Christianity

[Immanuel Can]

Read the Book. You'll be enlightened without my help.

Hmm,...the book titled ''the Book'' is enlightened...of course, why didn't I think of that, silly me.

Well, it would be silly for you to jump to conclusions about something you'd never read. But I can hope you won't.

[Dontaskme]

Read the Book. You'll be enlightened without my help.

Hmm,...the book titled ''the Book'' is enlightened...of course, why didn't I think of that, silly me.

Well, it would be silly for you to jump to conclusions about something you'd never read. But I can hope you won't.

But I've never seen a reader, so why should I care about a story that no one ever wrote, or read. Reality is a fictional story that no one knows.

The belief in unwritten stories, is your own fantasy, which has no actual literal reality, because beliefs are always swallowed by the absolute truth,like a shadow evaporating in the midday sun.

Hey, but don't jump to conclusions if you already know the author of your life, I mean why would you need to do that if you already know. Hmm.

It's like I've never seen people live 800 years, like it says in the story, but hey if that story gives you a jolly, then go for it, believe what you want.

.

[Immanuel Can]

Hmm,...the book titled ''the Book'' is enlightened...of course, why didn't I think of that, silly me.

Well, it would be silly for you to jump to conclusions about something you'd never read. But I can hope you won't.

But I've never seen a reader

You mean, "I've never been a reader."

[Dontaskme]

Well, it would be silly for you to jump to conclusions about something you'd never read. But I can hope you won't.

But I've never seen a reader

You mean, "I've never been a reader."

No, I mean I have never seen a reader. Have you?

[Immanuel Can]

But I've never seen a reader

You mean, "I've never been a reader."

No, I mean I have never seen a reader. Have you?

Rubbish. Not playing.

[Dontaskme]

You mean, "I've never been a reader."

No, I mean I have never seen a reader. Have you?

Rubbish. Not playing.

Ah, but you do not believe that life is a game, did you forget to remember that's what you told me.

You do not want to play the game now because you know you are lying, and so you try to run away and hide, you are basically being swallowed by the absolute truth and you don't like it, you do this everytime we talk, you say you do not want to talk.

No one has ever seen a reader, fact.

.

[Alexis Jacobi]

There's a ton to unpack here, Alexis: and I see that you're thinking-by-writing, exploring as you go...or so it seems to me...so that some paragraphs are preparatory for a main point, rather than being points in their own right.

Schopenhauer I believe said that some men don't think and write; some men think as they write; and some men, the better writers, think before they write. I fit I think into the second category often and that is why my writing seems a bit streamy. However, I do sketch out my thoughts when, for example, something you say provokes me. I do this in skeleton form mentally, and then sit down to get something worked out.

In my little world in smallish-town Colombia there are really no people who are remotely interested in these ideas. In any case I have not found them. These are ultra-European topics and what concerns South America are ranges of very different issues. Mostly the political and the economic. These forums fulfill a need to exteriorize thoughts and receive response.

For this reason the present conversation is super-interesting to me.

[Immanuel Can]

In my little world in smallish-town Colombia there are really no people who are remotely interested in these ideas. In any case I have not found them. These are ultra-European topics and what concerns South America are ranges of very different issues. Mostly the political and the economic. These forums fulfill a need to exteriorize thoughts and receive response.

For this reason the present conversation is super-interesting to me.

And to me.

I've been to Barranquilla and Cartagena, and briefly to Bogota, as well...not "ultra-European" central, any of them.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Christianity is not legitimately compelling of any culture. Its super-cultural and trans-cultural. (This explains how it could so easily move, for example, between Jewish and Greek culture, and how it has proven adaptable to every other world culture since.) However, Christianity does put a dire challenge to the individual's self. It demands of the hearer a response, and a decision as well -- will he remain the slave of his own passions and his own sins, or will he recognize his own condition, deny the demanding self, give himself over to that which is truly important and valuable, and live a new way? Will he accept metanoia and enter the weltanschauung of God? Or will he persist in his own way?

As you might say "This is partly true" but it is also somewhat false. I have an example I think of often. A few summers back I sat with a non-philosophical Jewish friend and his invitee to our little 'round table' where he wanted me to meet and talk to a highly philosophically-oriented friend of his. The long and the short of it is that we discussed 'cultural trajectory' and he spoke of how he had concluded that what he was (here *identity* is emphasized) is a man from a Christian culture who, he realized, was impelled to carry forth his being in accord with that trajectory. European culture certainly has that force of trajectory, and so does American culture. It is intensely impositional. It remakes the world and, as it crashes forth, it remodels the world.

This particular man we sat with had resolved to turn against that trajectory. He did not want to carry it forth, he did not want to impel nor to be impelled. So he was investigating, according to him, ways to abandon trajectory.

One has to seek out these trajectories in the religious imperative. They are quintessentially Christian even if it is not recognized as such.

