Notes on Turtullian: 2nd century Christian apologist

His original name was Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus. Tertullian is his anglicized (the English form) name. He was Berber: native of North Africa. He was the first to write Christian Latin literature. He was a Christian apologist and attacked many heresies. He is called 'the father of Latin Christianity' (e.g. Western Christianity, contrasted with Eastern). He coined the term: Trinity, and came up with: three Persons, one Substance. Coined the terms: Old and New Testament. He later converted to Montanism: a heresy lead by Montanus claiming to have a New Prophecy from God. After his conversion, he still combated heresies such as Gnosticism. He wrote 46 works: 31 are extant. He thought God has a body, though He is Spirit. He hated Greek philosophy, and thought it a breeding ground for heresy. Adhered to Traducianism: one's soul is transmitted by one's parents - the only soul directly made by God was Adam's. The soul has a distinct kind of physicality: thus, the fires of Hell can affect it. Jesus has not always existed: the Father - at one time - existed without the Son.

What is a passion?

Passion: a kind of concept - not particularly Romance. More to the point - a passion is an emotional state: innate and biologically driven. Examples: anger, lust, greed - thus: sins are passions, even though not all passions are sins. Passions can lead to: social ills or benefits. Like what?: God's punishment, Hobbes' state of nature, karma. Passions are foils - foils to what?: the pursuit of reason, virtue, or faith. Some indulge the passions: Hedonism and Nihilism. Some moderate the passions: Epicureanism or conventional Religion. Some extinguish the passions: Stoicism, Buddhism, Monasticism.

Spinoza and the passions: to be contrasted with action. When does a passion happen?: when external events affect us. In what way?: if we have confused ideas about the events and whatever caused them. What is a passive state?: occurs when we have a certain emotion - call it 'passivity of the soul'. When this happens, the body's power diminishes. An emotion is this: a bodily change coupled with an idea about that change, an idea that can help or hurt the body. When we have emotions, this happens: bodily changes are caused by either external or internal/external forces. We - as persons - should be the only cause of our bodily changes. And we should always base our acts on an understanding of cause and effect coupled with this: ideas of such bodily changes logically related to one another and the world. If one does this, one is active. Most of the time this doesn't happen: that's why Spinoza thought the emotions were more powerful than reason.

Yes: in the beginning was the Word - or, the Logic, and the Word became flesh to dwell among us. But the Word is also the only begotten of the Father - one almost wants to say: in the primordial beginning was the Music which begot the Word, just as Greek Tragedy begot Greek Philosophy. The Son was dead and buried, but rose: to reunite with the Music, the supra-rational, the trans-rational. A mystical parallel: our reason must die and resurrect to unite with the divine mystique - though reason be saluted!: for reason brings us to the dock where our mystical ship awaits.

Music: the infusion of the Dionysian and the Apollonian - Dionysus: the music - melody and rhythm without words. The mouth and vocals can express this: it's only condition - that language is not embodied. Apollonian: the words and the language as it is sung. Since the sung can also have melody and rhythm, it is a peculiar autonomous infusion of the greatest art. When this infusion is itself infused with the instrumental Dionysian, we have a more complex infusion, and the primordial infusion is brought to the second power. Movies: the infusion is also made - we have the score: it transforms the projected images, and the images embody the Apollonian. The key question: how is consciousness transformed or effected when brought into sensuous contact with such an infusion? Is not this the beginning of a nascent, mystical contact with the Divine beauty? Or - more generally: contact with things of the spirit?: things that cannot be directly stimulated, but conjured, enchanted, awoken, or coaxed?

The facing of the daily grind after a deep, religious, emotional experience of longing: the hangover after a night of intoxication.

Finding secret paths hidden to the maps: these are the nooks that hide the secrets of your heart - in the forest of life, wonder from the beaten path to find the nook!

I just read that a dove has a remarkable feature: wherever it is, it has the innate longing to return to its master - how much does this illuminate this: that the Holy Spirit descended on Christ like a dove? It's almost as though the Spirit had homesickness: as a mother bird longs to return to her nest.

To be a Christian philosopher: in an art museum with masses suffering from near-sightedness - a bland preoccupation with the only things they are able to see: that which is presented close to the eye. But the philosopher: his farsightedness leads to tripping over obstacles and himself - why?: he is too focused on the art! The true philosopher is not worried by their jeering: for he can't see them - and the masses fret over why the philosopher keeps stumbling - he cannot focus on the things that are close. The study of philosophy leads to a farsightedness: and he is always bottling up the experiences he has there - when alone: he enjoys the fragrance of the experience trapped within in recollection! The soul of a philosopher: a transit warehouse for such mystical bottles!

