My position boils down to the following quotes, one of which you provided yourself:
On the contrary, Gregory says [The quotation is from St. Augustine (De Civ. Dei i, 8)]: “Even as in the same fire gold glistens and straw smokes, so in the same fire the sinner burns and the elect is cleansed.” Therefore the fire of Purgatory is the same as the fire of hëll: and hence they are in the same place.
And a handful from the article — which explicitly credits Calvin for first citing a divine punitive agenda in the establishment of hëll — you felt free to cite yourself:
It is interesting to examine the Greek word for “divine”, it is from the Greek “theion”, which could also mean “divine being”, but also means “sulfur’, or in Old English “brimstone” [lit. ‘burning stone’]….
Yet the word ‘theion’ is translated as “brimstone” or “sulfur” in Luke 17:29, Rev. 9:17, 14:10, 20:10, 21:8, which is where ‘fire and brimstone’ comes out of heaven, but it is equally interchange with the words “divine fire”. Since this did not fit the translators’ preconceived ideas, it is rendered always as brimstone in this context….
Elsewhere in Revelation it states that the “heat comes out of heaven” and burns the enemies of God, yet does not harm the ones with God’s seal on their foreheads. So the same heat, the heat that is the very life and light that comes from God, burns the sinners, and does not harm the ones that love God.
And so on and so forth. These quotes demonstrate the medievals nurtured the concept that there was no divine punitive agenda in the establishment of hëll, because the fire in which the dámņëd languish is the same light in which the virtuous exult — all the dead are treatment the same.
I’m not asking anyone to take my word on anything….
No, saying “Since then I have been saying that Bill’s hypocrisy has no apparent virtue other than sheltering a predatory agenda,” is telling you what I’ve done — this statement of what I’ve done is independent of what Bill has or has not done
So far as his statement of his actions is independant of anything verifiable, Mike actually IS asking all of us to take his word for quite a lot of things.
This is only true if you have not, or refuse to admit you’ve, witnessed that “I have been saying that Bill’s hypocrisy has no apparent virtue other than sheltering a predatory agenda,” which I had thought you frequented these threads long enough to do. Tell me you’ve witnessed no such thing and I will accommodate you.
I would disagree that preserving a privilege is a virtue to those who indulge it. Do you know what virtue is? Virtue is defined as “the quality of doing what is right and avoiding what is wrong” or “merit: any admirable quality or attribute.” You seem to be confusing “virtue” with “self-interest.” They are different concepts. Looking out for one’s own interests is desirable, but not virtuous.
“(S)ame fire” is an ambiguous term. It could mean the exact same fire, in the same place, or it could mean the same sort of fire. Your assumption it must mean the first leads to this:
Gasoline poured on Mike while he is barbecuing hurts; Gasoline poured into my gas tank lets me drive to Baltimore: Therefore, Mike is barbecuing in my car (so he ought to stop that foolishness, right now).
No. The Aquinas citation of Augustine does not lead to any conclusions remotely analogous to the conclusion of your fantasy of burning people — so much so you can apparently provide no such conclusion for the cited medieval premise and depend on a strawman to make an absurd point.
Again, you continue to argue as to discredit whatever point you are trying to make. By all means, keep going.
To me, “same fire” can just as easily mean “the same sort of fire” as “the same specific fire, identical in time, place and duration.” If you said “I lost my dog” and I replied “The same thing happened to me” would you assume we were talking about the same dog lost at the same time, or would you see that we had merely experienced analogous events?
You still have provided no outcome from the plain reading of the Aquinas/Augustine quote your absurd analogies apply to. Failing to provide such an outcome demonstrates your analogies have no relationship with the quote in question — they are arbitrary.
I’m not gay-baiting, I’m obsessive-baiting, and there is simply no portrayal of a same-sex obsession as anything other than gay.
Simply untrue. You may not be creative enough to do so but your inabilities are not the rule.
In fact, there are so many ways that one could do it that your reliance on cheap gay-baiting is convincing evidence of a deeper animus toward homosexuals.
…which you demonstrate by failing to cite even an example of “so many ways” to portray same-sex obsession as something other than gay.
One can only imagine how Mike would react if someone else made the satement to the effect that he (mike) would be the Blanche DuBois to (the other guy’s) Stanley Kowalski. (Hey, Mike knows about A Streetcar Named Desire! Oooooo, he’s so literate!) I mean, Stanley rapes Blanche. Cripes! Mike would be theatening to call CNN or something!
(And Stanley seems an…odd character to identify with. Crass, vulger, a bully, unmannered, selfish, chauvinistic, a rapist…interesting choice. Interesting.)
Crass, vulger, and unmannered are terrible choices… and none of them were mine:
“give a chimpanzee a typewriter, and eventually you’ll get Shakespeare.”
How long do we have to wait? Because so far no Shakespeare from mike, just chimp.
“Who does it suck more to be, the chimp, or the history student corrected by the chimp?”
Thank you, Mike, for admitting you’re a chimp.
Still, must agree. This meeting of V.O.M.I.T is adjourned until the little chimp (thanks Micha) starts flinging verbal and intellectual feces against our wall.
Jerry chose to obsess on someone his friends have portrayed as simian. If you have a more flattering analogy, by all means, don’t let me stop you from sharing it.
As far as werewolves go, there is actually a medical condition called lycanthropy, in which the patient is pretty much covered with hair in unusual places and amounts for the average human. There is a theory that these people are the source of the werewolf mythology or lexicon or whichever term you’d like to use. However, there are also many multiple cases, even in this country, of large hairy critters being sited, lately in Wisconsin. So, having not seen any overly hairy critters besides my friends, I can’t say any more than that.
Micha and Jeffrey–thanks for the responses.
Posted by: Micha at May 30, 2007 09:01 PM I remember reading somewhere that werewolves were invented by Hollywood in the 30’s, I think to compete with Dracula movies. But I’m not certain about this.
Now you’re getting into my area again. ~8?}
There was a writer by the name of Guy Endore who went on to work in Hollywood after the publication of The Werewolf of Paris (1933). But he didn’t invent anything new.
No, the concept goes back well before that. The Romans had their annual Lupercali Festival every February 15th wherein one part of the calibration involved a rite that protected noble born children from wolves and werewolves. Ancient tribes all over the world would embrace the inner animal by donning animal skins in magic rituals. Wolves were very popular in those ceremonies.
Japan had a variation on the theme with the Fox Maidens of ancient myth and China had their version with the Fox People. It was believed in the middle ages that sorcerers would obtain a Fox Strap in order to change their forms.
Gilles Garnier (d. 1573) was accused of and confessed to the killing of a number of children while being, “in the form of a wolf.” His killing pattern was like that of a traditional werewolf as well.
Peter Stumpf (1525-1589) was convicted and executed as a werewolf killer in the town of Bedburg near the city of Cologne. There was an eight panel wood-carving of his murders (showing him as a wolf walking on two legs) and his execution that was made in 1590.
Thing is, how do you define “werewolf” in the conversation? In the strictest sense, Hollywood did create the modern werewolf in the 1930’s, but even then it was only a refinement of what came before. Most of the examples I listed above were werewolves of the kind that were either men or wolves with no man-wolf hybrid as we think of them today. They were shape shifters who couldn’t always control their transformation into a mindless and vicious animal. Still, that’s nowhere near the transformation that vampires have undergone over the centuries.
The word “werewolf” is also of questionable age. There are academic disputes over its first appearance and whether or not older names for some of the conditions of lycanthropy count as “werewolf” or not. Depends on how you view the translation process.
I know I just answered your query by saying both “yes” and “no” simultaneously, but it’s an interesting argument that depends on how fine you want to parse the definitions in the argument. Hey, I’ve got books that range from 400 pages to 800 pages devoted to the myth and lore and even they hedge their bets a bit when it comes to nailing down precisely defined categories of werewolves.
Oh, I left out that The Werewolf of Paris was, strangely based on a real man who wasn’t anything like a werewolf. Francois Bertrand was a sergeant in the French army who desecrated graves throughout Paris before being caught in 1840. More of a ghoul really. Still, Endore applied the name to his book and the book later became the source inspiration for The Curse of the Werewolf with Oliver Reed. Not a bad film actually. Better then a number of the better known ones as well.
That should be “celebration” up there. I have no freaking idea where calibration came from.
Sheesh……
If there’s one thing that’s a pain in the ášš to deal with, it’s a poorly calibrated werewolf. Crooked, poorly placed bite marks all over the place…
Speaking of mythical creatures, anybody seen the trailer for “Fido” yet? Looks like it could be amusing.
-Rex Hondo-
Thanks Doug, Jerry and Sean for the info on werewolves. I stand corrected.
Jeffrey, I noticed you decided to get into the discussion with Mike about hëll and Thomas Aquinas. I’m afraid this is one of the cases in which Mike takes a segment of text out of context and mixes it up with his own ideas and other ideas taken out of context. If you look at the whole passage from Thomas Quinas, and if you go further and look at other passages, then the context of the quoted passage and Aquinas’s position become clearer (or as clear as this stuff can be).
I’ll try to lay it out for you, but it’s long and I don’t know how to highlight the most relevant sentences, so bare with me.
Needless to say, this will have no effect on Mike. I’m doing this for the benefit of everybody else.
Mike quoted this paragraph:
“On the contrary, Gregory says [The quotation is from St. Augustine (De Civ. Dei i, 8)]: “Even as in the same fire gold glistens and straw smokes, so in the same fire the sinner burns and the elect is cleansed.” Therefore the fire of Purgatory is the same as the fire of hëll: and hence they are in the same place.”
But he omitted the context: on the contrary to what?
This quote is part of the second question in an appendix to the chapter about pergatory.
Now he has to deal with the nature and location of pergatory in relation to hëll.
True to scholastic form he starts by presenting reasons why the answer to the question should be negative, namely that hëll and pergatory are not in the same place:
“Objection 1. It would seem that it is not the same place where souls are cleansed and the dámņëd punished. For the punishment of the dámņëd is eternal, according to Matthew 25:46, “These shall go into everlasting punishment [Vulg.: ‘fire’].” But the fire of Purgatory is temporary, as the Master says (Sent. iv, D, 21). Therefore the former and the latter are not punished together in the same place: and consequently these places must needs be distinct.
Objection 2. The punishment of hëll is called by various names, as in Ps. 10:7, “Fire and brimstone, and storms of winds,” etc., whereas the punishment of Purgatory is called by one name only, namely fire. Therefore they are not punished with the same fire and in the same place.
Objection 3. Further, Hugh of St. Victor says (De Sacram. ii, 16): “It is probable that they are punished in the very places where they sinned.” And Gregory relates (Dial. iv, 40) that Germanus, Bishop of Capua, found Paschasius being cleansed in the baths. Therefore they are not cleansed in the same place as hëll, but in this world.”
But then he presents a counter argument from Augustine:
“On the contrary, Gregory says [The quotation is from St. Augustine (De Civ. Dei i, 8)]: “Even as in the same fire gold glistens and straw smokes, so in the same fire the sinner burns and the elect is cleansed.” Therefore the fire of Purgatory is the same as the fire of hëll: and hence they are in the same place.
Further, the holy fathers; before the coming of Christ, were in a more worthy place than that wherein souls are now cleansed after death, since there was no pain of sense there. Yet that place was joined to hëll, or the same as hëll: otherwise Christ when descending into Limbo would not be said to have descended into hëll. Therefore Purgatory is either close to, or the same place as, hëll.”
The point of these paragraphs is to say that hëll and pergatory are in the same place.
Now, after presenting arguments both against and for the idea that pergatory is in the same place as hëll, he goes on to give his own answer:
“I answer that, Nothing is clearly stated in Scripture about the situation of Purgatory, nor is it possible to offer convincing arguments on this question. It is probable, however, and more in keeping with the statements of holy men and the revelations made to many, that there is a twofold place of Purgatory. One, according to the common law; and thus the place of Purgatory is situated below and in proximity to hëll, so that it is the same fire which torments the dámņëd in hëll and cleanses the just in Purgatory; although the dámņëd being lower in merit, are to be consigned to a lower place. Another place of Purgatory is according to dispensation: and thus sometimes, as we read, some are punished in various places, either that the living may learn, or that the dead may be succored, seeing that their punishment being made known to the living may be mitigated through the prayers of the Church.
Some say, however, that according to the common law the place of Purgatory is where man sins. This does not seem probable, since a man may be punished at the same time for sins committed in various places. And others say that according to the common law they are punished above us, because they are between us and God, as regards their state. But this is of no account, for they are not punished for being above us, but for that which is lowest in them, namely sin.”
St. Thomas then goes on to address the objections he mentioned before:
“Reply to Objection 1. The fire of Purgatory is eternal in its substance, but temporary in its cleansing effect.
Reply to Objection 2. The punishment of hëll is for the purpose of affliction, wherefore it is called by the names of things that are wont to afflict us here. But the chief purpose of the punishment of Purgatory is to cleanse us from the remains of sin; and consequently the pain of fire only is ascribed to Purgatory, because fire cleanses and consumes.
Reply to Objection 3. This argument considers the point of special dispensation and not that of the common law.”
The important part here is the 2nd reply. St. Thomas clearly states that the objective of hëll and pergatory is punishment, in both cases by the same fire, but for different purposes.
Now you might ask, what is the nature of that fire. The theology proposed in the article Mike provide suggests a different concept of the fire of hëll.
“Article 5. Whether the fire of hëll will be corporeal?
Article 6. Whether the fire of hëll is of the same species as ours?
Article 7. Whether the fire of hëll is beneath the earth?”
And here is what the interpretation in the second link says about the answers to these questions:
“Will the fire of the Inferno be corporeal (article 5)? Yes, because we are not aware of spiritual punishment, and it is physical punishment with which God threatens us. Aquinas rejects the theory of Avicenna, that the souls of the wicked are punished after death, not by bodies but by images of bodies; just as in a dream. For the power of imagination depends ultimately on the power of bodily organs. ‘We must admit that the fire that will torment the bodies of the dámņëd is corporeal, since we cannot fittingly apply a punishment to a body unless the punishment itself is a bodily one’. The pain of the Inferno has to be real not imaginary pain. Since real pain is what causes pain to our body, the fire of the inferno must be a physical, not a spiritual fire.
Is the fire of hëll is of the same kind as earthly fire (article 6)? Yes, but it has certain properties differing from our fire, for instance that it needs no kindling, nor is kept alive by fuel. And is (article 7) the fire of hëll is beneath the earth? Probably. After all, the Latin word for ‘Hëll’ (Infernus) means ‘the regions below’. (the connotation of intense and searing heat, it clearly acquired from the Christian idea of punishment in the afterlife).”
Not at all. The person who wrote the article is suggesting to reject, based on the biblical text, “the way traditional Western Christianity, Roman Catholic or Protestant, has envisioned the afterlife. In Western thought Hëll is a location, a place where God punishes the wicked, where they are cut off from God and the Kingdom of Heaven. Yet this concept occurs nowhere in the Bible, and does not exist in the original languages of the Bible.”
Obviously, he is rejecting the theology of Thomas Aquinas, and the concept of hëll that was developed in the middle ages and afterwards in the age of the reformation. He is also rejecting St. Augustine’s ideas which inform St. Thomas’s thought.
Mike has mentioned Calvin, but again misses the point by ignoring important passages and not having any context, which is why all this is not clear to him.
Here is what he writer of this article says:
“Tragically, in the west a few centuries after the Great Schism (1054 AD) an innovation (i.e. heresy) developed as a result of an attempt to rationalize God’s purifying fires. Latin theologians surmised that God created a place called purgatory with purging fires to “purify” those that die with imperfect atonement, and they further rationalized that paying indulgences could buy your loved ones out of these painful purging fires faster. This rationalization also helped keep the church prosperous and coffers full.
