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Sep 20, 2016 20:15
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Is there any information on what kind of religious beliefs ordinary peasant folks had during the Medieval period? My understanding of the first few hundred years of Christianity (prior to Constantine anyway) is that churches were small and intimate affairs, where converts came to the faith voluntarily and would have been in direct contact with religious teachers within the community, so we can therefore assume that they would have had a decent grasp of the relevant theology. After the medieval period, with the invention of the printing press and wider literacy, we can again assume that it was possible for the average peasant to be well informed on at least the fundamentals of Catholic dogma. But what about the intermediating period? Without books or literacy, with masses performed in a foreign tongue, and without the idea of voluntary religious association (if your king was a Catholic, that meant you were too) just what kind of knowledge could the average peasant have been expected to have about Catholic teachings? Would the average peasant have even set foot in a church, much less have been able to communicate directly with his / her parish priest about any questions they may have had? I've read a few books about the medieval period generally, and about Christianity / the Church in the medieval period specifically, and they always seem to gloss over this part. It seems obligatory to mention that the Church was always facing in uphill battle in suppressing pagan superstitions during this period, but that's about it. Is there any information at all about the role that Christianity played in the lives of ordinary people during this period?
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Sep 24, 2016 09:42
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As I understand it, it's not possible to discuss the morality of abortion in this thread, but what do you make of the pope's comments today? What effect do you think it will have in practice?quote:Pope Francis has declared that abortion, which remains a "grave sin" in the eyes of the Catholic Church, can be forgiven by ordinary priests for the foreseeable future — instead of requiring the intervention of a bishop. http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/11/21/502852325/pope-francis-grants-all-priests-the-ability-to-forgive-abortions
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Nov 21, 2016 14:56
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Nativity scenes are also a pretty big deal here in the Czech Republic. I visited an exhibition in a small Bohemian village a few years back and - amidst the many garish and kitsch interpretations - found myself enjoying these more abstract displays:  
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Jan 6, 2017 16:25
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On this topic, can someone enlighten me on what the relationship between faith and righteousness is in contemporary Christianity? (I know that there will obviously be a number of different interpretations, so your own views, or those of your respective churches / traditions, will suffice.) I'm not sure how brightly Augustine's star still shines in contemporary Christian theology (and I know he had a number of beliefs about predestination that those outside of the Calvinist tradition would possibly disavow) but here is something I previously wrote about him - could you tell me if any mainline Christians would be likely to hold similar views today? quote:Augustine, for example, denied that one, regardless of one's actions, could only be considered “just” by acting through divine grace. Writing to Julian, he says: “God forbid there be true virtues in anyone unless he is just, and God forbid he be truly just unless he lives by faith”. And as for the virtuous pagans? “I proclaim... with all my divinely given liberty of consciousness: 'True justice is not in those men'.”, “the highest good can come to men only through Christ, and Him crucified.”, and “all that is not from faith is sin.” Actually, if anyone could also clarify the relationship between grace and faith that would also be a big help! Blurred fucked around with this message at 17:01 on Jan 9, 2017 |
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Jan 9, 2017 16:58
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The Phlegmatist posted:As far as grace versus faith goes, I got the Calvinist explanation, the Catholic explanation and the New Perspective on Paul explanation. Pick your poison. I'll take all three if you've got the patience to write it up!
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Jan 9, 2017 20:46
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:Are there any other traditions (or heresies, I suppose) where God is literally language? The Phlegmatist posted:The most-used translation of the Bible into Chinese translates logos into dao which has caused some interesting heresies among westerners who think they've suddenly found the hidden knowledge of Laozi. It's...actually kinda close though. Yeah, the concept of "logos" in Greek philosophy - by the time John was written - had largely shed its etymological relationship with spoken language. It had been refined into a kind of organising principle of the universe ("logic" would probably be a better translation than "word"), much in the same way as "tao/dao" was refined from the concept of "path" and "dharma" was refined from the concept of "law", into organising principles of the universe. So "dao", I'd say, is a very apt translation, even though the etymologies are completely different. As for the connection between language and God, I'm unfamiliar with any religious tradition that would conflate the two, but in the ancient world language was certainly considered to be infused with divine power. In the ancient Near East, for example, it was supposed that there was a causal relationship between the name of an object and that object coming into being. Basically, the gods spoke things into existence. (We can still see the shadows of these beliefs in the first chapter of Genesis.) Similarly, knowing the name of something gave you a certain power over it, and knowing someone's name gave you power over them. This applied to gods as well (to know the name of a god was to have the power to invoke it) which explains why God revealing his name to Moses was a significant moment in the Exodus narrative. Language itself also had a performative power, hence the profusion of curses in the world. Perhaps the closest thing I can think to conflating God with language, though, is the work of the work of Heidegger and Gadamer, who had language tied up very closely to their notion of "Being" (note the capitalisation): Heidegger - "Language is the house of Being". Gadamer - "Being that can be understood is language."
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Jan 12, 2017 22:25
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