Differring from Mr. Taunton on Ukrano-Russian Relations (he could be giving a pov he didn't share) and on Progress and St. Thomas ·
Giving the Word to Father Jason Charron (Byzantine Catholic Ukrainian)
Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere: Differring from Mr. Taunton on Ukrano-Russian Relations (he could be giving a pov he didn't share) and on Progress and St. Thomas ·
New blog on the kid: A Video by "Capturing Christianity" on Rhett McLaughlin, My Comments, Last One First, Then Timestamp by Timestamp
Why does the West keep getting Russia wrong?
Larry Alex Taunton | 22.IV.2025, Easter Tuesday
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QyOjaXUy_IM
47:34 Russia as we think of it didn't exist.
I think, in God's and the Blessed Virgin Mary's eyes, Ukraine is heir to Kievan Rus.
Muscovy starts later. And there have only been two supreme rulers Vladimir in Muscovy. Lenin and Putin. Putin is Vladimir II of Muscovy. Zelensky is Vladimir at least V of Kievan Rus ...
Now, admittedly it also stretched into Belarus and modern Russia. AND the part in modern Russia that preceded Kiev was Novgorod ... a stronghold of Paganism well after 988.
- Julia Panteleeva
- @juliapanteleeva500
- To write so is to absolutely not know how Rus lived in that before-Mongol period. The name Kievan Rus was not the name of the land (as we don’t say “Parisian France” or “London England”), it was given by historians as the name of the period of Rus when Kiev was its capital (compare to Vladimir Rus). At that time no countries no nations (as we think of them) now existed. There was a great territory where Eastern Slavs (future Russians, Belorussians and Ukrainians) lived all together plus some smaller ethnicities. The territory and the people got the name Rus. Most possible the name Rus was brought by Normans who started the dynasty of the Rurikovichi, were shortly Slavicized and reigned all over the territory of Rus with the capital in Kiev. The territory was one because of the common language (later, after the Mongol invasion it split into 3), common church hierarchy, common law, one multiple dynasty in all the principalities (those war-like siblings were from time to time fighting with each other because of their ambitions) but all of them most of the time recognised the supremacy of the Prince of Kiev. For example Vladimir the St. whom the author mentioned in the video had 12 sons and 7 of them went to reign in northern principalities like Nowgorod, Smolensk, Polotsk etc. Jaroslav Mudry/the Wise spent half of his life in northern principalities then moved to Kiev. It was characteristic for all of them. Before the Mongols’ invasion Kiev got weakened by multiple invasions of the nomads and the capital was moved to Vladimir (Vladimir-Suzdal which are lying very close). During the Mongols Rus went to parts: southern (Ukranians) went soon to Poland, western (Belorussian) was protected by Lithuanian Princes and formed first the Lithuanian and Russian Principality but then made a union with Poles (when Jagailo married Jadviga, was baptised Catholic together with his people and became the King of the new common state). Nothern-Eastern Rus stayed under Mongols for almost 300 years and when liberated, became an independent state with the uniting centre in Moscow. All 3 branches of Eastern Slavs were isolated because of the invasion but they are of the same origin, same age and same rights.
- Hans-Georg Lundahl
- @hglundahl
- @juliapanteleeva500 "The name Kievan Rus was not the name of the land"
The Weimar Republic was not the name of the land. The actual name of the land was not changed from 1870 to 1943, "Deutsches Reich".
Kievan Rus is a convenient label for historiography, like "Heptarchy" in England.
"Before the Mongols’ invasion Kiev got weakened by multiple invasions of the nomads and the capital was moved to Vladimir (Vladimir-Suzdal which are lying very close)."
Is this in the Primary Chronicle?
I know there was a move by one Kievan Metropolitan to Suzdal. He's "ancestral" to the Patriarchs of Moscow.
But a brief move of the Capital from Kiev to Vladimir is hardly proof that Vladimir-Suzdal-Tver rather than less Tatarised Kiev and (I think) Polotsk are the closest heirs to Rus (from the Kievan era).
Also, the old Rus Novgorod, if I recall correctly, was a Hanseatic city, and when it was conquered by Muscovites, it was demolished. I think that was under Ivan the terrible.
I agree about same rights in human dignity, but when it comes to spiritual heirs of St. Volodimir, and of the dedication to the Blessed Virgin, I would say that Ukraine is closer than Russia. That's why (my guess) Our Lady in Fatima asked for Russia to be consecrated. Ukraine and Belarus were under Christian rule, in Muscovy the feet were kissed of Pagan warlords who wanted to be treated as "here it is I who am god" ...
@juliapanteleeva500 My bad, the Hanseatic city was during the Tatar overlordship.
