Sunday, March 22, 2020

Prepare

3.29.20

Lucy Lawless

Prepare
Heart
准备心 
Zhǔnbèi xīn
心を整える 
Kokoro o totonoeru
ps15
Cor para

The winds in March have blown.
The seeds for plants and crops have been sown.

What is the life that lives among us?
When energy enters, it becomes a who not a what.



What is so important about having faith?
Hope for the best is that which makes us great.

Hope isn't so helpful when it isn't directed.
What is it about the unknown that asks to be selected?

The design in nature is something that can be shown in a test.
Isn't belief in the Designer of quality a personal quest?

Who may enter the sacred space?
Whoever seeks redemption in accord with divine grace.

Rebellion does not dwell within the heart.
The management of anger is an art.

Evil design is not chosen.
Contempt for creation is a broken emotion.

If the body is dead because of sin, 
the Spirit is new life by the faith of Christ within.

These bones were the house of Israel.
We were cut off from hope in the feel 
for what is real. 

Your graves will be opened. 
Promise for your land will again be spoken.

You will be returned to the place from which you came.
You will know that you were restored by the holy Name.

The cave was closed with a stone lying against it.
The body had been in state for 4 days with incensed gifts.

The stage was set to roll away the stone.
The sister complained that odor might be known.

She was told that her belief would result in the glory of God as shown.
The stone was rolled away that resurrected life would be known.

The Son extended a prayer of gratitude to the Father of lights
for the sake of the crowd that they might understand the belief in their sight.

The man was helped by the instruction to come out.
He rose. His hands and feet with strips of cloth were bound.
A linen cloth, around his face was wound. 



The captive of the tomb was set free
by the word of the Son for those who believed.
Many who saw the event saw the reward for their faith received.

The Spirit of the Father who raised Jesus from the dead lives in you.
He who raised Christ from death will give life to mortal bodies by hope in what is true.

The Church has the right to celebrate the promise of conservative reform.
The standards of the cloth represent the signs and symbols of the clerical norm.

Let love be genuine. 
Battles of attrition are not easy to win.

Hate what is evil. 
Rebellion supports upheaval.

Hate vicious action to avoid the adoption of it.
Goodness is beneficial to the public's optimal fit

Outdo one another in showing honor. 
Do not lack in the zeal that you can offer.

Be ardent in spirit.
Rejoice in hope whether or not you are near it.

Be patient in suffering pain. 
Persevere in prayer to find gain
that is not in vain.

Contribute to the needs of the ministry.
Love your enemies to avoid the consequence of partiality.

Do not fight evil with a sequel 
that is also illegal.

Overcome malice with goodness
in the intent that aspires to fullness.

Honor is shown for risk with safety.
Recklessness is viewed as crazy. 

The faithful work to do no wrong.
The word for truth is very strong.

Money is managed for posterity.
Reward for effort aims at parity.

Welcome is granted in sacred space
for those who worship for lawful grace.

----------------------

15 Domine, quis habitabit?
      Who dwells in the sacred and among us?

1 Lord, who may dwell in your tabernacle?
who may abide upon your holy hill?
2 Whoever leads a blameless life and does what is right,
who speaks the truth from his heart.
3 There is no guile upon his tongue;
he does no evil to his friend;
he does not heap contempt upon his neighbor.
4 In his sight the wicked is rejected,
but he honors those who fear the Lord.
5 He has sworn to do no wrong
and does not take back his word.
6 He does not give his money in hope of gain,
nor does he take a bribe against the innocent.
7 Whoever does these things
shall never be overthrown.

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=============

Winter was mild in our state this year.

