I think those were the "main" ten commandments, in a sense they were the summary of the ones that followed.
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I don't believe that the phrase "Ten Commandments" or similar appears in the Old Testament, or indeed anywhere in the Bible. In Gal 5:3 Paul attacks those who distinguish between different parts of the Law - he says that anyone who is circumcised is bound to obey the whole thing. His point of course is that if you choose to be circumcised the whole of the rest of the Law comes along with it, but it seems germane.
Obviously in New Testament times those commandments included among the "Ten" were considered especially important. In Matthew 19:18-19, Jesus tells a questioner to keep commandments five to nine, together with the additional injunction to "love your neighbour as yourself". Perhaps the implication is that these commandments are equivalent to loving your neighbour as yourself. In Mark 12:29-31, Jesus tells us that there are two fundamental commandments - to love God (the first of the Decalogue) and, again, to love your neighbour as yourself. This seems to be a sort of summary of the Decalogue. But again there is no explicit mention, in either of these passages, of the "Ten Commandments", and some commandments (notably the last) are conspicuous by their absence.
Obviously in New Testament times those commandments included among the "Ten" were considered especially important. In Matthew 19:18-19, Jesus tells a questioner to keep commandments five to nine, together with the additional injunction to "love your neighbour as yourself". Perhaps the implication is that these commandments are equivalent to loving your neighbour as yourself. In Mark 12:29-31, Jesus tells us that there are two fundamental commandments - to love God (the first of the Decalogue) and, again, to love your neighbour as yourself. This seems to be a sort of summary of the Decalogue. But again there is no explicit mention, in either of these passages, of the "Ten Commandments", and some commandments (notably the last) are conspicuous by their absence.
Doesn't the Sermon on the Mount sort of recap them as well?
Not really. A number of commandments from the Old Testament are mentioned there, but they are taken from different parts of the Law. In fact some of the "commandments" listed don't exist at all. Matthew 5:43 refers to a commandment instructing us to love our neighbours and hate our enemies, but I don't believe that is found in the Old Testament.
I have to say that I simply don't know the answer to that. I'm sure it would have happened very early, probably not so long after most Christians decided that Paul was right in saying that Christians were not bound by the Jewish Law. Basically, although mainstream Christianity turned into a largely Greek way of thinking fairly early, it retained a fundamentally Jewish moral code. So Christians came to believe that they were bound by the moral law but not the ritual law. Of course, the distinction between the two is completely unbiblical. But I'm pretty certain you'd find this basic view at least in Augustine and probably earlier.
Interestingly, one of the reasons for the success of some divergent movements within Christianity was that people wanted clearer and stricter moral guidelines. For example, the "New Prophecy" (that is, Montanism) seems to have been wholly concerned with extremely strict ethical teaching, not doctrinal innovation. Rigorist characters such as Tertullian were attracted to it for precisely that reason - it provided a moral framework that they believed to be lacking in the mainstream church.
Interestingly, one of the reasons for the success of some divergent movements within Christianity was that people wanted clearer and stricter moral guidelines. For example, the "New Prophecy" (that is, Montanism) seems to have been wholly concerned with extremely strict ethical teaching, not doctrinal innovation. Rigorist characters such as Tertullian were attracted to it for precisely that reason - it provided a moral framework that they believed to be lacking in the mainstream church.
ironduck
Deity
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But several laws (half I would argue) of the first 'ten' aren't really moral in nature.
- 'You shall have no other gods than me' doesn't seem to have much to do with morality, but rather about constructing the religion in a certain way.
- no idol images - same thing.
- no misusing of god's name - seems similar again.
- keep the sabbath holy - again about structuring religion.
The above four are part of the revered ten laws that christians often mention as morally righteous laws to live by. But the ones that follow after the ten often have a much stronger moral implications - they describe some pretty horrendous acts and what god believes to be the (equally horrendous) proper way of dealing with them.
It would seem more logical if only the laws that Jesus mentions would carry over to the christians, as you mentioned 5-9, so they would be the seven laws in all, or perhaps the two plus five.
Nevertheless a lot - I think most - christians put a whole lot of weight on those particular ten, they are so often quoted and referred to.
- 'You shall have no other gods than me' doesn't seem to have much to do with morality, but rather about constructing the religion in a certain way.
- no idol images - same thing.
- no misusing of god's name - seems similar again.
- keep the sabbath holy - again about structuring religion.
The above four are part of the revered ten laws that christians often mention as morally righteous laws to live by. But the ones that follow after the ten often have a much stronger moral implications - they describe some pretty horrendous acts and what god believes to be the (equally horrendous) proper way of dealing with them.
It would seem more logical if only the laws that Jesus mentions would carry over to the christians, as you mentioned 5-9, so they would be the seven laws in all, or perhaps the two plus five.