The western ideas had its roots in Augustinian theology (who was influenced by the Greek pagan philosophers). Unfortunately Augustine could not read Greek and had to devise his own theology from imperfect Latin translations. Late in his life he recanted much of his earlier writings, an act which was ignored in the West. Both Luther and Calvin developed their own theologies from Augustine’s erroneous writings, and ignoring Augustine’s later retraction. This is how the pagan notion of a God that both punishes and rewards made its way into western Christian theologies. Another major influence was the 13th century fantasy novelist Dante, who’s political satire known as the Inferno borrowed heavily from pagan mythology and bears little resemblance to Biblical eschatology.
Some Orthodox would contend that the western God, who both claims to love us, but also would condemn us to eternal punishment, is a schizophrenic God. It is reminiscent of the abusive groom who claims to love his bride but can not stop punishing her.
Calvin further rationalized if God is all knowing, then He knows who will be saved and who will not even before they are born, so therefore He must have created some people just so He can torment them in Hëll for eternity. This is the infamous “predestination” of Calvin, which makes God the author of evil. This is not Biblical and certainly not Christian. Ultimately this doctrine denies free will, the choice that all humans have to either pursue righteousness, or selfishness.”
The writer refers to several time periods in which Western Christianity moved away from the correct ideas he supports (which are still held in the Eastern Church), and toward the misconception of hëll he rejects:
1) St. Augustine’s theology (4th cenury)
2) 1054 — the seperation between the Roman Catholic Church in the West and the Greek Orthodox Church in Byzantium.
3) The development of the idea of pergatory and the idea that paying indulgences can get people out of pergatory (12th and 13th centuries)
4) Dante “who’s political satire known as the Inferno borrowed heavily from pagan mythology and bears little resemblance to Biblical eschatology.” (early 14th century)
6) Luther and Calvin who were influenced by Augustine (16th century).
Mike lacks contextual knowledge, so he thinks that Calvin is being criticized for coming up with the idea of hëll as a place of punishment. This, as we saw from Aquinas, is not true, as anybody who knows anything about Calvin knows. The writer is indeed very critical of Calvin — for developing the idea of predistination, which is even worse (from the writer’s point of view) than what Augustine and the medieval theologians did, and in fact went against medieval (and modern) Catholic doctrine. Because predestination says that god already determined before hand that most of the people, except a few elect, will go to hëll. There is no option of getting out.
Mike of course also ignored the fact that the article sees Dante as an example of the wrong concept of hëll.
“His [Dante’s] theology is mainly that of St. Thomas Aquinas, though he occasionally (as when treating of primal matter and of the nature of the celestial intelligences) departs from the teaching of the Angelical Doctor. On particular points, the influence of St. Gregory, St. Isidore, St. Anselm, and St. Bonaventure may be traced; that of Boethius is marked and deep throughout. His mysticism is professedly based upon St. Augustine, St. Bernard, and Richard of St. Victor, while in many places it curiously anticipates that of St. John of the Cross.
…Dante’s vehement denunciation of the ecclesiastical corruption of his times, and his condemnation of most of the contemporary popes (including the canonized Celestine V) to hëll have led to some questioning as to the poet’s attitude towards the Church. Even in the fourteenth century attempts were made to find heresy in the “Divina Commedia”, and the “De Monarchiâ” was burned at Bologna by order of a papal legate. In more recent times Dante has been hailed as a precursor of the Reformation. His theological position as an orthodox Catholic has been amply and repeatedly vindicated, recently and most notably by Dr. Moore, who declares that “there is no trace in his writings of doubt or dissatisfaction respecting any part of the teaching of the Church in matters of doctrine authoritatively laid down”. A strenuous opponent of the political aims of the popes of his own day, the beautiful episodes of Casella and Manfred in the “Purgatorio”, no less than the closing chapter of the “De Monarchiâ” itself, bear witness to Dante’s reverence for the spiritual power of the papacy, which he accepts as of Divine origin. Not the least striking testimony to his orthodoxy is the part played by the Blessed Virgin in the sacred poem from the beginning to the end. It is, as it were, the working out in inspired poetry of the sentence of Richard of St. Victor: “Through Mary not only is the light of grace given to man on earth but even the vision of God vouchsafed to souls in Heaven.””
————-
The howling sound you are hearing right now is this thread collapsing on its own weight and tearing the fabric of the universe. Welcome our new lords, the 5th dimention alien space monkeys
(It could be worse, at least they’re not squirrels).
I tried to post a long reply on Thomas Aquinas and all that stuff, but it got blocked because of the links. I’ll post it again without the links.
Jeffrey, I noticed you decided to get into the discussion with Mike about hëll and Thomas Aquinas. I’m afraid this is one of the cases in which Mike takes a segment of text out of context and mixes it up with his own ideas and other ideas taken out of context. If you look at the whole passage from Thomas Quinas, and if you go further and look at other passages, then the context of the quoted passage and Aquinas’s position become clearer (or as clear as this stuff can be).
I’ll try to lay it out for you, but it’s long and I don’t know how to highlight the most relevant sentences, so bare with me.
Needless to say, this will have no effect on Mike. I’m doing this for the benefit of everybody else.
Mike quoted this paragraph:
“On the contrary, Gregory says [The quotation is from St. Augustine (De Civ. Dei i, 8)]: “Even as in the same fire gold glistens and straw smokes, so in the same fire the sinner burns and the elect is cleansed.” Therefore the fire of Purgatory is the same as the fire of hëll: and hence they are in the same place.”
But he omitted the context: on the contrary to what?
This quote is part of the second question in an appendix to the chapter about pergatory.
ww.newadvent.org/summa/7001.htm
St. Thomas poses a question:
“Article 1. Whether there is a Purgatory after this life?”
and then another question:
“Article 2. Whether it is the same place where souls are cleansed, and the dámņëd punished?”
As you can see, Thomas already concluded that pergatory exists where the souls of sinners are cleansed. He also already concluded that hëll exists as a place where the dámņëd are punished.
Here are to links to the segment about hëll, the second has interpretation:
ww.newadvent.org/summa/5097.htm
uk.geocities.com/frege@btinternet.com/afterlife/afterlife.htm
Now he has to deal with the nature and location of pergatory in relation to hëll.
True to scholastic form he starts by presenting reasons why the answer to the question should be negative, namely that hëll and pergatory are not in the same place:
“Objection 1. It would seem that it is not the same place where souls are cleansed and the dámņëd punished. For the punishment of the dámņëd is eternal, according to Matthew 25:46, “These shall go into everlasting punishment [Vulg.: ‘fire’].” But the fire of Purgatory is temporary, as the Master says (Sent. iv, D, 21). Therefore the former and the latter are not punished together in the same place: and consequently these places must needs be distinct.
Objection 2. The punishment of hëll is called by various names, as in Ps. 10:7, “Fire and brimstone, and storms of winds,” etc., whereas the punishment of Purgatory is called by one name only, namely fire. Therefore they are not punished with the same fire and in the same place.
Objection 3. Further, Hugh of St. Victor says (De Sacram. ii, 16): “It is probable that they are punished in the very places where they sinned.” And Gregory relates (Dial. iv, 40) that Germanus, Bishop of Capua, found Paschasius being cleansed in the baths. Therefore they are not cleansed in the same place as hëll, but in this world.”
But then he presents a counter argument from Augustine:
“On the contrary, Gregory says [The quotation is from St. Augustine (De Civ. Dei i, 8)]: “Even as in the same fire gold glistens and straw smokes, so in the same fire the sinner burns and the elect is cleansed.” Therefore the fire of Purgatory is the same as the fire of hëll: and hence they are in the same place.
Further, the holy fathers; before the coming of Christ, were in a more worthy place than that wherein souls are now cleansed after death, since there was no pain of sense there. Yet that place was joined to hëll, or the same as hëll: otherwise Christ when descending into Limbo would not be said to have descended into hëll. Therefore Purgatory is either close to, or the same place as, hëll.”
The point of these paragraphs is to say that hëll and pergatory are in the same place.
Now, after presenting arguments both against and for the idea that pergatory is in the same place as hëll, he goes on to give his own answer:
“I answer that, Nothing is clearly stated in Scripture about the situation of Purgatory, nor is it possible to offer convincing arguments on this question. It is probable, however, and more in keeping with the statements of holy men and the revelations made to many, that there is a twofold place of Purgatory. One, according to the common law; and thus the place of Purgatory is situated below and in proximity to hëll, so that it is the same fire which torments the dámņëd in hëll and cleanses the just in Purgatory; although the dámņëd being lower in merit, are to be consigned to a lower place. Another place of Purgatory is according to dispensation: and thus sometimes, as we read, some are punished in various places, either that the living may learn, or that the dead may be succored, seeing that their punishment being made known to the living may be mitigated through the prayers of the Church.
Some say, however, that according to the common law the place of Purgatory is where man sins. This does not seem probable, since a man may be punished at the same time for sins committed in various places. And others say that according to the common law they are punished above us, because they are between us and God, as regards their state. But this is of no account, for they are not punished for being above us, but for that which is lowest in them, namely sin.”
St. Thomas then goes on to address the objections he mentioned before:
“Reply to Objection 1. The fire of Purgatory is eternal in its substance, but temporary in its cleansing effect.
Reply to Objection 2. The punishment of hëll is for the purpose of affliction, wherefore it is called by the names of things that are wont to afflict us here. But the chief purpose of the punishment of Purgatory is to cleanse us from the remains of sin; and consequently the pain of fire only is ascribed to Purgatory, because fire cleanses and consumes.
Reply to Objection 3. This argument considers the point of special dispensation and not that of the common law.”
The important part here is the 2nd reply. St. Thomas clearly states that the objective of hëll and pergatory is punishment, in both cases by the same fire, but for different purposes.
Now you might ask, what is the nature of that fire. The theology proposed in the article Mike provide suggests a different concept of the fire of hëll.
Aquinas deals with this in Articles 5, 6, 7 of chapter 97 of his book:
ww.newadvent.org/summa/5097.htm#5
uk.geocities.com/frege@btinternet.com/afterlife/inferno.htm#Q97a5
“Article 5. Whether the fire of hëll will be corporeal?
Article 6. Whether the fire of hëll is of the same species as ours?
Article 7. Whether the fire of hëll is beneath the earth?”
And here is what the interpretation in the second link says about the answers to these questions:
“Will the fire of the Inferno be corporeal (article 5)? Yes, because we are not aware of spiritual punishment, and it is physical punishment with which God threatens us. Aquinas rejects the theory of Avicenna, that the souls of the wicked are punished after death, not by bodies but by images of bodies; just as in a dream. For the power of imagination depends ultimately on the power of bodily organs. ‘We must admit that the fire that will torment the bodies of the dámņëd is corporeal, since we cannot fittingly apply a punishment to a body unless the punishment itself is a bodily one’. The pain of the Inferno has to be real not imaginary pain. Since real pain is what causes pain to our body, the fire of the inferno must be a physical, not a spiritual fire.
Is the fire of hëll is of the same kind as earthly fire (article 6)? Yes, but it has certain properties differing from our fire, for instance that it needs no kindling, nor is kept alive by fuel. And is (article 7) the fire of hëll is beneath the earth? Probably. After all, the Latin word for ‘Hëll’ (Infernus) means ‘the regions below’. (the connotation of intense and searing heat, it clearly acquired from the Christian idea of punishment in the afterlife).”
——————————–
How all this relate to the article posted by Mike?
(aggreen.net/beliefs/heaven_hell.html)
Not at all. The person who wrote the article is suggesting to reject, based on the biblical text, “the way traditional Western Christianity, Roman Catholic or Protestant, has envisioned the afterlife. In Western thought Hëll is a location, a place where God punishes the wicked, where they are cut off from God and the Kingdom of Heaven. Yet this concept occurs nowhere in the Bible, and does not exist in the original languages of the Bible.”
Obviously, he is rejecting the theology of Thomas Aquinas, and the concept of hëll that was developed in the middle ages and afterwards in the age of the reformation. He is also rejecting St. Augustine’s ideas which inform St. Thomas’s thought.
Mike has mentioned Calvin, but again misses the point by ignoring important passages and not having any context, which is why all this is not clear to him.
Here is what he writer of this article says:
“Tragically, in the west a few centuries after the Great Schism (1054 AD) an innovation (i.e. heresy) developed as a result of an attempt to rationalize God’s purifying fires. Latin theologians surmised that God created a place called purgatory with purging fires to “purify” those that die with imperfect atonement, and they further rationalized that paying indulgences could buy your loved ones out of these painful purging fires faster. This rationalization also helped keep the church prosperous and coffers full.
The western ideas had its roots in Augustinian theology (who was influenced by the Greek pagan philosophers). Unfortunately Augustine could not read Greek and had to devise his own theology from imperfect Latin translations. Late in his life he recanted much of his earlier writings, an act which was ignored in the West. Both Luther and Calvin developed their own theologies from Augustine’s erroneous writings, and ignoring Augustine’s later retraction. This is how the pagan notion of a God that both punishes and rewards made its way into western Christian theologies. Another major influence was the 13th century fantasy novelist Dante, who’s political satire known as the Inferno borrowed heavily from pagan mythology and bears little resemblance to Biblical eschatology.
Some Orthodox would contend that the western God, who both claims to love us, but also would condemn us to eternal punishment, is a schizophrenic God. It is reminiscent of the abusive groom who claims to love his bride but can not stop punishing her.
Calvin further rationalized if God is all knowing, then He knows who will be saved and who will not even before they are born, so therefore He must have created some people just so He can torment them in Hëll for eternity. This is the infamous “predestination” of Calvin, which makes God the author of evil. This is not Biblical and certainly not Christian. Ultimately this doctrine denies free will, the choice that all humans have to either pursue righteousness, or selfishness.”
The writer refers to several time periods in which Western Christianity moved away from the correct ideas he supports (which are still held in the Eastern Church), and toward the misconception of hëll he rejects:
1) St. Augustine’s theology (4th cenury)
2) 1054 — the seperation between the Roman Catholic Church in the West and the Greek Orthodox Church in Byzantium.
3) The development of the idea of pergatory and the idea that paying indulgences can get people out of pergatory (12th and 13th centuries)
4) Dante “who’s political satire known as the Inferno borrowed heavily from pagan mythology and bears little resemblance to Biblical eschatology.” (early 14th century)
6) Luther and Calvin who were influenced by Augustine (16th century).
Mike lacks contextual knowledge, so he thinks that Calvin is being criticized for coming up with the idea of hëll as a place of punishment. This, as we saw from Aquinas, is not true, as anybody who knows anything about Calvin knows. The writer is indeed very critical of Calvin — for developing the idea of predistination, which is even worse (from the writer’s point of view) than what Augustine and the medieval theologians did, and in fact went against medieval (and modern) Catholic doctrine. Because predestination says that god already determined before hand that most of the people, except a few elect, will go to hëll. There is no option of getting out.
Mike of course also ignored the fact that the article sees Dante as an example of the wrong concept of hëll.
————————
How all this is relevant to Dante?
Here is also a link to the article about Dante in the Catholic encyclopedia:
ww.newadvent.org/cathen/04628a.htm
And two quotes:
“His [Dante’s] theology is mainly that of St. Thomas Aquinas, though he occasionally (as when treating of primal matter and of the nature of the celestial intelligences) departs from the teaching of the Angelical Doctor. On particular points, the influence of St. Gregory, St. Isidore, St. Anselm, and St. Bonaventure may be traced; that of Boethius is marked and deep throughout. His mysticism is professedly based upon St. Augustine, St. Bernard, and Richard of St. Victor, while in many places it curiously anticipates that of St. John of the Cross.
