Christianity

[Dontaskme]

That second video was off the hook. Lol. Stephen Fry interrogates god when he arrives at the pearly gates.

He's very clued up is Stephen Fry ..I adore intelligent men..there are many more intelligent people like him. The world is very lucky to have people like Stephen Fry. And yes, like Stephen advocates, lets just give ourselves the permission to be human, we really do earn and deserve the title.

Gay people are the most warm and loving human beings I have ever had the pleasure to encounter. They exude beauty and warmth beyond belief. It's not even a bias - it's self-evident just being around them. I've literally cried inwardly around the presence of gay people because they have a presence that is always attractive and not repellent. It's like you feel relaxed in their presence. Well I do anyway.

I also think that most people when they are being truely honest with themselves are naturally bi-sexual, it's like food, there are so many varied ways to enjoy tasting ourselves...as long as we are not harming any thing, or anybody else, we can love whatever we like. Human beings will always do what they love, because they love doing what they love...even if that means committing evil acts..they would not do that if they did not love doing it.

Yup, the ideologies that are Christianity are positively TOXIC ..and quite dangerous. Can you imagine telling a small child they are a sinner so they better be good or else they will rot in hell fire.






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[Dontaskme]

Two words: Jesus Christ.

You may not think that's God Incarnate. But He is.

You'll find out.

But I see your mind's made up, so...is there anything else I can do for you, or are we done?

John 5:43 ''I have come in my Father’s name, and you do not accept me; but if someone else comes in his own name, you will accept him.''

Sorry IC but you cannot speak for the nameless ONE. You can only speak for the named one, namely your-self.

Thank you for not, reading, listening, answering. I guess that's what ''being done'' means. Yep, your done.

Now keep on keeping quiet, else you'll wake the dead, and you know what that'll mean don't you, it'll mean a welcome back to the zombie jamboree...whooo hoo!

[Dontaskme]

But I see your mind's made up, so...is there anything else I can do for you, or are we done?

IT IS Finished.

So in his last words, Jesus was communicating that the work he came for was accomplished. The task of earning the salvation of the world was completed in his work on the cross. No more additions or adjustments were necessary – salvation was completed.

''Psalm 46:10 KJV Bible. Be still, and know that I am God.''

I AM the last idiot. I am the one who speaks for the nameless one until I die.

Death is eternal, it's the only life you'll know.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Go back to the quotation I gave you two messages or so ago: you'll find at least four ways in which your summary of Genesis was wrong.

I'm surprised you haven't said anything about any of them. All you would have to do is provide the scriptural reference for something like "man falling to Earth," and you'd prove me wrong.

Why didn't you try?

The reason I won't engage with you further on this is because you believe in the Genesis story as a description of literal events, as if it is a history, and as if it can and should be taken seriously as if it is a literal history. Because you believe this (and I assume sincerely) I have determined that there is something wrong with your reasoning capabilities. So, as a result, I then begin to think I am dealing with someone -- and I do not mean just you here but *Evangelical Christians generally* -- who cannot be reasoned with. This then leads me to the thought that I am trying to talk to a cRaZy person. Again, I do not mean to say that you are crazy, I am speaking of a much more general sense about those who hold to *literal* beliefs of this sort.

Now, this issue is far wider really. What is it? My perception is that today people will and do believe anything, even if the belief clashes with *reason*. At the same time there are so many power-factions that, to exist and further themselves and their interests, must lie and misrepresent what they really are doing by presenting what they do in a non-truthful light. So to say *We are surrounded by lies* and *We exist in a sea of lying* is my perceptual stance.

We also exist in a liminal world between two radically different metaphysical systems. One, the Olden World of Christian metaphysics, and the other our modern world which is based on a completely different platform. We are strung between these two systems and do not understand, well enough, our condition. Obviously, it produces conflicts that are bridgeable through neurotic manoeuvres . . .

The many tensions existent today produce unbridgeable conflict. Unbridgeable conflict, hysteria. And hysterics I guess will believe what they need to . . .

