Fundamentalism in the sense that it was accompanied by the dissolution of the understanding of the 'great chain of being' and the 'intelligible nature' of the Cosmos which was found in earlier theological philosophies, to be replaced by a God who was essentially unknowable and sovereign even over reason. — Wayfarer
Have a look at What's Wrong with Ockham. A similar argument is elaborated in more detail in The Theological Origins of Modernity by Michael Gillespie. Also another book mentioned in the first article, Ideas have Consequences (apparently very popular amongst US conservatives.) — Wayfarer
I find it hard to say what my greatest joys were. Two come to mind. Achieving something that others thought was impossible and seeing other people inspired by it. And a time when I was 16-17 watching my girlfriend playing in the dust while I sat on a bench next to her. Very close to those two came listening to a great classical music concert, praying, attending a service on Mt. Athos, working in the field building houses for handicapped people (I used to dig ditches), other moments with my girlfriend and some similar experiences. — Agustino
Making love itself would rank after all these for me. It's intense (perhaps more intense than the other experiences), but, for me at least, followed by sadness, exactly as described by Spinoza. This is interesting. It feels similar to getting something you don't deserve, and then losing it. — Agustino
Nominalism clearly has consequences for theology. When it comes to particular doctrines of traditional Christian theology, nominalism, rigorously applied, obscures or renders incoherent many traditional propositions—about the relation of nature and grace, divine and human action, the transubstantiation of the Eucharist, justification and sanctification, the divine nature, etc. But even prescinding from such particular doctrines, think about what nominalism does for the very idea of Christian faith. Christian faith once could be compelling because it could claim to be the true wisdom, in a world that already imagined that true wisdom might be possible. Today we find Christian faith marginalized as a matter of private belief—even among otherwise perfectly sincere Christian believers! Christian faith offers itself as the way—a way of life and a way of knowing—indeed, a way of life because it is a way of knowing, a kind of insight, theoretical and practical, into the intelligible order of things. Faith and theology will necessarily appear markedly different in a world which cannot even conceive of what it would be to desire or possess an architectonic and life-transforming wisdom. Just as forms and their active power secured intrinsic connections between causes and their effects, between agents and ends, and between mind and reality, so they also secured intrinsic connections between what the mind grasps by reason and what the mind grasps by faith. Ockham, the father of nominalism, is indeed a crucial figure in the history of the separation of faith and reason, not because he denied that there was truth, even truth about God, but because he deprived us of the classical means of accounting for the unity of truth, including of truth about God.
According to the first mode, things accessible to the senses and the intellect are said to exist whereas anything which, ‘through the excellence of its nature’ (per excellentiam suae naturae), transcends our faculties are said not to exist. According to this classification, God, because of his transcendence is said not to exist. He is ‘nothingness through excellence’ (nihil per excellentiam).
an affirmation concerning the lower (order) is a negation concerning the higher, and so too a negation concerning the lower (order) is an affirmation concerning the higher. (Periphyseon, I.444a)
It could be that way, and it definitely is that way in Christianity, however, just from the fact that God is Love it doesn't follow that God is a person in the same way you and me are persons, or that God experiences love. — Agustino
My apologies for not acknowledging your good post on the history of the early Christians. I was thinking about what you said, but was drawing on other sources than you relied on. Not better, just different. — Bitter Crank
So the Scriptures state unequivocally that God is Love and you do not believe it? What kind of other evidence would you want that Christianity holds that God is Love? — Agustino
That wayfarer can produce an out of context quote from one of Jesus' disciples saying "God is Love", really does nothing for me. — Metaphysician Undercover
Yes! That's what I was thinking as well.but they all seem to qualify as feelings of joy accompanied by the idea of an external cause or at least occasioned by an external cause. — John
Spinoza's definition seems accurate from the point of view of a creature. But since God must be the source of Love, and in the beginning there was only God, then it seems to follow that from the divine point of view, Love does not require an external (although even God's Love was directed outwards towards the creation that was to come).So I don't think love necessarily entails an external, especially from the divine point of view. — Agustino
Yes, I fully agree. Breaking out of the prison of the self is what love enables us human beings to do.I think the salient point is that the idea of an external cause is the idea of something outside oneself; it can be interpreted as getting outside of oneself, the idea of a connection or relationship with something greater, with the world, with life, with the lover, with God. — John
Well personally I've only ever had sex with someone I was in love with. However sex - at least per Christianity - is an activity which belongs to the fallen flesh, which saps energy, and diminishes vitality. Jesus for example made it clear that in Heaven they "neither marry nor are given in marriage" - indeed marriage doesn't exist in the kingdom of God (and neither does sex for that matter). In Eastern Orthodox Christianity, lay believers are expected to abstain from sexual intercourse (not that most do, unfortunately) in periods of fasting and celebration. And it's not just Christianity, but all religious practices have for the most part seen sex negatively, for precisely this reason.I have experienced those kinds of feelings of emptiness after sex but never when I have felt love for and communion with my lover. At those times I have felt a profound sense of peace and completion after lovemaking. — John