Chn.  今年我们州的冬季温和。
            Jīnnián wǒmen zhōu de dōngjì wēnhé.
Jpn.    今年の州の冬は穏やかでした。
             Kotoshi no shū no fuyu wa odayakadeshita.
Krn.    올해는 우리 주에서 겨울이 온화했습니다.
             Olhaeneun uli jueseo gyeoul-i onhwahaessseubnida.
Ltn.     Hiems, mansuetus in statu huius anni.
Itln.    L'inverno è stato mite nel nostro stato quest'anno.
Spn.   El invierno fue suave en nuestro estado este año.
Frn.     L'hiver a été doux dans notre état cette année.
Gmn.   In unserem Bundesstaat war der Winter dieses Jahr mild.
Dtch.   De winter was dit jaar mild in onze staat.
Czch.   Zima byla letos v našem státě mírná.
Hng.    Ebben az évben enyhe tél volt a mi államunkban.
Trk.     Kış, bu yıl eyaletimizde ılımandı.
Grk.     Ο χειμώνας ήταν ήπιος στην πολιτεία μας φέτος.
             O cheimónas ítan ípios stin politeía mas fétos.
Rsn.    В этом году зима в нашем государстве была мягкой
           V etom godu zima v nashem gosudarstve byla myagkoy.

The winds in March have blown.
The seeds for plants and crops have been sown.

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Walk with Integrity

Psalm 15:1-2


Psalm 15

The King James Version of the Bible does not attribute the psalm to David in the title. Other versions do so with the standard superscription, A Psalm of David.

There are some interesting considerations that go with the ascription. The psalm is given a royal view of the priesthood that suggests respect, if not envy.

Who could enter the tabernacle or tent of the Lord? While entry to the Holy of Holies was reserved for the high priest, the people were allowed to assemble in the tent.

The priests spent more time in the space as they would enter to prepare it for worship or to offer sacrifice with prayer in behalf of the people.

There was also the question of when the psalm would have been written in David's life.
Where was the tabernacle at the time? The holy hill may have been a reference to Moriah. It was there that that Abraham had offered a ram in sacrifice instead of his son, Isaac (Gen.22:2).

David purchased the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite as a site to offer sacrifices after he had taken the census (2 Samuel 24:18-25) on the top of the same hill.

This purchase was made after David had become the king however. Moriah was probably not the holy hill referred to in this psalm.

Moses had been instructed at Mount Sinai to construct and transport the tabernacle with the Israelites on their journey through the wilderness (Num.4:15) and their subsequent conquest of the Promised Land.

Exodus 25–31 and 35–40 describe the tabernacle in detail. The description of the Holy of Holies, or the inner sanctuary which could only be entered by the high priest, was included.

The ark had been lost to the Philistines when the sons of Eli had instructed that it be taken into battle with them.

The remaining part of the Tabernacle was moved from Shiloh to the "great high place" in Gibeon (1 Sam. 4:1-22, 1 Chron. 21:29). The Tent was in Gibeon prior to the change of location to Mount Moriah.

The KJV described the person in terms of the character expected of priests (those from the tribe of Levi who were trained to offer mediation as elders).

The person was expected to walk uprightly. Other versions use the word 'blamelessly.' Righteousness and truth were to be characteristics of the heart. He was expected to condemn or despise evil action, but welcome a contrite heart.

The psalm has also been called an entrance liturgy. This gave it a broader application. The characteristics of the priest were extended to any who hoped to enter the space of the place for worship. The apostle Peter's reference to the 'royal priesthood' is included in this view.   

The first question of the psalm was tricky in the sense that no one but the Lord could abide in the tent for worship. The presence of the divine essence was believed to rest between the wings of the cherubim on the ark of the convenant.

----------------------

The author of the book presented himself as Ezekiel, the son of Buzzi, born into a priestly (Kohen) lineage. He gave a date for the first divine encounter "in the thirtieth year." (Ezek.1:1-2) He was born around 622 BCE if this was a reference to his age.

This was shortly after the call of Jeremiah to his prophetic ministry and about the time of Josiah's reforms (c. 626 BCE). Josiah had ordered the High Priest Hilkiah to use the tax money which had been collected over the years to renovate the temple. It was during this time that Hilkiah discovered the Book of the Law.

The book was not identified in the text as the Torah. Scholars believe this was either a copy of the Book of Deuteronomy or a text that became a part of the history known as Deuteronomic.

This may have marked a transition from reference to God as Elohim to Yahweh. The 'God of gods' had become the one God.

