Unspeakable Ethics, Unnatural Law

I want to believe -- and so do you -- in a complete, immanent, and transcendent set of propositions about right and wrong, findable rules that authoritatively and unambiguously direct us how to live righteously. I also want to believe -- and so do you -- in no such thing, but rather that we are wholly free, not only to choose for ourselves what we ought to do, but to decide for ourselves, individually and as a species, what we ought to be. What we want, Heaven help us, is simultaneously to be perfectly ruled and perfectly free, that is, at the same to discover the right and the good and to create it.

'If God the Creator became entwined in responding to every act of evil, the God Who created all would be subject to the vagaries of the creation and thus diminished in sovereignty.'

cf JRR Tolkien's Lord of The Rings, where Sam is in the topmost turret of the Towers of the Teeth:

Far above the mountains in the west, the night-sky was still dim and pale. There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty forever beyond its reach.

God is neither sullied nor contaminated by evil: but His supreme love and generosity is that He suffered Himself to become subject to *our* weakness -- we humans, who rebelled -- on the chance of saving us.

Being born in questionable circumstances
in a working-class household
of a persecuted minority group
in a country occupied by a foreign military
growing up an iternerant dependent upon charity
rejected by the religious and political leaders of the day--
to the point of being called demon-possessed and treasonous
betrayed by a close friend
convicted by an illegal kangaroo court
sentenced to an ignominious death by torture
with no appeal.

Cheers!

P.S. anybody else here interested in Anscombe? I have something real interesting I could send you.

Hi, I came across this while looking for something else.

Are you still willing and able to dig up and/or send me the "additional materials" on Anscombe?

Hope all is well with you and Don-o.

Cheers!

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