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Hah! Within the last couple of weeks I read Berdyaev's The Fate of Man in the Modern World, less for any special insight into theology than because the book was
by cafard 6y ago
Hah! Within the last couple of weeks I read Berdyaev's The Fate of Man in the Modern World, less for any special insight into theology than because the book was lying around, I had heard his name, and thought I might as well read it. On the other hand, I did read a fair bit of Plato and some Aristotle in 2020.
The one thing the modern synopsists will give you, though, is context. Jaroslav Pelikan quotes an American theologian to the effect that the Reformation was the reaction of Augustine's theology of grace on Augustine's theology of the church. I moderately well understand this, not through reading Augustine; I have read The Confessions and a smidgen each of On the Trinity and The City of God. But it was Peter Brown's Augustine of Hippo and the first volume of Pelikan's history of Christian doctrine that told me.
- Fellshard 6y agoContext is always an essential hermeneutic tool. Historic context in particular is nigh invaluable for many works. (This would seem obvious, but one of the consequences of 'death of the author' lines of thought is that a work becomes entirely stripped from all context, and much damage is thereby done to reason.)
- cafard 6y agoPhilosophers and theologians tend to be questioning answers that their predecessors or contemporaries have raised. This goes way back: Plato's dialogues have a lot of references to Heraclitus, Parmenides--well, the pre-Socratics--and Aristotle argues with Plato. To read the the successor without knowing at least something of the predecessor is like listening to somebody on the phone: you might be able to follow the conversation from just the one side, or you might not.