So I return to a previous dead-end conversation: You actually believe that Adam & Eve existed as 'an original mating pair' in a Garden (and God knows what else you accrete around this bizarre story). For me to entertain a conversation with you at this level would be comparable to going to a Noah's Ark theme-park in Arkansas and trying to reason with some Evangelical who actually believes there was an Ark; that Noah loaded it with all species of animals; that the whole world was flooded and, one assumes, all life and vegetation perished; and then Noah landed and restored humanity, the animal kingdom (who knows how the vegetable kingdom was conceived), for the Next Phase of the divine unfolding of The Plan.

So you ask: "Why won't you engage me in this?" and now you have your answer. I do not want to participate in lunacy. I'd rather withdraw from that conversation completely than expend energy on it. Make sense?

But the larger issue nevertheless interests me: Why do people believe what they believe? And what sort of Stories do they employ in order to bolster and support what they believe? The core questions are here. Are you even a wee bit capable of examining them? No, you are not. You cannot and you will not -- for obvious reasons.

AJ: But as I tell you I regard what is expressed in Genesis as a story that has an allegorical, not a literal, meaning.

IC: Yep, that's what you think. I know that. But so?

But so a great deal! How can you even ask such a silly question? If it is allegorical, it really is a Story. And if it is a Story, it can be examined as such. And doing that one sees that it is not the Story that should be focused on but what is communicated through the Story. And if this is so then it leads to a whole other order of consideration and re-consideration about stories.

AJ: There certainly are 'messages in Scripture', of that there is no doubt.

Great. Time to deal with them.

What has happened just now in this thread is that the *Christian haters* have come out of their redoubt. But it is very important for me personally to make it plain that I am not in any sense a Christian hater. I am a Christianity preserver. I have done my research (over years) and it would be impossible for anyone, any *hater*, to present an argument that convinces me that Christianity -- its values and interests -- are not of a sublime and ur-important sort. But you see what a fix you place me in! (And here I mean people who are absolute fundamentalists and literalists).

Nevertheless, I hold to my own views, understandings and definitions. They are complex and multi-layered and, I admit, it is a bit tedious to present them. But that is what I have been doing. Despite you and despite the haters. Now, I must define 'hater' so that I am not misunderstood. A hater blindly destroys what he hates but through 'ignorance'. But gnosis, knowledge, will modify that hate if enough of it is gained. Those who seek to teardown Christianity, on the whole, do so through destructive impulses that have a deep psychological origin. This reaction and resistance needs to be examined. And a good deal of what I write touches on this. On another level (and this is my view) Christianity must 'come to peace' with pagan impulse. Christianity *conquered Europe* and when gains are made through conquest they are never soundly and genuinely gained. So the larger *resistance* to strict Christian regulation and mental arrangement needs to be seen and understood. And in this, for us, the Fin de siècle era needs to be examined with a special, and very sensitive, frame of mind. Nietzsche, Freud, Jung and the revolution in perception and self-orientation is what I am referring to.

Are you capable even slightly of engaging in this examination? Absolutely not. You are absolutely closed. Thus, to put it squarely and fairly, you are useless. Your function is religious apologetics and preaching. Here at least you achieve the precise opposite of what you attempt but this matters not to you. Thus your endeavors seem to me narcissistic overall.

(And so on and so forth . . .)

Well, you don't even know what Christianity is. You've told me so already. You think it's a broad cultural construct of Catholicism and Westernism, one devoid of Scriptural particulars, and one that you're going to revive in order to save civilization.

But examine what you are doing, here in this thread, and let us compare. You try to sell a religious program that requires shutting down the intellect and the self to a more open approach. I suggest taking some steps back, doing a great deal more research before making any harsh decisions, and I suggest that even though *the Story* has collapsed, we cannot and should not make the mistake of jettisoning the entire *construct*.

I also say that I believe that people, and here I speak to the individual, need to find within ourselves that *well* or source of living water which is the source of all that is good and valuable in life. So I speak of 'renovation' and 'renewal'. I also say that I will work with anyone and build bridges with anyone who shares a similar objective.

