.

21 A causal circumstance is what is just enough to necessitate an effect….

CH. 3
CH. 4
p. 39 …conscious events, events of subjectivity, are nomic [or 'whatever-else'] correlates of simultaneous neural events….
[Are mental events, such as those employed in running modus ponens, themselves wholly convertible with neural event-structure? If so, then physical matter is idealized, 'mentalized'. If not, then there is nothing more to mental events, even in logic and reasoning, than brute mechanical operations.]

44 [A problem for libertarian causation is that it admits] the links after N4 have to be pretty tight [viz., so a subject's mental choice can tightly affect neural changes]. But then in factual consistency so do the neural links before N4.

46 … no one has ever begun to answer the question of the nature of the self or originator.

47 …is the originator in the Juliet story was the same from start to finish, why did it somehow cause her decision M4 when it did, rather than at the earlier time of M3 or the later time of the action A?
[This seems to be a gross mangling of modality and the actus-potentia distinction. Further, I might ask how "cat," being one and the same word in its total lexical existence, can at different spatiotemporal points cause such things as diverse as "c", "a", and "t".]

48 …if the originator is unchanging, how can it be said to cause endless numbers of different things, endless different decisions, as of course it is supposed to?

49 The Will… is sometimes said to be a rational disposition (Kenny 1975). Such a thing has the power to produce something all by itself, but it may not. But then what are we to understand about its working when it does work?
[petitio principio…]

53 …the fact of probability simply presupposes that B is the standard effect of something. As I say, bad news if you want to put probability together with indeterminism.

CH. 5
59 When I actually act, I do something than can be called giving a command to a part of my body. …I am an executive, or try to do the thing in question, or set myself to do it.
["I"? "My self"?]

63 (1) Each mental event, including each choosing or deciding, is in nomic connection with an associated neural event. The neural event by itself or together with some other non-mental thing necessitated the mental one. … (2) The mental event and the neural event… were the effect of a causal sequence, whose initial causal circumstance had in it early neural and bodily events and also certain environmental events…. (3) Each action… is the effect of a causal sequence whose initial circumstance included the right active intention.

CH. 6
69 Neuroscience proves psychoneural intimacy.

71 …there is a real difference between saying neural events come from processes that are always neural or otherwise bodily, and saying that neural events come from processes that are always neural or otherwise bodily and also never mental. Only the latter thing conflicts with out view.

73 [In 75 years of Quantum Theory debate,] no evidence in a standard sense has been produced for there being any such chance events.

76 Our determinism denies an interpretation of Quantum Theory. Free Will, as it seems, has to accept and deny that same interpretation. It accepts it in order to escape causation of events. It denies it by then taking those events as not chance events.

CH. 7
88 [Contra the Epicurean objection to determinism:] There doesn't seem to be a conflict between the judgement's being an effect and its corresponding to a fact.

90 If determinism is true I'm not free, and it I'm not free I can't engage in real investigation or enquiry, and so I can't have confidence either in my opposition to the Free Will philosophy of mind and action or in my support for determinism. This seems to me something to which we have to pay serious attention.

CH. 8
91 ff. Life-hopes seem in general to have two kinds of content. There is a state of affairs that we hope for–-say being regarded as in some [92] way a success, or the family's being in good shape, or just owning a car. The state of affairs in this narrow sense is important, but less important than something else. The other kind of content of a hope has to do with our future actions, maybe a long campaign of them. … [93] Life-hopes of the first kind… partly involve thinking of our futures as open or unfixed or alterable. … [94] An open future, a future we can make for ourselves, is one of which determinism isn't true. … [95] There can be no such hope if all the future is just effects of effects. … [96] There is nothing in [the second kind of, so to speak, naturally voluntary hopes] that is inconsistent with it. There is nothing about embraced desires and satisfying situations that conflicts with determinism.

100 Gratitude… has to go.
[i.e., since it credits someone as an originator of something we like]

CH. 9
105 …what we mean by freedom, which in fact is not Free Will, is compatible with determinism.

106 Hobbes, "…a free agent is he that can do as he will, and forbear as he will, and that liberty is the absence of external impediments." … Being unfree is being frustrated…. [Bishop Bramhall retorted to Hobbes:] "true liberty consists in the elective power of the rational will…. Reason is the root, the fountain, the original of true liberty…."

112 …[the] fundamental proposition of both Compatibilists and Incompatibilists is a mistake. We don't have a single settled idea of what has to be true if a choice is to count as free.

114 It is a good idea…, if you are saying you are in possession of the truth, to have an explanation of why a lot of other people disagree.

CH. 10
122 Our situation is that we have the two sets of attitudes, both including life-hopes, personal feelings, attitudes about knowledge, and various moral feelings. One set involves images of origination or Free Will with respect to actions, and the other does not. This is what we are calling Attitudinism. With the first set of attitudes, if we bring it together with the truth of determinism, or of course near-determinism (p. 5), our response may be dismay. We may feel the attitudes must be abandoned because they are inconsistent with determinism. With the second family, our response can be intransigence. We will soldier on, whatever else is true. These attitudes can go together with determinism.

124 Dismay about life-hopes is the response that our hopes are destroyed by determinism, and intransigence is the response that they are untouched by it.

126 …our new response would be this: trying by various strategies to accommodate ourselves to the situation we find ourselves in––accommodate ourselves to just what we can really possess if determinism is true, accommodate ourselves to the part of our lives that does not rest on the illusion of Free Will.

127 Exactly what raises my hopes, my hopes of the kind inconsistent with determinism, is the promise of my somehow overcoming things as they are and will be, my not being bound by causation. But that is the image of origination.

128 …determinism is unique in asserting that we stand in a close and unproblematic connection with nature.
[Uhhh…]

129 Determinism offers the compensation of an escape from a mordant kind of self-dislike and self-disapproval.
[Offers?]

CH. 11
CH. 12
151 …Perceptual Consciousness as Existence… explains your sense of life as a sense of something for which you are accountable and also something that is individual and indeed unique in another way or ways.

152 There is a problem about isolating a single condition in a causal circumstance and dignifying it as the cause. The problem, a paradox if you will, is that in a clear sense this cause is no more explanatory of the effect than any other condition in the causal circumstance. [So, Honderich vaguely suggests, we might need a narrative overlay of our life and world in order to call a cause 'more explanatory'.]

Saturday, August 8, 2009

NOTES: Body and Mind: Past, Present, and Future (ed.) R. W. Rieber

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Body and Mind: Past, Present, and Future (ed.) R. W. Rieber (New York: Academic Press, Inc., 1980).

L. D. HANKOFF
p. 5 …the Hebrew word for the madness feigned by David, meshugga, is borrowed by the Egyptians to designate imbecility or stupefaction.

7 holophrastic:

10 The simplest form of a noun in Hebrew was usually the collective form. … Thought in the mind of the Israelite was always linked to action. … Most primitive languages lack the verb "to be" (Lévy-Bruhl, 1922/1926, p. 148).

12 The earliest reference to the brain subserving neurophysiological function may be that of a case in the Edwin Smith papyrus, c. 1600 B.B., describing a head injury with contralateral paralysis (Laver, 1972).

17 …Albright (1968, p. 24) notes that Hebrew writings provide the first mention in history of religious conversion.

18 Terms for blood or flesh are used to refer to the individual in his weaker, more vulnerable, or temporal qualities as opposed to the vital and potentially powerful aspect of the individual in his nefesh, ruach, or laev. … nefesh … also frequently refers to an individual proper; the Israelites in a group are spoken of as a number of souls, using nefesh in the sense of an individual.

23 The Egyptian view of life and death was rooted in an absolute belief in the eternal coexistence of living, dead, and divine beings. … [25] …it is clear that the ancient Israelites were stringently separated from a realm of the dead. … [26] The contrast with Egyptian practices is so thoroughgoing that one suspects… that the pattern is specifically based on avoidance.

27 The Israelite witnessed the disintegration of the body and therefore concluded that the sol sooner or later ended its existence as well. Separate existences for body and soul were inconceivable to him. The Egyptian, perceiving a static enduring universe, assumed that the noncorporeal aspects of man must also endure. … The dead of the Egyptians needed the living more than vice versa; the dead of the Israelites were completely out of the sphere of the living and of no consequence in daily affairs.

MARGARET D. WILSON
p. 43 In the Aristotelian philosophy to which Descartes opposed himself, the human soul was understood as the form or activity of the human body, just as animal and vegetable souls were identified with the form or activity of the appropriate bodies. … Descartes differs from the Aristotelian view in denying any continuity between what thinks and wills in us, on the one hand, and the operations of animals, plants, and nature in general, on the other hand. … Finally, where the Aristotelian philosophy represents the rational principle in us as conceptually dependent on the boy––reason is the most unique and characteristic activity or function of the human body––Descartes from the beginning conceived the mind as a distinct hing, the exclusive subject of the activity of thought.

46 [According to one argument made by Descartes,] we can clearly conceive of ourselves existing as disembodied minds. There is, then, no contradiction in supposing a mind or a thinking thing may exist without a body: The separation of mind from body is a conceptual possibility.

48 [Hobbes objected to immaterial entities, thus:] …all subjects of all acts seem to be understood only under the concept of body, or under the concept of matter [sub ratione corporea, sive sub ratione materiae] {cf. Oeuvres de Descartes, Paris: J. Vrin, 1957. VII, 173}."

52 Leibniz tended to assimilate mental states to representational states….

K. D. IRANI
p. 65 Wittgenstein does not equate the meaning of a mental word with behavior; he moves the discussion of meaning to a consideration of use and requires use to be specified necessarily by public or behavioral criteria.

72 Can we not assert that a bodily event causes phenomenological state or vice versa? [Negative.] Causal relations from one scheme to the other cannot be coherently formulated. … [73] Why does the phenomenological description of the perception of the dime not appear as an event in this description [of a subject's perception of a dime on the floor]? Because being a phenomenological state, it can't (logically cannot) appear somewhere in a spatiotemporal continuity of physical changes.

HOWARD E. GRUBER
p. 80 …there is not one theory but a domain of theories of evolution.

81 At every stage in the growth of an evolving system, the constantly changing relation between form and function opens the way for genuine novelty. … Evolution [82] consumes its own past; each moment destroy the conditions that made it possible. Thus, it is impossible for our species to revert to the instinctual forms of our precursors. On the other hand, every step of evolution makes a new future possible. Thus it is no necessary for us to live within the confines of our past.

83 … Donald Campbell… APA presidential address (1975)… "evolutionary epistemology"… "blind variation-and-selective-retention"… 

85 As Washburn (1978) writes…, "There is obviously no need to postulate genes for altruism. It would be much more adaptive to have genes for intelligence, anabling one to be altruistic or selfish according to the needs of the moment [p. 414]."

86 … the "Baldwin effect," … Phenotypical adaptations arising in the individual life history are replaced by changes in the genotype having the same form and the same consequences. … In cognition, too, we have phenotypic adaptations, such as imitation, which establish responses that can later be controlled by more fundamental changes in mental structures replacing the ones that gave rise to the response in the first place (Ayala, 1978).

92 In the M and N notebooks we see Darwin's growing awareness that his evolutionary theorizing opened the way for a thoroughgoing philosophical materialism, with all its painful consequences.

96 …the process of death serves the adaptive function of limiting change and maintaining the integrity of the species.

97 …the [radically non-evolutionary] Quinarian system of William Sharp MacLeay…. [cf. Gavin de Beer, 1960, p. 29]

99 The astronomers had constructed orderly orbits which would account for the appearance of irregularity in the wandering of the planets without having to concede tat suc irregularity in fact marred the face of nature; the physicists had worked out universal laws to explain the orbits. Darwin's task was the reverse. He had to show that the appearance of order, which had been so carefully worked out by MacLeay and other systematists, could be explained a resulting from a random process producing an irregular result and furthermore that his hypothesis was not only tenable but more plausible than the hypothesis of a supernaturally created order.

102 [Thomas Reid, Vol. 1, p. 52, pub. 1967:] "I detest all systems that depreciate human nature. If it be a delusion, that there is something in the constitution of man that is venerable and worthy of its author, let me live and die in that delusion, rather than have my eyes opened to see my species in a humiliating and disgusting light. Every good man feels his indignation rise against those who disparage his kindred or his country; why should it not rise against those who disparage his kind?"

108 [Darwin] had expunged the question of origins from his theory…. Any introduction of intelligent planning or decision making reduces natural selection from the position of a necessary and universal principle to a mere possibility.

109 [Notebook B, p. 169, cited in Gruber & Barrett, 1974/1980, p. 446] "If all men were dead, then monkeys make men.––Men make angels." … [Darwin] is saying that organisms evolve in such a manner as to fill up ecological niches, and there is a place in the world for an intelligent, manlike creature.

110 "Believing as I do that man in the distant future will be a far more perfect creature than he is now, it is an intolerable thought that he and all other sentient beings are doomed to complete annihilation after such long-continued slow progress [Darwin's Autobiography, p. 92]."

112 …the simplest forms of mind, such as the photosensitivity of plants, are parts of the same evolutionary net as the more obviously purposeful acts of human beings.

