M
Mickey
Guest
Yes.
- Status
S
Servant19
Guest
Can you kindly please show me exactly where St.Basil says all that?
P
PRmerger
Guest
I mean this:
https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/..._cjo1up6xQ5rplDBQdOuI5pD7_0tukE-DV1h_U_e_umfg
2 questions:
-do you believe that God cannot be both physically present with his disciples at the Last Supper AND be physically present in the bread and wine?
-is the Baha’i paradigm: it’s true for you but not necessarily true for me? That is, do you believe that God could be present in the Blessed Sacrament for me, but if you went to the Church it would only be a symbolic presence for you?
M
Mickey
Guest
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the Trinity, One in essence and undivided.
(From the Divine Liturgy of St Basil the Great)
F
flameburns623
Guest
M
Mickey
Guest
Indeed!
I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever; and the bread that I will give, is my flesh, for the life of the world. The Jews therefore strove among themselves, saying: How can this man give us his flesh to eat? Then Jesus said to them: Amen, amen I say unto you: Except you eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, you shall not have life in you. He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath everlasting life: and I will raise him up in the last day. For my flesh is meat indeed: and my blood is drink indeed. He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, abideth in me, and I in him.
Gospel of St John, chapter 6
S
Servant19
Guest
Hi Mickey, could you please provide a link for this quote?
Plus also, the entire paragraph within which this sentence is written do that I can understand the context it is written in.
Thank you
D
daler
Guest
"Question.—The Christ said: “I am the living bread which came down from heaven, that a man may eat thereof and not die.” What is the meaning of this utterance?
Answer.—This bread signifies the heavenly food and divine perfections. So, “If any man eateth of this bread” means if any man acquires heavenly bounty, receives the divine light, or partakes of Christ’s perfections, he thereby gains everlasting life. The blood also signifies the spirit of life and the divine perfections, the lordly splendor and eternal bounty. For all the members of the body gain vital substance from the circulation of the blood.
In the Gospel of St. John, chapter 6, verse 26, it is written: “Ye seek Me, not because ye saw the miracles, but because ye did eat of the loaves, and were filled.”
It is evident that the bread of which the disciples ate and were filled was the heavenly bounty; for in verse of the same chapter it is said: “For the bread of God is He which cometh down from heaven, and giveth life unto the world.” It is clear that the body of Christ did not descend from heaven, but it came from the womb of Mary; and that which descended from the heaven of God was the spirit of Christ. As the Jews thought that Christ spoke of His body, they made objections, for it is said in the 42nd verse of the same chapter: “And they said, Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? how is it then that he saith, I came down from heaven?”
Reflect how clear it is that what Christ meant by the heavenly bread was His spirit, His bounties, His perfections and His teachings; for it is said in the 63rd verse: “It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing.”
Therefore, it is evident that the spirit of Christ is a heavenly grace which descends from heaven; whosoever receives light from that spirit in abundance—that is to say, the heavenly teachings—finds everlasting life. That is why it is said in the 35th verse: “And Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life: he that cometh to Me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on Me shall never thirst.”
Notice that “coming to Him” He expresses as eating, and “belief in Him” as drinking. Then it is evident and established that the celestial food is the divine bounties, the spiritual splendors, the heavenly teachings, the universal meaning of Christ. To eat is to draw near to Him, and to drink is to believe in Him. For Christ had an elemental body and a celestial form. The elemental body was crucified, but the heavenly form is living and eternal, and the cause of everlasting life; the first was the human nature, and the second is the divine nature. It is thought by some that the Eucharist is the reality of Christ, and that the Divinity and the Holy Spirit descend into and exist in it. Now when once the Eucharist is taken, after a few moments it is simply disintegrated and entirely transformed. Therefore, how can such a thought be conceived? God forbid! Certainly it is an absolute fantasy.
To conclude: through the manifestation of Christ, the divine teachings, which are an eternal bounty, were spread abroad, the light of guidance shone forth, and the spirit of life was conferred on man. Whoever found guidance became living; whoever remained lost was seized by enduring death. This bread which came down from heaven was the divine body of Christ, His spiritual elements, which the disciples ate, and through which they gained eternal life.
