Squonk said:
do the decisions of a new catholic council supersede the decisions of previous ones? Some obviously do, if they concern the same subject, but what if the canons of a new synod does not tackle the subject mentioned by previous ones? Are canons of Lateranum IV concerning Jews still in power, in theory?
As I understand it, canons regarding the faith are irreversible, but canons regarding discipline are reversible. The old Catholic encyclopedia says that even where such a canon is not explicitly reversed later on, it may nevertheless be effectively reversed if the circumstances which led to its being promulgated in the first place change. It doesn’t give any examples, though, and I can’t find any discussion of this subject in the new Catholic encyclopedia – although its entry on Lateran IV says that its decrees concerning the Jews should be understood in the context of the political situation of the time, implying that they are of only historical relevance, but without going into details of how or in what way. And the introduction to Tanner’s
Decrees of the ecumenical councils, which is the definitive text of the decrees themselves of all the councils, says (p. xvi):
Tanner said:
…the decrees possess on their own merit an authoritative force and validity which exists within the context of the whole of revelation (the analogy of faith) and are not simply products of the historical circumstances from which they originate. For this reason they are proper objects of consultation by the faithful… the altogether special status of those declarations which have been formally and solemnly approved by the councils is to be acknowledged as distinct from all other indications of opinion and intention, of whatever significance, which, for whatever reasons, did not receive official conciliar approbation.
That would seem to suggest that such decrees, including the constitutions of Lateran IV on the Jews, are at least authoritative and valid. There’s no discussion there of how they can be superseded at least as far as effect goes.
Squonk said:
Do bulls of past popes bear some significance for catholicism today?
Yes, I don’t see why they wouldn’t (although many of them were related to issues of the day, of course).
Randomnerd10 said:
I've heard a lot of Calvinists (generally the sort who are rather ignorant of most pre-reformation thinkers) speak very highly of Augustine. How much do you think he would approve of Calvinism?
He would no doubt approve of Calvinism’s emphasis upon the sinfulness of humanity and the need for divine grace, while disapprove of its break with the Catholic Church. The former characteristics of Calvinism can be seen as something of an exaggeration of Augustine’s ideas – nowhere does he articulate the doctrine of total depravity, for example, but he comes close on occasion. This is why, in the seventeenth century, the Catholic theologian Cornelius Jansen wrote a huge book entitled
Augustinus in which he argued that doctrines such as total depravity and the non-freedom of the will are authentically Augustinian. The Jansenist movement that resulted can be seen as, effectively, Catholics who thought that the Calvinists had got it largely right (apart from the not-being-Catholic part). Whether Augustine himself would have agreed with them is impossible to determine, though – someone of his range and scope is impossible to pin down to that extent.
Lone Wolf said:
I've read in one 1980's Soviet book that the translators of Septuagint softened Job's complaints against God in the Bible book named after him. Is it true?
The only substantial information I could find on this at short notice is in Pope, M. (1965)
The Anchor Bible: Job Garden City, NY: Doubleday.
The book of Job is textually the most varied and difficult of any Old Testament book. The Septuagint lacks about four hundred lines that are present in the Hebrew, that is, about a sixth of the entire book. A Coptic text of the book from before the third century AD is also missing these lines. When Origen revised the Greek text in the third century he had to add in all these missing lines from another translation.
(I also found Pietersma, A and Wright, B., eds. (2007)
A new English translation of the Septuagint Oxford: Oxford University Press, which is very interesting from this point of view. In their introduction to Job they note that the omissions from the Septuagint, compared to the Hebrew, get more numerous as you progress through the book; in the first fifteen chapters, 4% of the text is missing, but in chapters 32-37, 35% is missing. The translation in this edition is given with Origen’s insertions clearly marked – as Origen himself had marked them – so one can see what was missing.)