Nevertheless a lot - I think most - christians put a whole lot of weight on those particular ten, they are so often quoted and referred to.
phoenix_sprite
King
Who likes god more: me or you?
you don't have to answer that...but I have a serious question:
How can you counter sceptism towards god and spirituality?
you don't have to answer that...but I have a serious question:
How can you counter sceptism towards god and spirituality?
Alright, here are some clarifications I think I need to understand this, as things are never quite clear in philosophy on the first or second pass:
1. When you spoke about the holy spirit as sanctifying the faithful, exactly what is meant by this? I can think of a number of ways this could be thought of.
2. The movement from economy and deeds to the internal structure in understanding God and the trinity seems to parallel the general tendency that I personally have noticed in the Jewish and Christian tradition of a movement from external (ritual, only physical life) to internal (feeling, afterlife). I'll clarify the physical->afterlife, as a movement from being perpetually outside of God to moving closer inside in an afterlife; and ritual->feeling being a movement of focus on ritual for salvation (or at least personal, here-and-now benefit) towards one of belief and feeling being the determinants. My questions are: am I right, first off, in my recap; and does this have any connection with the change in approach to the Trinity, as in is it a concurrent movement, or did the two form at different times?
3. The concept the Gnostics had of the fragments of the divine (to be honest, most of what I've heard of them has tended toward my own thoughts) seems like another way of saying "splitting God". What is the difference, if any, here between their view and my proposed capacity of God to divide himself?
4. Is it really a condemnation to be spiritless, as is suggested, since one without a spirit would necessarily not be truly conscious of such a fate? I suppose this is the hardest question for me to explain, as it rests on personal understandings of existence that are hard to translate into language, but give a go at it and we'll see if I got it across anyway.
5. How does one exist in pure apatheia? Wouldn't enjoying the oneness with God be feeling something? My own attempts at this have resulted in rather excruciating experiences of nothingness, which feel far from anything remotely divine. I guess my question is, as I refuse to believe in the possibility of existence without any feeling, where is the line drawn between "base" emotions and "divine" emotions and why.
6. What precisely is the contemporary definition of "soul" that has been cast aside? I was under the impression that the dualist/physicalist debate was still ongoing. By all means, I have outright rejected the idea that a "soul" cannot exist, so I'm assuming there is a difference in definition here, or else someone is missing something here.
7. When you spoke of the Platonists' movement from Mud to no Form of mud, did they reject all Forms or just that of mud? In other words, did they reduce the Forms only to the most basest that could exist or get rid of them altogether? (I hope my understanding of the Forms is right, as it has been years since I heard an explanation, but I'm fairly confident in my knowledge.)
8. Question on your namesake: how can disunity come from perfect unity? In other words, how does he explain the creation of all the many dichotomies of existence from something that has none itself?
9. Why is "hell" a swear word? "Heck" is probably the most unnecessary word in English, imo. In fact, why is saying "heck" any different than saying "hell", as the two refer to precisely the same thing. Not to mention "hell" is used regularly around children... I suppose this is more a linguistic and sociological question, so I understand if there's no answer you can give me, but it just bothers me.
10. Is there any connection you see between the fundamentals of Christianity in the late Medieval period and the rise of rationalism and Western dominance? Perhaps there is none, but I'm currently trying to understand the causes of the West's rather conspicuous divergence from the rest of civilization, and see this as a rather important possibility. Not to say any religion is better, just that perhaps Christianity created some necessary condition for this.
1. When you spoke about the holy spirit as sanctifying the faithful, exactly what is meant by this? I can think of a number of ways this could be thought of.
2. The movement from economy and deeds to the internal structure in understanding God and the trinity seems to parallel the general tendency that I personally have noticed in the Jewish and Christian tradition of a movement from external (ritual, only physical life) to internal (feeling, afterlife). I'll clarify the physical->afterlife, as a movement from being perpetually outside of God to moving closer inside in an afterlife; and ritual->feeling being a movement of focus on ritual for salvation (or at least personal, here-and-now benefit) towards one of belief and feeling being the determinants. My questions are: am I right, first off, in my recap; and does this have any connection with the change in approach to the Trinity, as in is it a concurrent movement, or did the two form at different times?
3. The concept the Gnostics had of the fragments of the divine (to be honest, most of what I've heard of them has tended toward my own thoughts) seems like another way of saying "splitting God". What is the difference, if any, here between their view and my proposed capacity of God to divide himself?
4. Is it really a condemnation to be spiritless, as is suggested, since one without a spirit would necessarily not be truly conscious of such a fate? I suppose this is the hardest question for me to explain, as it rests on personal understandings of existence that are hard to translate into language, but give a go at it and we'll see if I got it across anyway.
5. How does one exist in pure apatheia? Wouldn't enjoying the oneness with God be feeling something? My own attempts at this have resulted in rather excruciating experiences of nothingness, which feel far from anything remotely divine. I guess my question is, as I refuse to believe in the possibility of existence without any feeling, where is the line drawn between "base" emotions and "divine" emotions and why.
