REAL debate thread for RELIGION

[Guillaume le Maréchal]

Ruinel, I agree with what you said earlier about capitalism/communism (though not the Godless, part, I suppose), and I am definitely in agreement with your most recent proviso. Human nature is not sinful, but is basically, or essentially, good, just as everything that exists, because they have being, is good. The one truly noble aspect of Catholic theological anthropology is that throughout the history of Christianity it has insisted upon the essential dignity of not just the essence of humanity, but also the dignity of the human person. But as Boethius points out, there is a rather big difference between being good and acting good: Being good has to do with essence whereas being just has to do with action. In Him [the Good] being and action are one and the same and therefore being good is the same as being just. But for us being and action are not one and the same. For we are not simple beings. Therefore, being good and being just are not one and the same for us. But being in essence is the same for all of us. Therefore, all things are good but not al things are just. Moreover, the good is something general wereas the just is something specific and this species does not extend to all things. Wherefore, some things are just, others are something else, but all things are good (Quomodo substantiae in eo quod sint bonae sint cum non sint substantialia bona, 50).

I also agree with your statement, “we are creatures of desire and wants,� properly understood, of course. All human action is dependant on volition in as much as all human action is directed toward an object of desire. However, to speak of will in any way that displaces reason from its proper place, as the master of the will, is to sink the will to the level of base desire. Boetius of Dacia has this to say: The supreme good for man should be his in terms of his highest power, and not according to the vegetative soul, which is also found in animals and from which their sensual pleasures arise. But man’s highest power is his reason and intellect. Therefore, men who are so weighed down by sense pleasures that they lose intellectual goods should grieve. For they never attain their supreme good. It is insofar as they are given to the senses that they do not seek that which is the good of the intellect itself. Against these the Philosopher [Aristotle] protests, saying: “Woe to you men who are numbered among beasts and who do not attend to that which is divine within you!� He calls the intellect that which is divine in man. For if there is anything divine in man, it is right for it to be the power of reason. Just as that which is best among all beings is divine, so also that which is best in man we call divine (De summo bono, 212). In other words, not all desires lead human beings down the path toward Aristotle’s happy life.

Of course, Aristotle, himself, is in complete agreement: Thus we see that the irrational element of the soul has two parts: the one is vegetative and has no share in reason at all, the other is the seat of the appetites and of desire in general and partakes of reason insofar as it complies with reason and accepts its leadership; it possesses reason in the sense that we say its “reasonable� to accept the advice of a father and of friends, not in the sense that we have a “rational� understanding of mathematical propositions. That the irrational element can be persuaded by the rational is shown by the fact that admonition and all manner of rebuke and exhortation are possible. If it is correct to say that the appetitive part, too, ahs reason, it follows that the rational element of the soul has two subdivisions: the one possesses reason in the strict sense, contained within itself, and the other possesses reason in the sense that it listens to reason as one would listen to a father (Nicomachean Ethics, I, 13).

[Guillaume le Maréchal]

Am I the only person who sees an inherent contradiction with a statement that posits the existence of only six distinct things, and then says that it resides in “us�? If “us� is not one of the six things that exist, exactly what do these six things reside in?

[Rían]

re the 6 things - I agree, Guillaume. Buddhism is waaay too simple, IMHO, to be able to deal with reality, like Christianity does. In addition, #3 of the 4 Noble Truths of Buddhism seems to be eliminate desire, in order to eliminate suffering. Christianity, OTOH, says that desire is GOOD, but must be directed to the right object.

I posted something over in the Gay/Lesbian thread on desire that I think was very good - here's a link: desire

[brownjenkins]

originally posted by Guillaume le Maréchal:

Am I the only person who sees an inherent contradiction with a statement that posits the existence of only six distinct things, and then says that it resides in “us�? If “us� is not one of the six things that exist, exactly what do these six things reside in?

i think your confusion is that you are approaching it from the christian "take everything literally" viewpoint... buddhist teachings are not absolute laws... they are illustrations which attempt to get a point across

the point i see here... there is good and bad in all of us and one is better served by accepting this and working with it, instead of fighting against it... i.e. don't view the world in terms of ideals, or you are bound to be dissappointed, and even more importantly, you will not be able to properly relate to it and work within it

on RÃ*an's point... as i said before, i don't agree with all the tenants of buddhism... i see it as a philosophy, some points i agree with, some i don't... i see christianity in much the same way... i think there is nothing wrong with considering all the alternatives out there

[Gwaimir Windgem]

Guillame, I for one would be very interested in hearing about Orthodox theological anthropology.

