With Stephan, on Scope and Nature of Theology (Part I?)

Stephan being Stephan Borgehammar. In his latest arrived letter, he suggested a discussion on what is theology.

I answered online, he could have it in Swedish for private or in English for publication, after some time, I asked "shall we take it in English?"

I

me to Stephan Borgehammar

6/19/2020 at 4:54 PM

shall we take it in English?

And to get a red herring out of the way, one should not ask "is'nt HGL excessively into apologetics, isn't he focussing on the difficulties of faith, is that what theology is about?"

I am doing apologetics because it suits my temperament and what I consider a vocation as a writer (confer St. Justin), which is a different thing from a vocation as a pastor.

Both can coincide, as for St. Thomas, they can also differ as for St. Joseph of Cupertino leaving not much written and Gilbert Keith Chesterton having directed no parish, since he was a layman.

I'd say it is NOT what Swedes call "fri och förutsättningslös forskning" research that is free and ... what would the other term be in English, you know Academia better than I do?

On the other hand, very little else is, so it is hypocritical to demand that of just theology, but me knowing that demand, I avoided the faculty where you teach.

I'd say theology as a discipline, for a Catholic, is making more explicit the contents of:

• Creed
• Pater
• Sacraments
• Commandments.

A shepherd girl may be a better theologian than many priests if she only knows the rosary, but she is not expressing it academically.

Other things are Hilfs-Wissenschaften - subsidiary disciplines, right? - and much of my work comes in here.

Nevertheless, theology as such is about the same certitude that the Creed expresses.

Your turn?

Blessed Feast of the Sacred Heart!
Hans Georg Lundahl

II

Stephan Borgehammar to me

6/22/2020 at 7:53 PM

Re : shall we take it in English?

Yes, let’s take it in English. But I’ve been busy with other things and am still busy this evening. I hope I can offer some cogent thoughts tomorrow!

/stephan

III

me to Stephan Borgehammar

6/23/2020 at 11:07 AM

Re : shall we take it in English?

Looking forward!

IV

Stephan Borgehammar to me

6/23/2020 at 10:15 PM

Re : shall we take it in English?

A good starting point! ”Theology as a discipline … is making more explicit the contents of” the basic elements of the Catholic faith, i.e. Creed, Commandments, the Lord’s Prayer and the Sacraments.

Then: "a shepherd girl" (theology but not as a discipline) ”may be a better theologian than many priests”. Theology, I guess, in the sense of a firm and practical understanding of the things of God.

It might be a good idea to explore if there are more senses of the word. I checked the OED:

1 a. The study or science which treats of God, His nature and attributes, and His relations with man and the universe; ’the science of things divine’ (Hooker).

b. A particular theological system or theory.

c. Applied to pagan or non-Christian systems (’Ægyptian Theology’)

d. In trivial or disparaging use: a system of theoretical principles; an (impractical or rigid) ideology.

2 a. Rarely used for Holy Scripture (Hugo de S. Victore: ’Theologia, id est divina scriptura’). Obsolete.

b. Hence, virtues of theology = ’theological virtues’, faith, hope and charity. Obsolete.

3. Metaphysics. Obsolete.

Of these, I think we need only concern ourselves with the first two. However, St. Thomas Aquinas writes in the Summa, Part I, q. 1, a. 1, that knowledge of God is had both in sacra doctrina and in philosophy, and he calls the philosophical study of God ’Theologia’. I guess this is OED sense 3, which is different from sense 1 as also St. Thomas asserts: ”Theologia quae ad sacram doctrinam pertinet, differt secundum genus ab illa theologia quae pars philosophiae ponitur” - and the difference is of course that the latter has to do its job without revealed truth.

This might do for the first round. But my next question will be whether theology as a science is theoretical or practical. I know what Schleiermacher says, but not what St. Thomas says - yet!

/stephan

V

me to Stephan Borgehammar

6/24/2020 at 8:14 PM

Re : shall we take it in English?

I'd disagree on obsoletion of two senses.

Natural theology is the metaphysics of Aristotelic-Platonic philosophy or philosophies as far as they agree.

Holy Scripture is the most compendious and at the same time sure sum of theology (revealed, supernatural), so Hugo de S. Victore is using Holy Writ metonymically for all of theology.

