Ask a Theologian III

[bombshoo]

While reminiscing about our times at Catholic school, one of my non-Catholic (and non-Christian) friends who attended mentioned how one time he received communion despite not being Catholic and ended up getting in quite a bit of trouble for it. Is there some religious reason why this would have upset some people? From my understanding, receiving communion when you are not Catholic isn't exactly terrible, just sort of pointless. Just for further information, the non-Catholic who took communion didn't have any bad intentions or anything, he pretty much just got pushed into the line and ran with it.

 

[Plotinus]

One has to estimate that the first man did not have language, or had something of an ancient precursor to it.

Why?

This too would seem to mean that he could not stabilize his ideas of a clear distinction between the external and the imaginary world, not in the form of communicated notions.

Why not? Language isn't necessary for ideas, though it may be for the communication of them.

I have three questions:

My first one is about Augustine. Did he believe in Predestination? And to what point? I have heard that he did from some people, but I have heard from others that he was inconsistent on that belief. What did Augustine teach about it?

That is incredibly complex and rather depends on what you mean by "predestination". I'm afraid there is no straightforward answer. Augustine's views changed on the matter. Earlier in his career, arguing against the Manichaeans, he stressed free will, the human ability to choose, and responsibility. Later, arguing against the Pelagians, he stressed human inability to choose meaningfully, whilst still not denying responsibility. See here for a summary.

My second question is about Martin Luther, and basically the same question I asked about Augustine; did he accept Predestination? I've heard people tell me IRL that he definitely did, but according to his Wikipedia page he did not.

Again, it rather depends on what you mean by "predestination". But here surely the answer is yes. Luther vehemently rejected belief in libertarian free will.

My third question is about early Christianity (First 500 years.) Were there any known Christians in the first 500 years which addressed those who had never heard the Gospel? Did they ever consider whether or not their fate would be different than those who heard the Gospel and rejected it? What did they say about it?

I don't think this was ever really addressed. Some theologians thought about those who hadn't heard the Gospel because of time, i.e. they lived before Christ. So Justin Martyr, as I've often said, wrote about the Jewish prophets and the Greek philosophers, arguing that if they followed reason, they were really following Christ, because Christ is reason. It would make sense to suppose that he would have thought the same thing applied to e.g. people in distant countries who had not heard of Christianity, but he does not make the connection. That's the closest I can think of. Of course, a number of Christian theologians in the period you mention believed in universal salvation, but this was invariably on the basis of everyone coming to be a Christian (either after death, or in a future life). Presumably those who held this view, such as Origen (probably) Gregory of Nyssa, or Titus of Bostra would have held that those who die never having heard of Christ will, at some future time, nevertheless put their faith in him; but that's not a special case - the same is true of everyone, including those who consciously reject Christ in this life. In other words, I don't think they did explicitly consider the issue of those who die without having heard of Christ.

Plotinus, what do you think of the theory that many of the Bible passages actually contain coded (or outright concealed) passages that refer to early polytheistic beliefs amongst the Israelites? Modern archaeology hints very strongly that the Israelites and the Canaanites were actually the same people, so it wouldn't be too unlikely to believe they were polytheists as well. The names El and Ashera keep popping up in the Bible and they are very similar to the Babylonian chief deity (portrayed as a kindly, long-bearded old man) and his wife. There was even a piece of pottery found (and lost) in the Sinai desert in the 1990s, said to have been marked with the names of both Yahweh and Ashera.

It doesn't make any difference to me whether the early Israelites were polytheistic or not, but I'd be interested in hearing your opinion.

I don't believe in deliberately coded passages in the Bible, but of course many passages testify to older beliefs because of the way the Bible was written, with lots of sources, some older and some later. But I know very little about Old Testament stuff. As far as I know, it is a pretty standard view that the Jews started off as polytheists and gradually evolved monotheism, but I don't know to what degree traces of this can be found in the Old Testament (or where) or how much certainty there is over the details.