You are going to have to accept that for many -- and certainly for those who participate on this thread -- that Christian particulars are not relevant to the living of their lives. Take for example Lacewing who explained her position to you. In this sense she would correspond to a 'daughter' of your rigid, doctrinal, controlling, circumscribing Evangelical church. Psychologically, and to survive and grow, she needed to break away. Most of your interlocutors, to speak very generally, have needed to break out of bondage in order to discover *freedom* and to live within freedom's opportunities, advantages, as well as dangers.

Again I will refer to Fin de Siècle shifts and changes, and simply as a point of reference that most will get, Nietzsche, Freud and Jung. There is a whole range of artists and intellects, and theologians, that would need to be examined to understand what has happened, why, and where it leads us. Are you useful in this? Absolutely not.

Even were the human mind not corrupt (which, in some ways, it certainly is), a finite creature is not capable of finding his own way to total knowledge of the Infinite God. Seventy five years or so, plus a brain the size of a softball, is not sufficient space. You may as well speak of containing the ocean in a paper cup...it would actually be easier.

Here, you present your Abstraction. You refer to God as if God is a library or, as I say ironically, a cloud-server that you can dial up and download godliness. This is how you present your concept of God!

I regard whatever we mean when we speak of *God* not as a verifiable external thing, but as an entire set of ideas that we view and entertain within our imagining structure -- our mind, our conception, our feeling an sensing selves. Thus: the sense of 'communion' is always internal, always subjective. But, I do not mean to say that God is therefore an internal creation of man, or something imagined. Whatever God is, and this must be admitted with some humbleness, is beyond my ken. One cannot derive the Christian God from the created world. That God (as Frye points out) would be a monster.

But to say this is to return to what I have said, ineffectively, earlier: Christianity is an imposition as-against 'the world' in its natural and biological being. That world is so outrageously contrary to what Christianity proposes, that it cannot be 'of this world'. (But this is another, involved topic with many layers and levels).

I think this is principally what you have caused me to concretize when I confront your childlike views. But I do not abandon this *structure* nor the value-set that the Picture pictorializes. The reference is to things metaphysical, and essentially things invisible. Ideas -- and meaning & value -- are realizations of those things invisible. However, these exist in all peoples, and certainly are presented through all religious conceptions. A mature person attempts to discern them and, I think, value them. Not rip them to shreds in a reactive tantrum.

There are some men, some people, some Christian and religious, some not, as well as many different people who manage, despite the terrible obstacles outer and inner, to realize themselves in respectable ways. I do not believe that a doctrine of absolute corruption (or depravity) is a good philosophy to invest in absolutely.

The Christian and Jewish view of the human heart is worth examination, nevertheless.
______________________________

[I know you do not hold to the Calvinist view, but I was reminded of a pretty good film called Hardcore with George C. Scott where he describes strict Calvinist doctrine to an LA street hooker who is helping him to find his daughter).]

Gotta keep things topical, right?

[Immanuel Can]

The reason I won't engage with you further on this is because you believe in the Genesis story as a description of literal events,

That's your "deal breaker" is it?

Well, that doesn't make a lot of sense, given that the four points I listed all have to do with what the text itself says. So whether you believe the text is literal or not is not quite the issue here: the issue is does the text even mention something like a human "falling to Earth," or is that the sort of thing you're pulling out of some abstruse Catholic or Miltonic account?

And we could decide that, if we look at Genesis itself...and you would be free to keep your view, even so.

*Evangelical Christians generally* -- who cannot be reasoned with.

That, I must say, is most certainly prejudiced, and not remotely true.

Some of the best current philosophers are evangelicals, as a matter of fact; and I have been reasoning with you myself from the start. So you may not like my beliefs or my conclusions, and that's fine; but it's hardly possible to complain that "evangelical Christians generally... cannot be reasoned with," they can.

But I see why it's more comforting to think "they're all nuts" than to think, "maybe they've got a point." That much, I get. It's just the human impulse to dismiss uncomfortable facts.

Now, this issue is far wider really. What is it? My perception is that today people will and do believe anything, even if the belief clashes with *reason*. At the same time there are so many power-factions that, to exist and further themselves and their interests, must lie and misrepresent what they really are doing by presenting what they do in a non-truthful light. So to say *We are surrounded by lies* and *We exist in a sea of lying* is my perceptual stance.