The disciples had taken many meals from the hand of Christ; why was the last supper distinguished from the others? It is evident that the heavenly bread did not signify this material bread, but rather the divine nourishment of the spiritual body of Christ, the divine graces and heavenly perfections of which His disciples partook, and with which they became filled.
In the same way, reflect that when Christ blessed the bread and gave it to His disciples, saying, “This is My body,” and gave grace to them, He was with them in person, in presence, and form. He was not transformed into bread and wine; if He had been turned into bread and wine, He could not have remained with the disciples in body, in person and in presence.
Then it is clear that the bread and wine were symbols which signified: I have given you My bounties and perfections, and when you have received this bounty, you have gained eternal life and have partaken of your share and your portion of the heavenly nourishment.
M
Mickey
Guest
F
flameburns623
Guest
Daler:
If you reflect even momentarily you would realize that it is no more of a difficulty for the One who exists outside of all time and space to be incarnate as a Man, nor transubstantiated as bread, than it is for Him to be present within our finite universe at all.
And yet: “Lo, I am with you, always”.
And yet: “In Him we live and move and have our being”.
It is the God Who Dwells in Ineffable Silence Who once spoke saying, “Let there be light”.
Who spoke on another occaision declaring, “I am the Lord, your God”.
And Who spake yet again and said, “This is My beloved Son: hear ye Him”.
Ours is the God Who knows no sin who yet forgives us our trespasses.
In other words: so far as I am aware, among all of the various forms of monotheism extant–God is, always, a God who deigns to reach down far below His Station to touch the lives of humanity.
Christianity is only unique in how we believe God to have humbled Himself “even to the image of a Man”, and to suffer humiliation and death in the body of that Man on behalf of all.
So far as how the Scriptures speak to the teaching of the Real Presence of Christ: I am not persuaded at all that individual statements, isolated from the larger contexts, somehow cancel out the absolute literal intent that can be deduced from that larger context.
I reaffirm: it seems clear to me that an ordinary reading of the text suggests the writers of the Gospel accounts intended a literalness to the teaching about the Eucharist which just was not there when Christ spoke of Himself as the Door or compared Himself to a mother hen gathering her chicks unto herself.
If you reflect even momentarily you would realize that it is no more of a difficulty for the One who exists outside of all time and space to be incarnate as a Man, nor transubstantiated as bread, than it is for Him to be present within our finite universe at all.
And yet: “Lo, I am with you, always”.
And yet: “In Him we live and move and have our being”.
It is the God Who Dwells in Ineffable Silence Who once spoke saying, “Let there be light”.
Who spoke on another occaision declaring, “I am the Lord, your God”.
And Who spake yet again and said, “This is My beloved Son: hear ye Him”.
Ours is the God Who knows no sin who yet forgives us our trespasses.
In other words: so far as I am aware, among all of the various forms of monotheism extant–God is, always, a God who deigns to reach down far below His Station to touch the lives of humanity.
Christianity is only unique in how we believe God to have humbled Himself “even to the image of a Man”, and to suffer humiliation and death in the body of that Man on behalf of all.
So far as how the Scriptures speak to the teaching of the Real Presence of Christ: I am not persuaded at all that individual statements, isolated from the larger contexts, somehow cancel out the absolute literal intent that can be deduced from that larger context.
I reaffirm: it seems clear to me that an ordinary reading of the text suggests the writers of the Gospel accounts intended a literalness to the teaching about the Eucharist which just was not there when Christ spoke of Himself as the Door or compared Himself to a mother hen gathering her chicks unto herself.
D
daler
Guest
F
flameburns623
Guest
D
daler
Guest
I
IgnatianPhilo
Guest
Daler
The world is constantly changing, it is not evidence of a new manifestation or any such thing. What matters is if they are really from God, and there is no good reason so far as I can tell, to suspect Mirza Hussain or his father to be from God.
And you constantly go to this example that Christians are like the unbelieving jews who rejected Jesus Christ, this cheap rhetorical device when we could easily compare you to Israel who went out in search of other Gods. Lets do that, the bahai are like Israel, prostitutes who sold themselves to false gods. This rhetoric doesn’t help us though and I wish bahai would understand that.