The camera abstracts the image in the photograph: the philosopher abstracts concepts. A lion and a photograph of a lion: if you rip the photograph, the real lion is left unscathed - the destruction of concepts leaves the world unscathed. The relation between the lion and the photograph might be the relation between the world and concepts: the photograph abstracts the lion - the concept abstracts from the world. Whence comes the concept of a unicorn: if there were no lion, it's photograph would be impossible - yet we have the concept of a unicorn: how does one abstract from that which is not?

A fly hits the windshield: the wipers don't remove the fly but smear it - the philosopher without love.

Imagine a man endlessly praising the seats in a theater during a movie: "Shhh!", we'd say: "Enjoy the movie!" - is this the practical man? Or perhaps the scientist is this: utter fascination with a pixel to the exclusion of the entire screen - if we we're in the theater, wouldn't we find him peculiar? To be in a theater where one is probably mocked for actually watching the movie: the predicament of the philosopher. Or: the blind person who specializes in sight - the predicament of the academic philosopher. Or: the seeing who specialize in blindness - the predicament of the nominal Christian?

Having to go to the bathroom when the doors are locked: the predicament of the unnoticed genius.

Deciding the salvation of someone: two men have an open book in front of their eyes, and their eyes are moving back and forth over the sentences. Each man is enclosed in a sound-proof glass case. One man is reading: the other is mimicking the act of reading. How do you decide who is reading? What criteria do you use? Is it the furrowed brow? But the mimicker has that as well. Is it the movement of the eyes? This won't work either. Two men are writhing on the ground, screaming because they are in pain: but one is acting - the behavior is identical. You shall know them by their fruit: cannot fruit be mimicked? You call a philosopher to discuss the issue of X: he eloquently gives an answer - yet, it could easily be a dunce (skilled in acting) reading from a book. Is the aim of life the much difficult quest of discovering who is really reading or in pain?

A man types as an annoying conversation is happening in the next room. He wants to type and for the talking to stop: then he hears his name. The typing stops - this is how God speaks to us. We try to type: but the conversation only happens while we type - and while we type we don't want to listen - we want to type. If we could but hear the conversation while we type we would know the will of God. Be we don't want to. And the conversation stops every time we try to listen.

Shelley said: Thou wert as a lone star whose light did shine
On some frail bark in winter's midnight roar: - To the precious individual swept up from the mass: be an individual.

Wilde said that to be ourselves it is necessary we wear masks. To have speech in a land of mutes: to have an ear in a land of deafness - how is communication possible? Sign language. The Philosopher, the poet, is banished to such a land. To avoid loneliness he must learn the speech of the natives. He must suspend his desire for speech and indulge the pettiness. Plato's cave: he must feign interest in shadows after experiencing the Sun. He is mocked if the prisoners are told of his preoccupation with the Sun. They are slaves. But a day is coming: the veil shall be taken off - they shall see what all along this madman was raving about.

The drunk person who doesn't think he is drunk: the arrogant man arrogantly analyzing his arrogance. The question was posed to Piper: why are Calvinists so negative? Piper's answer: the coherence of the Calvinist's system woos the systematic intellect, an intellect prone toward negativity, debate, and argument. Instead of removing the dagger he twists it. It is as if to say: all apologies about our negativity - it is only symptomatic of our superior intelligence, our attraction to a superior theology. They lack the proper mirror; all he has is a self-portrait. The mirror reveals the shortcomings. God, forgive my sins.

No man is an island, said Donne. Yet I long for solitude. Perhaps it's meant only in doses. The goal is the belonging to a community, membership. We are to be to a group what an organ is to a body: indispensable, irreplaceable. But the collective rears its head. You're just a number. Is this what Thoreau fled from? That he moved only a couple miles from the city is beside the point. The shoulder was taken out of joint, not severed. If it was severed, the body will eventually make due. But if out of joint, the body's attention is focused on that pain until the problem is fixed. Thoreau was being a gadfly to his town. Two things to avoid: a selfish solitude and a selfless collective. A bad Church breeds the former; institutions breed the latter. A good Church is family.

Alone in a house of unlikes: a solitude that is thrust upon you. But then out comes art. Is art always the offspring of spiritual poverty? No. God made the Heavens and the Earth. But Lewis speculates that in creating, it's possible that God made in Himself a want only we could fulfill. Only omnipotence could do that. Perhaps that is what is meant by this: God saw the crucifixion in creating the first nebula. Suffering and art mingle. It's almost a prerequisite that the creation of art is given birth by prior birth pains: and so God impregnated Himself with creation.