6. What precisely is the contemporary definition of "soul" that has been cast aside? I was under the impression that the dualist/physicalist debate was still ongoing. By all means, I have outright rejected the idea that a "soul" cannot exist, so I'm assuming there is a difference in definition here, or else someone is missing something here.
7. When you spoke of the Platonists' movement from Mud to no Form of mud, did they reject all Forms or just that of mud? In other words, did they reduce the Forms only to the most basest that could exist or get rid of them altogether? (I hope my understanding of the Forms is right, as it has been years since I heard an explanation, but I'm fairly confident in my knowledge.)
8. Question on your namesake: how can disunity come from perfect unity? In other words, how does he explain the creation of all the many dichotomies of existence from something that has none itself?
9. Why is "hell" a swear word? "Heck" is probably the most unnecessary word in English, imo. In fact, why is saying "heck" any different than saying "hell", as the two refer to precisely the same thing. Not to mention "hell" is used regularly around children... I suppose this is more a linguistic and sociological question, so I understand if there's no answer you can give me, but it just bothers me.
10. Is there any connection you see between the fundamentals of Christianity in the late Medieval period and the rise of rationalism and Western dominance? Perhaps there is none, but I'm currently trying to understand the causes of the West's rather conspicuous divergence from the rest of civilization, and see this as a rather important possibility. Not to say any religion is better, just that perhaps Christianity created some necessary condition for this.
Just wondering if you could answer another few questions ?
I'm curious about the basic idea behind anchorites ?
Did they have any theological base or did they just forfil a sort of social role ?
What was the relationship between the Church and the anchorites - did the anchorites have any spiritual authority over the local population , or did they just generally gave advise on non church matters ?
and did they generally have unusual ( if not unorthodox ) views ? or to put it another way , was Julian of Norwich a typical anchorite(ss) ?
Thanks again.
I'm curious about the basic idea behind anchorites ?
Did they have any theological base or did they just forfil a sort of social role ?
What was the relationship between the Church and the anchorites - did the anchorites have any spiritual authority over the local population , or did they just generally gave advise on non church matters ?
and did they generally have unusual ( if not unorthodox ) views ? or to put it another way , was Julian of Norwich a typical anchorite(ss) ?
Thanks again.
Can't have this thread getting lost.
GoodGame
Red, White, & Blue, baby!
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Do you feel that the Lost Seas Scrolls and the "lost books" of the bible actually belong in bible, even though it seems they were banned or ignored?
EDIT: oops, I did mean to type "Dead Sea Scrolls" and so called "lost books of the bible".
EDIT: oops, I did mean to type "Dead Sea Scrolls" and so called "lost books of the bible".
Sorry to take a while to tackle these. There's a lot of them so I shall do my best - forgive me if I'm too brief at all, and please ask for clarification if necessary.
I wouldn't want to counter scepticism towards anything. Scepticism is a good thing.
It is a bit vague, I agree, but then it tends to be. I think the idea is that the Holy Spirit is God acting directly inside the believer, changing him or her in important ways. Here's what Calvin has to say on the matter (Institutes III 3 8):
I don't know if you are right in your recap really. Are you suggesting that, historically, these religions have moved from an emphasis on ritual and external actions to an emphasis on inner change and spiritual life? If so, I don't think that's true, for two reasons. The first is that these religions have always had both "mystics" and "ecclesiastics" (to give the two tendencies names). The second is that there is not necessarily such a disjunction between them. Some of the early Pietists, such as Arndt and Dippel, made a big deal of such a distinction. Dippel in particular took it to extremes, so I can't resist posting a summary of him that I once wrote:
One thing I didn't mention there (because I couldn't find certain confirmation of it) is that Dippel's title was Baron Frankenstein and that he was said to perform mysterious experiments on corpses filched from the local graveyard. He was an alchemist too: he is said to have died after discovering the dye Prussian Blue. His corpse was supposedly discovered in his study, sitting with a horrified expression on its face and bright blue - having discovered the dye, he'd unwisely drunk the lot.
Anyway, you'll notice that these Pietists believed that Christianity had originally been mystical and had only later been turned ecclesiastical, which is the opposite trend to the one you suggest. As I say, I think neither is true. But it's also important to recognise that, for many people, ritual and external observance is identical with spirituality and the inner life. For example, many Catholics really do feel closer to God through following set liturgies, using incense, and so on. And not just Catholics either. The assumption that such activities are always hidebound and arid is a rather Pietist one that I think fails to appreciate all the reasons why people do them.
The Gnostics - or at least this variety - didn't really think in terms of "God" at all, I think. They thought more of "the divine" (note that in Greek there is not a great distinction between them - just the addition of a definite article). There are many divine beings in the Pleroma (or Fullness) of divinity. So it's not really that God splits himself - rather, divinity is not exclusive to one being. The highest being (according to the Valentinians) is not "God" but "Proarche" (before the beginning) and "Bythos" (depth). The early Gnostics seem to have had a highly apophatic theology, that is, they thought that the divine can't really be described, because it transcends thought. Basilides talked about the "Silence" of the deepest God.
