> On Oct 29, 2016, at 5:16 PM, Edwina Taborsky <tabor...@primus.ca> wrote:
>
> Jon wrote: "With that in mind, a unique aspect of Christianity is its
> startling affirmation that God Himself entered into Actuality--"
>
> I don't think that the concept of 'god entering into actuality' is unique to
> Christianity. It's basic to many ancient beliefs [loosely term as 'pagan']
> about the gods. Zeus, for instance, had quite a few mortal children. Mortals
> born of gods [and that includes virgin births] are found in these Greek-Roman
> tales and other religions {Hinduism, Buddhism]
I’d second this. I think among many groups of pagans Jesus seemed like a
throwback to a more primitive type of religion. They’d, after all, rejected
Zeus and company as actual beings but had allegorized them away into a focus on
Being itself. But even in the pagan era of late antiquity there were lots of
people who took the various religious figures as actual. It just was that once
Christianity dominated in the west it more or less forced Christianity
everywhere (or near to it). Even with Christianity dominate in the medieval era
you often had remnants of earlier beliefs persisting in folk culture. You
typically saw a big gap between how folk views of supernatural beings were
thought of versus how the more educated philosophers and theologians thought of
them. Then in the Renaissance you start having the opposite moves albeit in
sometimes complicated ways. (Think Giodano Bruno for instance who tried to
resuscitate paganism of late antiquity)
Even in the east while you have a more abstract form of Buddhism there were
often lots of forms of Buddhism that maintained the local views of demons, gods
and so forth. Even when the intellectual class disbelieved such things they
were justified in terms of expediency. (The Lotus Sutra and its burning house
parable being a great example of this justification) So the folk often believed
such figures to be actual even if the intellectual class didn’t.
I think when you move into say 19th century America you start having a similar
divide between the intellectual class and the folk. Eventually that divide
leads to Evangelical fundamentalism having more and more of a break with
mainstream mainline Protestantism.
Often we take a certain view of Christianity — often that of a certain
intellectual class — as representing the whole. The actual history is
frequently far more complicated.
> I'd therefore suggest that this shows the influence of the Greek and Roman
> religions on Christianity - whereas, to my knowledge, one doesn't find such
> influence in Judaism. And, in my view, Islam is a 7th century economic
> reaction to the settling of pastoral nomadic grazing lands by the
> Roman-Byzantine empire...but that's another story.
Judaism was highly Hellenized in the Alexander period of conquest up through
the Roman era. So figures like Philo have basically taken Platonism and
rethought Judaism in terms of it. Indeed it remains a common point about debate
how much of Jewish mysticism is really borrowed from Greek mysticism via the
gnostics. (Scholem’s famous work on Jewish Mysticism while dated sets the
‘default view’ here) The defenders of Judaic originalism try to predate such
things although it debatable how strong their arguments are. Most scholars see
Judaism fundamentally transformed first by the Babylonian exile and then Greek
and Roman conquest — especially the form of monotheism that develops - although
counter arguments by figures like Moshe Idel put merkabah mysticism into BCE
and at least co-extensive with early Hellenization if not earlier. The problem
is of course that texts earlier than 200 BCE are pretty rare. And what’s after
that era frequently reflects Hellenization.
In some ways one might say Judaism was more open to Hellenization simply
because it didn’t have to deal with the Trinity nor an embodied God in Jesus.
That’s not to say they didn’t form their own syncretic forms. I’m just not sure
those forms are somehow less influenced than say what results with Augustine.
I do want to keep this tied to Peirce and not these admittedly interesting
historical questions unrelated to Peirce. To my eyes the interesting connection
to Peirce is precisely the neoPlatonic element that comes down to him through
both Jewish and Christian texts. Peirce was a careful reader of many texts that
his contemporaries neglected. Particularly the major scholastics like Duns
Scotus. However he also clearly read major Greek figures. These almost
certainly would have informed his philosophy. (And indeed Duns Scotus in
particular seems a major influence)
> On Oct 29, 2016, at 1:48 PM, Gary Richmond <gary.richm...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> And I believe that you are also quite right to point to the religious
> practices of probably many people who want something other than a 'vague'
> concept of God to, as for example, you mentioned, to pray to, namely, a more
> personal God.
I bet many are willing to pray to a vague idea of God simply because they
acknowledge their ignorance. Yet even this vague form often is different again
from what many who focus more on God as Being believe. That is there’s a big
difference of presuppositions between praying to God for intervention from
thinking about God as ground. Both might be vague but what is not vaguely held
may differ considerably. Again the rising divide between fundamentalists and
those who held to an increasingly Hegelian type belief in God is a great
example of this.
> On Oct 29, 2016, at 2:58 PM, Stephen C. Rose <stever...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Much talk about God is talk about what we don't and can't know for the simple
> reason that reality is unfolding, is continuous, and heads somewhere.
Well I’d probably agree with “don’t know” but I’m not sure I can buy “can’t
know.” After all remove God from this and you have just reality unfolding. Yet
scientists think we can say a great deal about this unfolding reality. If we
can’t do this relative to God it says more about the means to know than it does
about it being a problem of continuity or unfolding.
> On Oct 29, 2016, at 9:55 PM, Gary Richmond <gary.richm...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Be that as it may, if we are to have a list discussion on this religious
> topic I would hope that it would center on (1) whether or not Peirce was in
> fact a Christian (my own view is that he was) and, if so, (2) what sort of a
> Christian he was (as I've already commented in another thread, I think that
> he was a non-traditional Christian--he once referred to his views as
> buddheo-Christian, but that, I believe, should be taken in context).
Relative to his main contemporaries whether of the intellectual class or the
‘folk’ he seemed to have non-standard beliefs. I confess that it’s his views on
Christ’s embodiment that seem most interesting to me but also not really
discussed well in the papers I’ve read on his religion.
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