And I also think you are very wrong in another sense: you can very much compel, and impel, and influence, how people think & see through the education they receive. That is why the term paideia always comes up for me. In the best of educational circumstances -- in my view the more Old School European-English classical education -- you can definitely inform individuals in accord with that paideia. The alternative can be understood when one considers feral children -- those who are given no context, or is it matrix? within their culture. These things, this assortment of things, is infused into people through paideia-processes.

And that is why I can refer, with justice, to a 'Christian culture' even if it is loosely such. Obviously, because of the controversial ideas I work with, if I am Christian I am atypically such. I aspire to much that is Christian. I try to see *it* fairly. But then I would imagine the de Benoist would as well.

I am interested in the *larger conversation* but also the larger existential issue. The larger conversation involves all things. All things pertinent to European life. I think that The Four Last Things, if I may mention them, must be thought about. But how one orients one's life and what become the elements of life (aesthetically if you wish; morally; and down here in the 'lower creation') these things are not settled. My version, if you will, of Christianity is simply an expanded list of possibilities.

will he remain the slave of his own passions and his own sins, or will he recognize his own condition, deny the demanding self, give himself over to that which is truly important and valuable, and live a new way?

This is another part of the *preamble* that I hoped to develop. It is possible to move from a sin-concept to a shame-concept, as de Benoist points out, and it is my view that though I think the Hebrews indeed got it right when they noticed that all life is tainted by the problem that good & evil are all mixed up together, the notion of 'sin' is a peculiar stress. To be steeped in sinfulness is one thing, and produces certain results, but to really devlop a sense of shame when one acts badly -- now that is clearly a different thing.

And I also think that it is quite different to see oneself, and genuinely to believe oneself, to be a partner with God rather than a slave of God, produces a different sort of individuality.

And the issue of What is really valuable? and In what way should one choose to live? are topics that are explored by our reason. It is open to all people.

Will he accept metanoia and enter the weltanschauung of God? Or will he persist in his own way?

A good question, of course, but metanoia can be many different things. I mean this process of spiritual transformation is open to all people.

I think this is one of Lacewing's philosophical points.

[Alexis Jacobi]

This is what I mean: think about what actually goes on in such "groves." Or perhaps you are only speaking with some kind of metaphor, the import of which eludes me at the moment.

Ah, well, that is why I referred to WB Yeats. In his essay -- I refer to it, and it is not that I am putting it forth as a doctrinal position, though I certainly believe his perspective has value -- he is obviously involved with his Celtic way-of-being. And it is a way of seeing, too. It is in fact crucial to him. It is crucial to his essence, the essence of him. There is many ways to refer to those 'groves' and Wordsworth spent a good deal of time in them.

I think we have to face the fact that the discourse of the Saints is not much listened to. Yeats mentions this somewhere. There are other people who speak though, the poets and artists and those of religious/spiritual mind, who carry forward the vibrant messages.

Here, there is something quintessential to Indo-European being that I think needs to be understood. I would not say that we must frame this as a battle of one against another (one way of being against another way of being). I simply point out, fairly I think, that Christianity has often and largely attempted to destroy the pagan-traditions. And when it couldn't, I guess, these things went somewhat underground.

No, I am not speaking only in metaphor.

[Immanuel Can]

...a man from a Christian culture...European...American culture. It is intensely impositional. It remakes the world and, as it crashes forth, it remodels the world.

Here we have to make the key distinction.

You're conflating American and European with Christian. I see no reason for this, other than the common misperception that having a significant population of Christians baptizes the larger culture and somehow makes the culture itself "Christian." No such thing is ever the case, of course. There are more Christians, at least nominally, today in China than in America or Europe.

Nobody is so unthinking as to claim this makes China "Christian." America and Europe both function on entirely secular procedures and methods, even when they tip the cap to "Christianity." Anybody who lives in either place knows that.

And I also think you are very wrong in another sense: you can very much compel, and impel, and influence, how people think & see through the education they receive.

Education, rightly done, does not indoctrinate. It informs, enables, empowers and enlightens the faculties, but opens up the mind to personal investigation and personal judgment. That's critical thinking. And that sort of liberal value was what was held up as the goal and ideal in education in the early part of the previous century, until the Left began to colonize public education. Nowadays, much of public education is systematic indoctrination. Critical thinking is downplayed, and conformity to the ideology of "Critical Theory" is emphasized. Independent critical faculties, science, reason and independence are diminished, and collectivism, "Social Justice" and groupthink are up-played. And there is no ideology more abused and rejected in public education today than Christianity.

This is indeed the "compelling, impelling, and influencing" of young people. But it is the secularists, not the religous who are doing it.

will he remain the slave of his own passions and his own sins, or will he recognize his own condition, deny the demanding self, give himself over to that which is truly important and valuable, and live a new way?

This is another part of the *preamble* that I hoped to develop. It is possible to move from a sin-concept to a shame-concept,

No movement is needed. To realize that one is a sinner is to recognize the fact of one's shame.