DAVID BAKAN
p. 118 …the defect of the scientific univrse of discourse is that it has no place in the objective world for information, except information in the bound form.

119 The telephone system may carry the message, but in no sense are the message and the characteristics of the telephone event the same. … There is a particular disorder that plagues the contemporary world. That disorder is depression. It is very widespread and is characterized by the sufferer's belief that his mental acts can have no impact on the world. I would observe that the materialist and the depressive share the same belief….

121 When probability theory is used in measurement, both the possible and the actual are involved. … this is not to say that probability theory does not deal with the objective. But actual is not the same as objective. Objectively, a die can fall in six ways. Actually, it can only fall one way.

122 Ludwig Boltzmann brought to bear the theory of probability on the mechanical theory of heat. Howy many ways can a given number of molecules be spatially distributed in a chamber? … The important thing to recognize is that the measurement of entropy involves not only the actual bu the nonactual possibilities as well.

123 The idea that there could be influence of intelligent beings on physical systems is the natural extension of the bringing to bear of probability theory on thermodynamics. [Cf. Leo Szilard, "On the decrease of entropy in a thermodynamic system by the intervention of intelligent beings. A. Rapoport & M. Knoller (trans.). Behavioral Science, 1964, 9, 301–310. {Oringially published as „Über die Entropieverminderung in einem Thermodynamischen System bei Eingriffen intelligenter Wesen“. Zeitschrift für Physik, 1929, 53, 840–856.] For the application of probability theory is based on the assumption that the realm of the possible, including the contradictions that can exist in the realm of the possible, are determinative of the actual. … Claude E. Shannon … took the measure of information to be a function of the region of possibility. The greater the total region of possibility, the greater the amount of information. The measure of information was the entropy. … the "bit," as the amount of information associated with the simplest contradiction in the realm of the possible, the two-alternative equally probably case.

124 Information is nonmaterial substance that imparts form. The human mind is a nonmaterial container, as it were, that can accept and store and process information, and inform the action of a body in such a way that the body can inform other parts of the world. … While the materialist is deeply preoccupied with the lawfulness of the material world, he has essentially left no place for the existence of lawfulness in the material world. The materialist argues that the universe if exhaustively described in terms of matter and energy, or perhaps as matter, energy, and law. Now, what is a law? Law is the information that informs the physical motion. Otherwise, what then is it? It is certainly not matter and energy. The materialist might then answer with some version of the constructionist argument, indicating that law is something that is constructed by the scientists. But then, what is the locus of the law? In the mind of the scientist? If it is in the mind of the scientist only, then the materialist has been forced to allow another category of existence: mind. Furthermore, if he takes tany form of constructionist position, he has no way by which to assert the lawfulness of the universe prior to the evolutional production of human beings.

125 …the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy. …just because certain great technological developments took place after the development of the materialist viewpoint does not mean that these developments took place because of that viewpoint.

126 If one can raise one's arm if one wants to if it is possible to do so, then a mental event can affect a physical event. …the realm of possibility is beyond the world of actuality, and the materialist would have a problem with that. So, for him, the proposition which is the first sentence of this paragraph is simply that the mental event can affect the physical event (the idea of possibility deleted). Yet he would deny even this. … steering mechanisms, typewriters, telephones, television sets, radios, computers, or tinker toys, bricks, and blank paper for that matter… are devices that are designed to be indeterminate and thus able to receive informational input. … This is not a fancy Heisenberg-type indeterminacy. It is that we build equipment with deliberate intention of introducing indeterminacy.

127 …the very word rational not only means logical but also means engaging in planning. The very concept of rational, as it used in the expression, say, the "rationalization of industry," criticially involves the assumption that mental events affect physical events.

128 Information is substance. … Substance is that which underlies manifestations. … Substance refers to that identity which is subject to transposition. … Energy, as such, has no manifest existence. It is only manifest as mechanical force, electrical force, etc. But that identity is transposable and itself unmanifest is referred to as energy. Similarly, information, as such, has no manifest existence. It is manifest only when it is bound. … Information can be measured. Energy is measured by work, that is, by what it has, as it were, triumphed over. So may information be measured by the possibilities over which it triumphs. … [129] Material actuality is made up out of three components: matter, energy, and bound information. …there is no conservation law with respect to information. The history of the planet suggests ever-increasing amounts of bound information. … Information may exist in an unbound state [such as logical and mathematical relationships]. …the information was available to inform the constructing of squares even during some historical interval during which there were no square objects in the universe at all. Information in the unbound state has no locus in space.

MILDRED BAKAN
p. 132 The Cartesian split between mind and body arises n the context of a philosophical concern to justify (and find) necessary truth and, with that, to extend a new mathematical mechanics of motion to the study of living bodies. To know nature in terms of mathematical laws that can characterize motion as a mechanism demands a concept of mind as both nonsensory and independent pf natural law. If the mind were subject to mathematical law, it could not freely know, and, if the mind could not free itself of sensory determination, it could not grasp abstract mathematical truth.

133 According to Plato (and Aristotle9, mind is itself the entelechy of the human body, which in the case of man is informed by perception––and in that sense knowledge––of the entelechy of things. n. 2 The mind, as the entelechy of the body, brings order into avaricious impulses by ordering the object of desire. So, for Plato, the relation of the body to the mind is essentially a relation of the appetitive–-chaotic desire or want––to harmonious ordering. This harmonious ordering amounts to the recovery of one's true self. In effect, the recovery of one's true self brings stability into practical or sociopolitical activity by establishing the true objects of desire and allotting them their proper places as ends. Though Descartes and Plato share the concept of mind as essentially knowing––gaining access to what is true as corresponding to what is real independently of the mind––Plato understands the body not as simply spatially extended matter but as intrinsically informed by desire and alive.

134 For Descartes, the clue to thinking substance––the personal awareness implicit in thinking––is a self-reflexive awareness. By doubting, one becomes reflexively aware of that which one cannot doubt––that one is doubting. The awareness that one is doubting achieves awareness as personal reality. Self-reflexivity, in just this sense, has been widely recognized since Descartes as uniquely characteristic of human beings. But reflexive awareness characterizes the awareness that one's body is one's own as well as the awareness that one is thinking. The awareness that one's body is one's own points to the undeniable ontic unity of body and mind, whatever difficulties we have in comprehending this unity (as Descartes, indeed, knew).

135 …this [physicalist] conception of the relation of physiology to the study of the mind is something like seeking to understand art by a study of the physical principles of colors and sounds.

136 …the artist's intent… functions something like a final cause, which, without violating the laws of physics and chemistry, is nevertheless not reducible to them either. The artist's intent is informed by a sense of the future and of the possible and actual coherence of his materials in terms of their felt qualities. If mind plays something of this role with respect to the body, then physiological study will not provide the clues we need.

There is a sense in which whatever is material is exhausted by the here and now; that is, materiality can be conceived spatially without reference to the temporal, except as an externally related successive order of what is earlier to what is later. In what is describable as spatially material, we will not find the past or the future, neither of which is physically present.

n. 4: D. M. Mackay (1962, pp. 89ff.) points out that the attribution of possibility to automata is marked by conceptual confusion. He distinguishes between possibility as underspecification of physical states, which are, however, as physical states fully determined, and possibility as requiring decision to exclude relevant alternatives. Mackay adds that a Buberian dialogical relationship is a commitment to respond to another in terms of mutual possibility in the second sense.

137 The German biologist Adolf Portmann, n. 5** …points out that every living body is bounded by an appearing surface that mediates the body's relation to its environment so as t maintain its internal organization. On the other hand, this very regulation in terms of the maintenance of internal organization amounts to a centerdness that, in relation to the organized body, is something like the human relation of self to body.

p. 139 By embodying intent in things, work is the first desiring relation to an independent object that does not destroy its object in achieving gratification.

140 …humans are centered in terms of a world disclosed as a structure of possible objects distinct from the human beings themselves.

141 language intrinsically achieves reference beyond the experiential context of its use. n. 10 Thus, the criteria for validity of disclosure are not themselves simply derived from experience but rather structure experience as a coherently supportive order (Bakan, 1974, pp. 28 ff.). n. 11

142 …subjectivity achieves an evaluative temporal synthesis that goes beyond the physically present by indicting the future.

143 (The disposition to see predicatively––that a cube has a top, a side, etc. or is yellow rather than green, etc.––invites the conceptual interpretation of things in terms of language.) n. 14

The achievement of the awareness of feelings is not a simple matter, as Descartes has suggested. Awareness of our feelings amounts to a dialogical relation with our desires that allows our desires to persist as desires without moving to gratification. To suppose that animals are aware of feelings as we are is assuredly absurd.

145 By carrying meaning in terms of the mutual exclusion of possible alternatives, language allows the deliberate transformation of things. Thus, the order of meaning generated in terms of language allows the development of a choice of activity itself in terms of the anticipation of––and actual (physical) exclusion of––possible consequences.

146 It is by virtue of being radically open-ended that we can be aware of ourselves as acting in the sense of origination what we do, determining ourselves with some self-direction in terms of intention that could itself be otherwise.

147 As the mind-matter problem, the mind-body problem concerns the emergence of integrating orders that serve as forms or ends organizing matter by unifying their constitutive elements in terms of their relational possibilities.

150 …the epiphenomenologist must suppose it possible to study the world by studying neural organization itself. But neural organization is perceptually effective by virtue of selectively focusing objects independent of the neural organization.

152 …human communicating and meaning… is achieved in the context of a metalevel that can recover itself as a metalevel, by recovering horizontal possibility as such, a freedom from every specific context, an opening to the world per se, as, perhaps, physiologically, the potential (or rather potential?) innervation of neural pathways. … …when the infant smiles at another, that metalevel consciousness or awareness as primordial self-awareness is there as originating direction into the object-level stemming from the metalevel organizing act itself. …however accurately the mind may correlate the brain, the mind organizes the brain, or we revert to either dualism or epiphenomenalism. …we can make sense of the mind as directing, by, in effect, focusing, achieving clarity, through the brain, much as a blind man may focus, achieving definition of an object, with his hands or even through a probing cane.

MARCEL KINSBOURNE

158 Limitations on the ability to distribute attention follow logically from the highly linked organization of the brain.

159 …if we apply the more general proposition of the "functional cerebral distance principle"––that unrelated attention-demanding activities interfere in proportion to the interconnectedness of their central control facilities––we can generate further predictions that would not be possible without knowing how the hemispheres are specialized for cognitive function and for manual control….

160 …interference is greatest between functionally adjacent control centers, that is, between the verbal processor and the right-hand control center (both represented in the left hemisphere) rather than the verbal processor and the left-hand control center (represented in different hemispheres).

162 When an asymmetrically represented control center is in action simultaneously with either of the bilateral control centers, it interferes ("cross-talks") more with the one closer to it and in the same hemisphere. Thus, the effect of the thought process on the quite unrelated bodily movement was not inherent in the thought content but arose simply and purely from the relative locations in the brain of their neural representation. Were the thought process snot based on a specific and invariant pattern of brain activation, it would not have generated the particular pattern of movement activity and interference that was in fact observed.

164 The patient with right-hemisphere damage is already in imbalance, with an attentional bias to the right. Left-sided activation intensifies the bias, rendering the neglect gross and obvious. The patient with left-sided disease, to the contrary, is helped in reinstating an impaired left-right balance by adopting a verbal mental set.

165 No one cortical analyzer, nor any one other part of the brain, is the "seat" of consciousness. Rather, the sum total of the activity of the cortical analyzers determines the content of awareness as that moment. The sum total possible states of the analyzers determines the individual's potential for conscious experience.

166 hemianopia: half-field blindness

167 …ideomotor theory (Greenwald, 1970)… conceives of movement as being programmed in terms of the sensory feedback to be expected once it has occurred. If one cannot mentally represent the sensory situation as it would be changed once the movement has occurred, one cannot move.

170 …much of the typical behavior of autists become intelligible if regarded as having the purpose of protecting the child from overarousal (Hutt, Hutt & Ounsted, 1965). … The stereotypies [i.e., iterative stimuli responses] themselves preoccupy the child and deter interaction. … In the absence of visual information, [blind] children have a severely depleted world to which to respond. Accumulated pressure to respond may break through as stereotypies ["blindisms"].

171 Whereas intact humans [sic] attention can only be focused on one area at a time (Posner, 1977), split-brain subjects can simultaneously attend to discrete locations on either side. … Theoretically, one could rear a plight-brain child in such a way as to have him amass completely different, and even contradictory, funds of knowledge based on opposite hemispheres … [but] not only does this not occur… [p. 172] but even if it did , it would not constitute two central consciousnesses, but one consciousness utilizing a variable date base.

173 A reorganization of the brain underlies the reorganization of behavior. [And the converse?] …mind as an emergent property of the brain (Bunge, 1977)… is not an emergent entity, in the sense of a novel and unique level of functioning, because it has no independent existence. Instead, mental states form a subset of brain states, as shown by the fact that when the mental states change, the brain states follow suit.

JOHN M. BROUGHTON
179 Metaphysics does not really transcend experience in any other sense than that in which the whole transcends its parts.