Josiah encouraged the exclusive worship of Yahweh. Other forms of worship were criticized and not recognized as current. There was recognition that this reform might result in invasion and conquest.

Valley of Bones


These Bones will Live


The work has the most logical arrangement of any of the prophetic books. It contains three sections, each of which addresses a different subject

Chapters 1–24 concerned the fall of Jerusalem.

Chapters 25–39 contained a series of oracles addressed to foreign nations.This concluded with a prediction in which the future of Israel was contrasted with that of the foreign nations.

The third section, Chapters 40–48, presented a plan for rebuilding the Temple and reorganizing the restored state of Israel.

Tel Abib



Ezekiel was one of the younger men taken to Babylon in the first captivity in 597 BCE. He served as a kind of religious counselor to the Hebrew exiles who were allowed to live in a colony by themselves near the banks of the Kebar River. The colony was called Tel Abib.

The book opened with a vision of YHWH (יהוה). Ezekiel was approached with a vision of God as the divine warrior riding in his battle chariot. The chariot was drawn by four living creatures each having four faces (those of a man, a lion, an ox and an eagle). Each creature had four wings.

Beside each "living creature" was a "wheel within a wheel" with "tall and awesome" rims full of eyes all around. God was then seen as enthroned in the Temple among the heavenly host.
Ezekiel was commissioned as the Son of Man, the watchman for Israel.

The book of prophecy moved on to anticipate the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple. It closed with the promise of a new start with a new Temple.

The vision of the valley of dry bones was a prophecy for the restoration of Israel.

Ezekiel 37:11-14

Then he said to me, 'Mortal, these bones are the house of Israel. They say, "Our bones are dried up. Our hope is lost. We are cut off completely."

'Prophesy and say to them, I am going to open your graves and bring you up. I will bring you back to the land of Israel.

'You shall know that I am the LORD when I open your graves and bring you up. I will put my spirit within you. You shall live. I will place you on your own soil. Then you will know that I have spoken and will act.'

---------------------

These bones were the house of Israel.
We were cut off from hope in the feel
for what is real.

Your graves will be opened.
Promise for your land will again be spoken.

You will be returned to the place from which you came.
You will know that you were restored by the holy Name.

================

Romans 8


The letter to the Romans was a scientific expression of hope based on theological reason. It was part of the transition from polytheistic to monotheistic culture in a way that included Jews and non-Jews.

While the justification by faith started with Abraham and jumped to Jesus as Christ, more could be said about the history of monotheism in the monarchies of Israel and Judah.

Elijah sought to beat stories of destruction with reflective stories that included instruction regarding the value of faith in the God of gods.

Isaiah had predicted that the royal line of succession would be an expression of conservative reform with faith in the one God.

Ezekiel had prophesied that the kingdom would be destroyed, but the state of Israel would be restored.  A state was restored as a Persian province by Cyrus the Great.

This province was taken over by the Seleucid Greeks after Alexander had invaded the middle east. A Hasmonean dynasty was established to expel the Seleucids most likely with the help of the Romans.

The Romans replaced the Hasmoneans with the Herodians and looked for a time when the monotheistic monarchy would be replaced by a polytheistic republic.

The issue of monarchy was highly charged at the time of that the letter to the Romans was presumed to have been written.

The countdown to the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem and the replacement of the tetrarchy of Judea with the republican province of Syria Palestine was approaching the anticipated time.

The system of election in Rome was very aggressive in the development of the Patrician class as the Roman means to govern trade with the world.

Term limits for the two consuls were for one year. This was the highest office prior to becoming a senator with the knowledge of active trade interests in the known world.

Elected public officials were also expected to command armies for the protection of trade interests for the patricians. The patricians were expected to provide for the officials and their armies in turn.

The community of faith was expected to encourage the membership to trust in their officials. The Roman Republic was very aggressive in the opposition to monarchy.

The jump from Abraham to Jesus was necessary to reduce explanation of how the opposition was part of a larger transformation from polytheism to monotheism.

Family succession was added to the republic by Julius Caesar. The imperial line included adoption as a means to select subsequent emperors who could alternately claim to be a monarch or a ruler depending upon the area for public appearance (parousia).

