I'm interested in learning about History and the RCC.
Can you refer me any books?
Of course the best book you could read on that would be
mine, but here is part of the bibliography I put together for that book, which you might find helpful:
Ahlstrom, S.
A religious history of the American people New Haven, CT; London: Yale University Press 2nd. Ed. 2004
Belitto, C.
The general councils: a history of the twenty-one general councils from Nicaea to Vatican II New York: Paulist Press 2002
Bokenkotter, T.
A concise history of the Catholic Church rev. ed. New York: Doubleday 1990
Breward, I.
A history of the churches in Australasia Oxford: Oxford University Press 2001
Constantilos, D.
Understanding the Greek Orthodox Church 3rd Ed. Brookline, MA: Hellenic College Press 1998
Duffy, E.
Saints and sinners: a history of the Popes 2nd. Ed. New Haven, CT; London: Yale University Press 2002
Fernando, L. and Gispert-Sauch, G.
Christianity in India: two thousand years of faith New Delhi: Viking 2004
Ferngren, G., ed.
Science and religion: a historical introduction Baltimore, MD; London: John Hopkins University Press 2002
Gritsch, E.
A history of Lutheranism Minneapolis, MN: Fortress 2002
Hastings, A., ed.
A world history of Christianity London: Cassell 1999
Isichei, E.
A history of Christianity in Africa: from antiquity to the present London: SPCK; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans 1995
Küng, H.
Christianity London: SCM 1995
McBrien, R.
Catholicism 3rd Ed. London: Geoffrey Chapman 1994
McManners, J., ed.
The Oxford history of Christianity Oxford: Oxford University Press 1990
Noll, M.
A history of Christianity in the United States and Canada Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans; London: SPCK 1992
Pospielovsky, D.
The Orthodox Church in the history of Russia Crestwood, NY: St Vladimirs Seminary Press 1998
Sundkler, B. and Steed, C.
A history of the church in Africa Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2000
Thompson, R.
Religion in Australia: a history Melbourne; Oxford: Oxford University Press 2002
Also, what can you tell about the person that is Luther?
What were his beliefs, what was his worldview and such.
That's far too huge a question for me to answer here, especially given the ready availability of information on Luther (apparently more books have been written about Luther than about anyone else in history, other than Jesus). Here are a few that might help:
Kolb, R.
Luthers heirs define his legacy: studies on Lutheran confessionalization Aldershot: Ashgate 1996
Lindberg, C.
The European Reformations Oxford: Blackwell 1996
Louthan, H. and Zachman, R.
Conciliation and confession: the struggle for unity in the Age of Reform, 1415-1648 Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press 2004
MacCulloch, D.
Reformation: Europes house divided, 1490-1700 London: Penguin 2004
Mannermaa, T.
Christ present in faith: Luthers view of justification Minneapolis, MN: Fortress 2005
Marins, R.
Martin Luther: the Christian between God and death Cambridge, MA; London: Harvard University Press 1999
Mullett, M.
Martin Luther London: Routledge 2004
Pelikan, J.
The Christian tradition: A history of the development of doctrine 4. Reformation of church and dogma (1300-1700) Chicago; London: University of Chicago Press 1983
Pettegree, A., ed.
The Reformation world London; New York: Routledge 2000
Steinmetz, D.
Reformers in the wings: from Geiler von Kayserberg to Theodore Beza Oxofrd: Oxford University Press 2001
Tomlin, G.
Luther and his world Oxford: Lion 2002
Williams, G.
The radical Reformation 3rd. ed. Kirksville, MO: Truman University Press 2000
Holy crapola, no, that isn't cop out, more like sell out.
I never knew you wrote book about it, and I have heard about that book.
Now I have to get my hands into that one.
Thanks! Good to know that people have heard about my books without my telling them. It's a little odd to think of them out there. I just got a copy of my second book translated into Chinese. I didn't even know it was
going to be translated into Chinese until I saw it.
I have a question: Theonomy is the doctrine that Christians are still bound by Old Testament law, and that the Bible is the only source for authentic human ethics, right? (Is that the essence of it, anyway? If I'm off, please correct me) I believe this doctrine came about during the Reformation; how important was it during the Reformation? Did this doctrine exist in any form before Calvin and his peers? How prevalent is this today in most modern American churches?
Really the issue of the Law was one of the earliest disputes in Christianity. Paul's letter to the Galatians was written, in part, to attack a group in that church who argued that Christians were bound by certain parts of the Old Testament Law (namely circumcision). It's not known who these people were: traditionally they are taken to be Jewish converts to Christianity, although they might just as easily be gentile converts who are over-enthusiastic about it all. Paul argues that you can't pick and choose with Old Testament laws; if you think you're bound by one you must be bound by all, so if you think that circumcision is still required you must obey all the others too. But that is inconsistent with the belief that salvation comes through Christ. So ever since then, the notion that Christians are required to follow the Old Testament Law has generally been regarded as heretical (and Christians have traditionally been very suspicious of any "Judaising" tendencies in that direction).