…Dante’s vehement denunciation of the ecclesiastical corruption of his times, and his condemnation of most of the contemporary popes (including the canonized Celestine V) to hëll have led to some questioning as to the poet’s attitude towards the Church. Even in the fourteenth century attempts were made to find heresy in the “Divina Commedia”, and the “De Monarchiâ” was burned at Bologna by order of a papal legate. In more recent times Dante has been hailed as a precursor of the Reformation. His theological position as an orthodox Catholic has been amply and repeatedly vindicated, recently and most notably by Dr. Moore, who declares that “there is no trace in his writings of doubt or dissatisfaction respecting any part of the teaching of the Church in matters of doctrine authoritatively laid down”. A strenuous opponent of the political aims of the popes of his own day, the beautiful episodes of Casella and Manfred in the “Purgatorio”, no less than the closing chapter of the “De Monarchiâ” itself, bear witness to Dante’s reverence for the spiritual power of the papacy, which he accepts as of Divine origin. Not the least striking testimony to his orthodoxy is the part played by the Blessed Virgin in the sacred poem from the beginning to the end. It is, as it were, the working out in inspired poetry of the sentence of Richard of St. Victor: “Through Mary not only is the light of grace given to man on earth but even the vision of God vouchsafed to souls in Heaven.””
————-
The howling sound you are hearing right now is this thread collapsing on its own weight and tearing the fabric of the universe. Welcome our new lords, the 5th dimention alien space monkeys
(It could be worse Bill, at least they’re not squirrels).
Mike wrote: “Otherwise, I don’t think you’re going to find a quote of me accusing Bill of deliberately being a racist, unless he said something I can’t remember demonstrating he was so. I just don’t think race as a topic has come up all that much.”
I believe the term you accused Bill and then several other people of sheltering racism, first because he opposed hate crime legislation, and later because we all rejected your absurd take on the word Genocide.
I’ve seen woodcuts of “werewolves” from many hundreds of years ago–either they show actual wolves or some guy crawling around eating babies.
The movies were the ones that gave us the “wolfman” concept–the hairy half man half wolf who was a helpless victim (the original werewolves were supposed to be Satanists who wanted to be wolves). I suspect they were just applying Dr Jeckyl and Mr Hyde to the old werewolf idea (as well as borrowing a few ideas from vampires, like silver bullets.)
Micha: Thanks for the information. It appears correct that Dante was essentially in full agreement with the official doctrine of his time. Public opinion on theology was much more diverse, with numerous approaches branded heresy. The Pelagians, who began in the 5th Century and were condemned by St. Augustine, believed Man could reach Heaven through his own efforts, without resorting to God’s grace, because he inherits neither original sin (through Adam and Eve’s transgression) nor righteousness (through Christ’s sacrifice). The Cathars, who began in the 11th Century, taught that the spirit was wholly good and created by the good God, while the body was evil and created by the evil God, and that the two gods were in eternal combat. The range of beliefs was quite broad!
[Dante] presented the dámņëd suffering more from their own compulsive behavior than the disapproval of some divine parole arbiter.
I believe you are giving Dante a modern interpretation that does not fit the perception of 13th century catholics of heaven and hëll…. I know of two cases in which historians were able to show that other historians were reading texts incorrectly, and attributing to medievals concepts that were not their own….
I’m afraid this is one of the cases in which Mike takes a segment of text out of context and mixes it up with his own ideas and other ideas taken out of context….
Mike quoted this paragraph:
On the contrary, Gregory says [The quotation is from St. Augustine (De Civ. Dei i, 8)]: “Even as in the same fire gold glistens and straw smokes, so in the same fire the sinner burns and the elect is cleansed.” Therefore the fire of Purgatory is the same as the fire of hëll: and hence they are in the same place.
But he omitted the context: on the contrary to what?
This quote is part of the second question in an appendix to the chapter about pergatory….
Micha, this whole thing started when you accused me of attributing to medievals concepts that were not their own. All I have to do was demonstrate medievals nurtured the idea there was no divine punitive agenda in the establishment of hëll — I don’t have to prove incompatible paradigms were absent. You’ve just settled this whole issue by addressing the Aquinas/Augustine/Gregory passage you provided as evidence of my interpretation. Thank you.
Moreover, I accuse you of using the same aforementioned intellectual dishonesty and snarkiness in many of your prior posts on prior threads. I find something wrong in all of them, and cite all of them as an example of this pattern, starting with your accusations that Bill Mulligan was racist that was followed by your playing around with the meaning of the word Genocide, and ending with your misinterpretation of the positions held by PAD and the NABJ in the thread on this subject.
I don’t think you’re going to find a quote of me accusing Bill of deliberately being a racist, unless he said something I can’t remember demonstrating he was so. I just don’t think race as a topic has come up all that much.
I believe the term you accused Bill and then several other people of sheltering racism, first because he opposed hate crime legislation, and later because we all rejected your absurd take on the word Genocide.
1. I don’t think you’re going to find a post by me referring to anyone sheltering racism before my references to the term genocide.
2. “accusations that Bill Mulligan was racist” is one of intent and behavior — which I don’t think you’re going to find by me at all unless he said something I can’t remember demonstrating he was so — whereas accusations of “sheltering racism” is one of behavior, but not intent. Reading the two accusation interchangeably only seems to make sense if you are trying to downplay intent which, by downplaying the motive for racism, portrays racism as a comparable imposition (if you admit to any) on the privileged and the vulnerable.
Posted by: Bill Mulligan at May 31, 2007 07:23 AM The movies were the ones that gave us the “wolfman” concept–
Yeah, that’s why I said I was basically answering the query with both a yes and a no. Hollywood helped to create the modern era’s version of the werewolf, but the basically tweaked that which came before. I find that pretty much only ultra-retentive purist, which I’m not, stand by the idea that Hollywood created the werewolf. Of course, I am the same guy that moans on about the fact that people include Resident Evil and 28 Days/Weeks Later on zombie film lists.
The nit-picking over when the werewolf was created and whether it was by Hollywood or not is almost odd since you don’t see the same level of drawing lines in the sand with more popular, and much more drastically altered, creatures like the vampire. Hëll, The vampire changed radically from the time of Varney the Vampyre to Hollywood’s first real stab at it and it changed just as much or more each century before Varney. Early American vampire accounts, when not dealing with insane criminals, are about mindless undead that rise up from their graves at night to feed on their former friends and family with no more self awareness of what they were or what they had become then a zombie.
Add in the tribal and regional variations (the hopping corpse of Chinese legend, the Bruxa of Portugal, the Slovakian upir, etc) and you get a whole mess of things that most people wouldn’t identify as a vampire if their life depended on it. There’s even an ancient form of vampire that’s nothing more then a floating gelatinous bag that enveloped its prey and sucked out a person’s life energy. Chuck into the mix the “good” vampire, a trend that’s becoming waaayyyyyyyyy too prevalent, and the vampire has evolved even more in the last few decades.
Why werewolves seem to get so much more divided debate and scrutiny at times then some of the others is beyond me. (Not that I’m saying that’s what’s going on here.)
Posted by: Bill Mulligan at May 31, 2007 07:23 AM The movies were the ones that gave us the “wolfman” concept–
Yeah, that’s why I said I was basically answering the query with both a yes and a no. Hollywood helped to create the modern era’s version of the werewolf, but the basically tweaked that which came before. I find that pretty much only ultra-retentive purist, which I’m not, stand by the idea that Hollywood created the werewolf. Of course, I am the same guy that moans on about the fact that people include Resident Evil and 28 Days/Weeks Later on zombie film lists.
The nit-picking over when the werewolf was created and whether it was by Hollywood or not is almost odd since you don’t see the same level of drawing lines in the sand with more popular, and much more drastically altered, creatures like the vampire. Hëll, The vampire changed radically from the time of Varney the Vampyre to Hollywood’s first real stab at it and it changed just as much or more each century before Varney. Early American vampire accounts, when not dealing with insane criminals, are about mindless undead that rise up from their graves at night to feed on their former friends and family with no more self awareness of what they were or what they had become then a zombie.
Add in the tribal and regional variations (the hopping corpse of Chinese legend, the Bruxa of Portugal, the Slovakian upir, etc) and you get a whole mess of things that most people wouldn’t identify as a vampire if their life depended on it. There’s even an ancient form of vampire that’s nothing more then a floating gelatinous bag that enveloped its prey and sucked out a person’s life energy. Chuck into the mix the “good” vampire, a trend that’s becoming waaayyyyyyyyy too prevalent, and the vampire has evolved even more in the last few decades.
Why werewolves seem to get so much more divided debate and scrutiny at times then some of the others is beyond me. (Not that I’m saying that’s what’s going on here.)
Before I forget, you guys should check out “The Beast of Bray Road” and “Hunting the American Werewolf.” Supposedly true(and I only say that, again, because I haven’t seen it myself) stories from the Midwest about the furries. There’s also “Lycanthrope” which deals with the medical condition and the psychological effects.
Kinda nice when my parapsychology stuff comes in handy.
*taps the microphone*
Is this thing still on?
🙂
“Varney the Vampyre”???
Good god, not another Ernest movie!
“I want to drink your blood! KnowwutImean?”
“It appears correct that Dante was essentially in full agreement with the official doctrine of his time. Public opinion on theology was much more diverse, with numerous approaches branded heresy. The Pelagians, who began in the 5th Century and were condemned by St. Augustine, believed Man could reach Heaven through his own efforts, without resorting to God’s grace, because he inherits neither original sin (through Adam and Eve’s transgression) nor righteousness (through Christ’s sacrifice). The Cathars, who began in the 11th Century, taught that the spirit was wholly good and created by the good God, while the body was evil and created by the evil God, and that the two gods were in eternal combat. The range of beliefs was quite broad!”
Jeffrey, it is advisable to distinguish between the situation — as far as Christianity is concerned, during the late Roman Empire and the Early Middle Ages, the 8th to 10th centuries, the 11th to 14th centuries, and then the 15th, 16th and 17th centiries. During the late Roman Empire and late Middle Ages there were several competing forms of Christianity, Christian Ordthodoxy was being defined, and the Roman Church was only beginning to build up it’s power, and deal with these heresies. This was the time of the Pelagian heresy, as well as several others. There was less of an abiility to enforce orthodoxy.
Later the Roman Church became more and more dominant and also tried to be more uniform, while also reforming itself. The Cathar heresy existed on the fringe, it was subversive, and was eventually crushed. Later in the 14th, and 15th centuries, just after the Catholic Church’s power and influence reached it’s height, it started facing growing criticism, and also lost some of its power. Then you have other forms of heresy (the Lolards) that were precursors of protestanism. And then you get to the Reformation when all hëll broke loose with many Christian denomination that fragmented from Catholicism and from each other.
Jerry and Bill, I didn;t realize that werewolves were such an issue of controversy. Anyway, thanks for the info.
*taps the microphone*
Is this thing still on?
🙂
No.
~8?O
Micha: The distinctions you draw are, I think, the correct ones. Significant and popular heresies were largely a thing of the earlier periods. Of course, that’s an entirely different thing from the state of popular religious understanding. Particularly in the case of illiterate villagers, religion was absorbed far more on the emotional than the intellectual level: The people accepted the major outlines as they understood them. As for Catharism and the Albigensians, their influence was very much on the wane prior to 1244, when the fortress of Montsegur was breached and the rebels burned alive, but some presence remained in Languedoc, France, until 1321 (incidentally the year of Dante’s death), when the prelate Guillaume Belibaste was executed. Detailed study (which I have not done) would give a good idea of the influence, or lack thereof, heretics and schismatics exercised in Dante’s Florence at the time.
There isn,t really all that much controversy, Micha. It all depends on where you throw out the question and around who you do it. Not a problem here.
I don’t care that much about mincing the lore because I love all of the lore. Even above, I wasn’t disagreeing with Bill as much as playing off of his post. I’ve got a huge bookshelf full of texts on myths, legends and lore, much of it dealing with vampires and werewolves, and a huge collection of horror fiction in several media. I love it all. I only ever get tetchy over having too many “noble” vampires showing up or “zombies” that are still alive. Well, unless you’re talking voodoo zombies. Then I’m fine with it.
Huh, I somehow missed The Beast of Bray Road before. I’ve been reading up on it inline and it looks like a fun little addition to the folklore.
Thanks for pointing that one out.
Micha, Jerry, everybody else:
Might wanna check this out for some background.
Jerry and Bill, I didn;t realize that werewolves were such an issue of controversy.
The only controversy is whether or not they got nards.
I’m not gay-baiting, I’m obsessive-baiting, and there is simply no portrayal of a same-sex obsession as anything other than gay.
Simply untrue. You may not be creative enough to do so but your inabilities are not the rule.
In fact, there are so many ways that one could do it that your reliance on cheap gay-baiting is convincing evidence of a deeper animus toward homosexuals.
…which you demonstrate by failing to cite even an example of “so many ways” to portray same-sex obsession as something other than gay.
Jerry chose to obsess on someone his friends have portrayed as simian. If you have a more flattering analogy, by all means, don’t let me stop you from sharing it.
So, so needy.
Ok, so the challenge is to come up with an example of a way to portray same-sex obsession as something other than gay. This is embarrassing, Mike. Obsession is not always sexual in nature…at least to most people. Your mileage may vary.
But let’s see…here’s a good one. You could have compared the situation to Les Misérables. Jerry would, in your fantasy, be the obsessive Inspector Javert, hounding the kindly Jean Valjean (played here by Mike). I have yet to hear anyone ever suggest that either A- Jean Valjean and Javert are not of the same sex or B- Javert is not obsessed with Valjean or C- there is any sexual component to that obsession.
The only disadvantage to the analogy is that putting yourself in the role of the heroic Valjean is only slightly more laughable than making out Jerry to be Javert. But it’s your fantasy, so knock yourself out. It’s still several orders of magnitude less creepy than comparing yourself to a rapist and Jerry as your victim.
Oh but I forget–people called you a chimp and of course, that inevitably leads to Stanley Kowalski! Actually, a better analogy could have been Koko the Gorilla, who has been able to learn a number of English words although more often than not what she says is gibberish.
If it’s a requirement that your fantasy stand-ins have animus toward women it may please you to note that Koko has been known to violently grab at people’s nipples.
If someone comes back and makes clear or tries to make clear what they were saying or meant to say and you just want to keep pounding away on the statement that they and others have left behind… Well, you’re a Mike.
Jerry, you could make it a first for one of your accusations [against] me, and cite a time when I’ve persisted to drive home a conceded point.
People can do what they want, but Mike debates have long ago lost their luster for me. There may be an academic interest in them for some who have a fascination with advanced mental disorders or the effects of extreme delusional paranoia, but I ain’t one of them. For me, Mike Posts are like poorly designed speed-bumps erected on the enjoyment super-highway.
Jerry, when are you going to realize everyone else reading this has started a pool on when we’re going to give into our passions, and finally rent the room.
Besides, let him spew that intolerance and hatred. It never bothered me before and it doesn’t now. I’m secure enough in the knowledge of my hetero-ness and I just can’t get myself to view being called gay as an insult because too many of the gay friends I have are pretty good people. If nothing else, it says a world about Mike’s own repressed bigotry and self doubts that he so often feels that others will feel the way he does when that label is tossed their way by him. Rather small, sad and pathetic really.
Well, good. So you won’t feel bad when your gay friends ask you when we’re going to give into our passions and finally rent the room.
[Posted by Jerry Chandler at May 22, 2007 01:39 PM]
Sigh, I’ll make one and only one post directly to Mike. And I mean just this one. I won’t respond to any other post of yours, Mike…. This is the ONLY POST HERE that I will make that directly responds to you in any way, shape or form…..
[Posted by Jerry Chandler at May 25, 2007 11:31 AM with no sense of irony]
Mike is equating a call to grassroots political action against the government of the Bush Era with lurking around PAD’s blog, misreading posters intents and expressed ideas, applying his own twisted view or reality to others statements and then championing a counter position to a position that usually never existed in the first place. In Mike’s world, the two compare. In the real world, it’s like saying five $1 bills = one $50 bill….
And Jerry, I’m taking the simian references against me to establish that when we do give into our passions and finally rent the hotel room, you are the Blanche DuBois to my Stanley Kowalski.
We have a blog that is regularly visited by Mike () who makes many and varied observations (O) about the others here and about life in general. It’s been pointed out by just about everybody here that Mike’s observations are, to be polite, reality opposed (RO) at best. This is because of the huge number of nonsensical ideas (NI)…
…and, as Bill Myers pointed out, that whole “I’ve always depended on the kindness of strangers” is so not me…
[Micha] Strange. Jeffrey didn’t revise the text at all.