47:55 It's like saying the US were founded in London.
The first capital of the Thirteen Colonies wasn't Washington DC, it was .... London. You know, prior to a tax dispute and all that back in 1776.
So, the action of Putin is a bit like if Trump tried to make UK 51st State.
47:59 As a Swede and back in 1988 a friend of an Ukrainian Uniate Catholic who duly celebrated the Baptism of St. Volodimir in 988, I obviously add myself to the Ukrainian choir disputing that. JUST to be clear.
Also, Ukraine was part time under Poland Lithuania (which certainly beats being under the Tatars), and that means Ukrainians were among the guys who saved Vienna from Islamisation in 1683.
54:55 When Russia had a go at an Industrial Revolution, fortunately Ukraine missed out on it, and it led to a starvation such that Lenin rubbed his hands and said
"this is Revolutionary potential" ...
That's why the next failure of crops in Russia proper, in the Volga valley was offset by plundering Ukraine and making a starvation there.
"We can't give the guys the impression that Makhnow and the Peasant Army (black and green armies)
had it right, we must boost the image of Industrialism" ...
Said and done, the manmade starvation of ill managed industrialism was displaced to Ukraine ... it did for Ukrainian loyalty to Russia (if any was left) what an earlier manmade starvation of Capitalism had done on Ireland when it came to loyalty to England. "We can't give Irish Catholic farm hands the impression they can just get wheat for free" ... (which wheat they had grown and when the contractual potatoes were failing), and well, one or two generations later, there is a certain Easter Uprising of 1916.
55:36 Evolution claims man came from creatures about the intelligence of chimps or gorillas.
Progressivism claims modern man came from the Palaeolithic.
Note, I would agree we came THROUGH the Palaeolithic, but I would say, compared to most pre-Flood areas (Neanderthals excepted) and compared to post-Flood times from Neolithic on, Palaeolithic is as marginal in human conditions as Industrial Revolution. About 350 years in each case.
58:15 I would actually say it has more to do with being heirs to the Ingalls family than with being heirs to the Vanderbilts.
In other words, you can thank God that the Industrial Revolution came later to you than to England. And has impacted less.
Equally, Ruralism rather than Industrialism tends to make Germans, Italians and Irish optimistic and resiliant.
58:33 What I distinctly love less about that comment is the idea of displacing Muslims and Christians (order of quantity) or Christians and Muslims (order of importance) for not being Jews.
59:42 I would say, from the Tucker Carlson interview, Putin is an Atheist. Or possibly Pantheist and if so probably Stoic or Kantian or Spinozan school.
There are far more real Christians and far more Christians at least professing to be such overall in Ukraine. I know your daughter had a different experience of it, but still.
64.4% Christianity = Russia.
87.3% Christianity = Ukraine.
1:01:15 Correction.
He's not summarising the MIND of God. He's summarising the REVELATION of God, or in other words "essential doctrines" ... 4000 pages essential doctrines? With some indepth explanation, yes.
He didn't much bother about doctrines which he didn't consider essential. The exciting thing is, when St. Thomas is lengthy, he's excited. He's pretty convinced that the opposing position to his own is likely either to damn you or at least to seriously impair your capacity for theological reflection.
1:02:16 Riccioli who didn't believe the Prime Mover argument was factually correct summarised it as God turning the visible Heavens as a whole around Earth, and dragging Sun, Moon and Stars, along with Heaven around Earth.
Instead Riccioli believed Heaven was empty and immobile [a void cannot move] on the levels we see and only indivual bodies move. The coordination of them still would require a God able to give orders to all of them, but OK.
The problem with trying to combine Heliocentrism with Prime Mover is, without
all of the universe participating in
one movement and that helping the
one ecosystem we live in the middle of, there goes a chance to refute the idea that there are many prime moverS instead. See
Prima Pars, Q 11, A 3, which speaks of God being
one (as distinct from existing in the first place) where the third way is precisely this.
First from His simplicity. For it is manifest that the reason why any singular thing is "this particular thing" is because it cannot be communicated to many: since that whereby Socrates is a man, can be communicated to many; whereas, what makes him this particular man, is only communicable to one. Therefore, if Socrates were a man by what makes him to be this particular man, as there cannot be many Socrates, so there could not in that way be many men. Now this belongs to God alone; for God Himself is His own nature, as was shown above (I:3:3). Therefore, in the very same way God is God, and He is this God. Impossible is it therefore that many Gods should exist.
This doesn't directly go back to I:2:3 or Five Ways, you have to pass by Q3.
