Thank you so much for this article!!! Very enlightening and uplifting! I hadn’t thought of it all in that way before but appreciate you presenting it so clearly and logically. My granddaughter loves Jane Austen so I will share it with her too. I myself, have observed the effects of love and desire being produced by expressions of love and desire. Amazing! Also conversely with violence and hatred as you mention. Thank you!
Thank you for your comment! I am so pleased you connected with what i wrote. I too have had so much joy in trying to tease out this little disctinction in different aspects of life as its operative everywhere. im glad that was communicated to you! medieval philosophy is amazing! acutally God is amazing that He made the world this way! but this distinction helped me see a little more clearly, and thats always a thrill. thanks for sharing!
I have often had occasion to reflect on the regrettable effect that scientific thought has had on our ability to form a relationship to sacred Scripture as well as to the rest of life. I appreciated your distinction between the speculative and the practical sign, howbeit it seems to me that there should be a more substantial term than "practical" to designate what is at stake. "Effectual," maybe?
In any case, I wonder if it is right to say something like, "whereas science has conditioned us to interpret descriptions from Scripture in the indicative mood, this mindset severely curtails our relationship with these texts. We should consider that Scripture is also conveying the ontological, creative power of speech, that flows from God but in which we can also take part"?
thanks for your comment. you raise a lot of interesting questions here. first because I am still trying to be formed by scholastic theology i try to let the terms rest as they are given for the most part and assume, in a case the term doesn´t seem exactly right, that I am missing something rather than that the term should be altered. the fundametnal distinction between speculative and practical reason aligns well at this point, thus a rationality ordered to knowing and another rationality ordered to desiring and doing. practical signs communicate an end, desire, or intention through the sign. my worry with the term effectual is that a speculative sign effects something as well (in the intellect or memory), its just it doesnt communicate desire or create movement. i guess i dont know why practical doesn´t seem substantial.
i really tried to focus on some of the most basic application of this distinciton and the one you raise about scripture is more complex. i do think the historical critical modes of the study of scripture treat scripture as a book of specualitive signs or one that communiates knowledge and thereby reduce what scripture could "mean" or its significance at the outset. Similarly here, scripture both in its stories, aphorisms, hymns, can, from a more orthodox point of view, communicate desire to those reading it with the intention of uncovering the desire of the ultimate author of scripture, and thus it takes the character of a practical sign. Yet there are various senses of scripture, the historical critical method usually reduces to the literal sense. But according to medieval exegesis there is a moral sense a literal sense a typological sense also anologial and allegorical. The red sea parted to save the israelites and then closed to crush their enemies. St Paul says in I cor 10 i think that this story was teaching about baptism, so the story itself is a type of baptism, Joshua is a type of Christ, Rebekka is a type of Mary, the window of rahab was a type of the wounds of Christ. But all of these types are speculative signs that serve practical signs, they help us understand how the practical sign functions be it baptism, Jesus Christ, or His Holy Wounds and our understanding what is the case or the indicative sense of the story is a precondition of its efficacy. I only mention this as it seems the use of indicative doesnt track in this important instance.
This is well put. Thanks for saying this: "We should consider that Scripture is also conveying the ontological, creative power of speech, that flows from God but in which we can also take part."
thanks for the response. I agree with everything you've written. I think my hang-up is the comparative feebleness of the word "practical" in English taken in the moral context. it has connotations of utilitarianism and pragmatism, at least to my ear, though I presume that native Latin speakers would have a different experience.
First time I’ve ever seen Pride and Prejudice compared with the teachings of Christ. I am here for it!!
Thank you so much for this article!!! Very enlightening and uplifting! I hadn’t thought of it all in that way before but appreciate you presenting it so clearly and logically. My granddaughter loves Jane Austen so I will share it with her too. I myself, have observed the effects of love and desire being produced by expressions of love and desire. Amazing! Also conversely with violence and hatred as you mention. Thank you!
Thank you for your comment! I am so pleased you connected with what i wrote. I too have had so much joy in trying to tease out this little disctinction in different aspects of life as its operative everywhere. im glad that was communicated to you! medieval philosophy is amazing! acutally God is amazing that He made the world this way! but this distinction helped me see a little more clearly, and thats always a thrill. thanks for sharing!
I thoroughly enjoyed this essay, so thank you.
I have often had occasion to reflect on the regrettable effect that scientific thought has had on our ability to form a relationship to sacred Scripture as well as to the rest of life. I appreciated your distinction between the speculative and the practical sign, howbeit it seems to me that there should be a more substantial term than "practical" to designate what is at stake. "Effectual," maybe?
In any case, I wonder if it is right to say something like, "whereas science has conditioned us to interpret descriptions from Scripture in the indicative mood, this mindset severely curtails our relationship with these texts. We should consider that Scripture is also conveying the ontological, creative power of speech, that flows from God but in which we can also take part"?
thanks for your comment. you raise a lot of interesting questions here. first because I am still trying to be formed by scholastic theology i try to let the terms rest as they are given for the most part and assume, in a case the term doesn´t seem exactly right, that I am missing something rather than that the term should be altered. the fundametnal distinction between speculative and practical reason aligns well at this point, thus a rationality ordered to knowing and another rationality ordered to desiring and doing. practical signs communicate an end, desire, or intention through the sign. my worry with the term effectual is that a speculative sign effects something as well (in the intellect or memory), its just it doesnt communicate desire or create movement. i guess i dont know why practical doesn´t seem substantial.
i really tried to focus on some of the most basic application of this distinciton and the one you raise about scripture is more complex. i do think the historical critical modes of the study of scripture treat scripture as a book of specualitive signs or one that communiates knowledge and thereby reduce what scripture could "mean" or its significance at the outset. Similarly here, scripture both in its stories, aphorisms, hymns, can, from a more orthodox point of view, communicate desire to those reading it with the intention of uncovering the desire of the ultimate author of scripture, and thus it takes the character of a practical sign. Yet there are various senses of scripture, the historical critical method usually reduces to the literal sense. But according to medieval exegesis there is a moral sense a literal sense a typological sense also anologial and allegorical. The red sea parted to save the israelites and then closed to crush their enemies. St Paul says in I cor 10 i think that this story was teaching about baptism, so the story itself is a type of baptism, Joshua is a type of Christ, Rebekka is a type of Mary, the window of rahab was a type of the wounds of Christ. But all of these types are speculative signs that serve practical signs, they help us understand how the practical sign functions be it baptism, Jesus Christ, or His Holy Wounds and our understanding what is the case or the indicative sense of the story is a precondition of its efficacy. I only mention this as it seems the use of indicative doesnt track in this important instance.
This is well put. Thanks for saying this: "We should consider that Scripture is also conveying the ontological, creative power of speech, that flows from God but in which we can also take part."
thanks for the response. I agree with everything you've written. I think my hang-up is the comparative feebleness of the word "practical" in English taken in the moral context. it has connotations of utilitarianism and pragmatism, at least to my ear, though I presume that native Latin speakers would have a different experience.
Really interesting!!!
Thanks alot and thanks for subscribing!