180 moiety:

182 …James Mark Baldwin… "symbolic interactionism" and the Piaget-Kohlberg "cognitive-developmental" approach…. From an initial "adualistic" or animistic consciousness the psychic organization is transformed through a dualism of "inner" versus "outer" to a stage of "psychological dualism" proper: a Cartesian dichotomy of mutually exclusive metal and psychical substances. Subsequently, this structure is transformed into an epistemological dualism of subject and object, culminating in logical, theoretical, or scientific thought (the contemplative consciousness of Kant's pure reason).

197 "It's all joined together, like a double exposure."

AMY'SHOP –– the S: is it a possessive suffix of an initial letter of a word? Or both? How is one thing two things at once? ~hypostatic union

HERBERT WIENER
224 …translation must occur twice. On the afferent side a form of energy such as light, as photons, must be translated into a visual perception with meaning––a psychological event––which may then lead to a change in heart rate, a change that also requires energy. The double translation from one form of energy will in the ensuing paragraphs be called "transduction."

225 Nerve impulses or spikes are… quantal phenomena: Impulses o not vary with stimulus intensity once the stimulus exceeds threshold.

228 [Wiener argues for an External Loop Model of Transduction: external stimuli can trigger psychological responses which themselves trigger physical changes, which are then reinforced or frustrated by ongoing, newly interpreted external stimuli; e.g., bulimics may respond to social pressure about weight and then alter their behavior, which then is exacerbated by more social psychosis; or they may have a physiological change on its own, which they then psychologically misinterpret, which then exacerbates the physiological process in conjunction with self-pressured behavior]

NOTES: Evolution (ed.) A. C. Fabian

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Evolution, (ed.) A. C. Fabian (Cambridge, 1998)

GOULD
p. 4 In this work, I try to identify adaptation as the most distinctly anglophonic subject of natural history and subsequent evolutionary ideas.

7 Darwin's revolution may be defined by its radically new and utterly inverted explanation of adaptation, but not by a decision to make the subject central……for good design had been the primary subject of English natural history for at least 200 years.

9 We will best understand the truly revolutionary aspects of natural selection when we can map its explanatory inversion upon the unaltered conviction that adaptation represents the central phenomenon requiring explanation by any adequate theory of life's history.

17 Critics would not object so strongly to adaptationist arguments as invariable first approaches if falsification of a particular claim could lead to tests of truly different alternatives outside the adaptationist programme. But the committed [18] functionalist does not work in so open a manner, and disproof of one adaptationist hypothesis leads only to lateral feinting towards a different story.

23 …adaptation need not be the fundamental result of life's transmutational history. Perhaps the continental perspective is more correct, and most adaptations rank as subsequent, particularistic modifications of underlying structures and as products of their transformational rules and regularities.

This forum is not the place for an extensive compendium, or a long defence, of these alternatives. (As an agnostic on this issue, I would not even be comfortable in presenting such a defence, nor can we fairly depict the issue in such a dichotomous manner at all.) But I do think that a variety of structuralist approaches are now in the ascendancy, thus giving new life to an old division that goes back to the pre-revolutionary version of Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire touting the power of archetypes and laws of form against the non-evolutionary [24] adaptationism of Georges Cuvier in their famous debates of 1830 at the Académie des Sciences in Paris. D'Arcy Thompson kept the structuralist vision alive, with an explicitly anti-Darwinian evolutionary version, in the finest work of prose in English natural history––On Growth and Form. This decade, Stuart Kauffman and Brian Goodwin have both written powerful and provocative, if flawed, modern versions that explore sources of biological order arising from structural rules rather than functional selection. (Kauffman, in particular, has underlined the potentially non-oppositional status of structuralism to Darwinian functionalism, pointing out that his laws of form provide order 'for free' to a selective system that can then modify and add further regularity.)

24 I am not much concerned with the fallacies of ultra-Darwinism within evolutionary biology, for most professionals understand the limitations of such a view only to well––and the current leading exponent, Richard Dawkins, seems to maintain a strict attachment to the creed that can only be called theological.

25 In fact, nothing could forth more annoyance from this remarkably genial man [Darwin] than the distortion of his theory into a cardboard version that equates natural selection with the exclusivity and omnipotence of Boyle's deity (and, on this ground, I am confident that Darwin would have eschewed ultra-Darwinism). For example, he wrote in near despair for the last edition of the Origin of Species (1872, p. 395):

As my conclusions have lately been much misrepresented, and it has been stated that I attribute the modification of species exclusively to natural selection, I may be permitted to remark that in the first edition of this work, [26] and subsequently, I placed in a most conspicuous position––namely at the close of the Introduction––the following words: 'I am convinced that natural selection has been the main, but not the exclusive means of modification.' This has been of no avail. Great is the power of steady misrepresentation.

WOLPERT
31 The basic idea of positional information is that the cells acquire positional identities with respect to certain boundaries, rather like specifying position with a system of co-ordinates.

34 …homeotic… mutations in these genes ca cause the alteration of one structure into another, which is known as homeosis. … the order of the genes along the chromosome is co-linear with the order in which they are expressed along the antero-posterior axis. … all the genes contain a rather similar small region known as the 'homeobox', which codes for part of the protein that binds to DNA.

37 …in a sense, evolution has been quite conservative, even lazy, in its invention of developmental mechanisms.

38 Here, I try to present a scenario––a 'just so story'–– whereby the eukaryotic cell could have evolved multicellular embryonic development. A central requirement of this is that each stage must have a selective advantage and that there is continuity between stages.

40 …in all multicellular organisms that develop from an egg the somatic cells sacrifice themselves for the survival of the egg. … the Baldwin effect… extended by the British embryologist Conrad Waddington into what he called 'genetic assimilation'. In essence it involves an environmentally produced effect becoming part of the developmental programme. An environmental signal is replaced by a developmental one.

DIAMOND
50 Horses had been playing a decisive role in military history ever since they were domesticated at around 4000 B.C. in the Ukraine.

52 …only a tiny fraction of wild mammal and bird species has been successfully domesticated, because domestication requires that a wild animal fulfil many prerequisites: a diet that humans can supply, a sufficiently rapid growth rate, a willingness to breed in captivity, tractable disposition, a social structure involving submissive behaviour towards dominant members of the same species (a behaviour transferable to dominant humans) and lack of a tendency to panic when fenced. Thousands of years ago, humans domesticated every possible large wild mammal species worth domesticating, with the result that there have been no significant additions in modern times, despite the efforts of modern science.

53 Eurasia's east/west axis means that species domesticated in one part of Eurasia could easily spread thousands of miles at the same latitude, encountering the same daylength and climate to which they were already adapted. … In contrast, the north/south axis of the Americas [and Africa] meant that species domesticated in one area could not spread far without encountering daylengths and [54] climates to which they were not adapted.

56 All of Africa's mammalian domesticates––cattle, sheep, goats, horses, even dogs……entered sub-Saharan Africa from the north, from Eurasia.

58 …a north/south axis and a paucity of wild plants and animal species suitable for domestication were doubly decisive in African history, just as they were in Native American history.

61 All things being equal, the rate of human invention is faster, and the rate of cultural loss is slower, in areas occupied by many competing societies with many individuals and in contact with societies elsewhere.

ROGERS
64 …I argue that London, like other complex urban systems, is a fragile and delicate structure that has come full circle in the cycle of evolutionary change. … Intelligent forward planning, anticipatory design and government intervention are necessary to avoid the process of gradual decline and eventual extinction that has affected urban cultures in the past.

70 …just as the elevator made the skyscraper possible…

77 The raw material of the new economy is, as ever, citizens and their knowledge––creativity and initiative. Art and science will be the life blood of knowledge-based development and th key to creation of [78] further wealth.

INGOLD
79 The verb 'to evolve', form the Latin evolvere, originally meant to roll out or unfold. Darwin, as is well known, used the word only once in the first edition of The Origin of Species. It is, in fact, the very last word of the book, and is used in its original sense to convey the idea of the history of life as a grand procession of forms unfolding before the the timeless gaze of the observing naturalist.

81 …Darwin was simply not concerned with the evolution of life as Spencer had conceived of it––that is, as one phase of a cosmic movement tat continually builds itself, through its own properties of dynamic self-organization, into ever novel and increasingly complex structures. His aim was much more modest: to account for the endless adjustment, remodelling and fine-tuning of those manifold and ingenious contrivances by which the current of life… had been carried into every nook and cranny of the habitable world. … the new generation of DWM [descent with modification] theorist would be anxious to correct anyone foolish enough to think that the adaptive modification of species amounted to a kind of evolution. For that… is to confuse phylogenetic change with ontogenetic development. Only the latter, underwritten as it is by a unique programme encoded in the organism's genetic endowment, has the character of the progressive unfolding of organized complexity to which the concept of evolution properly applies.

82 …I am still of the view that developmental biology, rather than DWM theory in its current neo-Darwinian guise, is the most promising place from which to start in the project of integrating biological and social science.

83 It is not my purpose, however, to contend that we need one kind of theory for human beings and another for the rest of the animal kingdom, nor do I mean to come out in favour of Canon Kingsley, to the effect that human beings, having become conscious of the laws of nature, are free to contravene them whenever they feel like it. To the contrary, I aim to show that a paradox of neo-Darwinian evolutionary biology is that it presumes, yet cannot comprehend, the historical process whereby certain humans came to be in a position to formulate it. Although Darwin could explain natural selection, natural selection cannot explain Darwin himself!

87 Those who would seek to construct an order of society, on whatever ideological foundation, must already dwell in a world of other persons and relationships, so that the institutional forms they create are themselves constituted within the flow of social life. …the reality of social life is no more contained within the things we call societies than is history contained within the fabrications of the human mind.

89 Evolutionary theory, it seems, requires hunter-gatherers. …the question of whether human beings differ from other animals in degree or in kind.

90 [ca. 1870] Human history––or what had now come to be called the evolution of society––was understood to march hand-in-hand with the evolution of the brain, through a process of natural selection in which the hapless savage, cast in the role of the vanquished in the struggle for survival, was sooner or later destined for extinction. When Wallace suggested, in his Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection of 1870, that the brains of primitive savages might be just as good as those of European philosophers, and therefore designed to be capable of more than was actually required of them under their simple conditions of life, he was dismissed as a spiritualist crank. For natural selection, it was argued, will furnish the savage only with as much brain power as he needs to get by. Only a Creator would come to think of preparing the savage for civilization in advance of his achieving it.

91 It was really not until after the Second World War, and the atrocities of the Holocaust, that such [i.e., racist] notions ceased to be tolerated in scientific circles. But this left the Darwinian with a problem on their hands. How was the doctrine of evolutionary continuity to be reconciled with the new-found commitment to universal human rights? The Declaration of Human Rights of the United Nations asserted, once again, the fundamental equality of all humans––present and future and, by implication, past as well. … Face with this problem, there was only one way for modern science to go; that is, back to the eighteenth century. … History, as psychologists David Premack and Ann James Premack have recently pronounced, is 'the sequence of changes through which a species passes while remaining biologically stable', and of all the species in the world, only humans have it.

93 In effect, the category of 'hunter-gatherer' was brought in to characterize the original condition of humanity at the cross-roads of two processes of change––the one evolutionary, the other historical––whose separation is logically necessary in order to preserve the claim of science to deliver an authoritative account of the workings of nature in the face of the recognition that the scientist (who, like the rest of us, is only human) belongs to a species that has itself evolved to its present form through a process of variation under natural selection. Humans did not evolve as scientists, but they are thought to have evolved with the capacity to be scientists, and for that matter to read and write, to play the piano, drive cars and even fly rockets to the moon; indeed, to do anything that human beings have ever done or will do. … Stretched between the poles of nature and reason, epitomized respectively by the contrasting figures of the hunter-gatherer and the scientist, is supposed to lie the entirety of human history. … In sum, contemporary evolutionary biology remains locked in the same contradiction that has been there all along. Its claim, that human beings differ from their predecessors in degree rather than in kind, can be upheld only by attributing the total movement of history, from Pleistocene hunting and gathering to modern science and civilization, to a social or cultural process that differs in kind, not degree, from the process of evolution. This contradiction is, of course, but a specific instance of a more general paradox that lies at the heart of Western thought, which has no way of comprehending human beings' creative involvement in the world save by taking themselves out of it.

94 Gazing into the mirror of nature, the scientist sees his own powers of reason reflected back in the inverted form of natural selection. Despite the claims of evolutionary theorists to have dispensed with the archaic subject/object and mind/body dualisms of Western thought, they are still there, albeit displaced onto the opposition between the scientists, to whose sovereign imagination is revealed the design of nature, and the hunter-gatherer whose behaviour is interpreted as the output of innate dispositions installed by natural selection, and of which he or she has no conscious awareness. … Relations are enfolded in persons, in their particular capacities, dispositions and identities, and unfold in purposive social action.

95 …we can no longer accept the idea, central to neo-Darwinian orthodoxy, that human capacities are pre-specified, in advance of development, by virtue of some innate endowment that every individual receives at the point of conception. My contention, to the contrary, is that such capacities arise as emergent properties of the total developmental system constituted by way of the emplacement of the person-to-be, from the outset, within a wider field of relations––including, most importantly, relations with other persons. …My own view… is that sociality is immanent in that very field of relations within which every human life inaugurated and through which it seeks fulfilment.