That's a good point and I'm sure a charitable Valentinian might agree with that! I don't know what they said on the matter though. Bear in mind that there is controversy over pretty much every aspect of Gnosticism (one of the current debates in this field right now is over whether Valentinus himself, the most notorious Gnostic of the early centuries, was even a Gnostic at all).
Note, though, that (as far as I know) the Gnostics didn't think you needed a spirit in order to be conscious or self-aware. They just thought you needed one if you were to return to the Pleroma. They thought that salvation consisted of the separation of the elements that had been mixed - for the elements of spirit to return to the Pleroma and the elements of soul and matter to remain behind. So a person with no spirit could still be saved - it's just that salvation for such a person would not involve returning to the divinity. What it would involve, I don't know.
This is one of the reasons why mainstream Christianity has tended to reject this sort of approach, I think. I don't know how a proponent of this sort of spirituality would answer it, except perhaps to say that if you're experiencing divinely inspired bliss you'll know it.
By "soul" here I'm thinking of the notion of a substance, that is, something which is both conceptually and really distinct from the body and which could, in principle, survive without it. You are right to say that dualism is still a live option in philosophy of mind (Chalmers, in particular, helped to revive it in recent years). However, dualism needn't be substance dualism. I think there are very few contemporary philosophers who would defend the notion of "soul" as I outlined it above - Richard Swinburne is the one major exception. I think most philosophers would agree that there is a conceptual distinction between mind and body, but they would say that it does not follow from this that there is a real one (Descartes, of course, thought that the former entailed the latter - bizarrely, since he had read scholastic philosophy and ought to have been aware of Scotus' distinction between the two kinds of distinction). Those philosophers who believe that not everything mental can be explained solely in terms of the physical (which is a rough definition of dualism) need not necessarily believe that the mind is completely distinct from the body and could survive without it (which is a rough definition of substance dualism).
The Middle Platonists and Neoplatonists didn't reject all Forms - on the contrary, they talked about them a lot more than Plato ever did. They simply rejected Forms of ignoble things such as mud. The point is that, for them, the Forms were primarily objects of veneration. If you read Plotinus' Ennead I.6, his famous essay on Beauty and how the contemplation of it can lead the mind to the divine, you'll see what I mean (I gave the link before, I think). For Plato himself, by contrast, the Forms have a primarily logical and ontological role: they explain how universal statements can be true and how different objects can have things in common. As I see it, this shift in function on the part of the Forms is one of the key elements of Middle/Neoplatonism as distinct from early Platonism. It reflects the increasingly "religious" nature of the movement.
That is the big problem for Plotinus, and I'm not sure he does answer it sufficiently. He talks about how it is natural for things to procreate, and the greater the thing, the more it does so: for example, the sun gives off rays of light. The One naturally turns upon itself and thinks of itself; this dichotomy of One and its thought is the Pythagorean Dyad which is the root of all multiplicity. The self-thought of the One brings about the divine Mind, the next order of reality, and the true seat of multiplicity because it contains all the Forms. Or something. I think this is one of those problems that Plotinus never really solves in a single way.
It's not a swear word for anyone except puritanical Americans. Since I'm neither puritanical nor American, I, like most English-speakers throughout the world, find the notion of "hell" being a swear word to be simply laughable. America's Puritan heritage has had many odd effects like this. For example, black cats are unlucky in America, although they are lucky in Britain. This is because black cats were always associated with the devil; the pragmatic British generally thought the devil was a useful character to have on your side, but the puritanical early Americans thought he should be avoided at all costs.
The question why America is like that is really two questions which are often confused. First, why has Christianity had such a powerful hold over the US, and why does it continue to do so, in that country virtually alone of all modern western nations? Second, why has Christianity itself in America been so dominated by particular elements that are less strong in the church in other countries? For example, Christianity in the US seems to be typically highly conservative in both a doctrinal and a political sense (the Episcopalian church is the only real exception to that, being considerably more liberal than other Anglican churches). Why is that, and why is it more true now than it was, say, fifty years ago? I think there are lots of possible answers to these questions; sociologists of religion are still debating these issues and will probably do so for a long time.
Actually I think they were closely connected. Christianity, at least in antiquity and the Middle Ages, fostered a highly rational worldview. It claimed that God - a supremely rational being - had created the world according to rational principles (indeed, according to and through his Logos, the divine Reason itself, identical with Christ). The world was thus susceptible to rational investigation. I think that this attitude was a major factor in the rise of science in the late Middle Ages, Renaissance, and early modern periods. I actually wrote a whole chapter on this in a book a couple of years ago but I don't have space to elaborate now!
Thank you! I hope it helps.
