Christianity

[Alexis Jacobi]

Yes, that's right: I see that we disagree on that. But there are no "partial Christians" and no "semi-Christians." There some lines that are just lines, plain and simple.

As they say, "You can't be a little bit dead or a little bit pregnant." You also can't be "a little bit saved," or "a little bit reborn."

I think you are comparing incomparable categories. The solution to the problem is to separate them. Yes, you cannot be ‘slightly’ pregnant, but the entire category of spiritual and intellectual assent given either to a metaphysical or supernatural entity, or to a group of ideas and values, can indeed and in fact is, and indeed all the time and far more commonly, an affair of partialness.

Those who preached coming under the spiritual authority, the influence, of a supernatural power, also preached and taught the value and benefit to be gained from living in accord with the moral and ethical teaching. Metanoia (repentance) was an idea and a sentiment common to pagan philosophy long before the early Christians came on the scene. And so was the notion of sozesthai (deliverance). Repentance, deliverance, and also rebirth and renewal were not foreign ideas. They are in the obvious sense notions that are common to all people.

So in fact you can be *a little repentant* and you can be *a little delivered* and thus you can be *a bit reborn*. The reason being is that these are not immediate states, nor absolute states comparable to literal pregnancy. One can also be ‘partially dead’ and ‘partially alive’ in a psychological, emotional, intellectual, spiritual and also moral sense.

There is an interesting Greek word: epopteia (ἐποπτεία) [“Beholding of the secret symbols or epiphanies of the gods”]. I don’t know much about the word except that it is related, let’s say, to inner seeing or to the realization we understand to be inner. How can such realizations even be defined?

But let’s take an example, against from Shakespeare, when Gloucester [in King Lear] after having his physical eyes gouged out and is stumbling around blind, has profound inner realizations which causes him to say about his former blinded-seeing state “I stumbled when I saw”.

I am pretty certain that at one time or another I have shared this fascinating truth-statement by William Blake:

This life’s dim windows of the soul
Distorts the heavens from pole to pole
And leads you to believe a lie
When you see with, not through, the eye.

So one can most certain *see* a little bit, or have a dim awakening, or have the truth (or a truth) begin to *dawn* on one.

[owl of Minerva]

By Immanuel Can:


“ Now, you can argue that reincarnation is real. You can argue that person X or Y has supported your view. You can argue that the Bible is wrong in what it says about the afterlife. But the one thing you can't say is that the Bible teaches reincarnation, or that any real Christian can believe in it.”

“If any believed in it, they believed contrary to Torah.”

—————————————————————————————————

Owl of Minerva:

Obviously the Orthodox did not believe in reincarnation but Jewish mystics did. So it is a matter of which is better, the dogma or the experience.

Maybe Jesus was Elisha on whom Elijah cast his mantle, “as he spoke of Elijah having come already and they knew him not, and they knew he spoke of John the Baptist.” From our perspective we do not know and will not know unless we are able to retain our conscious memory during the traumas of birth and death. Atheists do not have to dwell on this as life is biology: birth, procreation, and death, so the topic is irrelevant.

It is not a matter of believing or disbelieving but from a rational and philosophical perspective figuring out what makes the most sense.

[Immanuel Can]

...the entire category of spiritual and intellectual assent given either to a metaphysical or supernatural entity, or to a group of ideas and values, can indeed and in fact is, and indeed all the time and far more commonly, an affair of partialness.

In all ideologies, religions, and group loyalties, I entirely agree with you. But not in regard to salvation.

When you walk into a room and flip on a light switch, it's on, or it's off. There is no "kind of on." There is no "kind of off." Either the electric circuit is complete, or it is incomplete. No half-way measures are even possible.

Another all-or-nothing situation is the situation of genetic ancestry. You are either the daughter (or son) of your parents, or you are somebody else's daughter or son. There is no "partiality" or shadowiness to that relationship: it is what it is, or it is not. And you can't make yourself somebody's child by claiming that's what you are: it's a matter of genetics, of birth, of identity.

The Bible is clear: you cannot be partially born from above. The birth in question comes "from above" and you either have been "born" that way, or you simply have not. Either you stand in relation to God as His son or daughter, or you do not. There is only "in" and "out," and no such thing as "sort of in" or "sort of out."

As Christ said, "The one who is not with Me is against Me; and the one who does not gather with Me scatters." (Matt. 12:20) The one who falsely professes to be a Christian is not a "sort of" Christian, but an opponent, a "scatterer," an impediment to the message of Christ and a dissembler whose contribution is merely to obscure the truth. As Paul says, "They profess to know God, but by their deeds they deny Him, being detestable and disobedient and worthless for any good deed." (Titus 1:15) The Bible has no time for fake Christians, the half-hearted, the double-minded, the semi-committed, the lukewarm, the dabblers, dilettantes, and the sort-of-committed. "In or out," that's what it is.

There is no being "on the fence" with Christ. A person is His, or he is not.

Metanoia (repentance) was an idea and a sentiment common to pagan philosophy long before the early Christians came on the scene. And so was the notion of sozesthai (deliverance). Repentance, deliverance, and also rebirth and renewal were not foreign ideas. They are in the obvious sense notions that are common to all people.

That's only suprising to anybody who naively believed that ancient people knew nothing. In fact, they knew a very great deal...they always had the pieces out of place, but that does not imply that they had none of the pieces. The Bible is, in fact, a document designed not merely to speak directly to today's people, but to people of ancient days, using concepts some of them already had, but putting them in their right place and context, and filling them out in ways those people had not before imagined.