Well, not on our planet, Micha, but then who knows how those texts read on his.
[Micha] Mike is correct. Jeffrey made that change.
Yes, Jerry, do whatever it takes to build that smoldering tension that can only be relieved by explosively giving into our passions.
…there are so many ways that one could [portray a same-sex obsession as something other than gay] that your reliance on cheap gay-baiting is convincing evidence of a deeper animus toward homosexuals.
…here’s a good one. You could have compared the situation to Les Misérables. Jerry would, in your fantasy, be the obsessive Inspector Javert, hounding the kindly Jean Valjean (played here by Mike). I have yet to hear anyone ever suggest that either A- Jean Valjean and Javert are not of the same sex or B- Javert is not obsessed with Valjean or C- there is any sexual component to that obsession.
The only disadvantage to the analogy is that putting yourself in the role of the heroic Valjean is only slightly more laughable than making out Jerry to be Javert.
Thanks, Bill, for reminding us of — and disqualifying — that Valjean/Javert dynamic no one can ever seem to get away from.
But don’t lose hope. If John Gray ever publishes Men Are From Jean Valjean, Other Men Are From Inspector Javert, your analogy for straight-men obsession will prove to have been so prescient, they’ll have to shut down all the lotteries before you go in and scoop up all the jackpots with your psychic powers.
But it’s your fantasy, so knock yourself out. It’s still several orders of magnitude less creepy than comparing yourself to a rapist and Jerry as your victim.
Oh but I forget–people called you a chimp and of course, that inevitably leads to Stanley Kowalski! Actually, a better analogy could have been Koko the Gorilla, who has been able to learn a number of English words although more often than not what she says is gibberish.
If it’s a requirement that your fantasy stand-ins have animus toward women it may please you to note that Koko has been known to violently grab at people’s nipples.
And your continuing to indulge in venting disgust? No, that isn’t needy at all.
Thanks, Bill, for reminding us of — and disqualifying — that Valjean/Javert dynamic no one can ever seem to get away from.
No, thank you, Mike, for agreeing that your statement that there is simply no portrayal of a same-sex obsession as anything other than gay is incorrect and evidence of either a severe lack of imagination on your part and/or an obsession with seeing everything with a sexual component.
And your continuing to indulge in venting disgust? No, that isn’t needy at all.
Neat trick–you say stupid things and then accuse those who call you on it of being needy. You’re like a 4 year old who makes fart sounds in church and then gets pouty when the grownups shush him. You must have had some childhood.
Hmmm, my last post seems to have vanished. I’ll try again.
No, thank you, Mike for conforming that your statement there is simply no portrayal of a same-sex obsession as anything other than gay. was both incorrect and indicative of a lack of imagination.
Posted by: Jerry Chandler at May 31, 2007 04:10 PM:
“I don’t care that much about mincing the lore because I love all of the lore.”
Yes. There can be different takes on a subject.
I don’t know that much about horror.
I only ever get tetchy over having too many “noble” vampires showing up….”
That’s interesting. Do you mean noble as in good or noble as in aristocratic. The image of vampires as aristocratic seems to be a recurring theme, but it seems to me to fit well. If I ever write the epic fantasy that is currently in my mind, I’d like to have some vampires and other undead. I was thinking of going aristocratic with the vampires in the undead hierarchy and in general. Any thoughts? I don’t want to be too cliche.
There are also going to be werewolves, or other were creatures.
“Micha, this whole thing started when you accused me of attributing to medievals concepts that were not their own.”
I guess that’s the root of the problem with you Mike — “…you accused me…” — you view these discussions as ‘accusations’ and then go to increasing level of absurdity to evade them like yo did with the ‘rocket surgery’ google discussion. It’s a shame really. You made a layman comment about Dante that is not without merit. I made a comment. It could all have ended there. But since you viewed my reply as an ‘accusation’, this discussion has been dragged so long and taken by you to such levels of absurdity, all to evade this so called ‘accusation’. Why? Good for you for reading Dante. God for you for thinking about it, for forming original thoughts. Nobody expects you to know about medieval mentality. Nobody expects you to be right all the time about everything. In the literary, philosophical, crative level, your comment has som merit. There might even be something there on the historical level, although, as Jeffrey pointed out, we can’t say anything pending much more research than we’re willng to do. But by viewing it as an accusation that needs to be evaded at all cost you have deprived al of us of a sensible conversation in exchange for what? I don’t know.
——————
Posted by: Jeffrey Frawley at May 31, 2007 03:54 PM
“Detailed study (which I have not done) would give a good idea of the influence, or lack thereof, heretics and schismatics exercised in Dante’s Florence at the time.”
I bet somewhere out there there is a book or an article discussing heretic themes in Dante’s work. The idea of heresy was on the minds of people, I’m pretty sure. But please son’t ask me to do research.
I’d also like to point out that in the medieval context the accusation of being schismatic was leveled every time there was a division in the Cathlic Church over the election of the Pope, which was quite common. I don’t know if there were any anti-Popes during Dante’s time, but it was a major part of the Church’s history before and after.
Thanks for the link Sean.
In fact, there are so many ways that one could do it that your reliance on cheap gay-baiting is convincing evidence of a deeper animus toward homosexuals.
…which you demonstrate by failing to cite even an example of “so many ways” to portray same-sex obsession as something other than gay.
…Thanks, Bill, for reminding us of — and disqualifying — that Valjean/Javert dynamic no one can ever seem to get away from.
No, thank you, Mike for [confirming] that your statement there is simply no portrayal of a same-sex obsession as anything other than gay. was both incorrect and indicative of a lack of imagination….
And thank you for helping me dismiss that whole “animus toward homosexuals” thing as an arbitrary accusation. After 2 days, the “so many ways” to portray Jerry’s same-sex obsession with me as something other than gay is still zero.
Neat trick–you say stupid things and then accuse those who call you on it of being needy. You’re like a 4 year old who makes fart sounds in church and then gets pouty when the grownups shush him. You must have had some childhood.
Not at all.
Your arbitrary “so many ways” accusation seems just a part of your practice of venting disgust on people to shame them into doing what you want them to do — a practice you probably honed in your profession as an authority figure over children.
As far as you need to take people hostage by their shame to validate an arbitrary accusation, you are needy.
Ok Micha, I’m convinced. Or more accurate, Mike has convinced me that your diagnosis of him is the correct one. I had previously thought that Mike didn’t really believe the things he said, that they were positions taken to somehow ‘win’… whatever it is he thinks he wins in these discussions. (The simple pleasure of always being able to perceive himself as right, I suspect.)
After this last little bit with The Mulligan (and catching up on the ‘rocket surgery’ hilarity that happened while I was out of town) I’ve come to agree with Micha that Mike just can’t help himself. This is really who he is, and how he sees the world. Which raises the question if having fun at his expense qualifies as picking on the disabled?
I really don’t know, I think it would feel more icky if Mike himself wasn’t so determined to attack everyone around him, and the fact that he mostly doesn’t seem to feel that put upon by people’s reactions to him. (Except for his forays into total paranioa, when he imagines Jerry is driving to his house with a trunk full of duct tape and horse tranquilizers…)
“Do you mean noble as in good or noble as in aristocratic. “
I meant noble as in good. I don’t mind the odd nice vampire popping up from time to time, but it’s becoming the cliché in vampire fiction to have your lead character have a boyfriend/girlfriend/lover that’s a vampire.
Anita and Buffy lead the way in popularizing this to the detriment of vampire lore. For me, vampires lose a lot when they become good guys. The lore already had the dhampire to play with, so taking evil and making it all soft and cuddly never made much sense to me.
Any thoughts? I don’t want to be too cliche.
You wouldn’t really want to know my thoughts. I’m not saying that in a sarcastic manner, it’s just that the vampire fiction I’ve worked on and tried to get out there plays with returning the vampire to a much darker, harder edged place.
If you can order it from over there, get the “completely revamped” (their words on the cover) edition of j. Gordon Melton’s The Vampire Book. It’s about 800 pages of information on vampire lore of old and the last 120 years or so of pop-culture vampires. The order information will show it at about 900 pages, but that’s because it has almost 100 pages of end notes and references. There’s soooo much more in that then I could tell you on this blog.
Micha, you have Myers email? If you can’t get he book over there and you want it (and if Bill doesn’t mind being a middle man) get in touch with me through Myers and I’ll get a copy for you.
If you can get the book over there, see if you can find The Werewolf Book and The Witch Book by the same publisher. Again, they’re an ok mix of pop-culture ideas on the topics and some of the older lore.
Oh, and all three (mostly the first two) also have listings of criminal nutcases who acquired the nickname or reputations of being a vampire/werewolf killer. like I said before, they’re a good mix of stuff on the topics and pretty fun reads.
Werewolves, vampires, and Dante’s Inferno aside, I just want to say for the record I’m now totally disgusted with Mike, and am just going to abjure him from now on. I don’t see any point in trying to continue any discussion or debate with him, and his schtik has lost any entertainment appeal it might have.
“Anita and Buffy lead the way in popularizing this to the detriment of vampire lore.”
I agree that Buffy and Anita did open the door to the current overflow of stories that feature vampires as more than evil, villanous bloodsuckers. But I don’t know that’s such a bad thing. I’ve certainly enjoyed reading and watching many shows that feature vampire characters that are far more interesting than just your typical monster gets to be. The early Anita stories kept the vamps as scary, until the series turned into Anita Does the Undead/Supernatural World. Buffy’s vamps…long before they were love interests…were far less imposing that other potrayals made them out to be.
But long before there was Buffy or Anita, Dracula…both literary and the hollywood versions…started to reek sensuality and sexuality. And audiences dug on it. Today’s manifestations of the vampire character seem to be more of the natural evolution of the archetype fitting the desires of the audience.
Thanks Jerry. I don’t know if I can find the book here — fantasy and sci-fi are available. but not the full range — but there is always Amazon, and/or relatives in the US.
I just loooked in amazon, there’s a whole bunch of compendia on magical things apparently. Which would you recommend? I don’t know how much research I want to do. Sometimes i use the need to learn more as an excuse not to do things. Also, are there any fiction books on vampires/witches/werewolves you’d recommend?
“You wouldn’t really want to know my thoughts. I’m not saying that in a sarcastic manner, it’s just that the vampire fiction I’ve worked on and tried to get out there plays with returning the vampire to a much darker, harder edged place.”
I sincerely would be interested to hear your ideas if you’re interested in sharing. Sometimes I can be a good sounding board.
—————-
In the spirit of recommending books, but completely unrelated to anything: I highly recommend Karin Lowachee’s books. It’s like Endder’s Game with even more psychological sensitivity. It’s not related to this discussion, or any discussion for that matter, but these books are really good and could use the promotion.
————————
Patrick, dealing with Mike has certainly challenged my paradigms (what do you know, this word can be of use) of human communication. I have no answers.
“I agree that Buffy and Anita did open the door to the current overflow of stories that feature vampires as more than evil, villanous bloodsuckers. But I don’t know that’s such a bad thing. I’ve certainly enjoyed reading and watching many shows that feature vampire characters that are far more interesting than just your typical monster gets to be. The early Anita stories kept the vamps as scary, until the series turned into Anita Does the Undead/Supernatural World. Buffy’s vamps…long before they were love interests…were far less imposing that other potrayals made them out to be.”
I haven’t read or seen much vampire stuff other than Buffy, so I can’t really say much. Buffy portrayed vampires as pretty disposable, not very powerful, foot soldiers mostly, low on the demonic food chain. I remember being a bit disappointed at first. Later they needed to come up with different kind of demons to fill the void, and they also started giving the vampires (and other demons) more personality, which resulted in them being more likeable and less disposable. But they did such a good job, the show was so good, that there wasn’t any reason to complain.
So far as vampire stories go, the Batman Vampire trilogy of Elseworlds books, Red Rain, Bloodstorm, and Crimson Mist are well worth reading.
-Rex Hondo-
After 2 days, the “so many ways” to portray Jerry’s same-sex obsession with me as something other than gay is still zero.
Silly, silly Mike. The “disqualification” of the Valjean/Javert dynamic is because you, sir, are no Valjean and Jerry is no Javert. Even reversing the roles doesn’t quite work because Javert had a few redeeming qualities.
All irrelevant since the point being made was that your statement there is simply no portrayal of a same-sex obsession as anything other than gay is simply wrong and indicative of a lack of imagination. Your inability to demonstrate why the Valjean/Javert dynamic is either NOT obsessive (on the part of Javert) or is a gay relationship proves the point.
Your attempts to stamp your feet and say you’ve won the argument make you look so silly. Keep it up.
Micha,
The problem with vampires is partly one of overuse. I mean, there is exactly one movie made in American sign langiage and it is, of course, a vampire movie (Deafula) (I’m not kidding.) (No, really, it was released in 1975) (Look it up on IMDB if you don’t believe me!) (Ha! You did, didn’t you? Never doubt me again!) There have been singing vampires (Rocula) Dancing vampires (The Vampire and the Ballerina), puppet vampires (Mad Monster Party), Cartoon vampires (BLood the last Vampire), lesbian vampires (The Velvet Vampire), space vampires (Planet of the vampires), vampires who get their áššëš kicked by Goliath (Goliath and the vampires), kung fu vampires (The Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires), pørņø vampires (Lust at First Bite), black vampires (Blacula), western vampires (Curse of the Undead), Vampire lesbian kickboxers (Vampire Lesbian Kickboxers)…
They’ve kind of saturated the market. But that’s ok, you could say the same of zombie movies and not only does that NOT bother me, I’m contributing to the problem! So here are the problems, as I see it, with vampires:
1- They are the big whiny pûššìëš of the monster kingdom.
Boo hoo hoo, wha wha wha, I am lonely in my eternal immortality, sob sob sob, how I long to again touch the warmth of a sunrise, etc etc”
Cripes! Take a couple of toughen ups, boy, and call me in the morning! But at least these guys are correct about the essential fact that being a vampire should suck. Which brings us to the second problem
2- The idea that vampirism is in any way shape or form cool.
Blade 2 was a lot of fun but the whole “vampire nation” thing is a load of horse feces. Vampires are parasites. They lead a wretched existence. They have certain powers but only an idiot would trade normal humanity for the unlife of a typical vampire. Sure, you don’t age but look at all the new problems you have–garlic, silver, sunlight, the thorns of the Hawthorne bush, crosses, holy water…it might be easier to list what can’t kill them!
Now maybe it’s just me…someone once said that everybody goes to see Dracula, nobody goes to see Van Helsing…well, I always identified with Van Helsing. Go Peter Cushing! Wipe out the whole wretched lot of ’em! That’s probably why I AM LEGEND remains my favorite take on vampires, a whole book that’s about the guy hunting them (Currently being raped for the big screen as a Will Smith vehicle, sigh).
You know the best treatment of vampires ever done, IMHO? Marv Wolfman and Gene Colan’s TOMB OF DRACULA. Great, just great. It portrayed them as powerful, vulnerable, scary, tragic and never lost track of the fact that Dracula was evil. Complex, yes, but evil, and deserving of his inevitable fate.
Jerry, Micha, there’s also, in the same group, The Witch Book.
Bill, if I could ask, what was your take on The Lost Boys and Carpenter’s Vampires?
Jerry, Micha, there’s also, in the same group, The Witch Book.
Bill, if I could ask, what was your take on The Lost Boys and Carpenter’s Vampires?
So here are the problems, as I see it, with vampires:
1- They are the big whiny pûššìëš of the monster kingdom.
I blame Anne Rice. While she may not have created whiny effeminate eurotrash vampires, she’s the one who made them so popular that they became the norm for bloodsuckers in pop culture.
-Rex Hondo-
I haven’t read Interview with the Vampire yet but I’ve heard that they aren’t quite as mopey in the book. I hope so. That said, I rather liked the movie, especially Kirsten Dunst’s character.