96 …an agricultural analogy. Farmers do not create crops; they grow them. Through their work in the fields, they establish the environmental conditions for the plants' healthy development. Now just as farmers grow crops, so people 'grow' one another. And it is int eh growing of person, I suggest, rather than in the creation of society, that history is made.

97 That the constituent elements of design are thus imported into the organism, as a kind of evolved architecture, prior to the organism's development within an environmental context, is I believe one of the great delusions of modern biology. To be sure, every organism begins life with its complement of DNA in the genome, but on its own, DNA specifies nothing. There is no 'reading' of the genetic code that is not itself part of the organism's development in its environment. … What is literally passed on from one generation to the next, as Susan Oyama has pointed out in her important book The Ontogeny of Information: Developmental Systems and Evolution, 'is a genome and a segment of the world'. … For Darwin was no Darwinist, let alone a neo-Darwinist, and he was a great deal more sensitive than many of those who nowadays yoke his name to their cause. … It is curious, and not a little disturbing, that Darwin's heresy has now become [98] a new orthodoxy, bordering in some cases almost on faith. Those who claim that neo-Darwinism must be right because there is no alternative, and dismiss all doubters as heretics and enemies of Science, are surely the Wilberforces of the late twentieth century.

BEER
108 The absence/presence of the human in Darwinian theory as Darwin presents it has been a temptation to many interpreters within and beyond fiction. The apparitional quality of the human in his argument in the Origin produces a kind of flirtation that makes readers and commentators desperate to restore humankind to a stable centrality.

109 Evolutionary thinking is not a grid; it is a bundle of apprehensions.

DYSON
119 Sudden loss of symmetry is seen in many of the most important phase transitions as the universe evolves.

121 Both in the non-living universe and on the living earth, evolution alternates between long periods of metastability and short periods of rapid change.

124 The effect of a concept-driven [scientific] revolution is to explain old things in new ways. The effect of a tool-driven revolution is to discover new things that have to be explained.

127 The Aristotelian view [of the celestial sphere as a place of perfect peace and harmony] still dominated the practice of astronomy until 1935. [Fritz] Zwicky was the first astronomer who imagined a violent universe.

131 …a terabyte being a million megabytes.

REES
149 'Ever since the beginning, gravity's "anti-thermodynamic" effects have been amplify[151]ing inhomogeneities, and creating progressively steeper temperature gradients––a prerequisite for emergence of the complexity that lies around us ten billion years later, and of which we are a part.'

Eastern Papal Florilegium

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[I originally posted this florilegium in June, 2007, but I recently updated and polished it, so I decided to re-post it.]

The Pontificator pointed out how, despite Pope St. Gregory's clear insistence on the universal supremacy of Rome, he is a saint in the Eastern Orthodox Church. [NOTE: The archives for the Pontificator's original Pontifications blog were almost all lost when he set up a new blog, and on top of that, he recently gave up blogging altogether. Thank God he's too busy being a Roman Catholic priest! -- EBB 27 Jun 07] The declarations of papal supremacy by Gregory the Great, as well his predecessor, Pope St. Leo the Great (also a saint in the Eastern Orthodox Church) are perhaps sufficient in themselves to demonstrate the explicit ancient basis for papal supremacy in the Tradition, East and West.

To quote Pope Leo the Great at his most papal:

The Lord . . . wanted His gifts to flow into the entire body from Peter himself, as if from the head, in such a way that anyone who had dared to separate himself from the solidarity of Peter would realize that he was himself no longer a sharer in the divine mystery . . . The Apostolic See . . . has on countless occasions been reported to in consultation by bishops . . . And through the appeal of various cases to this see, decisions already made have been either revoked or confirmed, as dictated by longstanding custom.
(Letter to the Bishops of Vienne, July, 445 A.D., 10:1-2; in Jurgens, William A., ed. and tr., The Faith of the Early Fathers [FEF], 3 volumes, Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1970, vol. 3, p. 269)

Although bishops have a common dignity, they are not all of the same rank. Even among the most blessed Apostles, though they were alike in honor, there was a certain distinction of power. All were equal in being chosen, but it was given to one to be preeminent over the others . . . the care of the universal Church would converge in the one See of Peter, and nothing should ever be at odds with this head.
(Letter to Bishop Anastasius of Thessalonica, c.446 A.D., 14:11; in Jurgens, FEF, vol. 3, p. 270)

From the whole world only one, Peter, is chosen to preside over the calling of all nations, and over all the other Apostles, and over the Fathers of the Church . . . Peter . . . rules them all, of whom, too, it is Christ who is their chief ruler. Divine condescension, dearly beloved, has granted to this man in a wonderful and marvelous manner the aggregate of its power; and if there was something that it wanted to be his in common with other leaders, it never gave whatever it did not deny to others except through him.
(Sermons, 4:2; in Jurgens, FEF, vol. 3, p. 275)

[Cf. also Vladimir Soloviev, The Russian Church and the Papacy {El Cajon, CA: Catholic Answers, Inc., 2001}, pp. 163ff., for additional striking quotations by Pope Leo IV explicating and asserting his papal sovereignty, insofar as "Peter does not cease to preside in his See and his consortium with the Eternal Pontiff never fails" Works, ed. Migne, 1846, etc., I:155-56}.]

In similar fashion, as Gregory the Great said,

To all who know the Gospel it is clear that by the words of our Lord the care of the whole Church was committed to Blessed Peter, the Prince of the Apostles . . . Behold, he received the keys of the kingdom of heaven, the power to bind and loose was given to him, and the care and principality of the entire church was committed to him . . . Yet he was not the universal Apostle. But . . . John would be called universal Bishop . . . [Popes had never assumed this title, though it had been given them], lest all the Bishops be deprived of their due meed of honor whilst some special honor be conceded to one.
(Epistles, 5, 37; to Emperor Maurice)

In canonizing and venerating these two popes (not to mention the many other popes it has canonized), the Eastern Orthodox Church has enshrined two of the most ardent and lucid defenders of papal supremacy, and eo ipso entrenched papal supremacy, in its own pre-schism Tradition. As the Pontificator says,

What does one do with this development? Should St Gregory have his sainthood taken away from him? It’s clear that papal primacy was not a medieval corruption. It has its roots in the Patristic period (and of course Catholics would say that it has its roots in Scripture).

A reader (Mr. Jones again) objected that "more is required to establish Papal supremacy than a 'Because I say so' coming from a Pope." This is a valid point, as far as it goes. Why trust a pope about the pope? For that matter, why trust Western theology, the rootbed of the papacy, in this debate? What we need is the pure and unpapalized lumen orientalum. So, I decided to compile this long list of (primarily Eastern) patristic and canonical quotations about the Petrine credentials of the Roman See.

Let me add that reading such profoundly Romish stuff by such profoundly Eastern Fathers, frankly, makes my bowels quiver. I nearly wept for my lingering this side of the Tiber when I first read the great St. Maximus's acclamation of Rome's universal supremacy. Seeing it all again, and now with so many more buddies to back him up, makes my head spin. [NOTE: I'm happy to report that, since I first posted this florilegium, I heeded the counsel of these Fathers and became a Catholic (on 27 March 2005) in communion with the bishop of Rome.]

+ + + + + + + + + +

As you read all this, first first keep in mind that, as the Church is one Divine Body and the Tradition is one whole and holy truth, early ambiguity about the "presidency" of Rome (in, e.g., Clement, Ignatius, Irenaeus, Tertullian, et al.) must be understood in light of the subsequent guidance of the Holy Spirit. What ambiguities or rhetorical "excesses" in the early Church were not anathematized by the later reinforces the continuity of thought behind transient verbal ambiguities.

Much the same can be said, for example, about understanding the development of the dogma of the Trinity in Tradition. Early ambiguities must be parsed in light of Nicea, Constantinople, etc. Certain dogmatic developments, crystallizations of organic truths, necessitate working according to and from those dogmas, not without of or against them.

A second important factor ro recall while reading such quotations, is that, despite the attempts of some to reduce such papal rhetoric to, well, mere rhetoric, the historical breadth and explicit doctrinal consistency of these quotations put the lie to the deflationary claim that early papal Romanism is but Classical verbal obeisance. In other words, while there is certainly a rhetorical tradition in which such quotations belong, that context gives us no reason to ignore the content of the patristic testimony about Rome's Petrine primacy. To have the same message proclaimed so clearly, for so long, by so many different people, in so many different cultures and in so many different situations––well, it strains credibility to claim that all of it boils down to mere ornate rhetorical custom. Emphasizing the distorting effects of rhetoric to such an extreme degree actually undermines the perspicuity of Scripture, since the Bible, as an ancient text[1], is even more profoundly obscured by ancient cultural and rhetoric. Words do have meaning, even centuries apart, and people are made to grasp meaning.[2]

A third aspect to consider is this: Outside of the Bishop of Rome, of whom else was it ever said, "Peter has spoken through him!"? Likewise, outside of the Catholic Church, who else can, much less does, still speak about the Pope as the Fathers cited below speak of the Roman See? In other words, what Church still has a coherent Petrine voice and still has a robust Petrine "rhetoric" to match the patristic quotations cited below?

But enough preface. My various adjustments are in brackets, like so: [ – EBB]. Please enter humbly into these words of Holy Christian Tradition.[3]

+ + + + + + + + + + + +


+ St. Ignatius of Antioch (ca. 98-117 A.D.):
"Ignatius, also called Theophorus, to the Church that has found mercy in the transcendent Majesty of the Most High and... which presides in the chief place of the Roman territory, a church worthy of God, worthy of honor... presiding in love, maintaining the law of Christ, and bearer of the Father's name: her [and her members -- EBB] do I therefore salute... who imperturbably enjoy the full measure of God's grace and have every foreign stain filtered out of them."
(Letter to the Romans, preface)

+ Irenaeus of Lyons (ca. 175-189 A.D.):
"Since, however, it would be very tedious, in such a volume as this, to reckon up the successions of all the Churches, we do put to confusion all those who, in whatever manner, whether by an evil self-pleasing, by vainglory, or by blindness and perverse opinion, assemble in unauthorized meetings; [we do this, I say,] by indicating that tradition derived from the apostles, of the very great, the very ancient, and universally known Church founded and organized at Rome by the two most glorious apostles, Peter and Paul; as also [by pointing out] the faith preached to men, which comes down to our time by means of the successions of the bishops. For it is a matter of necessity that every Church should agree with this Church, on account of its preeminent authority [propter potentiorem principalitatem] – that is, the faithful everywhere – inasmuch as the Apostolic Tradition has been preserved continuously by those who are everywhere.”
(Adversus Haereses 3:3:2)

+ Hippolytus (ca. 225 A.D.):
"Peter, the Rock of the faith, whom Christ our Lord called blessed, the teacher of the Church, the first disciple, he who has the keys of the kingdom."
(Exfabrico. n.9)

+ Origen (ca. 230 A.D.):
"Peter likewise, on whom the Church was founded by the good pleasure of the Lord, lays it down in his epistle..."
(Origen, De Bono Patientia, p. 484)

+ Cyprian of Carthage (ca. 252 A.D.), writing to Pope Stephen in Rome:
“They [those in favor or re-baptizing lapsed Christians – EBB] dare to sail even to the chair of Peter and carry letters from schismatics and seculars to the principal Church, the source of sacerdotal unity.”
(Epistula 55:14, [PL 3:844-45]) 

[14 Apr 2013 –– I want to insert a detour here. Firmilianus (d. ca. 269) was a bishop of Cæsarea, an eastern see, and is to this day venerated in the eastern and western Church. His claim to fame, as it were, is how he vehemently opposed Pope Stephen in the controversy over the re-baptism of the lapsi (Christians who fell away into heresy under persecution). When Pope Stephen wrote an edict that lapsi could be welcomed back into the Church without being baptized again, but merely by way of the imposition of hands, as was the Roman custom, hardliners like St. Cyprian of Carthage and Firmilian protested to the Pope's "power grab". Opponents of papal authority are wont to cite Cyprian and Firmilian's reactions as proof that there was no early patristic idea of the supremacy and infallibility of the Petrine See at Rome. But this is sloppy for a few reasons. 

First, the mere fact that some bishops opposed a Pope is irrelevant. If uncontested uniformity is the acid test for orthodoxy, then, sorry to say, little if anything in Christian history could assume the mantle of dogma. In the ensuing two centuries after Firmilianus, there was enormous controversy about the origin of the Son of God, the nature of the Incarnation, the personhood of the Spirit, and even the canon of Scripture. Ultimately, however, truth was declared, always in union with the Roman See, by the way, and always in such a way as Eastern Orthodox and conservative Protestants accept to this day. (The phrase Athanasius contra mundum is a good reminder not only that, as far as papal dissent goes, truth is not a matter of conformity, but also that, as far as the Church infallibility goes, the Catholic Church does not claim that only the Bishop of Rome can be infallible. Nor, pace the feverish anti-papalism of this forum thread, does the fact there are many "papas" in the Church negate the Papa-cy of Rome. Analogy, analogy, analogy. Rome is a brother see with all others. Rome is a pope among popes. Peter was an apostle among apostles. The Bible is a book among books. Christ was a man among men. Yes, yes… and yet…!) Moreover, Christ Himself was opposed by His own besserwissers, but that fact isn't cited by Protestants or Eastern Orthodox that there was no "early consensus" about Christ's authority. Indeed, authority is precisely what is needed in the face of such conflict! 