"Metanoia" is a good example. The concept of a "change of mind" is an old one: but none of the ancients described it in the way the Biblical text does, and none of them understood it by way of the Bible's metaphysical dynamics. Christian "metanoia" is quite different from anything Nicodemus knew, for example: which is why Jesus told him bluntly, "Unless a man is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.", and Nicodemus was gobsmacked, unable to grasp what that meant. (see John 3).

But let’s take an example, against from Shakespeare, when Gloucester [in King Lear] after having his physical eyes gouged out and is stumbling around blind, has profound inner realizations which causes him to say about his former blinded-seeing state “I stumbled when I saw”.

I like that play. But that concept, the irony of the blind man who sees, and the seeing man who is blind, so beloved by Shakespeare, was not his own concept. It numbers among the over thirteen hundred references to Scripture that Shakespeare made, since it comes from John 9:39 -- And Jesus said, “For judgment I came into this world, so that those who do not see may see, and those who see may become blind.”

So one can most certain *see* a little bit, or have a dim awakening, or have the truth (or a truth) begin to *dawn* on one.

All that is true. But Biblically speaking, one is stil either saved or lost, alive or dead, "born again" (John 3) or "dead in trespasses and sins." (Eph. 2:1)

That is because it is actually not at all important what one knows: what it crucial is what one believes , commits to, and does as a result.

[Alexis Jacobi]

But the admonitions to Titus are directed specifically against what I guess would be called *Judaizers*.

10 For there are many unruly and vain talkers and deceivers, specially they of the circumcision:

11 Whose mouths must be stopped, who subvert whole houses, teaching things which they ought not, for filthy lucre's sake.

12 One of themselves, even a prophet of their own, said, the Cretians are alway liars, evil beasts, slow bellies.

13 This witness is true. Wherefore rebuke them sharply, that they may be sound in the faith;

14 Not giving heed to Jewish fables, and commandments of men, that turn from the truth.

15 Unto the pure all things are pure: but unto them that are defiled and unbelieving is nothing pure; but even their mind and conscience is defiled.

16 They profess that they know God; but in works they deny him, being abominable, and disobedient, and unto every good work reprobate.

My impression is that you would not be able to produce that absolute Christian. If you did you would only set forth a more or less typical Evangelical who self-asserts her or his absolute, unconditional salvation. There is no external test and no means to measure.

But there are sufficient means to measure someone committed to and dedicated to Christian living, ethics, activities, education, support of certain values, and on and on.

There is also a Christian culture that does all this because of attachment to and belief in those values.

My sense is that you have a position which is unassailable in argument, because you control the terms and the references. But the facts on the ground are what really count.

I like that play. But that concept, the irony of the blind man who sees, and the seeing man who is blind, so beloved by Shakespeare, was not his own concept. It numbers among the over thirteen hundred references to Scripture that Shakespeare made, since it comes from John 9:39 -- And Jesus said, “For judgment I came into this world, so that those who do not see may see, and those who see may become blind.”

Was Shakespeare a Christian?

[Immanuel Can]

But the admonitions to Titus are directed specifically against what I guess would be called *Judaizers*.

Good for you, for checking the context. Most people forget to do that, and they really should.

However, is it your supposition that the principle is limited to them? Why would you think that one kind of fake Christian would be less odious to God than another? You'd need to show me a reason to think that.

My impression is that you would not be able to produce that absolute Christian.

It depends what you mean by "absolute."

Being a Christian is an all-or-nothing matter. In that sense, therefore, to show you ANY Christian is to show you an "absolute" Christian. But I'm guessing you don't mean that: I'm thinking you must mean something like, "Show me anybody who lives, in all respects, exactly like Christ." And you're right: I can show you nobody like that. Christians, like all people, are fallible human beings; they may be forgiven and have divine help, but they make mistakes and still sin, nonetheless. There will be no perfect Christians before eternity. And any sensible Christian is aware of it and willing to acknowledge that.

A Christian is a saved sinner...it is not somebody who made himself perfect so that God now likes him.

So nobody is "absolutely" perfect. But that's not really the issue. Rather, the business of being a Christian is about what one is BEING. That is, what is the nature of what one is...how is one constituted...what is one's identity and genetics, if you will...what is one's judicial and personal relationship to God. And that is absolute.

You may one day disappoint your parents. That will not change whether or not you are their child. It will have a considerable impact on whether you're pleasing them or not, and whether you're acting like you should...but you are, forever, their child. They can decide to disown you, but even that will not change the fact that you are their child: you'll just be their estranged child.

Genetic relationship, relationship by birth, is irrevocable. And we would hope, since we are born of our parents, that our genetics will also be helpful in inclining us to be good children. But Christians have more than the mere fact of being God's children: they have the promise of His dynamic help in making them what they should be, progressively, as they learn to stop acting like the sinners they were, and to start acting as the saints they are by His design.

The bottom line: Christians are never perfect -- just forgiven. But beyond that, they are also children of God, given His help. That doesn't make them naturally better than other people: but it makes them much better than they, themselves, would otherwise be.

And their status is absolute. Eternal, in fact.

There is no external test and no means to measure.

Who has a right to measure the condition of a man?

Only God. And He has the "test" necessary. Whether we know or not what a man's status with God is, well, that's really not our business, is it?

But there are sufficient means to measure someone committed to and dedicated to Christian living, ethics, activities, education, support of certain values, and on and on.

