[lbo-talk] more on the econ Nobel

[C. G. Estabrook]

Your residual Catholicism is getting a bit rusty, Doug.  The
council of Chalcedon (451 CE) specifically rejected the notion
that Christ was a hybrid. "Fully human," they said -- and
their notion of God was not of simply another existent in the
universe. Of course, there's no reason to think that even the
sophisticated philosophical terms of fifteen centuries ago
offer the best way to express Christian faith -- we should
have learnt something in that time (as any good Aristotelian
would hold).  But Catholicism also surely holds that, altho'
the matter could be put better, the denial of Chalcedon's
statement is false. 

Incidentally, one of the hottest topics in Shakespeare studies
right now is the extent to which Shakespeare (I mean the
author to the plays and poems, whoever he was) belonged to
that church as well. Orthodox scholars (those who think the
man from Stratford was the author) are in the lead, suggesting
an extensive underground Catholic life for Shakespeare during
the "lost years" (losing those years when he was apparently
so young looks like carelessness), possibly as a tutor in a
recusant family in Yorkshire, and possibly in the orbit of
the Jesuit intellectual Edmund Campion, executed under Elizabeth.

It's always been difficult to explain what Hamlet's father is
doing in purgatory when purgatory has been officially
outlawed; and the positive treatment in the plays of the
members of the Catholic clergy -- regarded in Elizabeth's
England as CP members and Soviet spies were in 1950s America
-- has always been a puzzle.  Recently the literary evidence
for Shakespeare's Catholicism has been gathered (some would
say over-gathered) by Clare Asquith in a nevertheless
entertaining book, SHADOWPLAY: THE HIDDEN BELIEFS AND CODED
POLITICS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.  Even more impressively, the
philosopher John Finnis has decoded a late and obscure
Shakespeare poem (untitled, but usually called THE PHOENIX AND
THE TURTLE) and shown that it celebrates a Catholic woman, Ann
Line, who was executed for religion by Elizabeth.

--CGE  

---- Original message ----
>Date: Tue, 11 Oct 2005 12:35:49 -0400
>From: Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com>  
>Subject: RE: [lbo-talk] more on the econ Nobel  
>To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
>
>Miles Jackson wrote:
>
>>On Tue, 11 Oct 2005, C. G. Estabrook wrote:
>>
>>>Ah, another theological argument on LBO: settled religious
>>>faith in the traditional story v. modern historical
>>>investigation...  --CGE
>>>
>>
>>Okay, I'll bite: any textual or historical evidence to
>>support the claim?  Most of the arguments I've heard are
>>pretty speculative, to be kind.
>
>Hey, remember that this remark comes from a guy who belongs to a 
>church that teaches that a hybrid man-god was born of a
virgin, that 
>he died for our sins, resurrected from the dead, and was assumed 
>bodily into heaven.
>