idols

[Doug Mounce]

I had this insight about the "four idols" categories that I would typically describe in an essay format but I can't seem to allocate the time!  This short note may be interesting to some and, of course, any feedback is welcome.

Attributed to Thomas, the false idols are power, money, adoration and pleasure.  I had the insight that there is an opposite ideal like those developed in the four temperaments theory. Power has a positive possibility, for example, in leadership.  Money, likewise, can provide stability and security.  Adoration might inspire community in shared appreciation, and, my idol, pleasure, can also be joy.

Lonergan, in the Aristorelian tradition, was a great classifier and I'm fond of saying that some of our most profound mistakes are made in classification schemes, but these are fun games to play in any case.  What are your favorite proto-psychological theories?

-Doug

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https://staff.washington.edu/mounce/

[Hugh Williams]

Doug my good friend in ‘letters’,

 I’ve not thought about Thomas Aquinas (and his totalizing project of the summa for the ‘catholic faith’) for some time as I’ve been mixing with those at one time considered heretics.

 Be that as it may, we both recognized Thomas’ work hovering in the background for our extensive and good exchanges with a few others on Lonergan and then on Rahner.

 Generally speaking, idolatry, as I understand it, is the most serious of sins for Thomas since it sets up another god in the world, diminishing the true God’s primacy.

 So, this post will be somewhat self-serving in that I’d like to use your invitation to draw attention to at least a short excerpt from my extensive review of John and Pierre’s AIRR(2023) text that I shared in a much earlier attachment with this list. This excerpt can be read as a constructively critical review of a very serious Christian effort to expose the idolatry of ‘power and money’ in the real-world capitalist system of our times.

 My strange argument is that this effort from the Christian side will require, especially if we hope to understand and overcome what I consider to be this real and present idolatry, that we revisit the thinking of the Marxist tradition which often has been regarded as a type of ‘heresy’.

 Ah … but heresy and idolatry do come in many forms and its clarification and effective overcoming necessarily requires honest dialectic. 

Lonergan himself has said as much … so in this spirit, for those interested, see attached.

 Hugh

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