The differences between revealed and natural are two:

• truths known by the natural are known more surely and with less hesitation on details from revelation;
• some truths are not known by natural theology, e. g. the Five Ways are natural theology, but one cannot conclude from them God would be incarnate and die on the Cross.

St. Thomas considers theology as BOTH a theoretical AND a practical discipline, like medicine which has both anatomy and pathology on the theoretical side and both pharmacopy and dietary rules on the practical one.

I actually, on lookiing it up, did him an injustice. It is first and foremost a theoretical one:

Article 4. Whether sacred doctrine is a practical science?
https://www.newadvent.org/summa/1001.htm#article4

Objection 1. It seems that sacred doctrine is a practical science; for a practical science is that which ends in action according to the Philosopher (Metaph. ii). But sacred doctrine is ordained to action: "Be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only" (James 1:22). Therefore sacred doctrine is a practical science.

Objection 2. Further, sacred doctrine is divided into the Old and the New Law. But law implies a moral science which is a practical science. Therefore sacred doctrine is a practical science.

On the contrary, Every practical science is concerned with human operations; as moral science is concerned with human acts, and architecture with buildings. But sacred doctrine is chiefly concerned with God, whose handiwork is especially man. Therefore it is not a practical but a speculative science.

I answer that, Sacred doctrine, being one, extends to things which belong to different philosophical sciences because it considers in each the same formal aspect, namely, so far as they can be known through divine revelation. Hence, although among the philosophical sciences one is speculative and another practical, nevertheless sacred doctrine includes both; as God, by one and the same science, knows both Himself and His works. Still, it is speculative rather than practical because it is more concerned with divine things than with human acts; though it does treat even of these latter, inasmuch as man is ordained by them to the perfect knowledge of God in which consists eternal bliss. This is a sufficient answer to the Objections.

Obviously, the shepherd girl has some grasp on both points./HGL

VI

Stephan Borgehammar to me

6/25/2020 at 9:40 PM

Re : shall we take it in English?

That wonderful shepherd girl!

I agree entirely with the Angelic Doctor, of course. However, I must now compare his answer to that given by Friedrich Schleiermacher.

Schleiermacher was also a sharp thinker, almost as sharp as St Thomas, but being a child of the Enlightenment, he could not base his system on revelation. Instead, he tried to create a system of sciences based only on reason, or to be more precise, on the concept of knowledge. Like St Thomas, he saw that there are two kinds of science (”duplex est scientiarum genus”, q 1, a 3, resp): those whose principles proceed from the natural light of the intellect and those whose principles come from a higher science. Moreover, he argued that there is another category, which he called ”positive sciences”, which gather knowledge from other sciences in order to apply them to a specific kind of human activity. Among these he counted medicine, law and theology.

So in Schleiermacher’s system, theology is constituted by a practice. It exists because the Church needs it, it contains the knowledge needed for Kirchenleitung. At the same time, because it is a science, the kind of knowledge it contains is speculative.

One should note, further, that for Schleiermacher theology includes philosophical theology, historical theology (i.e. exegesis, Church history and dogmatics) as well as practical theology. In other words, theology is the sum of sciences that a theological faculty concerns itself with. This is another common use of the word theology which, surprisingly, the OED has missed.

The huge weakness of Schleiermacher’s system, as seen with Catholic eyes, is of course that it does not recognise revelation as an objective reality. It acknowledges the necessity of Scripture and dogmatics to the Church but treats them as historical subjects. Whether they contain revealed truth or not, and if so to what extent, depends on the faith of the person who receives them.

What all this boils down to is that both Thomas and Friedrich give a correct definition of theology, but they use the word in different senses that are both legitimate:

Thomas: theology is sacra doctrina.
Friedrich: theology is scientia pro ecclesia recte gubernanda.

VII

me to Stephan Borgehammar

6/26/2020 at 7:07 PM

Re : shall we take it in English?

Without any sacra doctrina, there is no scientia pro ecclesia recte gubernanda.

Without any sacra doctrina, there is no raison d'être for the ecclesia.

I'd have considered for instance "theologia pastoralis" as "scientia pro ecclesia recte gubernanda" except that I prefer the less collectivist "ars pro animis recte gubernandis" - however, it gets its knowledge from a higher doctrine, namely from revelatio divina.

