"Sun in the sun": The moral theology of Peter Sterry
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The Cambridge Platonist and erstwhile chaplain to Oliver Cromwell, Peter Sterry (1613–1672) employed Neoplatonic metaphysics in order to form a Christian philosophy that facilitates a complete transformation of the self. Utilizing a Trinitarian method influenced by Nicholas Cusanus, Sterry's moral theology is an ethic of universal reform, regarding not only the human person but society at large. Sterry uses the logic of coincidence promoted by Cusanus to argue that all truths, even the contradiction of being and non-being are in reality unified in the ultimate Truth that descends from God. Like the Neoplatonists (and Cusanus), Sterry argues that only the 'higher' kinds of intellection, such as the divine and angelic intellects (nous), are set above the 'wall' of opposites perceived by discursive reason (dianoia). Sterry sees this contrast between higher and lower reason as indicative of the Triune shape of the mind, which he delineates according to unity (essence), variety (understanding), and union (will) as the proper method for viewing all of reality. This Triune vision of the soul unites philosophy and theology, as it replicates the life of Christ in his birth, death, and resurrection, in the 'birth' of divinity in the intellect, the subordination of understanding and discursive reason to God, and the union of the intellect and will in the soul as it is united with God's vision. The acceptance of the coincidence of opposites not only enables one to participate in the divine Life, but it also illuminates the whole person with divine Virtue, which is the intellectual vision of the soul forming its concepts and loves into their Triune shape of unity, variety, and union. Sterry's Trinitarian method is inherently practical, as it provides for a broader sense of tolerance and freedom in the individual as well as society as it limits human ambition, specifically the quest for absolute certainty in matters of religion and politics. This study shows how Peter Sterry worked to propose a practical Christian philosophy as the means to universal reform and peace in seventeenth-century England.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.007 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.008 | 0.021 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.007 | 0.005 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.007 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".