I liked Lost Boys when I saw it upon it’s first rlease. I don’t think I’ve seen it since and it’s one of those 80s flicks I approach with trepedation–Will it hold up. Some do (fright Night, Monster Squad, Night of the Creeps) some don’t (Goonies, Night of the Comet). Great final line though.
You know, I remember being disappointed that the movie wasn’t actually a vampire Peter Pan, which I still think is a cool idea.
Carpenter’s Vampires was about the last good thing he’s done, isn’t it? Sigh. I hate seeing guys like him and Tobe Hooper just hacking it out. Anyway, except for the twist with the priest, which I saw coming before the coming attractions were even over, I liked the idea of a modern western vampire take on the material. The parts are better than the whole, though.
If anyone wants to see an interesting micro-budget very animalistic take on vampirism, check out Leif Jonker’s Darkness. GFilmed in Wichita KS, I don’t know how I managed to miss being in it since I was living there at the time it was filmed. I later met Mr. Jonker and might have been in his next movie DEMON MACHINE but the financing fell through. Too bad–nice guy and he did a lot with very little.
If you weren’t talking about posting contact information like my address and phone number — why didn’t you just post the link to my site?
Jeez, Jerry, heaven forbid anyone take any steps to protect their privacy. Take steps to keep your contact info private, get disgust vented on you in retaliation by the cop making you the object of his obsessive attention. No, that isn’t intimidating.
I really don’t know, I think it would feel more icky if Mike himself wasn’t so determined to attack everyone around him, and the fact that he mostly doesn’t seem to feel that put upon by people’s reactions to him. (Except for his forays into total paranioa, when he imagines Jerry is driving to his house with a trunk full of duct tape and horse tranquilizers…)
Patrick, as a demonstration you aren’t paranoid, why don’t you post your address and, say, your work number? No one here has even vented any disgust on you as they have me.
Otherwise, we are all in agreement in our paranoia.
In fact, there are so many ways that one could do it that your reliance on cheap gay-baiting is convincing evidence of a deeper animus toward homosexuals.
…which you demonstrate by failing to cite even an example of “so many ways” to portray same-sex obsession as something other than gay.
…Thanks, Bill, for reminding us of — and disqualifying — that Valjean/Javert dynamic no one can ever seem to get away from.
No, thank you, Mike for [confirming] that your statement there is simply no portrayal of a same-sex obsession as anything other than gay. was both incorrect and indicative of a lack of imagination.
And thank you for helping me dismiss that whole “animus toward homosexuals” thing as an arbitrary accusation. After 2 days, the “so many ways” to portray Jerry’s same-sex obsession with me as something other than gay is still zero.
All irrelevant since the point being made was that your statement there is simply no portrayal of a same-sex obsession as anything other than gay is simply wrong and indicative of a lack of imagination. Your inability to demonstrate why the Valjean/Javert dynamic is either NOT obsessive (on the part of Javert) or is a gay relationship proves the point.
Your attempts to stamp your feet and say you’ve won the argument make you look so silly. Keep it up.
Thank you for stipulating specifically that “After 2 days, the ‘so many ways’ to portray Jerry’s same-sex obsession with me as something other than gay is still zero.”
While an absolute absense of any portrayal of a same-sex obsession as anything other than gay would have covered me in rebutting you, my dismissal of your accusation does not depend on such an absolute absense or in “[demonstrating] why the Valjean/Javert dynamic is either NOT obsessive (on the part of Javert) or is a gay relationship.” (“Not depend,” as in “not need,” which is the hallmark of dedication.)
…because your accusation (“so many ways”) depends on my lack of imagination — in failing to producing that which you yourself cannot produce (“is still zero”) to prove your point. (“Depend,” as in “need,” which is the hallmark of childhood.)
Nope. You said it couldn’t be done. I did it. You lose. Try to parse the meaning of the words “there”, “is”, “simply”, “no”, “portrayal”, “of”, “a”, “same-sex”, “obsession”, “as”, “anything”, “other”, “than” and “gay” all you want. You still lose.
Now, one could ask, “lose what?” For any normal person, the answer would be “Nothing.” For you, well…As others have pointed out, your fragile neediness can brook no failure–the whole unstable paradigm of your self-image would probably come tumbling down. Given how awful you come off while still believing in yourself as the distiller of truths heretofore never seen, one can only imagine how creepy you would become without the facade.
Your latest attempt to deny the obvious is the funniest one yet. Keep it up. You’ll be able to save a bundle on therapist costs by just printing this all out and handing it to them.
Thanks, Bill. The truth of anything else I’ve said does not depend on [my] pretending mistakes pointed out to me aren’t mistakes.
You’re welcome….
No, thank you, Mike for [confirming] that your statement there is simply no portrayal of a same-sex obsession as anything other than gay. was both incorrect and indicative of a lack of imagination.
And thank you for helping me dismiss that whole “animus toward homosexuals” thing as an arbitrary accusation. After 2 days, the “so many ways” to portray Jerry’s same-sex obsession with me as something other than gay is still zero.
Nope. You said it couldn’t be done. I did it. You lose. Try to parse the meaning of the words “there”, “is”, “simply”, “no”, “portrayal”, “of”, “a”, “same-sex”, “obsession”, “as”, “anything”, “other”, “than” and “gay” all you want. You still lose.
Now, one could ask, “lose what?” For any normal person, the answer would be “Nothing.” For you, well…As others have pointed out, your fragile neediness can brook no failure–the whole unstable paradigm of your self-image would probably come tumbling down. Given how awful you come off while still believing in yourself as the distiller of truths heretofore never seen, one can only imagine how creepy you would become without the facade.
Your latest attempt to deny the obvious is the funniest one yet. Keep it up. You’ll be able to save a bundle on therapist costs by just printing this all out and handing it to them.
So how and when did my supposed pretense of invulnerability manifest itself? Was it when I accused you of refusing to take a correction I previously gave you credit for taking? No, that can’t be it, because that wasn’t my hypocrisy against you, that was your hypocrisy against me. That’s Totally Normal Psychology.™
• 
This is only true if you have not, or refuse to admit you’ve, witnessed that “I have been saying that Bill’s hypocrisy has no apparent virtue other than sheltering a predatory agenda,” which I had thought you frequented these threads long enough to do. Tell me you’ve witnessed no such thing and I will accommodate you.
virtue:
I’m using the word appropriately.
You still have provided no outcome from the plain reading of the Aquinas/Augustine quote your absurd analogies apply to. Failing to provide such an outcome demonstrates your analogies have no relationship with the quote in question — they are arbitrary.
…which you demonstrate by failing to cite even an example of “so many ways” to portray same-sex obsession as something other than gay.
Crass, vulger, and unmannered are terrible choices… and none of them were mine:
How long do we have to wait? Because so far no Shakespeare from mike, just chimp.
Thank you, Mike, for admitting you’re a chimp.
Jerry chose to obsess on someone his friends have portrayed as simian. If you have a more flattering analogy, by all means, don’t let me stop you from sharing it.
As far as werewolves go, there is actually a medical condition called lycanthropy, in which the patient is pretty much covered with hair in unusual places and amounts for the average human. There is a theory that these people are the source of the werewolf mythology or lexicon or whichever term you’d like to use. However, there are also many multiple cases, even in this country, of large hairy critters being sited, lately in Wisconsin. So, having not seen any overly hairy critters besides my friends, I can’t say any more than that.
Micha and Jeffrey–thanks for the responses.
Posted by: Micha at May 30, 2007 09:01 PM
I remember reading somewhere that werewolves were invented by Hollywood in the 30’s, I think to compete with Dracula movies. But I’m not certain about this.
Now you’re getting into my area again. ~8?}
There was a writer by the name of Guy Endore who went on to work in Hollywood after the publication of The Werewolf of Paris (1933). But he didn’t invent anything new.
No, the concept goes back well before that. The Romans had their annual Lupercali Festival every February 15th wherein one part of the calibration involved a rite that protected noble born children from wolves and werewolves. Ancient tribes all over the world would embrace the inner animal by donning animal skins in magic rituals. Wolves were very popular in those ceremonies.
Japan had a variation on the theme with the Fox Maidens of ancient myth and China had their version with the Fox People. It was believed in the middle ages that sorcerers would obtain a Fox Strap in order to change their forms.
Gilles Garnier (d. 1573) was accused of and confessed to the killing of a number of children while being, “in the form of a wolf.” His killing pattern was like that of a traditional werewolf as well.
Peter Stumpf (1525-1589) was convicted and executed as a werewolf killer in the town of Bedburg near the city of Cologne. There was an eight panel wood-carving of his murders (showing him as a wolf walking on two legs) and his execution that was made in 1590.
Thing is, how do you define “werewolf” in the conversation? In the strictest sense, Hollywood did create the modern werewolf in the 1930’s, but even then it was only a refinement of what came before. Most of the examples I listed above were werewolves of the kind that were either men or wolves with no man-wolf hybrid as we think of them today. They were shape shifters who couldn’t always control their transformation into a mindless and vicious animal. Still, that’s nowhere near the transformation that vampires have undergone over the centuries.
The word “werewolf” is also of questionable age. There are academic disputes over its first appearance and whether or not older names for some of the conditions of lycanthropy count as “werewolf” or not. Depends on how you view the translation process.
I know I just answered your query by saying both “yes” and “no” simultaneously, but it’s an interesting argument that depends on how fine you want to parse the definitions in the argument. Hey, I’ve got books that range from 400 pages to 800 pages devoted to the myth and lore and even they hedge their bets a bit when it comes to nailing down precisely defined categories of werewolves.
Oh, I left out that The Werewolf of Paris was, strangely based on a real man who wasn’t anything like a werewolf. Francois Bertrand was a sergeant in the French army who desecrated graves throughout Paris before being caught in 1840. More of a ghoul really. Still, Endore applied the name to his book and the book later became the source inspiration for The Curse of the Werewolf with Oliver Reed. Not a bad film actually. Better then a number of the better known ones as well.
That should be “celebration” up there. I have no freaking idea where calibration came from.
Sheesh……
If there’s one thing that’s a pain in the ášš to deal with, it’s a poorly calibrated werewolf. Crooked, poorly placed bite marks all over the place…
Speaking of mythical creatures, anybody seen the trailer for “Fido” yet? Looks like it could be amusing.
-Rex Hondo-
Thanks Doug, Jerry and Sean for the info on werewolves. I stand corrected.
Jeffrey, I noticed you decided to get into the discussion with Mike about hëll and Thomas Aquinas. I’m afraid this is one of the cases in which Mike takes a segment of text out of context and mixes it up with his own ideas and other ideas taken out of context. If you look at the whole passage from Thomas Quinas, and if you go further and look at other passages, then the context of the quoted passage and Aquinas’s position become clearer (or as clear as this stuff can be).
I’ll try to lay it out for you, but it’s long and I don’t know how to highlight the most relevant sentences, so bare with me.
Needless to say, this will have no effect on Mike. I’m doing this for the benefit of everybody else.
Mike quoted this paragraph:
“On the contrary, Gregory says [The quotation is from St. Augustine (De Civ. Dei i, 8)]: “Even as in the same fire gold glistens and straw smokes, so in the same fire the sinner burns and the elect is cleansed.” Therefore the fire of Purgatory is the same as the fire of hëll: and hence they are in the same place.”
But he omitted the context: on the contrary to what?
This quote is part of the second question in an appendix to the chapter about pergatory.
http://www.newadvent.org/summa/7001.htm
St. Thomas poses a question:
“Article 1. Whether there is a Purgatory after this life?”
and then another question:
“Article 2. Whether it is the same place where souls are cleansed, and the dámņëd punished?”
As you can see, he already concluded that pergatory exists where the souls of sinners are cleansed. He also already concluded that hëll exists as a place where the dámņëd are punished.
Here are to links to the segment about hëll, the second has interpretation:
http://www.newadvent.org/summa/5097.htm
http://uk.geocities.com/frege@btinternet.com/afterlife/afterlife.htm
Now he has to deal with the nature and location of pergatory in relation to hëll.
True to scholastic form he starts by presenting reasons why the answer to the question should be negative, namely that hëll and pergatory are not in the same place:
“Objection 1. It would seem that it is not the same place where souls are cleansed and the dámņëd punished. For the punishment of the dámņëd is eternal, according to Matthew 25:46, “These shall go into everlasting punishment [Vulg.: ‘fire’].” But the fire of Purgatory is temporary, as the Master says (Sent. iv, D, 21). Therefore the former and the latter are not punished together in the same place: and consequently these places must needs be distinct.
Objection 2. The punishment of hëll is called by various names, as in Ps. 10:7, “Fire and brimstone, and storms of winds,” etc., whereas the punishment of Purgatory is called by one name only, namely fire. Therefore they are not punished with the same fire and in the same place.
Objection 3. Further, Hugh of St. Victor says (De Sacram. ii, 16): “It is probable that they are punished in the very places where they sinned.” And Gregory relates (Dial. iv, 40) that Germanus, Bishop of Capua, found Paschasius being cleansed in the baths. Therefore they are not cleansed in the same place as hëll, but in this world.”
But then he presents a counter argument from Augustine:
“On the contrary, Gregory says [The quotation is from St. Augustine (De Civ. Dei i, 8)]: “Even as in the same fire gold glistens and straw smokes, so in the same fire the sinner burns and the elect is cleansed.” Therefore the fire of Purgatory is the same as the fire of hëll: and hence they are in the same place.
Further, the holy fathers; before the coming of Christ, were in a more worthy place than that wherein souls are now cleansed after death, since there was no pain of sense there. Yet that place was joined to hëll, or the same as hëll: otherwise Christ when descending into Limbo would not be said to have descended into hëll. Therefore Purgatory is either close to, or the same place as, hëll.”
The point of these paragraphs is to say that hëll and pergatory are in the same place.
Now, after presenting arguments both against and for the idea that pergatory is in the same place as hëll, he goes on to give his own answer:
“I answer that, Nothing is clearly stated in Scripture about the situation of Purgatory, nor is it possible to offer convincing arguments on this question. It is probable, however, and more in keeping with the statements of holy men and the revelations made to many, that there is a twofold place of Purgatory. One, according to the common law; and thus the place of Purgatory is situated below and in proximity to hëll, so that it is the same fire which torments the dámņëd in hëll and cleanses the just in Purgatory; although the dámņëd being lower in merit, are to be consigned to a lower place. Another place of Purgatory is according to dispensation: and thus sometimes, as we read, some are punished in various places, either that the living may learn, or that the dead may be succored, seeing that their punishment being made known to the living may be mitigated through the prayers of the Church.
Some say, however, that according to the common law the place of Purgatory is where man sins. This does not seem probable, since a man may be punished at the same time for sins committed in various places. And others say that according to the common law they are punished above us, because they are between us and God, as regards their state. But this is of no account, for they are not punished for being above us, but for that which is lowest in them, namely sin.”
St. Thomas then goes on to address the objections he mentioned before:
“Reply to Objection 1. The fire of Purgatory is eternal in its substance, but temporary in its cleansing effect.
Reply to Objection 2. The punishment of hëll is for the purpose of affliction, wherefore it is called by the names of things that are wont to afflict us here. But the chief purpose of the punishment of Purgatory is to cleanse us from the remains of sin; and consequently the pain of fire only is ascribed to Purgatory, because fire cleanses and consumes.
Reply to Objection 3. This argument considers the point of special dispensation and not that of the common law.”
The important part here is the 2nd reply. St. Thomas clearly states that the objective of hëll and pergatory is punishment, in both cases by the same fire, but for different purposes.
Now you might ask, what is the nature of that fire. The theology proposed in the article Mike provide suggests a different concept of the fire of hëll.
Aquinas deals with this in Articles 5, 6, 7 of chapter 97 of his book:
http://www.newadvent.org/summa/5097.htm#5
http://uk.geocities.com/frege@btinternet.com/afterlife/inferno.htm#Q97a5
“Article 5. Whether the fire of hëll will be corporeal?
