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21436655 No.21436655 [Reply] [Original]

Read Augustine.

>> No.21436689

>>21436655
Why?

>> No.21437819

Bump because curious

>> No.21437825

Though some might find him overbearing, St Augustine saved me. Would recommend for any young person trying to find their way.

>> No.21437881

>>21436655
No

>> No.21437885

Read Sneed.

>> No.21437909

Is he horror? Which of his stories does he rip the still flaming hearts of his enemies out? Looks badass.

>> No.21438018

*changes Yahweh for Neo-Platonist God*

Nothing personnel, Kid

>> No.21439298

>>21438018
This was pretty much took from reading Confessions. Christianity really is just Judeo-Greco syncretism. I'm not sure how to feel about it. Christians that I've talked with just seem to think all of its concepts like the logos or nous came out of a unique vacuum.

>> No.21439305

>>21438018
>>21439298
Explain for brainlet

>> No.21439325

>>21439298
There's a difference between merging Christianity with Greek philosophy and using Greek philosophy to elucidate Christian concepts. Protestantism has tried to stop the former in favor of only the latter.

>> No.21439326

>>21439305
To make a long story short, Jesus of Nazareth somehow became a locus for the fusion of Judaic and Hellenistic religion and philosophy.

>> No.21439379

>>21439305
Catholic theology is a one to one rip off of Greek thought; with one branch, Augustine's, tending to Plato, and the other, Aquinas', to Aristotle. Neither added anything important to the Greek originals which were orders of magnitude greater.

Augustine is still a fun writer.

>> No.21439392

>>21439379
One thing that has to be remembered is the influence of Pseudo-Dionysius. In the sixth century a set of Neo-Platonic Christian writings appeared which claimed their author to be Dionysius the Areopagite, a pagan who was converted by Paul in the book of Acts. There was resistance at first but eventually most Christians came to believe that these were actually written by Dionysius, which would give them immense antiquity and authority, and they were extremely influential until they were proven to be false in the 1400s.

>> No.21439397

>>21439392
Also some Orthodox Christians still actually believe they were written by Dionysius despite all evidence to the contrary. Catholics eventually accepted that they're fakes but their influence is still there.

>> No.21439432

>>21439305
By the time the Romans conquered Israel it had already been thoroughly steeped in Greek culture and philosophy during the long occupation by the Seleukid Empire as well as by proximity to the Platonist stronghold of Alexandria. The initially influential Valentinian sect of Christianity originated from Alexandria, and was explicitly synergistic with Platonic religion.

>> No.21439433

>>21439397
You can read about it here
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pseudo-dionysius-areopagite/
Example:

>The hierarchic treatises ... suggest that the sensible and intelligible realms are not places reached by a single being, but different kinds of beings, and that the vision of God is handed from being to being downward through the levels of the hierarchy. On the Celestial Hierarchy describes the intelligible realm as divided into nine ranks of beings: the seraphim, cherubim, thrones, dominions, powers, authorities, principalities, archangels, and angels. On the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy describes the human beings within the church as divided into eight ranks: the hierarchs or bishops, priests, deacons, monks, laity, catechumens, penitents, and the demon-possessed.

>The hierarchs, highest within the human hierarchy, contemplate the intelligible realm directly, though presumably they contemplate only its lowest level: the angels. The visible result of the hierarchs’ contemplation of the angels is the series of rites belonging to the Christian church.

>The monks and laity are able to engage the passionless part of their souls only through the passionate part, and so they require a visible trigger—the symbol—to stimulate their intelligible contemplation. The ranks of hierarch, priest, and deacon are in charge of administering the rites ... The priests illuminate the laity, who are able to receive the intelligible truth. The hierarchs perfect, a task whose initiate seems ideally to be the monk, since Dionysius identifies the monks as leading the more perfect life of those who are not explicitly consecrated as clergy.

>> No.21439559

>>21439392
>until they were proven to be false
how?

