From the book
Candida Phoenix Philosophica
Anonymous · Diotimos Editions · 2026
Browse this book’s lexicon →Orientation
At a Glance
- The wordConcordance is an ordered correspondence between events, distinguished here from one event producing another.
- In the CandidaThe relation between lunar changes and tides is acknowledged while a causal inference is refused.
- TranslationConcordance is retained because the distinction from cause carries the argument.
- A place to readII.105.1, p. 105.
Meaning
The author recognizes that ebb and flow, in most places as far as he knows, follow changes of the moon. He then invokes Arnd's distinction between cause and concordance. A correspondence can be real without giving the author grounds to assign efficient agency to the moon. He traces the ordered relation itself to God's command that the heavenly lights provide signs and seasons.
This is not a denial that events correspond. The concessive opening matters: the author acknowledges the observed relation before explaining what he thinks it warrants. The dispute concerns the inference from correspondence to cause within his theology of divine government. The word concordance gives the acknowledged relation a positive place in that account.
Use in the book
The passage follows the account of the divine Word remaining as the life of creatures. The author appeals to the command concerning the lights in the firmament to explain why celestial and terrestrial events can be ordered together. The relation is not random in his account, even though it does not make one correlated phenomenon the ultimate productive cause of the other.17
The qualification concerning most places and the limit of the author's knowledge should be preserved. He is not claiming an exhaustive global measurement of tides. His local observation supplies an objection he considers worth answering. The reply moves from that observation to a distinction among kinds of explanatory relation.
Nearby, the author expressly refuses to deprive the elements of motions and operations received through the universal Word or the stars of influence and concordance with them (II.103.1). The tides argument therefore should not be expanded into a rejection of every stellar operation. Chapter Eight later assigns an affirmative role to the action of the stars, especially the sun, upon the water in the account of concentrated Mercury (II.177.1). Each claim has its stated object and context.
The distinction also bears on the polemic about weather. A title of rule in the air does not by itself establish that the Devil can produce true wind. There too, an association is insufficient to identify a productive agent. The author's account is theological, but it contains a definite demand concerning inference: the relation asserted in a premise must be adequate to the causal conclusion drawn from it.
Places to read
- Part II · II.103.1; II.105.12Received natural operations and the explicit distinction between lunar concordance and cause.
- Part II · II.100.2; II.101.12The separate refusal to infer weather-making power from association with the air.
- Part II · II.177.1A different passage affirming a particular stellar action upon the subject.
Translation
Concordantia and concordanz are rendered concordance. Correspondence can explain the term in ordinary prose, but replacing it by causation would destroy the distinction. The historical account is not silently translated into a modern gravitational explanation, which would answer the question in a different framework.
Cautions
The passage gives the author's explanation of an acknowledged relation. It is neither a modern account of tides nor a general statement that correlation can never coexist with causation. Its scope is the inference and divine order under discussion.
concordantiam
concordantiam — concordance in an inflected Latin form. II.105.1.
concordanz
concordanz — concordance in German spelling. II.105.1.
Source note
The statement at II.105.1 is qualified by meines wissens and an den meisten Orten: to the author’s knowledge and in most places. These limits should remain alongside the distinction between cause and concordance.