Silk for calde blog: Wolfe thesis

Matthew Weber · 19 Dec 2009, 03:57 · from 2009-December.txt.gz

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From: palaeologos at gmail.com (Matthew Weber)
Date: Fri, 18 Dec 2009 19:57:47 -0800
Subject: (urth) Silk for calde blog: Wolfe thesis
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On Fri, Dec 18, 2009 at 7:31 PM, Jeff Wilson <jwilson at io.com> wrote:

> brunians at brunians.org wrote:
>
>> It is certainly scientific in the old sense.
>>
>> It has been gone over for a long time by some brilliant people and the
>> loose ends are pretty much all tied up.
>>
>
> How about transubstantiation, and other unobservable unfalsifiables?
>
>
Could you unpack what you mean by "transubstantiation"?  Where I come from,
the word is used to describe a theory of how the Real Presence in the
Eucharist works; a theory couched in 13th-century neo-Aristotelian
philosophico-scientific terms.

Look at any of the great works of systematic theology (Thomas's Summa, John
Damascene's Exposition, Lombard's Sentences).  There's nothing wrong with
the reasoning in any of these works, and they proceed in an orderly,
rational, and coherent fashion.  Whether you find them credible will depend,
of course, on whether you accept their basic assumptions.  Criticizing them
for not following the methods of 21st century science is a bit like
criticizing theoretical mathematics for not having a good beat.  That's not
what they're *for*.

-- 
Matt +

The Ides of March have come.
Julius Caesar (100-44 B.C.), From PLUTARCH, Lives, Caesar, sec. 63
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