Second, the protests lodged against Pope Stephen were not primarily about his authority, but rather about his orthodoxy. Firmilian did not deny that Peter was the foundation of the Church, nor even that Rome was Peter's successor. In fact, he complained precisely because Stephen "boasts of the place of his episcopate and contends the he holds the succession from Peter, on whom the foundations of the church were laid. Yet, he introduces many other rocks and establishes the buildings of many [heretical] churches! … Stephen, who declares that he holds the chair of Peter by succession, is not stirred with zeal against heretics [as a successor of Peter ought to be]" (5.394 Bercot, emphasis added). As in the case of Honorius, we see that the problem is that a Pope was charged with failing to live up with his calling as the successor of Peter, not that Peter was not the Rock, nor that there was no such Roman succession. Stephen Ray addresses these points very well on pp. 187–188 of Upon This Rock.

Further, as Fr. Stanley Jaki notes in his The Keys of the Kingdom, actions speak louder than words. The fact that St. Cyprian sought Rome's aid against Novatianism speaks volumes, especially since he also wrote of Rome as "the Chair of Peter and to the principal church, in which sacerdotal unity has its source" (Epistle to Cornelius [Bishop of Rome] 59:14). Whatever his complaints against Stephen may have been, he never lost sight of the authority of the Roman See.
Third, to be blunt, Pope Stephen was right and even the Eastern Orthodox recognize this by accepting the position of Pope Stephen concerning lapsi. If Firmilian and Cyprian were right, the Church as a whole would have followed them in(to) that truth. Since, however, they were wrong, and Stephen was right, the Church followed Rome. You can't cite the rectitude of an opposed pope as proof against the papacy. Church history must be judged as a whole, particularly in light of the ways in which Providence has objectively guided Her in the past.]

+ Aphraates the Sage (ca. 330 A.D.), one of the oldest fathers of the Syrian Church:
"[King] David handed over the Kingdom to [Prince] Solomon and was gathered to his people; and Jesus handed over the Keys to Simon and ascended and returned to Him Who sent Him."
(Aphraates, xxi, 13).

+ St. Peter, Bishop of Alexandria (306-311 A.D.):
"Peter, set above the Apostles."
(Peter of Alexandria, Canon. ix, Galland, iv. p. 98)

+ St. Anthony of Egypt (ca. 330 A.D.):
"Peter, the Prince of the Apostles..."
(Epist. xvii., Galland, iv p. 687)

+ St. Ephraem the Syrian (ca. 350 A.D.):
"Then Peter deservedly received the Vicariate of Christ over His people."
(Sermon de Martyrio. SS. App. Petri et Pauli)

“[Peter was] the firstborn of those that bear the Keys.”
("Sermo in SS. Apostolorum", cited in Allnatt, Cathedra Petri [London: Burnes and Oates, 1878], p. 32)

[As if spoken by Jesus:] "Simon my follower, I have made you the foundation of My holy Church. I betimes called you Peter, because you will support all its buildings. You are the inspector of all who will build on earth a Church for Me. If they should wish to build what is false, you, the foundation, will condemn them. You are the head of the fountain from which My teaching flows, you are the chief of My disciples. Through you I will give drink to all peoples. Yours is the life-giving sweetness which I dispense. I have chosen you to be, as it were, the first-born in My institution, and so that, as the heir, you may be the executor of all My treasures. I have given you the keys of My Kingdom. Behold, I have given you authority over all My treasures!"

"To whom, O Lord, didst Thou entrust that most precious pledge of the heavenly keys? To Bar Jonas, the Prince of the Apostles, with whom, I implore Thee, may I share Thy bridal chamber...Our Lord chose Simon Peter and appointed him chief of the Apostles, foundation of the holy Church and guardian of His establishment. He appointed him head of the Apostles and commanded him to feed His flock and teach it laws for preserving the purity of its beliefs."
(Homilies, 4:1, ca. 350 A.D.)

+ St. Athanasius (ca. 362 A.D.):
"Rome is called the Apostolic throne."
(Hist. Arian, ad Monach. n. 3; Migne PG 25:734-35.)

"The Chief, Peter."
(In Ps. xv. 8, Migne, tom. iii., p. 106)

+ St. Cyril of Jerusalem, Patriarch (ca. 363 A.D.):
"Peter, the chief and foremost leader of the Apostles, before a little maid thrice denied the Lord, but moved to penitence, he wept bitterly."
(Catech. ii. n. 15)

+ Optatus (ca. 367 A.D.):
"In the city of Rome the Episcopal chair was given first to Peter, the chair in which Peter sat, the same who was head — that is why he is also called Cephas ["Rock"] — of all the Apostles, the one chair in which unity is maintained by all. Neither do the Apostles proceed individually on their own, and anyone who would presume to set up another chair in opposition to that single chair would, by that very fact, be a schismatic and a sinner.... Recall then the origins of your chair, those of you who wish to claim for yourselves the title of holy Church."
(The Schism of the Donatists, 2:2)

+ St. Gregory of Nazianzen (ca. 370 A.D.):
"Seest thou that of the disciples of Christ, all of whom were great and deserving of the choice, one is called a Rock and is entrusted with the Foundations of the Church..."
(T.i. or. xxii. n.18)

+ St. Gregory of Nyssa (ca. 371 A.D.):
"The memory of Peter, the Head of the Apostles, is celebrated; and magnified indeed with him are the other members of the Church; but [upon him] is the Church of God firmly established. For he is, agreeably to the gift conferred upon him by the Lord, that unbroken and most firm Rock upon which the Lord built His Church."
(Alt. Or. De S. Steph., Galland. t. vi.)"Peter, with his whole soul, associates himself with the Lamb; and, by means of the change of his name, he is changed by the Lord into something more divine. Instead of Simon, being both called and having become a Rock, the great Peter did not by advancing little by little attain unto this grace, but at once he listened to his brother (Andrew), believed in the Lamb, and was through faith perfected, and, having cleaved to the Rock, became himself Peter."
(T. i. Hom. in C. Cantic, xv.)

+ St. Macarius of Egypt (ca. 371 A.D.):
"Moses was succeeded by Peter, who had committed to his hands the new Church of Christ, and the true priesthood."
(Hom. xxvi. n. 23, p. 101)

+ St. Basil the Cappadocian (ca. 329-379 A.D.):
"What a hardened heart would not be induced to fear God’s judgment if even that great exactor of so great a judgment as Peter, who was preferred before all the disciples, who, alone received a greater testimony and blessing that the rest, to whom were trusted the keys of the kingdom of heaven, also has to hear: ‘If I do not wash you, you will have no part in me’.”
(De judicio Dei, Proemium, n. 7 [PG 31:671])

+ St. Epiphanius of Salamis (ca. 385 A.D.):
"Holy men are therefore called the temple of God, because the Holy Spirit dwells in them; as that Chief of the Apostles testifies, he that was found to be blessed by the Lord, because the Father had revealed unto him. To him then did the Father reveal His true Son; and the same [Peter] furthermore reveals the Holy Spirit. This was befitting in the First of the Apostles, that firm Rock upon which the Church of God is built, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. The gates of hell are heretics and heresiarchs. For in every way was the faith confirmed in him who received the keys of heaven; who looses on earth and binds in heaven. For in him are found all subtle questions of faith. He was aided by the Father so as to be [or lay] the Foundation of the security [or firmness] of the faith. He [Peter] heard from the same God, 'feed my lambs'; to him He entrusted the flock; he leads the way admirably in the power of his own Master.
(T. ii. in Anchor)

+ St. John Chrysostom, Patriarch of Constantinople (ca. 387 A.D.):
"Peter, that Leader of the choir, that Mouth of the rest of the Apostles, that Head of the brotherhood, that one set over the entire universe, that Foundation of the Church."
(In illud hoc Scitote)

"[Peter], the foundation of the Church, the Coryphaeus of the choir of the Apostles, the vehement lover of Christ ...he who ran throughout the whole world, who fished the whole world; this holy Coryphaeus of the blessed choir; the ardent disciple, who was entrusted with the keys of heaven, who received the spiritual revelation. Peter, the mouth of all Apostles, the head of that company, the ruler of the whole world."
(De Eleemos, iii. 4; Hom. de decem mille tal. 3)

"And why, then, passing by the others, does He converse with Peter on these things? (John 21:15). He was the chosen one of the Apostles, and the mouth of the disciples, and the leader of the choir. On this account, Paul also went up on a time to see him rather than the others (Galatians 1:18). And withal, to show him that he must thenceforward have confidence, as the denial was done away with, He puts into his hands the presidency over the brethren. And He brings not forward the denial, nor reproaches him with what had past, but says, 'If you love me, preside over the brethren, ...and the third time He gives him the same injunction, showing what a price He sets the presidency over His own sheep. And if one should say, 'How then did James receive the throne of Jerusalem?,' this I would answer that He appointed this man [Peter] teacher, not of that throne, but of the whole world."
(In Joan. Hom. lxxxviii. n. 1, tom. Viii)

"'And in those days,' it says, 'Peter stood up in the midst of the disciples, and said.' (Acts v. 15.) Both as being ardent, and as having been put in trust by Christ with the flock, and as having precedence in honor, he always begins the discourse. ... But observe how Peter does everything with the common consent; nothing imperiously. ... 'Men and brethren,' says Peter. For if the Lord called them brethren, much more may he. ... 'And his bishopric let another take' [Psalm lxix, 25]; that is, his office, his priesthood. So that this, he says, is not my counsel, but His who hath foretold these things. For, that he may not seem to be undertaking a great thing, and just such as Christ had done, he adduces the Prophet as a witness. ... Why does he make it their business too? That the matter might not become an object of strife, and they might not fall into contention about it. For if the Apostles themselves once did this, much more might those. This he ever avoids. Wherefore at the beginning he said, 'Men and brethren. It behooves' to choose from among you. He defers the decision to the whole body, thereby both making the elected objects of reverence and himself keeping clear of all invidiousness with regard to the rest. ... Then why did it not rest with Peter to make the election himself: what was the motive? This; that he might not seem to bestow it of favor. And besides, he was not yet endowed with the spirit. ... Not he appointed them: but it was he that introduced the proposition to that effect, at the same time pointing out that even this was not his own, but from old time by prophecy; so that he acted as expositor, not as preceptor. ... Again, consider the moderation of James. He it was who received the Bishopric of Jerusalem, and here he says nothing. Mark also the great moderation of the other Apostles, how they concede the throne to him, and no longer dispute with each other. ... Here is forethought for providing a teacher; here was the first who ordained a teacher. He did not say, ‘We are sufficient.’ So far was he beyond all vain-glory, and he looked to one thing alone. And yet he had the same power to ordain as they all collectively. But well might these things be done in this fashion, through the noble spirit of the man, and because prelacy then was not an affair of dignity, but of provident care for the governed. ... and he asks for one out of the whole body: with good right, as having been put in charge of them: for to him had Christ said, 'And when thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren.' (Luke xxii. 32, Ben.)"
(Homily III on Acts i. 12.)

"[God wills] to make the Church immovable in so great an onset of waves, and to cause a fisherman to be stronger than any rock, when the whole world wars against him . . . as the Father said, speaking to Jeremias, that He would set him as a column of brass and as a wall; but Jeremias to a single nation, Peter to the whole world. . . . The Father gave to Peter the revelation of the Son [cf. Matthew 16 – EBB] but the Son gave to him to spread that of the Father and of Himself throughout the whole world, and to a mortal man he entrusted the power over all that is in heaven, in giving the keys to him who extended the Church throughout the world.... He [Jesus] allowed the coryphaeus to fall, to make him more self-restrained, and to anoint him for yet greater love. . . . He moderates him, that he might not in the future have the same fault, when he should receive the government of the world....”
(Cited in Chapman, Studies on the Early Papacy [London: Sheed & Ward, 1928], pp. 72-98., as cited in Jaki, S. Eastern Orthodoxy's Witness to Papal Primacy [Port Huron, MI: Real View Books, 2004], p. 21ff.)

"God has had great account of this city Antioch, . . . especially in that he ordered Peter, the ruler [epistates] of the whole world, to whom he entrusted the keys of heaven, to whom he committed the office of bringing all in [the Fold of Christ], to pass a long time here, so that our city stood to him in the place of the whole world. . . . [Although Flavian, bishop of Antioch,] has succeeded to the virtue of Peter, and also to his chair [in the city which] received the coryphaeus of the apostles as its teacher in the beginning . . . [yet even] though we received him as teacher, we did not retain him to the end, but gave him up to Royal Rome. Nay, but we did retain him [by retaining his faith, but not his body].”
(Cited in Chapman, Studies on the Early Papacy [London: Sheed & Ward, 1928], pp. 72-98., as cited in Stanley Jaki, Eastern Orthodoxy's Witness to Papal Primacy [Port Huron, MI: Real View Books, 2004], p. 23f.)

