#aquinas

For anyone wondering why Plato is so important, a big part of it is that he's actually one of the most influential figures *ever* on Christianity. Here are two ideas so ubiquitous we probably barely think about it, that Plato straight up came up with:

1. Heaven & Souls: He's the first Western thinker to systematically distinguish the physical and the spiritual/mental (with, like, actual arguments and not just 'lalalala because I said so'), while also saying that the physical is just a pale imitation of the spiritual realm (which is what's truly real), and that our souls are immortal and more essential than our bodies. This is where we got our current conceptions of heaven, souls and two-thousand years of Christian body hating.

2. God's Infinity: He believed in this thing called the 'Form of the Good', which is the source of all reality, the highest 'entity' (even if he technically said it's not actually a 'being', anyway unimportant), and the thing that makes knowledge and reason possible (sound familiar?). You know how God is supposed to be infinite in every sense, and not just a magical old dude in the sky? Yeah, Aquinas got that from Plato (via Aristotle & the Neoplatonists), not the Bible.

Bonus: He made up Atlantis. And then 19th century whackjobs thought he was being serious. That's actually where that comes from. Seriously.

(Key Texts: Republic & Phaedo)

(Also I swear I'm not a hater, believe it or not I'm actually a Christian... kind of)

Anyway, here are some Gregorian chants.

Anyway, I have this DVD copy of the movie The Prophecy (1995), and am having trouble confidently identifying some of the fonts used on it. Could you please help me out, if you can?

I've ID'd most of the text on here as Matrix (the first iteration from 1986; not Matrix II, its 2007 revamp, as this older version lacks a specialized italic variation).

Seemingly unique to this DVD cover, Christopher Walken's billing on top uses two fonts: Matrix Bold for the initals and a different, sans-serif font for the lowercases. I think it's Myriad Condensed with the letters spread out, but I'm not 100% sure.

Also not sure about the title font either. Capricho Light is very close but that one was only released a few years ago and lacks the Papyrus-style weathering (which I don't think is customization bc the weathering is uniform on repeating letters; also the small "THE" has the weathering too, it's just hard to see in the photo I took)

Thanks a bunch! :)

I agree that the sans serif looks like Myriad Condensed. The title font is Aquinas (1989) [Fonts In Use · Identifont].

- refers to the Star of Bethlehem

How I wonder what you are

- refers to ST III q 36 a 7 in which St. Thomas Aquinas speculates as to the nature of the Bethlehem Star

Up above the world so high

- presuming, as Aquinas does, that the Bethlehem Star is a manifestation of the Holy Spirit, it therefore transcends the created universe

Like a diamond in the sky

- because the Bethlehem Star is in the atmosphere and not in the ether (like the planets) nor the firmament (like the fixed stars), it may have a twinkling, diamond like appearance unlike the other celestial objects

Twinkle, twinkle, etc. (refrain)

When the blazing sun is gone, when he nothing shines upon

- though Aquinas says the Bethlehem Star was visible during the day, this is a reference to Christ's humility, coming as a baby rather than in a sort of military splendor as was thought the Messiah would appear

Then you show your little light

- Christ comes as a little baby in his humility

Twinkle, twinkle all the night

- the Messiah's birth occurs in the middle of the night, as referenced in the prayer of St. Andrew, "...the Son of God was born of the most pure Virgin Mary, at midnight, in Bethlehem, in piercing cold..."

Twinkle, twinkle, little star (refrain)

Then the traveler in the dark

- a reference to the three Magi

Thanks you for your tiny spark

- the three Magi offering their gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh

Could he see which way to go, if you did not twinkle so?

- as the Magi required the star to navigate to the Christ, so do we require the Holy Spirit to find our way

Twinkle, twinkle, etc. (refrain)

In the dark blue sky you keep

- while the Bethlehem Star no longer literally shines, the light of Christ remains as a "light shining in the darkness" (John 1:5)

While you through my curtains peep

- the Lord seeks entry into your house, your heart

And you never shut your eye

- the omniscience of God

Till the sun is in the sky

- we must watch until the second coming, when "the night shall be no more" (Revelation 22:5)

Hence the marks of a prideful and vainglorious man are an unwillingness to submit himself to any higher authority (which would include prevailing laws and norms); habitual braggadocio and bombastic speech; exaggeration and lying about his achievements; being obnoxiously quarrelsome; stubborn attachment to his own opinions in the face of all evidence and superior counterarguments; and a taste for doing things that are shocking and unexpected.

It stands to reason that a prideful and vainglorious man is bound to be polarizing. On the one hand, his fundamental motivations are to attain pre-eminence, and to do so by drawing attention to his imagined excellence. If he is good at this, then naturally, he is going to gain a following of some kind. On the other hand, pride and vainglory are objectively ugly character traits, as the daughters of vainglory make evident and as one would expect from the fact that pride is the worst of sins. Hence, people who see through a proud and vainglorious man’s charade are naturally going to be repulsed by him, especially if they have decent instincts.

The Christian tradition has, after all, held that pride is the characteristic sin of the devil and of antichrist. It is also the characteristic sin of the tyrant, who on Plato’s analysis is a consummate narcissist, and who in the political philosophy of Aristotle and Aquinas is defined as the ruler who governs a polity for the sake of his own good rather than for the common good. There are no villains more repulsive than the devil, the antichrist, and tyrants. And yet in all three cases we have figures who draw many to them. “Satan disguises himself as an angel of light” (2 Corinthians 11:14). It is no wonder that lesser malign figures – prideful and vainglorious politicians, business leaders, sports stars, entertainers, public intellectuals, and so on – attract many people even as they repulse others.

Aquinas also teaches in De Malo that “pride extinguishes all the virtues and weakens all the powers of the soul.” It is not hard to see how this would be so. If a prideful man is by nature insubordinate, he is not likely to subordinate himself to moral restraints. He may exhibit counterfeits of certain virtues, if that would aid in leading others to perceive him as having excellence. He also may have a certain cleverness or cunning in achieving his ends. But it will not be true wisdom, because that requires seeing things as they really are, and his narcissism prevents that. He will have allies and sycophants, but is unlikely to have true friends, because he will ultimately sacrifice the good of others for the sake of his own good. He may have a certain boldness, but he will not have true courage, because his boldness does not serve the true and the good, but only himself. And so on.

Scripture famously teaches that “pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall” (Proverbs 16:18). But even apart from scripture, everyone knows this from experience. Or almost everyone, because the prideful man himself does not see it. Nor do those in thrall to him, since they labor under the same delusion about his supposed excellence as he does. It goes without saying that the greater the following a prideful man has, or the larger the community over which he has authority, the greater will be his fall, and theirs.’

A recent study has revisited the mysterious death of Thomas Aquinas, one of the most influential theologians and philosophers of the Middle Ages. The article, published in the journal World Neurosurgery, suggests that a chronic subdural hematoma resulting from a traumatic head injury may have been the cause of his death in 1274.