It also gets its legitimacy from the divine revelation : a Christian Church of Paris or Oxford or any other Catholic place has a claim to govern souls precisely because of the promises of Christ, which belong to the revelatio divina.

By contrast, the Alevite sect of Islam also has set a claim on governing souls, and if a Christian is confronted with the Alevite claim, either he must repudiate it on grounds of Alevite Islam being fake revelation and Christianity being true revelation, or on the grounds of needing no Church.

The latter leaves him with a conflict with objective contents of divine revelation, but also leaves, if granted, the claim of a sect on purely social grounds as empty. An Ummah or a Church becomes a private hobby within the state. That's how Gengis Khan, Kublai Khan, Attila the Hun wanted to treat it, and the attempt made Christian martyrs. At least with the Huns.

Christendom has stood for objective divine revelation, and therefore also for a freedom of the soul and conscience as against abusive state power.

I think Schleiermacher may in this sense be very close to Islam, for which there is a hadith "don't say you are a believer, say you practise a religion" and for which theology is essentially casuistics of Sharia law.

Schleiermacher and a tolerance or estimation of Islam became popular in Germanic and Lutheran-Anglican countries in the same period, 19th C. Same period in which Andersen wrote "den lille jødepigen" in which obedience to parents trumps over Christian faith, contrary to Sts Barbara, Cecily, Lucy, Agnes and Agatha.

You get why Schleiermacher is dangerous - at least if you count Christianity as objectively true?

VIII

Stephan Borgehammar to me

6/30/2020 at 9:10 AM

Re : shall we take it in English?

First, I take it we agree that ”theology” can have several meanings, including ”that which is studied and taught in a theological faculty”. Church History, for instance, can rightly be regarded as a branch of theology in this sense, even if it does not concern itself directly with doctrine (indirectly it must). A condition, of course, is that the things taught in a theological faculty are somehow relevant to the life and mission of the Church. Academics active in theological faculties sometimes become so preoccupied with some academic specialty that their research and teaching loses relevance for the Church, and is their work then theology? So maybe theology in this sense should be defined as ”that which is studied and taught in a theological faculty and which is of relevance to the Church”. I realize that this introduces an element of relativity in the definition, which strictly speaking is undesirable in definitions: ”theology” is not a definite concept but can be more or less theological. But in reality this is how things are.

Secondly, you develop an argument about revelation and sacred doctrine. I agree with the argument, but I don’t think you have represented Schleiermacher correctly when you compare his idea of religion to that of Islam. I would say the opposite: the Church has this in common with Islam that it encourages its children to do certain things and not just to believe. Recite the Creed and Pater Noster regularly, go to Mass on Sundays and other days of obligation, confess and receive the Sacrament at least once a year. On this objective ground you can call yourself a Christian, even if your faith is weak and perhaps a bit muddled.

Schleiermacher, on the contrary, located religion in the heart. ”Läßt sich nun das religiöse als ein Gegenstand behandeln? Die Idee der Gottheit ist der erste, aber diese an sich ist gar kein darstellbarer Gegenstand; ein Mensch ist religiös wenn diese äußerlich nicht darstellbare Idee in seinem Bewußtsein constitutiv ist, und dieses sich als eine Aussage des lebendigen Verhältnisses des Menschen zu dieser Idee zu erkennen giebt” (Praktische Theologie, p. 88). Thus, God or revelation cannot be an object in Schleiermacher’s epistemology. Humans relate not directly to God, but to their idea of God. Revelation, consequently, is the expression of that relation by particularly gifted religious people. And worship is ”Darstellung” of a community’s religious consciousness.

All this, I suspect, follows as a consequence of the Reformation. The Reformers thought they could create a church based on their personal understanding of Scripture. But then authority moves from Scripture to the individual. Religion becomes interpretation, whether of Scripture or of one’s own subjective ”idea of God”. Epistemologically, Schleiermacher is basically right: as humans, we do not have the capacity to perceive God directly, and revelation is always filtered through the individual consciousness of the prophet or apostle. But together, in the bond of Love, which is the Holy Spirit, we can still learn Truth.