>> No.21439595

>>21439559
Heavy reliance on the Neoplatonist philosopher Proclus (d. 485), sometimes almost word for word. Various other anachronisms, such as references to liturgical practices that were established in the late 5th century, as well as to liturgical practices specific to Syria (the text was first brought forth by Syrian monophysites, e.g. Severus of Antioch). No record at all of the text anywhere before the early 6th century. Initial opposition by some Christians at the time (e.g. Hypatius of Ephesus), on the basis that no one had ever heard of it before and there was no citation or evidence of it in the church fathers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudo-Dionysius_the_Areopagite#Dating

>The Florentine humanist Lorenzo Valla (d. 1457), in his 1457 commentaries on the New Testament, did much to establish that the author of the Corpus Areopagiticum could not have been St. Paul's convert, though he was unable to identify the actual historical author. William Grocyn pursued Valla's lines of textual criticism, and Valla's critical viewpoint of the authorship of the highly influential Corpus was accepted and publicized by Erasmus from 1504 onward, for which he was criticized by Catholic theologians. In the Leipzig disputation with Martin Luther, in 1519, Johann Eck used the Corpus, specifically the Angelic Hierarchy, as argument for the apostolic origin of papal supremacy, pressing the Platonist analogy, "as above, so below".

>> No.21439728

>>21437825
Do I have to read something before confessions?

>> No.21439770

>>21439728
No

>> No.21439773

>>21439298
>Christianity really is just Judeo-Greco syncretism
This is precisely the reason I love Christianity. This makes it infinitely rich and beautiful.

>> No.21439781

>>21439559
Look up Renaissance humanism and the Donation of Constantine

Modern Western historical consciousness really starts with 15th century textual criticism. The Renaissance fags got so unbelievably good at analyzing every single surviving Latin text (originally because they were trying to replicate its style and revive Latin and classical culture) that they could tell you by sheer "feel" what era a text was likely from, they could tell you when certain idioms or turns of phrase or words began to be used (thus giving termini post quem and ante quem for a text). They got better and better at analysis of things mentioned in the text as well, again, basically creating historical consciousness via the sense that there was not one generic "man" or even "Roman man" but continuous change, development, eras of decadence and brilliance, etc.

>> No.21439784

The way he roasts all the Roman “gods” in city of god is hilarious. Actually knowing that catholic theology has its foundation in Plato made me appreciate it a lot more.

>> No.21439983

>>21436655
What was the amazing religious concept that Augustine came up with again? I remember modern day philosophers and scientists speaking of some idea that has not moved at all since Augustine

>> No.21440081

>>21439983
came up with justifications for christians defending themselves and going to war those were huge back in the day because really early christians wouldn't serve in the military

>> No.21440105

>>21440081
This doesnt sound right. I thought it was some kind of abstract philosophical idea that everyone struggles to answer

>> No.21440130

>>21440105
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_war_theory

Every country on the planet now does some version of this to justify going to war. Pretty crazy

>> No.21440150

>>21439983
Maybe the "what is time" thing? Or the nunc stans

>> No.21440898

>>21439298
>Christianity really is just Judeo-Greco syncretism
Obviously. Read Zizioulas. His book "Doxa & Praxis" makes it painfully obvious that Christianity is nothing more than a combination of Platonism and biblical Judaism. Not sure if it has been translated to English though.
By the way, Zizioulas is an Orthodox bishop. I don't think anyone can blame him for being biased or anti-Christian.

>> No.21440929

>>21439433
lol hilarious
that's Plato's theory of forms but with extra steps. Why are christcucks unable to realize this?

>> No.21440937

>>21440929
>Why are christcucks unable to realize this?
Protestants did.

>> No.21440944

>>21440937
based. imagine being so pissed off at the pope that you start protesting against your own religion, thoroughly deconstructing it in the process

>> No.21441739

>>21436655
I have a lot of problems with Augustine, honestly...

>unbaptized infants will be damned

Horrible to contemplate. Beyond horrible to contemplate, and of all his beliefs the one which is most incomprehensible from a modern point of view.

>the way salvation works is that God orchestrates a situation beforehand in which He infallibly knows (*in advance!*) that you will respond to His grace

In retrospect, this position lays the ground for modern determinism and I would even argue that Jansenists do not *really* misread Augustine (one Jansenist said that he had read Augustine's complete works like 30 times or something)... read some of his letters where he responds to abbots complaining that the monks they chastise respond that they merely haven't received the grace to follow God (and thus they shouldn't be reproved). Augustine simply replies to the abbots that said lazy monks probably *haven't* received such grace, and that such reproof might be occasion of it... in other words, Augustine's own perception of his own theory seems to be what would centuries later be called Jansenist.