Yes. And those are the sorts of "tests" we need to employ in order to make our own judgments about what actions we should take, relative to that person. But it doesn't really unfold to us where that man's status is in relation to God. And it's probably a good thing it doesn't. For if it did, we'd have good reason to judge others pretty harshly sometimes. That's why Christians are cautioned not to make those sorts of judgments at all.

There is also a Christian culture that does all this because of attachment to and belief in those values.

It's not "Christian." Rather, it's a secular culture that contains some measure of influence from Christians. That's quite a different thing.

It's no doubt a very good thing if particular cultures are influenced by the values of Christians and Jews. The legacy of human rights, for example, is entirely derived from two things: the fact of all persons being created in God's image (from Torah), and the fact of each person's definite accountability to God (more emphasized in the New Testament, but present in Torah). I think you and I would agree that any culture that has the concept of, and respect for, human rights is much better than a culture that doesn't, right?

But secular culture has no grounding for those rights. It denies that we are created in the image of God, or that God exists at all; and it denies ultimate accountablility and justice, as well. So the only way a secular culture manages to retain a public belief in rights is by asserting them ungroundedly. It asserts them merely as a kind of "useful myth," one that has no foundation in the truth of the way things are, but which Western secularism finds useful to continue, at least for the present. How durable that is, I leave you to judge.

But having a Jewish/Christian belief in human rights does not make a culture "Christian." It just shows it is poaching the legacy of Judaism and Christianity. Such a culture may, at any moment, wake up and realize that what Nietzche the Atheist and Dostoevsky the Theist saw is true: "If God is dead, then everything is permitted."

I like that play. But that concept, the irony of the blind man who sees, and the seeing man who is blind, so beloved by Shakespeare, was not his own concept. It numbers among the over thirteen hundred references to Scripture that Shakespeare made, since it comes from John 9:39 -- And Jesus said, “For judgment I came into this world, so that those who do not see may see, and those who see may become blind.”

Was Shakespeare a Christian?

There's much debate as to whether he was Anglican or Catholic by profession. He might have been sincere, or merely nominal: who can say? There's no debate that he would have called himself a "Christian." And there's no doubt he was heavily influenced by the Bible, which he clearly knew quite well. It appears in all of his plays.

In fact, he uses the term "Christian" occastionally in his plays, usually as a synonym for "good citizen," as in the case of Twelfth Night, in which the character Sir Andrew say, "Methinks sometimes I have no more wit than a Christian or an ordinary man has." (He has much less, of course, but doesn't know it.) The important thing is the linking, in Shakespeare's thought, of "Christian" with "ordinary man." And if that's what Shakespeare really thought, then I would have to say that Shakespeare was a rather nominal religious person, rather than a deep believer in Christ.

But who knows? The man's dead, and can't tell us. In his day, to call oneself a "Christian" was pretty much something everybody did. And it meant, as it still means for many today, no more than "It is my habit to go to a chuch building at Easter or Christmas."

[Lacewing]

A Christian is a saved sinner...it is not somebody who made himself perfect so that God now likes him.

.../...

You may one day disappoint your parents. That will not change whether or not you are their child. It will have a considerable impact on whether you're pleasing them or not, and whether you're acting like you should...but you are, forever, their child. They can decide to disown you, but even that will not change the fact that you are their child: you'll just be their estranged child.

Can a Christian -- a 'saved sinner' -- become an estranged Christian?

The bottom line: Christians are never perfect -- just forgiven.

And their status is absolute. Eternal, in fact.

So, all of the Christians who have committed (and commit) horrible acts are forgiven of those acts, while non-Christians who haven't done such terrible things are 'unsaved' sinners?

That would suggest that Christians could be the worst of humanity, and be rewarded more than humans who are not. What kind of hideously rigged program is that?

[Immanuel Can]

...an estranged Christian?

No such thing.

The bottom line: Christians are never perfect -- just forgiven.

And their status is absolute. Eternal, in fact.

So, all of the Christians who have committed (and commit) horrible acts are forgiven of those acts, while non-Christians who haven't done such terrible things are 'unsaved' sinners?

No, we're all sinners. That's universal.

Some people know that they are, and do nothing about it. Some don't believe they even have anything to do anything about...but they do. But some also know that they are, confess that they are, and beg God to forgive them, and not to give them exactly what they really deserve, and to show mercy they know they don't merit.

We all pick our position in that. What's yours?

Don't tell me. I'm not the one that needs to know.

[Lacewing]

...an estranged Christian?

No such thing.

So your example about a child still being your child, even if they might be estranged, had little to do with Christians and god. Rather, it makes more sense for the argument that if god made everyone, then we remain children of that god, even if we could be estranged.

The bottom line: Christians are never perfect -- just forgiven.

And their status is absolute. Eternal, in fact.

So, all of the Christians who have committed (and commit) horrible acts are forgiven of those acts, while non-Christians who haven't done such terrible things are 'unsaved' sinners?

No, we're all sinners. That's universal.

I said 'unsaved' sinners. Did you leave out that important designation, just so that you could disagree with me?

Some people know that they are, and do nothing about it. Some don't believe they even have anything to do anything about...but they do. But some also know that they are, confess that they are, and beg God to forgive them, and not to give them exactly what they really deserve, and to show mercy they know they don't merit.

And that last group may ask forgiveness over and over again, regardless of the immoral acts they commit, right? Which means, they're 'saved sinners', while many non-Christians who don't commit such acts, are 'unsaved sinners'.

We all pick our position in that. What's yours?

As usual, your limited notions aren't applicable to choose from. It doesn't make any sense to me that I'm 'unsaved' or 'saved'. I chose to be Christian when I was a child -- so according to you, I'm saved forever right? But I'm not a Christian anymore. I feel love and perfection throughout all of creation, so it makes no sense to me that there would be anyone besides people like you casting judgement.

