Posted on 11/30/2004 6:21:11 PM PST by betty boop
Thought you might have an interest in these subjects -- if you have the time, please feel free to comment. Your thoughts would be most welcome!
But if you dislike cosmology/metaphystics/theology, you can always skip down to the bold head, "Natural Law, Contingency, and the Scientific Method." Which is followed by another bold head, "Worlviews and Paradigm Shifts." The first starts near the bottom, the next follows closely.
Still, I hope you have the time and interest to get with "the culture" first.
In any case, it is always a great pleasure to hear from you.
So, if you have the time and interest, please do stop by and share your critique with me.
There was probably no such person as Plato. There was a school. Before you say he had a history, a wealthy Athenian family, all that, remember they had the same kind of history for Theseus. At least they had a ship, or they say they did, for Theseus.
If you believe something because it makes you feel good to believe it, doesn't that make you a hedonist?
Ping so I can read this later when I am suppose to be doing work.
plato ping
Thanks for the ping, BB. This looks like it may be your most ambitious work yet. An impressive effort. I'll try to digest it ... but you know my limitations.
Slow down Wolfgang. This is precisely what the early Church did not say. The Church Fathers made a clear distinction between the created world and the uncreated and stated that there is no similarity between the two whatsoever. This was the doctrine of the Church that drove the Neoplatonism of Clement and Origen and the eternal ideas or forms of Plato from the church forever, at least in the East. In this theology of the Church, creation is not self-revelation of God.
Furthermore, the Fathers make a distinction bewteen the uncreated essence of God and the uncreated energies or divine attributes of God. God's essense is unknowable, ineffable, inconceivable, incomprehensible. Revelation of God is only possible by means of the uncreated energy or divine grace which is His outward face to his creation.
The situation in the West was different and with St. Augustine and later the scholastics, the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle enter the theological thinking of the Church. This is most likely what Wolfgang is referring to. This Platonic perspective many be true for some theologians, but it is not an indisputable fact for Christianity as a whole and certainly not at its deepest level.
WOW - please add me to your ping list. This is the stuff I have been digging into this past year through a return to college and much - much reading on the side. So much to learn, so little time!
I look forward to future discussions!
You have a point. I suggest that even in Clement has a horse in your race. But allowing that Clement can be faulted for his apologetic, the word "Fathers" could be used less broadly than you propose. :)
I'm not sure I like Plato's idea. I don't think I am just part of a giant sponge. ;^)
betty boop
add me to your ping list
Okay, how about St Theophilus of Antioch, St Irenaeus, St Athansius, St Basil, St Gregory of Nazianzus, St Gregory of Nyssa, St Epiphanius of Cyprus, St John Chrysostom, St Cyril of Alexandria, St Macarius, St Dionysius the Areopagite, St Maximus the Confessor, St John Damascene. That would take us up to about the 7th or 8th Century. Is that defined narrowly enough?
Now you're talking!
read later
Dream on, kiddo.
"Feel good" has nothing to do with it. This isn't about "body"; this isn't about "the creature"; this is about the human mind, thinking -- as it has, from time immemorial.
Do you have a problem with that?
That should give both sides the heegie beegies--if it should sink in.
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