Aristotle clearly does not think God/Prime Mover is the maker of the world. This is a Christian concept. For Aristotle, God has no agency. — Jackson

Aristotle does not assign the role of 'creator of the universe' to the Prime Mover but there is much agency implied in being both the efficient and formal cause of all that is generated. Aristotle does sharply separate what is generated from what is 'eternal'. The discussion has more to do with departures from Plato than anything "Christian".

I don't have an image for what you are thinking of in this regard.

I understand the distinction between methods that you make. I agree with Fooloso4 that people do not build temples to the Prime Mover.

The emphasis upon creeds is not the same amongst different kinds of worship. The difference of methods is not so much about beliefs being 'incontrovertible' as it involves a relationship to a divine agent (or agents). In that sense, Aristotle's god is impersonal in comparison to the Olympian pantheon as well as those groups gathered in particular testimonies of faith connected to a world shaped by our decisions.

So, Paul's faith, for instance, is not a good measure of what giving respect to Apollo or Dionysus involves. The differences of method that separates the 'personal' from the 'impersonal', is not self-explanatory toward the purpose of distinguishing the divine from the natural for all who try to do it. That would clump together what should be seen in contrast.

My impression from reading Aristotle is that the unfolding of beings according to their potential to become what they were meant to be is the clearest encounter with a maker of the world. There is encouragement to become 'more like' this agent but those encouragements happen in the context of recognizing that what makes us is tied to our agency no matter what.

Aristotle is not that far from approaching creation stories in the manner of Timaeus, where we are told constantly that the stories are 'likely' but cannot be confirmed. What Aristotle did with the Prime Mover is to introduce that factor as an X. He does not know the value but can proceed without knowing it. It has a function.

Paul was not content to disagree with the 'natural' world but presented his vision as a "foolishness to the Greeks and a scandal for the Jews," It was a diremption with the philosophical that became philosophical. A personal vision that would sweep away tradition and the 'thinking' of the time which others tried to heal.

That is a lot different from Apollo cutting a deal with the Furies over the limits of revenge.

Well, you asked if Aristotle distinguished the realm of Becoming from some conditions that were not bound by those limits. In the context of asking what is 'theological', that is an important difference to bring to mind.

Quote passages that support your view.

Generated beings happen because they appear through time and so have beginnings and endings as organisms. That element of this life is sharply distinguished in Aristotle from what is presumed to be timeless.

He was looking for the cat; he didn't start from the assumption he had found it. — Banno

I think that is true. On the other hand, he based his model upon separating the 'realm of becoming' from what is timeless:

So, it is evident from what has been said that what is called "a form" or "a substance" is not generated, but what is generated is the composite which is named according to that form, and that there is matter in everything that is generated, and in the latter one part is this and another that.
— Metaphysics, 1033b 15, translated by H.G. Apostle

In regards to recognizing a 'natural' theology in contrast to any other kind, this thing about time and what happens within it is not just a narrative of revelation and what might be promised by gods. Or if it is, then there is no distinction to be made between kinds of theology.

Are you onboard with Aristotle saying that the first principles that bring about the realm of becoming we live in is a matter of what he called "theology"?

There's a legitimate branch of philosophy that is concerned with natural theology. It's defining characteristic is that unlike other theologies it does not rely on scripture, mysticism or revelation. Hence, just talking about god is not sufficient to differentiate theology form philosophy. — Banno

Does the Timaeus count as a proponent of natural theology?

It sounds like the Ukrainians and the Russians had nothing to do with it from that paraphrase. Seems unlikely in view of the "civil" war quality of the participants.

The U.S. has fought a lot of proxy wars. One quality that has appeared consistently in those conflicts is how the people actually fighting for themselves came to use foreign powers for their own ends. It turns out that it is not just a game of Risk.

Who are you quoting?

Whether one describes it as a 'removal of a people' for the sake of doing that or not, the brutality accepted as necessary to achieve goals has been well established. Tough if you are one of the troublesome people.

When one takes it straight without chaser:

I admit that I was fixated on the dental condition of a donkey, but others gave a more serious reply.

Many different people heard different meanings in those words in Matthew.

The Great Schism between the Western and Eastern churches highlighted whether the Nicene Creed should say the Spirit comes from the Father (as was originally agreed upon) or whether it should say the Spirit comes from the Father and the Son.

I figure centuries of religious wars within 'Christianity' should make referring to it as an identifiable object more problematic than is commonly done.

