Question: What have been the different theological opinions regarding an age of accountability?
I'm not sure what you mean by that - do you mean an age of moral responsibility? I believe that the Council of Trent fixed this as coming somewhere between the ages of 7 and 12, but otherwise I don't know of any particular opinions.
What were the different theological opinions on the salvation or otherwise of infants? And which viewpoints seem the most plausible?
As far as I can tell, most Christians have wanted to avoid saying that infants who die are condemned, even those whose other beliefs seem to imply that they should be. For example, one might think that those who believe that salvation comes by faith alone ought to believe that babies cannot be saved, since they cannot have faith. But no-one seems to want to accept this conclusion. Some Calvinists have argued that since God may predestine whom he wishes to salvation, he may predestine babies who die to salvation, and (in some way that is mysterious to me) this does not contradict the doctrine of salvation by faith alone.
In the case of Catholics, as long as the baby is baptised, all is well, because baptism removes whatever guilt attaches to original sin. A baptised baby is therefore without sin and will be all right if it dies. The case of unbaptised babies is a bit more problematic. Here again it seems the logic of the doctrine ought to mean that they are condemned, but most Catholics have followed Augustine in holding that if they are condemned it is a very mild sort of condemnation. Augustine thought that unbaptised babies occupy the least bad portion of hell. By the Middle Ages, some theologians (such as Abelard) thought that this meant that unbaptised babies suffer less than other condemned souls, but others (such as Aquinas) thought that it meant that they do not suffer at all. Rather, they simply lack the joys of those in heaven. In fact Aquinas thought that they exist in a state of natural joy and don't even realise that there is a higher joy that they're missing out on. Today there are plenty of Catholic theologians who believe that unbaptised babies might be saved after all, but this is not official Catholic teaching - even though Benedict XVI is one of those theologians.
As for what's plausible, I'd say that it seems pretty obvious that any theology that involves the claim that a good God would consign to damnation babies who die is bad theology, and it's fairly clear that most Christians have taken that view. The Catholic way of dealing with this makes more sense to me than the Protestant one.
And when was birth control first given mention by theologians? And when was it first mentioned favorably? (Not as a sin.)
Again, I don't know much about this. I believe that the church fathers mention it, at least as early as Clement of Alexandria, and they're opposed to it. However, this is at least in part because they held ancient biological theories which involved the view that a sperm contains the whole human being in miniature (and the mother contributes nothing other than being basically a sort of incubator), a view which entails that spermicide is homicide. So they regarded birth control as basically a form of abortion. As far as I know no theologians regarded birth control favourably until the twentieth century, but I don't know much about it. You must remember, though, that in the past practices such as this had very different connotations. E.g. with abortion, today we think of abortion as (in part) a women's rights issue, and think that restricting the right to abortion is a restriction on a woman's right to choose. But in antiquity it was exactly the opposite - abortions were ordered by men (fathers or husbands) and were extremely dangerous for women. So an ancient proponent of women's rights and a woman's right to choose - had anyone with such modern views existed then - would have been opposed to abortion. That means that we can't take ancient attitudes to this subject as directly relevant to modern debates, because they weren't really talking about the same thing. I suspect it's the same with contraception. Before the middle of the twentieth century people contraception as we know it didn't really exist, at least not in the same way, and it had very different associations.
I was reading about the Hussite Wars recently, and while it didn't go into much detail on the theological side of things- the main focus was on the social-political content of the Hussite movement- it did seem to suggest that the Utraquist current of the movement was a theological forerunner of Protestantism. Is that substantially the case, or was it just the author glossing over the details for simplicities sake?
As I understand it, Utraquism per se was the view that the Eucharist should be taken in both parts (i.e. everyone got to partake of the wine as well as the bread). But the term came to apply to the moderate Hussites. Now here again I'm afraid I don't know much about this subject. But as I understand it, the Hussite movement is indeed often seen as a forerunner of Protestantism, at least theologically. Hus himself was hugely influenced by Wycliffe (indeed, I don't think he really said anything that Wycliffe hadn't already said, although he formed some of his opinions independently) and Wycliffe too is quite reasonably seen as a forerunner of the Reformers. During the Reformation many of the remaining Hussites were absorbed into the Protestant churches, as were remnants of even earlier protest groups such as the Waldensians. Certainly there were differences between the Hussites and the later Protestants, but that doesn't mean one can't see genuine similarities, as the Hussites themselves evidently did when they decided to join forces with the Protestants.
