Windows 95 = Mac 86
December 27, 2007I remember a long time ago seeing a bumper sticker that said something like the above title. Now I confess I am Windows user, primarily since it was the “tradition” that I received. But I recognize that in many ways Macs are better systems. With that I don’t mean to enter into that fracas that is the ongoing war between these two groups. But the bumper stick made an important point. MS users wanted to think of their way as being better until Windows essentially popularized the same general idea. Then the Mac idea was the cat’s meow.
Psychologically it is interesting to me that in theology and philosophy this kind of thing happens quite often, especially if you are Orthodox. Make a criticism of Augustine, and you are labeled a pariah, an ignoramous and your mother was a hampster. But if you’re Catholic, well then, things are much different! This seems to be the case over at Kimel’s blog at his most recent post.
21 Comments | 
Calvinism, Catholic, Church Fathers, Eastern Orthodox, Free Will, Maximus, Monothelitism, Predestination, Protestant, Synergy | 
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Posted by Perry Robinson
Vacation is all I ever wanted
December 26, 2007Right now I am in California. I have been suffering through the horrible temperature change from St. Louis, but somehow I am managing. For the most part I have been busy with grading as well as family and church engagements so the blog has been slow. The blog will continue to be slow for a while so that I can play catch up. After grading 1,500 pages of exams, I am tired.
I do have a few projects for the new year which will include extensive posts on Icons, invocation to the Saints, the Filioque, problems in Medieval Scholasticism, answering Mormon apologetic claims regarding theosis and the Incarnation, and some new material on Libertarian freewill a long with some new objections to Compatibilism.
I hope all of you continue to be mindful of the continuing Christmass season and those who suffer.
8 Comments | 
Personal | 
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Posted by Perry Robinson
The 9th Century Crisis: Political, Theological, Social, and Prophetic
December 11, 2007Farrell, Most Rev. Bishop Photios, S.S.B. God, History, and Dialectic: The Theological Foundations of the Two Europes and Their Cultural Consequences. Excerpt from Volume II:
The Inception of the Two Europes
The Ninth Century Crisis and the Emergence of the Two Europes: The First Phase and its Central Ikon
The mediaevalist Norman Cantor made the following suggestive observation in a book on mediaeval historiography that is replete with intriguing implications:
We have not dealt with the making of the other Middle Ages — primarily Arab, Byzantine, and Jewish. That is the subject of another inquiry. It is my personal prejudice that while these other mediaeval civilizations are of enormous importance not only intrinsically but in respect to their impact on the West, for a variety of reasons, including sheer chance, the magisterial intellectua; structures that were created to priviliedge of the European Middle Ages in the twnetieth century were largely lacking with respect to the conceptualization of these other mediaeval socieities.[i]
The remarks are intriguing because they allude to the elevation of the historiographical tradition of Western Europe to “canonical status”, yet hint that something is amiss that cannot be explained solely by reference to the West. Paradoxically, it is the Jewish and Islamic aspects of “the other Middle Ages” that are the most understood by the West, and the other Christian Middle Ages, that of the splendid edifice of the Byzantine Roman Empire and Church, that are so obscure. And yet, it is the Byzantine Empire and Church which hold the key to the decryption of the central moment in the emergence of the two Europes, that moment in the ninth century when Augustinism becomes the broad theological culture of the Frankish empire, and has begun both to be driven by, and to drive, the political and cultural outlook of the West, and come into conflict with the First Europe’s representative in the West: the papacy. Without that perspective, all remains obscure at best or unintelligible at worst. Read the rest of this entry »
50 Comments | 
Farrell, Filioque, GHD | 
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Posted by photios
Piking Peter
December 10, 2007Here’s a response to Peter Pike over at Triablogue about Libertarian Free Will.
Peter,
Per the missed point, too many restrictions would be positing conditions inconsistent with the idea. So far I can’t see how any of the restrictions you posited preclude LFW. I think van Inwagen in his classic essay spelled out quite clearly what those inconsistent conditions are.
Given that the power to do otherwise is glossed counter-factually, I don’t see how this makes it illusory. I think a romp through counter factuals would help you here. If you disagree, do you think the fact that God created the world renders it necessary that God created the world? Could God have done otherwise or does that language mean nothing at all? If not, what’s the difference between your conception of deity and that of the Platonists with a necessary world? Doing your devotionals out of Plotinus, are we?