>the state should take actions against heretics, but when we are on the losing side, they shouldn't

I don't really have a problem with this one, as the world and politics have grown more intolerable, I get the necessity. But he again seems rather harsh and open to the accusation of hypocrisy here...

>sex between married couples when done not for the express purpose of procreation involves at least venial sin

again, man, with the rigorism... the modern Catholic view has progressed to the idea that the act need only be *open* to procreation, not that it needs to involve a positive conscious intent to beget offspring. Augustine of course was not as strict as some (he even wrote defending the goodness of sex against the Manichees), but this is a little error which I think had negative effects on the Latin west.

So history has shown him to be excessively strict in 3 major ways... his blanket denial of limbo (or the salvation of any unbaptized infants, even those whose parents intend to baptize them), his apparent over-emphasis on grace over nature (which again was forgivable, given that at the time he was arguing against literal Pelagians), his sort of brutal picture of Church/state relations, and his harsh view on sexuality... he's not as bad as an actual heretic, like Tertullian, and of course he was a genius, a blazing light, a holy saint... God allowed the eastern fathers to fall into some errors of laxity, and he permitted Augustine to fall into some errors of rigorism.

>>21438018
"I am that I am" basically proves that Aristotle had stumbled upon the (natural) truth about God, just as John's gospel basically vindicates Plato.

>> No.21441799

>>21441739
Note that I make all these criticisms from the POV of someone who loves St. Augustine, or is at least fascinated with him as a person. There is so much to be said about why he's so interesting. He simultaneously stands for ultimate transgression (in that he rebelled at the deepest level against the entire civilization which had produced him) and ultimate authority (as the Ur-Father of the Latin West and thus the West in general), for burning passion (I believe the early parts of his confessions were censored in the middle ages or somewhere thereabouts) and the heights of repression (or sublimation). He is lionized (by the Church) and demonized (by all her enemies, who take his "original sin" to be the original sin of society itself). He was also a theological-philosophical genius whose theories on grace, sin, salvation, redemption, language, history, the trinity, the soul, and time are in many respects unsurpassed.

Of all ancient thinkers he is by far the most modern (not to mention the most medieval—in the sense that virtually all medieval latin theology is simply an elaboration on Augustine), but also, for the reasons I listed, also the most inextricably alien.

>>21440929
The idea is that the theory of forms was truthful. The pagans discovered truths about the nature of immaterial things which could then be synthesized by Christianity (reconciled with Christ's revelation) without contradiction. Do you know what the truth is? Many people can discover different parts of it... I have no idea why people think that post-Christ thinkers being influenced by pagan philosophy is some kind of BANTZ... Christ did not come to deliver a definitive philosophy, but to reveal the truth about man and God. Absolute Truth of course can be reconciled with philosophical truth, there's literally no reason why it couldn't.

>> No.21441804

>>21439983
He's called the "Doctor of Grace" for his concept that God is the one who makes us turn to God (it is not *just* that we turn to God entirely of our own power, and God "rewards" us for this turn with more grace—God Himself is in the act of repentance).

Really a very pious and beautiful concept.

>> No.21442114

Reminder it’s
>Uh-Gus-Tin
Not
>Aug-Uh-Steen

>> No.21442348

>>21442114
Actually, it's Austin (formerly Augustinus)

>> No.21442378
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21442378

>>21441799
>I have no idea why people think that post-Christ thinkers being influenced by pagan philosophy is some kind of BANTZ... Christ did not come to deliver a definitive philosophy, but to reveal the truth about man and God. Absolute Truth of course can be reconciled with philosophical truth, there's literally no reason why it couldn't.

Holy shit someone who's actually intelligent.

The entire reason scholastic theology even exists is because when the West regained Aristotle he seemed to have definitive answers for a lot of topics and questions. Christians could either stick their heads in the sand and ignore him, or they could engage with him. They did the latter, and so we get Aquinas, Bonaventure, Scotus, etc..

It's not wrong to pull what's True from non-Christian traditions and make use of it. You just need to keep in mind that Scripture has the final word when there's a dispute.

