Pope speech

[paulhope]

I never thought I'd say this, but after reading this speech, I'm a big fan of the pope.

Dad sent me the link to the speech a couple days ago with the note, "The Pope created a furore with this lecture, but for the wrong reasons." By "furore" (British spelling--who knew?) he was referring to the outcry by Islamic leaders against something mean a

Comments

[pooperman]

The differences between the Septuagint (Greek) and Masoretic (Hebrew) OT's is significant. What is most-important, in my mind, is that the Jesus of the gospels quoted from the Septuagint and not the Masoretic in some places where the differences were not at all trivial.

There is an interesting element to this, given the protestants generally dismiss the Septuagint (and generally hand-wave over the differences between it and the Masoretic texts) and at least the Greek Orthodox catholics still embrace it.

The Logos of John is very similar, if not identical, to the logos of Heraclitus. That is, I suspect that the Greekiness of the NT was closer to the sophists than it was to the platonists.

Thanks for the link--and the post.

[anosognosia]

Teh Logos courtesy of teh Catholic Encyclopedia. All non-Protestant Christians (ie. Catholics, Chalcedonian [Eastern] Orthodox, Miaphysite [Coptic] Orthodox, and Nestorian [Oriental] Orthodox) use the Septuagint.

[paulhope]

Thanks for encyclopedia link. I'll check it out later.

[paulhope]

Hey, dude. Funny finding you here.

That is, I suspect that the Greekiness of the NT was closer to the sophists than it was to the platonists.

How would you distinguish them?

[pooperman]

Yeah--I friended you a couple weeks ago after several conversations where I figured out you had some very interesting things to say and that you were going down some fairly interesting paths. Hope you don't mind.

Benedict actually (parenthetically) compared Platonism to Cartesianism. I hadn't made this connection before, but it makes sense to me now that I think about it. Platonists (not to be confused with Plato, mind you) take their semantic swords and attempt to cleave the subject thinker from the thought, and they dream up this process of the discovery of eternal Forms in some heavenly realm where these Forms really really exist. It is this subject/object split that, while a useful heuristic in many circumstances, should not (IMO) be embraced as anything more than a fiction.

I would say that the unyielding and indivisible nature of the universe was the crux of Heraclitus and the sophists--this is how the logos goes so well with the "I Am". The I am, inseparable from the "everything else but I am", dissolves the subject/

[force_of_will]

The same "I am" appears in the Upanishads, and upon becoming self aware, becomes afraid. But, it reasons, this is not a reasonable state to be in, for it would mean it is afraid of itself. But this realization is quickly followed by loneliness, for "I" is always alone. At which point it divides in two, He and She...

It might be noted that in the face of a dogmatic and dominating religion of the middle ages, romatic love was born, in which each side recognized in the world its other half. This gnositic revelation was, for some time, considered a blasphemy. Romance, it would seem, has been reduced to an act in these modern times. A demand to be met, not a state to be witness to...

[pooperman]

That sounds very much like a reading of Genesis I've seen before as well, in the splitting of Adam into Adam/Eve. Some language people say the imagery is closer to a splitting into two instead of the more-popular extracting of a rib bone and fashioning something from the rib.

It's a neat image--first a cleave apart (distinction), then a cleave unto (unification/synthesis).

[anosognosia]

I think these are very different movements. The Abrahamic "I" is the statement of absolute being, the establishment of an absolute ground, whereas the Hindu "I" is the genesis of the transcendental subject from the absolute ground. In the Upanishads, this is clear -- existence does not begin with this invocation of subjectivity. The distinction is also clear in early Gnostic myths, where the I who becomes confused by and identifies with phenomena, thereby producing the world, is not the absolute being, but rather the final emanation of being. It's a curiosity of the Abrahamic tradition that both of these movements (rather than just the second of them) is granted the statue of an "I". This is really how Christianity continues, theoretically, the Abrahamic tradition, by providing, in Christ, the model of an identity between the transcendent I of absolute being and the immanent I of subjectivity. For the Hindus absolute being personifies itself through the genesis of subjectivity, but is not, as in the Abrahamic tradition, already

[force_of_will]

It's an interesting take, and not without merit. For the eastern religion, they also allow for a regression of their Gods i.e. their Gods have Gods.

It seems the same old limits of logic are to haunt us eternal...

[paulhope]

Hope you don't mind.

Certainly don't. High time I reciprocated.