The hope at the time was such that the Republic would come to be less superstitious by the adoption of monotheism in Christianity. There was a long tradition of support for the indirect reference to the special natue of time with the stories about the trysts and conflicts of the gods.

The prevailing morality had an inherent default to immorality as part of fallen human nature. There was an actual indication of the association of immorality with immortality that made the tradition insidiously persistent.       

Christians were advised to refrain from participation in the trysts and conflicts of the polytheists and among each other in order to perpetuate the transition to the institution of hope for something better as a certainty with particular respect for historical verity.

Romans 8:10-11

If Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead lives in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit that dwells in you.

---------------------

If the body is dead because of sin,
the Spirit is new life by the faith of Christ within.

The Spirit of the Father who raised Jesus from the dead lives in you.
He who raised Christ from death will give life to mortal bodies by hope in what is true.

================

The author to the Romans did not advise that the way to combat evil was to use evil to conquer those who initiated stories about the success of trysts and conflicts.

The fictional element of polytheism allowed for a divide between the image of the public official and his personal conduct.

Stories about the atrocities of the emperors may have been stories of deflection to deter hope for too much in the way of expectation for success in their succession.

The Roman Christians were advised to live good lives. 

Romans 12:9-13,21

Let love be genuine. Hate what is evil. Hold fast to what is good. Love one another with mutual affection. Outdo one another in showing honor. Do not lag in zeal. Be ardent in spirit. Serve the Lord.

Rejoice in hope. Be patient in suffering. Persevere in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints. Extend hospitality to strangers.

Do not be overcome by evil. Overcome evil with goodness.

---------------------

Let love be genuine.
Battles of attrition are not fine.

Hate what is evil.
Rebellion supports upheaval.

Hate evil action to avoid the adoption of it.
Goodness is beneficial to the public's optimal fit

Outdo one another in showing honor.
Do not lack in the zeal that you can offer.

Be ardent in spirit.
Rejoice in hope whether or not you are near it.

Be patient in suffering pain.
Persevere in prayer to find gain
that is not in vain.

Contribute to the needs of the ministry.
Love your enemies to avoid the consequence of partiality.

Do not overcome evil with a sequel
that is also illegal.

Overcome malice with goodness
in the intent that aspires to fullness.

================

Spring from the Death of Winter into New Life


The eleventh chapter of the Gospel of John in the New Testament of the Christian Bible records the raising of Lazarus from the dead. The plot to take  the life of Jesus was subsequently developed for the performance of the miracle.

Chapter 10 had ended with Jesus leaving Jerusalem as some Jews threatened to stone him. They had traveled to Perea. It was the part of Herod's kingdom that was east of the river Jordan.

The evangelist's introduction of Lazarus of Bethany at this point (John 11:1) led to the discussion of whether Jesus should return to Judea (Jerusalem) in the face of the growing plot against him.

Lazarus was introduced by reference to Martha and Mary. He may have been the youngest.

The sisters sent a message to Jesus, so his location wasn't a complete secret. They expected that he who had cured so many strangers would have come willingly to restore to health one whom he had known and loved so tenderly.

The disciples of Jesus expressed their concern over his return to Judea. He told them that the light of day was the time to work. The light of the world could be seen during the day. One could walk in the day. One stumbles at night because the world is not illumined for sight.

Bethany was identified in relation to the distance to Jerusalem. It was about 2 miles away.

Jesus met with Martha and told her that he was the resurrection and the life. Life comes to those who believe even in the face of death. Whoever lived and believed in him would never die. He asked her if she believed this.

She confessed that she believed that he was the Messiah, the Son of God who had been expected to enter the world. Peter was the only other disciple who had confessed to this belief with speech.

The story about the miracle explained the meaning for the name, Lazarus. It translates as 'God helped.'

John 11:38-45

Jesus came to the tomb. He was greatly disturbed. It was a cave with a stone lying against it.
He said, 'Take away the stone.'

Martha said to him, 'Lord, there is a stench already. He has been dead for 4 days.'
Jesus said to her, 'Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?'
They took away the stone.

