I'm not sure about this, his analysis of the emotions is quite good.But it is Clear that Aquinas didnt quite get the human psyche and how it really worked. — Beebert
Why would you say Aquinas is incapable of that?But imagine Aquinas going out for a run. Imagine him actually doing anything that intensifies the Will and thereby proves the reality of things within us that he seems to have neglected. — Beebert
Sure, except that you don't get to choose amongst them, rather the choice is made for you based on how you answer some questions (not very good questions, I will admit).Plus, you have there Only two Christians basically to choose from from a list of philosophers. — Beebert
A good intention (for example, that of helping one's neighbor) does not make behavior that is intrinsically disordered, such as lying and calumny, good or just
One intends to do something objectively good, helping one's neighbor, by means of something objectively bad, lying. — Thorongil
There is no final definitive formulation of the good to be arrived at; it is better and better known through better and better understanding, intuition and conscience. — Janus
Everything you choose, everything do you, will be tainted by self-interest. That, I think, is the inner meaning of Augustine's 'Love, and do what you will' - by that I take him to mean, that love itself is the sacrifice of ego. — Wayfarer
as one acts from self-centredness and ego (and, who doesn't?) then you can't even aspire to the Good. — Wayfarer
There is no absolute perfection in humanity. — Janus
As we're discussing religious philosophies, as a matter of fact, this is exactly what Christ is supposed to be. Take it or leave it but it's is a fundamental principle of Christianity. Not that I'm preaching - it's simply a matter of definition. — Wayfarer
Yes, of course, I have heard about it - that was quite common with the Theosophical Society and also Steiner's movement if I'm not mistaken. There's also many other less esoteric forms of non-Trinitarian Christianity which take the same principles.I think that is for the most part the most common Christian view; but there are alternative interpretations. Have you heard of 'the Cosmic Christ' for example? As far as I understand the idea the Cosmic Christ is the divine-in-incarnation and is universally present in Creation. So, Jesus would have been one who fully realized the divine in himself; and we can all potentially realize the same. This understanding is incompatible with the doctrine of atonement. The idea of atonement makes no sense at all to me, although I acknowledge it is a predominant view among Christians. — Janus
the earliest Christians did believe that Jesus was God and claimed to be God. — Agustino
The Gospel narratives may suggest that Jesus was divine, but they do not insist upon it. Hundreds of years after Jesus' death, the Church councils made Jesus' divinity a central tenet of belief among many of his followers. When Jesus Became God: The Epic Fight over Christ's Divinity in the Last Days of Rome by Richard Rubenstein is a narrative history of Christians' early efforts to define Christianity by convening councils and writing creeds. Rubenstein is most interested in the battle between Arius, Presbyter of Alexandria, and Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria. Arius said that Christ did not share God's nature but was the first creature God created. Athanasius said that Christ was fully God. At the Council of Nicea in 325, the Church Fathers came down on Athanasius's side and made Arius's belief a heresy.
The idea of atonement makes no sense at all to me, although I acknowledge it is a predominant view among Christians. — Janus
So rather than arguing about whether 'Christianity is better than Buddhism' — Wayfarer
This is why the search for whether any religion is true ought to come first and the search for similarities between religions second, which in fact will follow as a matter of course from the first. — Thorongil
The "perennial philosophy" is ...defined as a doctrine which holds, first, that as far as worthwhile knowledge is concerned not all men are equal, but that there is a hierarchy of persons, some of whom, through what they are, can know much more than others; secondly, that there is a hierarchy also of the levels of reality, some of which are more "real," because more exalted than others; third, that the sages of old have found a wisdom which is true, although it has no empirical basis in observations which can be made by everyone and everybody; and that in fact there is a rare and unordinary faculty in some of us by which we can attain direct contact with actual reality--through the Prajñāpāramitā of the Buddhists, the logos of Parmenides, the sophia of Aristotle and others, Spinoza's amor dei intellectualis, Hegel's Vernunft, and so on; and finally that true teaching is based on an authority which legitimizes itself by the exemplary life and charismatic quality of its exponents. — Edward Conze
there are "levels of being" such that the more real is also the more valuable; these levels appear in both the "external" and the "internal" worlds, "higher" levels of reality without corresponding to "deeper" levels of reality within. On the very lowest level is the material/physical world, which depends for its existence on the higher levels. On the very highest/deepest level is the Infinite or Absolute -- that is, God [or in Buddhism, the Dharmakaya].
Basically this book is an attempt to recover this view of reality from materialism, scientism, and "postmodernism." It does not attempt to adjudicate among religions (or philosophies), it does not spell out any of the important differences between world faiths, and it is not intended to substitute a "new" religion for the specific faiths which already exist.
Nor should any such project be expected from a work that expressly focuses on what religions have in common. Far from showing that all religions are somehow "the same," Smith in fact shows that religions have a "common" core only at a sufficiently general level.
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