Perhaps the problem of Protestantism and of rationalism is one and the same: they both attempt to find certainty without having to rely on other people, without trust and humility but solely through the intellect.

My Comment

I had missed one major thing, namely:

Epistemologically, Schleiermacher is basically right: as humans, we do not have the capacity to perceive God directly, and revelation is always filtered through the individual consciousness of the prophet or apostle. But together, in the bond of Love, which is the Holy Spirit, we can still learn Truth.

It is answered in XVI.

IX

me to Stephan Borgehammar

6/30/2020 at 11:24 AM

Re : shall we take it in English?

"I would say the opposite: the Church has this in common with Islam that it encourages its children to do certain things and not just to believe. Recite the Creed and Pater Noster regularly, go to Mass on Sundays and other days of obligation, confess and receive the Sacrament at least once a year. On this objective ground you can call yourself a Christian, even if your faith is weak and perhaps a bit muddled."

I don't think one is a Christian if one doesn't believe Christ rose, since that involves at least interior denial of a part of the Creed.

Conversely, if you can't say the Our Father (Péguy had years through a diffculty with "fiat voluntas tua" and I have now with "sicut et nos dimittimus debitoribus nostris"), but believe the Creed and the Catholic interpretation of it, you are a Christian, albeit a bad one.

In Christianity, the theoretical primes the practical. In Islam, the practical primes the theoretic, as with Muhammed's cited inversion of theologic virtues.

Islam and Protestantism have sermonality in common. The Catholic Bible has 680 chapters out of 1184 chapters as history. The Coran directly inverts the proportions, as I noted here:

[Creation vs. Evolution : Muslims and my Creationism]
http://creavsevolu.blogspot.com/2020/06/muslims-and-my-creationism.html

And when the Bible reading was in vulgar tongue, the sermon no longe served to tell the story, but to sermonalise about either it or the other readings./HGL

X

me to Stephan Borgehammar

6/30/2020 at 6:58 PM

examples of academic church history errors

Formerly on Protestant faculties (still some and Bible schools):

• no trace of early Church monarchic episcopacy
• De Martelaersspiegel & Foxe's Book of Martyrs
• St. Ambrosius never proposed or supported real presence, as per
  
  The History of Protestantism
  by 'James Aitken Wylie'
  Book 1 — Progress From the First to the Fourteenth Century
  
  
• apostolic succession broken by black century of popes

Still on mainstream:

• Marcan priority (tradition says Matthean)
• all synoptics after 70 (C. S. Lewis dealt with that one)
• Church Fathers did not care for literal Bible interpretation

In other words, while Academia studies Church history, it does not always do so very well./HGL

XI

Stephan Borgehammar to me

7/1/2020 at 6:34 AM

Re : shall we take it in English?

If you "believe the Creed and the Catholic interpretation of it, you are a Christian, albeit a bad one”. Yes, provided that you are baptised, of course. And conversely, if you are baptised and have but fides informis, not fides caritate formata, you are also a Christian. But saying your prayers, attending Mass and using the sacraments will improve your faith. Perhaps we can agree that the Catholic way strikes a sound balance between doing and believing, just as the Gospels teach what Christ said and did and Christ’s commission to the Church is to ”teach them to observe all that I have commanded you” (Matth. 28:20).

Do you have any comments on the epistemological question? It seems to me that the idea that a person can arrive at certain truth by unaided, ”unprejudiced” thinking is at the root of many problems in Western thought since the end of the Middle Ages. Descartes tried to build a whole system of thought on his solipsistic ”cogito, ergo sum”, but overlooked the fact that his ability to formulate that sentence was given to him by language, which in turn was given to him by the people he grew up among. Thus, if we can’t rely on others, then we can know nothing at all (except what our senses and instincts tell us, like the animals).

In a separate message you commented that Church historians are often wrong. True, but Church History is still a useful subject for pastors and has a legitimate claim to be a part of Theology. I think I shall have to write to the OED and point out that their definitions of theology lack ”theology as an academic subject”!

/stephan

XII

me to Stephan Borgehammar

7/1/2020 at 11:27 AM

Re : shall we take it in English?

"It seems to me that the idea that a person can arrive at certain truth by unaided, ”unprejudiced” thinking is at the root of many problems in Western thought since the end of the Middle Ages."

