SirPalomides

Emperor Justinian's 2nd Council of Constantinople, in 553, did include an anathema against Origen. Origen lived before "orthodoxy" had really formed yet, but he was deeply influential on later "orthodox" church fathers, so his views about pre-existence of souls, the subordination of the Son, and other issues became a problem. However, it should be noted that the primary purpose of this council was to reconcile the numerous Christians (called "monophysites" by their enemies) who had rejected the council of Chalcedon (451) and who were the vast majority in Egypt, Syria, and Armenia. This proved to be an even bigger failure than Nicaea, as the monophysites not only did not reconcile with the official doctrine, but went on to form their own parallel hierarchy which persists today in the Coptic, Syrian, Ethiopian, and Armenian orthodox churches, who form a separate communion from the Eastern Orthodox churches. Again this shows the serious limits of imperial power in imposing unity on the church.

It means he was able to get a bunch of bishops into a room together to work out their differences. The actual outcome was not up to him. Nor was he able to enforce it across the empire.

The empire did not have that kind of control over the churches. The council of Nicaea itself, over which the Emperor presided, was a failure almost as soon as it concluded, as it was rejected by many bishops and the Arians remained dominant in many regions. So how in the world would the emperor be able to enforce a change of the scriptural canon? A lot of these guys had endured torture under prior emperors. If some bureaucrats tried rewriting the scriptures for them, there would have been a riot. This is to say nothing of the churches outside of Roman political control altogether, e.g. in Persia or Ethiopia.

What I’m saying is, it didn’t happen. There was no council where someone went through a Bible ripping out pages and said, “Okay, here’s our new Bible guys.” The origins of the New Testament texts as we have them today, and their relation to Marcion’s canon, is pretty murky but there’s no evidence that there were some passages about reincarnation that were later excised.

Particularly, the divinity of Christ- and on that count, it failed almost as soon as it ended, as the Arians continued to be very influential (and Constantine himself seemed start leaning towards them).

There's a popular legend (most recently pushed in the Da Vinci Code) that Constantine had some role in fixing the New Testament canon and that he excluded or edited various texts. He did not. The canon of scripture wasn't even on the agenda at the Council of Nicaea.

The records of the proceedings of the ecumenical councils are pretty spotty. I think the first one where they actually have extant records of the back-and-forth and the decrees is Chalcedon. There was no dogma of reincarnation but Clement and Origen of Alexandria (both highly Platonic theologians) talk about it in their writings- whether as doctrine or speculation is debatable. They were both highly influential thinkers in what became orthodoxy, but in retrospect they had a number of views that were embarrassing for the later orthodox party. The Emperor Justinian (an all-around jerk if you ask me) did promulgate a series of anathemas against Origen in the 6th century- sometimes these are treated as part of the Fifth Ecumenical Council that Justinian orchestrated but they are really separate. You can read these anathemas here:https://www.tertullian.org/fathers2/NPNF2-14/Npnf2-14-116.htm A lot of the themes here will be familiar to those versed in the more speculative strands of Platonism.

No, definitely not. This is a minority viewpoint which appears to be tolerated. The parameters of Orthodox dogma are pretty murky though apart from the ecumenical councils.

No, universalism is not Alfeyev's focus in the book, so he doesn't address any arguments pro or con. David Bentley Hart's book That All Shall Be Saved on the other hand is very polemical and does address this objection, which, along with "What about free will?" constitute the two perennial arguments for a doctrine of eternal torment. It's been a while since I read his book but as I recall, the basic counter-points are: 1. Our fundamental human longing is for God; sin is suffering and any joy we hope to find in sin is just a distorted form of this divine longing; sin is torment in itself; 2. our natural human response to God's revelation of love and salvation is to love him in return, that's why it's "the good news"; 3. constructing a monstrous vision of God so as to terrify believers is not only lying but blasphemous (this is more addressed to the "closet universalists" who still thought the doctrine of eternal damnation was needed to keep the flock in line.) It should also be kept in mind that the universalists do not deny that that the torment of hell is real, only that it is eternal. It is a purification by fire, as St Gregory of Nyssa says.

The usual answer I see from Muslim apologists is twofold: 1. Some of the apparent contradictions are actually not contradictions; 2. Where there are contradictions it's because the Christians corrupted/ falsified their scriptures while God preserved the Quran inviolate- you can get the authentic teaching of Jesus in the Quran and hadith.

.