I have to say that I don't know much about anchorites. I don't believe that they had any spiritual authority, at least not officially. In the Middle Ages, such authority was almost always in the hands of the priestly hierarchy: that is, local parish priests, then bishops, then archbishops, and so on up the chain. Movements that offered spiritual help or authority outside that hierarchy were viewed with enormous suspicion. Thus, those movements that effectively rejected the whole thing, such as the Waldenses, were persecuted as heretics. Those that did not, but which sought to exist alongside it, such as the mendicant orders, were highly controversial. For example, there was a big controversy in the 1280s over whether Franciscan and Dominican friars could hear confession. This conflicted with the rule that everyone had to make confession to their parish priest at least once a year. Those who opposed the friars, such as Henry of Ghent, argued that that rule meant that any absolution that the friars gave was effectively worthless, because the absolved person was still enjoined to confess to a parish priest anyway; thus, the friars didn't really have any such authority in the first place. But Henry was ultimately overruled on that matter.
So I don't think that anchorites would have had such abilities and authority. They were effectively like monks, except that they lived in a solitary way and could never leave their cells. What authority they had would have been entirely unofficial. I think their main official role in society was simply to pray for people: most towns, by the late fourteenth century, would have had an anchorite as a matter of course, simply because you need someone to get all the necessary praying done.
I think that Julian of Norwich must have been a highly unusual anchoress. The fact that her name is mentioned in a number of sources, quite apart from her book, indicates that. Obviously most anchorites would not have written books (and of course few women ever wrote in the Middle Ages at all). I doubt that many anchorites would have been well educated in either letters or theology; I believe that all of Julian's learning was self-taught and came from her reading of Augustine and other such authorities. So I also doubt that many would have had unorthodox views. Of course Julian didn't have unorthodox views either; as is well known, she had many problems with the notion of the eternal condemnation of the damned, but she explicitly stated that she believed it anyway because it was the teaching of the church. Just as well that she only had Augustine to read, and not Gregory of Nyssa, or she'd have got confused...
I think you mean the Dead Sea Scrolls... those texts are not Christian, so I'm not sure why anyone would think that they belong in the Bible.
Most of the apocryphal works you allude to weren't "banned" or even necessarily ignored - they just didn't make it into the Bible, for a variety of reasons. Most of those reasons, to be quite honest, were good. I think the early Christians chose fairly well for the most part: for example, the four Gospels of the New Testament are certainly the only ones that contain any substantial information on the historical Jesus. There is virtually nothing in any of the non-canonical ones that really goes back to Jesus, except for what they take from the canonical ones. There weren't any books that originally formed part of the Bible but were subsequently removed or dropped, unless you count the actions of Luther and the other Reformers when they relegated parts of the Old Testament to the Apocrypha (for reasons I think we've gone into in this thread already). 1 Clement and the Shepherd of Hermas were often treated as more or less scriptural until the fourth century, when the final list was formalised and they were left out; it would be funny if they hadn't been left out, because otherwise no doubt modern fundamentalists would be claiming that the phoenix really exists. The books of Hebrews and Revelation were regarded with some suspicion in many churches but they ultimately made it in. I don't think it makes a whole lot of difference though.
Christianity doesn't dislike gays - some Christians do, but many others have no problem with them. In fact it sometimes seems that pretty much everyone involved in the diocese of London, apart from the archbishop of Canterbury himself, is gay. I used to have a friend who worked for George Carey when he was archbishop; my friend was an ordinand and lived with another ordinand who was gay, and there seemed to be an endless succession of gay priests passing through their flat.
As for those (mostly fundamentalist) Christians who are opposed to homosexuality, it has nothing to do with Leviticus. If they were really basing those views on Leviticus then they'd also believe it wrong to shave, plant different vegetables in the same garden, or wear polycotton clothes. Clearly they have that view for other reasons and then appeal to Leviticus or other texts to support it - which is not the same thing as believing it on the basis of those texts. As for why they are opposed to homosexuality in the first place, I think the answer to that is the same as the answer to why anyone is bigoted.
I wouldn't want to counter scepticism towards anything. Scepticism is a good thing.
It is a bit vague, I agree, but then it tends to be. I think the idea is that the Holy Spirit is God acting directly inside the believer, changing him or her in important ways. Here's what Calvin has to say on the matter (Institutes III 3 8):
John Calvin said:
I don't know if you are right in your recap really. Are you suggesting that, historically, these religions have moved from an emphasis on ritual and external actions to an emphasis on inner change and spiritual life? If so, I don't think that's true, for two reasons. The first is that these religions have always had both "mystics" and "ecclesiastics" (to give the two tendencies names). The second is that there is not necessarily such a disjunction between them. Some of the early Pietists, such as Arndt and Dippel, made a big deal of such a distinction. Dippel in particular took it to extremes, so I can't resist posting a summary of him that I once wrote:
One thing I didn't mention there (because I couldn't find certain confirmation of it) is that Dippel's title was Baron Frankenstein and that he was said to perform mysterious experiments on corpses filched from the local graveyard. He was an alchemist too: he is said to have died after discovering the dye Prussian Blue. His corpse was supposedly discovered in his study, sitting with a horrified expression on its face and bright blue - having discovered the dye, he'd unwisely drunk the lot.