>> No.21442394

>>21436655
I've read Calvin which means I've read the best parts of Augustine.

>> No.21442493

>>21442378
>You just need to keep in mind that Scripture has the final word when there's a dispute.
Scripture never has the final word. *your interpretation* of scripture has the final word, if you're a protestant. and your opponent who disagrees with your interpretation? *his interpretation* of scripture has the final word for him.

>> No.21442507

>>21442493
>Scripture never has the final word.
>*your interpretation* of scripture has the final word
>if you're a protestant.
So... not always?

>> No.21442511
File: 1.81 MB, 2768x3609, Paulus_VI,_by_Fotografia_Felici,_1969.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
21442511

>>21442493
I'm not a Protestant.

"Rome has spoken, the matter is settled."

>> No.21442535

>>21436655
I have. What's next?

>> No.21442536

>>21442535
Nietzsche

>> No.21442560

>>21442507
>So... not always?
Well, there's a sense in which scripture *does* have the final word... but in truth, it is a particular *interpretation* of scripture that has the final word. Which ultimately comes down to a question of authority: does it rest with the individual interpreter, or an ecclesiastical institution? And if the latter, *which* institution?
Which Church?

>>21442511
>I'm not a Protestant.
Okay. Me too.

>> No.21442563

>>21442535
serious answer: bonaventure or kempis

>> No.21442568

>>21442563
My answer was serious; Nietzsche finished what Augustine started.
When you know, you know.

>> No.21442573

>>21442568
Nietzsche doesn't accept Christ Crucified or Christ Risen.

>> No.21442577

>>21442560
>Which Church?
No church, not anymore. I fell into disbelief. Now, I just read Christian philosophers (and those they were influenced by) because for some reason I still feel like it's important for me to know, even though occasionally I feel like I'm wasting just my time.

>> No.21442585

>>21442573
He was both

>> No.21442586

>>21442577
>I feel like I'm wasting just my time.
just wasting my time*

>> No.21442640

>>21442511
Roma Locuta Est...

I love latin

>> No.21442642

>>21442568
Nietzsche isn't even a flea on Augustine's sock

>> No.21442668

>>21442577
ironic

I'm obsessed with theology even though so far I've been unable to find joy in Christ (or even to pray most of the time)

it's a bizarre place to be in. I intellectually acknowledge that it's all true, but I just can't get it to LIVE for me. it's really, really weird. God help me (truly)

>> No.21442673

>>21436689
>>21437819
Because he explains how the importance of worshipping and loving our Lord Jesus Christ while delving into critically psychological evaluations as to why he committed different sins throughout his life. (ie He psychoanalyzes himself)
>example
He recounts to us an episode of his childhood where he stole fruit from pear trees because of the fact that “it was simply forbidden to do so” rather than actually wanting to them. He stole them not because he actually wanted to eat the pears but because he got off doing something that’s morally taboo. He’s sort of a precursor to thinkers like Jung and Freud but differs from them by delving into theological ideas and metaphysics.

>> No.21442676

>>21442673
>correction
**actually wanting to eat them

>> No.21442681

>>21436655
I've read Confession, I aim on reading City of God next year.

>> No.21442686

>>21442668
For me it was focusing on the miraculous nature and mystery of Christ's sacrifice and thinking about it while doing outwardly focused prayer, prayer for others, especially animals and for general goodness in the world. When I wasn't praying for myself or only focused on myself, it made it easier to see the miraculous nature of Christ's sacrifice and God's love. Have you tried reading Philo? It's slow to get into but he has some of the best descriptions of mystical approach to a personal God rather than an abstract principle.

>> No.21442883
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21442883

>>21442686
The focus on love is really important. That concept is so central to what it actually means to be Christian but a lot of the approaches to Christianity from the outside seem to miss it, to me.

Maybe because it sounds too "homey" or too corny, and not esoteric enough?

But you won't get anywhere as a for-real Christian without love. That's the whole point of the Incarnation.

>> No.21442936

>>21442883
I don't know what love is or even if it exists, somehow. Or I recognize it intellectually, but I never really feel it.

>> No.21443074
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21443074

>>21442936
You've never felt love?

You've never even felt love for your parents or siblings?

>> No.21443341

>>21442686
Who is Philo?