[Guillaume le Maréchal]

I’m definitely not the person to ask My limited knowledge of theology is thoroughly western and scholastic. However, I can point you toward two excellent Eastern Orthodox theologians: John Meyendorff, and Vladimir Lossky.

Eastern Orthodox theology, in general, can be termed as “mystical.� One of the unfortunate off-shoots of western medieval thought was the impression that theology and doctrine are primarily an academic exercise. While this was not true of individual theologians such as Bonaventure, Thomas Aquinas, Jons Duns Scotus, or Nicolas of Cusa, it was definitely the impression given by the University establishment in general. This was never the case in the east where the work of theology remained primarily the endeavor of ascetics and monasteries. Eastern Orthodox theology rarely separates the mystical experience of the Trinity from its conclusions, and this would include the powerful experiences of living a deep prayer life in connection to the sacraments. While I don’t think the opposite was necessarily the case for most medieval thinkers in the west, the terms of the western debates, specifically the application of Aristotelianism to theological constructs, made the work of the western scholastics seem entirely academic and out of touch with prayer.

Because of the eastern approach, Orthodox theology emphasizes divination in their anthropology. Thus eastern theology is often eschatological in nature... always looking forward to the divination of human persons when God will fulfill all things. Lossky wrote:

Man was created perfect. That, however, does not mean that his first state is identical with his last, or that he was united with God from the moment of his creation. Before the fall, Adam was neither a ‘pure nature’ nor a deified man. As we have said before, both the cosmology and the anthropology of the Eastern Church are dynamic in character, and resolutely exclude the possibility of juxtaposing the ideas of nature and grace. Nature and grace do not exist side by side, rather there is a mutual interpenetrating of one another, the one exists in the other. Saint John Damascene sees an unfathomable mystery in the fact that man was created ‘for deification’, moving towards union with God. The perfection of our first nature lay above all in this capacity to communicate with God, to be united more and more with the fullnes of the Godhead, which was to penetrate and transfigure created nature. Saint Gregory Nazianzen refers to this highest faculty of the human spirit when he speaks of God breathing in ‘the divine part’, that is to say the grace which from the beginning is present in the soul able to receive and make its won the deifying energy of God. The human person was called, according to Saint Maximus, ‘to reunite by love created with uncreated nature, showing the two in unity and identity through the acquisition of grace’. The unity and identity here refer to the person, to the human hypostasis. Man is thus to reunite by grace two natures in his created hypostasis, to become ‘a created god’, a ‘god by grace’, in contrast to Christ who being a divine person assumed human nature. To arrive at this end the concurrence of two wills is necessary; on the one side there is the divine and deifying will granting grace through the presence of the Holy Spirit in the human person; on the other side there is the human will which submits to the will of God in receiving grace and making it its own, and allowing it to penetrate all its nature. As the will is an active power of rational nature, it acts by grace to the extent in which nature participates in grace, in which the likeness is restored by ‘the transforming fire’. (The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, 126.)

Thus we see that Lossky definitely looks back on the first humans and the fall as a loss of grace. Western theology has emphasized that the fall scared human nature (original sin), and Eastern theology has emphasized the fall as due to the first humans alienating deifying grace. The two positions are not mutually exclusive, especially if we look closer at Thomistic and Scotist thought; both of these western thinkers definitely saw the scar in human nature as being the result of a loss of grace, and they would never consider the "natural" state of man to be "without grace or diefication" (the confusion between east and west arises because scholasticism insisted upon speaking of deification as an "end" of human nature... as such, if its the "end" of man it must belong naturally to man). Furthermore, John Duns Scotus, perhaps more so than Aquinas, differentiated the paradise of Eden from the paradise of humanity’s deification. Thus the two sides are not so far removed on the issue of human nature, grace or the fall (or original sin, a doctrine not specifically spelled out in the Eastern Orthodox Churches) than at first glance; the main difference is in language and emphasis.