How can information processing simpliciter be the same as a full-blown observer? I think there are too many jumps and "just so" things going on here to link the two so brashly. — schopenhauer1

For those involved with building theories through 'cybernetic codes', there is an interesting model that separates two kinds of cognitive processes and sees them interacting in parallel. The model assumes that stress of negative experiences drives the interaction:

The cognitive system, shown in the left-hand side of Figure 1, is comprised of low-level automatic processing and on-line (strategic) processing that includes the limited capacity “thinking space.” The output illustrated is labeled “psychological disorder” and is considered the consequence of the cognitive attentional syndrome (CAS) dominating on-line processing as depicted. Under different on-line processing configurations, where, for example, inhibition of worry under control of the MCS is specified, internal psychological events will be transitory and therefore not constitute “disorder.”

The need to pay attention is accompanied by a process that gives it a way to resolve the emergency. The system becomes dysfunctional without that relief:

The model highlights clear differences between metacognitive therapy and other treatment approaches in the intended target of change. In MCT, the therapist retrieves and modifies the validity of declarative metacognitions and also retrieves and re-writes the commands (procedures) for regulating processing with the purpose of modifying those involved in the CAS. In contrast, other treatments either do not aim to work on metacognitions or they do so without maintaining a clear structural and functional distinction between systems. But such a distinction could be facilitative in the design of more advanced theory-grounded treatment techniques. For example, if we consider the treatment of low self-esteem, a cognitive therapist will aim to identify and challenge negative beliefs about the self by asking questions such as: “What is the evidence you are a failure, is there another way to view the situation?” but the metacognitive therapist would ask: “What’s the point in analyzing your failures?” and follows with techniques that allow the individual to directly step-back and abandon the perseverative thought processes that extend the idea. Of particular importance, in MCT, the client discovers that processing remains malleable and subject to control in spite of the dominant cognition (belief) “I’m a failure,” thus creating an alternative model of processing rather than an alternative model of the social self (the latter considered a secondary topographic event).

From this perspective the 'perceiver' happens between the processes rather than appears as a result of any process by itself.

Your teeth are like a flock of shorn ewes that have come up from the washing, all of which bear twins, and not one among them has lost its young. — Song of Solomon 4:2

The talk of the 'timeless wisdom of Egypt' and mystery cults reminds me of Madame Blavatsky and the
Theosophical Society.

She, too, embraced Neo-Platonism and antisemitism. She did not, however, refer to Judaism as 'anti-Christian'. That has more of the tone of Marcion, as mentioned before.

The entities are only a sufficient cause if they provide what their absence does not. Simply listing God as a cause is no advance toward explaining phenomena. That is tantamount to saying nothing can be explained.

The point in the article about analogical language does point to something that is not 'univocal' in Aquinas' language. And Aquinas' statement that there is no difference between 'His essence from His being', does not permit predicating His existence as we do with any other thing.

But noting that God is the efficient cause is for Aquinas a given 'natural' function such as Aristotle saw was necessary to explain the realm of becoming. That seems 'univocal' in its purpose.

The onus is on the person providing the book to say what this book must be read, out of all possible books. — Manuel

Yes. Let the onus fall on you.

I don't think recommendations are pointless. I disagree with Chomsky in many ways but respect the way he pulls together what he thinks is coherent. I don't think he would be cool with the idea that his ideas are just one of many. He wants his idea to win.

Well, then, what is Chomsky's reading list?

The novacula occami aka Occam's razor is a principle applied to explanations and simply states that entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity. — Agent Smith

You seem to be going beyond the necessity of any particular explanation by stating that the restriction suggested by Occam applies to all possible statements.

Yes, much more than the lawns.

I am familiar with Mills, Waugh, O'Connor, and Brooks. Will check out the others.

I think Steinbeck is a part of this. Conformity as a means to survival in contrast to people imagining their future in Dickens.

Rupert Thomson, lives in Veblen's basement, should you check him out.