>> No.21443381

>>21436655
Doing, and not too impressed.

>> No.21443499

>>21441799
>which could then be synthesized by Christianity (reconciled with Christ's revelation) without contradiction
Okay. But why would you do that? Nobody is explaining to me WHY it's necessary to combine Hellenic PHILOSOPHY with Christian FAITH. Do you understand what I'm saying? The Greeks used their brains to come up with various theories about the world. Then the Christians came along and they shoe-horned their FAITH into philosophy. Why did they do that? In other words, Christians mold reality in order to fit their presuppositions. For example, the Christians presuppose that Jesus Christ is the son of God, so they spend their lives trying to make sense of that. The possibility that their presuppositions about God are wrong never crosses their minds...
Please, can you tell me why I should accept Augustinian theology instead of Platonic philosophy? What's missing from Plato's theology, and why does it need to be combined with Christian faith?

>> No.21443513

>>21442378
Please, answer my questions in >>21443499. Thanks, intelligent anon.

>> No.21443611

>>21443499
Also, Thomas Aquinas had to conclude that the Bible only described God by analogy in order to reconcile it with his Aristotelian-Averroist philosophy. So God isn't actually loving, it's just human language used as an analogy, because actually God is the abstract God of Averroes, not the personal God described in the Bible.

>> No.21443831

>>21443074
Not really, no. I thought about this for a while and realized it sounded evil to say no, but I don’t know what else to say. I just feel guilt or sadness about them, not affection.

I know that affection isn’t love; love is a choice. But it’s often associated with affection.

>> No.21443834

>>21443611
apophatic theologians centuries earlier denied that God was loving (nothing can be predicated of God, he’s *that* ineffable)

>> No.21443846

>>21443499
Faith and reason aren’t in conflict. They’re both true—it’s good to reconcile non-conflicting systems of truths.

You’re confusing philosophy for theology, nature for what is above nature. People come to faith through grace, and then philosophize about the truth they’ve received. With pure “natural” philosophy, it’s different—you can get along on your own without supernatural grace.

>> No.21443956

>>21443499
You need to accept Christianity because when you die God will hold you to account for every act you ever committed throughout your life, and if you do not put your faith in Christ as the propitiation for your sins, you will be punished accordingly forever.

>> No.21444019

>>21443611
Agreed. God (i.e. the Being that Is, aka the "Ontos On" as modern Hellenists like to say), is NOT personal. God doesn't love you, doesn't hate you, and doesn't forgive you. We can't even claim that God exists, because God is beyond existence. The Abrahamist cannot comprehend this.
>>21443834
God's love is the cornerstone of Christian theology. Early Christian theologians used the concept of love in order to argue that the creation of the cosmos was a free act of God. According to Plato, God created the word using the Logos, the Forms, and the Space. However, Christians cannot accept this Platonic view because they think that it's not a free act. They argued that the creation of the cosmos cannot be free if it is the product of the Logos, because the Logos is eternally part of God, therefore the creation cannot have a beginning. So, instead of saying that the creation is the product of the Logos, they claimed that creation is the product of God's love, thus proving that it's a free act of God.
BUT if God is not loving, as the apophatic theologians have argued, then this entire argument is moot.
>>21443846
You think you're saying something profound, but you're not.
Please, answer the question. What reason do I have to agree with Augustine's view of the world instead of Plato's? Why is Plato's cosmology wrong whereas Augustine's is correct? Give me a reason. The ONLY reason the Christians disagreed with Plato is because it contradicted their Bible, i.e. Plato contradicted their presuppositions. But that's not a reason why Plato's wrong, is it?
>You’re confusing philosophy for theology
No, I am not confusing the two. I am aware that theology is part of philosophy. You mistakenly believe that theology is mystical, but it's not.
>Theology = theos (god) + logos (reason)
Nothing that concerns the logos/reason is mystical. Theology is by definition philosophical, and it requires reason/logos.

>> No.21444057

>>21436655
I'm not a Christcuck

>> No.21444083

>>21444019
>But that's not a reason why Plato's wrong, is it?
Of course it is. As God is the highest epistemic source possible as truth itself, anything disagreeing with his revelation is by definition wrong. Things which are not coherent with divine revelation are necessarily wrong and it's the highest and most secure knowledge of anything a man can have.