I was thinking about this passage right after the throwing the first stone -episode:
Could you deduct from this that God doesn't judge people for their sins? Or, of course it's possible, but has this been considered, and if so, how widely?
Do other passages of the Bible come to your mind that would lend support to the idea that God doesn't judge at all?
I don't know of any such interpretation of that passage, but anything's possible. I don't think one could build much of a biblical case for the claim that God doesn't judge at all, though. Judgement is frequently depicted as one of God's most distinctive functions.
Why did St. Clement of Alexandria have such a fixation on facial hair?
Because most of his moral teachings are taken directly from Musonius Rufus and reflect contemporary views on how a Roman gentleman should behave.
(He's not a saint, by the way, although in early modern times he was sometimes venerated as one.)
On a less spammy note, I read an argument online that there's no real dichotomy between Thomism and Palamism, and that the two are actually quite complementary. What would you say to this? In general, what was the influence of Aristotleanism on Byzantine theology? Did Aquinas have any influence at all?
There certainly was Aristotelian influence on Byzantine theology, at least in its early stages. Eastern theologians were Aristotelian before western ones ever were. The obvious examples are Leontius of Byzantium and John of Damascus, who presented extremely sophisticated understandings of Christian theology in deeply Aristotelian terms. I'm fairly sure that Leontius made no impression on the west, at least directly, but John of Damascus was obviously very significant and was effectively the last Greek theologian to be familiar to western authors. He is a very important influence on Aquinas, who cites him frequently.
To the extent that they shared that heritage, it is true to say that there is affinity between the later medieval theologies of east and west, and Aquinas and Palamas in particular. However, I don't believe that Aristotle continued to have a great influence on Byzantine theology. Although his works were known they were not much read. The major figures who influenced subsequent Byzantine theology - Pseudo-Dionysius, Maximus the Confessor, and so on - had little to do with Aristotle, being far more Neoplatonic. (Of course one can be both Neoplatonic and Aristotelian - Aquinas was - but I don't think they were.) In fourteenth-century Byzantium, the most prominent Aristotelian theologian was not Palamas but his nemesis, Barlaam.
Obviously Palamas and Aquinas are often linked and compared, but I don't think it's because of any real similarity in their thought. It's because each one was the greatest figure in his respective tradition, summing up the views of his predecessors and presenting a clearly packaged, authoritative statement of his tradition which subsequent and lesser minds would spend centuries unpicking. It's probably true to say that there is no great disagreement between them, but I think this may be not so much because they were saying the same thing as because they were addressing such different issues and with such different terms. The things that Palamas spent so much time and effort arguing and writing about - principally hesychasm - were complete non-issues for Aquinas, and I'm sure the reverse is true too.
Anyhow, I've come to the conclusion that heaven exists outside of time. This is partially because this seems to be the ideal way for paradise to work. I think given an actual infinite amount of time, the idea of heaven becomes horrifying: either people live out a literal eternity there seems it would drive anyone to ennui, people would be despondent over loved ones missing, the general ability of the human mind to make itself dissatisfied, etc. etc.
This makes sense, except that heaven isn't supposed to be eternal. It's a temporary state that the devout are supposed to enjoy while they are waiting for the final judgement, when they will be re-united with their bodies and go off into the new heavens and the new earth. So in traditional Christianity, heaven is very firmly temporal (and so is hell, and also purgatory, which are similar "waiting rooms", just not as pleasant).
Assuming these problems are negated by the infinite joy of paradise, heaven sounds like a horrifying cyberpunk style scenario. People so mind numbingly happy that they have no sense of what is going on around them.