Article 6. Whether the fire of hëll is of the same species as ours?
Article 7. Whether the fire of hëll is beneath the earth?”
And here is what the interpretation in the second link says about the answers to these questions:
“Will the fire of the Inferno be corporeal (article 5)? Yes, because we are not aware of spiritual punishment, and it is physical punishment with which God threatens us. Aquinas rejects the theory of Avicenna, that the souls of the wicked are punished after death, not by bodies but by images of bodies; just as in a dream. For the power of imagination depends ultimately on the power of bodily organs. ‘We must admit that the fire that will torment the bodies of the dámņëd is corporeal, since we cannot fittingly apply a punishment to a body unless the punishment itself is a bodily one’. The pain of the Inferno has to be real not imaginary pain. Since real pain is what causes pain to our body, the fire of the inferno must be a physical, not a spiritual fire.
Is the fire of hëll is of the same kind as earthly fire (article 6)? Yes, but it has certain properties differing from our fire, for instance that it needs no kindling, nor is kept alive by fuel. And is (article 7) the fire of hëll is beneath the earth? Probably. After all, the Latin word for ‘Hëll’ (Infernus) means ‘the regions below’. (the connotation of intense and searing heat, it clearly acquired from the Christian idea of punishment in the afterlife).”
——————————–
How all this relate to the article posted by Mike?(http://aggreen.net/beliefs/heaven_hell.html)
Not at all. The person who wrote the article is suggesting to reject, based on the biblical text, “the way traditional Western Christianity, Roman Catholic or Protestant, has envisioned the afterlife. In Western thought Hëll is a location, a place where God punishes the wicked, where they are cut off from God and the Kingdom of Heaven. Yet this concept occurs nowhere in the Bible, and does not exist in the original languages of the Bible.”
Obviously, he is rejecting the theology of Thomas Aquinas, and the concept of hëll that was developed in the middle ages and afterwards in the age of the reformation. He is also rejecting St. Augustine’s ideas which inform St. Thomas’s thought.
Mike has mentioned Calvin, but again misses the point by ignoring important passages and not having any context, which is why all this is not clear to him.
Here is what he writer of this article says:
“Tragically, in the west a few centuries after the Great Schism (1054 AD) an innovation (i.e. heresy) developed as a result of an attempt to rationalize God’s purifying fires. Latin theologians surmised that God created a place called purgatory with purging fires to “purify” those that die with imperfect atonement, and they further rationalized that paying indulgences could buy your loved ones out of these painful purging fires faster. This rationalization also helped keep the church prosperous and coffers full.
The western ideas had its roots in Augustinian theology (who was influenced by the Greek pagan philosophers). Unfortunately Augustine could not read Greek and had to devise his own theology from imperfect Latin translations. Late in his life he recanted much of his earlier writings, an act which was ignored in the West. Both Luther and Calvin developed their own theologies from Augustine’s erroneous writings, and ignoring Augustine’s later retraction. This is how the pagan notion of a God that both punishes and rewards made its way into western Christian theologies. Another major influence was the 13th century fantasy novelist Dante, who’s political satire known as the Inferno borrowed heavily from pagan mythology and bears little resemblance to Biblical eschatology.
Some Orthodox would contend that the western God, who both claims to love us, but also would condemn us to eternal punishment, is a schizophrenic God. It is reminiscent of the abusive groom who claims to love his bride but can not stop punishing her.
Calvin further rationalized if God is all knowing, then He knows who will be saved and who will not even before they are born, so therefore He must have created some people just so He can torment them in Hëll for eternity. This is the infamous “predestination” of Calvin, which makes God the author of evil. This is not Biblical and certainly not Christian. Ultimately this doctrine denies free will, the choice that all humans have to either pursue righteousness, or selfishness.”
The writer refers to several time periods in which Western Christianity moved away from the correct ideas he supports (which are still held in the Eastern Church), and toward the misconception of hëll he rejects:
1) St. Augustine’s theology (4th cenury)
2) 1054 — the seperation between the Roman Catholic Church in the West and the Greek Orthodox Church in Byzantium.
3) The development of the idea of pergatory and the idea that paying indulgences can get people out of pergatory (12th and 13th centuries)
4) Dante “who’s political satire known as the Inferno borrowed heavily from pagan mythology and bears little resemblance to Biblical eschatology.” (early 14th century)
6) Luther and Calvin who were influenced by Augustine (16th century).
Mike lacks contextual knowledge, so he thinks that Calvin is being criticized for coming up with the idea of hëll as a place of punishment. This, as we saw from Aquinas, is not true, as anybody who knows anything about Calvin knows. The writer is indeed very critical of Calvin — for developing the idea of predistination, which is even worse (from the writer’s point of view) than what Augustine and the medieval theologians did, and in fact went against medieval (and modern) Catholic doctrine. Because predestination says that god already determined before hand that most of the people, except a few elect, will go to hëll. There is no option of getting out.
Mike of course also ignored the fact that the article sees Dante as an example of the wrong concept of hëll.
————————
How all this is relevant to Dante?
Here is also a link to the article about Dante in the Catholic encyclopedia:
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04628a.htm
And two quotes:
“His [Dante’s] theology is mainly that of St. Thomas Aquinas, though he occasionally (as when treating of primal matter and of the nature of the celestial intelligences) departs from the teaching of the Angelical Doctor. On particular points, the influence of St. Gregory, St. Isidore, St. Anselm, and St. Bonaventure may be traced; that of Boethius is marked and deep throughout. His mysticism is professedly based upon St. Augustine, St. Bernard, and Richard of St. Victor, while in many places it curiously anticipates that of St. John of the Cross.
…Dante’s vehement denunciation of the ecclesiastical corruption of his times, and his condemnation of most of the contemporary popes (including the canonized Celestine V) to hëll have led to some questioning as to the poet’s attitude towards the Church. Even in the fourteenth century attempts were made to find heresy in the “Divina Commedia”, and the “De Monarchiâ” was burned at Bologna by order of a papal legate. In more recent times Dante has been hailed as a precursor of the Reformation. His theological position as an orthodox Catholic has been amply and repeatedly vindicated, recently and most notably by Dr. Moore, who declares that “there is no trace in his writings of doubt or dissatisfaction respecting any part of the teaching of the Church in matters of doctrine authoritatively laid down”. A strenuous opponent of the political aims of the popes of his own day, the beautiful episodes of Casella and Manfred in the “Purgatorio”, no less than the closing chapter of the “De Monarchiâ” itself, bear witness to Dante’s reverence for the spiritual power of the papacy, which he accepts as of Divine origin. Not the least striking testimony to his orthodoxy is the part played by the Blessed Virgin in the sacred poem from the beginning to the end. It is, as it were, the working out in inspired poetry of the sentence of Richard of St. Victor: “Through Mary not only is the light of grace given to man on earth but even the vision of God vouchsafed to souls in Heaven.””
————-
The howling sound you are hearing right now is this thread collapsing on its own weight and tearing the fabric of the universe. Welcome our new lords, the 5th dimention alien space monkeys
(It could be worse, at least they’re not squirrels).
I tried to post a long reply on Thomas Aquinas and all that stuff, but it got blocked because of the links. I’ll post it again without the links.
Jeffrey, I noticed you decided to get into the discussion with Mike about hëll and Thomas Aquinas. I’m afraid this is one of the cases in which Mike takes a segment of text out of context and mixes it up with his own ideas and other ideas taken out of context. If you look at the whole passage from Thomas Quinas, and if you go further and look at other passages, then the context of the quoted passage and Aquinas’s position become clearer (or as clear as this stuff can be).
I’ll try to lay it out for you, but it’s long and I don’t know how to highlight the most relevant sentences, so bare with me.
Needless to say, this will have no effect on Mike. I’m doing this for the benefit of everybody else.
Mike quoted this paragraph:
“On the contrary, Gregory says [The quotation is from St. Augustine (De Civ. Dei i, 8)]: “Even as in the same fire gold glistens and straw smokes, so in the same fire the sinner burns and the elect is cleansed.” Therefore the fire of Purgatory is the same as the fire of hëll: and hence they are in the same place.”
But he omitted the context: on the contrary to what?
This quote is part of the second question in an appendix to the chapter about pergatory.
ww.newadvent.org/summa/7001.htm
St. Thomas poses a question:
“Article 1. Whether there is a Purgatory after this life?”
and then another question:
“Article 2. Whether it is the same place where souls are cleansed, and the dámņëd punished?”
As you can see, Thomas already concluded that pergatory exists where the souls of sinners are cleansed. He also already concluded that hëll exists as a place where the dámņëd are punished.
Here are to links to the segment about hëll, the second has interpretation:
ww.newadvent.org/summa/5097.htm
uk.geocities.com/frege@btinternet.com/afterlife/afterlife.htm
Now he has to deal with the nature and location of pergatory in relation to hëll.
True to scholastic form he starts by presenting reasons why the answer to the question should be negative, namely that hëll and pergatory are not in the same place:
“Objection 1. It would seem that it is not the same place where souls are cleansed and the dámņëd punished. For the punishment of the dámņëd is eternal, according to Matthew 25:46, “These shall go into everlasting punishment [Vulg.: ‘fire’].” But the fire of Purgatory is temporary, as the Master says (Sent. iv, D, 21). Therefore the former and the latter are not punished together in the same place: and consequently these places must needs be distinct.
Objection 2. The punishment of hëll is called by various names, as in Ps. 10:7, “Fire and brimstone, and storms of winds,” etc., whereas the punishment of Purgatory is called by one name only, namely fire. Therefore they are not punished with the same fire and in the same place.
Objection 3. Further, Hugh of St. Victor says (De Sacram. ii, 16): “It is probable that they are punished in the very places where they sinned.” And Gregory relates (Dial. iv, 40) that Germanus, Bishop of Capua, found Paschasius being cleansed in the baths. Therefore they are not cleansed in the same place as hëll, but in this world.”
But then he presents a counter argument from Augustine:
“On the contrary, Gregory says [The quotation is from St. Augustine (De Civ. Dei i, 8)]: “Even as in the same fire gold glistens and straw smokes, so in the same fire the sinner burns and the elect is cleansed.” Therefore the fire of Purgatory is the same as the fire of hëll: and hence they are in the same place.
Further, the holy fathers; before the coming of Christ, were in a more worthy place than that wherein souls are now cleansed after death, since there was no pain of sense there. Yet that place was joined to hëll, or the same as hëll: otherwise Christ when descending into Limbo would not be said to have descended into hëll. Therefore Purgatory is either close to, or the same place as, hëll.”
The point of these paragraphs is to say that hëll and pergatory are in the same place.
Now, after presenting arguments both against and for the idea that pergatory is in the same place as hëll, he goes on to give his own answer:
“I answer that, Nothing is clearly stated in Scripture about the situation of Purgatory, nor is it possible to offer convincing arguments on this question. It is probable, however, and more in keeping with the statements of holy men and the revelations made to many, that there is a twofold place of Purgatory. One, according to the common law; and thus the place of Purgatory is situated below and in proximity to hëll, so that it is the same fire which torments the dámņëd in hëll and cleanses the just in Purgatory; although the dámņëd being lower in merit, are to be consigned to a lower place. Another place of Purgatory is according to dispensation: and thus sometimes, as we read, some are punished in various places, either that the living may learn, or that the dead may be succored, seeing that their punishment being made known to the living may be mitigated through the prayers of the Church.
Some say, however, that according to the common law the place of Purgatory is where man sins. This does not seem probable, since a man may be punished at the same time for sins committed in various places. And others say that according to the common law they are punished above us, because they are between us and God, as regards their state. But this is of no account, for they are not punished for being above us, but for that which is lowest in them, namely sin.”
St. Thomas then goes on to address the objections he mentioned before:
“Reply to Objection 1. The fire of Purgatory is eternal in its substance, but temporary in its cleansing effect.
Reply to Objection 2. The punishment of hëll is for the purpose of affliction, wherefore it is called by the names of things that are wont to afflict us here. But the chief purpose of the punishment of Purgatory is to cleanse us from the remains of sin; and consequently the pain of fire only is ascribed to Purgatory, because fire cleanses and consumes.
Reply to Objection 3. This argument considers the point of special dispensation and not that of the common law.”
The important part here is the 2nd reply. St. Thomas clearly states that the objective of hëll and pergatory is punishment, in both cases by the same fire, but for different purposes.
Now you might ask, what is the nature of that fire. The theology proposed in the article Mike provide suggests a different concept of the fire of hëll.
Aquinas deals with this in Articles 5, 6, 7 of chapter 97 of his book:
ww.newadvent.org/summa/5097.htm#5
uk.geocities.com/frege@btinternet.com/afterlife/inferno.htm#Q97a5
“Article 5. Whether the fire of hëll will be corporeal?
Article 6. Whether the fire of hëll is of the same species as ours?
Article 7. Whether the fire of hëll is beneath the earth?”
And here is what the interpretation in the second link says about the answers to these questions:
“Will the fire of the Inferno be corporeal (article 5)? Yes, because we are not aware of spiritual punishment, and it is physical punishment with which God threatens us. Aquinas rejects the theory of Avicenna, that the souls of the wicked are punished after death, not by bodies but by images of bodies; just as in a dream. For the power of imagination depends ultimately on the power of bodily organs. ‘We must admit that the fire that will torment the bodies of the dámņëd is corporeal, since we cannot fittingly apply a punishment to a body unless the punishment itself is a bodily one’. The pain of the Inferno has to be real not imaginary pain. Since real pain is what causes pain to our body, the fire of the inferno must be a physical, not a spiritual fire.
Is the fire of hëll is of the same kind as earthly fire (article 6)? Yes, but it has certain properties differing from our fire, for instance that it needs no kindling, nor is kept alive by fuel. And is (article 7) the fire of hëll is beneath the earth? Probably. After all, the Latin word for ‘Hëll’ (Infernus) means ‘the regions below’. (the connotation of intense and searing heat, it clearly acquired from the Christian idea of punishment in the afterlife).”
——————————–
How all this relate to the article posted by Mike?
(aggreen.net/beliefs/heaven_hell.html)
Not at all. The person who wrote the article is suggesting to reject, based on the biblical text, “the way traditional Western Christianity, Roman Catholic or Protestant, has envisioned the afterlife. In Western thought Hëll is a location, a place where God punishes the wicked, where they are cut off from God and the Kingdom of Heaven. Yet this concept occurs nowhere in the Bible, and does not exist in the original languages of the Bible.”
Obviously, he is rejecting the theology of Thomas Aquinas, and the concept of hëll that was developed in the middle ages and afterwards in the age of the reformation. He is also rejecting St. Augustine’s ideas which inform St. Thomas’s thought.
Mike has mentioned Calvin, but again misses the point by ignoring important passages and not having any context, which is why all this is not clear to him.
Here is what he writer of this article says:
“Tragically, in the west a few centuries after the Great Schism (1054 AD) an innovation (i.e. heresy) developed as a result of an attempt to rationalize God’s purifying fires. Latin theologians surmised that God created a place called purgatory with purging fires to “purify” those that die with imperfect atonement, and they further rationalized that paying indulgences could buy your loved ones out of these painful purging fires faster. This rationalization also helped keep the church prosperous and coffers full.
The western ideas had its roots in Augustinian theology (who was influenced by the Greek pagan philosophers). Unfortunately Augustine could not read Greek and had to devise his own theology from imperfect Latin translations. Late in his life he recanted much of his earlier writings, an act which was ignored in the West. Both Luther and Calvin developed their own theologies from Augustine’s erroneous writings, and ignoring Augustine’s later retraction. This is how the pagan notion of a God that both punishes and rewards made its way into western Christian theologies. Another major influence was the 13th century fantasy novelist Dante, who’s political satire known as the Inferno borrowed heavily from pagan mythology and bears little resemblance to Biblical eschatology.
Some Orthodox would contend that the western God, who both claims to love us, but also would condemn us to eternal punishment, is a schizophrenic God. It is reminiscent of the abusive groom who claims to love his bride but can not stop punishing her.