>> No.21444088

>>21444083
>anything disagreeing with his revelation is by definition wrong
You presuppose that the bible is God's revelation. You haven't proven that. There's no proper argument that you can use to defend this presupposition. You just accept it on faith. Similarly, Muslims accept that the Quran is God's revelation.

>> No.21444336

>>21444057
>>Read Plato
>I'm not a Platonist
>>Read Moby Dick
>I'm not a whaler
>>Read The Travels
>I'm not an explorer
>>Read Stalin: Parodoxes of Power
>I'm not Russian
>>Read the Iliad
>I'm not Achaean
>>Read Conan the Barbarian
>I'm not a barbarian
You sound retarded.

>> No.21444546

>>21444336
He uses the term “Christcuck” of course he’s retarded

>> No.21444567

>>21444336
he's obviously a troll
>>21444546
but you are christian and a cuck, so what's the problem?

>> No.21444770

>>21442936
>I don't know what love is or even if it exists, somehow. Or I recognize it intellectually, but I never really feel it.
This happens to me but with "beauty"

>> No.21444785

>>21444567
I’m a married Christian father of a child.

>> No.21445661
File: 134 KB, 665x900, statue-jesus-as-homeless-beggar-st-francis-assisi-church-nyc-new-york-usa-july-desguised-front-sculpted-timothy-p-schmalz-156432707.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
21445661

>>21443499
>What's missing from Plato's theology

Christ.

>why does it need to be combined with the Christian faith

Because without the Christian faith it's wrong.

What you're not getting is the person of Jesus Christ. Pope Benedict is apparently dying, so it's worth pointing out that this is a big emphasis of his. The PERSON of Jesus. The MAN Jesus Christ. That is how the unknowable God truly becomes knowable, in the human who was God, who lived and died and lived again.

And we know God loves us because Jesus says so, and we are to love God back, and to love our neighbors in the same way that God loves them.

Jesus is real. That's what needs to be understood. That's how to "make sense" of Christianity: through the reality of Jesus Christ.

>> No.21445679

>>21445661
>Christ.
>Because without the Christian faith it's wrong.
How is it failing? Tell me exactly how Plato's philosophy/theology/cosmology, as it was presented in his work Timaeus, fails.
>Jesus is real. That's what needs to be understood. That's how to "make sense" of Christianity: through the reality of Jesus Christ.
Saying it doesn't make it true, mate. You can keep repeating the same ol' stuff, but it's not convincing anymore. Perhaps you might have been able to convince 9th century peasants, but your rhetoric's utility has dried up. This is why Christianity is failing. Answer my questions, please.

>> No.21445697

>>21445679
Christianity can’t fail. What a ridiculous statement.

>> No.21445723

>>21445697
>doesn't answer my question
okay bye

>> No.21445752
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21445752

>>21440944
Image being so pissed off you write down 95 reasons why you’re pissed and nail them to the fucking door of the church

>> No.21445775

>>21439325
>There's a difference between merging Christianity with Greek philosophy and using Greek philosophy to elucidate Christian concepts
Linguistically, maybe; functionally there's no difference

>> No.21445806

>>21441804
>Really a very pious and beautiful concept.
Unless you think about it for more than five minutes and realize that if God doesn’t decide to give you grace then you are literally fucking doomed and were doomed from the second you were born since the original sin you inherited makes it ontologically impossible for you to ever repent without the grace that God has decided to withhold from you, necessarily implying that God created you for the sole purpose of throwing you into a pit of fire and torturing you forever and there is on a metaphysical level nothing you can do or ever could have done to escape it.

>> No.21445870
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21445870

>>21436655
I don't read people who had sex

>> No.21445904

>>21444019
> if God is not loving, as the apophatic theologians have argued, then this entire argument is moot.

I didn’t express myself clearly. When apophatic theology says that God is not loving, it is a statement which is intended to point towards the reality of God as being beyond all categories (for various reasons we cannot really speak of Him as if He were a regular entity in this universe). Revelation shows that all earthly love is a shadow of the love of God. He is *more* than what we can conceptualize as loving, not less.

***

And theology is not a part of philosophy. It is the application of philosophical methods to the data of revelation.