The Orthodox bishop Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev published a very interesting and beautiful book called Christ the Conqueror of Hell which collects a range of early Christian texts, hymns, and poems relating to the descent of Christ into Hades ("the harrowing of hell" as it's known in western Christendom). While this is not the main thesis of his book, what becomes clear is that many of these texts carry the assumption that Christ descended to Hell to liberate everyone there, and this was taken as a pledge of what he would do at the end of time. Some of the hymns he cites are still used today in Orthodox Churches, especially in the Holy Saturday services. A minority of texts teach rather that Christ only liberated the Old Testament righteous- these texts come largely from the Latin fathers who, for whatever reason, developed a harsher theology than the Greek fathers. The theologian David Bentley Hart (also Orthodox) published That All Shall Be Saved which argues (conclusively, IMO) that the New Testament has a universalist message, that many of the fathers shared this message, and that it's the only view that actually makes sense from an orthodox Christian perspective. This book has of course been wildly attacked by the "infernalists" but everything I've seen from the critics indicate an unwillingness to actually understand or engage with the arguments Hart makes. Anyway for further leads on Christian universalism, as advocated by very much orthodox Christians, and not just some green-haired crystal-gazing Episcopalian hippies in rainbow stoles, this is a great blog: https://afkimel.wordpress.com/essential-readings-on-universalism/

I won't pretend Hindus are meek pacifists or that people aren't responsible for the shit they do but there's a lot to be said for how much the British f'd up the subcontinent, fomenting communal division there and pretty much every place they went, and making sure they were as dysfunctional as possible when they left. I read a saying from Iraq: "If you see two fish fighting in the Tigris, there's an Englishman nearby".

I'll add something else here which is both obvious and yet not obvious... Christians, even Protestants who say they only follow the Bible, learn their Christianity from other Christians first. Before they read the Bible they are taught what to expect there. Often they are fed short snippets of text and told what they are supposed to mean. So as soon as they crack the book open they are already coming with preconceptions about what's important in this book, what it means, etc. The many passages that don't fit, that are obscure, that are just plain weird, are passed over in silence. Then the apologists can say, "The Bible obviously teaches x, y, z" because everyone around them has already been conditioned to read certain passages in terms of x,y,z. If you handed the Bible to someone who knew nothing about Christianity and said, "Hey, what kind of religion do you deduce from this?" you're not going to get something that looks like any Christianity we know about. It certainly wouldn't resemble the post-Nicene orthodoxy that most Christian sects profess. They don't have the lens so they won't see what they're supposed to see according to Christians. For western Christians, the person most important in forging this lens was Augustine. Just like most modern people have never read Copernicus or Newton yet are very much under their influence, western Christians imbibe Augustine even if they know nothing about him. Augustine was in many ways a fascinating and brilliant man but, for Latin Christians, he was pretty much the Church father, which meant that his speculations and idiosyncrasies proved far more influential than they might have been if there had been comparable figures to balance him out. And a lot of the worst tendencies of Latin Christianity can be traced to his influence. His thoughts on eternal damnation, predestination, persecution of heretics, etc. became synonymous with the doctrine of the church itself. I'm not saying he invented any of these things but he gave them a particularly grim and stark expression that hardened into dogma for later generations.

Note that in a prior thread Daniel tried to cast Rambam as a heretic whose Greek influences put him outside the pale of Judaism. You can actually see some of this influence in lines 1-5 of the Yigdal.

Apart from the beautiful passage on the Yellow Emperor's music, in Chapter 14 of Zhuangzi, I don't know if any peculiarly Daoist aesthetic theories have been elaborated (they probably have, I'm just ignorant of them). Obviously over the course of its history Daoism has produced a vast amount of painting, literature, music, etc. As far as I know, the Chinese philosophical school that most stridently advocated the arts as a means of self-cultivation are the Confucians. This goes back to Confucius himself with his enthusiasm for the Book of Poetry , music, etc. and China's fine art traditions (painting, poetry, calligraphy, guqin playing) tended to develop within that paradigm, even when artists were expressing Daoist or Buddhist themes. There are several parts in where Zhuangzi seems to come out against this notion of art as a means of implanting virtue, but like the passage I mentioned about the Yellow Emperor's music there are parts that indicate a place for music as well. I think your artistic rut is probably not uncommon. It might help to try to forget your technical training, break the rules, just create one thing after another without a preconceived plan. Automatic drawing, decalcomania, etc. perhaps. Then you might develop a clearer sense of what you really want to do, and when that happens the technical skills you acquired can emerge in a way that is actually useful to your vision.

