- Mar 2020
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faculty.georgetown.edu faculty.georgetown.edu
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Meanwhile, in the case of those who were denounced to me as Christians, I have observed the following procedure: I interrogated these as to whether they were Christians; those who confessed I interrogated a second and a third time, threatening them with punishment
In the Christian faith a lot of people fear sinning and others don’t fear sinning, or going against God, they fear punishment. When we repent our sins do we do it because we truly feel remorseful or because we don’t want to face the punishment. Also, in bible stories we see punishment as being something that should be feared. This makes me think of “Daniel in The Lions Den,” because the ones who received the punishment in the end were those who tried to get Daniel in trouble.
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They asserted, however, that the sum and substance of their fault or error had been that they were accustomed to meet on a fixed day before dawn and sing responsively a hymn to Christ as to a god, and to bind themselves by oath, not to some crime, but not to commit fraud, theft, or adultery, not falsify their trust, nor to refuse to return a trust when called upon to do so. When this was over, it was their custom to depart and to assemble again to partake of food--but ordinary and innocent food. Even this, they affirmed, they had ceased to do after my edict by which, in accordance with your instructions, I had forbidden political associations. Accordingly, I judged it all the more necessary to find out what the truth was by torturing two female slaves who were called deaconesses. But I discovered nothing else but depraved, excessive superstition.
This is interesting because this piece of text relates to sinning and the repercussions of that and torture which comes with sinning. Also how hiding the truth is a form of sinning.
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- Jan 2020
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www.newadvent.org www.newadvent.org
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For the end is always like the beginning: and, therefore, as there is one end to all things, so ought we to understand that there was one beginning
This section of the text is very polarizing. I was confused because when I thought, in the beginning of the text, that spirituality and individuality came from our body this section contradicted that. In Chapter six, I noticed more emphasis on the origin of the beginning.
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It is one thing to see, and another to know: to see and to be seen is a property of bodies; to know and to be known, an attribute of intellectual being.
I found this part of the text (Ch. 1-8) really interesting because it mentions the ‘body’ and ‘bodily nature.’ The “property of bodies” could be a reference to a metaphor of the human body or the holy body and how we are recognized through or from our body; our body can be what makes us visible to others and to God. In an earlier part of the text there is mention of how the human body can be visible or invisible and the holiness that goes with the body. The first line of this section is particularly vivid in describing seeing and what it means to be seen. Sometimes, we can be seen in the wrong way, what is shown to us may not be what we see or what God sees and vise-versa.
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