[Arien the Maia]

Guillaume, what denomination are you? From what I gather you are either cathlic or Orthadox...but I could be WAY off too!

[Gwaimir Windgem]

I think he said he was currently Russian Orthodox; though if that's the case, his confessed lack of knowledge of Orthodox theology confuses me.

[Arien the Maia]

Originally posted by Gwaimir Windgem
I think he said he was currently Russian Orthodox; though if that's the case, his confessed lack of knowledge of Orthodox theology confuses me.

yes that confuses me too

[Guillaume le Maréchal]

I'm Roman Catholic

My wife, on the other hand, is a Maronite Catholic, and our parish where we go church is Maronite. The best of two worlds.

After re-reading the above post I wasn't too happy with the last part; it wasn't very clear to me, so I re-wrote it (I didn't edit because it went over the word limit... I'm apparently a long winded guy):

Thus we see that Lossky definitely looks back on the first humans and the fall as a loss of grace. Western theology has emphasized that the fall scared human nature (original sin), and Eastern theology has emphasized the fall as due to the first humans alienating deifying grace. The two positions are not mutually exclusive, especially if we look closer at Thomistic and Scotist thought; both of these western thinkers definitely saw the scar in human nature as being the result of a loss of grace.

Confusion between east and west arises because of certain aspects of scholastic theology. Scholastic thought insisted on speaking of deification as an “end� of man, not as an observable or deductible nature of man’s essence. For thinkers such as Saint Thomas Aquinas or Blessed John Duns Scotus, the deification of human beings is a reality that we only know via revelation, and there is no evidence for this end that can be observed in or deduced from the world of sense experience. In reality, however, both positions say the same thing--if deification is man’s end, then deification is essentially according to man’s nature, whether or it can be experientially observed or deduced, or, as the case actually is, whether it must be revealed to man. It is on this score that Aquinas’ moral theology argues that following the divine law is far more beneficial than following the natural law. While grace does not contradict reason or the natural law, it is grace that transforms human beings according to their final end--despite its lofty position, human reason alone can not achieve this end, nor can a morality that merely follows natural law.

Another aspect of the problem is what western thinkers posited as the experientially observable aspect of the fall--concupiscence. The western emphasis on concupiscence as a result of original sin, and observable evidence of original sin, can be easily mistaken for identifying concupiscence as original sin. From my sparse reading of Eastern Orthodox theologians, it seems that some at least have made this mistake in their reading of Saint Augustine, thus they are inclined to censure Catholic theology as positing concupiscence as the sin of the first man and woman. This, though, is not the case in Catholic dogma, and despite some rather problematic passages from Saint Augustine’s more polemical discourses, was not the gist of his thought either. (Note: there are some rather strong Augustinian undercurrents in modern Protestant theology, which has, interestingly enough, caused problems between Catholics and Protestants that are similar to the problems between Catholics and Orthodox.)

Thus the two sides are not so far removed on the issue of human nature, grace and the fall (or original sin, a doctrine not specifically spelled out in the Eastern Orthodox Churches) than at first glance; the main difference is in language and emphasis.

[Arien the Maia]

Originally posted by Guillaume le Maréchal
I'm Roman Catholic

My wife, on the other hand, is a Maronite Catholic, and our parish where we go church is Maronite. The best of two worlds.

The Maronite Rite is part of the Eastern Catholic church is it not? I've always been extremely interested in the Eastern Church. As far as I know, there are no Eastern Cahtolic churches around here...just Greek Orthodox and Russian Orthodox and Roman Catholic of course, which is what I am. Can you join an Eastern Catholic church if you were raised and baptized in a Roman one? I've always been curious b/c don't the Eastern Churches allkow married men to become priests? By that rational, couldn't a married man who was born Roman Catholic and wanted to be a priest as well, switch to being an Eastern Catholic?