I don't know much about the extent to which such a view was revived during the Reformation, although I think it would have been quite contrary to the spirit of the Reformers. I also don't know much about modern American churches, although I would be surprised if this view were very prevalent among them. As I said, it's a heresy from the viewpoint of traditional orthodox Christianity. That doesn't necessarily mean it can't be widespread (the belief that the Father suffers is also a heresy, but I think it's quite common even among fairly conservative evangelicals) but in this case I don't think it is.
Now the idea that the Bible is the only source for human ethics
does sound a lot more like something the Reformers would believe. The Catholic Church would reject that view, because Catholics believe that ethics is one of those areas that you can know about through reason alone. That is, reason will tell us (for example) that murder is wrong - you don't need revelation to know such a thing. Of course, we
also know it through revelation - the Bible tells us that murder is wrong, just as reason does. So reason and revelation agree, which means that the Bible isn't the sole source for ethics. The Reformers disagreed with this outlook, which is why Protestants traditionally think that it all has to come from the Bible. I suppose the most thoroughgoing representative of this view was Karl Barth, who devoted most of his life to arguing against the claim that human beings can know
anything spiritual or moral except through revelation.
So I'd say that the view that Christians are bound by the Old Testament Law must be a very minority view in most churches today; but the view that ethics should come only from the Bible is probably quite mainstream, at least in Protestantism. I'd question how seriously most Protestants would take the principle, though. Because if you accept it, you must also accept that anyone who doesn't know about the Bible cannot be held morally responsible for any action, because they wouldn't know whether it's right or wrong. So (say) Crassus did not commit an immoral act when he crucified thousands of slaves along the Appian Way, because he hadn't read the Old Testament and didn't know that such things are wrong. But that seems pretty implausible and I doubt that most Protestants, even those who think that morality must come only from the Bible, would hold such a view. In practice, I think that most Protestants have held a view more like intuitionism or sentimentalism, according to which you just
know right and wrong through the action of an inner "moral sense" (or something like that). Jonathan Edwards, the most important American theologian and a pretty strict Calvinist, was one of the most important representatives of this view.
I ask because I have a friend who attends a PCA (Presbyterian Church of America) church who actually believe in theonomy, as well as post-millenialism. (So as far as I can tell, they believe eventually the world will consist entirely of Christians, and Christian governments enforcing Old Testament laws?) It sounds pretty wacky, but apparently that's what they believe. (My friend wasn't aware of this when he started attending, but plans to keep going there because his brother goes there as well, until he leaves town for college next year, using college as an excuse to make a graceful exit)
I don't think there's any religious view which is so wacky you won't find representatives of it in America!
Sorry if this has been asked before, but did your choosing Leibniz as the object of your philosophy dissertation have anything to do with your work in Theology? If so, what? If not, why did you choose Leibniz?
No, my choice of Leibniz had nothing to do with Theology. I chose to do him because I wrote my undergraduate dissertation on him. And I did that simply because I happened to have found a subject to write about connected to him. I wanted to do him, though, because I like his ideas and his style of writing. I don't actually think Leibniz was very interesting as a theologian (although he did write a very striking early work in which he argued that there are virtually no theological differences between Lutherans and Catholics).
Question: is that the sort of things theologians should be saying? In other words, setting aside the specific example to which this quote refers and looking at it generally, are theologians really in any position to say that any given religious belief, be it about the devil or about reincarnation or what have you, is any more or less a) likely to be true and b) "mature" a belief to hold?
That's an interesting question and I'm not sure how to answer it, except by saying that in theology the views expressed are only those of the theologian in question... I mean that anyone is entitled to think that the opposing opinion is ridiculous. That is, I've seen plenty of conservative evangelicals heap scorn upon "liberal" views, usually without any real understanding of the views in question or why people hold them. And I've seen Catholics ridicule Protestantism and Protestants ridicule Catholicism, again usually on the basis of ridiculous misunderstandings (I remember in particular one woman telling me that all Catholic priests are hypocrites, because they tell people not to use contraception whilst remaining celibate themselves - something so daft I didn't know what to say). So if theologians do it then they're hardly exclusively to blame.
The more fundamental issue, though, is where one derives the sources of one's religious views. Should one discard a belief because it is "ridiculous" or doesn't seem to fit in with what one knows in other matters? Much modern theology is based on the assumption that one should (just as Bultmann said it's impossible to believe in angels and demons in a radio age). But of course many religious people would completely reject such a view - Tertullian went so far as to say that he believed
because it was impossible (a much misunderstood quote, but never mind). I don't think it's really possible to settle such a dispute.
