Trent states: “Whosoever affirms that new-born infants are not to be baptized, even though they are the children of baptized parents, or says that they are indeed baptized for the remission of sins, but derive no original sin from Adam, which requires to be expiated by the laver of . . . . Continue Reading »
I have an Advent meditation at http://www.firstthings.com/ this morning. . . . . Continue Reading »
JN Figgis ( Studies of Political Thought From Gerson to Grotius ) writes, “In the Middle Ages the Church was not a State, but the State; the State or rather the civil authority (for a separate society was not recognized) was merely the police department of the Church. The latter took over . . . . Continue Reading »
Dumont argues that the Gelasian “two powers” theory is often misread. The theory is not a simple hierarchy, the state subordinated to the church, but a ” hierarchical complementarity .” Priests are indeed superior to kings, but they are “subordinate to the king in . . . . Continue Reading »
Like many scholars, Louis Dumont ( Essays on Individualism ) traces the development of modern conceptions of social order, individualism, and politics to Ockham: Ockham denied that general terms have any reality: “Ockham goes so far in his polemics against the Pope as to deny that there is . . . . Continue Reading »
“For centuries England has relied on protection, has carried it to extremes and has obtained satisfactory results from it. There is no doubt that it is to this system that it owes its present strength. After two centuries, England has found it convenient to adopt free trade because it thinks . . . . Continue Reading »
In his epistle to Serapion, Athanasius gives his most extensive consideration to pneumatology. As in his debates with Arians, Athanasius consistently focuses attention back to the pattern of biblical language, what Anatolios calls the “intertextual scriptural characterizations of Father, Son . . . . Continue Reading »
Athanasius believes that human beings are inherently unstable, just because they are creatures. For Athanasius, the stability of salvation rests, Anatolios argues, in the inner-Trinitarian life of giving and receiving. Explaining the “anointing” of Psalm 45 as an anointing of the Son by . . . . Continue Reading »
Anatiolios offers this explanation of Athanasius’ defense of homoousios : “the meaning of the Nicene homoousios is contained in its function as a guide to a certain way of reading Scripture. An immediate hermeneutical consequence of this principle is that efforts to understand this term . . . . Continue Reading »
By insisting that “Creator” is a name intrinsic to God’s essence, Athanasius steps back into the problems from which Arianism arose in the first place. Anatolios notes that the debates about “Origen’s speculation that the title ‘Almighty,’ as a designation . . . . Continue Reading »
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