While reminiscing about our times at Catholic school, one of my non-Catholic (and non-Christian) friends who attended mentioned how one time he received communion despite not being Catholic and ended up getting in quite a bit of trouble for it. Is there some religious reason why this would have upset some people? From my understanding, receiving communion when you are not Catholic isn't exactly terrible, just sort of pointless. Just for further information, the non-Catholic who took communion didn't have any bad intentions or anything, he pretty much just got pushed into the line and ran with it.

Non-Catholics can't partake of the bread and wine at a Catholic Mass. This is because it's a sacrament of the church, so people who aren't members of the church can't participate (although they can certainly attend). So while participating may be rather pointless from the point of view of the non-Catholic, from the point of view of the church it's actively wrong, no matter what the intentions of those involved may be.

 

[Kyriakos]

Why?

I am of the view that for a language to appear there has to be first some complicated communication of the species, onto which the formation of the language will be built, and also from which the need for it will rise.
Moreover linguistics of the greek language seem to support this view, or make one biased to it anyway, since the terms for language (such as 'glossa', which means 'tongue' and 'lalia', which refers to the production of sound with the intent to communicate) are clearly connected to communication. Hence, briefly put, i came to think that it seems likely that language was something formed after communication of some more primitive form was available for some time, but this means inevitably that it came to be a lot after thoughts appeared to exist on human minds. This would mean that for some considerable time man was able to think, but not to stabilize and categorize those thoughts in a system which must have been a direct result of complicated communication.

Why not? Language isn't necessary for ideas, though it may be for the communication of them.

I agree that language is not a prerequisite for ideas. However i expect you would agree that an idea without the existence of a language, and an idea with it are two very different things.
Already, with complicated languages around, we find difficulty sometimes in stabilizing complex ideas in our mind, categorizing them, analyzing them and so on. Would it not follow that when there was no set language, but there only existed the personal precursor to it in the mind, some anonymous system of identifying thoughts without naming them in a way which could have the stability (even if it is false) communication lends to it, that those ideas would most of the time be a lot less prone to becoming stable? And if so would their inherent instability not produce an instability in the notions they referred to?

It is a guess about a possible (or less possible) state of the mind of the first man. You might not agree with this particular guess, but i think you will accept that his world of thought most probably was very distinct from that of latter man, for example that of the classical era, where language was the absolute basis for thought (no matter that thought itself, again, is a phenomenon that does not prerequisite language).
This difference, which probably was dramatic, can allow for various systemic differences in how one thought, and even what thoughts actually caused inside one's mind, how they were being understood, and a multitude of other parameters as well.

 

[GhostWriter16]

Thanks for the answers Plotinus!

 

[madviking]

I hope I'm not too incorrect with my terminology and Christianity in general here...

So according to the Bible, Jesus' final words were "Oh Lord, why have you forsaken me?"
But, in the tradition of the Trinity, Jesus is both God and his son (and the holy ghost), and moreover, Jesus is the lord. So, essentially, what Jesus said before he died was "Oh me, why did I do this to myself?" Is this correct?
Furthermore, since Jesus is the Lord and the Lord possesses both omniscience and omnipotence, couldn't Jesus have avoided the whole debacle with the Pilate all together since he had foresight of the event? Why did he have to be crucified?

 

[GamezRule]

I am not the expert, but I am pretty sure the new testament predates the idea of the trinity. I think the idea grew out of a couple of Paul's ramblings.

 

[ParkCungHee]

What are your thoughts on potential connections between early christian heresies and similarly named medieval heresies.

 

[Plotinus]

I hope I'm not too incorrect with my terminology and Christianity in general here...

So according to the Bible, Jesus' final words were "Oh Lord, why have you forsaken me?"
But, in the tradition of the Trinity, Jesus is both God and his son (and the holy ghost), and moreover, Jesus is the lord. So, essentially, what Jesus said before he died was "Oh me, why did I do this to myself?" Is this correct?

Are you asking what the historical Jesus meant, or what orthodox Christian theology holds that he meant? The two are not the same.