A remark on the bahai using patristics
I think it so odd, having reread some of the interpretations of the church fathers concerning specific doctrines of Christianity that the bahai consider the fathers of the church in the same league as they. We have to take in mind that the bahai must necessarily believe the entire church became corrupt yet they will interpret a father of the church, like Saint Cyril or Saint Basil to defend their viewpoint of a platonistic understanding of the inferiority of the body and thus have saint Cyril deny resurrection?
This seems to me, to be the exact same thing they do with the bible. Bahai simply don’t care about a historical concept of understanding things in the time they were written. They will go to any verse, reinterpret it and present as bahai without a care in the world for what the author actually meant and what it means to their theology. Bahai understand they received something different and whenever they are in lack of a response they will say “obviously they thought differently because this is a new revelation we as bahai have received which they did not,” Ie the spiritual ascension into heaven being conflated with the term resurrection. However when they feel they can interpret a passage to how they want it to be they will say “look this is the bahai teaching!”
Saint Cyril : It is said by a bahai in the forum that he taught a non physical resurrection, lets see about that.
The world is constantly changing, it is not evidence of a new manifestation or any such thing. What matters is if they are really from God, and there is no good reason so far as I can tell, to suspect Mirza Hussain or his father to be from God.
And you constantly go to this example that Christians are like the unbelieving jews who rejected Jesus Christ, this cheap rhetorical device when we could easily compare you to Israel who went out in search of other Gods. Lets do that, the bahai are like Israel, prostitutes who sold themselves to false gods. This rhetoric doesn’t help us though and I wish bahai would understand that.
A remark on the bahai using patristics
I think it so odd, having reread some of the interpretations of the church fathers concerning specific doctrines of Christianity that the bahai consider the fathers of the church in the same league as they. We have to take in mind that the bahai must necessarily believe the entire church became corrupt yet they will interpret a father of the church, like Saint Cyril or Saint Basil to defend their viewpoint of a platonistic understanding of the inferiority of the body and thus have saint Cyril deny resurrection?
This seems to me, to be the exact same thing they do with the bible. Bahai simply don’t care about a historical concept of understanding things in the time they were written. They will go to any verse, reinterpret it and present as bahai without a care in the world for what the author actually meant and what it means to their theology. Bahai understand they received something different and whenever they are in lack of a response they will say “obviously they thought differently because this is a new revelation we as bahai have received which they did not,” Ie the spiritual ascension into heaven being conflated with the term resurrection. However when they feel they can interpret a passage to how they want it to be they will say “look this is the bahai teaching!”
Saint Cyril : It is said by a bahai in the forum that he taught a non physical resurrection, lets see about that.
- The root of all good works is the hope of the Resurrection; for the expectation of the recompense nerves the soul to good works. For every labourer is ready to endure the toils, if he sees their reward in prospect; but when men weary themselves for nought, their heart soon sinks as well as their body. A soldier who expects a prize is ready for war, but no one is forward to die for a king who is indifferent about those who serve under him, and bestows no honours on their toils. In like manner every soul believing in a Resurrection is naturally careful of itself; but, disbelieving it, abandons itself to perdition. He who believes that his body shall remain to rise again, is careful of his robe, and defiles it not with fornication; but he who disbelieves the Resurrection, gives himself to fornication, and misuses his own body, as though it were not his own. Faith therefore in the Resurrection of the dead, is a great commandment and doctrine of the Holy Catholic Church; great and most necessary, though gainsaid by many, yet surely warranted by the truth. Greeks contradict it , Samaritans disbelieve it, heretics mutilate it; the contradiction is manifold, but the truth is uniform.
- Now Greeks and Samaritans together argue against us thus. The dead man has fallen, and mouldered away, and is all turned into worms; and the worms have died also; such is the decay and destruction which has overtaken the body; how then is it to be raised? The shipwrecked have been devoured by fishes, which are themselves devoured. Of them who fight with wild beasts the very bones are ground to powder, and consumed by bears and lions. Vultures and ravens feed on the flesh of the unburied dead, and then fly away over all the world; whence then is the body to be collected? For of the fowls who have devoured it some may chance to die in India, some in Persia, some in the land of the Goths. Other men again are consumed by fire, and their very ashes scattered by rain or wind; whence is the body to be brought together again ?