I don't disagree...however, I do not find that "evangelicals" have any special monopoly on this...at all. It's just human nature. And the best of us work to overcome that liabilty.

We also exist in a liminal world between two radically different metaphysical systems. One, the Olden World of Christian metaphysics, and the other our modern world which is based on a completely different platform.

True, but simplistic.

Can we really say there are only two? That seems rather cartoony.

What you call "the Olden World of Christian metaphysics," (i.e. the Catholic-Medieval thing, or the so-called "European tradtion,") has only characterized Europe, has been different somewhat in America or the colonies, and hasn't been the same in many places. You will know very well that "the European tradition" has been considerably hybridized in South America, so that much of it is really not "European" at all. And agains this, are we to put "the Modern world"? That also seems simplistic. "Modern" didn't mean in 1750 what it means in 1900 or 1960...when "Postmodernism" first reared its head. And as you also know, it looks very different in Asia, Africa or South America than it does in Dublin, Berlin or New York.

So the "two systems" interpretation, I would say, as handy as it may be, is just too simplistic to yield us any nuanced or accurate understanding of the situation. And such excesssive simplicity is one of those strategies you speak of, by which overwhelmed, confused, postmodern people attempt to get control of a situation that is more complex than they'd like.

So I return to a previous dead-end conversation: You actually believe that Adam & Eve existed as 'an original mating pair'

What I said, if you remember, was that even Evolutionists have to believe that's how it happened. There is no plausible alternate theory, even in Evolutionism, but that one mutated "pair" produced the human race. The alternative -- the only alternative, so far as I can see -- is to say that somehow hundreds or thousands of mutated pairs just "broke out" for no reason, at some point in history. And any such explanation has its own serious explanatory problems...like, how do thousands of pairs just suddenly "break out"?

I'd rather withdraw from that conversation completely than expend energy on it. Make sense?

Of course. All conversations are optional. If you don't want to talk to me, then the last thing I'm going to do is force you to.

But the larger issue nevertheless interests me: Why do people believe what they believe? And what sort of Stories do they employ in order to bolster and support what they believe? The core questions are here. Are you even a wee bit capable of examining them? No, you are not. You cannot and you will not -- for obvious reasons.

No, it's not that I "cannot." I understand your mythologizing strategy very well...I find it old, trite and tired, though. And I think nobody who understands the Sociological landscape or the differences in world religions could possibly find it plausible. And what you don't know is that I have the qualifications to say such a thing, and to know what I'm saying.

But you're right about this much: the fact that I reject your basic description tool for the religious "landscape," the mythologizing strategy, means that you and I are going to have trouble discussing what you insist to be the case. It doesn't mean we have to be unkind to each other, but it does mean that if you insist I agree with your about mythologizing before we begin, we're not going to get very far.

AJ: But as I tell you I regard what is expressed in Genesis as a story that has an allegorical, not a literal, meaning.

IC: Yep, that's what you think. I know that. But so?

But so a great deal! How can you even ask such a silly question? If it is allegorical, it really is a Story. [/quote]
Oh, you're so mistaken! There are many stories that are also true.

Have you ever heard the story of the Battle of Waterloo? How about the Crossing of the Rubicon? How about the Life of Jesus? These are stories, to be sure; and they all have allegorical implications. However, nobody says they aren't also true. In fact, what significance could Caesar's crossing of the Rubicon have if he had never actually done it? And what would a "Waterloo" be, if Napoleon had not been defeated there? Those incidents, then, would be of considerably less allegorical force.

It's not an either-or: it's a both-and, in this case.

AJ: There certainly are 'messages in Scripture', of that there is no doubt.

Great. Time to deal with them.

What has happened just now in this thread is that the *Christian haters* have come out of their redoubt.

They're always around. Don't let it worry you.

But it is very important for me personally to make it plain that I am not in any sense a Christian hater. I am a Christianity preserver. I have done my research (over years) and it would be impossible for anyone, any *hater*, to present an argument that convinces me that Christianity -- its values and interests -- are not of a sublime and ur-important sort. But you see what a fix you place me in! (And here I mean people who are absolute fundamentalists and literalists).