On the former, assuming that Jesus really said it - which there is no reason to doubt - it's a quotation from Psalm 22. It could be seen as an expression of despair. There's no reason to suppose that the historical Jesus believed himself to be divine, let alone identical to the Father, so there's no reason to suppose that he was addressing himself.

On the interpretation of this saying in the context of orthodox Christian theology, I think you've misunderstood the doctrine of the Trinity. According to that doctrine, Jesus is absolutely not identical with the Father, or with the Holy Spirit. Each of the persons is God - and they are the same God - but they are nevertheless distinct. To say that Jesus is identical with the Father is the heresy of modalism. So in this saying, Jesus - the Son, the second person of the Trinity - addresses the Father, the first person of the Trinity. He is not talking to himself. The same goes for all the many instances in the Gospels where Jesus prays to the Father.

Furthermore, since Jesus is the Lord and the Lord possesses both omniscience and omnipotence, couldn't Jesus have avoided the whole debacle with the Pilate all together since he had foresight of the event? Why did he have to be crucified?

If he was omnipotent and omniscient, then presumably he could have avoided it, but chose not to. But Christian theologians do not all think that he was omnipotent and omniscient. And some think that although he was omnipotent and omniscient, he didn't know that he was, so he was effectively not omnipotent or omniscient.

As for why he had to be crucified, again if you are asking that from a theological point of view rather than a historical one, then that's the doctrine of the atonement.

But I think we've addressed these issues before, one way or another, if you have a look at the index at the start of the thread.

I am not the expert, but I am pretty sure the new testament predates the idea of the trinity. I think the idea grew out of a couple of Paul's ramblings.

I don't know what you mean by "ramblings", but I don't think that it's a particuarly Pauline idea or associated with Paul more than any other biblical author. Obviously the Trinitarian formula comes from Matthew.

What are your thoughts on potential connections between early christian heresies and similarly named medieval heresies.

It depends on what heresies you're talking about. Some medieval heresies may have had historical connections to ancient ones, the obvious example being Catharism and gnosticism, but there's no real evidence for any historical link. Some less dramatic heresies were certainly identified by their opponents as resurgences of ancient ones. For example, the Spanish adoptionists were accused of being Nestorians, Abelard was accused of being a Pelagian, and so on and so forth. In this case, the medieval "heretics" would certainly have been aware of the ancient heresies of which they were accused, so there's a historical connection in that sense. But it seems pretty unlikely that they were positively influenced by them. Rather, their opponents interpreted them through the lens of ancient doctrinal controversies. For example, Alcuin of York read the works of Felix of Urgel and thought he saw Nestorianism in them. Whether Felix really said anything like Nestorianism is uncertain; even if he did, whether he got the idea from the ancient Nestorians seems unlikely. The same goes for Abelard and Pelagianism.

 

[Leoreth]

Can someone really be omniscient and not know it?

 

[Plotinus]

Yes, if they have different streams of consciousness, as a number of philosophical theologians have proposed.

By illustration, someone with fragmented personalities could "know" something in one personality but not in the other. Now some writers, notably Thomas Morris and Richard Swinburne, have suggested that Christ could have had a split mind in a somewhat analogous way. His divine stream of consciousness would have carried on as before, complete with its omniscient knowledge. But he would have had a human stream of consciousness parallel with it, which would not have had omniscient knowledge. In such a case, Christ would have been omniscient (in virtue of his divine consciousness), but in his human consciousness he would not have had access to that knowledge and might not even have known that he had it.

Remember that, historically, theologians have held that Christ had two minds - a human one and a divine one. This is because it was thought that, if he hadn't had a distinct human mind in addition to his divine mind, he would not have been truly human. So the Morris/Swinburne idea of the split mind is really just a modern restatement. The difference is that, classically, Christian theologians have thought that even the human mind was omniscient, on the grounds that although it was human, it must have been perfect, and therefore have had all knowledge (and any other perfections) that a human mind is capable of. Modern philosophical theologians tend not to think this, and those who posit the two-mind or split-mind theory suppose instead that, while the divine mind is omniscient, the human mind is not.

