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Pope Benedict XVI, The Papal Science

Em. Macron, Rediscovering the Path to Europe

Page 11

In all honesty, one must observe that in the late Middle Ages we find trends in theology which would sunder this synthesis between the Greek spirit and the Christian spirit. In contrast with the so-called intellectualism of Augustine and Thomas [true bearers of the Greek spirit], there arose with Duns Scotus a voluntarism which, in its later developments, led to the claim that we can only know God's voluntas ordinata.

 

There came the Saxons bringing their awful appetite, and this appetite, despite the infallibility of the See of Peter, despite Rocks of faith, such as Augustine and Thomas, despite the Rock of philosophy, which is Aristotle, managed to hurt the Greekness of the West, they spoiled the Order and Purity that papal Reason was trying to spread all over as a blissful Terror. Why this very Reason had condemned Aquinas himself, why this Reason had denied Filioque, then accepted it, today not knowing what to do and rather denying it again, etc., are things not explained, not even silently considered, but they can't be assigned to Duns' appetite, by themselves reveal the papal Reason a limitless appetite. However, let's keep on reading what happened with that invasion of the Saxons.

 

Beyond this [voluntas ordinata] is the realm of God's freedom, in virtue of which he could have done the opposite of everything he has actually done [= they presented God as claiming for Himself the papal exclusivity in arbitrariness]. This gives rise to positions which clearly approach those of Ibn Hazn and might even lead to the image of a capricious God, [a God who dares to be capricious as the pope], who is not even bound to truth and goodness. God's transcendence and otherness are so exalted that our reason, our sense of the true and good, are no longer an authentic mirror of God, whose deepest possibilities remain eternally unattainable and hidden behind his actual decisions [leaving us incapable of giving to our 'lives' the Total 'Order' and 'Purity' that Human Reason and Opportunism demand]. As opposed to this, the faith of the Church has always insisted that between God and us, between his eternal Creator Spirit and our created reason there exists a real analogy, in which - as the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 stated - unlikeness remains infinitely greater than likeness, yet not to the point of abolishing analogy and its language.

 

If His unlikeness is infinitely greater than likeness, then for analogy to remain, infinity should be recognised in our reason too. The simultaneous deification and disdain of reason made papacy able to have the most contradictory claims, each time in the most absolute manner, and to this wholehearted opportunism to base brutalities such as the attack to Byzantium, in the same time when the fourth lateran council was attacking the reason that it was worshipping.

 

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Cf.  Manuel II Palaeologus Resources * The Papal Chrislamism * What have we done to Christianity..
Orthodoxy and Science : A changing relationship? * Papacy * Constantinople

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