Philosophos

I’m studying for my Patristics mid-term, and I’m trying out a program called FreeMind, which is a tool for creating charts which are commonly called mind maps.

Here is the mind map I created while reviewing St. Ignatius of Antioch. He is one of my favorites of the Apostolic Fathers (those Church Fathers who knew the Apostles). I hope to write more about his works in the future, but this will have to do for now.

John DePoe is a doctoral student in Philosophy whose blog posts I’ve enjoyed for quite a while. Some of his stuff is beyond me, but I thought his post on Friendly Atheism to be interesting, and possibly helpful to some of my readers.

From 1985 to 1991 I worked for General Dynamics in Fort Worth, Texas. Half of that time was on F-16 related projects, and the last half was working on the A-12 Avenger II, a highly ambitious project to build what could be called an aircraft carrier based stealth bomber. Technical difficulties led to cost overruns, which led to the project’s cancellation. The program was classified, so I was never able to really talk about it while I worked on it. Even now, I’m not sure what I would be free to say about it.

Yesterday, a high school student was asking me about places I had worked, and I thought that he would probably be interested in the A-12 story, so this morning, I found the following website which is a tribute to the A-12. It’s full of all kinds of cool pictures, so if you’re into that kind of stuff, check it out.

Here is a 3 minute video of Dr. William Lane Craig responding to a typical argument for atheism. Dr. Craig is a logic machine. He has the ability to cut through the cloud of rhetoric with a laser beam of logic, and explain his case step-by-step so that his argument seems irrefutable.

Stizzyocayce tagged me to do the following:

• Pick up the nearest book of 123 pages or more. (No cheating!)
• Find Page 123.
• Find the first 5 sentences.
• Post the next 3 sentences.
• Tag 5 people.

I think the closest book was the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which I was consulting recently for an email conversation. It was towards my left, but I also have a stack of books towards my right, the top of which is Acts of Faith by Eboo Patel, which I just bought today after hearing Dr. Patel speak at a conference of the Independent Schools Association of the Southwest (ISAS). I think that book is maybe a few inches farther away from me than the Catechism, but because it’s so close, I will quote it too.

First, from the Catechism :

440 Jesus accepted Peter’s profession of faith, which acknowledge him to be the Messiah, by announcing the imminent Passion of the Son of Man. He unveiled the authentic content of his messianic kingship both in the transcendent identity of the Son of Man “who came down from heaven,” and in his redemptive mission as the suffering Servant: “The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” Hence the true meaning of his kingship is revealed only when he is raised high on the cross.

Now from Acts of Faith:

It was Azim’s job to develop young Ismaili scholars. The only time I had ever detected pride in his voice was when he told me about Ismailis who had gotten jobs at major universities in North America and Europe, and he mused about the impact they would have when their work started to be published. I thought perhaps he would be excited about my new career focus.

Ok, I’ve done 4 out of 5 of the bullets. I’ve never been one to pass along things like this, so I won’t make any promises on the fifth obligation.

By the way, here is a little information about Dr. Patel. He is a young American Muslim from India who has founded an organization call Interfaith Youth Core, which seeks to promote discussion of religion among young people. There were several things in his talk that impressed me:

• His approach to interfaith dialog is not a process of watering down religions to a minimal and meaningless commonality, but for people who are passionate about their religion to discuss and learn what is common and what is distinctive about theirs and other’s religions.
• He said regardless of your particular religion, or your view of religion, it is clear that knowledge of religion is necessary to understand the world we live in. Classes on religion, that do not seek to convert students, but to inform them, should be a part of a good education. The Supreme Court has ruled repeatedly that such classes in public schools do not violate the principle of separation of Church and State.
• He has found that an effective way of getting students interested in religion is to show how many people who have made positive changes in history were inspired by their faith. He names people like Martin Luther King and Dorothy Day as inspirations in his own life. When he teaches about religions, he takes certain values, such as “mercy”, and shows what the various religions teach about the subject, and then how it is worked out in civilization, and in individual people’s lives.
• He compares the religious situation of today to the race situation in the 20th century. Just as courageous people were willing to cross the “color line”, he is calling people now to be willing to cross the “religion line”.

