After having jumped into amateur astronomy, the sky has lost some of its aweful majesty to me. It's beautiful, but not aweful. I think this has something to do with the way that by having names to attach to objects and having ways of classifying them, there is a way in which we have tamed them. That beautiful glow over there—that's "just" the Lagoon Nebula. There is a way in which this is deceptive. We encompass a whole galaxy in a word, completely ignorant of the billions of fascinating lives that, for all we know, are unfolding there. But there is also a way in which the galaxy itself, leaving aside any life in it (I think it would be strange to talk of a dog, much less a human, as "part of the Milky Way Galaxy"), really is not aweful. It is a creature of God, and in itself not as wondrous as a human being with reason and volition.
I think the above gives me reason to be even more sympathetic to the Thomistic doctrine that God is not a member of any of the genera, and the early Christian insistence on God not having a name.
I think the above gives me reason to be even more sympathetic to the Thomistic doctrine that God is not a member of any of the genera, and the early Christian insistence on God not having a name.
