St Basil the Great - Part 2 : Biography, Commentary on Genesis 1, and letters 

I’m loving these podcasts on the Early Church historical figures. Many thanks!

Hi Sam, Are you going to do a video on Michael Servetus? I would really enjoy that I’m curious to hear his Christology from his book and why some oneness people claim him.

😂 @28:00 😂 👏 👏 👏 Bravo!

56:32 We, as Unitarians, express frustration towards the reformation for not going far enough doctrinally, and similarly, I hope that this frustration won't be repeated with the recession of modernity. Just as paganism persisted through trinitarianism, I believe that the unsavory essence of modernity, namely disenchantment, will endure through theistic evolution. I do not see you as a half-hearted revolutionary, Sam. Persuaded yet? :-)

keep up the good work! I don’t know if you’ve done any sort of episodes on this because it doesn’t have much of anything to do with trinitarianism but do you have anything for the laws christian’s should follow? Are we bound to the laws found in the first five books of moses? Paul and Jesus don’t seem like they’re in agreement on it. I would love to hear your perspective on this.

Hello Sam, are you planning to do any videos on Saint Ephraim the Syrian?

I think there is half an answer to animal suffering in the discussion of evil. Limited agency and self awareness in the natural world mean things like natural suffering (which is useful for learning) and predation are not in the category of evil. This would not absolve animal cruelty which is the result of human agency.

First.

When God declared every thing very good, that was prior to the Fall of Man and the subsequent corruption of nature, both man and animal. St Basil in his discourse on the origin of humanity agrees with Genesis that originally all creatures were vegetarian, there were no carnivores, no beasts clawed prey, and there were no corpses for vultures to feed on. Hank should note that Catholic teaching is that human nature has been adversely affected by the Fall, and is in need of grace to overcome concupiscence. St Basil also teaches the need to overcome the desire of the flesh and cause every impulse toward evil to cease. So, there is in human beings a tendency to evil which we need God's grace to overcome. That is basically what St Augustine was arguing against Pelagius. Man does not start of neutral and able freely to decide for good or for evil. Even the person baptized as an infant still has concupiscence as a reality to deal with by the help of God's grace. That concupiscence is not in itself sin, but is an inclination towards it, and must be overcome by willing cooperation with God's grace. It is an unjust charge, and an old one as with Julian of Eclanum, to accuse Augustine of being Manicheean in the matter of the human condition since the Fall. It might be that Manicheean determinism influenced Augustines wrong thinking on interpreting predestination, but the Church, long before Calvin, formally rejected the idea of predestination to evil and to damnation in the sense that Augustine seemed to think of it.