When we do theology we proceed from the presuppositions rendered by holding that revelation is true, which presuppositions are grounded by the experience of God intervening in our lives.

There is a great gulf which separates the God of the philosophers from the God of Abraham and Isaac. The former only provides a bare intellectual satisfaction, the latter brings true, deep joy and has the power to transform lives and whole societies.

It is like philosophy (natural theology) can give us some proofs of a person’s existence and some bare predicates which are true of them. Faith is an actual relationship with the person—and true theology is reasoning about that relationship and all that it implies.

So you’re right. From the point of view of reason not enlightened by faith, theology is radically deficient, because it proceeds from premises which (without faith) seem arbitrary, whereas natural theology proceeds from what is known or at least knowable to everyone without exception.

>> No.21445907

>>21444088
Yes, with the difference that the incarnation already provides the mystical ground for a reconciliation between faith and reason—whereas in Islam, faith nullifies reason.

>> No.21445934

>>21445806
well this is my problem with Augustine, that at times it seems hard to prove he wasn’t a Jansenist. Read the Vatican II declaration on grace and free will, it’s more comforting. The two obviously have to be in balance. Augustine over-corrected against Pelagian pride—we need to strike a balance.

>> No.21445942

>>21439298
I feel great about it, as a Xian. In fact it just helps with my Pascalian wager.

>> No.21445954

>>21445907
>the incarnation already provides the mystical ground for a reconciliation between faith and reason
How? In what way? Be specific.
>>21445904
>the incarnation already provides the mystical ground for a reconciliation between faith and reason
It's really not. Theology is a very simple concept, really. As I have already pointed out, theology means "study of the divine". The word "theology" is made up of two words, the word "theos" (meaning god) and "logos" (meaning reason or study). To claim that theology is an activity specifically related to Christianity or any particular revelation is ignorant, false, and biased. People have been "studying the divine" long before Christianity or Judaism. The Greeks were great theologians, even though they couldn't care less about the Torah or Jesus Christ.
>When we do theology we proceed from the presuppositions rendered by holding that revelation is true
That is simply not true. I've already argued against your definition of theology. Show me that your understanding of theology is the correct one.
>theology [without faith] is radically deficient
Well, of course it is! When you have faith, everything makes sense. You don't have to understand or argue about anything. Most importantly, you don't have to admit your own ignorance. When you have faith, the whole world makes perfect sense. So, it makes sense that you would consider a theology without faith to be lacking. In truth, it is not lacking at all.
>whereas natural theology proceeds from what is known or at least knowable to everyone without exception
If it's a truth known to all, why can't you argue for it? Why is it so difficult for Christians to argue for God? Every time I try to have a discussion with a Christian on the matter of the trinity, they throw up their arms and proclaim that the trinity is a "holy mystery" that cannot be understood by humans. Bullshit.

>> No.21445959

>>21445934
>The two obviously have to be in balance. Augustine over-corrected against Pelagian pride—we need to strike a balance.
Yes, I think that's the heart of it; Augustine's views weren't totally consistent for his whole life and towards the end he basically veered into full-on proto-Jansenism/Calvinism to the point where John Calvin said that you could reconstruct his entire theology from Augustine alone (this is a really, really bad thing if you know what Calvin's theology contains)

In his spat with Pelagius, Augustine ended up going to far in the other direction that he overshot his target by countless miles and ended up with a theology that pretty much said that God created a bunch of babies to set on fire for eternity for laughs

>> No.21446917

>>21445679
>You can keep repeating the same ol' stuff, but it's not convincing anymore. Perhaps you might have been able to convince 9th century peasants, but your rhetoric's utility has dried up.

I personally know people who have converted to Christianity. It's not as dead as you think.

I'll pray for you, Anon.

>> No.21446925

Not sure why he's a central figure for a lot of people. I found Origen more interesting than him, Augustine couldn't even read Greek by himself.

>> No.21446996

>>21446925
Origen was a heretic according to many.

>> No.21447270

>>21446925
He's exceptionally relatable in the Confessions. Augustine reveals that humans really haven't changed after thousands of years. And in turn, he reveals that God's grace and mercy can still transform our lives and do us good, even thousands of years after the founding of Christianity.