Re: RI January 2025

On Sun, 23 Feb 2025 19:22:00 -0000 (UTC), Don <g@crcomp.net> wrote:

<snippo, I'm not sure what this was actually about>

Simon Magus appears in THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. He created the Gnostic
demiurge. Simon Magus' darkly evil god arguably acts as a bookend to
this story's merely dark god.

Per <https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/demiurge>, the
Demiurge was a Platonic or a Gnostic subordinate deity. Since Plotinus
devotes an entire lecture to attacking the Gostics as misunderstanding
Platonism, I suggest that Plato invented the concept and Simon Magus
and stole it.

Incidentally, the volume in the collection named /Great Books of the
Western World/ devoted to Ptolemy, Copernicus, and Kepler has an essay
between Ptolemy and Copernicus which points out that, if you use the
figures given in Plato's /Timeus/, the ratios of the wanderer's
distances from the Central Fire are similar to those of the planets'
mean distances from the Sun. Suggesting that Plato had a heliocentric
view of the World.

As to Simon Magus, <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Magus> notes
that the Early Fathers did attribute Gnosticism to him but modern
scholars are divided on whether he actually was a Gnostic or was
merely regarded as one by the Church Fathers. All of whom, since Simon
Magus and Peter the Apostle were contemporaries, were writing a
century or two after he died.

CITY OF GOD by St Augustine addresses Christian sanctuary. When
Christian barbarians sacked Hippo they gave quarter by designating
Christian churches as sanctuaries.

Huh. I thought the idea was that Christians live in the Church, the
City of God, and Pagans live in the World, the City of Man.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_City_of_God> locates it after the
sack of Rome by the Visigoths in 410, when the pagans claimed that
Christianity had weakened the Empire and so produced this disaster.

The sacking of Hippo Regius
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippo_Regius> by the Vandals actually
killed Augustine, so he could hardly have written /City of God/ after
that. And the Vandals were Arians, and so heretics.

There may or may not be echoes of Donatism
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donatism> mixed in here. This was a
local heresy that Augustine wrote about. Although this article does
not say so, I recall reading somewhere that what /really/ put the
Donatists out of business was the Muslim Conquest: they were localized
to North Africa so when it went, they went.

That last lists quite a few similar movements. Dark and foetid indeed
are some parts of theology.
--
"Here lies the Tuscan poet Aretino,
Who evil spoke of everyone but God,
Giving as his excuse, 'I never knew him.'"