Is he talking about a body or the ascension of the soul? Lets continue further. - But if according to you there is no resurrection of the dead, wherefore do you condemn the robbers of graves? For if the body perishes, and there is no resurrection to be hoped for, why does the violator of the tomb undergo punishment? You see that though you deny it with your lips, there yet abides with you an indestructible instinct of the resurrection.
- Further, does a tree after it has been cut down blossom again, and shall man after being cut down blossom no more? And does the grain sown and reaped remain for the threshing floor, and shall man when reaped from this world not remain for the threshing? And do shoots of vine or other trees, when clean cut off and transplanted, come to life and bear fruit; and shall man, for whose sake all these exist, fall into the earth and not rise again? Comparing efforts, which is greater, to mould from the beginning a statue which did not exist, or to recast in the same shape that which had fallen? Is God then, who created us out of nothing, unable to raise again those who exist and are fallen ? But you believe not what is written of the resurrection, being a Greek: then from the analogy of nature consider these matters, and understand them from what is seen to this day. Wheat, it may be, or some other kind of grain, is sown; and when the seed has fallen, it dies and rots, and is henceforth useless for food. But that which has rotted, springs up in verdure; and though small when sown, springs up most beautiful. Now wheat was made for us; for wheat and all seeds were created not for themselves, but for our use; are then the things which were made for us quickened when they die, and do we for whom they were made, not rise again after our death ?
All of this and more can be found Catechetical lecture 18
I
IgnatianPhilo
Guest
Sen
I read canon seven and it nowhere declares the council of Constantinople to be anathamatised or wrong. What canon seven does reaffirm is the Nicene council and that no one should contradict it. The only way you would have to maintain canon seven is directed against Nicea is if the fathers of Ephesus were of the opinion that Constantinople contradicted Nicea. I think that would be a hopeless and fruitless position to take as Ephesus was the council which set about defending calling Mary the Mother of God.
Now what is unclear in regaurds to the definition of the trinity? I run across this claim from Muslims and now bahai often but I find in the first place they do not understand the terms being used in the first place. The Heterousians for all their faults didn’t claim the other side made no sense, they claimed the other side to be wrong, arrians understood what the fathers were saying, they were saying the father and the son share the exact same essence of being. That which composes an existent entity. We are composed of matter arranged into a form to make human, thus I am composed of multiple substances that arrange this complex creature known as a human. God on the other hand is composed of divinity, an ineffable substance which cannot be perceived, touched and is totally beyond human will and understanding and it is the Christian doctrine of the trinity that say within this substance of divinity that composes God that there are three persons, father son and holy spirit sharing the exact same divinity. What is hard to understand about this? The terms and ideas have been around for 1700 years roughly speaking, the church has taken great care to talk about this subject. There is no excuse for ignorance on the trinity as to say it makes no sense.
In so far as the quran is concered I have no degree but I can put two and two together to get four. What is the quran telling Christians to do? It is telling Christians to judge therein the gospel. What is the gospel that Christians are to judge therein? Obviously the author of the quran thinks the Christian has possession of this gospel, this gospel you maintain is no book. Is the gospel a message then? Handed down orally from the apostles to the Christians at the time of prophet of Islam? What is that message that Christians of the sixth century had and believed concerning the gospel? It certaintly wasn’t anything comparable to islam, the Christian conception of the gospel was that he himself was the good news, Jesus Christ was the good news. Jesus Christ and his death and resurrection, this is the gospel. So granting the view it is not a book, Christians were to judge by that message and what? See Muhammad in it? How exactly? Remember now the quran is not talking about the gospel books but the message of Jesus Christ which Christians had. What is the implication of the quran? To simply judge by it and not convert? Or is it to judge by this message and see Muhammad in it and then become muslim? Seems to me the latter applies. I’m giving the quran credit here and iny giving it credit I see its flaws ever more transparent.
