Notes & asides

* Dear Bill: I have had a delightful time absorbing your Miles Gone By. I did note in your book that the Printer's Devil slipped in a typo on page 175. Anni horribilishould be anni horribilesas the plural of annus horribilis. Different declensions. (In evidence of the pliancy, or perversity, of the classical Roman mind, "horrible" can also mean "wonderful" and "astonishing.")

I am sure there will be many new printings of the book, so you might want to note that. This is not pedantry: We well remember that the fate of civilization depended on one iota during the homoousion controversy at Nicaea, later resolved at the First Council of Constantinople.

Custos linguae latinae,

Rev. George W. Rutler

New York, N.Y

Dear Father Rutler: Thanks for the correction. You prompted me to look at my own book, Nearer My God, for elucidation. There I found (page 41):

   To explore these questions thoroughly
   you'd have to familiarize yourself with
   many definitions pronounced, one after
   another, during the first few hundred
   years after Christ. Almost always these
   definitions came about as a result of
   heuristic challenges to current orthodoxy.
   The Arian heresy, for example,
   held that Jesus was something other
   than God. "If God the Son was begotten
   of the Father, does that not imply that
   the Father existed before Him?" (The
   answer to that question, before we
   move on, is yes, it would seem to imply
   exactly that.) This contention was held
   to be mortally dangerous to a correct
   understanding of the Incarnation and so
   the Fathers convened for the first
   General Council, in Nicaea, in the year
   325. The consensus was that Christ was
   consubstantial with the Father, of one
   substance; and to relay that conclusion
   the word "homoousian" (from the Greek
   homoousios, "of the same substance")
   was selected as applying to Christ. In
   so declaring, the Fathers were confident
   that no Christian who acknowledged
   the homoousian nature of Jesus
   could go on to err about his godhood.

As ever, Bill

* Dear Mr. Buckley: I hope this note is only one of many which you will receive calling attention to a grammatical slip on the final paragraph of Matthew Scully's otherwise commendable article on the National Cathedral service for Ronald Reagan. "And then off he went, as soon as Reverend Danforth ..." The word "Reverend" is an adjective, not a title, and the phrase should have gone like this: "And then off he went, as soon as the Reverend Mister [or Doctor or John] Danforth ..."

One can only surmise that the copyeditor was lulled into complacency by the correct treatment of this somewhat arcane problem in two instances in the third paragraph of the article. Could it be that I am fighting a losing battle considering the widespread acceptance and usage of this grammatical abomination in many if not most fundamentalist circles? Your thoughts?

Sincerely,

Robert M. Parrish

Florence, Ala.

Dear Mr. Parrish: I think you're right, it's probably a losing battle. But that doesn't mean it's not worth fighting, right?

Cordially, WFB

* Dear Mr. Buckley: What's the world coming to--WFB calling John Kenneth Galbraith "probably the most influential U.S. intellectual of the 20th century"? (NR, May 3)

I have been teaching economics for about forty years and once even taught a (horrendously stupid) mini-course called "The Economics of J. K. Galbraith." Anyone who teaches such a course (especially with such a course title) deserves to be punished under sharia.

What a pity you did not ask him about his profound discovery, the "Convergence Hypothesis"! Some people consider him a social critic and not an economist. He is certainly not in the same league as Milton Friedman and Paul Samuelson. And, Bush should be denounced for his ignorance of Ricardo? If that were the criterion to question conservative credentials, Bush may be in good company. Even many young economics professors may be innocent of Ricardian theories.

Sincerely,

K. R. Nair

Professor Emeritus of Economics

West Virginia Wesleyan College

Buckhannon, W.Va.

--WFB

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