I am taking a class on Patristic Theology, which is about the theology of the early Christians. I have a lot of reading for this class from the original ancient sources, and they are very fascinating. I have decided to try to share on this blog important passages as I run across them in my reading, hoping to benefit others as well as aid in my own learning process.

The first passage I want to share is from St. Clement’s letter to the Corinthians, written in 96 or 97 AD. It is the oldest extant work of Christian literature, apart from the biblical writings. Clement was the 3rd bishop of Rome after St. Peter, and he is writing to Corinth because of a schism that has happened in that Church. I am impressed by the following chapter, 42, because it is an indication of the early concept of Holy Orders and Apostolic Succession which is the backbone of authority in the Church. You can see the entire epistle at Early Christian Writings or New Advent Encyclopedia.

The apostles have preached the gospel to us from the Lord Jesus Christ; Jesus Christ [has done so] from God. Christ therefore was sent forth by God, and the apostles by Christ. Both these appointments, then, were made in an orderly way, according to the will of God. Having therefore received their orders, and being fully assured by the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, and established in the word of God, with full assurance of the Holy Ghost, they went forth proclaiming that the kingdom of God was at hand. And thus preaching through countries and cities, they appointed the first fruits [of their labours], having first proved them by the Spirit, to be bishops and deacons of those who should afterwards believe. Nor was this any new thing, since indeed many ages before it was written concerning bishops and deacons. For thus says the Scripture in a certain place, “I will appoint their bishops in righteousness, and their deacons in faith.” (1 Clement 42)

Clement goes on in chapter 43 to retell the story of how in the time of Moses, the authority of the high priest, Aaron, was challenged by others, and God performed a miracle with Aaron’s staff to indicate he was the chosen one. Clement says this was done “that there might be no sedition in Israel“. Established authority is necessary for unity, so Clement tells the Corinthians what is the basis of proper authority in the Church in order to heal the split.

In Chapter 44, he says “Our apostles also knew, through our Lord Jesus Christ, that there would be strife on account of the office of the episcopate. For this reason, therefore, inasmuch as they had obtained a perfect fore-knowledge of this, they appointed those [ministers] already mentioned, and afterwards gave instructions, that when these should fall asleep, other approved men should succeed them in their ministry.” He goes on to say that it is wrong to remove a bishop from his office who is rightly performing the role, which is what had been attempted in Corinth. One thing to note here is that “bishop” and “presbyter” are used interchangeably. It will be over a decade later before we see writings that indicate the separate orders of bishop and presbyter (priest) that we have today.

I’ve turned my comments back on after activating some anti-spam technology called Askimet, which comes with my WordPress installation, but required a key to activate. I haven’t had much time to investigate this problem until now that I’m on break from school and work. I’ll do some more research to see if I need to add anything else.

Merry Christmas everyone. For your Christmas reading pleasure, I invite you to read this great little article by Mark Shea regarding the common conception that the practice of celebrating of Christmas on December 25th is of pagan origin. I will not say anymore; just read it for yourselves.

I’m getting a lot of attempts at comment spam. Although they were going to a moderation queue, they still are a lot of trouble to manage, so I’m turning off comments for now. If you do have a comment on something I’ve written, please email me and I’ll try to include it in a future post.

Yesterday was the feast of the Immaculate Conception of Mary. I ran across these notes from a blog I read written by a Benedictine Monk. He doesn’t provide much explanation, but I was still impressed.

I have heard Tim Staples make the connection between the virgin Earth , unstained by sin, from which the first Adam was formed and the Virgin Mary, unstained by sin, from which the second Adam, Jesus Christ, was formed, but Fr. Stephanos brings out more parallels here than I remember from Tim Staples. Beyond that, Fr. Stephanos draws a parallel between the Virgin Mary and the virgin tomb, which “gave birth” to the resurrected Christ. He even points out that Christ emerged from the tomb without breaking the seal of the tomb. (It was the angel that rolled away the stone in order to reveal the already empty tomb, Mt 28:2.) This is parallel to the early tradition that Christ emerged from the womb of Mary in some miraculous manner such that the integrity of her virginity was not violated. (Although Catholic dogma of the Eternal Virginity of Mary does not insist on this particular detail, it is a common Catholic belief.)