Mirza: I will not doubt mirza that the fathers wrote in a different context than the apostles, indeed they seemed to have a more indepth knowledge of Greek philosophy and were affected by it in their thinking this is not to be doubted. The question is did they invent a different faith based on those Greek assumptions? Did they for instance abandon resurrection in favour of a Greek idea of the immortality of the soul and its ascension to a place better than the material world? No that was the bahai wasn’t it? Did they then compromise the divinity of God and make him an entity comparable to Homer’s Hercules or Zeus? No, in fact they did the opposite, they maintained the divinity of God declaring that God is absolutely above any such physicality. Rather what they did with the trinity is make a distinction between the divinity of God which had existed since all eternity and the humanity of Christ which was created. Christ was the word of God, eternal, the creator of all, the judge by which every knee would bow to and be worshipped by, but he was a man. As Saint Paul said Jesus humbled himself taking on the form of a man, not seeing his equality with God to be coveted. The ideas of the great fathers of the church in this regard, separating and distinguishing essence from person were quite unique.
So is the trinity explicitely in the bible? No one should claim that, but is the content of that belief there? I Believe it to be so. Jesus Christ is God, the father is God, the spirit is God, there is one God over all to be surrended to in the bible. The trinity best explains these facts of the biblical texts, it clarifies and makes known what the text says. It doesn’t invent something that was never there, God forbid.
In my experience Bahai do not turn to logic, rationality, history or science when it comes to biblical interpretation. They turn to their revelation first and foremost and read the texts from the perspective of a bahai, not the perspective of a first century Jew in that context and society. That’s important believe it or not in interpreting the bible. For instance the bahai will insist that we have to adopt this idea of the spiritual soul being superior to the physical flesh, this quite simply doesn’t match what we find in second temple Judaism specifically since the understanding of the Pharisees was one of real resurrection. But I see no attempt in this to gain assurity of what you believe, for all the pretenstions to logic and rationality and love of God, there is no ultimate garuntee you are right when as you admit (by saying our fathers were wrong) that you have understood the faith, that you know those before you are wrong and that you are right. What prevents you from saying “I am just as right as those who believed in false things before me?” As a bahai, nothing it seems.
I read canon seven and it nowhere declares the council of Constantinople to be anathamatised or wrong. What canon seven does reaffirm is the Nicene council and that no one should contradict it. The only way you would have to maintain canon seven is directed against Nicea is if the fathers of Ephesus were of the opinion that Constantinople contradicted Nicea. I think that would be a hopeless and fruitless position to take as Ephesus was the council which set about defending calling Mary the Mother of God.
Now what is unclear in regaurds to the definition of the trinity? I run across this claim from Muslims and now bahai often but I find in the first place they do not understand the terms being used in the first place. The Heterousians for all their faults didn’t claim the other side made no sense, they claimed the other side to be wrong, arrians understood what the fathers were saying, they were saying the father and the son share the exact same essence of being. That which composes an existent entity. We are composed of matter arranged into a form to make human, thus I am composed of multiple substances that arrange this complex creature known as a human. God on the other hand is composed of divinity, an ineffable substance which cannot be perceived, touched and is totally beyond human will and understanding and it is the Christian doctrine of the trinity that say within this substance of divinity that composes God that there are three persons, father son and holy spirit sharing the exact same divinity. What is hard to understand about this? The terms and ideas have been around for 1700 years roughly speaking, the church has taken great care to talk about this subject. There is no excuse for ignorance on the trinity as to say it makes no sense.
In so far as the quran is concered I have no degree but I can put two and two together to get four. What is the quran telling Christians to do? It is telling Christians to judge therein the gospel. What is the gospel that Christians are to judge therein? Obviously the author of the quran thinks the Christian has possession of this gospel, this gospel you maintain is no book. Is the gospel a message then? Handed down orally from the apostles to the Christians at the time of prophet of Islam? What is that message that Christians of the sixth century had and believed concerning the gospel? It certaintly wasn’t anything comparable to islam, the Christian conception of the gospel was that he himself was the good news, Jesus Christ was the good news. Jesus Christ and his death and resurrection, this is the gospel. So granting the view it is not a book, Christians were to judge by that message and what? See Muhammad in it? How exactly? Remember now the quran is not talking about the gospel books but the message of Jesus Christ which Christians had. What is the implication of the quran? To simply judge by it and not convert? Or is it to judge by this message and see Muhammad in it and then become muslim? Seems to me the latter applies. I’m giving the quran credit here and iny giving it credit I see its flaws ever more transparent.
