📄 On the Necessity of the Filioque

If the Holy Spirit does not proceed from the Son, then there is no origin or relation between them, thus no personal distinction. This means either a polytheistic division in the divine essence or an impersonal modal dialectic; both heretical.

https://twitter.com/FedPoasting/status/1922602908387836026

i) In the Trinity, personal distinction arises solely through relation of origin. (E.g. the Father is paternity, the Son is filiation, the Spirit is spiration)

ii) If the Holy Spirit does not proceed from the Son as per Eastern "Orthodoxy", they have no relation of origin.

📄Mary's Teaching role in Theology

Fr. Peter Damien Felhner's ambitious sounding thesis: that Mary is in a preeminent way our teacher of theology, directly and intimately involved in any such fruitful pursuit, as she is the Immaculate Conception, thus the mediatrix of grace.
I present it as rather ambitious "sounding" because his demonstration for it is actually really simple but its immediate implications present an overwhelmingly glorious Mariology, the likes of which would run such expressions as:

📃Why the Roman Catholic Dogma concerning the Papacy is true.

Deo Gratias, we have a new Pope!
In honour of Pope Leo XIV, it is time for a quick thread on the Papacy. I'll be arguing:

1) From Scripture

2) From The Fathers

3) From the Nature of the case
1) From Scripture

The Church is founded on the most important pun in human history. Our Lord gives Simon the name Peter as a pun on the word for rock. He is the rock. It is upon him that the Church is founded. It’s standard apologetics to start with Mt. 16 but it is important:

The First Vatican Council's Pastor Aeternus tells us that the Roman Pontiff cannot be judged by any human power after assuming office, not that the office exists apart from reception. Thus, you've conflated two distinct considerations:

https://x.com/syd_bee3/status/1920524185023230300

i) jurisdictional power, and
ii) mode of appointment.
The Pope in actual fact receives his 'plenitudo potestatis' immediately from Christ upon valid election, but the Church, as a visible society, still requires a definite mode of appointment for he who is received into office.

📄Comprehensive entry to Franciscan Theology

I was asked on strawpage for Franciscan reading recommendations.
I would suggest four figures to know:

i) St. Francis of Assisi
ii) St. Bonaventure
iii) Bl. Duns Scotus
iv) Bl. Ramon Lull

I will, then, tie into Carmelite theology.
i) Start w/the CWS collection of St. Bonaventure's Journey of the Mind/Tree of Life/Life of St. Francis.
This will cover St. Francis well and show he is integral for their theology.

The Life of St. Francis by St. Bonaventure was held as authoritative by St. Francis's own friends

📄Marsilio Ficino & the Catholic-alchemical symbolism of the Black Sun

In c. 14 of Liber de Arte Chemica, Ficino offers a dense exposition on the 2nd, rather difficult phase of alchemical praxis. Key part of this is "necessary death" wherein we get the symbol of the Black Sun:
His central concern is the mystical process of transformation. The unity of opposites such as body and soul, heaven and earth, spirit and matter. The pursuit of the Philosopher’s Stone.

Anyone familiar with general mystical theology should keep in mind the triple way.

🧵Scripture and the Filioque

I want go over the general scriptural expressions of the Filioque. In so doing I believe therein will lie sufficient furnish for the Catholic position.
Background to the controversy

"The Holy Ghost eternally proceeds from Father and Son as from one principle and by one spiration." (Council of Lyon II)

Direct argument from St. Bonaventure for the Catholic positon can be found here

https://x.com/_bonaventurian/status/1880199949176172647

🧵 St. Bonaventure tells us that according to the mystical understanding of Christ's nativity, the fact that Christ was born in Bethlehem is Eucharistic as means that he is the living bread, for Bethlehem is interpreted by the Romans as "the house of bread".
St. Jerome quotes Paula saying, “‘Hail Bethlehem, house ofbread, wherein was born that Bread that came down from heaven.” (Letter 108)

“It was fitting too that he was born in Bethlehem. Bethlehem is translated, ‘house of
bread’, and it is he who said:

🧵The decisive break between Ficino and Pico in magic can be seen here: Ficino's definition of magic is, "the drawing of one thing to another by way of natural similitude" (De Amore, VI)

Pico instead says: "What man the magus makes through art, nature made naturally making man." The first from Ficino account operates by images and similitudes. Magic properly so called works with lower order terms and so philosophy and theology must be used to elevate magic, the use of natural similitudes, if at all.

🧵St. Bonaventure, On the Cognition of God: through near similitudes or through the image; first impression―whether in these three powers a reckoning of an image is obtained. (In Sent. I, d. 3, p. 2, a. 1, q. 1)

A walkthrough of the Seraphic Doctor's arguments on the matter: The recapitulate the direction and purpose of the discussion here in this distinction: St. Bonaventure has just argued the nature of man's knowledge of God.

🧵On The Blessed Virgin Mary as Mediatrix

As the spiritual mother of men, and to the extent to which she is such a mother, Mary the Mediatrix between God & men, since she brings to men the things that pertain to God & she brings the things that pertain to men to God.