 

[ParkCungHee]

Do they still hold that he had a perfect human mind? It seems to me that this new understanding might be based on a greater appreciation for the limits of the human mind.

Also, I didn't really mean any in particular. I've been taking a course on The Church in the Middle Ages, and the professor is teaching it through the lens of "Non-Conforming Minorities of Exceptional Cohesion" so Heretics are a major parts of it.

 

[Dachs]

Reposted from your wall with minor edits:

I semi-recently did a primary source thing for class, a bog-standard comparison of Stephanus' Life of Wilfrid and Bede, and wasn't allowed to use a whole lot of external information. Now that I've turned it in, though, I seem to recall something about the whole Bishop Chad thing that wasn't in either Bede or Stephanus. Something about Oswiu kicking Wilfrid out as part of a conflict with his son Aehlfrith...? Do you know more about that, and could you clear that up a bit for me?

 

[Plotinus]

Do they still hold that he had a perfect human mind? It seems to me that this new understanding might be based on a greater appreciation for the limits of the human mind.

I think they take "perfect" in a different sense. "Perfect" has two meanings. (1) It is the best possible example of a kind of thing. For example, the perfect cake is a really, really good cake. (2) It is an absolutely typical example of a kind of thing. If I'm complaining about how often the trains are late, and then when I try to go home I find they'd cancelled (as happened yesterday), I might say, "This is a perfect example of what I was talking about!"

In an ancient context, the two were conflated. To be a typical example of a kind of thing, something had to be the best possible example of that kind of thing. So the Platonic Forms, for example, are both of these. The Form of the Horse is that which, by participating in it, all horses are horses. So it is the archetypal horse, as horsey as anything could be. But it's also the perfect, superlative example of horsiness.

So in this context, to say that Christ is truly human (i.e. perfectly human in the second sense) implies that he's the best possible human (i.e. perfectly human in the first sense). I think most Christians would want to agree that Christ was the best possible human in some respects - such as morally speaking - but they wouldn't necessarily want to say that he was the best possible in every respect, such as in physical strength. Both ancient and medieval theologians generally assumed that if Christ was perfectly human then he really was perfect in every respect. They generally seemed to think of this in terms of his knowledge (i.e., his human knowledge was complete and perfect, just like his divine knowledge), not things like physical prowess, although it seems to me that their arguments would commit them to thinking this.

Anyway, I would say that the modern theologians who deny that Christ was (operationally) omniscient, omnipotent, etc. would agree that he was a perfect human in the second sense, but not the first sense. It's the ability to distinguish between these two senses that makes this a viable view without abandoning the claim that Christ was perfectly human. And of course, they would argue - and do, at length - that Christ wouldn't be fully and genuinely human if he didn't have (operational) limits of this kind. He certainly wouldn't be like us in all respects other than sin, as the Chalcedonian formula puts it.

Reposted from your wall with minor edits:

I semi-recently did a primary source thing for class, a bog-standard comparison of Stephanus' Life of Wilfrid and Bede, and wasn't allowed to use a whole lot of external information. Now that I've turned it in, though, I seem to recall something about the whole Bishop Chad thing that wasn't in either Bede or Stephanus. Something about Oswiu kicking Wilfrid out as part of a conflict with his son Aehlfrith...? Do you know more about that, and could you clear that up a bit for me?

Sorry, I was going to address this on my wall and completely forgot. The short answer is that I don't know, but I'll see if I can find out.

 

[Whiskey_Lord]

Weeeeeeell it seems that I have been assigned this little thread as homework.

Plotinus, I hope you don't mind a somewhat personal question, but have you had much experience outside the forum interacting with anti-theists (those far greater than myself, I should hope)? What would you say are some common and/or irritating misconceptions that they have about religion and/or your profession?

For the record, I appreciate what you do. History is important, even when it's about religion.