I disagree. The problem is not thinking a man can arrive at any given truth, but believing that this dispenses with the need for revelation.

"Descartes tried to build a whole system of thought on his solipsistic ”cogito, ergo sum”, but overlooked the fact that his ability to formulate that sentence was given to him by language, which in turn was given to him by the people he grew up among."

The problem with Descartes, I agree with the late Father Houghton, was rather to imagine he could still do so after an attempt at general scepticism "to purge out errors."

Cogito ergo sum is not solipsistic. It seems he found it compatible at a first analysis with solipsism, and then did a second analysis to show why solipsism doesn't hold. The problem is not at all "cogito ergo sum" but the huge mass of unanalysed and often ill founded doubt on many other truths that preceded it.

Errors are not purged out by general scepticism, but by specific grounds derived from certainties.

"True, but Church History is still a useful subject for pastors and has a legitimate claim to be a part of Theology."

And a legitimate part of reflection of amateur theologers.

I tend to rely neither over much on Academic Church historians (you are one I find less objectionable than others) nor on he parallel Academia in for instance Patriot University or Bible schools, but rather on hints from Late Antiquity and Middle Ages historians not primarily concerned with Church History.

C. S. Lewis in Allegory of Love and in combatting modern prejudices with Ptolemy and in parts of Selected Literary Essays, R. R. Bolgar, The Classical Heritage and its Beneficiaries, Umberto Eco's analysis of Inquisition and heresies in Name of the Rose ... or where both Academia and parallel Academia agree, like St. Augustine of Hippo was no Baptist.

Ultimately, sources.

I would say it is an aspect of revealed theology - if Bible gives laws for Christian conduct, hagiography gives "case law" or "law by precedent" (which English / American legal systems still have), while continuities and discontinuities in historically known communities comments on Matthew 28:20 "all days" and their presence in different countries on "all nations".

Church History doesn't reveal new doctrine, but is an ongoing comment on already revealed doctrine. Therein parallel to the status of private revelations (I'm not claiming to give such, if this was in any way an ultimate intent, my colleagues are Chesterton and Belloc, not Sts Bridget of Vadstena or Catherine of Siena).

It is useful to pastors, but too important to be left entirely to them.

"Thus, if we can’t rely on others, then we can know nothing at all (except what our senses and instincts tell us, like the animals)."

Relying on others in general, very agreed.

Relying on specific others because experts, very much disagreed.

C. S. Lewis refused, rightly, to rely on NT experts claiming Synoptics were post-70, since including a prophecy of the Destruction of Jerusalem, since he could tell very simply, the argument is not derived from there expertise in manuscripts, but from the prejudice that miracles and therefore accurate predictions of non-impending events (how could Jesus know, not that Romans would sooner or later destroy Jerusalem, but that this would happen before all His hearers had died, if He was not making a miraculous prediction? Or that [Pella in] the mountains [of Jordan] would be safe?).

Hence, I will rely on experts for facts they observe, like carbon level in remains of Gobekli Tepe being 25 pcm, more or less, but not on their conclusion, that since it started with 100 pcm this implies two halflives of age.

Hans Georg Lundahl

XIII

Stephan Borgehammar to me

7/2/2020 at 9:40 AM

Re : shall we take it in English?

I think I explained the philosophical part of my argument badly. Of course a man can arrive at any given truth, provided that he has sufficient evidence, time and intelligence. The problem I discern in the development of Western philosophy since that Middle Ages is its distrust of human perception and thought in general and of tradition in particular. This distrust has led to attempts to construct whole philosophical systems that don’t rely on tradition and that are perfectly certain. I regard Descartes’ cogito as one of the first such attempts. Others followed: Francis Bacon, Locke, Hume, Kant, Marx, Russell … These attempts invariably lead to one of two pitfalls: the shallow thinkers become positivists, the deep thinkers become relativists, subjectivists and sceptics.

The problem has several aspects. Logically, all thinking must proceed from first principles. If you don’t admit any first principles, you will get nowhere. If you admit one single first principle, like ”cogito, ergo sum,” you will not get very far because the whole of reality cannot be reduced to a single principle. Trying to do so is the error which C. S. Lewis, at the end of Miracles, called philosophical monism.