Calvin further rationalized if God is all knowing, then He knows who will be saved and who will not even before they are born, so therefore He must have created some people just so He can torment them in Hëll for eternity. This is the infamous “predestination” of Calvin, which makes God the author of evil. This is not Biblical and certainly not Christian. Ultimately this doctrine denies free will, the choice that all humans have to either pursue righteousness, or selfishness.”
The writer refers to several time periods in which Western Christianity moved away from the correct ideas he supports (which are still held in the Eastern Church), and toward the misconception of hëll he rejects:
1) St. Augustine’s theology (4th cenury)
2) 1054 — the seperation between the Roman Catholic Church in the West and the Greek Orthodox Church in Byzantium.
3) The development of the idea of pergatory and the idea that paying indulgences can get people out of pergatory (12th and 13th centuries)
4) Dante “who’s political satire known as the Inferno borrowed heavily from pagan mythology and bears little resemblance to Biblical eschatology.” (early 14th century)
6) Luther and Calvin who were influenced by Augustine (16th century).
Mike lacks contextual knowledge, so he thinks that Calvin is being criticized for coming up with the idea of hëll as a place of punishment. This, as we saw from Aquinas, is not true, as anybody who knows anything about Calvin knows. The writer is indeed very critical of Calvin — for developing the idea of predistination, which is even worse (from the writer’s point of view) than what Augustine and the medieval theologians did, and in fact went against medieval (and modern) Catholic doctrine. Because predestination says that god already determined before hand that most of the people, except a few elect, will go to hëll. There is no option of getting out.
Mike of course also ignored the fact that the article sees Dante as an example of the wrong concept of hëll.
————————
How all this is relevant to Dante?
Here is also a link to the article about Dante in the Catholic encyclopedia:
ww.newadvent.org/cathen/04628a.htm
And two quotes:
“His [Dante’s] theology is mainly that of St. Thomas Aquinas, though he occasionally (as when treating of primal matter and of the nature of the celestial intelligences) departs from the teaching of the Angelical Doctor. On particular points, the influence of St. Gregory, St. Isidore, St. Anselm, and St. Bonaventure may be traced; that of Boethius is marked and deep throughout. His mysticism is professedly based upon St. Augustine, St. Bernard, and Richard of St. Victor, while in many places it curiously anticipates that of St. John of the Cross.
…Dante’s vehement denunciation of the ecclesiastical corruption of his times, and his condemnation of most of the contemporary popes (including the canonized Celestine V) to hëll have led to some questioning as to the poet’s attitude towards the Church. Even in the fourteenth century attempts were made to find heresy in the “Divina Commedia”, and the “De Monarchiâ” was burned at Bologna by order of a papal legate. In more recent times Dante has been hailed as a precursor of the Reformation. His theological position as an orthodox Catholic has been amply and repeatedly vindicated, recently and most notably by Dr. Moore, who declares that “there is no trace in his writings of doubt or dissatisfaction respecting any part of the teaching of the Church in matters of doctrine authoritatively laid down”. A strenuous opponent of the political aims of the popes of his own day, the beautiful episodes of Casella and Manfred in the “Purgatorio”, no less than the closing chapter of the “De Monarchiâ” itself, bear witness to Dante’s reverence for the spiritual power of the papacy, which he accepts as of Divine origin. Not the least striking testimony to his orthodoxy is the part played by the Blessed Virgin in the sacred poem from the beginning to the end. It is, as it were, the working out in inspired poetry of the sentence of Richard of St. Victor: “Through Mary not only is the light of grace given to man on earth but even the vision of God vouchsafed to souls in Heaven.””
————-
The howling sound you are hearing right now is this thread collapsing on its own weight and tearing the fabric of the universe. Welcome our new lords, the 5th dimention alien space monkeys
(It could be worse Bill, at least they’re not squirrels).
Mike wrote: “Otherwise, I don’t think you’re going to find a quote of me accusing Bill of deliberately being a racist, unless he said something I can’t remember demonstrating he was so. I just don’t think race as a topic has come up all that much.”
I believe the term you accused Bill and then several other people of sheltering racism, first because he opposed hate crime legislation, and later because we all rejected your absurd take on the word Genocide.
I’ve seen woodcuts of “werewolves” from many hundreds of years ago–either they show actual wolves or some guy crawling around eating babies.
The movies were the ones that gave us the “wolfman” concept–the hairy half man half wolf who was a helpless victim (the original werewolves were supposed to be Satanists who wanted to be wolves). I suspect they were just applying Dr Jeckyl and Mr Hyde to the old werewolf idea (as well as borrowing a few ideas from vampires, like silver bullets.)
Micha: Thanks for the information. It appears correct that Dante was essentially in full agreement with the official doctrine of his time. Public opinion on theology was much more diverse, with numerous approaches branded heresy. The Pelagians, who began in the 5th Century and were condemned by St. Augustine, believed Man could reach Heaven through his own efforts, without resorting to God’s grace, because he inherits neither original sin (through Adam and Eve’s transgression) nor righteousness (through Christ’s sacrifice). The Cathars, who began in the 11th Century, taught that the spirit was wholly good and created by the good God, while the body was evil and created by the evil God, and that the two gods were in eternal combat. The range of beliefs was quite broad!
Micha, this whole thing started when you accused me of attributing to medievals concepts that were not their own. All I have to do was demonstrate medievals nurtured the idea there was no divine punitive agenda in the establishment of hëll — I don’t have to prove incompatible paradigms were absent. You’ve just settled this whole issue by addressing the Aquinas/Augustine/Gregory passage you provided as evidence of my interpretation. Thank you.
1. I don’t think you’re going to find a post by me referring to anyone sheltering racism before my references to the term genocide.
2. “accusations that Bill Mulligan was racist” is one of intent and behavior — which I don’t think you’re going to find by me at all unless he said something I can’t remember demonstrating he was so — whereas accusations of “sheltering racism” is one of behavior, but not intent. Reading the two accusation interchangeably only seems to make sense if you are trying to downplay intent which, by downplaying the motive for racism, portrays racism as a comparable imposition (if you admit to any) on the privileged and the vulnerable.
Posted by: Bill Mulligan at May 31, 2007 07:23 AM
The movies were the ones that gave us the “wolfman” concept–
Yeah, that’s why I said I was basically answering the query with both a yes and a no. Hollywood helped to create the modern era’s version of the werewolf, but the basically tweaked that which came before. I find that pretty much only ultra-retentive purist, which I’m not, stand by the idea that Hollywood created the werewolf. Of course, I am the same guy that moans on about the fact that people include Resident Evil and 28 Days/Weeks Later on zombie film lists.
The nit-picking over when the werewolf was created and whether it was by Hollywood or not is almost odd since you don’t see the same level of drawing lines in the sand with more popular, and much more drastically altered, creatures like the vampire. Hëll, The vampire changed radically from the time of Varney the Vampyre to Hollywood’s first real stab at it and it changed just as much or more each century before Varney. Early American vampire accounts, when not dealing with insane criminals, are about mindless undead that rise up from their graves at night to feed on their former friends and family with no more self awareness of what they were or what they had become then a zombie.
Add in the tribal and regional variations (the hopping corpse of Chinese legend, the Bruxa of Portugal, the Slovakian upir, etc) and you get a whole mess of things that most people wouldn’t identify as a vampire if their life depended on it. There’s even an ancient form of vampire that’s nothing more then a floating gelatinous bag that enveloped its prey and sucked out a person’s life energy. Chuck into the mix the “good” vampire, a trend that’s becoming waaayyyyyyyyy too prevalent, and the vampire has evolved even more in the last few decades.
Why werewolves seem to get so much more divided debate and scrutiny at times then some of the others is beyond me. (Not that I’m saying that’s what’s going on here.)
Posted by: Bill Mulligan at May 31, 2007 07:23 AM
The movies were the ones that gave us the “wolfman” concept–
Yeah, that’s why I said I was basically answering the query with both a yes and a no. Hollywood helped to create the modern era’s version of the werewolf, but the basically tweaked that which came before. I find that pretty much only ultra-retentive purist, which I’m not, stand by the idea that Hollywood created the werewolf. Of course, I am the same guy that moans on about the fact that people include Resident Evil and 28 Days/Weeks Later on zombie film lists.
The nit-picking over when the werewolf was created and whether it was by Hollywood or not is almost odd since you don’t see the same level of drawing lines in the sand with more popular, and much more drastically altered, creatures like the vampire. Hëll, The vampire changed radically from the time of Varney the Vampyre to Hollywood’s first real stab at it and it changed just as much or more each century before Varney. Early American vampire accounts, when not dealing with insane criminals, are about mindless undead that rise up from their graves at night to feed on their former friends and family with no more self awareness of what they were or what they had become then a zombie.
Add in the tribal and regional variations (the hopping corpse of Chinese legend, the Bruxa of Portugal, the Slovakian upir, etc) and you get a whole mess of things that most people wouldn’t identify as a vampire if their life depended on it. There’s even an ancient form of vampire that’s nothing more then a floating gelatinous bag that enveloped its prey and sucked out a person’s life energy. Chuck into the mix the “good” vampire, a trend that’s becoming waaayyyyyyyyy too prevalent, and the vampire has evolved even more in the last few decades.
Why werewolves seem to get so much more divided debate and scrutiny at times then some of the others is beyond me. (Not that I’m saying that’s what’s going on here.)
Before I forget, you guys should check out “The Beast of Bray Road” and “Hunting the American Werewolf.” Supposedly true(and I only say that, again, because I haven’t seen it myself) stories from the Midwest about the furries. There’s also “Lycanthrope” which deals with the medical condition and the psychological effects.
Kinda nice when my parapsychology stuff comes in handy.
*taps the microphone*
Is this thing still on?
🙂
“Varney the Vampyre”???
Good god, not another Ernest movie!
“I want to drink your blood! KnowwutImean?”
“It appears correct that Dante was essentially in full agreement with the official doctrine of his time. Public opinion on theology was much more diverse, with numerous approaches branded heresy. The Pelagians, who began in the 5th Century and were condemned by St. Augustine, believed Man could reach Heaven through his own efforts, without resorting to God’s grace, because he inherits neither original sin (through Adam and Eve’s transgression) nor righteousness (through Christ’s sacrifice). The Cathars, who began in the 11th Century, taught that the spirit was wholly good and created by the good God, while the body was evil and created by the evil God, and that the two gods were in eternal combat. The range of beliefs was quite broad!”
Jeffrey, it is advisable to distinguish between the situation — as far as Christianity is concerned, during the late Roman Empire and the Early Middle Ages, the 8th to 10th centuries, the 11th to 14th centuries, and then the 15th, 16th and 17th centiries. During the late Roman Empire and late Middle Ages there were several competing forms of Christianity, Christian Ordthodoxy was being defined, and the Roman Church was only beginning to build up it’s power, and deal with these heresies. This was the time of the Pelagian heresy, as well as several others. There was less of an abiility to enforce orthodoxy.
Later the Roman Church became more and more dominant and also tried to be more uniform, while also reforming itself. The Cathar heresy existed on the fringe, it was subversive, and was eventually crushed. Later in the 14th, and 15th centuries, just after the Catholic Church’s power and influence reached it’s height, it started facing growing criticism, and also lost some of its power. Then you have other forms of heresy (the Lolards) that were precursors of protestanism. And then you get to the Reformation when all hëll broke loose with many Christian denomination that fragmented from Catholicism and from each other.
Jerry and Bill, I didn;t realize that werewolves were such an issue of controversy. Anyway, thanks for the info.
*taps the microphone*
Is this thing still on?
🙂
No.
~8?O
Micha: The distinctions you draw are, I think, the correct ones. Significant and popular heresies were largely a thing of the earlier periods. Of course, that’s an entirely different thing from the state of popular religious understanding. Particularly in the case of illiterate villagers, religion was absorbed far more on the emotional than the intellectual level: The people accepted the major outlines as they understood them. As for Catharism and the Albigensians, their influence was very much on the wane prior to 1244, when the fortress of Montsegur was breached and the rebels burned alive, but some presence remained in Languedoc, France, until 1321 (incidentally the year of Dante’s death), when the prelate Guillaume Belibaste was executed. Detailed study (which I have not done) would give a good idea of the influence, or lack thereof, heretics and schismatics exercised in Dante’s Florence at the time.
There isn,t really all that much controversy, Micha. It all depends on where you throw out the question and around who you do it. Not a problem here.
I don’t care that much about mincing the lore because I love all of the lore. Even above, I wasn’t disagreeing with Bill as much as playing off of his post. I’ve got a huge bookshelf full of texts on myths, legends and lore, much of it dealing with vampires and werewolves, and a huge collection of horror fiction in several media. I love it all. I only ever get tetchy over having too many “noble” vampires showing up or “zombies” that are still alive. Well, unless you’re talking voodoo zombies. Then I’m fine with it.
Huh, I somehow missed The Beast of Bray Road before. I’ve been reading up on it inline and it looks like a fun little addition to the folklore.
Thanks for pointing that one out.
Micha, Jerry, everybody else:
Might wanna check this out for some background.
http://www.history.com/media.do?id=mysteries_werewolves_broadband&action=clip
Jerry and Bill, I didn;t realize that werewolves were such an issue of controversy.
The only controversy is whether or not they got nards.
I’m not gay-baiting, I’m obsessive-baiting, and there is simply no portrayal of a same-sex obsession as anything other than gay.
Simply untrue. You may not be creative enough to do so but your inabilities are not the rule.
In fact, there are so many ways that one could do it that your reliance on cheap gay-baiting is convincing evidence of a deeper animus toward homosexuals.
…which you demonstrate by failing to cite even an example of “so many ways” to portray same-sex obsession as something other than gay.
Jerry chose to obsess on someone his friends have portrayed as simian. If you have a more flattering analogy, by all means, don’t let me stop you from sharing it.
So, so needy.
Ok, so the challenge is to come up with an example of a way to portray same-sex obsession as something other than gay. This is embarrassing, Mike. Obsession is not always sexual in nature…at least to most people. Your mileage may vary.
But let’s see…here’s a good one. You could have compared the situation to Les Misérables. Jerry would, in your fantasy, be the obsessive Inspector Javert, hounding the kindly Jean Valjean (played here by Mike). I have yet to hear anyone ever suggest that either A- Jean Valjean and Javert are not of the same sex or B- Javert is not obsessed with Valjean or C- there is any sexual component to that obsession.
The only disadvantage to the analogy is that putting yourself in the role of the heroic Valjean is only slightly more laughable than making out Jerry to be Javert. But it’s your fantasy, so knock yourself out. It’s still several orders of magnitude less creepy than comparing yourself to a rapist and Jerry as your victim.
Oh but I forget–people called you a chimp and of course, that inevitably leads to Stanley Kowalski! Actually, a better analogy could have been Koko the Gorilla, who has been able to learn a number of English words although more often than not what she says is gibberish.
If it’s a requirement that your fantasy stand-ins have animus toward women it may please you to note that Koko has been known to violently grab at people’s nipples.
Thanks, Bill, for reminding us of — and disqualifying — that Valjean/Javert dynamic no one can ever seem to get away from.
But don’t lose hope. If John Gray ever publishes Men Are From Jean Valjean, Other Men Are From Inspector Javert, your analogy for straight-men obsession will prove to have been so prescient, they’ll have to shut down all the lotteries before you go in and scoop up all the jackpots with your psychic powers.
And your continuing to indulge in venting disgust? No, that isn’t needy at all.
Thanks, Bill, for reminding us of — and disqualifying — that Valjean/Javert dynamic no one can ever seem to get away from.
No, thank you, Mike, for agreeing that your statement that there is simply no portrayal of a same-sex obsession as anything other than gay is incorrect and evidence of either a severe lack of imagination on your part and/or an obsession with seeing everything with a sexual component.
And your continuing to indulge in venting disgust? No, that isn’t needy at all.