4 Comments | Calvinism, Contemporary Philosophy, Free Will, Protestant | Permalink
Posted by Perry Robinson
Why He’s Heterodox
December 10, 20071) Ecclesiology
The Holy Spirit isn’t a means. He is a Divine Person. Last I checked the Church was called the Body of Christ. I suspect that might have something to do with the Incarnation. The humanity of Christ is the bond between members of the Church by the working of the Spirit, which is why the Eucharist holds center stage. To take the Spirit as the unifying principle smacks of docetism and an impoverished view of the resurrected flesh.
2) Authority of Tradition
He can’t believe that the Scriptures are “unchangeable” with respect to the canon, for on his own principles the canon is a fallible set. What Scripture is, functionally for Protestants is a more or less fluid set of books. They modified the canon in the past and I see no in principle reason why they could not do so again.
And even if Scripture were the only normative source for teaching and practice there are I’d wager lots of practices or beliefs that have no explicit support in Scripture such as the perpetual virginity of Jesus or admitting women to the Eucharist.
And even if Scripture were the only infallible rule, the question is, who is the judge that is to normatively apply the rule?
3) Static cultural adaptation
I think we should preserve the Jewish forms of worship from the synagogue and the temple, albeit transformed by Christ. Jesus seemed to like them. To be Jewish in this respect is hardly “syncretistic.” And it is to be quite relevant for it keeps the church from having to follow after silly cultural trends and aestheticism and reinvent itself every five years like our existentially sick culture. It sends a message. We are not your culture. We are about something bigger than your culture. We are not a fad and we will outlast them all. People who constructed the great Cathedrals of Europe understood this. Moreover, they also understood the relevance of the Incarnation to architecture. With contemporary Protestant architecture, and no small amount of Puritan architecture as well, God is everywhere in general and no where in particular. So much for the Epistle to the Hebrews.
A big part of the divine liturgy is about meeting God in the life of Christ, which is why the Liturgy and the church year are centered around “doing over” the life of Christ. Historically it seems to have done a far better job at making people “holy” than the pop evangelical styles. Evangelicals have values but they lack virtue.
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Posted by Perry Robinson
The Mystagogy of the Holy Spirit
December 10, 2007A free text of St. Photios’ Mystagogy is available here.
4 Comments | Dialectic and Theological Method, Filioque | Permalink
Posted by Perry Robinson
The Captivity of St. Nicholas
December 8, 2007The Orthodox can’t use it, but the Muslims can make a profit from it. And what’s to stop the Sodomites from getting in on the act?
http://www.asianews.it/index.php?l=en&art=4829
Some relief from “secular Turkey.” If you live in the free West, just imagine having to get permission from the “secular” Muslim state to use your own church. And the difference between Jim Crow and this is…?
http://www.asianews.it/index.php?l=en&art=10974&theme=8&size=A
Keep on rockin’ in the free world.
10 Comments | Causes, Eastern Orthodox | Permalink
Posted by Perry Robinson
Killing Your Father
December 3, 2007Patricide has been one of the worst crimes one can commit in western consciousness for a very long time. The father was the source of familial authority for it was the father who went out, albeit with a few buddies, and scooped up some maiden to be his wife. Once the hymen was broken, she died to her old family and familial deities and rose to life to a new set of ancestors. The hymen was the marker of familial ties since one ought not to sleep with their own sister. To do so would put into confusion the ancestral lines in both this world and the next. In any case the maiden took on her husbands name since he became her new father. The father was the source of familial authority or rather he was the author of the family. To kill your father was to rebel against all authority for all authority, particularly of the state was derived from fatherly authority. Patricide is essentially anarchical, against the source or rather the positing of many new sources.
One of the things in modern western religious discourse that peeves me is the constant dialectical framing of issues. One is either Protestant or Catholic. Granted that there are historical bodies that try to bridge the gap such as Anglicanism, but these are either disappearing before our very eyes or were never really what either polemical side wished them to be. In any case, the former makes the latter moot. This way of framing matters leaves out entire swaths of the Christian tradition and not just Orthodoxy, but also the Anabaptists for example.
62 Comments | Absolute Divine Simplicity, Calvinism, Dialectic and Theological Method, Filioque | Permalink
Posted by Perry Robinson