Practically, the problem is that you can’t start from zero. As in my previous example: Descartes overlooked the fact that he took the existence of language for granted, which in turn presupposes the existence of a human community and a living tradition. As the wonderful English philosopher Mary Midgley has said, ”we always start in the middle of things”.

The reason I brought this up was that it throws light on why Schleiermacher downplays the value of revelation. He was a sharp and deep thinker indeed. You can easily find fault with individual opinions of his, if you proceed from different assumptions than he did, but if you regard his system as a whole, you will find that it is all consistent and that every single opinion in it ultimately derives from first principles that are difficult to criticize. Thus, when he reduces revelation to subjective truth - the recognition by the individual that the words of Scripture have personal relevance for him - this is based on a solid ontology and epistemology. So where does he go wrong? I argue: precisely in trying to construct a system from scratch, and not recognising the binding force of Tradition with a capital T, i.e. the living Spirit of Truth continuously active in Holy Church.

On your other points: I admit that I am not familiar with the details of Descartes’ philosophy or his development. I used the cogito as emblematic of the rationalistic tendency in Western philosophy which I tried to describe.

On Church History: there are many good, reliable historians in addition to the ones you mention. But I’m surprised you mentioned Umberto Eco. Isn’t he a modernist? Enlighten me!

Hagiography as case law: good point! Thank you!

Relying on experts: it depends on the situation. If I need my car repaired, I have to rely on the repairman (who may or may not in fact be competent). In matters of history, natural history or philosophy, I respect the expert who has spent much more time and effort on the subject than I can ever do, but I also recognise the fact that these subjects leave much room for uncertainty and for faulty conclusions based on faulty premises or unconscious bias. I try to make the same reservations about myself, i.e. I try to recognise both the extent and the limits of my own expertise.

/stephan

XIV

me to Stephan Borgehammar

7/2/2020 at 11:30 AM

Re : shall we take it in English?

Reducing a philosophy to one axiom is indeed bad.

But the problem with Descartes is, he put systematic doubt first.

As Fr. Bryan Houghton pointed out, if you doubt that much, you can doubt the existence of the thinker behind the thought too.

Obviously cogito ergo sum is a perfectly valid conclusion. If you wake up in a dark room and don't know whether light is blocked or has ceased to be where you are, you can say "cogito ergo sum, either I didn't die or there is an afterlife". When a moment later you feel a sore on the back on your head, you can add "doleo, ergo sum et aliud quoque est, mihi nocens".

The problem with Descartes is, he is trying to reduce epistemology to what you can know when waking up in a dark room with a knock on your head still sore ... in other words, systematic doubt.

Showing how certain sane first principles (plural) can lead to part of the revealed truth, but not all of it, cannot be put in the same basket. That was the business of St. Thomas and of Fr. Bryan Houghton.

And the problem with Schleiermacher is that none of this in any way shape or form proves revelation were not needed (for other truths not deducible, like Christ dying on a Cross, or pardoning enemies required; for ease of those having no time to pursue the philosophical pursuits; for access not only thus universal as to outreach among all classes and all ages, including the shepherd girl, but also without admixture of error, like not tumbling over into Averroism over wondering why a perfect God would bother to create or rule a creation less perfect than He).

I'd like to know what were the first assumptions of Schleiermacher leading him to downplay revelation.

As he wrote in Germany with Thirty Years War a bit more than a century behind, indeed more than 150 years after the Westphalian Peace Treaty, it cannot be excluded that he went something like "appeals to revelation do not guarantee [intersubjective] objectivity, [the kind of objectivity you seek from a court being partial to neither,] therefore revelation is not [epistemically] objective ..." - with words I put in square brackets being left out from his explicitation ... like so many Swedes today.

Obviously, the practical response is, Schleiermacher, Kant, Secularism do not add any impartial umpire, they add another party to the historic mess after the Reformation.

Umberto Eco, as far as I know was even more modernist than Christian modernists, he was postmodern and arguably non-Christian. As such he had no stake between for instance a Catholic or an Evangelical whom he would have considered as both being back in those Middle Ages we are supposed to know better than even if it's arguable we don't ...