Secondly, this is proved from the infinity of His perfection. For it was shown above (I:4:2) that God comprehends in Himself the whole perfection of being. If then many gods existed, they would necessarily differ from each other. Something therefore would belong to one which did not belong to another. And if this were a privation, one of them would not be absolutely perfect; but if a perfection, one of them would be without it. So it is impossible for many gods to exist. Hence also the ancient philosophers, constrained as it were by truth, when they asserted an infinite principle, asserted likewise that there was only one such principle.
Dito, but Q4.
Thirdly, this is shown from the unity of the world. For all things that exist are seen to be ordered to each other since some serve others. But things that are diverse do not harmonize in the same order, unless they are ordered thereto by one. For many are reduced into one order by one better than by many: because one is the per se cause of one, and many are only the accidental cause of one, inasmuch as they are in some way one. Since therefore what is first is most perfect, and is so per se and not accidentally, it must be that the first which reduces all into one order should be only one. And this one is God.
Here we are dealing with Prime Mover as per Q2, AND St. Thomas is saying Sirius and Vega are parts of the ecosystem we live in, they are not some kind of other world with Tatooine attached ... much as I loved Star Wars back in 1977.
1:02:59 Sorry, Larry.
P as in Phail for Thomism.
He specifically denied the infinite regress.
It is certain, and evident to our senses, that in the world some things are in motion.
So far we agree on what he said.
Now whatever is in motion is put in motion by another, for nothing can be in motion except it is in potentiality to that towards which it is in motion; whereas a thing moves inasmuch as it is in act.
Note, you are giving a Kalam or Earliest mover argument, by substituting "was" for "is" ... St. Thomas does not recognise inertia as an infinite potentiality to remain moving in the same direction, but on top of that, circular astromovements aren't staying in the same direction, so, they would even on Newton's view need to be "set in motion" while it happens, they are a motion that cannot sustain itself.
I skip a lot, since it's examples from other motion types than locomotion, as these better illustrate act and potency.
Now it is not possible that the same thing should be at once in actuality and potentiality in the same respect, but only in different respects. For what is actually hot cannot simultaneously be potentially hot; but it is simultaneously potentially cold. It is therefore impossible that in the same respect and in the same way a thing should be both mover and moved, i.e. that it should move itself.
This underlines how Newton's inertia is definitely not the explanation model for St. Thomas. To Newton, inertia means a thing moving itself because it is already moving. This St. Thomas argues cannot happen.
Therefore, whatever is in motion must be put in motion by another. If that by which it is put in motion be itself put in motion, then this also must needs be put in motion by another, and that by another again.
Here he is speaking of a regress. To him, and I would respectfully disagree, God is only moving the sphere of the fix stars, then that is moving the sphere of Saturnus, that the one of Jupiter, that the one of Mars, that the one of the Sun, that the one of Mercury, of Venus, of the Moon (I may have misplaced Mercury and Venus in relation to each other) and then the sphere of the Moon, by friction, moves the atmosphere West (hence winds of passage) which move the oceans West (hence the Oceanic currents). Now, he does not say that the regress is infinite. Once you track a windgust to a cyclone, a cyclone to a wind of passage at the equator, that to the sphere of the Moon and so on up to the sphere of the Fix stars you are not required to look further for this kind of moved movers.
But this cannot go on to infinity, because then there would be no first mover, and, consequently, no other mover; seeing that subsequent movers move only inasmuch as they are put in motion by the first mover; as the staff moves only because it is put in motion by the hand. Therefore it is necessary to arrive at a first mover, put in motion by no other; and this everyone understands to be God.
1:04:16 More like
one Protestant
perversion of the Summa.
If you want an indepth argument why Thomists shouldn't be Calvinists, I'd refer to
Scholastic Answers, an Amazing channel. (Just a bit Novus Ordo on the edges and so ...).
1:04:35 Education of St. Thomas: Plato, Aristotle, and a few more.
Education of Calvin: Cicero.
As a Latinist and non-huge fan of Cicero and Seneca, I don't play connoisseur of education, but enjoy the one whose education chimes with me and mine ... (CSL loved Plato and respected Aristotle, and found Cicero "a great bore" but he was certainly neither a great scientist nor a great philosopher, his glory is the pater patriae and the appeals to Caesar to be clement after the condemnations of Verres being the opposite ...).
1:04:46 His footnoting may be superb to his own writings, but he's
not providing the best footnotes to the endings of Mark and Matthew. I
have read his wheedling* around the proof texts for Apostolic Succession and for non-Cessationism.
Speaking of which, a much better exegete, St. Thomas, had sth to say about "mythoi" or rather Latin "fables" in Thessalonians, I believe, I am behind on translating that passage, unlike the Summa, the Bible commentaries of St. Thomas are only available in Latin.
* I meant weaselling. My bad.