Like the passage notes, it's kind of hard to pin down what Heraclitus meant by "logos". I suspect it's more his description of his own account/ understanding of the world which everyone else struggles to catch up with. These pre-socratic philosophers are like rappers, every one of them is the greatest and all the other MC's are wack and too stupid to understand them. The parallels between Daoist philosophy and Stoicism have been noted more than once. I would say a subtle but key difference is the Stoics' fatalism and their sense of freedom as a purely interior thing. Virtue is the sole good and ultimately a matter purely of mental will detached from all surrounding experience. The Daoists acknowledge fate as well, and value interior equilibrium in the face of life's changes, but my sense is that there is a greater sense of human freedom and agency within the world at large than the Stoics would be willing to admit. Yes and no. It is of course widely read, quoted, etc. but I would argue by itself it's quite a vague text and if we want to get into some really meaty Daoist philosophy then Zhuangzi is the place to start. Philosophy is a way of life. The notion that it could be some detached exercise doesn't seem to arise before the last few centuries.

I’ve started reading Brook Ziporyn’s edition of Zhuangzi, with selections from traditional commentaries, and the selections are really brilliant. I’ve always loved Zhuangzi but this makes the reading more enjoyable. From Wang Fuzhi’s commentary on Zhuangzi, chapter 1: “For us forms lodged here between heaven and earth there is only this wandering, this play, and nothing besides. It makes no difference how large or small: each stops only where it finds itself. Going forth but without any plan, coming back but not to any dwelling place—this is what it means to be free of dependence: not leaning on things to establish some identity for oneself, not leaning on projects to establish some merit for oneself, not leaning on actualities to establish some name for oneself. Large and small alike come to rest in the middle of Heaven the Potter’s Wheel and thus each wanders far and unfettered. 'Unfettered' means echoing beyond the dissolving tones—forgetting what has passed. 'Far' means pulled into the distance — not limited to the understanding consciousness. Hence, the theories of things can be made equal, the ruling force of life nourished, the physical form forgotten but its Virtuosity fulfilled, the world entered but its harm kept at bay, things responded to in a manner worthy of a true sovereign so that the empire comes to order. All are ways of attunement with the great source, forgetting both life and death. All can be wandered in — indeed, all are nothing but this wandering.”

That video is pretty bad. First of all, it doesn’t name its sources and takes at face value claims made about Pythagoras centuries after he lived. A video purporting to reveal “what they don’t teach you in school” could start by demonstrating some basic critical thinking skills. Not that examining the so-called Pythagorean tradition isn’t worthwhile- it’s all very fascinating, but the sources are much later and very much overlapping with Platonism. This stream gets stirred together with Hermeticism, alchemy, etc and feeds into the Christian and especially Islamic esoteric currents that developed a lot of the West’s scientific heritage. But the video just skips 2000 years to Newton. What?

It’s a terrible book and I’m hoping MBZ was kidding. I would start with a historical overview- I think the best way to understand ideas is to learn at the same time the context they arose in. Isabelle Robinet’s book Taoism: Growth of a Religion is good, I don’t know if anything in English has superseded it.

Well, yeah. That’s basically the history of science. It is uncomfortable for the positivist consensus to acknowledge but modern science developed out of various disciplines of “natural philosophy” that were inseparable from magical or esoteric practices. One of the silliest things about that film Agora is that it depicts Hypatia as some sort of 18th-19th century empiricist.

I'd say the word "nature" is sufficiently vague and broad in application that there are, indeed, Chinese words that can stand in for it, depending on the meaning. But that's the problem, isn't it? How can we pinpoint nature and thereby also know what goes against nature? If we say "follow nature" then we also have to account for how something can arise against nature- can that be done without lapsing into some kind of dualist metaphysics? The Stoics avoided the question by adopting fatalism. Oftentimes "nature" is invoked to elevate preferences or historically bound views into cosmic principles.

There’s a word for that, it’s called “bootlicking” and it’s actually very common.

Imagine thinking Andrew Tate and Mark Zuckerberg are people you want to emulate

Point taken. I’ll say this though in defense of the Bronze Age religions: they produced some wonderful cultural artifacts. Beautiful myths, literature, art, monuments, etc. It seems their modern successors have nothing to offer but multi-level marketing schemes, energy drinks, and weird diets.