Yes, I agree on this.Thus even Spinoza's God may be love, but It cannot love us. (Re God-as-It, it is intriguing (for me at least) and I realized just recently that there is, in English at least, no non-gendered personal pronoun). — John
Hmm. I'm not sure. Christianity isn't clear in this regard because the second person of the Trinity - Jesus Christ - is embodied. In addition, Christianity claims that there is a bodily resurrection after death. Sure, it won't be the same kind of body as this earthly one, but it will be a body nonetheless.On the other hand, to say that God is a Person is not necessarily to say that God is a person such as we are; that would be ridiculous, anyway, because we are embodied, sensual creatures, and it wouldn't seem to make any sense at all to say that God is an embodied sensual creature. — John
Well I think the "ungendered" or better "androgynous" person, as referenced in the works of, for example, Berdyaev refers to someone who is complete in and of themselves - someone who doesn't need something or someone external to complete them. Men are incomplete because they need women and vice versa. If they didn't need them, they would be complete. Of course, it doesn't follow from not needing them that they wouldn't want to be together, etc.(can we even conceive of a truly ungendered personhood, for example?) — John
Would you agree that intellect and will are both absolutely essential for personhood, whether we're talking about embodied or disembodied persons?in any case; personhood would not seem to consist merely, or even necessarily, in being an embodied, sensual creature. — John
No I too felt a fulfilment, but it was a weak fulfilment - it's like being at peace in weakness (because you fought too hard on the field of battle and are too tired [an analogy to a soldier]), instead of being at peace because of strength. — Agustino
Hmm. I'm not sure. Christianity isn't clear in this regard because the second person of the Trinity - Jesus Christ - is embodied. In addition, Christianity claims that there is a bodily resurrection after death. Sure, it won't be the same kind of body as this earthly one, but it will be a body nonetheless. — Agustino
— John
Well I think the "ungendered" or better "androgynous" person, as referenced in the works of, for example, Berdyaev refers to someone who is complete in and of themselves - someone who doesn't need something or someone external to complete them. Men are incomplete because they need women and vice versa. If they didn't need them, they would be complete. Of course, it doesn't follow from not needing them that they wouldn't want to be together, etc. — Agustino
Would you agree that intellect and will are both absolutely essential for personhood, whether we're talking about embodied or disembodied persons? — Agustino
The context is The Bible, if that helps. It is basic to all schools of Christianity. Really as this is a philosophy forum, it is hardly the place to have such arguments. — Wayfarer
Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him.
But since God must be the source of Love, and in the beginning there was only God, then it seems to follow that from the divine point of view, Love does not require an external (although even God's Love was directed outwards towards the creation that was to come). — Agustino
Why can't both God is Love and God is loving be true? :s You seem to be taking a very black and white approach to the issue. — Agustino
You seem to be assuming that the apostle John thought in a manner that philosophers are sometimes thought to think, rather than thinking like a poet. You seem to believe that, if he had noticed it, he would have realized that he misspoke when he declared that God is Love. Ironically it is what you say that seems contradictory, because you acknowledge that in saying this he spoke metaphorically, and yet you claim that he "mistakenly spoke a contradiction". If his declaration is taken as a metaphor, there is no contradiction. — John
If God holds the world in being as an act of love, if He feels infinite love for every being, if He is the source of all love, if Love is our highest Good, our highest aspiration, our very God, and if God is the ultimate object of all human love, what better way could this be poetically expressed than to say "God is Love"? — John
This appears to have reduced it to nothing more than a mere metaphysical relation, since even if it is expressed by those that do not exist, there must even in non-existence be assigned a cause. And why rather than others? I am unsure if you have confused prop. 3, but exactly how have you isolated totality (substance) from whatever is must be in a substance and the cause of all that exists? Even 'ideas' are in this same order. — TimeLine
It's a nuanced question with many possible interpretations and answers. It is said in Christian teaching that humans are made in the image of God. Spinoza says all phenomena are modes of the one substance, God. If God is love then we, just like He, do not merely love, but are modes of love, even if we do not recognize it. — John
It is true we are not God, but that does not mean that God is not us, or that we are anything but God. You are not your body, perhaps, but from that it does not follow that you body is not you. You have a body, and your body is (at least) a part of you, and as such is you (even if not the whole of you). It's really all down to language and the senses of the words we use. — John
Or again, if we accept that we are not God, but think we live and breathe and have our being in God, then if God is Love we live and breathe and have our being in love (although of course it is always possible that we do not recognize that). — John
They're already isolated in Spinoza's distinction between Substance and modes. For modes to literally be in Substance, it would mean Substance was a mere collection of finite states, which morphed into a distinct form ever time a state of the world was destroyed and emerged. — TheWillowOfDarkness
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