[GrayMouser]

Originally posted by Valandil
Dave,

You generally seem much more versed in philosophy than me, but in case you're not aware of it, there's a particular philosophy called "Objectivism" (capital 'O') based on the writings of author Ayn Rand. It tries to be very strictly logical, rational, capitalistic...(ED: oh - and centers on the importance of THE INDIVIDUAL!!) here my knowledge of it breaks down.

.

Yep, that was with a capital "O".

She claimed to be call for a return to a strict Aristotlean logic ( her bete noire was Immanuel Kant); though IMHO her argument quickly breaks down.

Libertarians generally respect her, bit the people who actually call themselves Objectivists have more of the aspects of a cult ( which she strongly promoted.)

[GrayMouser]

Originally posted by Gwaimir Windgem

Rian: Another church I would add is the Anglican Church, or at least the most well-known branch thereof.

Reminds me of an old Mort Sahl joke- "those liberal churches that believe Moses came down the mountain carrying the Ten Suggestions."

[GrayMouser]

Originally posted by Guillaume le Maréchal
A logically valid argument does not make one an “objectivist.� Most relativists are able to support their positions with very logical arguments. What makes someone an adherent of objectivism or relativism is their presuppositions about reality and the mind’s relation to reality. It comes down to accepting or not accepting the objective validity of self-evident propositions--either they are necessary mental constructs (relativism), or they are irrefutable axioms governing the world of experience (objectivism).

--Dave

A little confused here- a "self-evident proposition": aren't these necessarily confined to rules of logic?

An "irrefutable axiom governing the world of experience"- anything in the world of experience must be contingent, and therefore refutable.

To me, rejecting pomo thinkers, the mind is a mirror of Nature, but an imperfect one- there are underlying (physical ) laws of the Universe, and we are geared to accept them, but only so far as our evolutionarily-derived animal minds can grasp.

Once we get too fast, too hot, too dense, too small- the relation of our mind to reality , in the "commonsense version" breaks down.

[Gwaimir Windgem]

I'm Roman Catholic

Well, that would explain it then!

Reminds me of an old Mort Sahl joke- "those liberal churches that believe Moses came down the mountain carrying the Ten Suggestions."

Don't forget the Local flood.

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[Gwaimir Windgem]

Originally posted by Arien the Maia
The Maronite Rite is part of the Eastern Catholic church is it not? I've always been extremely interested in the Eastern Church. As far as I know, there are no Eastern Cahtolic churches around here...just Greek Orthodox and Russian Orthodox and Roman Catholic of course, which is what I am. Can you join an Eastern Catholic church if you were raised and baptized in a Roman one? I've always been curious b/c don't the Eastern Churches allkow married men to become priests? By that rational, couldn't a married man who was born Roman Catholic and wanted to be a priest as well, switch to being an Eastern Catholic?

I agree; the Eastern Catholic Churches are very interesting. I believe in Catholic dogma and theology; but the Eastern rites, liturgies, and practices are (IMO) much more interesting and, in a sense, "good" than the Western.

[Arien the Maia]

Originally posted by Gwaimir Windgem
I agree; the Eastern Catholic Churches are very interesting. I believe in Catholic dogma and theology; but the Eastern rites, liturgies, and practices are (IMO) much more interesting and, in a sense, "good" than the Western.

Have you ever been to an eastern Catholic Mass? oh and BTW, have you been to any Russian Orthodox services lately? If you have, exactly how are they performed and are they called Mass or Liturgy or Service?

[Guillaume le Maréchal]

Rites and Churches in the Catholic Church

Eight Rites of the Catholic Church:

1. Roman; 2. Armenian; 3. Byzantine; 4. Coptic; 5. Maronite; 6. East Syrian; 7. West Syrian; 8. Ethiopian (often listed as a recension of the Coptic Rite)

The twenty-two Catholic Churches:

* ROMAN RITE * 1. Latin Church (Roman Catholic)

* ARMENIAN RITE* 2. Armenian Church

* BYZANTINE RITE * 3. Italo-Albanian Church; 4. Melkite Church; 5. Ukrainian Church; 6. Ruthenian Church; 7. Romanian Church; 8. Greek Church (in Greece); 9. Greek Church of Former Yugoslavia; 10. Bulgarian Church; 11. Slovak Church; 12. Hungarian Church; 13. Russian Church; 14. Belarusan Church; 15. Albanian Church

