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Re: Lewis' thoughts on other major religions?

PostPosted: August 30th, 2010, 1:31 pm
by Nerd42

Re: Lewis' thoughts on other major religions?

PostPosted: August 30th, 2010, 9:25 pm
by postodave

Re: Lewis' thoughts on other major religions?

PostPosted: August 31st, 2010, 2:08 pm
by archenland_knight

Re: Lewis' thoughts on other major religions?

PostPosted: August 31st, 2010, 7:19 pm
by postodave

Re: Lewis' thoughts on other major religions?

PostPosted: August 31st, 2010, 7:38 pm
by cyranorox
As I don't offer my gender I'm surprised to be referred to as 'she'; I may have missed some things by not recognizing a reference to myself elsewhere.

I agree with Rus that this board has become a schoolchildren's resource, mostly. And the tone had become sour, or hectoring, too often.

I am gratified to be asked to comment by Postodave. Pagan inclusions is an old issue, quiet from about the 500's to the 1500's, when the P's began to accuse the RC's. The OC has easily transformed and subsumed the good of paganism, simply because we are the Greeks, the Romans; there is so much less discontinuity and of course no real language barrier. At the same time, there has been an ongoing vigilance to maintain dogma and not allow improper or false ideas from the pagans to creep in.

Pagans, unlike Christians, generally do not have a systematic theology and do not always reveal their deepest doctrine. Hindus, for all the colorful gods and stories, are almost certainly Monists, and educated ones will commonly acknowledge this. Buddhists, too, although being as such is problematic for them. But there are multiple Indian schools of religious thought, including plain materialism, idealism, and pantheism [i use rough equivalents] and I'm not at all worried about my new South Asian neighbors.

Neopagans are usually disaffected Christians or Jews, who desire to escape the personal demand of the Deity in favor of impersonal forces and a new set of colorful characters representing aspects of the world. I have a great affection for theomachism, having been there. And I have pagan friends of several strains of paganism. Ultimately, though, I don't find this relgious culture very serious, partly because it is a reaction, partly because it accepts as true ideas or images that are known to be fantasies or inventions.

Re: Lewis' thoughts on other major religions?

PostPosted: September 1st, 2010, 1:26 am
by Nerd42
delete post

Re: Lewis' thoughts on other major religions?

PostPosted: September 1st, 2010, 2:48 pm
by archenland_knight

Re: Lewis' thoughts on other major religions?

PostPosted: September 1st, 2010, 3:48 pm
by Nerd42
Now you're quoting me as saying a bunch of stuff I never said.

Re: Lewis' thoughts on other major religions?

PostPosted: September 1st, 2010, 3:54 pm
by archenland_knight

Re: Lewis' thoughts on other major religions?

PostPosted: September 1st, 2010, 6:02 pm
by postodave

Re: Lewis' thoughts on other major religions?

PostPosted: September 1st, 2010, 8:57 pm
by cyranorox
The language of passions can be ambiguous: i mean what-is-suffered, what-is-received; opposed to actions. 'Compassion' is chiefly shared suffering, a choice, not intrinsically the emotion that goes with the act; paradoxically an active choice of a passive predicament.
As God has, but for the Incarnation, no passivity, he cannot have passions in that sense. That He has definite desires, views, and demands is not in question; that they are expressed to us in the language of emotion and feeling is also agreed. If you look at one strain of thought in the Fathers, particularly Isaac the Syrian, you find an understanding of God that does not imagine him angry or passionate. It's been a while since I spent time with the texts, but a good reinterpretation can be had in MacDonald - although I disagree with him [as does Isaac] on the issue of punishment. Our Uncle Origen also hold these views.

The man of apatheia is not subject to his passions; in a sense, that must mean he has them not. However, he can choose to feel, and ought to, warm, generous, charitable, or just emotions. The distinction is in the process. The passion is the man *being dragged* by the horse, not the horse itself, which is the energy or activity; you can keep him. Plato's black horse with hairy ears can get a trim and nowadays looks rather sleek in harness ;~>

I think others here are using 'passion' to cover some of the semantic territory that belongs properly [iirc]to 'energy' or feeling.

As for Pagan infiltration, again it's an old story; but the burden of proof must rest on the latecomers who claim to hold a normative content and then point out what they feel is extraneous. Withal, their innovations must also be scrutinized; I've pointed out the Pagan strain in medieval western thinking about soteriology.

The warp of Christian life is revelation and sacrament, But where should the woof come from? where but the substrate of bread and wine, dress and speech, thought and discourse, all brought into and through Christian community, principally from the Greeks and Jews. What God is, how the universe is set up, is in the Creed- error, pagan or otherwise, is locked out. What He did and said is recorded in the Gospels and elsewhere- this is a pure source and admits no additions, pagan or otherwise. BTW I don't think the Fathers had quite the 'Biblical' view; the Gospel view, certainly, and a deep knowledge of the OT, but that is not quite the same thing.

Re: Lewis' thoughts on other major religions?

PostPosted: September 2nd, 2010, 7:02 pm
by postodave

Re: Lewis' thoughts on other major religions?

PostPosted: September 2nd, 2010, 9:20 pm
by cyranorox
Moltman is new to me.

Perhaps a view with respect to the Fall will clarify at least my side. Passions are post fall; the primal state was passionless. The final freedom of the sons of God will also be passionless, because perfect freedom would exclude compulsion, and the essence of passion is that it is experienced as compulsory.

Milton has a comment on this: in PL, Adam, who has been in voluntary control of his sexual appetites before the fatal apple, finds himself 'ripe for play' after some conversation with Eve. It's the "finds himself", the status of recipient instead of commander, that is passionate.

This view marches with stoicism some way, but the good in view is rather different. Without the Christian virtues and the Spirit, indeed passionlessness is the equipment of a villain or a conqueror, no more. It can look cold because it's a space cleared and awaiting content.

Re: Lewis' thoughts on other major religions?

PostPosted: September 3rd, 2010, 12:23 am
by Nerd42
Lewis pointed out somewhere, I think it was in "Beyond Personality" that God having no passions suggests we have experiences of real value which He lacks. Lewis suggested it would be better to think of God as being superpassionate or transpassionate rather than nonpassionate. Like, God can't "fall in love" because He IS love.

Re: Lewis' thoughts on other major religions?

PostPosted: September 3rd, 2010, 6:39 pm
by postodave