Mirza: I will not doubt mirza that the fathers wrote in a different context than the apostles, indeed they seemed to have a more indepth knowledge of Greek philosophy and were affected by it in their thinking this is not to be doubted. The question is did they invent a different faith based on those Greek assumptions? Did they for instance abandon resurrection in favour of a Greek idea of the immortality of the soul and its ascension to a place better than the material world? No that was the bahai wasn’t it? Did they then compromise the divinity of God and make him an entity comparable to Homer’s Hercules or Zeus? No, in fact they did the opposite, they maintained the divinity of God declaring that God is absolutely above any such physicality. Rather what they did with the trinity is make a distinction between the divinity of God which had existed since all eternity and the humanity of Christ which was created. Christ was the word of God, eternal, the creator of all, the judge by which every knee would bow to and be worshipped by, but he was a man. As Saint Paul said Jesus humbled himself taking on the form of a man, not seeing his equality with God to be coveted. The ideas of the great fathers of the church in this regard, separating and distinguishing essence from person were quite unique.
So is the trinity explicitely in the bible? No one should claim that, but is the content of that belief there? I Believe it to be so. Jesus Christ is God, the father is God, the spirit is God, there is one God over all to be surrended to in the bible. The trinity best explains these facts of the biblical texts, it clarifies and makes known what the text says. It doesn’t invent something that was never there, God forbid.
In my experience Bahai do not turn to logic, rationality, history or science when it comes to biblical interpretation. They turn to their revelation first and foremost and read the texts from the perspective of a bahai, not the perspective of a first century Jew in that context and society. That’s important believe it or not in interpreting the bible. For instance the bahai will insist that we have to adopt this idea of the spiritual soul being superior to the physical flesh, this quite simply doesn’t match what we find in second temple Judaism specifically since the understanding of the Pharisees was one of real resurrection. But I see no attempt in this to gain assurity of what you believe, for all the pretenstions to logic and rationality and love of God, there is no ultimate garuntee you are right when as you admit (by saying our fathers were wrong) that you have understood the faith, that you know those before you are wrong and that you are right. What prevents you from saying “I am just as right as those who believed in false things before me?” As a bahai, nothing it seems.
S
Sen_McGlinn
Guest
I agree. The first question is, what do the terms mean? The second is, do they actually correspond to any reality?
God on the other hand is composed of divinity, an ineffable substance which cannot be perceived, touched and is totally beyond human will and understanding
Is that substance an ineffable material thing, or is it rather that God is composed of divinity in the same way, analogously, to water is composed of hydrogen and oxygen? If it is an analogy, the question is, OK, not matter, but what then? And how is the analogy from the material a valid analogy for discussing God?
So God is composed of a substance, which itself is composed of three persons, like hydrogen oxygen and nitrogen make nitrous acid. But either none of these is God, in which case the argument does not show that father son and holy spirit are the same, OR one of them is God, in which case that God is himself made of a substance which is made of three persons one of which is God who is made of a substance etc, OR all three are God, in which case call three are made of a substance which made of three persons all three of which are God who are made … etc.
Sorry, it makes no sense at all to me. And because God does make sense (as a person, an uncomposed reality), I strongly suspect that the words are just words, that do not correspond to any reality at all. What has Jerusalem to do with Athens? “Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child shall in no wise enter therein.” Does any of this help anyone to enter the kingdom of God? Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child shall in no wise enter therein.
OK that answers my question above: it is an analogy. God is composed of the substance divinity, in a way analogous to “I am composed of multiple substances that arrange this complex creature known as a human.” But how far does the analogy go? Was the divinity pre-existent, and God was composed out of it? Does the general rule that all that is composed, decomposes, apply to God? Presumably not, and that’s OK: an analogy is only good in one respect, the one that it is intended to clarify. So what is it that is clarified?