Jesus looked upwards and said, 'Father, I thank you for having heard me. I knew that you hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here so they may believe that you sent me.'

When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, 'Lazarus, come out!'

The dead man came out. His hands and feet were bound with strips of cloth. His face was wrapped in a cloth.

Jesus said to them, 'Unbind him and let him go.'

Many of the Jews who had come with Mary and had seen what Jesus did, believed in him.

---------------------

The cave was closed with a stone lying against it.
The body had been in state for 4 days with incensed gifts.

The stage was set to roll away the stone.
The sister complained that odor might be known.

She was told that her belief would result in the glory of God as shown.
The stone was rolled away that resurrected life would be known.

The Son extended a prayer of gratitude to the Father of lights
for the sake of the crowd that they might understand the belief in their sight.

The man was helped by the instruction to come out.
He rose. His hands and feet with strips of cloth were bound.
A linen cloth, around his face was wound.

The captive of the tomb was set free
by the word of the Son for those who believed.
Many who saw the event saw the reward for their faith received.

================

Church of England

John Keble

John Keble was one of the leaders of the Oxford Movement in the 19th century. Keble College, Oxford, was named after him.

The Oxford Movement developed at the university in the 1830's in response to fears that the Whig government intended to disestablish the Church of England.

John Keble was born in Fairford, Gloucestershire where his father, the Rev. John Keble, was Vicar of Coln St. Aldwyns.

He attended Corpus Christi College, Oxford and became a Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford. He was a tutor and examiner in the University for years.

He took Holy Orders in 1815 while still at Oxford. He became first a curate to his father, and later curate of St Michael and St Martin's Church, Eastleach Martin in Gloucestershire.

He had been writing 'The Christian Year', a book of popular verse. The work appeared in 1827. The object of the text as described by the author was to bring the thoughts and feelings of the reader into unison with those exemplified in the Prayer Book.

It was well received by the public. Ninety-five editions of the devotional text were printed during his lifetime. The number had arisen to a hundred-and-nine at the end of the year following his death.

Over 375,000 copies had been sold in Britain and 158 editions had been published by the time the copyright expired in 1873.

John Henry Newman of Oriel College was the leader of the Oxford Movement. He traced the start of the movement back to Keble’s sermon on ‘national apostasy’ in the university church in 1833. Keble was a fellow of Oriel also.

The previous five years had seen radical changes to the nature of the relationship between the Church of England and the state.

The centuries-old discrimination against Protestant Dissenters was repealed in 1828. Catholic Emancipation was passed in 1829. The Pittite-Tory regime fell in 1830.

The first Whig government in a generation took office. It was dedicated to Calvinist reform.

The Puritans had never been fully formed as a religious group, but they were instrumental in the establishment of the Whig faction as the party that imposed the First English Civil War (1642–1646) on England.

The Whigs aggressively defined the monarch as corrupt. They claimed that they were opposed to absolute monarchy in favor of a constitutional form, but the English Bill of Rights was a factionalist document that sought to coerce the public into agreement with their party.

Almost all Puritan clergy left the Church of England after the restoration of the monarchy in 1660 and the 1662 Uniformity Act. Their beliefs were enshrined in the Savoy Declaration (1658), the confession of faith held by the Congregationalist churches.

Many continued to practice their faith in nonconformist denominations, especially in Congregationalist, Presbyterian and eventually the Methodist churches.

The Methodists modeled their worship on the Anglican form, but were politicallly non-conformist. This made the Whig party the representative leaders of the non-conformist sects.

The Puritans had dissolved as a religious movement by the 18th century.

Many Anglican churchmen believed that the Whigs were preparing to invade the rights and alter the constitution of the Church after the Whig triumph of the Reform Act 1832.

The Whigs passed the Church Temporalities Act in 1833. This reorganised the Church of Ireland and reduced its bishoprics from 22 to 12. The action justified Anglican fears that the government was prepared to act against Church opinion.

Keble argued that the nation had acknowledged herself as Christian in her theory of government for centuries. This acknowledgement was implicitly extended to Christ's Church.

