Divine forgiveness, an intellectual challenge for Xxxxx Sample Clauses

Divine forgiveness, an intellectual challenge for Xxxxx. Xxxxx can be characterised as an excellent example of an intellectual of his period. He has left us with an elaborate library of treatises. He embarked in these treatises on a journey of intellectual reflection about a wide range of topics. Seeking and receiving divine forgiveness is among these topics. All the elements of the supposedly simplistic daily-life religious approach to divine forgiveness appear in Xxxxx’x treatises: God who is insulted and enraged by human evil, who reacts with punishment, or with forgiveness if the evildoer repents.41 His intellectual considerations did not lead Xxxxx to simply reject 38 Spec. III, 1–3. 39 Abr. 162–163. Half of the questions that Xxxxx raises here could be regarded as theological questions. Xxxxx Xxxxx’x thinking to be characterised as theology, rather than philosophy? For example, Xxxxxxxx Xxxxx-Xxxxx claims: ‘By placing wisdom at the service of God, and drawing on virtue from the study of the Law, Xxxxx is quite different from the philosophers from whom he borrows’ (Xxxxx-Xxxxx, Xxxxx, p. 178). Was Xxxxx indeed different from the philosophers from whom he borrows? One should bear in mind that a strict distinction between theology and philosophy is a modern phenomenon. With regard to Xxxxx, as with any ancient author, it is unjustified to distinguish between philosophy and theology: within Xxxxx’x intellectual context all philosophy stemmed from a proper understanding of the divine. As Xxxxxx Xxxxxx put it, after Xxxxx ‘every system of Greek philosophy (save only the Sceptics) culminated in theology’ (Jaeger, Theology, p. 4). According to Xxxx Xxxxxx, for Philo philosophy and theology were one and the same thing (see Xxxxxx, Middle Platonists, p. 141). Xxxxxx Xxxxxx-Xxxxxxx notes, when comparing Xxxxx and Xxxxxxxx, that in their writings theology and philosophy were intertwined and that knowledge of theology and philosophy is therefore necessary to understand these ancient authors (see Xxxxxx-Xxxxxxx, ‘Der eine Gott’, pp. 162–166). A writer such as Xxxxxxxxxx, who somewhere around 100 CE presented his philosophical insights in the form of commentaries on Xxxxx’x epics, did not distinguish between philosophy and theology. He claimed that ‘Xxxxx here has given us a scientific theology in allegorical form’ (see Xxxxxxxxxx, Homeric Problems 58 [translation by Xxxxxxx/Xxxxxxx]; in Xxxxxxx/Xxxxxxx, Xxxxxxxxxx, p. 97; for dating Xxxxxxxxxx see ibid., p. xi). Whereas Xxxxxxxxxx found the answers to his fundamental qu...