The Calvinist International
In the third theorem of his Theologia naturalis Alsted discusses the issue of non-Christian authors and commends their use even for public preaching, though with certain caveats: III. Præclara ethnicorum dicta Theologica ab eis tanquam iniustis possessoribus, in usum nostrum transferenda sunt. Hoc theorema totidem ferme verbis occurrit apud Augustinum lib. 3. de doctrina Christ. […]
In the introduction to Niall Rudd’s Oxford World’s Classics translation of what survives of Cicero’s Republic and Laws, Jonathan Powell and Niall Rudd include a section on natural law, which for Cicero stands above all civil and positive law. There they note that Cicero’s view of natural law rests on other commitments, “certain fundamental beliefs” (xxvii). They […]
David Rieff has a punchy and provocative article up at Foreign Policy right now. A couple of teasers, the first because it includes a nice bit from Cicero’s De divinatione (“On divination”) 2 (though it’s not Cicero’s observation, but Cicero’s reporting of Cato’s observation) : But financial manias pale (at least for those who have […]
An excerpt from Cicero’s De finibus bonorum et malorum (On the ends of goods and evils) on how Wisdom relates to Nature: Ut Phidias potest a primo instituere signum idque perficere, potest ab alio inchoatum accipere et absolvere, huic est sapientia similis; non enim ipsa genuit hominem, sed accepit a natura inchoatum. Hanc ergo intuens debet institutum […]