[Immanuel Can]

...an estranged Christian?

No such thing.

So your example about a child still being your child, even if they might be estranged, had little to do with Christians and god.

No, that's not it. The reason there is no such thing is because if a person is genuinely a child of god, he/she will never be "estranged." God does not "estrange" His children. That's what the Bible says. (Hebrews 13:5 -- ...He Himself has said, “I will never desert you, nor will I ever abandon you,”

The bottom line: Christians are never perfect -- just forgiven.

And their status is absolute. Eternal, in fact.

So, all of the Christians who have committed (and commit) horrible acts are forgiven of those acts, while non-Christians who haven't done such terrible things are 'unsaved' sinners?

No, we're all sinners. That's universal.

I said 'unsaved' sinners. Did you leave out that important designation, just so that you could disagree with me?

No. You said "Christians who have committed horrible acts." To whom were you referring?

Some people know that they are, and do nothing about it. Some don't believe they even have anything to do anything about...but they do. But some also know that they are, confess that they are, and beg God to forgive them, and not to give them exactly what they really deserve, and to show mercy they know they don't merit.

And that last group may ask forgiveness over and over again, regardless of the immoral acts they commit, right?

Well, that's wrong. But you can read Romans 6, and find out why you're wrong. It's for a different reason than you are thinking.

We all pick our position in that. What's yours?

I chose to be Christian when I was a child -- so according to you, I'm saved forever right?

I don't know what you did. You may well have thought you knew what a Christian is, and you may well have thought you did whatever you thought you had to do to become one: but I have no idea what that was.

What I do know is this: those that genuinely come to Christ don't leave. So I guess, you be the judge of what that means for you.

[Belinda]

No such thing.

So your example about a child still being your child, even if they might be estranged, had little to do with Christians and god.

No, that's not it. The reason there is no such thing is because if a person is genuinely a child of god, he/she will never be "estranged." God does not "estrange" His children. That's what the Bible says. (Hebrews 13:5 -- ...He Himself has said, “I will never desert you, nor will I ever abandon you,”

The bottom line: Christians are never perfect -- just forgiven.

And their status is absolute. Eternal, in fact.

No, we're all sinners. That's universal.

I said 'unsaved' sinners. Did you leave out that important designation, just so that you could disagree with me?

No. You said "Christians who have committed horrible acts." To whom were you referring?

Some people know that they are, and do nothing about it. Some don't believe they even have anything to do anything about...but they do. But some also know that they are, confess that they are, and beg God to forgive them, and not to give them exactly what they really deserve, and to show mercy they know they don't merit.

And that last group may ask forgiveness over and over again, regardless of the immoral acts they commit, right?

Well, that's wrong. But you can read Romans 6, and find out why you're wrong. It's for a different reason than you are thinking.

We all pick our position in that. What's yours?

I chose to be Christian when I was a child -- so according to you, I'm saved forever right?

I don't know what you did. You may well have thought you knew what a Christian is, and you may well have thought you did whatever you thought you had to do to become one: but I have no idea what that was.

What I do know is this: those that genuinely come to Christ don't leave. So I guess, you be the judge of what that means for you.

Lacewing's integrity is obvious from her posts, and I guess she well knows her own integrity when she introspects.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Being a Christian is an all-or-nothing matter. In that sense, therefore, to show you ANY Christian is to show you an "absolute" Christian. But I'm guessing you don't mean that: I'm thinking you must mean something like, "Show me anybody who lives, in all respects, exactly like Christ." And you're right: I can show you nobody like that. Christians, like all people, are fallible human beings; they may be forgiven and have divine help, but they make mistakes and still sin, nonetheless. There will be no perfect Christians before eternity. And any sensible Christian is aware of it and willing to acknowledge that.

If you are wondering, and I think you and anyone reading should wonder, what my own purposes are in participating in this conversation, but moreover in trying to involve myself in *projects of renovation* and also of *resistance* in our immediate present, with an emphasis on *Europe* (which takes on a special meaning in my own case), it is through answering that question that I will explain myself, and also explain a movement that is afoot, and also why it is that I have no choice but to oppose some parts of what you assert.

You say that in regard to salvation (whatever salvation actually is and it is not at all easy to define) that one either is or is not Christian. One is either saved or one is not. While I understand the function of the assertion (to incite dedication, discernment and decisiveness) I must conclude, and it is a logical conclusion, that your position is largely wrong. Not because it has no elements of truth, but because it is a partial truth. I have my reasonings worked out, at least to some degree.

It is impossible for any human person to 'live like Christ'. The reason should be obvious. (No human being is an incarnation of God into this plane of manifestation). So in all circumstances any given person will have to make interpretations as to what this Advent means, and through interpretations make decisions about actions taken in this plane of existence. It is that that must be focused on when one asks what can only be an historical question: What is Christianity? And what does it demand?

There can not ever be any 'perfect Christian' and there can only be those who hear a message -- the reference to the seeing who are blind and the blind who see becomes apt here because so much depends on inner, intuitive relationship, something intangible and non-physical, and therefore something uniquely internal and transcendent -- and try to live in accord with it. My view is that it is that that must be given emphasis. The attempt.

Now, in order to speak more about 'the attempt' one has to define the field. Because when one has defined the field one has also defined the difficulty. Not a simple difficulty but a supreme difficulty. And that difficulty is being an incarnate being, thrust down into a biological, flesh body, into this world where all beings are forced to consume each other. This is not merely as poetic reference. The nature of biological life is that it is terrible and terrifying.