Now it seems that the explanation for this is uncertain. Some scholars think that the shorter version is actually the original, in which case the Septuagint version was translated from an earlier Hebrew version, and the longer Hebrew version we have represents a later, expanded text. But most scholars disagree with this and think that the Septuagint translator simply omitted the missing lines. Why he did this, though, is unclear. Pietersma and Wright suggest that much of the Septuagint translation should be seen as an epitome: the author omits what he regards as repetition and also tries to structure it more carefully with the addition of Greek particles; furthermore, he moves some material around and even adds some bits from elsewhere in the Old Testament. Not only that but he changes many words, often rearranging their letters to make completely different words. He may have done this consciously to try to get the best text, as modern scholars often emend manuscripts where they think a slightly different spelling or reading would result in a meaning that makes more sense.
Some scholars have thought that this is down to theological bias. Pope cites H.S. Gehman and D.H. Gard as representatives of this view, although he does not say what he thinks the translator’s theological bias actually was. He also cites H. Orlinsky as arguing that in fact the omissions are not theologically motivated. Pope implies that this argument is decisive, but he goes on to suggest that even so, the translator did “muddle the sense a bit” of some passages, such as 13:15. The original text, he suggests, is “Behold, he will slay me; I have no hope.” He argues that, quite independently, two groups of ancient scholars sought to mitigate this. The first was the Masoretes, the Jewish scholars who fixed the vocalisation of the Hebrew text (which lacks vowels) and whose text is our main source for the text of Job; they made a very slight change to the spelling of one of the words to change the meaning to “Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him.” The other group of ancient scholars who changed the text’s meaning was the translator of the Septuagint, who did not know of the Masorete alteration. He just fudged the translation, to come up with “Though the Mighty One lay hand on me, since he has already begun, I will speak and plead before him.” It is also worth bearing in mind that traditional Jewish translation was at least partly exegesis, involving a rather free use of the text. Pope comments that Jerome, the author of the Latin version of the text, was trained by rabbis and that this explains why he sometimes gives an overly free translation as well.
So in short, it looks like the author of the Septuagint version of Job did make some changes to the text along the way, but to what degree these were motivated by theological bias and to what degree by just missing out stuff that was too tricky, is hard to tell.
dwaxe said:
The guy who made the Great People Quotes mod lied to me.
Yes, this is why we shouldn’t trust any supposed “quote” that doesn’t give a source.
dwaxe said:
1. Are you a materialist, i.e. do you hold the view that all phenomena are material (as contrasted with dualism: no Cartesian soul, 'ether', or 'ectoplasm', (or God?)) as your default position?
I don’t know. I think it’s a pretty reasonable position. I certainly don’t believe in Cartesian dualism. However, you should be aware that there are forms of dualism that are not Cartesian, such as property dualism. Property dualists hold that there are no non-physical substances (or at least they may hold that) but that some physical substances have properties that are non-physical and cannot be reduced to physical substances. One may think, for example, that the brain has mental properties which are not reducible to its physical properties, but that the brain is nevertheless a physical thing.
dwaxe said:
2. What evidence would pretty much vindicate materialism? Dualism?
I don’t think that any
evidence would vindicate either, which is why the argument between them is a philosophical one rather than a scientific one.
dwaxe said:
3. What does the "mystery of consciousness" have to do with all this? Is it really a mystery, or has been largely explained?
I think consciousness is like identity – it’s either one of the hardest riddles in metaphysics or it’s utterly straightforward. But I don’t know which.
dwaxe said:
4. What is your opinion of postmodernism?
It’s too big a movement to have a single opinion about. I’d ask what you mean by “postmodernism” before pronouncing on it.
Moss said:
More of a personal question(s):
How are you liking your career so far? And what, if anything, do you find fulfilling about it? Also, what types of responsibilities (if any) do you feel as a theologian to educate the common masses, or maybe I'm meaning, what do you see as the ends to your work?