+ Asterius (ca. 400 A.D.):
"In order that he may show his power, God has endowed none of his disciples with gifts like Peter. But, having raised him with heavenly gifts, he has set him above all ... as first disciple and greater among the brethren, ... [and thus] has shown, by the test of deeds, the power of the Spirit. The first to be called, he followed at once.... The Saviour confided to this man, as some special trust, the whole universal Church, after having asked him three times 'Lovest thou me?'. And he receive the world in charge..."
(Homily 8, in Giles, pp. 145-146)

+ St. John Cassian (ca. 362-435 A.D.):
"O Peter, Prince of Apostles, it is just that you should teach us, since you were yourself taught by the Lord; and also that you should open to us the gate of which you have received the Key. Keep out all those who are undermining the heavenly House; turn away those who are trying to enter through false caverns and unlawful gates since it is certain that no one can enter in at the gate of the Kingdom except the one unto whom the Key, placed by you in the churches, shall open it."
(Against the Nestorians on the Incarnation, Book III, Chap 12)

+ Bachiarius, monk, (fl. 420 A.D.):
"...none of the heresies could gain hold of or move the Chair of Peter, that is the See of faith."
(Professio fidei, 2; Migne PL 20:1023; cited in Allnatt, Cathedra Petri [London: Burnes and Oates, 1878], p. 67)

+ St. Cyril of Alexandria (ca. 424 A.D.):
"He [Christ] promises to found the [local and whole – EBB] Church, assigning immovableness to it, as He is the Lord of strength, and over this He sets Peter as shepherd."
(Comm. on Matt., ad loc.)

+ John Cassian, monk (ca. 430 A.D.), writing to Pope Celestine I:
"That great man, the disciple of disciples, that master among masters, who wielding the government of the Roman Church possessed the principle authority in faith and in priesthood. Tell us, therefore, we beg of you, Peter, prince of Apostles, tell us how the Churches must believe in God."
(Contra Nestorium, III, 12, CSEL, vol. 17, p. 276).

+ Philip, a papal legate, as quoted and endorsed in the Acts of the Council of Ephesus, Session III (ca. 431 A.D.):
"There is no doubt, and in fact it has been known in all ages, that the holy and most blessed Peter, prince and head of the Apostles, pillar of faith, and foundation of the Catholic Church, received the keys of the kingdom from our Lord Jesus Christ, the Savior and Redeemer of the human race, and that to him was given the power of loosing and binding sins: who down even to to-day and forever, lives and judges in his successors. The holy and most blessed Pope Celestine, according to due order, is his successor and holds his place...."[4]
(cf. Labbe & Cossart, Concilia, Tom. III, col. 621; NPNF, XIV:223)

+ Socrates Scholasticus (ca. 380-450 A.D.), a Greek Church historian in Constantinople:
"...the churches shall not make any ordinances against the opinion of the bishop of Rome."
(The Ecclesiastical History 2, 8, NPNF2, 2:38)

+ The Emperor Theodosius I (347—395 A.D.) and Valentinian writing to Aetius, Master of the Military and Patrician:
"It is certain that for us the only defence lies in the favour of the God of heaven; and to deserve it our first care is to support the Christian faith and its venerable religion. Inasmuch then as the primacy of the apostolic see is assured, by the merit of S. Peter, who is chief of the episcopal order, by the rank of the city of Rome, and also by the authority of a sacred synod, let no one presume to attempt any illicit act contrary to the authority of that see. For then at length will the peace of the churches be maintained everywhere, if the whole body acknowledges its ruler.

"Hitherto these customs have been observed without fail; but Hilary of Arles, as we are informed by the trustworthy report of that venerable man Leo, Pope of Rome, has with contumacious daring ventured upon certain unlawful proceedings.... For Hilary who is called bishop of Arles, without consulting the pontiff of the church of the city of Rome, has in solitary rashness usurped his jurisdiction by the ordination of bishops ... and after investigation they have been dispersed by the order of that pious man the Pope of the city. The sentence applies to Hilary and to those whom he has wickedly ordained. This same sentence would have been valid through the Gauls without imperial sanction; for what is not allowed in the Church to the authority of so great a pontiff? Hilary is allowed still to be called a bishop, only by the kindness of the gentle president; and our just command is, that it is not lawful either for him or for anyone else to mix church affairs with arms or to obstruct the orders of the Roman overseer. ... [I]n order that not even the least disturbance may arise amongst the churches, nor the discipline of religion appear in any instance to be weakened, we decree by this eternal law that it shall not be lawful for bishops ... contrary to ancient custom, to do aught without the authority of the venerable Pope of the eternal city. And whatever the authority of the apostolic see has sanctioned, or may sanction, shall be the law for all; so that if any bishop summoned to trial before the pontiff of Rome shall neglect to come, he shall be compelled to appear by the governor of that province. Those things which our divine parents conferred on the Roman church are to be upheld in every way."
(Valentinian III, Certum est. 8 July 445. In Leo, Ep. II. [P.L. 54. 637; Kidd, Docs. 2. 282.])

+ Emperor Marcian (r. 450-457 A.D.), writing to Pope Leo IV:
"In all that concerns the Catholic religion and the faith of Christians, we have thought it right to approach in the first place Your Holiness who is overseer and guardian of the divine faith."
(Mansi, 6:93)

+ Empress Pulcheria, wife of Marcian, writing to Pope Leo IV:
"[I am sure that the council] will define the Catholic belief by your authority, as Christian faith and piety require."
(Mansi, 6:101.)

+ St. Peter Chrysologus (ca. 449 A.D.):
"We exhort you in every respect, honorable brother, to heed obediently what has been written by the most blessed pope in the city of Rome, for blessed Peter, who lives and presides in his own see, provides the true faith to those who seek it. For we ... cannot try cases on the faith without the consent of the bishop of Rome."
(Letters 25:2)

"Just as Peter received his name from the rock, because he was the first to deserve to establish the Church, by reason of his steadfastness of faith, so also Stephen was named from a crown...the first who deserved to bear witness with his blood. Let Peter hold his ancient primacy of the apostolic choir. Let him open to those who enter the kingdom of heaven. Let him bind the guilty with his power and absolve the penitent in kindness."
(Sermo 154, P.L. 52. 608.)

+ Flavian, patriarch of Constantinople, (d. 449 A.D.), writing to Pope Leo IV:
"The whole question [of Eutychianism -- EBB] needs only your single decision and all will be settled in peace and quietness. Your sacred letter will with God's help completely suppress the heresy... and so the convening of a council which is any case difficult will be rendered superfluous."
(As cited in Vladimir Solovyev, Russia and the Universal Church, trans. H Rees [London: Geoffrey Bles, 1948], p. 134)

+ Theodoret, Bishop of Cyrus in Syria (ca. 450 A.D.):
"If Paul, the herald of the truth, the trumpet of the Holy Spirit, hastened to the great Peter, to convey from him the solution to those in Antioch, who were at issue about living under the law, how much more do we, poor and humble, run to the Apostolic Throne (Rome) to receive from you (Pope Leo) healing for wounds of the the Churches. For it pertains to you to have primacy in all things [direct us in all things]; for your throne is adorned with many prerogatives. ... Your city has the fullest abundance of good things from the giver of all good. . . . But her chief decoration is her faith, to which the divine apostle is a sure witness when he exclaims "Your faith is proclaimed in all the world"; and if, immediately after receiving the seeds of the saving gospel, she bore such a weight of wondrous fruit, what words are sufficient to express the piety which is now found in her? She has, too, the tombs of our common fathers and teachers of the truth, Peter and Paul, to enlighten the souls of the faithful. And this blessed and divine pair arose indeed in the East, and shed its rays in all directions, but voluntarily underwent the sunset of life in the West, from whence now they light up the whole world. These have rendered your see so glorious: this the height of your good things. For their God has made their see bright, since he has settled your holiness in it to send forth the rays of the true faith."
(Mansi, Sacrum Conciliorum, 6:36, 37, Ep. Leoni, lii, 1, 5, 6. PL. liv, 847 and 851, cf. PG. Lxxxiii, 1311S and 1315S)

"...Twenty-six years I have been a bishop; I have undergone countless labours; I have struggled hard for the truth; I have freed tens of thousands of heretics and brought them to the Saviour, and now they have stripped me of my priesthood, and are exiling me from the city. ... Wherefore I beseech your sanctity to persuade the very sacred and holy Archbishop Leo to [to use his Apostolic power and] bid me hasten to your council. For that holy see [throne] has precedence of [sovereignty over] all churches in the world, for many reasons; and above all for this, that it is free from all taint of heresy, and that no bishop of false opinions has ever sat upon its throne, but it has kept the grace of the apostles undefiled."
(Ep. 116, to Renatus the presbyter. A.D. 449. [P.G. 83. 1324; P.N.F. 3. 295B.]; Tom. iv. Epist. cxvi. Renato, p. 1197)

"For as I" [he says, quoting Luke 22:31,32 -- EBB] "did not despise thee when tossed, so be thou a support to thy brethren in trouble, and the help by which thou wast saved do thou thyself impart to others, and exhort them not while they are tottering, but raise them up in their peril. For this reason I suffer thee also to slip, but do not permit thee to fail, [thus] through thee gaining steadfastness for those who are tossed." So this great pillar supported the tossing and sinking world, and permitted it not to fall entirely and gave it back stability, having been ordered to feed God's sheep."
(Oratio de Caritate, P.G. 82. 1509.)

"After the unjust sentence which it pleased Dioscorus to pronounce against me . . . I appealed to the throne of the prince of the apostles, the Apostolic See, and to the holy synod which is under the authority of your Holiness . . . ."
(Theodoret, Schwartz. Acta Concil. Œcum. II Vol. II, pars prior, p. 78)

+ The Greek historian Salminius Hermias Sozomen (ca. 375?-447/48 A.D.), a contemporary of Pope Leo IV:
"8. Athanasius, escaping from Alexandria, came to Rome. Paul, bishop of Constantinople, Marcellus of Ancyra, and Asclepas of Gaza went there at the same time. Asclepas, who was opposed to the Arians, ... and Quintian had been appointed in his place. Lucius, bishop of Adrianople, who had been deposed from his office on another charge, was also staying in Rome. The Roman bishop, on learning the accusation against each one, and finding that they were all like-minded about the doctrine of the council of Nicaea, admitted them to communion as of like orthodoxy. And alleging that the care for all belongs to him, because of the dignity of his see, he restored each to his own church. . . . 10. ...Julius, learning that Athanasius was not safe in Egypt, called him back to himself. He replied at the same time to the letter of the bishops who were convened at Antioch, for just then he happened to have received it, and he accused them of having secretly introduced innovations contrary to the dogmas of the Nicene council, and of having violated the laws of the Church by not calling him to the synod. For there is a priestly law, making void whatever is effected against the mind of the bishop of Rome."
(Sozomen, Church History, Book 3. A.D. 450. [P.G. 67. 1052; Bagster 113.])

+ Council of Chalcedon (451 A.D.):
"...the most holy and blessed archbishop Leo, archbishop of the great and elder Rome, through us, and through this present most holy synod, together with the thrice blessed and all-glorious Peter the Apostle, who is the rock and foundation of the Catholic Church, and the foundation of the orthodox faith, hath stripped him [Disoscorus] of every priestly office [the episcopate]. Therefore let this most holy and great synod... [punish Dioscorus -- EBB]."
(Schaff and Wace, eds., NPNF, 2nd series, vol. 14, p. 259-260; cf. also Mansi, Conc. Ampl. Coll. VI, 1047. [Act III]; Schwartz II, Vol. I, pars. altera p. 29 [225] [Act II])

"It is you who through your legates [i.e., his apostolic delegates Paschasinus of Lilybaeum, Lucentius of Ascoli, Frs. Boniface and Basil, and Julian bishop of Cos – EBB] have guided and ruled the whole gathering of the fathers, as the head rules the members, by showing them the true meaning of the dogma [of the hypostatic union]."
(synod of Chalcedon to Pope St. Leo. Ep. xcviii, PL. liv, 951. Mansi vi, 147-148)

"1. ...You are set as an interpreter to all of the voice of blessed Peter and to all you impart the blessings of that faith. And so we too, wisely taking you as our guide in all that is good, have shown to the sons of the Church their inheritance of the truth. ... For if where two or three are gathered together in his name, he has said that he is in the midst of them, must he not have been much more particularly present with 520 priests who preferred to their country and their ease the spread of knowledge about him? Of all these you were the chief, as head to members, showing your goodwill in matters of organization. ...

"2. The enemy would have been like a wild beast outside the fold...if the late pontiff of the Alexandrians had not thrown himself to him for a prey....By his terror-won votes he acquitted Eutyches.... Besides all this he extended his fury even against him who had been charged with the custody of the vine by the Saviour -- we refer to your holiness -- and he intended to excommunicate one who was zealous to unite the body of the Church. ...