The world is a life and death mill. The fight for survival is terrible and terrifying. And in that context, when a conscious man arises and gains the capacity to *see* the world, to understand what it really is, that vision is really quite terrifying and deeply disconcerting. In order to live in this plane of existence you must kill.

Obviously I am referring to the biological-ecological world of natural systems. We are alive because we kill. And our life depends on those beings that we kill (consume, take into ourselves). But then at the end of our own struggle, and one that we are thrust into and about which we have no choice, we are eventually consumed ourselves. In any case we eventually expire, often in horrifying processes.

So it seems to me -- in fact I know this to be true and it is not a guess or merely an assertion on my part -- that when we consider historical Christianity, that is to say Occidental Christianity, we have to see as clearly as possible how they saw and how they defined 'the world'. They had to interpret that world and they had to diagram it. And when they did this they came up with a picture: The Great Chain of Being. It is a metaphysical picture. If one does not understand this diagram, the way that the world was understood by them, the way it was defined and explained, one cannot understand Christianity and one cannot understand 'salvation'. So many of the terms that are part of our language reflect the ideation of The Great Chain of Being. All our *meanings* arose through this model, this picture (this metaphysical dream).

Salvation definitely meant liberation from the world of struggle, death, cruelty, violence, and merciless determination. In short, a given Christian realized she or he was in an impossible situation (the biological, ecological world) that could never be resolved adequately or fairly. There is no way to be 'completely just'. There is no way 'never to harm'. Any movement, any decision, any act of building -- in short the construction of life here -- involves taking advantage of other forms of life, and of course one's own brethren. There is, quite literally, no way around this. The Christian realization (similar in this sense to other metaphysical realizations such as the Jain or the Buddhist) places the one who realizes it, who sees, in an impossible situation. And the elements that 'saves' is Grace.

Grace then is God's recognition of man's insurmountable, impossible plight. It is as if God realizes that he has placed man, or man has chosen through some action for which he must assume responsibility, through he really cannot understand what he has done nor can he atone for it, to 'fall down' into this terrifying world where his suffering begins. The Christian myths offer this picture. An act through which one's original parents were condemned, and then all the levels of ensuing suffering and, in essence, spiritual exile.

But then it is said "Do thus-and-such and you will be saved from all this!" You will not be able to save yourself from physical death, obviously, but you will, while you are alive in this impossible plane of insurmountable ethical and moral problems, and the really psychotic conflict that must develop in a man when he sees his condition (excuse the masculine pronouns ladies!), you will receive absolution and forgiveness for the inevitable sins that you must inevitably commit while you inevitably live. Grace will come upon you, if you can only ask for it.

But here another sort of 'madness' manifests. Because you still have no choice but to live, to carry on, to try to create things, to build things, within this impossible plane of existence. You will bear and raise children and you will hope that even on the shifting sands of mutable existence, where everything is unstable and dangerous, that your children will achieve some sort of platform where they can live well and decently. But all your striving still must take place within the impossible plane of existence against which the Christian awareness takes a stand. It is this metaphysical opposition, this awareness, or this dream, of a transcendent overworld/otherworld where one is delivered from the terrible constraints of physical, incarnated life. That is Heaven.

[Immanuel Can]

Lacewing's integrity is obvious from her posts, and I guess she well knows her own integrity when she introspects.

I never said anything about her integrity.

She can judge her own heart...it's not my job to.

[Lacewing]

So it seems to me -- in fact I know this to be true and it is not a guess or merely an assertion on my part -- that when we consider historical Christianity, that is to say Occidental Christianity, we have to see as clearly as possible how they saw and how they defined 'the world'. They had to interpret that world and they had to diagram it. And when they did this they came up with a picture: The Great Chain of Being. It is a metaphysical picture. If one does not understand this diagram, the way that the world was understood by them, the way it was defined and explained, one cannot understand Christianity and one cannot understand 'salvation'. So many of the terms that are part of our language reflect the ideation of The Great Chain of Being. All our *meanings* arose through this model, this picture (this metaphysical dream).

I appreciate the points you make, Alexis.

I agree, humans do the best they can to reconcile all things of the world, and what the reason and purpose of life is. And they create and interpret models, and then believe in, perpetuate, and maintain those models as a foundation for themselves and their families and their lives. Ideologies can be useful in some ways, and limited or even destructive in some ways. I would think that should be apparent and reasonable to explore truthfully by those on a philosophy forum, but often, the inconvenient truths are ignored by those who are so completely identified with (and dependent on) their ideological platform.

I was raised as a Christian, and I devoted myself to it for many years. I believed in it... and I lived it... until I had to acknowledge that it was not the most divinely expansive path for me. I think we all have a divine essence (so-to-speak; 'divine' meaning beyond/greater than this world) which we can recognize, tap into, etc., in countless ways! What makes sense to me is that it's NATURAL... and we are NEVER separated from it (or anything else)... and we are never condemned... and we are exploring and creating and expressing and experiencing in these forms we are in. I've known many extraordinarily good and amazing people who are not Christians. I've also known Christian people who personified evil with perfect skill. So, I see the Christian idea as a human creation full of the grand and insightful as well as the limited and shallow qualities, as all human ideas can be.

It is as if God realizes that he has placed man, or man has chosen through some action for which he must assume responsibility, through he really cannot understand what he has done nor can he atone for it, to 'fall down' into this terrifying world where his suffering begins. The Christian myths offer this picture. An act through which one's original parents were condemned, and then all the levels of ensuing suffering and, in essence, spiritual exile.