But you can't "preserve" what you don't understand. And, as I have been saying to you repeatedly, what you're trying to "preserve" is not Christianity...it's just the leftovers of Catholic-Medievalism, as mythically remembered from a Europe that was never so uniform as the theory requires. Can you "preserve" such a thing? No. And if you could, would it do anybody any good? No.

What's more, you're open to the critique from the postmodernists that you are merely romanticizing the European past. That's a serious challenge, but not one that proceeds from any Christian suppositions. Still, you would need to prove them wrong.

Those who seek to teardown Christianity, on the whole, do so through destructive impulses that have a deep psychological origin. This reaction and resistance needs to be examined.

Fair enough. And if you had a workable definition of "Christanity," then you and I would be on the same page about that.

On another level (and this is my view) Christianity must 'come to peace' with pagan impulse.

Well, that's exactly what the Catholic tradition tried to do from the start. And it's been a serious failure.

Living where you do, you'll be surrounded by the exemplars of the Catholic attempt to syncretize the pagan past with the Catholic ideology. And you'll know of their compromise with Marxism, as well, known as "Liberation Theology." The Catholic tradition has always tried ot absorb paganism, with mixed results...and it's only made their tradition more pagan, to the point that actual Christians do not recognize any association with it at all.

... for us, the Fin de siècle era needs to be examined with a special, and very sensitive, frame of mind. Nietzsche, Freud, Jung and the revolution in perception and self-orientation is what I am referring to.

Are you capable even slightly of engaging in this examination?

Yep. I have those guys on my shelf, right here. What do you want to talk about?

Oh...I forgot...you've decided it's not worth talking to me. Oh well.

You try to sell a religious program that requires shutting down the intellect and the self to a more open approach.

You've badly misunderstood.

I'm not against intellectuals, or science, or reason, or any of it. The sole area in which I have pointed out that the academic reaches his Waterloo is in the matter of experiencing salvation. Nobody gets to come to God arrogantly, preening herself on her intellect and waving her credentials. When one faces God, one faces an immeasurably Superior intellect, one who, in His grace, has made a way of salvation not merely for the intellectual and arrogant, but for everyone.

You don't like that, apparently. I don't know why you begrudge the weak and lowly salvation. I don't. And, thank God, He does not despise the lowly. He will save the simplest person, or the most sophisticated. And they all come by the same road: faith in Jesus Christ

However, about the proud, the elitists, the arrogant, the self-important, God has a very strong opinion. He brings them down. So I say, just don't be one of them. You can be as smart as you like: just don't be elite in your own eyes. Let God decide the matter of what you are.

You are going to have to accept that for many -- and certainly for those who participate on this thread -- that Christian particulars are not relevant to the living of their lives.

Yes, they're going to think that. So?

Even were the human mind not corrupt (which, in some ways, it certainly is), a finite creature is not capable of finding his own way to total knowledge of the Infinite God. Seventy five years or so, plus a brain the size of a softball, is not sufficient space. You may as well speak of containing the ocean in a paper cup...it would actually be easier.

Here, you present your Abstraction.

Not even a bit.

Rather, I present Him as the actually-existing greatest Person and Mind in the universe...which is what He is.

I regard whatever we mean when we speak of *God* not as a verifiable external thing, but as an entire set of ideas that we view and entertain within our imagining structure

A delusion, you mean? Or a fiction of some kind? Or just a subjective intuition or "construct" of something that's not really there?

Well, that's even worse than an "abstraction." At least abstractions (like those of maths) can refer to real things. What you're proposing doesn't even get that far.

Sorry you don't want to persist in discussion. If you decide, I'll subside. But it will be up to you.

[Alexis Jacobi]

...does the text even mention something like a human "falling to Earth,"

I am going to make only one clarifying statement. But just one.

The notion of 'The Fall implies not only a falling down as a moral event, but if the Garden is understood as a special, divinely-created, separate place where A&E lived, in a sort of deathless state, and if when the sin was committed they were cast out of that realm, that protected place, that deathless state out into a realm (or Earth) of death and all other sorts of tribulations, the notion of a moral fall does combine with the sense that A&E, in a similar manner as those 'fallen angels' who fell from a celestial height down into a terrestrial depth, is not an outrageous assertion.

