Tuesday, May 28, 2013

The "Adoro te devote" should really be called the "Te devote laudo". So not "Hidden God, devoutly I adore thee," but rather (to but modify the one translation) "Hidden God, devoutly I do praise thee".

     According to Robert Wielockx, in "Adoro te deuote:  zur Lösung einer alten Crux," Annales theologici:  revista internazionale di teologia 21 (2007):  101-138.

Te deuote laudo, latens ueritas,
     Te que sub his formis uere latitas.

Tibi se cor meum totum subicit,
     Quia te contemplans totum deficit.
Visus, tactus, gustus in te fallitur,
     Sed auditu solo tute creditur.
Credo quicquid dixit dei filius,
     Nichil ueritatis uerbo uerius.

In cruce latebat sola deitas,
     Sed hic latet simul et humanitas.

Ambo uere credens atque confitens,
     Peto quod petiuit latro penitens.
Plagas sicut Thomas non intueor,
     Deum tamen meum te confiteor.

Fac me tibi semper magis credere,
     In te spem habere, te diligere.

O memoriale mortis domini,
     Panis uiuus uitam prestans homini.

Presta michi semper de te uiuere,
     Et te michi semper dulce sapere.

Pie pellicane, Ihesu domine,
     Me immundum munda tuo sanguine.

Cuius una stilla saluum facere,
     Totum mundum posset omni scelere.

Ihesu, quem velatum nunc aspicio,
     Quando fiet illud quod tam sicio?
Vt te reuelata cernens facie,
     Visu sim beatus tue glorie.

This is identical to the critical edition Wielockx gives at "Poetry and theology in the Adoro te deuote:  Thomas Aquinas on the Eucharist and Christ's uniqueness," in Christ among the medieval Dominicans:  representations of Christ in the texts and images of the Order of Preachers, ed. Kent Emery, Jr. and Joseph Wawrykow, Notre Dame conferences in medieval studies 7 (Notre Dame, IN:  University of Notre Dame Press, 1998):  172 (157-174), except that Wielockx now (in 2007) replaces the incipit "Adoro te deuote" with the incipit "Te deuote laudo".  In 1998 he spoke of a "crux" that "cannot be resolved defin[i]tely" (172); in 2007 he provides what he considers to be the "Lösung einer alten Crux", namely the restoration of "Te deuote laudo" to the position usurped after the death of Aquinas by "Adoro te deuote".  The latter (or so Wielockx argues) derives not (like "Te deuote laudo") from Aquinas himself, but from the early-13th-century-and-later incipit common to the "prayers for the adoration of the Holy Cross" that arose originally in the Carolingian period.

Translations to add at some point, however deficient the underlying Latin:
English:
German:
  • "Dich bet ich an in Treuen, Gott der heimlich wirkt", by R. A. Schröder, Gesammelte Werke 1 (Berlin & Frankfurt, 1952), pp. 852 ff.

Monday, May 27, 2013

"It is therefore the worship of God alone that renders them superior [to the beasts], through which alone one is assisted to immortality."

"[It] is therefore the worship of God alone that renders them superior, through which alone one is assisted [(i.e. aspired)] to immortality" (Calvin, Institutes I.iii.3, trans. Perisho).

"the only thing, therefore, which makes them superior is the worship of God, through which alone they aspire to immortality" (Calvin, Institutes I.iii.3, trans. Beveridge).

"Therefore, it is worship of God alone that renders men higher than the brutes, and through it alone they aspire to immortality" (Calvin, Institutes I.iii.3, trans. Battles).

"Unum ergo esse Dei cultum, qui superiores ipsos reddat, per quem solum ad immortalitatem aspiratur."  Or, from 1539-1554,  "Unum ergo esse Dei cultum, qui superiores ipsos faciat, per quem solum ad immortalitatem aspiratur" (Calvin, Institutes I.iii.3; COS 3, 40, ll. 27-28).

     Contra Beveridge and Battles both, aspiratur is surely (?) a passive (not a deponent) singular.  Cf. Lewis & Short, s.v. aspiro I.A.2, "to be favorable toto favorassist (the figure taken from a fair breeze)".  So "through which alone one is aspired to [(ad-spir-ed)] immortality."  The McNeill edition trans. Battles notes that elsewhere in the Institutes it is said to be reason that distinguishes men from the beasts (vol. 1, p. 47n14).  But here it is worship (the cultus).
     Yet don't the beasts render God a cultus?

     Lexicon latinitatis medii aevi:  "1. tr., exciter (qqn.)2. intr., conspirer."
     Mediae Latinitatis lexicon minus =Medieval Latin dictionary =Lexique latin médiéval =Mittellateinisches Wörterbuch, 2nd (2002) ed., ed. Niermeyer et al.:  "exciterto incite—anstacheln."
     Oxford Latin dictionary:  "7 (intr.) "to give assistance (to), favour, aid."

Sunday, May 26, 2013

"To be an atheist in the best modern sense, . . . and so to be a truly intellectually and emotionally fulfilled naturalist in philosophy, one must genuinely succeed in not believing in God...."

"To be an atheist in the best modern sense, . . . and so to be a truly intellectually and emotionally fulfilled naturalist in philosophy, one must genuinely succeed in not believing in God, with all the logical consequences such disbelief entails."

     David Bentley Hart, The experience of God:  being, consciousness, bliss (New Haven, CT:  Yale University Press, 2013), 32.  See also "The back page:  God, gods, and fairies," First things no. 234 (June/July 2013):  71 (72-71).  "The philosophical naturalist's view of reality is not one that merely fails to find some particular object within the world that the theist imagines can be descried there; it is a very particular representation of the nature of things, entailing a vast range of purely metaphysical commitments."