No problem with that: the dual nature of Christ, the pre-eternity of the Word, its role in creation, are, so far as I can see, identical doctrines in Bahai and Christianity.
You lost me again. You said that “within this substance of divinity that composes God that there are three persons.” and now, that within Christ, the person is distinguished from the Essence. Is there the same disctinction between person and essence within the Father and the Holy Spirit? How does the Person of Christ relate to the Persons of Father Son and Holy Spirit. Is Person of Christ the same as “the Son, a Person in the trinity” and if so, why do we need an essence as well? What distinguishes an essence from a substance?
S
Sen_McGlinn
Guest
continued …
I imagine you mean, the perspective of a first-century Christian. That is, the perspective of someone who has himself been transformed by encountering Christ.
Again, is that relevant? Surely if we find it in the Gospels, but not in the second temple Judaism, this shows the impact of Christ. Not only are people transformed, new ideas arise.
You lost me in the detail there, but broadly I think the answer is, that the historical context does not exhaust the truth of the revelation. It is revelation precisely because it stands out of and confronts the historical context, and transforms people. It creates people who could not have existed without that Revelation. The process is potentially (not inevitably) progressive in the life of the community. Johannine Christianity is less Pharisaic and more Christian than Mark’s Christianity.
A
arthra
Guest
Someone wrote above:
For instance the bahai will insist that we have to adopt this idea of the spiritual soul being superior to the physical flesh, this quite simply doesn’t match what we find in second temple Judaism specifically since the understanding of the Pharisees was one of real resurrection.
My comment:
I would be wary of the perspectives of the Pharisees and what they believed was “real”…
For instance the bahai will insist that we have to adopt this idea of the spiritual soul being superior to the physical flesh, this quite simply doesn’t match what we find in second temple Judaism specifically since the understanding of the Pharisees was one of real resurrection.
My comment:
I would be wary of the perspectives of the Pharisees and what they believed was “real”…
S
Servant19
Guest
Mickey, thank you for the link to St.Basils liturgy. Did he write all of that himself or was there some creedal insertions as well?
I still have not heard from anyone, Mickey, Flame, Ignatian, anyone what they understand from the paragraph I provided from St. Basils letters several posts ago.
I have been accused of cherry picking, which to me is a wonderful way of saying that you want to avoid the question, but I genuinely want to know what is understood from his statements about the prototype being the REFLECTION of the Archetype (capital A)?
Thankyou
I still have not heard from anyone, Mickey, Flame, Ignatian, anyone what they understand from the paragraph I provided from St. Basils letters several posts ago.
I have been accused of cherry picking, which to me is a wonderful way of saying that you want to avoid the question, but I genuinely want to know what is understood from his statements about the prototype being the REFLECTION of the Archetype (capital A)?
Thankyou
F
flameburns623
Guest
I’m not deeply read in Patristics, so haven’t contributed much on that score. I do think it important to read any thinker in the wider context of their writings and what we know of their thought.
Granting that in many cases, we have to account for shifts in the thoughts of many thinkers.
Many thinkers present their ideas as a seamless, coherent whole over the life of their body of thought. Some seem to make sharp turns in thinking which make their work at one phase of life seem at odds with what they believed at another phase of writing.
The early St. Augustine was much more militant regarding predestinarian ideas than the later Augustine. There are shifts in Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, and Heidegger which are clearly identifiable.
I don’t know if you can argue this is the case with Basil.
Since I don’t know, I don’t feel competant to contribute to that aspect of the discussion.
Granting that in many cases, we have to account for shifts in the thoughts of many thinkers.
Many thinkers present their ideas as a seamless, coherent whole over the life of their body of thought. Some seem to make sharp turns in thinking which make their work at one phase of life seem at odds with what they believed at another phase of writing.
The early St. Augustine was much more militant regarding predestinarian ideas than the later Augustine. There are shifts in Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, and Heidegger which are clearly identifiable.
I don’t know if you can argue this is the case with Basil.
Since I don’t know, I don’t feel competant to contribute to that aspect of the discussion.
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