The Church should be allowed to celebrate the monarchy just as Judaism had had theirs.

When Hooker had written about English Church tradition in the 16th century, he basically insisted that Roman customs for worship had already been in practice for hundreds of years.

National sovereignty had been the objective for the Royal Acts of Supremacy, not the complete overhaul of the Church to extinguish Roman customs.

This was basically what the non-conformists represented, the rejection and extinguishment of Church tradition. The signs and symbols for celebrating the faith were to be replaced by austerities to help their factional representation grow in power.

The Whigs may have said that they were for constitutional monarchy, but they were for the subordination of the government to non-conformist demands in order to build their partisan faction.

The tractarians appealed to the observation of Roman Catholic custom in order to reinstate the English Church tradition that had been pushed out of existence by the Whigs for their non-conformist representation.

Newman and his followers published Ninety Tracts for the Times. The publications earned them the name Tractarians. Newman joined the Roman Catholic Church in 1845 and would become cardinal, but Keble and others remained in the Church of England.

They would have have a lasting influence on the Anglican church at home and abroad as Anglo-Catholics.

Keble retired to his country vicarage in the village of Hursley, near Winchester after 1841. He wrote tracts and hymns. He took his clerical duties so seriously that he once said that if the Church of England collapsed, it would be found in his parish.

Prayer


John Keble
S. 约翰·凯布尔
T. 約翰·凱布爾

约 Yue    about                約  yaku    promise       Jon    じょん   ジョン       Jon  존  zone         
翰 han    John                  翰  kan      letter           Ke      け          ケ               Ke    케   ke           
凯  Kai     Kay                 凱  gai       victory         bu     ぶ           ブ               beul 블   bl           
布  bu      cloth                布  fu         linen            ru      る           ル                                       
尔  er       er                     爾  ji           you                                                     
                                                                 
----------------------

The Church has the right to celebrate the promise of conservative reform.
The standards of the cloth represent the signs and symbols of the clerical norm.

==============

Lectionary John Keble
Obit. JK
wiki National Apostasy

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Reasonable Reason


Peter Geach
b. Chelsea, London, England  5.29.1916
d. Cambridge, England 12.23.2013

Peter Geach was a younger colleague of Ludwig Wittgenstein. He supported analytical philosophy. He was a professor of logic at the University of Leeds. His interests were logic, ethics, history, religion and identity.

He translated the works of Gottlebe Frege with Max Black in 1952.

Geach synthesized analytic philosophy with Thomism. He was one of the most  notable Catholic philosophers in the last half century.  Faith neither conflicted with reason nor trumped it.

The two dovetailed. He produced sharp gems of analytical argument that criticized relevant currents in philosophy.

-------------------------

Peter Geach was born in Chelsea, London on 29 March 1916. He was the only son of George Hender Geach and his wife Eleonora Frederyka Adolfina née Sgonina.

His father was employed in the Indian Educational Service. He would go on to work as a professor of philosophy in Lahore and later as the principal of a teacher-training college in Peshawar in Pakistan.

Geach won a scholarship to Balliol College, Oxford in 1934. He graduated with a degree in the Classics in 1938. He spent a year (1938–39) as a Gladstone Research Student based at St Deiniol's Library, Hawarden.

Geach's married Elizabeth Anscombe in 1941. Both were converts to Catholicism. Their marraige was a fertile philosophical coupling like that of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir.

They had four daughters and three sons. They were a daunting duo in philosophical debate. Each collaborated in translating Descartes and in the movement (later called Analytical Thomism)

He undertook further research at Cambridge following the end of World War II in 1945.

He was appointed to his first substantive academic post as assistant lecturer at the University of Birmingham in 1951. He became a reader in logic later.

Geach's first book was Mental Acts (1957). It became a classic in the philosophy of psychology. It argued that the acquisition of a concept was a process of becoming able to do something.

It was not a matter of having internal representations of external things or undergoing inner experiences as many philosophers since Descartes had held.

Geach criticised what he called abstractionism. The view held that we acquire the concept of red from repeated experiences of red.