In answer to the first two questions, not much. In answer to the third, I don’t feel much such responsibility, because really I think it’s people’s own responsibility to be aware of things if they think they’re important. But I try to help educate the “common masses” to some extent, at least, more because it’s what I want to do rather than because I have a particular vocation or moral imperative to do it.
eduhum said:
One question:
What do you think of the Catholic Institution Opus Dei, that many times is sooo misjudged?
I would want to have a knowlegded response, not a ''I think/ I supose'' one
Actually I know very little about it, I’m afraid, so there’s not much to say, other than that I wouldn’t place much trust in what Dan Brown has to say on the subject.
Perfection said:
Big question for you: Which came first the chicken or the egg?
I’m sure you know the answer to that as well as anyone.
Omega124 said:
If you had to name one person right this moment as the Anti-Christ, whom would it be? Who would the Four Horsemen be?
Biblically speaking, “antichrist” is not a person but an attitude, mentioned in the Johannine letters as an aberrant doctrine about Christ. The term does not appear in Revelation. Even if it did appear in Revelation, I don’t see how I could answer a question like that, since I wouldn’t be inclined to fit ancient apocalyptic literature to the situation of today. They wouldn’t be anyone.
JEELEN said:
A person with no knowledge of mathematics cannot possibly add 2 and 2 together - since numbers are a mathematical principle.
That doesn’t address the point I was making, which was that the fact that two objects plus two objects is four objects irrespective of whether any observer recognises this fact.
JEELEN said:
Actually you would have to know the Pacific to be able to see it; otherwise all you would see is a body of water.
No; I would need to know that it’s the Pacific in order to see it
as the Pacific, but the Pacific can obviously be the object of my perception whether I know it’s the Pacific or not. If I am looking at the Pacific without knowing that it’s the Pacific, and while looking at it I learn that it is the Pacific, then the object of my perception does not change, although certainly the way I perceive it may do so. If you really think that the object of my perception changes, then consider this: suppose I am looking at the Pacific and I don’t know it’s the Pacific, and you are, at the same time, also looking at the Pacific, and you know that it’s the Pacific. On your principles, the object of my perception is not the same as the object of your perception (since you claim that I am not perceiving the Pacific at all, whereas you are). It would follow that there are two oceans there. But that is surely an absurd conclusion.
Similarly, if I perceive God without knowing that it’s God, then I do indeed perceive God, because God is the object of my perception. I just don’t know that this object
is God.
JEELEN said:
So, analogy apart, if you saw God - but didn´t know it was God - all you could say was I´ve seen, say, something very remarkable. And, bible apart, noone claiming to have seen God, has been able to give an even remotely accurate description. (But I mentioned the bible - more specifically the Torah section of it - as it contains one person who reportedly has seen God.)
Right, but none of this means that we can’t perceive God; at most it means we might not recognise him as God when we perceive him.
JEELEN said:
You seem to be asking for an argument to supprt an argument... The question however should be how do we perceive (measure, see) atemporal phenomena?
I’m asking for an argument to support a premise. Your argument seems to be:
(1) Any being that lacks the sensory equipment to perceive atemporal things cannot perceive atemporal things.
(2) We lack the sensory equipment to perceive atemporal things.
(3) Therefore, we cannot perceive atemporal things.
I’m asking what your argument is to support (2).
JEELEN said:
Relevance: you say you see a manifestation caused by God. How do you know this?
You mean, how do I, the observer of the manifestation, know that it’s caused by God? I might not know it at all. But again, that’s neither here nor there. My point was that there could be a case for saying that to perceive such a manifestation (directly) is to perceive God (indirectly). Whether one
knows that one is perceiving God under such conditions is a completely different issue.
JEELEN said:
Using the Invisble Man analogy all one can say is: there´s an invisible man. Letting the analogy be, since we have no description of what God looks like (that is, already assuming an atemporal being "looks" like anything), a vision of a manifestation of God´s work does not amount to "seeing God" - merely to seeing God´s work. The problem, again, is: how do we know this is God´s doing? Basically, even if you´re seeing God´s work, you´re not seeing God, you´re seeing God´s work. (Theorically your example - not the Invisible Man ofcourse - is correct, but I´m interested in the practical aspect.)