But if you really really want to keep hammering on this . . . carry on. I am not at all sure it will advance your argument on any level.

[Alexis Jacobi]

But I see why it's more comforting to think "they're all nuts" than to think, "maybe they've got a point." That much, I get. It's just the human impulse to dismiss uncomfortable facts.

If you, the most esteemed IC, actually believe in that Garden and if you actually believe in Noah's Ark in any way that is not allegorical, I am directly declaring that you and those who share this view are investing in a nutty view. Typically, when we encounter those who hold to nutty views we label them 'nuts'. But what I say is that to think in such a way is, as I clearly say, to be strung between one epistemological assertion and another one which contradicts it. So I am defining 'nuttiness' in a specific way and with a good deal of understanding of human foibles.

You have no point. It is not a question of comfort or discomfort.

[Immanuel Can]

...the notion of a moral fall does combine with the sense that A&E, in a similar manner as those 'fallen angels' who fell from a celestial height down into a terrestrial depth, is not an outrageous assertion.

Well, the "Fall" in Genesis is not from Heaven to Earth. What you're actually repeating there is John Milton's imaginative account, not Scripture. So it's not so much "outrageous" as just "not what the Bible says happened," which is something much more straightforward.

As for the other three things your account got wrong, if you want to address them too, I'm ready. And if not, then I think the point stands.

[Immanuel Can]

But I see why it's more comforting to think "they're all nuts" than to think, "maybe they've got a point." That much, I get. It's just the human impulse to dismiss uncomfortable facts.

If you, the most esteemed IC, actually believe in that Garden...

You're extrapolating, not repeating what I was saying. And I don't feel any justification in responding to what you imagine you wanted me to have said instead of what I actually did.

What I said was that an original mating pair is unavoidable for Evolutionists. If you have an alternate theory, let's hear how the human race came to exist...without an original mating pair.

[Alexis Jacobi]

What you call "the Olden World of Christian metaphysics," (i.e. the Catholic-Medieval thing, or the so-called "European tradition,") has only characterized Europe . . .

You misunderstood. The "Olden World of Christian metaphysics" certainly applied to the associates of Jesus within that contextual time-frame. As I said the Hebrews also conceived of the world and the cosmos in a manner similar to that of the surrounding cultures. I presented you with a Jewish website that probed those cosmological conceptions.

Christianity itself, with notions of angels and demons, with a God in a lofty realm who sends His son down to the Earth as an avataric incarnation -- this in itself reveals the Olden Metaphysic. If I had more time I could dig up more about the Hebrew cosmological and cosmogonical system.

It is situated within an episteme that, for us today, in attenuated. For many it is a mere shadow, for others a fading light. And in that sense we all live (in differing degrees) within the space that opens between the old conception and a new conception. Still, in our language, the Olden System plainly shows itself.

How many times must the same idea be repeated to you, in such clear terms, before you can get it?

When one examines other primitive cultures -- I have often mentioned the Vedic world -- you find similar patterns of conception. So while it is true that The Great Chain of Being as a European Mediaeval construct has many unique features, you can find similar sorts of conceptual systems outside of Europe.

I might mention that the Hindu-Vedic system still functions for some in our modernity as a viable and effective medical system. And Ayurvedic medicine shares many similar bases of understanding to the European Mediaeval medical system and considers, for example, the positions of the stars and planets, the differing elements (pitta, vata, kapha -- fire water earth), and the use of herbs and also gems which are said to have a celestial influence in the here-below or to represent the celestial bodies down here in the Earth-realm just as they do in TGCOB conception.

[Immanuel Can]

How many times must the same idea be repeated to you, in such clear terms, before you can get it?

It has to be worth "getting." I understand the idea...I just find it implausible.

It's interesting to me what an offense this seems to be to you. But even you must know that your view is not mainstream, not reflective of majority historiography or coherent with what traditions claim to be. So it's odd to me that you expect instant, unthinking assent. You must think something is obvious that is simply not obvious to most people.

[Alexis Jacobi]

All conversations are optional. If you don't want to talk to me, then the last thing I'm going to do is force you to.