That in turn goes back to Duns Scotus ‘univocity of being’. It was that which foreclosed the possibility of there being expressions conveying different modes or levels of being. — Wayfarer

One thing I don't understand about Milbank's argument is whether Scotus's 'univocity' cancels St. Thomas arguing that God is simple in Question 3 of the Summa Theologica. There is a list of what cannot be said of him. The negatives are balanced against what can be said of him in the 'voice' of 'natural' being:

I answer that, The absolute simplicity of God may be shown in many ways. First from the previous articles of this question. For there is neither composition of quantitative parts in God, since he is not a body; nor composition of form and matter; nor does His nature differ from his suppositum; nor his essence from his being; neither in Him is composition of genus and difference, nor of subject and accident. Therefore it is clear that God in no way composite, but is altogether simple. Secondly, because every composite is posterior to its component parts, and is dependent upon them; but God is the first being, as has been shown above. Thirdly, because every composite has a cause, for things in themselves diverse cannot unite unless something causes them to unite. But God is uncaused, as has been shown above since he is the first efficient cause. — Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Q.3. Art7

Maintaining that God cannot be expressed as a being seems to remove him from the discussion of different 'modes' or levels of 'being' rather than provide the means for such. A better example of the 'univocal' may be Spinoza whose metaphysics does not allow agents of creation to loiter in the hallways.

Apologies to all if this point of theology does not belong to a discussion of the concept of religion.

It has given me a boost when my other guilty pleasures did not.

My interests overlap with many of the books you and the other posters mention as important to them. I am going to check out a number of titles mentioned that I have not read.

Books not mentioned yet, that are important to me, are the wittings of Greeks from Homer onwards. I have spent most of my time in that neck of the wood on the works of philosophy but the plays and poems interest me too.

Some other books I love without having to think much about it are:

Rupert Thomson's Five Gates of Hell
The Poetry of Rilke, Auden, Neruda, C.S Merwin, and Charles Olson.
Veblen's Theory of the Leisure Class
Yuri Slezkine's The House of Government
Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next series.
Virgil's Aeneid translated by Dryden

I like Bitter Crank's idea for a worst ever list. I am going to slip into a Hazmat suit before entering that conversation.

Apart from the question of whether causes and first principles exist outside of the individual beings they bring into existence, they can be distinguished from each other during the inquiry into their nature. What, after all, is an inquiry into causes if one cannot make that distinction?

The soul is the cause and first principle of the living body. But these are so spoken in many ways, and similarly the soul is cause in the three ways distinguished; for the soul is cause as being that from which the movement is itself derived, as that for the sake of which it occurs, and as the essence of bodies which are ensouled. — De Anima, 415b8, translated by D.W. Hamlyn

But the intellect, as a potential (from the passage I quoted), is posterior to the material body, dependent on it, just like every other power that the soul has. — Metaphysician Undercover

The potentiality of the intellect in III.4 is not described as a dependency upon the "material body" but as a condition that allows it to think "all things":

It must, then, since it thinks all things, be unmixed, as Anaxagoras says, in order it may rule, that is in order it may know; for the intrusion of anything foreign to it hinders and obstructs it; hence too, it must have no other nature than this, that is potential. That part of the soul, then, called intellect (and I speak of as intellect that by which the soul thinks and supposes) is actually none of the existing things before it thinks. Hence too, it is reasonable that it should not be mixed with the body; for in that case it would come to be of a certain kind, either cold or hot, or it would even have an organ like the faculty of perception; but as things are it has none. Those who say, then, that soul is a place of forms speak well, except it is not the whole soul but that which can think, and it is not actually but potentially the forms. — ibid, 429a 18

This is the last comment I will make in this discussion. Feel free to have the last word. I am still no closer to understanding your interpretation and you report the same consternation about mine. It is time that I exit the revolving door.

They are not separated in the generated individual, but Aristotle distinguishes between the soul as form and the individual repeatedly as the bulk of my quotes demonstrate. De Anima begins with the distinction:

There is also the problem of whether the affections (πάθη) of the soul are all common also to that which has it or whether any are peculiar to the soul itself; — ibid, 403a3-7, Greek terms included by Eugene T. Gendlin

After Aristotle develops his proposed answer to the problem he can say:

Hence old age is not due to the soul's being affected in a certain way, but this happening to that which the soul is in, as in the case of drunkenness and disease. — ibid, 408b 18, emphasis mine

The book is meaningless without the distinction.

Except for the forms and matter which make such beings possible.

The traffic lights turn blue tomorrow.

One of the roles of metaphor is to travel. Poetry as means of changing place and time.

A Contemporary

What if I came down now out of these
solid dark clouds that build up against the mountain
day after day with no rain in them
and lived as a blade of grass
in a garden in the south when the clouds part in winter
from the beginning I would be older than all the animals
and to the last I would be simpler
frost would design me and dew would disappear on me
sun would shine through me
I would be green with white roots
feel worms touch my feet as a bounty
have no name and no fear
turn naturally to the light
know how to spend the day and night
climbing out of myself
all my life. — W.S. Merwin, Flower and Hand

They are a "special" class of beings in regard to distinguishing the generated from what is not generated.