But shame is a despised quality in our ethos. That's too bad: because while shame can, at times be induced for bad reasons, it is most naturally the expression of a conscience that has become aware of its misdeeds or bad character. A person who has no shame is an evil person, a person with a seared conscience and a lack of moral integrity.

Some shame is good. Our society needs a great deal more of it than it will presently allow itself. If it had more shame, it would do less evil.

But the modern ethos despises shame. And why? Because secularism has no cure for it. In a Godless world, there is no forgiveness, no cleansing, no repentance, no change, no escape, no recovery of purity, no healing, no restoration...only regret for things that have been done and cannot be changed now. And so it seems obvious to the modern mind that what we should do is simply avoid, downgrade and dismiss shame...for shame has no upside, no payoff, no benefit, and leads nowhere for it.

To be steeped in sinfulness is one thing, and produced certain results, but to really devlop a sense of shame when one acts badly -- now that is clearly a different thing.

Right. One can be very wicked, and still be telling oneself that one has no need to feel shame.

You can see the modern attitude to shame in phrases like, "fat shaming" and "slut shaming." The implication of these coinages is that shaming people is bad, because there's nothing they can do now about their promiscuity or corpulence, and it's nobody's business to tell them to change anyway.

Of course, if one has cancer, it does no good at all to deny the diagnosis. But if one thinks one's cancer is terminal anyway, one might have reason to prefer not to know.

And I also think that it is quite different to see oneself, and genuinely to believe oneself, to be a partner with God rather than a slave of God, produces a different sort of individuality.

What about the Biblical term: "friend of God"?

Will he accept metanoia and enter the weltanschauung of God? Or will he persist in his own way?

A good question, of course, but metanoia can be many different things.

Not really.

One can change one's mind in many ways, of course: but Biblically speaking, metanoia is first and foremost about one's personal moral condition. And about that, there are really only two ways to go.

[Immanuel Can]

I simply point out, fairly I think, that Christianity has often and largely attempted to destroy the pagan-traditions.

Do you mean the Catholic Church did this, by force? Or that Christianity did it, by persuasion?

In any case, I find it highly ironic that modern people, who often excoriate Christianity for being "too superstititious," or "anti-scientific," or even "anti-human" so often gravitate to paganism -- which is, by every possible metric, the worse alternative.

[Alexis Jacobi]

I said: "However, and with all that said, it is simply not possible to describe Christianity in any other terms but as Greco-Christian."

I think it's abundantly obvious that's false.

One of the sources that contributed to forming my opinion that Christianity is best understood as Greco-Christianity was my reading of the essay on religion in The Legacy of Greece. But there have been other influences as well.

[Immanuel Can]

I said: "However, and with all that said, it is simply not possible to describe Christianity in any other terms but as Greco-Christian."

I think it's abundantly obvious that's false.

One of the sources that contributed to forming my opinion that Christianity is best understood as Greco-Christianity was my reading of the essay on religion in The Legacy of Greece. But there have been other influences as well.

Well, what about a look at the text itself, instead of somebody's opinion about what he wants you to think is in there?

Any reading of the Bible will quickly disabuse a fair reader of any misapprehension that any culture is more widely represented therein than Judaism. It's everywhere. Even those sections that are written in Greek are almost exclusively referential to Judaism, not Gentile cultures.

P.S. -- I cannot help but note the irony that in the very first page of his account of the Greeks, the author of "Legacy" first speaks of the marvelous "mongrel" nature of the Greeks...how un"-racialized" they were, he says...and then instantly of the Athens and Sparta. In those two names, you have the truth: that the Greeks were worse than racist -- they actually hated people who were not just from different countries, but just not even from their same city-state. As to how welcomed and integrated their multitudinous slaves and other "barbarian" trash may have felt, one can only imagine. What we have in "Legacy," I begin to suspect, is the spinning of an idealized myth of an ancient Arcady, not the hard historical truth about life in Greece.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Any reading of the Bible will quickly disabuse a fair reader of any misapprehension that any culture is more widely represented therein than Judaism. It's everywhere. Even those sections that are written in Greek are almost exclusively referential to Judaism, not Gentile cultures.

Oh but that is not in any doubt, or much doubt in any case (though the development of Christianity and other sects of that era may have been influenced by exterior influences outside of strict Judaism).

When I refer to Greco-Christianity, and I suppose when Inge does (and many of those, mostly English religious philosophers that have influenced me), I think he refers to how Christianity developed and where, and perhaps why, it took root. In the Greek world. When I was studying this material I more or less became convinced that this was so. Another relevant matrix for the continuing development of Christianity was of course in Alexandria.

Do you have any statement to make on Christian Platonism? What do you make of that synthesis?

What we have in "Legacy," I begin to suspect, is the spinning of an idealized myth of an ancient Arcady, not the hard historical truth about life in Greece.

No, I do not think that is the case. Why he makes those social-political statements there at the beginning is likely for social and political reasons. The book’s essays are really quite good.