Anyway, you'll notice that these Pietists believed that Christianity had originally been mystical and had only later been turned ecclesiastical, which is the opposite trend to the one you suggest. As I say, I think neither is true. But it's also important to recognise that, for many people, ritual and external observance is identical with spirituality and the inner life. For example, many Catholics really do feel closer to God through following set liturgies, using incense, and so on. And not just Catholics either. The assumption that such activities are always hidebound and arid is a rather Pietist one that I think fails to appreciate all the reasons why people do them.
The Gnostics - or at least this variety - didn't really think in terms of "God" at all, I think. They thought more of "the divine" (note that in Greek there is not a great distinction between them - just the addition of a definite article). There are many divine beings in the Pleroma (or Fullness) of divinity. So it's not really that God splits himself - rather, divinity is not exclusive to one being. The highest being (according to the Valentinians) is not "God" but "Proarche" (before the beginning) and "Bythos" (depth). The early Gnostics seem to have had a highly apophatic theology, that is, they thought that the divine can't really be described, because it transcends thought. Basilides talked about the "Silence" of the deepest God.
That's a good point and I'm sure a charitable Valentinian might agree with that! I don't know what they said on the matter though. Bear in mind that there is controversy over pretty much every aspect of Gnosticism (one of the current debates in this field right now is over whether Valentinus himself, the most notorious Gnostic of the early centuries, was even a Gnostic at all).
Note, though, that (as far as I know) the Gnostics didn't think you needed a spirit in order to be conscious or self-aware. They just thought you needed one if you were to return to the Pleroma. They thought that salvation consisted of the separation of the elements that had been mixed - for the elements of spirit to return to the Pleroma and the elements of soul and matter to remain behind. So a person with no spirit could still be saved - it's just that salvation for such a person would not involve returning to the divinity. What it would involve, I don't know.
This is one of the reasons why mainstream Christianity has tended to reject this sort of approach, I think. I don't know how a proponent of this sort of spirituality would answer it, except perhaps to say that if you're experiencing divinely inspired bliss you'll know it.
By "soul" here I'm thinking of the notion of a substance, that is, something which is both conceptually and really distinct from the body and which could, in principle, survive without it. You are right to say that dualism is still a live option in philosophy of mind (Chalmers, in particular, helped to revive it in recent years). However, dualism needn't be substance dualism. I think there are very few contemporary philosophers who would defend the notion of "soul" as I outlined it above - Richard Swinburne is the one major exception. I think most philosophers would agree that there is a conceptual distinction between mind and body, but they would say that it does not follow from this that there is a real one (Descartes, of course, thought that the former entailed the latter - bizarrely, since he had read scholastic philosophy and ought to have been aware of Scotus' distinction between the two kinds of distinction). Those philosophers who believe that not everything mental can be explained solely in terms of the physical (which is a rough definition of dualism) need not necessarily believe that the mind is completely distinct from the body and could survive without it (which is a rough definition of substance dualism).
The Middle Platonists and Neoplatonists didn't reject all Forms - on the contrary, they talked about them a lot more than Plato ever did. They simply rejected Forms of ignoble things such as mud. The point is that, for them, the Forms were primarily objects of veneration. If you read Plotinus' Ennead I.6, his famous essay on Beauty and how the contemplation of it can lead the mind to the divine, you'll see what I mean (I gave the link before, I think). For Plato himself, by contrast, the Forms have a primarily logical and ontological role: they explain how universal statements can be true and how different objects can have things in common. As I see it, this shift in function on the part of the Forms is one of the key elements of Middle/Neoplatonism as distinct from early Platonism. It reflects the increasingly "religious" nature of the movement.
That is the big problem for Plotinus, and I'm not sure he does answer it sufficiently. He talks about how it is natural for things to procreate, and the greater the thing, the more it does so: for example, the sun gives off rays of light. The One naturally turns upon itself and thinks of itself; this dichotomy of One and its thought is the Pythagorean Dyad which is the root of all multiplicity. The self-thought of the One brings about the divine Mind, the next order of reality, and the true seat of multiplicity because it contains all the Forms. Or something. I think this is one of those problems that Plotinus never really solves in a single way.
It's not a swear word for anyone except puritanical Americans. Since I'm neither puritanical nor American, I, like most English-speakers throughout the world, find the notion of "hell" being a swear word to be simply laughable. America's Puritan heritage has had many odd effects like this. For example, black cats are unlucky in America, although they are lucky in Britain. This is because black cats were always associated with the devil; the pragmatic British generally thought the devil was a useful character to have on your side, but the puritanical early Americans thought he should be avoided at all costs.