The ability to 'rise above' all of this would surely require extraordinary love more than anything else... such as: 1) love by a god who did not judge humankind in the way that shallow/limited man might do or imagine, or 2) love by humans themselves, from their recognition of being as one in the great creative churn of life, beyond the shallow/limited ways that man might be or imagine. Many humans have experienced greater levels of love than can even be put into words -- and there is surely more love than even that. Such love is not built on (nor dependent on) structures or models, not even theism. It seems wrong for Christianity to claim ownership/control of such natural potential.

But then it is said "Do thus-and-such and you will be saved from all this!" You will not be able to save yourself from physical death, obviously, but you will, while you are alive in this impossible plane of insurmountable ethical and moral problems, and the really psychotic conflict that must develop in a man when he sees his condition (excuse the masculine pronouns ladies!), you will receive absolution and forgiveness for the inevitable sins that you must inevitably commit while you inevitably live. Grace will come upon you, if you can only ask for it.

But here another sort of 'madness' manifests. Because you still have no choice but to live, to carry on, to try to create things, to build things, within this impossible plane of existence. You will bear and raise children and you will hope that even on the shifting sands of mutable existence, where everything is unstable and dangerous, that your children will achieve some sort of platform where they can live well and decently. But all your striving still must take place within the impossible plane of existence against which the Christian awareness takes a stand. It is this metaphysical opposition, this awareness, or this dream, of a transcendent overworld/otherworld where one is delivered from the terrible constraints of physical, incarnated life. That is Heaven.

I feel inspired to add, that the idea of 'Heaven' further compounds our belief of being 'stuck' in a place that is not Heaven. So we might feel like wretches and pray to a god to save us. Rather than, say, striving for understanding/awareness beyond that model. Everything is so scary here, why look further? Maybe it's scary here exactly because we do not look further. Most of us have experienced how the familiar (no matter how limiting or awful) can be preferable over stepping into the unknown. It has been my experience that when people are aligned with good intentions, the unknown simply offers up more along those lines... and much more than we could have imagined possible.

Even when I was a Christian, I imagined a god and love and connectivity that was so much greater than human comprehension. Limiting such potential to the 'known' framework of Christianity, seems like a tragically small (and sometimes horrible) idea. My hope would be for everyone to find their own access to greatness through whatever paths work for them, while allowing there to always be even more potential for themselves and others. If we limit a god and heaven and truth to our level of understanding, we are (I think) living in and worshipping our own image.

[Immanuel Can]

If you are wondering, and I think you and anyone reading should wonder, what my own purposes are in participating in this conversation, but moreover in trying to involve myself in *projects of renovation* and also of *resistance* in our immediate present, with an emphasis on *Europe* (which takes on a special meaning in my own case), it is through answering that question that I will explain myself, and also explain a movement that is afoot, and also why it is that I have no choice but to oppose some parts of what you assert.

I understand all that.

If a person thinks he/she is going to find some way to renovate Europe (or America, or wherever) then one is going to have to resist any thought that such a thing cannot be done...at least, not on the terms that that particular renovator is prepared to consider.

So if making Europe moral again would, say, literally require the genuine and voluntary conversion of the majority of its population, and that prospect seems highly unlikely, then the renovator is going to have to refuse to accept that conclusion...even if it turns out to be true...or else abandon hope of renovating Europe on his/her desired terms.

So that seems natural.

...your position is largely wrong. Not because it has no elements of truth, but because it is a partial truth. I have my reasonings worked out, at least to some degree.

It is impossible for any human person to 'live like Christ'. The reason should be obvious. (No human being is an incarnation of God into this plane of manifestation). So in all circumstances any given person will have to make interpretations as to what this Advent means, and through interpretations make decisions about actions taken in this plane of existence. It is that that must be focused on when one asks what can only be an historical question: What is Christianity? And what does it demand?

Now we're to the central question.

You're supposing we have only two possibilities here, so far as I can tell. One is that a "Christian" is whoever says he/she is a "Christian, whether or not he or she believes any particular thing or lives in whatever way a Christian should." The other is that a "Christian" must be somebody perfect, absolutely Christ-like in every regard, and devoid of sins and personal failings. Since the latter seems impossible, you revert to the former, it seems.

What about a third possibility?

There can not ever be any 'perfect Christian' and there can only be those who hear a message -- the reference to the seeing who are blind and the blind who see becomes apt here because so much depends on inner, intuitive relationship, something intangible and non-physical, and therefore something uniquely internal and transcendent -- and try to live in accord with it. My view is that it is that that must be given emphasis. The attempt.

No, not "the attempt." For that puts the weight on entirely the wrong side, a side that has nothing to do with Christianity, in reality.

How is "the attempt" to get to God sufficient? When humans "attempt" something, they often fall quite short of their goals. A man may "attempt" to swim the Pacific Ocean, from Los Angeles to Sydney Harbour. And a great swimmer may pride himself on his ability to swim out 50 miles. The bad swimmer will go down in 50 feet. But it matters not at all: because both simply drowned. Neither one made it. And viewed from space, even the expert swimmer's "attempts" are revealed for what they are: mere obdurate hubris...nothing better. In fact, an astronaut looking down could not even tell a difference between where the bad swimmer and the good one died. All that could be seen is how utterly futile the attempt was, in the first place.