* COPTIC RITE * 16. Coptic Church (in many lists the Ethiopian Church is also placed here)

* MARONITE RITE * 17. Maronite Church

* EAST SYRIAN RITE * 18. Chaldean Church 19. Syro-Malabar Church

* WEST SYRIAN RITE * 20. Syro-Malankara Church 21. Syrian Church

* ETHIOPIAN RITE * 22. Ethiopian Church (often listed under the Coptic Rite)

Rite refers to the form of the liturgy, and Church refers to a governed body of believers. All other 21 Churches of the Catholic Church have independent governing bodies from the Roman Church, with their own bishops and metropolitans, but all recognize the bishop of Rome as the head of the catholic and apostolic Church.

All twenty-two churches are part of the Catholic communion. As a Catholic you can attend any of these churches in accordance with Sunday/holy day obligation. However, you can not “change rites.� If you were baptized and confirmed as a Melkite Catholic, for example, you can’t just become a Roman Catholic because you are a member of a Roman Catholic parish. Sometimes it might be necessary to become a member of a Catholic parish that does not belong to your Rite. This is very common in the case of eastern Catholics who sometimes move to places where the only Catholic parishes available are Roman. Also, it sometimes happens that through marriage, a person might be permitted to join a parish that is of a different Rite (as in my case). In general, though, it is best that you stick with the tradition in which you were baptized and confirmed. Children usually follow the Rite of the father, and nearly all eastern Catholic priests in America have a dispensation to baptize and confirm into the Roman Church.

Most eastern Catholic Churches do not practice the discipline of priestly celibacy. However, this is not the case in the United States where it was promulgated by the National Conference of Catholic Bishops that all Catholic priests in the Americas, no matter what Catholic Church they belong, are to be celibate. This was approved by Rome in the 1950s (don’t know the exact date). Married priests of different Churches were allowed to remain, of course, but eparchs and bishops were no longer allowed to ordain married men in non-Roman Churches in America. There are many reasons for this decision, not all of which were for the welfare of the non-Roman traditions, and there is much talk about dispensing of the celibacy requirement for non-Roman priests (after all, they are allowed to be married in other parts of the world). I think that these traditions ought to have the freedom to practice their customary disciplines in America, but on the other hand, I would hope that at a time when the Church is called to greater asceticism in the face of a terrifying materialistic and hedonistic secular world, we would move toward greater sacrifice, not less.

A Roman Catholic man can not become a Syro-Malankara Catholic priest (though a special dispensation can be, and often is, granted allowing priests of different churches to celebrate liturgies of different Rites). So a man can not start out a Roman Catholic, join the Syro-Malankara Catholic Church, marry a nice Syrian girl , and then seek ordination... as a person baptized and confirmed Roman, he would be bound to follow the Roman discipline.

[Arien the Maia]

Thanks Guillaume! That was really informative and I've always wanted to know the specifics of the different rites and churches within the Catholic church.

On a similar note, I feel that the whole priestly celibacy thing should be abolished. Living in a time where the priest shortage is getting worse, I feel that ordaining married men would help to a point. I know several married men who are very religious and would possibly join the priesthood.

several parishes in my diocese have been closed in the past few years b/c of the priest shortage.

[Rían]

Originally posted by GrayMouser
An "irrefutable axiom governing the world of experience"- anything in the world of experience must be contingent, and therefore refutable.

yes; but OTOH, if we never allow any axioms, then we can't build on anything ... one can't PROVE axioms, by their very definition, but it's reasonable to assume the truth of many axioms, such as Euclid's axiom that things equal to the same thing are equal to each other. You wouldn't get very far in mathematics (what, miss the joys of calculus? Fie!) without assuming it to be true.

Of course, axioms are refutable, but we would pretty much have to abandon our entire knowledge base and rebuild it from scratch if any were found to be refuted. That's why there aren't too many axioms ... they're so OBVIOUSLY true, and they are the foundation of our knowledge.