The question why America is like that is really two questions which are often confused. First, why has Christianity had such a powerful hold over the US, and why does it continue to do so, in that country virtually alone of all modern western nations? Second, why has Christianity itself in America been so dominated by particular elements that are less strong in the church in other countries? For example, Christianity in the US seems to be typically highly conservative in both a doctrinal and a political sense (the Episcopalian church is the only real exception to that, being considerably more liberal than other Anglican churches). Why is that, and why is it more true now than it was, say, fifty years ago? I think there are lots of possible answers to these questions; sociologists of religion are still debating these issues and will probably do so for a long time.
Actually I think they were closely connected. Christianity, at least in antiquity and the Middle Ages, fostered a highly rational worldview. It claimed that God - a supremely rational being - had created the world according to rational principles (indeed, according to and through his Logos, the divine Reason itself, identical with Christ). The world was thus susceptible to rational investigation. I think that this attitude was a major factor in the rise of science in the late Middle Ages, Renaissance, and early modern periods. I actually wrote a whole chapter on this in a book a couple of years ago but I don't have space to elaborate now!
Thank you! I hope it helps.
I have to say that I don't know much about anchorites. I don't believe that they had any spiritual authority, at least not officially. In the Middle Ages, such authority was almost always in the hands of the priestly hierarchy: that is, local parish priests, then bishops, then archbishops, and so on up the chain. Movements that offered spiritual help or authority outside that hierarchy were viewed with enormous suspicion. Thus, those movements that effectively rejected the whole thing, such as the Waldenses, were persecuted as heretics. Those that did not, but which sought to exist alongside it, such as the mendicant orders, were highly controversial. For example, there was a big controversy in the 1280s over whether Franciscan and Dominican friars could hear confession. This conflicted with the rule that everyone had to make confession to their parish priest at least once a year. Those who opposed the friars, such as Henry of Ghent, argued that that rule meant that any absolution that the friars gave was effectively worthless, because the absolved person was still enjoined to confess to a parish priest anyway; thus, the friars didn't really have any such authority in the first place. But Henry was ultimately overruled on that matter.
So I don't think that anchorites would have had such abilities and authority. They were effectively like monks, except that they lived in a solitary way and could never leave their cells. What authority they had would have been entirely unofficial. I think their main official role in society was simply to pray for people: most towns, by the late fourteenth century, would have had an anchorite as a matter of course, simply because you need someone to get all the necessary praying done.
I think that Julian of Norwich must have been a highly unusual anchoress. The fact that her name is mentioned in a number of sources, quite apart from her book, indicates that. Obviously most anchorites would not have written books (and of course few women ever wrote in the Middle Ages at all). I doubt that many anchorites would have been well educated in either letters or theology; I believe that all of Julian's learning was self-taught and came from her reading of Augustine and other such authorities. So I also doubt that many would have had unorthodox views. Of course Julian didn't have unorthodox views either; as is well known, she had many problems with the notion of the eternal condemnation of the damned, but she explicitly stated that she believed it anyway because it was the teaching of the church. Just as well that she only had Augustine to read, and not Gregory of Nyssa, or she'd have got confused...
I think you mean the Dead Sea Scrolls... those texts are not Christian, so I'm not sure why anyone would think that they belong in the Bible.
Most of the apocryphal works you allude to weren't "banned" or even necessarily ignored - they just didn't make it into the Bible, for a variety of reasons. Most of those reasons, to be quite honest, were good. I think the early Christians chose fairly well for the most part: for example, the four Gospels of the New Testament are certainly the only ones that contain any substantial information on the historical Jesus. There is virtually nothing in any of the non-canonical ones that really goes back to Jesus, except for what they take from the canonical ones. There weren't any books that originally formed part of the Bible but were subsequently removed or dropped, unless you count the actions of Luther and the other Reformers when they relegated parts of the Old Testament to the Apocrypha (for reasons I think we've gone into in this thread already). 1 Clement and the Shepherd of Hermas were often treated as more or less scriptural until the fourth century, when the final list was formalised and they were left out; it would be funny if they hadn't been left out, because otherwise no doubt modern fundamentalists would be claiming that the phoenix really exists. The books of Hebrews and Revelation were regarded with some suspicion in many churches but they ultimately made it in. I don't think it makes a whole lot of difference though.
Christianity doesn't dislike gays - some Christians do, but many others have no problem with them. In fact it sometimes seems that pretty much everyone involved in the diocese of London, apart from the archbishop of Canterbury himself, is gay. I used to have a friend who worked for George Carey when he was archbishop; my friend was an ordinand and lived with another ordinand who was gay, and there seemed to be an endless succession of gay priests passing through their flat.