 

[PeteAtoms]

What would you say are some common and/or irritating misconceptions that they have about religion and/or your profession?

I know the question was for Plot, but I felt like tossing in something I've observed. It seems to be a common notion among theists and anti-theists that theologians are religious. The idea that theologians can be atheists is alien to a lot of people.

 

[Whiskey_Lord]

Yes yes, I know Plotty isn't religious. I wouldn't doubt that he has run in to such people in the past though.

 

[Atticus]

There have been multiple of them in these threads

Little related: What are the most popular topics that interest wackos? By "wacko" I mean people who pursue unconventional or unpopular world views. I'm not after mere misconceptions, but more like things that are open to interpretation. Typical example would be Knights Templar, and outside religious field the archetype: Freemasons (although all of these are related and interlap, you know, I read so in the internets). Are there such topics bubbling under, not so popular, but almost?

And another question: What's the most efficient way you know to point out inconcistency in 1) the Bible, 2) the New Testament?

 

[PeteAtoms]

What's on the cutting edge of theology these days? New breakthroughs or theories that have been developing that deserve attention?

 

[Yui108]

What do you feel like the probable origins of religion are? As a Christian obviously I believe something such as Christianity came around because it was true, but do you think all modern religions are just down the road from the original cro magnon or whatever saying ", I don't know how or why we are here and why/how the world works it must be because of the bear god's/the sun's/spaghetti monster's benevolence/hatred/whatever" and it just became a habit almost? Or do people just have a predisposition to this kind of belief?

 

[ParkCungHee]

I think they take "perfect" in a different sense. "Perfect" has two meanings. (1) It is the best possible example of a kind of thing. For example, the perfect cake is a really, really good cake. (2) It is an absolutely typical example of a kind of thing. If I'm complaining about how often the trains are late, and then when I try to go home I find they'd cancelled (as happened yesterday), I might say, "This is a perfect example of what I was talking about!"

In an ancient context, the two were conflated. To be a typical example of a kind of thing, something had to be the best possible example of that kind of thing. So the Platonic Forms, for example, are both of these. The Form of the Horse is that which, by participating in it, all horses are horses. So it is the archetypal horse, as horsey as anything could be. But it's also the perfect, superlative example of horsiness.

So in this context, to say that Christ is truly human (i.e. perfectly human in the second sense) implies that he's the best possible human (i.e. perfectly human in the first sense). I think most Christians would want to agree that Christ was the best possible human in some respects - such as morally speaking - but they wouldn't necessarily want to say that he was the best possible in every respect, such as in physical strength. Both ancient and medieval theologians generally assumed that if Christ was perfectly human then he really was perfect in every respect. They generally seemed to think of this in terms of his knowledge (i.e., his human knowledge was complete and perfect, just like his divine knowledge), not things like physical prowess, although it seems to me that their arguments would commit them to thinking this.

Anyway, I would say that the modern theologians who deny that Christ was (operationally) omniscient, omnipotent, etc. would agree that he was a perfect human in the second sense, but not the first sense. It's the ability to distinguish between these two senses that makes this a viable view without abandoning the claim that Christ was perfectly human. And of course, they would argue - and do, at length - that Christ wouldn't be fully and genuinely human if he didn't have (operational) limits of this kind. He certainly wouldn't be like us in all respects other than sin, as the Chalcedonian formula puts it.

But what I'm questioning is whether a perfect human mind in the first sense would actually be omniscient. It seems to me that even an ideal form of something cannot overcome the inherent flaws.
Allowing for the first definition (and example), a perfect cake might be the perfect level of sweetness, but is unlikely to be at all satisfying if I look for something spicy. Being sweet instead of spicy is an inherent nature of cake, and even if you had a perfect cake, I don't think I'd want to eat it for lunch.
Similarly, wouldn't a perfect human mind, even under the first definition be extremely limited because of the problems inherent in a human mind?
In short, doesn't that seem like a wildly optimistic view of the human mind that, in it's ideal form, it would be omniscient?