Neat trick–you say stupid things and then accuse those who call you on it of being needy. You’re like a 4 year old who makes fart sounds in church and then gets pouty when the grownups shush him. You must have had some childhood.
Hmmm, my last post seems to have vanished. I’ll try again.
No, thank you, Mike for conforming that your statement there is simply no portrayal of a same-sex obsession as anything other than gay. was both incorrect and indicative of a lack of imagination.
Posted by: Jerry Chandler at May 31, 2007 04:10 PM:
“I don’t care that much about mincing the lore because I love all of the lore.”
Yes. There can be different takes on a subject.
I don’t know that much about horror.
I only ever get tetchy over having too many “noble” vampires showing up….”
That’s interesting. Do you mean noble as in good or noble as in aristocratic. The image of vampires as aristocratic seems to be a recurring theme, but it seems to me to fit well. If I ever write the epic fantasy that is currently in my mind, I’d like to have some vampires and other undead. I was thinking of going aristocratic with the vampires in the undead hierarchy and in general. Any thoughts? I don’t want to be too cliche.
There are also going to be werewolves, or other were creatures.
“Micha, this whole thing started when you accused me of attributing to medievals concepts that were not their own.”
I guess that’s the root of the problem with you Mike — “…you accused me…” — you view these discussions as ‘accusations’ and then go to increasing level of absurdity to evade them like yo did with the ‘rocket surgery’ google discussion. It’s a shame really. You made a layman comment about Dante that is not without merit. I made a comment. It could all have ended there. But since you viewed my reply as an ‘accusation’, this discussion has been dragged so long and taken by you to such levels of absurdity, all to evade this so called ‘accusation’. Why? Good for you for reading Dante. God for you for thinking about it, for forming original thoughts. Nobody expects you to know about medieval mentality. Nobody expects you to be right all the time about everything. In the literary, philosophical, crative level, your comment has som merit. There might even be something there on the historical level, although, as Jeffrey pointed out, we can’t say anything pending much more research than we’re willng to do. But by viewing it as an accusation that needs to be evaded at all cost you have deprived al of us of a sensible conversation in exchange for what? I don’t know.
——————
Posted by: Jeffrey Frawley at May 31, 2007 03:54 PM
“Detailed study (which I have not done) would give a good idea of the influence, or lack thereof, heretics and schismatics exercised in Dante’s Florence at the time.”
I bet somewhere out there there is a book or an article discussing heretic themes in Dante’s work. The idea of heresy was on the minds of people, I’m pretty sure. But please son’t ask me to do research.
I’d also like to point out that in the medieval context the accusation of being schismatic was leveled every time there was a division in the Cathlic Church over the election of the Pope, which was quite common. I don’t know if there were any anti-Popes during Dante’s time, but it was a major part of the Church’s history before and after.
Thanks for the link Sean.
And thank you for helping me dismiss that whole “animus toward homosexuals” thing as an arbitrary accusation. After 2 days, the “so many ways” to portray Jerry’s same-sex obsession with me as something other than gay is still zero.
Not at all.
Your arbitrary “so many ways” accusation seems just a part of your practice of venting disgust on people to shame them into doing what you want them to do — a practice you probably honed in your profession as an authority figure over children.
As far as you need to take people hostage by their shame to validate an arbitrary accusation, you are needy.
Ok Micha, I’m convinced. Or more accurate, Mike has convinced me that your diagnosis of him is the correct one. I had previously thought that Mike didn’t really believe the things he said, that they were positions taken to somehow ‘win’… whatever it is he thinks he wins in these discussions. (The simple pleasure of always being able to perceive himself as right, I suspect.)
After this last little bit with The Mulligan (and catching up on the ‘rocket surgery’ hilarity that happened while I was out of town) I’ve come to agree with Micha that Mike just can’t help himself. This is really who he is, and how he sees the world. Which raises the question if having fun at his expense qualifies as picking on the disabled?
I really don’t know, I think it would feel more icky if Mike himself wasn’t so determined to attack everyone around him, and the fact that he mostly doesn’t seem to feel that put upon by people’s reactions to him. (Except for his forays into total paranioa, when he imagines Jerry is driving to his house with a trunk full of duct tape and horse tranquilizers…)
“Do you mean noble as in good or noble as in aristocratic. “
I meant noble as in good. I don’t mind the odd nice vampire popping up from time to time, but it’s becoming the cliché in vampire fiction to have your lead character have a boyfriend/girlfriend/lover that’s a vampire.
Anita and Buffy lead the way in popularizing this to the detriment of vampire lore. For me, vampires lose a lot when they become good guys. The lore already had the dhampire to play with, so taking evil and making it all soft and cuddly never made much sense to me.
Any thoughts? I don’t want to be too cliche.
You wouldn’t really want to know my thoughts. I’m not saying that in a sarcastic manner, it’s just that the vampire fiction I’ve worked on and tried to get out there plays with returning the vampire to a much darker, harder edged place.
If you can order it from over there, get the “completely revamped” (their words on the cover) edition of j. Gordon Melton’s The Vampire Book. It’s about 800 pages of information on vampire lore of old and the last 120 years or so of pop-culture vampires. The order information will show it at about 900 pages, but that’s because it has almost 100 pages of end notes and references. There’s soooo much more in that then I could tell you on this blog.
Plus it’s a really fun read.
~8?)
People can check it out here:
http://www.deepdiscount.com/viewproduct.htm?productId=7694376
Micha, you have Myers email? If you can’t get he book over there and you want it (and if Bill doesn’t mind being a middle man) get in touch with me through Myers and I’ll get a copy for you.
If you can get the book over there, see if you can find The Werewolf Book and The Witch Book by the same publisher. Again, they’re an ok mix of pop-culture ideas on the topics and some of the older lore.
Oh, and all three (mostly the first two) also have listings of criminal nutcases who acquired the nickname or reputations of being a vampire/werewolf killer. like I said before, they’re a good mix of stuff on the topics and pretty fun reads.
Werewolves, vampires, and Dante’s Inferno aside, I just want to say for the record I’m now totally disgusted with Mike, and am just going to abjure him from now on. I don’t see any point in trying to continue any discussion or debate with him, and his schtik has lost any entertainment appeal it might have.
“Anita and Buffy lead the way in popularizing this to the detriment of vampire lore.”
I agree that Buffy and Anita did open the door to the current overflow of stories that feature vampires as more than evil, villanous bloodsuckers. But I don’t know that’s such a bad thing. I’ve certainly enjoyed reading and watching many shows that feature vampire characters that are far more interesting than just your typical monster gets to be. The early Anita stories kept the vamps as scary, until the series turned into Anita Does the Undead/Supernatural World. Buffy’s vamps…long before they were love interests…were far less imposing that other potrayals made them out to be.
But long before there was Buffy or Anita, Dracula…both literary and the hollywood versions…started to reek sensuality and sexuality. And audiences dug on it. Today’s manifestations of the vampire character seem to be more of the natural evolution of the archetype fitting the desires of the audience.
Thanks Jerry. I don’t know if I can find the book here — fantasy and sci-fi are available. but not the full range — but there is always Amazon, and/or relatives in the US.
I just loooked in amazon, there’s a whole bunch of compendia on magical things apparently. Which would you recommend? I don’t know how much research I want to do. Sometimes i use the need to learn more as an excuse not to do things. Also, are there any fiction books on vampires/witches/werewolves you’d recommend?
“You wouldn’t really want to know my thoughts. I’m not saying that in a sarcastic manner, it’s just that the vampire fiction I’ve worked on and tried to get out there plays with returning the vampire to a much darker, harder edged place.”
I sincerely would be interested to hear your ideas if you’re interested in sharing. Sometimes I can be a good sounding board.
—————-
In the spirit of recommending books, but completely unrelated to anything: I highly recommend Karin Lowachee’s books. It’s like Endder’s Game with even more psychological sensitivity. It’s not related to this discussion, or any discussion for that matter, but these books are really good and could use the promotion.
————————
Patrick, dealing with Mike has certainly challenged my paradigms (what do you know, this word can be of use) of human communication. I have no answers.
“I agree that Buffy and Anita did open the door to the current overflow of stories that feature vampires as more than evil, villanous bloodsuckers. But I don’t know that’s such a bad thing. I’ve certainly enjoyed reading and watching many shows that feature vampire characters that are far more interesting than just your typical monster gets to be. The early Anita stories kept the vamps as scary, until the series turned into Anita Does the Undead/Supernatural World. Buffy’s vamps…long before they were love interests…were far less imposing that other potrayals made them out to be.”
I haven’t read or seen much vampire stuff other than Buffy, so I can’t really say much. Buffy portrayed vampires as pretty disposable, not very powerful, foot soldiers mostly, low on the demonic food chain. I remember being a bit disappointed at first. Later they needed to come up with different kind of demons to fill the void, and they also started giving the vampires (and other demons) more personality, which resulted in them being more likeable and less disposable. But they did such a good job, the show was so good, that there wasn’t any reason to complain.
So far as vampire stories go, the Batman Vampire trilogy of Elseworlds books, Red Rain, Bloodstorm, and Crimson Mist are well worth reading.
-Rex Hondo-
After 2 days, the “so many ways” to portray Jerry’s same-sex obsession with me as something other than gay is still zero.
Silly, silly Mike. The “disqualification” of the Valjean/Javert dynamic is because you, sir, are no Valjean and Jerry is no Javert. Even reversing the roles doesn’t quite work because Javert had a few redeeming qualities.
All irrelevant since the point being made was that your statement there is simply no portrayal of a same-sex obsession as anything other than gay is simply wrong and indicative of a lack of imagination. Your inability to demonstrate why the Valjean/Javert dynamic is either NOT obsessive (on the part of Javert) or is a gay relationship proves the point.
Your attempts to stamp your feet and say you’ve won the argument make you look so silly. Keep it up.
Micha,
The problem with vampires is partly one of overuse. I mean, there is exactly one movie made in American sign langiage and it is, of course, a vampire movie (Deafula) (I’m not kidding.) (No, really, it was released in 1975) (Look it up on IMDB if you don’t believe me!) (Ha! You did, didn’t you? Never doubt me again!) There have been singing vampires (Rocula) Dancing vampires (The Vampire and the Ballerina), puppet vampires (Mad Monster Party), Cartoon vampires (BLood the last Vampire), lesbian vampires (The Velvet Vampire), space vampires (Planet of the vampires), vampires who get their áššëš kicked by Goliath (Goliath and the vampires), kung fu vampires (The Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires), pørņø vampires (Lust at First Bite), black vampires (Blacula), western vampires (Curse of the Undead), Vampire lesbian kickboxers (Vampire Lesbian Kickboxers)…
They’ve kind of saturated the market. But that’s ok, you could say the same of zombie movies and not only does that NOT bother me, I’m contributing to the problem! So here are the problems, as I see it, with vampires:
1- They are the big whiny pûššìëš of the monster kingdom.
Boo hoo hoo, wha wha wha, I am lonely in my eternal immortality, sob sob sob, how I long to again touch the warmth of a sunrise, etc etc”
Cripes! Take a couple of toughen ups, boy, and call me in the morning! But at least these guys are correct about the essential fact that being a vampire should suck. Which brings us to the second problem
2- The idea that vampirism is in any way shape or form cool.
Blade 2 was a lot of fun but the whole “vampire nation” thing is a load of horse feces. Vampires are parasites. They lead a wretched existence. They have certain powers but only an idiot would trade normal humanity for the unlife of a typical vampire. Sure, you don’t age but look at all the new problems you have–garlic, silver, sunlight, the thorns of the Hawthorne bush, crosses, holy water…it might be easier to list what can’t kill them!
Now maybe it’s just me…someone once said that everybody goes to see Dracula, nobody goes to see Van Helsing…well, I always identified with Van Helsing. Go Peter Cushing! Wipe out the whole wretched lot of ’em! That’s probably why I AM LEGEND remains my favorite take on vampires, a whole book that’s about the guy hunting them (Currently being raped for the big screen as a Will Smith vehicle, sigh).
You know the best treatment of vampires ever done, IMHO? Marv Wolfman and Gene Colan’s TOMB OF DRACULA. Great, just great. It portrayed them as powerful, vulnerable, scary, tragic and never lost track of the fact that Dracula was evil. Complex, yes, but evil, and deserving of his inevitable fate.
Jerry, Micha, there’s also, in the same group, The Witch Book.
Bill, if I could ask, what was your take on The Lost Boys and Carpenter’s Vampires?
Jerry, Micha, there’s also, in the same group, The Witch Book.
Bill, if I could ask, what was your take on The Lost Boys and Carpenter’s Vampires?
So here are the problems, as I see it, with vampires:
1- They are the big whiny pûššìëš of the monster kingdom.
I blame Anne Rice. While she may not have created whiny effeminate eurotrash vampires, she’s the one who made them so popular that they became the norm for bloodsuckers in pop culture.
-Rex Hondo-
I haven’t read Interview with the Vampire yet but I’ve heard that they aren’t quite as mopey in the book. I hope so. That said, I rather liked the movie, especially Kirsten Dunst’s character.
I liked Lost Boys when I saw it upon it’s first rlease. I don’t think I’ve seen it since and it’s one of those 80s flicks I approach with trepedation–Will it hold up. Some do (fright Night, Monster Squad, Night of the Creeps) some don’t (Goonies, Night of the Comet). Great final line though.
You know, I remember being disappointed that the movie wasn’t actually a vampire Peter Pan, which I still think is a cool idea.
Carpenter’s Vampires was about the last good thing he’s done, isn’t it? Sigh. I hate seeing guys like him and Tobe Hooper just hacking it out. Anyway, except for the twist with the priest, which I saw coming before the coming attractions were even over, I liked the idea of a modern western vampire take on the material. The parts are better than the whole, though.
If anyone wants to see an interesting micro-budget very animalistic take on vampirism, check out Leif Jonker’s Darkness. GFilmed in Wichita KS, I don’t know how I managed to miss being in it since I was living there at the time it was filmed. I later met Mr. Jonker and might have been in his next movie DEMON MACHINE but the financing fell through. Too bad–nice guy and he did a lot with very little.
Patrick, as a demonstration you aren’t paranoid, why don’t you post your address and, say, your work number? No one here has even vented any disgust on you as they have me.
Otherwise, we are all in agreement in our paranoia.
Thank you for stipulating specifically that “After 2 days, the ‘so many ways’ to portray Jerry’s same-sex obsession with me as something other than gay is still zero.”
While an absolute absense of any portrayal of a same-sex obsession as anything other than gay would have covered me in rebutting you, my dismissal of your accusation does not depend on such an absolute absense or in “[demonstrating] why the Valjean/Javert dynamic is either NOT obsessive (on the part of Javert) or is a gay relationship.” (“Not depend,” as in “not need,” which is the hallmark of dedication.)
…because your accusation (“so many ways”) depends on my lack of imagination — in failing to producing that which you yourself cannot produce (“is still zero”) to prove your point. (“Depend,” as in “need,” which is the hallmark of childhood.)
Nope. You said it couldn’t be done. I did it. You lose. Try to parse the meaning of the words “there”, “is”, “simply”, “no”, “portrayal”, “of”, “a”, “same-sex”, “obsession”, “as”, “anything”, “other”, “than” and “gay” all you want. You still lose.
Now, one could ask, “lose what?” For any normal person, the answer would be “Nothing.” For you, well…As others have pointed out, your fragile neediness can brook no failure–the whole unstable paradigm of your self-image would probably come tumbling down. Given how awful you come off while still believing in yourself as the distiller of truths heretofore never seen, one can only imagine how creepy you would become without the facade.
Your latest attempt to deny the obvious is the funniest one yet. Keep it up. You’ll be able to save a bundle on therapist costs by just printing this all out and handing it to them.
So how and when did my supposed pretense of invulnerability manifest itself? Was it when I accused you of refusing to take a correction I previously gave you credit for taking? No, that can’t be it, because that wasn’t my hypocrisy against you, that was your hypocrisy against me. That’s Totally Normal Psychology.™