Instead, if heaven exists out of time (with god, as presumably god created time when he created the world).
This also seems to make the idea of hell a bit more compatible with an omnibenevolent being. Rather then being subjected to the infinite tortures imagined by Dante, a soul is lost to hell, and simply exists in that state, permanently, without change, but without an eternity of torment.
Is that not inconsistent, though? If you're saying that an atemporal heaven would be pleasant, then I don't see how you could say that an atemporal hell would not be unpleasant. If hell is atemporal then there certainly is an eternity of torment - it's just an atemporal eternity rather than an everlasting one. That doesn't seem much better to me.
Now first, the problems I'm grappling with from a theological standpoint. First is the fact that this would mean that people exist in heaven "before" they are even born, and in fact, before anything on earth was born. This seems at first to be an absurdity, but one that seems very reasonable to me.
No, atemporality doesn't work quite like that. Suppose Peter is born in 1900 and dies in 1980. In the year 1800, on your theory, it is true to say "Peter is in heaven." However, it is false to say "Peter is in heaven now," because if heaven is atemporal it is not simultaneous with anything. Similarly, in the year 2000, it is true to say "Peter is in heaven" but false to say "Peter is in heaven now." And the same applies even in 1950 as well. It is
never true to say "Peter is in heaven now" (or talk about Peter being in heaven in any temporal context) and
always true to say "Peter is in heaven." This is one of the paradoxes of atemporality.
1) Do you think this qualify as a form of predetermination?
I don't think so, because there's no "pre" about it.
2) If so, does thinking like this show up in any theological discussions on predeterminism?
Again, I don't think so, because as I say heaven has always been seen as temporal, not atemporal.
3) Is there a name for this kind of philosophy about heaven and salvation? Is it considered a heresy by the Catholic Church?
I don't think it is named or formally heretical, but I'm pretty sure it would be seen as erroneous from a Catholic point of view.
3) If not, do I get to name it?
Of course! Although, you know, heresies are invariably remembered under the names that their opponents gave them, not by the names they gave themselves - even when we know those names.
As an afterthought, since I know you're not big on the bible per se, but this does seem to involve some philosophical and metaphysical wrangling: Do you think this would contradict the Book of Matthew which says "For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale's belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth"?
Well, it probably would. But I'm sure a defender of an atemporal heaven/hell could find a way around it.
Who were their great founders and what texts did they leave them (and us?)?
Platonism was founded by Plato, who wrote all the dialogues that are still extant.
Aristotelianism was founded by Aristotle, who wrote the esoteric texts that are extant and also about four times as many exoteric texts that have all been lost.
Stoicism was founded by Zeno, who wrote a lot of works that are all lost.
Epicureanism was founded by Epicurus, who also wrote a lot of works, almost all of which (but not quite all) are lost.
The New Academy was founded by Arcesilaus, who I believe wrote nothing, but the New Academy was at least in theory Platonic and so I would guess revolved around Plato's writings.
I think those are the main schools. There were other movements too, such as Pyrrhonism, but they seem not to have been so well defined and institutional.
Two questions,
1) is the image of Saint Sergius and Saint Bacchus a reference to the rite of adoption found in Orthodox
2) Where can I find more about the rite of adoption in the Catholic Church
I'm afraid I don't know the answer to either of those things - although a good place to start looking for information about Catholic things is
the Catholic Encyclopedia (preferably ignoring the rather alarming homepage and going straight to the alphabetical index at the top of the page). It's very outdated and obviously partisan but the historical scholarship is of good quality.
I had a sleepy friend read over the threads, and she asks, wrt
this:
: even if it is obvious that obama exists, burden of proof still rests on people believing his existence
: they just have lots of proof.
: thoughts?
I suppose that when there is that much proof for a claim, that means there is no burden of proof to speak of for those defending it. Does this contradict what I said before?
Good luck if you are the one getting married. And goodbye to theology and philosophy?
I'm getting married in a fortnight. I'm sure that there will be more provision for philosophy and theology, and indeed everything else, after that than there is in the period when one is preparing to get married.