kmoney

What Gros does to a comma should be against the law.

Thank you!
:cheers:
GFR

Wow, that looks interesting. Newman is more direct. His essay is more about development, whereas the book you have is more about doctrine. That is, Newman focuses on the question of what constitutes genuine organic development and what constitutes innovative aberration (the findings caused the former Anglican scholar to convert). I am not recommending his Essay unless you want a tough read. I am just saying that if you read on the topic this will be the bedrock that Catholics and Orthodox will often pull from. :e4e:

:chuckle: I actually went to a talk given by Marcus Plested (student of Kallistos Ware) the other night and he made a strong case that the Orthodox rejection of intellectual matters is novel and fleeting.

What you should understand is that there are two broad approaches open to the Christian: the Catholic/Orthodox approach of organic development and the Protestant/Mormon approach of the Church falling into heresy and then being recovered at a later date. The seminal work on development is Newman's Essay on Development of Christian Doctrine. Generally one would take a doctrine (e.g. the Apostle's Creed) and trace it back to see if it is a genuine development of the teaching of Christ and his Apostolic church or an aberration. Fortunately, most all Christians accept the creed as a genuine development, but this is something that you may need to verify for yourself.

I see *frantically presses the red alarm button under the desk to call the Inquisition* lain:

How do you see Christ? Mainly as a prophet or do you see him as a divine being, but subordinated to the Father.

You should definitely give Bonhoeffer a read. I've read a couple of books by Claiborne, Jesus for President and The Irresistible Revolution. Thought the latter was most interesting.

:e4e:

I do. The Orthodox often criticize (Roman) Catholics for being overly intellectual and "underly" liturgical. Who knows what they think of Protestants! Remember that the early church was largely illiterate and Bibles weren't even available to most, yet they were well-catechized through the liturgy, prayer, and community. This sort of immersion shapes a Christian more completely than simple intellectual speculation can, just as the Apostle's daily immersion in Christ's life shaped them. The student was to be "covered in the dust" of his Rabbi/teacher.

Thanks, feel free to say a prayer for me!

Ah, okay. Have you read any early church history? How do you aim to address your questions about the creed?

I hope to hearken back to Ratzinger's book for a short while too, which relates to the topic of faith. I was thinking of your questions as I re-read it. :e4e:

Sure. It's a good read, and it would engage you in a way that is more than merely intellectual. I think that's precisely what you need.

The semester is good, but so busy. I feel like I'm drowning in work. :rip:

What creed do you say at church?

Which part of the creed(s) did you have in mind?

Yeah, I agree that the Fransciscan view is needed today. I think that someone like thew new monasticism movement (like Shane Claiborne and his ilk) is a modern protestant/evangelical (although I do not think they explicitly identify with only select denominations) version of that spirituality.

I'm doing alright, autumn is coming :chuckle:

Good idea. You know kmo, if you are thinking about baptism, you might check out The Study of Liturgy and Worship. It is an ecumenical and scholarly look at liturgy, worship, and sacraments. I think it is fairly good, and demonstrates just how important liturgy and sacraments have been to Christianity for the last 2000 years. Although much of Protestantism has dropped the ball on this fact, Episcopalianism retains a stronger liturgical tradition than most. :e4e:

That would require having a far greater grasp of the tradition and philosophy than I do :chuckle: I should probably read Pannenberg, he probably deals with it.

If you do not mind me asking, what are you debating with the Reverend with regards to baptism?

:e4e:

FYI... I extended your subscription another year. Thanks for the support!

I've already been told to send him several cartons of cigarettes so he can maintain his dominance in prison. lain:

Been contemplating theology and evolutionary theory again. I'm currently reading Jenson, and as he is going through the various church fathers it is quite apparent that there is a dominant philosophical theological view of an order an hierarchy of being and I think the idea of man flowing from the lower beings would have been quite foreign to them. So while most informed Christians and most educated theologians of course accept the theory of evolution, I still wonder if theology as such has really completely reformed itself in light of the fact of evolution. There are of course attempts, but I think there is a lot of work remaining when it comes to forming a systematic theology that truly reflects the insights of evolutionary biology as well as truly attempting to rework the tradition in light of that.

I've only heard the Homebrewed Christianity interview with him. My impression was that it is a fairly standard argument of portraying Christ as an apocalyptic. Which in itself is an important view, that probably gets forgotten a bit too much by some Christians, if they are familiar with that view at all. I guess the book got quite popular after that ridiculous Fox interview with Aslan :chuckle: It would be interesting to see what a thinker like Pannenberg makes of such views, considering he thinks the historical realities are paramount to Christianity (he spent a lot of time arguing for the historical reality of the resurrection).

What kind of a church do you attend now by the way?

Rudy is going away for a little while... lain:

:e4e:

Thank you, kmoney :thumb:
Best regards;
G

...So the dilemma in its presented form is answered. The tendency to go on and ask why God is ipsum esse is somewhat natural, but mistaken. This is because the question asks for a (broadly Aristotelian) cause of God, or at least his goodness. But there is no cause of God, nor is he composed so that his goodness is an accident inhering within him. Again, I can't explain this fully here, but if one truly understood God as ipsum esse he would not ask the follow-up question which necessarily assumes that God is not ipsum esse.

If you want to move it to the group, that's fine. It's a bit much for visitor messages.

That said, my answer is not tautological in the way that some "just is" questions are. It may look that way since I did not explain in full detail the philosophical moves undergirding the position (Thomas addresses such questions in the early questions of the Summa).

The fact is, given the world that we know exists, we can reason to a God who is the source of being and goodness; a God who is being itself and goodness itself. Given this fact, it is not true that either God adheres to some external standard of goodness or that he arbitrarily defines goodness to be such and such.

Competitive flourishing is an interesting question. Thomas addresses it more thoroughly in de malo. If you clarify your question I would be willing to dust off that work. That said, perception of flourishing does not necessitate flourishing. What Hitler did was evil, even though he inevitably thought it was good.

"Just is" answers are inevitable, especially for human beings. Although it is somewhat complicated, I think modern distaste for them stems from an overestimate of human capacities coupled with a misunderstanding of knowledge, particularly non-demonstrative knowledge. There are bedrock intuitions and premises that are not reasoned to, and are merely recognized. The search for truth is in large part an attempt to recognize and correctly understand that which exists. The reductionistic tendency is ultimately rationally bankrupt, although this is not easy to see. I don't have the space to explore this in detail via VM.

Steven Seagal is so horrendous that his movies can be quite funny:chuckle: I haven't seen SNL parodies, but I have seen and enjoy the MAD TV parodies of him.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rw41SysnHmE

I am currently reading a rather interesting book by the theologian Robert W. Jenson. I was only familiar with him through hearing a couple of lectures by him on youtube, but when I saw that David Bentley Hart spoke so warmly about him (although they have some rather different views, Hart claims that Jenson is someone who he enjoys struggling with). The book is: The Triune Identity: God according to the Gospel. Picked it up at the theological library. After reading over 1/3 of it in one sitting yesterday I'm glad I also loaned volume 1 of his systematic theology.

Lesson went well. So starting the final obligatory part on monday.

I watch a rather wide spectrum of movies. I can enjoy anything from art movies to dumb action movies, but I tend to prefer American 80s and early 90s action movies (I still claim that Commando with Arnold Schwarzenegger is the greatest comedy ever made :chuckle because they are so extremely silly.

You?

I think zippy covered your follow up question well. I do not think that you can conceive of something as being neutral in that sense. Being and non-being is like life and death in that sense. Life is good and death is the negation of it.