[RD] Ask a Theologian V

[Arakhor]

Moderator Action: Remember that this is the Ask a Theologian thread. If someone can answer a question, then I doubt Plotinus would mind, but don't start a debate in his absence.

 

[Mouthwash]

I find it kind of difficult to engage with people who think "Lol" is a reasonable answer in a debate

Guess Twitter has ruined me.

 

[Plotinus]

Sorry, I seem to have been neglecting not merely the thread but the whole site! At the moment I'm busy scrabbling to prepare for "blended" online/masked classes, which mainly seems to involve writing subtitles for my own video lectures.

On Plantinga, I am not an expert on this argument but it's always seemed to me that it rests upon the supposition that a belief can be "warranted" only if it is formed by a process that was deliberately designed to produce true beliefs. And this supposition seems to me to be pretty dubious and basically one that begs the question. It's possible that I misunderstand Plantinga here.

(Although, if I may be smug for a moment, I did recently publish a paper in which I demolish Plantinga's argument about something completely different, so maybe I'm onto something on this one too!)

That is a strange claim, since there is so little evidence of the concept prior to the rise of the (Biblical) ideas of sin and punishment. A few commentators like Aristotle bring it up but they seem to consider it a minor issue in the theory of mind rather than something important.

This is correct, though doesn't go far enough. "Free will" as a concept didn't really arise until late antiquity, in the context of theological debates. Aristotle had no concept of "free will". He discussed under what conditions actions should be considered hekousion ("voluntary" or perhaps "intentional"), which isn't really the same thing. It's not a biblical concept either.

Indeed "free will" is such an amorphous and vague concept that personally I think it's virtually meaningless. Nobody can agree on how to define it or how important it is.

 

[Mouthwash]

Is it true that Aquinas said that if someone believes "to omit fornication is a mortal sin, when he chooses not to fornicate, he sins mortally"? I found this quote here and Google search doesn't retrieve anything other than that one article.

Forgot about this question - have you seen the quote? Is it something that Aquinas or other Christian theologians would believe?

Also, is the story about Aquinas saying that everything he had written was "like straw" after having a mystical vision apocryphal?

Finally, I have some concerns about the translations of the New Testament after reading the comments here. I realize that any translation is inevitably going to be a sort of paraphrase, but even the RSV goes too far (why translate ekklesia as church if you're not writing for a specifically Christian audience?). Is there an ultra-literalist's translation out there, perhaps with commentary or clarification? EDIT: Found one, I think.

(I've been reading Mark and Matthew and it is genuinely mind-blowing how many common English phrases come straight out of the NT. 'A house divided', never would have suspected that Abe Lincoln wasn't the original source! Plus all the strange things Jesus says that I've never heard before, like telling his followers not to ever make oaths or promises.)

 

[Birdjaguar]

There are places in the Bible to support almost any position one wants to take on most topics.

 

[Farm Boy]

Lincoln is steeped in the biblicality. Four score and seven years, four score being the time of a man's life... etc. The underlying principles of a culture's dominant faith flavor the society despite humans being humans being humans. I like Luke, usually. He writes more about the women.

 

[_random_]

Do you have any thoughts on Dorothee Solle or Maria Skobtsova? If you asked me to name a favorite theologian, it'd probably come down to those two.