THE GREAT IDEAS, A SYNTOPICON, VOL. 1
Mortimer J. Adler, editor
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"Human kingdoms are established by divine providence." St. Augustine
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"Immortality is, in a way, enjoyed in this life, for it is a present participation in eternity through the mind's knowledge of God."
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"All things partake of The One in absolute dependence."
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"Although the essences or forms of things are many, yet the truth of the divine intellect is one." Thomas Aquinas
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"If we attentively consider the constant regularity, order, and concatenation of natural things, the surprising magnificence, beauty, and perfection of the larger, and the exquisite contrivance of the smaller parts of the creation, together with the exact harmony and correspondence of the whole,….I say if we consider all these things, and at the same time attend to the meaning and import of the attributes, one, eternal, infinitely wise, good, and perfect, we shall clearly perceive that they belong to the Spirit who 'works all in all', and 'by whom all things consist.'" George Berkeley (1685-1745), 'The Principles of Human Knowledge'
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"Spirit is immortal; with it there is no past, no future, but an essential now. This necessarily implies that the present form of Spirit comprehends within it all earlier steps….The grades which Spirit seems to have left behind it, it still possesses in the depths of its present." Georg Hegel (1770-1831),
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"Love is all opposites – the only reality."
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"Love is everywhere in the universe – in all things which have their being from the bounty and generosity of God's creative love and which in return obey the law of love in seeking God or in whatever they do to magnify God's glory."
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"As God is the supernatural efficient cause of all created things, so God is also the supernatural final cause – the end or ultimate good toward which all creatures tend." Baruch Spinoza
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"In the realm of Being, the trace of The One establishes reality: existence is a trace of The One." Plotinus
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"God is the infinite and eternal substance of all finite existences, an absolute and unchanging ONE underlying the finite modes in which it variably manifests itself."
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"Only God, only an infinite being, can satisfy man's infinite craving for all the good there is."
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"The ancients did not doubt that men could choose and, through choice, exercise some control over the disposition of their lives. Tacitus, for example…claims that 'the wisest of the ancients leave us the capacity of choosing our life."
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"Nothing is future to God. Everything that has ever happened or ever will is simultaneously together in the eternal present of the divine vision."
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"Man dies in the flesh to be reborn in the spirit. Man, composite of soul and body, perishes as do all things which are subject to dissolution; but the soul itself, a simple spiritual substance, is immortal, living on after its union with the body is dissolved."
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"A natural teleology seems to imply that every natural thing is governed by an indwelling form working toward a definite end, and that the whole of nature exhibits the working out of a divine plan or design."
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"God is sovranly [sovereignly] present through all. We cannot think of something of God here and something else there,…there is an instantaneous presence everywhere….everything therefore [is] fully held by the divine." Plotinus
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"Man's nature as a social being tends to make him feel it one of his natural wants that there should be harmony between his feelings and aims and those of his fellow-creatures."
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"Charity, according to its very nature, causes peace; for love is a unitive force." Thomas Aquinas
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"Providence connects each one with its proper order." Boethius, quoted by Thomas Aquinas
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"Every act of understanding or thought involves imagination."
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"The absolute good is, as in the 'Divine Comedy', the final cause or ultimate end of the motions of the universe. It is 'the Alpha and Omega', Dante says, 'of every scripture that Love reads to me.'"
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"Whatever exists...has some share in the effulgent beauty of the One."
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"In the view of Nicolas of Cusa, the mystery of God's infinity is best expressed by affirming that in God all contradictions are somehow reconciled."
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"In Aristotle's cosmology, the circular motions of the celestial spheres, and through them all other cycles of natural change, are sustained eternally by the prime mover, which moves all things by the attraction of its perfect being."
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