This is a parable for all human efforts to attain the righteousness of God. A person can make the "attempt," but will "drown" before arriving at any achievement worth mentioning. As the Bible in both the Tanakh and the New Testament says,

...both Jews and Greeks are all under sin; as it is written:

“There is no righteous person, not even one;
There is no one who understands,
There is no one who seeks out God;
They have all turned aside, together they have become corrupt;
There is no one who does good,
There is not even one.”
“Their throat is an open grave,
With their tongues they keep deceiving,”
“The venom of asps is under their lips”;
“Their mouth is full of cursing and bitterness”;
“Their feet are swift to shed blood,
Destruction and misery are in their paths,
And they have not known the way of peace.”
“There is no fear of God before their eyes.”

Now we know that whatever the Law says, it speaks to those who are under the Law, so that every mouth may be closed and all the world may become accountable to God; because by the works [of the Law none of mankind will be justified in His sight; for through the Law comes knowledge of sin. (Romans 3:9-20)

What this says is this: the people who never even had the Law (the Gentiles) didn't attempt to keep it; but the people who had the Law (Jews) and should have known better, and made the attempt at the Law, failed too. And everybody ended up in the same situation: they drowned beside the shore.

We can fool ourselves. We compare ourselves to other human beings, and maybe we say, "Well, I'm doing pretty well, compared to that loser over there." And we couldn't be more wrong. We haven't realized that the standard actually IS perfection: and our human inability to attain it, far from providing us with the automatic excuse for our failings that we trust it to, is just guaranteeing our failure.

Now, in order to speak more about 'the attempt' one has to define the field. Because when one has defined the field one has also defined the difficulty. Not a simple difficulty but a supreme difficulty. And that difficulty is being an incarnate being, thrust down into a biological, flesh body, into this world where all beings are forced to consume each other. This is not merely as poetic reference. The nature of biological life is that it is terrible and terrifying.

It's worse than that. We aren't at all "forced" to consume each other. We like to. And we even have ideologies we treasure in which "suvival of the fittest" is held up as the very mechanism by which our "greatness" is achieved. This is another thing we "attempt."

The world is a life and death mill. The fight for survival is terrible and terrifying. And in that context, when a conscious man arises and gains the capacity to *see* the world, to understand what it really is, that vision is really quite terrifying and deeply disconcerting. In order to live in this plane of existence you must kill.

Obviously I am referring to the biological-ecological world of natural systems. We are alive because we kill. And our life depends on those beings that we kill (consume, take into ourselves). But then at the end of our own struggle, and one that we are thrust into and about which we have no choice, we are eventually consumed ourselves. In any case we eventually expire, often in horrifying processes.

This is a superb portrait of what, exactly, the Materialist-Evolutionary view entails: that we are here by cosmic accident, surviving by brutality, and doomed to extinction and irrelevance. In the meanwhile, we're fighting like mad to get ourselves ahead, though the certainty of our failure and death is absolute.

Nicely put.

So it seems to me -- in fact I know this to be true and it is not a guess or merely an assertion on my part -- that when we consider historical Christianity, that is to say Occidental Christianity, we have to see as clearly as possible how they saw and how they defined 'the world'.

Who is this "they"? Do you mean the nominal kind, the one who just calls himself a "Christian," which was most of Europe in the era of which you speak, whose relationship to actual Christianity was more cultural and legal than personal?

Is your hope for Europe that we can somehow get them to return to the state of Medieval religiosity, so that some crumbs will fall back from the Christian "table" in such a way as to bring back some cultural benefit to the secular "dogs" beneath it? (I borrow that metaphor from Mark 7, of course.)

I really don't think such a plan is likely to work. One thing seems very evident -- we're not going back to Medieval pseudo-Christianity being a significant cultural force. That just won't happen, I think.

They had to interpret that world and they had to diagram it. And when they did this they came up with a picture: The Great Chain of Being. It is a metaphysical picture.

No, no...that picture is Medieval and cultural. It does not come from the Bible at all. There is no such "Great Chain," or any representation thereof, in all of Scripture.

All our *meanings* arose through this model, this picture (this metaphysical dream).

That may be so...but it's not a "Christian" dream. You've mistaken the merely Medieval-cultural worldview for some sort of "Christian" worldview. Sorry to say, but it's true.

Salvation definitely meant liberation from the world of struggle, death, cruelty, violence, and merciless determination.

"Merciless determination" was undiscovered as yet. The Medieval person lived in a world inhabited by Aristotelian forces, ghosts, demi-gods and demons, witches and other such metaphysical brickabrack. And most lived in rural places, under the stars by night and under the vagaries of weather by day. Death was a very present reality, and negotiation with the unseen world, in some form, was never optional, in their minds. The cosmos, for them, was full of activity, volition, chance and actions, in which their actions could only play a small part ... but a crucial part, for them. They were never unmindful that Fate and Death watched for them...you can see it in their art and hear it in their poetry.

In their view, lots went on that had nothing to do with the sort of "merciless determination" of the Materialist world that was imagined later. Your analysis grows anachronistic at this point: the people of whom you speak did not participate in the worldview you describe. For the most part, they didn't even know such a worldview was possible.

It was only after the "Enlightenment" and with the beginning of "The Industrial Revolution" that the ideas of a purely mechanistic world, began to become plausible. After that, it became even a winsome idea: the world as a giant, impersonal machine that might be mean and cruel, but the inner workings of which could inevitably be probed, unpacked and utilized by the ingenuity of humans, through science and technology. But that was no Medieval conception, for sure.