I don't understand your use of "combined beings". It doesn't appear Aristotelian to me. — Metaphysician Undercover

Read Chapter 8 of Book Zeta of the Metaphysics for the briefest account of the "hylomorphism" that Aristotle uses throughout his works on natural beings. The chapter should be read as a whole to understand its parts but here is the decisive sentence regarding this discussion:

So, it is evident from what has been said that what is called "a form" or "a substance" is not generated, but what is generated is the composite which is named according to that form, and that there is matter in everything that is generated, and in the latter one part is this and another that. — Metaphysics, 1033b 15, translated by H.G. Apostle

This idea, I cannot accept. The idea that when a person becomes old, and mentally incapacitated, suffering dementia or something like that, the person is still fully capable of "thought", and it's just something else that decays, I believe is completely refuted by evidence. We'd have to really distort the meaning of "thought" to support such a position. — Metaphysician Undercover

This does not reflect Aristotle's thinking. Only some combined beings are capable of thought. The capacity is directly related to the condition of the body. This is made clear in the passage preceding the one I quoted:

The intellect seems to be born in us as a kind of substance and not to be destroyed. For it would be destroyed if at all by the feebleness of old age, while as things are, what happens is similar to what happens in the case of the sense-organs. For if an old man acquired an eye of a certain kind, he would see as well as even a young man. Hence old age is not due to the soul's being affected in a certain way, but this happening to that which the soul is in, as in the case of drunkenness and disease. — ibid, 408b 18, emphasis mine

I believe that in reality we ought to reject this qualification "impassable", and allow the simple solution, that the material aspect of the human mind is what receives forms. — Metaphysician Undercover

Here again, it is important to follow distinctions Aristotle makes between the soul as a principle that animates all life from the experience of combined beings. Aristotle states at the beginning of the book that only combined beings can be affected:

There is also the problem of whether the affections (πάθη) of the soul are all common also to that which has it or whether any are peculiar to the soul itself; for it is necessary to deal with this, though it is not easy. It appears that in most cases the soul is not affected, nor does it act (ποιεῖν) apart from the body, e.g., in being angry, being confident, wanting, and in all perceiving. although noein (νοεῖν, thinking, understanding, nous-activity) looks most like being peculiar to the soul. But if this too is a form of imagination or does not exist apart from (μὴ ἄνευ) imagination, it would not be possible even for this to be (εἶναι, einai) apart from the body. — ibid, 403a3-7, Greek terms included by Eugene T. Gendlin

Book 3, chapter 4 follows the discussion of imagination in chapter 3 and begins the argument of how the intellect can be seen as a potential in relation to what makes it actual. The last paragraph of chapter 4 says:

Now, being affected in virtue of something common has been discussed before---to the effect that the intellect is in a way potentially the objects of thought, although it is actually nothing before it thinks; potentially in the same way as there is writing on a tablet on which nothing actually written exists; that is what happens in the case of the intellect. And it is itself an object of thought, just as its objects are. For, in the case of those things which have no matter, that which thinks and that which is thought are the same; for contemplative knowledge and that which is known in that way are the same. The reason why it does not always think we must consider. In those things which have matter each of the objects of thought is present potentially. Hence, they will not have intellect in them (for intellect is a potentiality for being such things without their matter}, while it can be thought in it. — ibid, 429b29

The following chapters demonstrate how admitting in 431a8 that the 'soul never thinks without an image" is not admitting that the intellect is a "form of imagination" as described at the beginning of the book.

I think it can be traced back to a growing animosity that develops with the followers of Paul. A question of birthright. — Fooloso4

That certainly must be the case. On the other hand, the experience of reading those texts directly after centuries of being told what it says may have had something to do with the strong emotions elicited. The scene had changed from when Paul was explaining why the narrative included Gentiles. Luther reacts as if he just watched the whole event on videotape and is beside himself with rage.

Pascal is an interesting counterpoint to that reaction. In the Pensées, he spends a lot of time on thinking about Judaism as different through the lens of Paul but goes further into texts outside of the Passion and ends up saying the differences did not place Judaism outside of the truth as Pascal understood it to be.

(To be clear, Pascal's role in the Reformation is much different from Protestants who broke from the Church altogether.)

It is a dark stain across most of the Protestant denominations.