"4. We mention further that we have made certain other decisions also for the good management and stability of church affairs, as we are persuaded that your holiness will accept and ratify them when you are told. ... We have also ratified the canon [number XVI – EBB] of the 150 holy fathers who met at Constantinople...which declares that after your most holy and apostolic see, the see of Constantinople shall have privileges, being placed second; for we are persuaded that, with your usual interest, you have often extended that apostolic radiance of yours even to the church of Constantinople also. ... And so, deign, most holy and blessed father, to embrace as your own, and as lovable and agreeable to good order, the things we have decreed, for the removal of all confusion, and the confirmation of church order. ... But we ... recognized as fitting the confirmation of the honour by this universal council, and we confidently endorsed it,... knowing that every success of the children redounds to the parents. We therefore beg you to honour our decision by your assent, and as we have yielded agreement to the head in noble things, so may the head also fulfil what is fitting for the children. Thus ... the see of Constantinople will receive its recompense for having always displayed such loyalty on matters of religion towards you, and for having so zealously linked itself to you in full agreement."
(Acts of the Council of Chalcedon, To Leo. A.D. 451. Leo, Ep. 98. [P.L. 54. 952; P.N.F. 12. 72A.])

+ Anatolius, Patriarch of Constantinople (449-458 A.D.):
"With regard to the decree laid down by the recent synod of Chalcedon [i.e., Canon XXVI, which ascribed the next place of honor to Constantinople, but was later rescinded by Pope Leo IV – EBB] . . . let your Beatitude rest assured that this was not my fault. But it was the desire of the reverend clergy of Constantinople . . . the validity and confirmation of this action being reserved to the authority of your Beatitude".
(Ep. Leoni cxxxii., 4. PL. liv, 1084. Mansi vi, 278S)

+ Macedonius, Patriarch of Constantinople (466-516 A.D.):
"Macedonius declared, when desired by the Emperor Anastasius to condemn the Council of Chalcedon, that 'such a step without an Ecumenical Synod presided over by the Pope of Rome is impossible.'"
(Patr. Graec. 108: 360a [Theophan. Chronogr., pp. 234-346 seq.])

+ St. Fulgentius of Ruspe (465-533 A.D.):
"That which the Roman Church, which has the loftiest place on the earth, teaches and holds, so does the whole Christian world believe without hesitation for their justification, and does not delay to confess for their salvation"
(Letter 17, 21, ca. A.D. 519).

+ Signatories of the "Formula of Hormisdas" (519 A.D.) to restore union after the Acacian Schism (484 A.D.):
"[We agree that] in the Apostolic See the Catholic Religion is always kept immaculate. . . . We receive and approve all the letters of the blessed Pope Leo . . . and, as we have said, we follow the Apostolic See in everything and teach all its laws. Therefore, I hope that I may deserve to be with you [Pope Hormisdas, r. 514-523 – EBB] in that one Communion taught by the Apostolic See, in which Communion is the whole, real and perfect solidity of the Christian Religion. And I promise that in the future I will not say in the holy Mysteries the names of those who are banished from the Communion of the Catholic Church, that is, who do not agree with the Apostolic See."
(Cf. Adrian Fortescue, The Eastern Orthodox Church [London: Catholic Truth Society, 1925], pp. 85-86; as cited in Stanley Jaki, Eastern Orthodoxy's Witness to Papal Primacy [Port Huron, MI: Real View Books, 2004], p. 21f.**)

+ John the Cappadocian, Patriarch of Constantinople (518-519 A.D.), writing to Pope Hormisdas:
"It is first of all clear that the Catholic religion is guarded inviolate in the Apostolic See [Prima salus est quia in sede apostolica inviolabilis semper catholica custoditur religio]."
(Labbe, Concil., 8:451:2)

+ Emperor Justinian (520-533 A.D.), writing to Pope John I:
"Yielding honor to the Apostolic See and to Your Holiness, and honoring your Holiness, as one ought to honor a father, we have hastened to subject all the priests of the whole Eastern district, and to unite them to the See of your Holiness, for we do not allow of any point, however manifest and indisputable it be, which relates to the state of the Churches, not being brought to the cognizance of your Holiness, since you are the Head of all the holy Churches."
(Epist. ad. Pap. Joan. ii., Cod. Justin. lib. I. tit. 1).

…and to Pope Hormisdas:
"Let your Apostleship show that you have worthily succeeded to the Apostle Peter, since the Lord will work through you, as Supreme Pastor, the salvation of all."
(Coll. Avell. Ep. 196, July 9th, 520).

+ Byzantine Emperor Justinian, to Pope St. Agapetus (ca. 535 A.D.):
"...the source of the priesthood...the venerable See of the most high Apostle Peter...No one doubts that the height of the Supreme Pontificate is at Rome."
(as cited in The Eastern Churches and the Papacy by S. Herbert Scott, p. 231.)

+ Patriarch Mennas (ca. 536-552 A.D.; d. 552 A.D.), commemorated in the West on August 25, in his own sentence against Anthimus at a council in Constantinople (ca. 536 A.D.):
"Indeed Agapetus of holy memory, pope of Old Rome, giving him time for repentance until he should receive whatever the holy fathers defined, did not allow him to be called either a priest or a Catholic... we follow and obey the apostolic throne; we are in communion with those with whom it is in communion, and we condemn those whom it condemns."
(Mansi 8: 968-70, as found in "Keys Over the Christian World"; author Scott Butler).

+ Eulogius of Alexandria (ca. 581 A.D., d. 609 A.D.):
"Neither to John, nor to any other of the disciples, did our Savior say, 'I will give to thee the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven,' but only to Peter."
(Lib. ii. Cont. Novatian. ap. Photium, Biblioth, cod. 280)

"[Let us recall] of the Chair of Peter, the Prince of the Apostles, that he himself sits therein to this day in his successors."
(Epistola 40, Migne PL 77:898.)

+ St. Sophronius, Patriarch of Jerusalem (ca. 638 A.D.):
"Teaching us all orthodoxy and destroying all heresy and driving it away from the God-protected halls of our holy Catholic Church. And together with these inspired syllables and characters, I accept all his [the pope's] letters and teachings as proceeding from the mouth of Peter the Coryphaeus, and I kiss them and salute them and embrace them with all my soul ... I recognize the latter as definitions of Peter and the former as those of Mark, and besides, all the heaven-taught teachings of all the chosen mystagogues of our Catholic Church."
(Sophronius, Mansi, xi. 461)

+ Stephen, Bishop of Dora in Palestine (ca. 645 A.D.):
"...fly away and announce these things to the Chair [of Peter at Rome] which rules and presides over all . . . I desire to denounce monotheletism to the chief See, the mistress of all Sees. I desire to do so to your highest and divine See, that it may altogether heal the wound. For this it has been accustomed to do from old and from the beginning with power by its canonical or apostolic authority, because the truly great Peter, head of the Apostles, was clearly thought worthy not only to be trusted with the keys of heaven, alone apart from the rest, to open it worthily to believers, or to close it justly to those who disbelieve the Gospel of grace, but because he was also commissioned to feed the sheep of the whole Catholic Church; for 'Peter,' saith He, 'lovest thou Me? Feed My sheep.' And again, [as successor] to the blessed Peter because he had in a manner peculiar and special, a faith in the Lord stronger than all and unchangeable, to be converted [with compassion] and to confirm his fellows and spiritual brethren when tossed about, as having been adorned by God Himself incarnate for us with power and sacerdotal authority over all ... Transverse quickly all the world from one end to the other until you come to the Apostolic See (Rome), where are the foundations of the orthodox doctrine. ... Cease not to pray and to beg them until their apostolic and Divine wisdom shall have pronounced the victorious judgement and destroyed from the foundation... the new heresy.”
(Mansi, Collectio conciliorum, 10:893-896)

+ Sergius, Metropolitan of Cyprus (ca. 649 A.D.), writing to Pope Theodore:
"O Holy Head, Christ our God hath destined thy Apostolic See to be an immovable foundation and a pillar of the Faith. For thou art, as the Divine Word truly saith, Peter, and on thee as a foundation-stone have the pillars of the Church been fixed."
(Ep. ad Theod., lecta in Sess. ii. Concil. Lat. Anno 649; Mansi, 10:914 and Allnatt, p. 66)

+ St. Maximus the Confessor (ca. 580-662 A.D.), a celebrated theologian and a native of Constantinople:[5]
"The extremities of the earth, and everyone in every part of it who purely and rightly confess the Lord, look directly towards the Most Holy Roman Church and her confession and faith, as to a sun of unfailing light awaiting from her the brilliant radiance of the sacred dogmas of our Fathers, according to that which the inspired and holy Councils have stainlessly and piously decreed. For, from the descent of the Incarnate Word amongst us, all the churches in every part of the world have held the greatest Church alone to be their base and foundation, seeing that, according to the promise of Christ Our Savior, the gates of hell will never prevail against her, that she has the keys of the orthodox confession and right faith in Him, that she opens the true and exclusive religion to such men as approach with piety, and she shuts up and locks every heretical mouth which speaks against the Most High."
(Opuscula theologica et polemica [A.D. 650], in PG 91:144)

"How much more in the case of the clergy and Church of the Romans, which from old until now presides over all the churches which are under the sun? Having surely received this canonically, as well as from councils and the apostles, as from the princes of the latter [Peter & Paul], and being numbered in their company, she is subject to no writings or issues in synodical documents, on account of the eminence of her pontificate... even as in all these things all are equally subject to her [the Church of Rome] according to sacerdotal law. And so when, without fear, but with all holy and becoming confidence, those ministers [the popes] are of the truly firm and immovable rock, that is of the most great and Apostolic Church of Rome."
(as cited in J.B. Mansi, ed. Amplissima Collectio Conciliorum, vol. 10)

"I was afraid of being thought to transgress the holy laws, if I were to do this [i.e., write this letter to Peter – EBB] without knowing the will of the most holy see of Apostolic men, who lead aright the whole plenitude of the Catholic Church, and rule it with order according to the divine law. ... If the Roman See recognizes Pyrrhus to be not only a reprobate but a heretic, it is certainly plain that everyone who anathematizes those who have rejected Pyrrhus also anathematizes the See of Rome, that is, he anathematizes the Catholic Church. I need hardly add that he excommunicates himself also, if indeed he is in communion with the Roman See and the Catholic Church of God ...Let him hasten before all things to satisfy the Roman See, for if it is satisfied, all will agree in calling him pious and orthodox. For he only speaks in vain who... does not satisfy and implore the blessed Pope of the most holy Catholic Church of the Romans, that is, the Apostolic See, which is from the incarnate of the Son of God Himself, and also [from] all the holy synods, according to the holy canons and definitions, has received universal and supreme dominion, authority, and power of binding and loosing over all the holy churches of God throughout the whole world. -- For with it the Word who is above the celestial powers binds and looses in heaven also. For if he thinks he must satisfy others, and fails to implore the most blessed Roman pope, he is acting like a man who, when accused of murder or some other crime, does not hasten to prove his innocence to the judge appointed by the law, but only uselessly and without profit does his best to demonstrate his innocence to private individuals, who have no power to acquit him."
(letter to the patrician Peter, ca. AD 642, in Mansi x, 692; Migne PG 91:114)

+ Fathers of the Third Council of Constantinople (680-681 A.D.), composed of 170 Eastern Bishops (680 A.D.), writing to Pope St. Agatho:
"Serious illnesses call for greater helps, as you know, most blessed [father]; and therefore Christ our true God gave a wise physician, namely your God-honoured sanctity, to drive away by force the contagion of heretical pestilence by the remedies of orthodoxy, and to give the strength of health to the members of the church. Therefore to thee, as to the bishop of the first see of the Universal Church, we leave what must be done, since you willingly take for your standing ground the firm rock of the faith, as we know from having read your true confession in the letter sent by your fatherly beatitude to the most pious emperor: and we acknowledge that this letter [of Agatho's --EBB] was divinely written [perscriptas] as by the Chief of the Apostles, and through it we have cast out the heretical sect of many errors which had recently sprung up."
(Migne, Pat. Lat., Tom. LXXXVII., col. 1247 et seqq.; cf. also Labbe & Cossart, Concilia, Tom. VI., col. 1071 et seqq.)

"The head and prince of the apostles fought with us…. the ink [of the letter from Pope Agatho] was plain to see and Peter spoke through Agatho."
(Mansi, Sacrorum Conciliorum, 11:658.)

"[The Pope is the] Head of the Church... [and his chair is] the First See of the Ecumenical Church."
(J. Hardouin, Conciliorum collectio regia maxima adp. Philippi Labbei et p. Gabrielis Cossartii e Societate Jesu labores haud modica accessione facta et emendationibus pluribus additis.... tom. iii., p. 1632)

+ From the edict of the Emperor, confirming the decrees of the Sixth Council:
"These are the teachings of the voices of the Gospels and apostles, these are the doctrines of the holy councils and of the elect and patristic tongues; these have been preserved untainted by Peter the Rock of the Faith, the Head of the apostles."
(Mansi, xi, 698.)

[Go here for a discussion of an Eastern Orthodox "zinger" against papal supremacy.]