When you demonstrate your investment in bizarre conceptual neuroses I can't talk to you. Because of your situation and your commitments you make conversation, of the sort I value and can make use of, impossible.

[Immanuel Can]

All conversations are optional. If you don't want to talk to me, then the last thing I'm going to do is force you to.

When you demonstrate your investment in bizarre conceptual neuroses I can't talk to you. Because of your situation and your commitments you make conversation, of the sort I value and can make use of, impossible.

Well, I don't buy your theory. So if having people test it and criticize it instead of buying into it naively impairs your ability to speak, then I guess you'd have a point there.

But if your theory is good, why can't it stand up to a little doubt and interrogation? That seems odd.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Have you ever heard the story of the Battle of Waterloo? How about the Crossing of the Rubicon? How about the Life of Jesus? These are stories, to be sure; and they all have allegorical implications. However, nobody says they aren't also true.

Here you zero in on something important (though you do it unintentionally and inadvertently).

I personally believe from certain evidences (a gleaning of writing on the topic) that the figure Jesus Christ existed. He had impact on the people around him. And his influence set many waves of effect in motion. I do not doubt this.

But what I do question, which is not the same as doubt, is the material that was accreted to him, to his person, to his worlds, and to his mission. It is not impossible, in my view of things, that whatever he was factually became invested with all manner of different stuff (for want of a better word). Thus the Life of Jesus was mythologized. And as a mythologized figure he became, for those who did this, a different type of figure than what he likely was.

By saying what I said here, in the way that I say it, my description necessarily punctures the mythology. And many people when they see this done (or read such types of descriptions) then belief that the whole Story is a vain, empty fabrication. But that is not how I see it. Thus, I employ, if you will, a uniquely modern-derived means to conceptualize Jesus Christ, while I still can hold to and value the metaphysical implications. But in asserting 'metaphysical implications' I assert notions that can only be expressed through logos. And in this sense the figure of Jesus recedes before the logos-based concepts.

The function of the Story of Jesus, in the Gospels, and as these function in Christian belief, is to bring one into the possibility of conceiving of certain ideas about life and reality. But once these are perceived, and understood, and verified, the story could be said to have lost some of its function. Put another way the story might not be needed to be able to grasp what the story alluded to.

The Crossing of the Rubicon and Waterloo are historical accounts with a greater degree of verifiability than almost any part or aspect of the Gospel accounts. The exist in a different plane. They are accounts that do not deal on existential and profound metaphysical issues, assertions and declarations.

[Alexis Jacobi]

AJ: On another level (and this is my view) Christianity must 'come to peace' with pagan impulse.

Well, that's exactly what the Catholic tradition tried to do from the start. And it's been a serious failure.

Living where you do, you'll be surrounded by the exemplars of the Catholic attempt to syncretize the pagan past with the Catholic ideology. And you'll know of their compromise with Marxism, as well, known as "Liberation Theology." The Catholic tradition has always tried ot absorb paganism, with mixed results...and it's only made their tradition more pagan, to the point that actual Christians do not recognize any association with it at all.

You misunderstand again. When I refer to the Pagan/Christian reconciliation (for want of a better word) I am speaking of the Fin de Siècle and the movement of ideas in the Nietzschean and post-Nietzschean European world.

I am speaking of people -- Hermann Hesse perhaps is a good reference -- who made an effort, psychic and psychological to bridge worlds divided off from one another. I guess I could refer to Steppenwolf as a good example. But art, psychology, theology and other areas would have to be considered. The 'alternative spirituality' movements were born I think in Europe. And certainly those movements that turned toward India and the Indo-European origins.

And I could also refer to CG Jung himself who, very definitely, sought to restore European pagan concepts, or soul-perceptions (again I do not know how to express this) within his own person. I might say that, on one hand, his therapeutics failed, as did Freuds, but the important thing -- for purposes of understanding ourselves and our present -- is that these processes are still on-going.

So attention must be paid to those who were paying attention to Nietzsche and what Nietzsche meant. A road has been opened and that road will not close down. Factually, you are speaking to people here on this forum who provide evidence of what I am talking about.