Another question, when you get around to it. What was the early Christian belief on hell? Did they largely believe it was a literal place that lasted forever, or did they believe that it wasn't literal, or was non-eternal, or what? What about the early Church fathers? (I know Origen was a Universalist, any others? Was this the predominating view at any point, or was it always in the minority?)
The church fathers - at least after the second century or thereabouts - would have distinguished between "hell" as a place where the soul goes after death to await judgement and "hell" as the place where the resurrected body goes after judgement. That is, they believed that, after death, your soul is separated from your body. The body rots, and the soul wafts off somewhere where it experiences a foretaste of what is to come: if it's a good soul it goes to be with God, and if it's a bad soul then it gets punished. However, these are not permanent destinations; they are only provisional, and last until the end of history and judgement day. At that time, all bodies are resurrected and all souls are reunited with their bodies. God then passes judgement on everyone, and they troop off to their final destinations. This is the view of things we find in Augustine. So those who accepted this view would have said that in one sense, "hell" is temporary (the first hell), but in another sense permanent (the second hell). However, I should point out that in practice, they tend not to distinguish them.
This is where the medieval doctrine of purgatory came from: the belief in a sort of temporary, provisional hell turned into purgatory later on.
Now as far as I can tell, most of the church fathers did believe that punishment would be everlasting. Some of them apparently disagreed. You're right that Origen is normally thought to have been a universalist, although his literary remains are in such a poor state that this is controversial - Henri Crouzel, for example, argues that Origen was not a universalist at all. However, the structure of his thought seems to entail it. Origen believed, like Plato, that the purpose of punishment is always rehabilitation: it is done to improve the person being punished. He likens it to painful surgery, which is unpleasant but in the best interests of the person undergoing it. On that view, it would be incoherent to have eternal punishment. So even if Origen didn't explicitly teach that damnation is only temporary and ultimately everyone would be saved, it certainly seems to follow from his views.
Clement of Alexandria seems to have tended towards a similar view, and the more obscure Titus of Bostra also held them. The main universalist among the church fathers, though, was Gregory of Nyssa, who taught it far more explicitly than Origen ever did. The interesting thing is that Gregory seems unaware that this view might be considered controversial; he never argues for it in much detail, but simply mentions it almost in passing in many passages. Yet Gregory did devote much energy to defending views that he considered controversial, such as his view that God is infinite. Which suggests that although few people apparently believed in universalism, there may have been more than one might think, and there was very little dispute between the two sides. Which is strange, given that Gregory's own brother, Basil of Caesarea, argued
against universalism. Their mutual friend Gregory of Nazianzus didn't know which one to believe.
However, Augustine argued against universalism in his
City of God, and that was so influential that that was pretty much it for the doctrine until modern times.
What do you think of the claims that the word used for "everlasting" and "eternal" in the New Testament, "aionios" should be interpreted as "eon" or "age" instead of eternity as it is more commonly interpreted?
Those claims are completely true, and indeed uncontroversially so. The word "aionios" does mean that, and indeed there are places in the New Testament where it is clearly used to indicate a long, but limited, period of time:
1 Corinthians 10:11 said:
These things happened to them to serve as an example, and they were written down to instruct us, on whom the ends of the ages have come.
That is, we are living at the end of an extremely long but limited period of time (ie, the history of the world). Now of course "aionios" is neutral regarding whether the "age" in question is finite or infinite. The fact that this word is used in other verses to refer to the post-mortem fate of individuals doesn't, in itself, indicate whether that fate is unending or simply very, very long - it's ambiguous.
I don't know if you've been asked this question before, but..
..Why do you believe religion exists?
Because that's just the way people are! You'd have to ask an anthropologist for more on that, I think...
Do you think for the progression of humanity in areas related to science , moral behavior * , economical advancement and so on that Relligion should or will be weakened as a result of the progress that is sparked by technological advancement, generally , globally ?
There are differences between religions and i expect this in your answer but each religion does share a distinct culture that affects our culture , ideas positively or negatively.
I'm not convinced at all that humanity has seen any "progression" in morality, so I'm not sure what you mean by that. As for progress in science and economics, I don't really see why those would be relevant to religion. Religion doesn't depend upon science and economics being poorly advanced. Of course, religion may take different
forms depending on the state of society, but that's not the same thing. For example, in late antiquity, people generally looked to religion to explain things cosmically. That is, one of the good reasons to believe in God (it was argued) was that God could explain why the world is the way that it is. Today, we don't need God to do that. But it doesn't follow that people are less likely to believe in God; it's simply that the belief functions in a different way for them.