It would fail to account for many of our concepts. You could not find anything in the sensible world, nor could you draw any picture that could suitably be labelled 'or' or 'not'.

The book, Mental Acts, was indebted to Wittgenstein. His paper Ascriptivism (1960) was more original and in line with his distinctive technique of using hard logic to crack problems in metaphysics and ethics.

He showed by means of "if" sentences the inadequacy of ethical theories which claimed that calling a person, act or principle good or bad was just a matter of commending or expressing disapproval of the person, act or principle, without any possibility of referring to a real quality they have or of being accurate about that quality.

The rule of modus ponens asserted that if a conditional statement (“if p then q ”) is accepted and the antecedent ( p ) holds, then the consequent ( q ) may be inferred.

He made what he called "the Frege point", and later came to be called the Frege-Geach point. The “embedding problem” was posed in his article “Assertion” (Geach, 1964), but the discussion had started back from his article “Imperatives and Deontic Logic” (Geach, 1958).

Sentences that express moral judgments can form part of semantically complex statements in a way that an expressivist view cannot easily explain.

The sentence “Telling lies is wrong” has the same meaning regardless of whether it occurs on its own or as the antecedent to “If telling lies is wrong, then getting your little brother to tell lies is also wrong”.

He recommended  attention to Frege’s distinction between assertion and predication. Assertion expressed illocutionary force, whereas predication was about propositional content.

Illocutionary force conveyed an imperative sense of caution, whereas propositional content described the modification of the subject.

The same statement "telling lies is wrong" could then express different degrees of emotional concern.

If you were emphatically telling your son that getting your little brother to torment the cat was wrong, it would be illocutionary. If you were illustrating an example of moral statements, the condition is propositional content.

Consider the embedded statements in the modus ponens:

1. If tormenting the cat is wrong, then getting your little brother to torment the cat is also wrong

2. Tormenting the cat is wrong

Therefore, getting your little brother to torment the cat is wrong.

The modus ponens gives the argument a more emphatic sense of relevance.

Geach was appointed Professor of Logic in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Leeds in 1966.

He defended the Thomistic position that human beings are essentially rational animals, each one miraculously created.

He dismissed Darwinistic attempts to regard reason as inessential to humanity.  He repudiated any capacity for language in animals as mere association of manual signs with things or performances.

He disagreed with both pragmatic and epistemic conceptions of truth. He developed the correspondence theory proposed by Aquinas.

He saw W. V. Quine and Arthur Prior as his allies, in that they held three truths. 1) There are no non-existent beings. 2) A proposition can occur in discourse without being there asserted. 3) The sense of a term does not depend on the truth of the proposition in which it occurs.

Geach retired from his chair in 1981 with the title Emeritus Professor of Logic. He held visiting professorships at the universities  of Cornell, Chicago, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Warsaw.

He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy (FBA) in 1965. He was elected an Honorary Fellow of Balliol College in 1979.

He was awarded the papal cross "Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice" by the Holy See for his philosophical work.

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Aquinas had defended monarchy with his dialectic imitation of Aristotle in the 13th century.

Roman Catholics that favor national sovereignty don't qualify as threats to national or international security.

Papal claims to supremacy and infallibility destablized Europe in terms of monarchical and parliamentarian government. Supremacy supported Vatican investiture as did the call for the Crusades, the Inquisition and indulgences.

The conversion of Geach to catholicism presented an interesting social quandary to the British government. Aquinas could be used to support national sovereignty, but the conversion could have suggested that the monarchy should just comply with the Vatican as had been the case prior to Henry VIII.

It is likely that his public position as a professor indicated that he was interested in promoting the Oxford movement effort to support Roman customs in Anglican Churches in service to the United Kingdom.

Catholics that supported reasonable policy for conservative expenditure by government were for national sovereignty. Their political perspective had proven to be necessary to counter liberal expenditure for Calvinist reform.

Rather than promote the prohibition of employment for Roman Catholics, the British government entertained employment as a means to consider national security in relation to the international situation.

wiki Peter Geach
Info Phil PG
Guardian Obit PG
Geach, Frege and Wittgenstein
The Frege-Geach Problem
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