In short, a given Christian realized she or he was in an impossible situation (the biological, ecological world) that could never be resolved adequately or fairly. There is no way to be 'completely just'. There is no way 'never to harm'. Any movement, any decision, any act of building -- in short the construction of life here -- involves taking advantage of other forms of life, and of course one's own brethren. There is, quite literally, no way around this. The Christian realization (similar in this sense to other metaphysical realizations such as the Jain or the Buddhist) places the one who realizes it, who sees, in an impossible situation. And the elements that 'saves' is Grace.

Christians always knew that the world was a fallen place, a place of sin and tending toward death. They've known that from the start. There was no Medieval awakening to some new fact, in that regard.

Grace then is God's recognition of man's insurmountable, impossible plight.

Technically, not quite right.

"Grace" means "a free gift." God didn't "realize" anything new. And mankind's plight has always been "impossible" since the Fall, in that it has been corrupted by sin.

It is as if God realizes that he has placed man, or man has chosen through some action for which he must assume responsibility, through he really cannot understand what he has done nor can he atone for it, to 'fall down' into this terrifying world where his suffering begins.

No, we know what we do. And we even know when what we do is wrong. We just do it anyway.

The Christian myths offer this picture. An act through which one's original parents were condemned, and then all the levels of ensuing suffering and, in essence, spiritual exile.

No, that's too vague.

"Original sin" merely describes where the very possibility of sin began. The actuality of sin is brought about by each one of us. We choose what we do. We know it, we want to do it, and we do it. We are not victims: we are, at best, colluders; and at our worst, perpetrators. Most of us are both.

But yes, we are in "spiritual exile." Man is not in relationship to God. He's out-of-joint, alienated, ignorant, rebellious, indifferent and hostile to God.

This is why the Bible says, "For one will hardly die for a righteous person; hough perhaps for the good person someone would even dare to die. But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us."(Romans 8:7-8)

But then it is said "Do thus-and-such and you will be saved from all this!"

No, that is not what Christianity says at all. It says the opposite. It says,

"But when the kindness of God our Savior and His love for mankind appeared, He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we did in righteousness, but in accordance with His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit, whom He richly poured out upon us through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by His grace we would be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life." (Titus 3:4-7)

You will not be able to save yourself from physical death,

The truth is that you can't "save yourself" from any kind of "death," whether physical, spiritual or moral.

...you will receive absolution and forgiveness for the inevitable sins that you must inevitably commit while you inevitably live. Grace will come upon you, if you can only ask for it.

It's much better than this. Instead of being left to continue in "inevitable" sins, all particular sins become "evitable." And more than that, God Himself becomes your active Helper in progressively learning how to defeat sin in your life. (Romans 6) So while, in this life, you may never be perfect, you will inevitably be better than it would have been possible for you to ever have been, and the completion, the perfecting of that, if you will, will be completed by God in eternity.

But here another sort of 'madness' manifests. Because you still have no choice but to live, to carry on, to try to create things, to build things, within this impossible plane of existence. You will bear and raise children and you will hope that even on the shifting sands of mutable existence, where everything is unstable and dangerous, that your children will achieve some sort of platform where they can live well and decently. But all your striving still must take place within the impossible plane of existence against which the Christian awareness takes a stand. It is this metaphysical opposition, this awareness, or this dream, of a transcendent overworld/otherworld where one is delivered from the terrible constraints of physical, incarnated life.

That is Heaven.

Umm...no, no, that's certainly not.

That's closer to Hell than to Heaven, but not really either. That's Earth. That's what one sees when one thinks this place is really all that there is, and that God is not dynamically involved in His creation or in salvation. Descripting that perspective, viewing the world as if that lens was all one had, is what made Paul cry out, "Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death?" (Romans 7:24)

And the answer he immediately gives? "Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!" (Romans 7:25)

In your account, you've go no place for an actual God who actually saves, or who actually helps people. All you've got in there is a concept, the "belief in the existence of God," which is not at all the same thing. And that's what is distorting your view of what Christians believe, and of what they experience as well. It's why you find yourself occasionally tongue-tied about what the implications of being a Christian must be, because the one thing you haven't taken into your equation yet.

God is real.

"Christian awareness," like human "attempts," is never enough. Christianity is only as good as it is able to deliver this: reconciliation and peace with God...not imaginary peace or imaginary relationship, but the real, actual, dynamic thing.

[Lacewing]

if a person is genuinely a child of god, he/she will never be "estranged."

So, a child of god is forgiven of all sins, past, present, and future... yes?

And if a child of god has a mindlessly horrific human moment of sin where they sexually abuse a small child repeatedly, and then they regain their senses and realize that was bad and they genuinely ask for forgiveness... they will be forgiven, and God won't desert them.

But a non-Christian who does no such horrific thing, is not afforded such forgiveness for smaller transgressions... and they will not be 'saved'.

Sounds like a perfect ideology for delusional degenerates to claim salvation. Also sounds like a God who makes bad choices in companions.

No, we're all sinners. That's universal.

I said 'unsaved' sinners. Did you leave out that important designation, just so that you could disagree with me?

No. You said "Christians who have committed horrible acts." To whom were you referring?

I was referring to Christians who have committed horrible acts. Are you unfamiliar with that possibility and reality? Or do you believe that REAL Christians don't commit horrible acts? Then what is God's forgiveness needed for? Stealing pencils at work?

What I do know is this: those that genuinely come to Christ don't leave.

Oh, so REAL Christians never expand beyond the Christian ideology. They never discover other spiritual paths that aren't so convoluted by man's distortions as to become almost meaningless. If they leave, they weren't real. Evidently SOME Christians need to think in such terms for their own validation. Yet, I bet God was there for those 'unreal' Christians all along.