All I need to do is argue, he portrayed the Middle Ages accurately with a kind of artificial sympathy rather than a partisan one, but he forgot they could be objectively right, and we not - the way out of the conundrum could be, if we cannnot prove them wrong, what if they could prove "us" wrong? An us from which I except myself, as much as I can ...

I would like to know where Church History is coming, I sense a parallel which isn't one perhaps upcoming.

Especially as you have a close acquaintance with Anders Piltz OP Tert., of whom I have some experience, for better things, but also for this.

XV

me to Stephan Borgehammar

7/2/2020 at 12:58 PM

Re: shall we ... Two more on previous

1) "If you admit one single first principle, like ”cogito, ergo sum,” you will not get very far because the whole of reality cannot be reduced to a single principle. Trying to do so is the error which C. S. Lewis, at the end of Miracles, called philosophical monism."

C. S. Lewis was thinking of ontological principles, like matter, energy, spirit, and acting on uniform principles. Like reality plays checkers, never chess. At the end of Miracles, I don't think he dealt with what you are thinking of, axiomatic "monism".

2) "If I need my car repaired, I have to rely on the repairman (who may or may not in fact be competent)."

There are severe punishments for incompetent car repairmen or heart surgeons.

There are not for incompetent shrinks or palaeontologists, T. Rex won't resurrect and contradict the one, and the victims of shrinks are often too marginalised to have their complaints heard, unlike victims of incompetent car repairmen.

"In matters of history, natural history or philosophy, I respect the expert who has spent much more time and effort on the subject than I can ever do,"

I do not take the verdict of the expert as an irreducible unit. I distinguish between what in the nature of the case he must know better than I, like how much carbon 14 expressed in pcm there is an charcoal from Göbekli Tepe, and what he cannot know better than I, namely how many pcm there were prior to its cessation of plant respiration. We both know he checked the one, we both know he could not check the other.

And I will not waste any deference on blatant nonsense like Carl Krieg's:

"we should note that this concept of biblical inerrancy initially arose after the Reformation in the period known as Protestant Orthodoxy, and was a factor in the Thirty Years war, in which about 8 million died."

We both know "initially" and "originally" and "uniquely" are dangerous terms that imply universal negatives about "before" or "other". They should be carefully checked, as C. S. Lewis reminded, not presumed.

Here is how I deal with him:

[Creation vs. Evolution : Carl Krieg : Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire]
https://creavsevolu.blogspot.com/2020/07/carl-krieg-liar-liar-pants-on-fire.html

And it has been sent to "Progressing Spirit" which is where he writes for./HGL

XVI

me to Stephan Borgehammar

7/2/2020 at 11:12 PM

"Epistemologically, Schleiermacher is basically right:"

"Epistemologically, Schleiermacher is basically right: as humans, we do not have the capacity to perceive God directly, and revelation is always filtered through the individual consciousness of the prophet or apostle. But together, in the bond of Love, which is the Holy Spirit, we can still learn Truth."

I would disagree, I missed this, am now copying to the blog, so, came across this.

Revelation is adapted, actively by God, to the capacity of the prophet or apostle.

The prophet does not need to perceive God directly, God makes sure all he sees is true about Himself and no truth is left out or distorted.

Seeing St. Veronica's face cloth is not seeing the physical face of Jesus, and yet it is so.

It is not primarily the bond of love, but the accumulated theological knowledge in it that makes assessment of revelation, up to when it was finished, and of private revelation even now, possible as to coherence with what was previously revealed.

However, as with the revelation, so with the assessment by the Church - God makes sure nothing is distorted. This comes with the bond of love, and with the virtue of love, and yet someone with a dead faith may still have perfectly good theological assessment, unless his sin is attacking the doctrinal point in question.

Epilogue

I am still waiting for how Church History as useful to pastors might be relevant for this ... if given a point of application, I'll try to update./HGL

I hope it won't be one where the "pastor" (as submitting to Pope Michael, I don't think he is mine) shows total ineptitude as such and with applying any "parallels" coming to his mind./HGL

Continued on:
Beginning to update, Scope and Nature of Theology (Part II)
https://correspondentia-ioannis-georgii.blogspot.com/2020/07/beginning-to-update-scope-and-nature-of.html