Mary does the former inasmuch as she regenerates men to the divine life; but she does the latter inasmuch as she offers her maternal consent in the name of and as a representative of the human race. Now, in detail:

🧵A large portion rw pagan twitter will defend various Hindu schools, practices, texts and history.

Yet they don't once stop to look at the abyss that is that subcontinent, not realising a substantial cause of both intergenertional Indian depravity & their paganism was demons. Demons can manipulate seminal reason principles, so argued St. Bonaventure in In Sent II, St. Augustine in the Trinity (De Trin III.8-9), St. Thomas (ST. I, Q. 115, a. 2, re. 2).

So demons can influence, over longer periods of time, the course of biological production.

🧵Our Lord says, "Stand in the gate of God's house and preach the word, declare this word." (Jer. 7:2). The Father speaks one Word and speaks it eternally, and in the Word He expends all His might and utters His entire divine nature and all possible creatures in the Word. Aa point rushes forth infinite possible lines.
From those lines composed of infinite possible points rush forth infinite possible lines from each infinite possible points.

So is an infinite-infinitude, beyond-infinity communicated in simplicity to the Word in the Divine Nature.

🧵In the Commentary on the Timaeus, Proclus outlines three demonstrations that spherical shape is a gift [Gift IV] of the demiurge (Plato, Timaeus 331b1-8). For our purposes, I'm choosing the second demonstration, from beauty, to examine in this thread.

The second demonstration is from the beautiful and what is fitting.

Spherical shape, says Proclus, is fitting:

i) to the one who receives,
ii) to the one who gives
iii) and to the paradigm.

🧵 St. Bonaventure on Divine Wisdom

One of the central and guiding theological concepts and themes within St. Bonaventure's thought is 'sapeintia', or wisdom. But wisdom is said in many ways. Naturally, an exploration of the topic is due:

Itinerarium exhorts us to be 'sapientiae amatores'. Apart from it, one cannot know peace that alone satiates the soul. "The principal act of the gift of wisdom is on the part of the affective faculty, so that it begins in knowledge & is consummated in affection." (Sent. III d.35)

🧵 Proclean Metaphysics and the Communion of Saints

Berthold von Moosburg OP, in his allegorical reading of Neoplatonic soul-transmigration ends up giving a startling level of depth to the communion of saints that I was not expecting.
The exposition runs as follows. Berthold contends that, by the light of Proclus's own operative principles, he should have understood that not only is it impossible for the soul that achieves Beatitude to fall again—

🧵 St. Bonaventure teaches that predestination, and election thereby is:

i) From eternity.
ii) Principally in God's will.
iii) On the part of God precognising and disposing it, has both certitude of infallibility and immutability.

Therefore it is unconditional:

https://twitter.com/catholiccom/status/1791137607625097637

It must be stated prior to this discussion that:

"Predestination bears off nothing from free will, but only posits grace in ot; but grace infers no necessity upon free will, therefore neither does predestination." (d. 40, a. 2, q. 1)

So, free will isn't destroyed.

🧵 St. Bonaventure and the Slavery of Sin

A common expression we find through the Catholic tradition is of sin as "slavery". And while it may immediately seem obvious, there are a manifold of implications behind this.

The most evident Scriptural source text for this expression has to be in John 8:31-47 where Our Lord teaches of how the Truth, by His Divinity itself and belief in Him will set one free from the slavery of sin.

🧵 Boethius and the Ascent of the Intellect

Each book of Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy represents a different faculty (I: sense, II: imagination, IV: reason, V: intellect) except III. Lib. III, as its centre and pivot, enfolds all of them.

https://twitter.com/VirDesideriorum/status/1779487005568594158

The imagery and method of each book restores that faculty and imparts knowledge from that level of knowing. In this sense Boethius' method is much like the literary theurgy of Proclus' Elements of Theology ー

Response: this set of objections a) misconceived of God and the evidence of his existence b) misconceives the relationship of natural science and metaphysics c) egregiously misdefines metaphysics.

I shall work backwards in full refutation.

https://twitter.com/DieLorel3i/status/1779504083369427413

c) Metaphysics

Metaphysics, or Ontology, is by definition the study or science of "being qua being" (we will define science in the next section). It's name "meta" - "physis" comes from its placement in the Corpus of Aristotle after (ergo "meta") the Physics.

🧵This is a common secular objection which requires a little more explanation in response.

i) Assent to a falsehood is to debase yourself as a human being, that is, as a rational animal.
ii) God is Truth - falsehood is opposed to Him
iii) True happiness is the Beatific Vision

https://twitter.com/DieLorel3i/status/1779343076021964857

Explanation of the first point i): To not hold to the truth is to be deluded. But by nature "all humans desire to know" (Aristotle, Metaphysics Lib. alpha), because we delight in our senses. Thus to be willfully deluded is to debase yourself as a human being.