Why is it that I couldn't tell you the lyrics to a song I loved if you asked me on the spot? But if the song was playing, then I could magically recall the lyrics, and sing along with the song. Philosophy is like this. If someone asks me what good is philosophy, I stammer and stutter. But if a philosophical conversation was occurring, I suddenly know the words. Even by request: if a question is posed to me, my conscious attention to the form my answer will take muddles the process. But if in solitude I close my eyes and contemplate the question, I suddenly hear the music, and suddenly have sparkling glimpses of the answer . . .

Reading a bad review of a song which made you weep: the ultimate insult? Reading a bad review of a movie you loved by a critic you've long respected: even worse? The question arises: whose soul is lacking? Or are different colors shining from different sides of the prism? You hear the following: there comes a time when one says of even a Bach or a Shakespeare, and then asks, 'Is that it?'. But then you encounter those who think Bach ugly. Can we have any assurance regarding our personal favorites? Pearl Jam cascades upon me all the trappings of sublimity. Yet, Amazon.com is riddled with scathing reviews of their mediocrity. I shudder. How could they? Are they aesthetically handicapped, or am I? And what of those who aren't moved to music at all? I am dimensions away from them. I am a droplet of cool water in a furnace of petty ignorance.

Language-games

If I'm playing basketball, does it make much sense to cry foul because the rook moved diagonally? Nonsense. The game of basketball and chess are mingling. Is not the same thing happening here: science cries foul because God is not detected empirically? Aren't the games of religion and science mingling inadvertently?

Art, God, and hiding

The best books are the books that hide the author. If the story of mankind was a book, how great would its author be on this ground? Yet we decry a hidden God. We want a more obvious God. Aesthetically, I revolt at finding too much of an author in a work. Yet, if he does put himself in the work, he does it in a way unexpected. Wilde always made his spokesmen well to do, upper class people. God came into the world in the dross of poverty and meekness. What brilliance. This is why M. Night Shyamalan's cameos are dull. We know it's the director. We don't want to see him. Hitchcock knows this. He comes into view and goes out, and that's just what we want. Clint Eastwood goes for the other safe route: making himself a main character. Shyamalan tries to be a supporting character, and only almost wants to be the plot's Deus ex Machina. The character - in order to convince - must be more cloaked. Hiding is the key to showing. Silence is the key to explaining.

Pregnant with words . . .

I can't write when I just sit down to write. One must always have something to write about. They must have a message. Being cute with words will eventually be found out. I was on the verge of dispensing Oscar Wilde on such grounds; but then I came to find he actually said something. And that is what I attended to. Chesterton despised the mere paradox on the grounds that it was lying. I hate when I notice someone straining for a paradox he doesn't believe himself. It's dishonest. It's proud. It displays linguistic dexterity, but sacrifices something more important. It's a man speaking a dozen languages, but speaking nothing but banalities. It's impressive, but insipid. It's the celebrity who chooses his role based on the income, rather than passion in the part. When the audience discovers it - if they are discerning - they rightfully despise him. This is art for money's sake. I forget who said it, but I agree - there's too much of Wilde in his plays, just as there is too much Chesterton in his Father Brown series. That is why they fall short of greatness, in my opinion. Sure, Wilde has his share of social insights, and insights into human nature; but in the end, we have predominately linguistic dexterity. It is a skill well brandished. But aesthetically it seems to me inferior. I prefer much more a work in which the author is hidden. I almost would like to say there's too much Shakespeare in Shakespeare. Each play is drenched with the same meter - but I attribute this more to my ignorance. But that is my immediate reaction, and that is why I've never gone very deep with him. I picked the gems and left the dirt. Wittgenstein felt the same on this score. Even Tolstoy is a grand painter. But it is the whole we prefer instead of the parts. To refer back to Wilde, I do think Dorian Grey a masterpiece - but that is not because there isn't too much of Wilde: it is that Wilde is disclosed so thoroughly to us. He is naked before us and we sympathize, since - deep down - we have the same depravity. But Tolstoy paints the Sistine Chapel. To stare up at that grand ceiling is a near religious experience. It is peopled with many characters and we can get lost gazing on each one. And yet there is a symphonic whole. That is his genius. Characters are created. The whole Tolstoy isn't reincarnated in each character. There are too many characters. Tolstoy strikes me as a reader of persons. He can discern from the look of a face the state of a soul. He does this as Mozart plays music. Human nature is Tolstoy's piano. I've always admired people who can read others: the observant. Sherlock Holmes falls in this category. After a quick scan, things are deduced which baffle the imagination. This must be a trait of the superman. But with admiration comes envy. Are we to strive to attain it? What if our nature is incapable? But we don't know till we try. Does the glory lie in the trying? We try to realize our natures to their fullest. But isn't the point of life to find the key to redeeming our natures, or that this is a condition for realizing them? Sometimes I look out onto the world and I feel dumb. People race past me knowing all sorts of things and I stand dumb, watching them go about their tasks, tasks that they do with great skill. Other times, I feel like an anomaly, caring more for inward things. It nauseates me to think of practicality. It revolts my whole being. For example, I love philosophy. But to be asked what can be done with it stirs within a brooding fury. They cannot understand. They will not understand. Their whole frame of mind is alien to potentially understanding. They are convinced that nothing can be done with it and that is the end of it. If you can get out any reasons, once they leave your mouth, you detest yourself, for when you go to defend your love, you're reduced to babbling nonsense, and the foolishness of your defense further reassures the man of practice of your hopelessly idealistic way of life. That I cannot talk of sports means that I am disconnected from life. On the contrary! That they cannot talk of life is the greatest tragedy. Pascal was right: it's either diversion or indifference. But we've found the source of food. Why fret? Because they think we're foolish. But is it all as selfish as that? What would I want? The veneration of all? It's sane man in the madhouse being labeled insane by the madmen. There comes a point when you want to grab them and scream how insane that is. But you cannot talk to a beast. You cannot talk to the spiritually asleep. They are in the dark, in the desert. Is prayer the only way our of the morass?