+ St. John Damascene (680-740 A.D.):
"The church was monarchial from the beginning, for the Apostle Peter whom our Doctor considers the first-called and the first to follow the Saviour."
(Homily on the Transfiguration 6; Migne, PG, 96:553D)

"Peter was predestined by Jesus Christ to be the worthy head of the Church."
(Homily on Holy Saturday 33, col. 636C, PG, 96:560C)

"It was not of tents that the Master constituted thee [Peter -- EBB] the orderer, but of the Universal Church. Thy disciples, thy sheep, which the Good Shepherd entrusted to thee as head, have fulfilled thy desire [to make tents on the Mount of Transfiguration -- EBB]. They have raised one tent to Christ, one to Moses and Elias, and now we celebrate our feasts here."
(Homily on the Transfiguration, PG 16:596D)

+ John VI, Patriarch of Constantinople (ca. 715 A.D.):
"The Pope of Rome, the head of the Christian priesthood, whom in Peter, the Lord commanded to confirm his brethren."
(Epist. ad Constantin. Pap. ad. Combefis, Auctuar. Bibl. P.P. Graec.tom. ii. p. 211, seq.)

+ St. Nicephorus (758-828 A.D.), Patriarch of Constantinople:
"Without whom [i.e., the Romans presiding in the seventh Council] a doctrine brought forward in the Church could not, even though confirmed by canonical decrees and by ecclesiastical usage, ever obtain full approval or currency. For it is they [the Popes of Rome] who have had assigned to them the rule in sacred things, and who have received into their hands the dignity of headship among the Apostles."
(Niceph. Cpl. pro. s. imag. c 25 [Mai N. Bibl. pp. ii. 30]).

+ St. Theodore the Studite of Constantinople (759-826 A.D.):
"Since to great Peter Christ our Lord gave the office of Chief Shepherd after entrusting him with the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven, to Peter or his successor must of necessity every novelty in the Catholic Church be referred. [Therefore], save us, oh most divine Head of Heads, Chief Shepherd of the Church of Heaven."
(Theodore, Bk. I. Ep. 23, writing to Pope Leo III)

"Hear, O Apostolic Head, divinely-appointed Shepherd of Christ's sheep, keybearer of the Kingdom of Heaven, Rock of the Faith upon whom the Catholic Church is built. For Peter art thou, who adornest and governest the Chair of Peter. Hither, then, from the West, imitator of Christ, arise and repel not for ever (Ps. xliii. 23). To thee spake Christ our Lord: 'And thou being one day converted, shalt strengthen thy brethren.' Behold the hour and the place. Help us, thou that art set by God for this. Stretch forth thy hand so far as thou canst. Thou hast strength with God, through being the first [chief] of all."
(Letter of St. Theodore and four other Abbots, writing to Pope Paschal, Bk. ii Ep. 12, Patr. Graec. 99, 1152-3)

"...a manifest successor of the prince of the Apostles presides over the Roman Church. We truly believe that Christ has not deserted the Church here [in Constantinople -- EBB], for assistance from you has been our one and only aid from of old and from the beginning by the providence of God in the critical times. You are, indeed the untroubled and pure fount of orthodoxy from the beginning, you the calm harbor of the whole Church, far removed from the waves of heresy, you the God-chosen city of refuge."
(Letter of St. Theodore & Four Abbots to Pope Paschal [citation?]).

"Order that the declaration from old Rome be received, as was the custom by Tradition of our Fathers from of old and from the beginning. For this, O Emperor, is the highest of the Churches of God, in which first Peter held the Chair, to whom the Lord said: 'Thou art Peter...and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.'"
(Theodore, Bk. II. Ep. 86, writing to Emperor Michael)

"I witness now before God and men, they [the Iconoclasts – EBB] have torn themselves away from the Body of Christ, from the Supreme See [Rome], in which Christ placed the keys of the Faith, against which the gates of hell (I mean the mouth of heretics) have not prevailed, and never will until the Consummation, according to the promise of Him Who cannot lie. Let the blessed and Apostolic Paschal [Pope St. Paschal I] rejoice therefore, for he has fulfilled the work of Peter."
(Theodore Bk. II. Ep. 63).

"Let him [Patriarch Nicephorus of Constantinople] assemble a synod of those with whom he has been at variance, if it is impossible that representatives of the other Patriarchs should be present, a thing which might certainly be if the Emperor should wish the Western Patriarch [the Roman Pope] to be present, to whom is given authority over an ecumenical synod; but let him make peace and union by sending his synodical letters to the prelate of the First See."
(Theodore the Studite, Patr. Graec. 99, 1420)

+ Fourth Council of Constantinople, canon 21 (869-870 A.D.):
"...no secular powers should treat with disrespect any of those who hold the office of patriarch or seek to move them from their high positions, but rather they should esteem them as worthy of all honour and reverence. This applies in the first place to the most holy pope of old Rome, secondly to the patriarch of Constantinople, and then to the patriarchs of Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem.

"Furthermore, nobody else should compose or edit writings or tracts against the most holy pope of old Rome, on the pretext of making incriminating charges, as Photius did recently and Dioscorus a long time ago. Whoever shows such great arrogance and audacity, after the manner of Photius and Dioscorus, and makes false accusations in writing or speech against the see of Peter, the chief of the apostles, let him receive a punishment equal to theirs.

"...Furthermore, if a universal synod is held and any question or controversy arises about the holy church of Rome, it should make inquiries with proper reverence and respect about the question raised and should find a profitable solution; it must on no account pronounce sentence rashly against the supreme pontiffs of old Rome.”
(J. Hardouin, Conciliorum collectio regia maxima adp. Philippi Labbei et p. Gabrielis Cossartii e Societate Jesu labores haud modica accessione facta et emendationibus pluribus additis..., 12 vols. Paris 1714-1715.)

+ Texts from Vespers and Matins of June 29 & 30 from the Byzantine-Slavonic Menaion (Feasts of the Martyrdom of Sts. Peter and Paul and of the Synaxis of the Twelve Apostles):
"With what garlands of praise shall we crown Peter and Paul the greatest among the heralds of the Word of God, distinct in their person but one in spirit--the one the chief Ruler of the Apostles, the other who labored more than the rest? ...

"Peter, foundation of the Apostles, rock of Christ's Church, beginning of Christians, feed the sheep of your fold, guard your lambs from the rapacious wolves and save your flock from ferocious assaults. You, O Peter, were the first bishop of Rome, you the pride and the glory of the greatest city, you were the confirmation of the Church that the forces of hell cannot overcome, as Christ foretold.

"O Peter, rock of foundation....O Peter, first of the glorious apostles and rock of faith....Rejoice, O Peter, apostle and special friend of the Teacher, Christ our God....O my soul, extol Peter the solid rock.... With hymns of praise let us venerate Peter, the rock of faith....

"Having put aside fishing in the deep, you received from the Father himself the revelation of the incarnation of the Word. Thus you confidently cried out in faith to your Creator: I know that You are the Son of God, consubstantial with Him. Therefore, you were truly revealed as the rock of faith and a trustee of the keys of grace.

"Three times Christ asked Peter: Do you love me? In this way He reversed the threefold denial of Himself. Henceforth Simon was to lead those who had witnessed God's mysteries. ... According to the promise of Christ, you have been a fisher of men. He has made you holy for his Church because from its beginning He placed you at the helm. ...

"Peter, it is right to call you the rock! The Lord established the unshaken faith of the Church on you. He made you the chief shepherd of his reasonable sheep. ... Today Christ the Rock glorifies with supreme honor the Rock of Faith and Leader of the Apostles, Peter, together with Paul and the Twelve...."

+ The Byzantine-Slavonic Menaion, January 2:
"Father Sylvester....thou didst appear as a pillar of fire, snatching the faithful from the Egyptian error [the Arian heresy] and continually leading them with unerring teachings to divine light. ... Thou hast shown thyself the supreme one of the Sacred Council, O initiator into the sacred mysteries, and hast illustrated the Throne of the Supreme One of the Disciples. ... Endowed with the See of the leader of the apostles, you became an outstanding minister of God, enriching, establishing, and increasing the church with divine dogmas. You were the prince of the sacred council and you adorned the throne of the head of the disciples; like a divine prince over the holy Fathers you confirmed the most sacred dogma."

+ The Byzantine-Slavonic Menaion, on the feast of St. Leo the Great, February 18 at Matins:
"The pillar of orthodoxy, as the successor of Peter, endowed with his precedence and primacy, gave the divinely inspired definition of faith, appearing to the people of God like a new Moses, who, moved by God, engraved the teachings of the faith upon divinely stamped tablets, and who like a true patriarch fixed his tent in the City where the primacy and seat and order of the patriarchs now stand."

+ + + + + + + + + + + +

[1] To deny the basic nature of the Bible as a human text is to fall into the Docetic heresy, i.e., that the Word of God only appeared mortal. The Bible, as the icon of Christ, is, like Him, a man-made thing, and yet so much more.

[2] While we're on the topic of the Petrine ministry, it's hard to pass up these words of Martin Luther:

If Christ had not entrusted all power to one man, the Church would not have been perfect because there would have been no order and each one would have been able to say [that] he was led by the Holy Spirit. This is what the heretics did, each one setting up his own principle. In this way as many Churches arose as there were heads. Christ therefore wills, in order that all may be assembled in one unity, that His power be exercised by one man to whom He Himself commits it. He has, however, made this power so strong that he looses all the powers of Hell (without injury) against it. He says: 'the Gates of Hell shall not prevail against it', as though He said: 'they will fight against it but never overcome it', so it is in this way it is made manifest that this power is in reality from God and not from man. Wherefore, whoever breaks away from this unity and order of the power, let him not boast of great enlightenment and wonderful works, as our Picards and other heretics do, 'for much better is obedience than to be the victims of fools who know not what evil they do.' (Eccles. Iv.,17).
(Sermo in Vincula S. Petri, "Werke" Weimar edition, I, 69)

[3] Lest I be accused of plagiarism, I hereby admit nearly every citation has been taken from either Stanley Jaki's The Keys of the Kingdom, Steve Ray's Upon This Rock, Butler and Dahlgren's Jesus, Peter & the Keys, various works by James Likoudis, or E. Giles's Documents Illustrating Papal Authority AD 96-454.

[4] Philip's claims were affirmed by the other council fathers. Cyril, the bishop of Alexandria, replied,

The professions which have been made by Arcadius and Projectus, the most holy and pious bishops, as also by Philip, the most religious presbyter of the Roman Church, stand manifest to the holy Synod. For they have made their profession in the place of the Apostolic See, and of the whole of the holy synod of the God-beloved and most holy bishops of the West. Wherefore let those things which were defined by the most holy Coelestine, the God-beloved bishop, be carried into effect, and the vote east against Nestorius the heretic ... be agreed to universally; for this purpose let there be added to the already prepared acts the proceedings of yesterday and today, and let them be shewn to their holiness, so that by their subscription according to custom, their canonical agreement with all of us may be manifest.

Then Arcadius, the most reverend bishop and legate of the Roman Church, said, "According to the acts of this holy Synod, we necessarily confirm with our subscriptions their doctrines."

At which point the Holy Synod said, "Since Arcadius and Projectus the most reverend and most religious bishops and legates and Philip, the presbyter and legate of the Apostolic See, have said that they are of the same mind with us, it only remains, that they redeem their promises and confirm the acts with their signatures, and then let the minutes of the acts be shewn to them." (cf. EXTRACTS FROM THE ACTS, SESSION III [Labbe and Cossart, Concilia, Tom. III., col. 621.])

[5] Since a great deal of controversy between the East and the West hinges on the filioque controversy, I think it's helpful to recall St. Maximus's conciliatory stance:

Those of the Queen of cities [i.e., Constantinople] have attacked the synodal letter of the present very holy Pope, not in the case of all the chapters that he has written in it, but only in the case of two of them. One relates to the theology [of the Trinity] and according to this, says 'the Holy Spirit also has his ekporeusis from the Son.'

The other deals with the divine incarnation. With regard to the first matter, they [the Romans] have produced the unanimous evidence of the Latin Fathers, and also of Cyril of Alexandria, from the study he made of the gospel of St. John. On the basis of these texts, they have shown that they have not made the Son the cause of the Spirit--they know in fact that the Father is the only cause of the Son and the Spirit, the one by begetting and the other by procession -- but that they have manifested the procession through him and have thus shown the unity and identity of the essence.

They [i.e., the Romans] have therefore been accused of precisely those things of which it would be wrong the accuse them, whereas the former [i.e., the Byzantines] have been accused of those things it has been quite correct to accuse them [of Monothelitism].

In accordance with your request I have asked the Romans to translate what is peculiar to them [the 'also from the Son'] in such a way that any obscurities that may result from it will be avoided. ... It is true, of course, that they cannot reproduce their idea in a language and in words that are foreign to them as they can in their mother-tongue, just as we too cannot do.
(St. Maximus Confessor, Letter to Marinus, PG 91, 136.)

See also the assessment by Metropolitan (John) Zizioulas of Pergamom of the 1995 Vatican document, "The Father as the Source of the Whole Trinity: The Procession of the Holy Spirit in Greek and Latin Traditions".