As for those (mostly fundamentalist) Christians who are opposed to homosexuality, it has nothing to do with Leviticus. If they were really basing those views on Leviticus then they'd also believe it wrong to shave, plant different vegetables in the same garden, or wear polycotton clothes. Clearly they have that view for other reasons and then appeal to Leviticus or other texts to support it - which is not the same thing as believing it on the basis of those texts. As for why they are opposed to homosexuality in the first place, I think the answer to that is the same as the answer to why anyone is bigoted.
King Alexander
Universe explorer
Hi Plotinus! 
I wanted to ask you, why did you choose Plotinus for your avatar? Do you admire him for some specific reason or an idea of his? Has he, in some way, affected you, personally, or some of your ideas/way of thinking agree with his ideas? (I'm just asking)
What about the mystical(I don't know how else to say it) side of Plotinus' ideas? What do think about them? Do you agree? *
* Answer what you want: if some things you don't want to say in public, it's ok with me.
I wanted to ask you, why did you choose Plotinus for your avatar? Do you admire him for some specific reason or an idea of his? Has he, in some way, affected you, personally, or some of your ideas/way of thinking agree with his ideas? (I'm just asking)
What about the mystical(I don't know how else to say it) side of Plotinus' ideas? What do think about them? Do you agree? *
* Answer what you want: if some things you don't want to say in public, it's ok with me.
For what it's worth, in my experience, those Christians who tend to condemn homosexuality appeal to the writings of Paul far more often than to anything in the Old Testament, including Leviticus.
(My religion, for what it's worth, when condemning homosexual behavior, appeals to what we consider modern revelation. Of course, we are not usually vocally anti-gay to the degree some churches are.)
(My religion, for what it's worth, when condemning homosexual behavior, appeals to what we consider modern revelation. Of course, we are not usually vocally anti-gay to the degree some churches are.)
Hi Plotinus!
I wanted to ask you, why did you choose Plotinus for your avatar? Do you admire him for some specific reason or an idea of his? Has he, in some way, affected you, personally, or some of your ideas/way of thinking agree with his ideas? (I'm just asking)
What about the mystical(I don't know how else to say it) side of Plotinus' ideas? What do think about them? Do you agree? *
* Answer what you want: if some things you don't want to say in public, it's ok with me.
That's an interesting question. I often wonder about people's nicks and avatars.
Actually there was no particular reason. I wanted to be Origen, who I really do admire, but that name was already taken, bizarrely, so I chose his most illustrious contemporary instead. I do like Plotinus although he's hideous to read; I remember spending a rather pleasant afternoon by the lake at Blenheim Palace reading the Enneads once, when I was studying for my master's, and thinking that this was a terribly effete sort of thing to be doing!
I've never really had much sympathy for Platonism of whatever stripe, but I have more sympathy for the Platonism of Plato himself than for Neoplatonism because I think it's philosophically more interesting. The thing with the Middle Platonists and the Neoplatonists alike is that they are far less rigorous, and create more problems for themselves, in the name of spirituality. For example, we've already seen how Plotinus gets himself into knots trying to explain how the One can give rise to the many. But that's a problem he really creates for himself through his insistence on the notion that unity is necessarily prior to plurality. But why should it be?
John Rist, who is an important scholar of the period, actually converted to Christianity after reading Plotinus - something Plotinus himself would not be too happy about. He was impressed by Plotinus' arguments for the necessity of a higher world than the merely physical. I've also met someone recently who regards himself as a Platonist spiritualist (or something along those lines) but I wasn't so impressed with him, as his understanding of Plato himself didn't seem very impressive. He thought that there is no difference between Plato, Plotinus, and Ficino, and that modern scholarship's tendency to downplay whatever mystical elements are in Plato's thought is simply a result of modern scholarship's prejudice against mysticism. Which is daft.
Of course that's just as problematic, really, because Paul has very little to say about homosexuality, and what is there is highly ambiguous. The meaning of the celebrated passage in 1 Cor 6:9 is basically unknown, given that Paul coins a completely new word there.
Besides, the same reasoning applies. Anyone who really believes that Paul's exhortations of this kind are completely binding should also believe that it is wrong for a man to pray without a hat on, and equally wrong for a woman to pray with a hat on (1 Cor 11:4-5). Note that Paul himself recognises that he has no real argument to back up this view other than prejudice (1 Cor 11:16).
Then in the Pastorals we have the instruction that women cannot be teachers (1 Tim 2:11-12) and that women must have children in order to be saved (1 Tim 2:15). We've also got the claim that all Cretans are liars (Tit 1:12-13, actually a misunderstood quote from Epimenides). Now of course Paul did not really write the Pastoral epistles, although most of the fundamentalists who appeal to him against homosexuality believe that he did. The fact that most such people do not accept these other teachings in his letters or in the letters attributed to him suggests that those letters are not the real reason for their views, simply a convenient authority to invoke as support for them.
That may be true, but at least appealing to their noncompliance to the Law of Moses isn't a good retort . . .
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