Why do I return over and over again to the parts in movies and music that move me? Why do I do that? Wittgenstein listened to Beethoven, liked him, and liked him because of passion. Is the key to the problem of life passion? Maybe not pain. But an inner striving. This is Kierkegaard's point. But I would say I've found Christ. And yet I return again and again to those parts. Why? Do I enjoy the feeling? That's a part, but I don't think it's the whole. Schopenhauer thought a great deal of the effect of music is the role imagination played during the experience. When I listen to Alive by Pearl Jam, I have certain images race across my mind's eye, images which are fed to me from the deepest recesses of my consciousness. If I paid sufficient attention, maybe I could note what those images are and perform a sort of psychoanalysis on myself in the same vein Freud did with dreams. The latent content, being chosen for a reason, needing analysis, and that this might be a bridge to the land of your identity. So, there is a feeling, images, and their cooperation. Lewis' desire or joy plays a role here. The meaning of the experience is given content by those passages in Lewis that analyze the dialectic of desire. The idea of arousal, that it arouses feelings, and that the next step is the satisfaction of the desires, and the notion that satisfaction doesn't exist in this world, and so the probable explanation is that the satisfaction lies in the next world. These ideas flit across my mind as I listen. Is this why I return? There is newness too. If I remember rightly, new images flash before my mind upon each new experience, and if the images remain, their order can change suddenly, unpredictably. This variability is pleasurable; it is the same kind of variability in an ocean disturbed by swells. You're tossed about, you ascend suddenly, you descend just as suddenly, and there's no rhyme or reason about the waves. If in a real ocean, terror overtakes you; but if the ocean is just the gusts of the music stirring the ocean of your imagination and consciousness, there is a distinct pleasure in it, especially if the waves are the images, and that the images come from you. For example, the first lyric is Alive is, "Son, she said, have I got a little story for you." My mother immediately appears. Perhaps even a mysterious female figure. The image of an open book is there, with the cover toward me, and the contents toward the woman, and that her eyes peer just above the top of the book, and they're staring at me. And all these images are blasting me, while the melody embodies its own mood in its own mysterious way. All these forces clash each other like tidal waves. The contact happens in consciousness and it produces in us longing. Do I listen to it, then, to feel the longing? But I don't want to simplify anything. Music has other purposes, as does other forms of art. There are paroxysms of rage without particular direction. No longing here. Just Dionysian reveling. But then I would I long for this. I can't say anything else here.

Why does Justin McLeod in the movie The Man Without a Face fascinate me? His house. It is home for me. I watched the movie a million times. Yet, I'd say the movie is mediocre. His house is filled with books and other things. He listens to opera, he reads The Aeneid by Virgil, he looks at his scarred face in a mirror. The music coincides perfectly with his revulsion. He is alone. Isn't that all of us? I've watched that scene over and over again. What about when Chuck Norstadt reads the poem High Flight by John Gillespie Magee, Jr? Swirled and swung. Put out my hand and touched the face of God. The music by James Horner strikes just the write mood. Poetry sweeps the imagination into realms you have not dreamed of. Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth. How that stabs me as I type it!! Sunward I've climbed and joined the tumbling mirth. Yes, and Chesterton was saying it to me all along. That Christ's secret was his mirth. Oh, please do not systematize mirth! Leave your claws away. Must you touch everything, Reason? Cold Reason. Come warm me Passion, Emotion, Feeling. Shield me from science's lifeless dissection. And yet the paradox is that I need Reason to say that. Alas.