But I’m not remotely interested in the practical aspect, and it wasn’t the practical aspect we were talking about. This started as a discussion about
the possibility of perceiving God. You keep trying to turn it into a discussion about
the possibility of knowing when you’re perceiving God. That’s not the same thing!
Now you also say here that if I see God’s work I’m not really seeing God, only his work. But what I’m saying is that the Invisible Man case suggests that this might not be so; if I see a suit of clothes walking about, it is legitimate to say that I’m seeing the Invisible Man, even though I am only
directly seeing his clothes. Indeed, on Platonism, we are not identical with our bodies; we are instead identical with our souls, which cannot be perceived. So on Platonism, when I say “I see you”, I am in fact not seeing
you directly; I am only directly seeing your body. But I can still legitimately be said to see you in an indirect way, via your body. Whether Platonism is true or not, this would surely a consistent and viable way of speaking if it were true. Indeed, when I look at you I don’t really see you anyway, I only see a small part of you, namely your skin. But if I were to say “I see you,” would it be a legitimate response to say, “No, you don’t, you’re only seeing my skin”?
Similarly,
perhaps one could say that one can perceive God
indirectly when one perceives his works
directly. In fact the Orthodox tradition says pretty much this when it says that what we experience of God is not his essence but his
energeia, that is, his activity; this is an idea drawn from Gregory of Nyssa but later articulated by Gregory Palamas.
JEELEN said:
Yes, but this disects into two separate causations:
1) an atemporal God
2) God being the cause of the universe.
It´s perfectly possible to believe in a God who is not the cause of the universe.
Perhaps, although many would argue that if God is not the cause of the universe he’s not a perfect being, because it would be better if he
were the cause of the universe. However, this doesn’t really touch on what I was saying.
JEELEN said:
It follows from an untemporal being not being affected by temporal phenomena - which in itself is perfectly plausible.
It follows only if you think that someone can be concerned only with things that affect them. But this seems untrue to me. I can be concerned about the plight of children in Africa even if that doesn’t affect me at all. If you say that it does affect me, because at least I’m part of the same world, then I’d say that if we knew of the existence of a parallel universe in which there was terrible suffering, I’d be concerned about that too even though there’s no way it could affect me.
JEELEN said:
Again, the assumption is that temporal and atemporal phenomena affect one another; however, unless there is no strict division between the two, there is no reason that they actually do. (Whether causation is temporal, atemporal or something in between isn´t relevant at all.)
It’s not an assumption that they do affect one another. It’s simply a belief that they may. What we’re arguing about is whether it is possible for temporal and atemporal things to be causally linked, not whether they actually are or not. And certainly it’s relevant whether causation is temporal. If causation is necessarily temporal, then an atemporal being cannot, by definition, be causally linked to a temporal one.
JEELEN said:
But I´ve stumbled unto another problem: assuming God is omnipotent and perfectly good is illogical. To be perfectly good excludes even the possibility of doing evil, yet omnipotence implies the opposite.
That’s a hoary old chestnut. There are two main possible responses.
First, being perfectly good does not exclude the possibility of doing evil. A being who is capable of doing evil, but who chooses to do good anyway, seems to be morally superior to a being who always does good because it has no choice. Similar reasoning motivates modern theologians who hold that when Jesus was tempted, it was genuine temptation and he really could have done the wrong thing, because if he weren’t capable of it, he wasn’t very morally admirable and certainly wasn’t much like us. So on this view, God is quite capable of doing what is wrong, but in fact he never does what is wrong.
Second, one may think that God is incapable of doing wrong, but hold that this is not a limit to his power, because doing wrong implies a deficiency. To do what is right is always to accomplish more than to do what is wrong. This may, however, require a rethink of the definition of “omnipotence”.