If I understand this correctly, I see two points. First, the truth is not accessible by our own efforts. Second, without experiencing truth anything we think or imagine it to be will not only fall short of it but will lead us astray. — Fooloso4

Our efforts are required but more is needed beyond those. The limits of self-sufficiency are not a cancellation of them.

Kierkegaard did not say that it leads one astray, necessarily. It is more of a kind of horizon where the past and present is related to what has been created can be seen as something given to us whereas a relationship to the future cannot be approached that way. One cannot propose that one is in need of a condition that one lacks if one already knows what that condition is.

One of those proponents here also includes the Egyptians in his efforts to bypass and exclude Judaism from our understanding of Jesus. In his case it is him more than anything else that stands in his way. — Fooloso4

There is something weird and dark about the desire to rip out Judaism, root and branch. That program does not offset the need for testifying what one believes. Being 'Christian' is not a result of saying what it is not.

The desire to have as a principle, a separate, independent intellect, led to the notion of a complete separation between active and passive intellect. This allows that the active intellect might be free from the influence of the passive matter (potential), allowing the intellect the capacity to know all things. — Metaphysician Undercover

The active intellect, in so far as it exists separately from the composite beings who are able to think because of it, are not experiencing this aspect of the principle:

Thus thought and contemplation decay because something else within is destroyed, while thought itself is unaffected, But thinking (dianoiesthai), and loving or hating are not affectations of that, but for the individual which has it, in so far as it does. Hence when this too is destroyed we neither remember nor love; for these did not belong to that, but to the composite thing which has perished. — De Anima, 408b 18, translated Ackrill

And:

In separation it is just what it is, and this alone is immortal and eternal. (But we do not remember because this is unaffected, whereas the passive intellect is perishable, and without this thinks nothing. — ibid, 430a 18

The difference between the active principle and the sort of knowing that composite beings do is collapsed again when you say:

But a completely separate, active intellect appears to be impossible by Aristotle's principles. This is because the intellect in each of its capacities, the capacity to know, prior to learning, and the capacity to act, posterior to learning, are all properly described as potentials. — Metaphysician Undercover

Only the composite beings have a capacity to learn, act, or remember. In regard to 'potentials" that is what caused Aristotle to object to his predecessors:

The view we have just been examining, in company with most theories about the soul, involves the following absurdity: they all join the soul to a body, or place it in a body, without adding any specification of the reason of their union, or of the bodily conditions required for it. Yet such explanation can scarcely be omitted; for some community of nature is presupposed by the fact that the one acts and the other is acted upon, the one moves and the other is moved; interaction always implies a special nature in the two inter-agents. — ibid, 407b14-21

These observations move me to ask for you to provide textual references for the following statement:

And, it is later shown how thinking as the act of an intellect is fundamentally a potential, therefore it cannot be used to represent a pure, independent actuality. — Metaphysician Undercover

What did Paul say about the Greek understanding of the universal nature of truth? — Fooloso4

Paul was not the philosopher Augustine was. The understanding of truth Paul worked with was for the purpose of translating between the Gentiles and the Jews. In the Letter to the Romans, the Creator is said to have 'etched the good into every heart'. The experience of conscience as an individual is still true with or without the crisis that the event of Christ has brought forward. But the acceptance of that 'good', which all can receive from the conditions of their birth, does not account for the 'shortness of days' that expects "this cosmos" to be replaced by another. This movement requires more than a universal good of a person to be recognized because that life is happening within a process where there is an interaction with the Creator who can change the cosmos and the creatures within it.

Paul depicts the experience of the Gentiles as providing only an isolated view of a single cosmos

Centuries later, Kierkegaard says that once one has left the cosmos of the world as being what it already is, it is a departure, whether one follows Paul or not. If the condition for experiencing truth is outside of one's innate package, then one cannot use that package as a testimony for it.

How does this relate to the Covenant? Is this part of the problem of Christian self understanding? — Fooloso4

As you have observed elsewhere, there is more than one 'Christian' answer or question regarding these matters. I am trying to see the matter through Paul's eyes even though I do not accept his testimony as my own.

Your question is worth its own discussion. On this topic of 'how Greek was Jesus', I just wanted to point out that as an 'article' of faith, Paul insists on the differences between Greek and Jewish legacies even as he unifies them in his particular vision of the Kingdom of Heaven. No matter how far one can or cannot get by studying the historical context, the proponents of a 'nothing but Greek' thesis has the author of much of what is commonly understood to be Christian standing in the way.