Christianity

[Immanuel Can]

Why do you say that?

It's inevitable.

I'm not seeing any inevitability.

Well, Gary, if there were no God, then you could be quite sure He didn't love you, had no purposes for you, and was not going to intervene on your behalf in any way. And if you had any hope, then, you'd have to leave out any explanation that relied on God or on anything He has done.

[Belinda]

I say that Catholicism-Christianity is a Greco-Christian thing.

I understand why you say that, now.

For you, "Christian" means "Roman Catholic," which goes back, through people like Aquinas, to Aristotle. And you're right: Catholicism is a syncretism of pagan sources and Jewish thought, the "Roman" and the putatively "universal." It's a Romanized clerical institution with universal political ambitions.

I am not a religious fanatic and in that you must oppose me.

Yeah...no. I don't really need to do anything.

The reason I got into the discussion and was pressing for your definition was simply that I could tell you didn't know anything accurate about Christian theology. I was merely at pains to see that I helped you get better, more accurate information as to what "Christian" really entails. I don't feel I need to "oppose" you, and certainly not because you fail to be a "fanatic." You don't represent any kind of threat or problem to me.

How could you? You're not even really talking about people like me, though you don't seem to know it yet.

My actual point was to help you make your theory better. And I was kind of astonished that you so adamantly refused better information than you already had. It made me wonder if you didn't have some high-stakes emotional investment in your theory that I was unaware of. And maybe that's still the case: but I think the point has been cleared up.

Your frame of reference is Catholicism, and (as people often do) you're generalizing from what you know, unaware that your generalizations fail to hold once you range beyond your own frame of reference.

I'd have thought, Immanuel, since you know the history of Xianity through Roman Catholicism to Protestantism, you would deduce that Xian doctrines can change.

[Dubious]

We created god as a hope and an explanation and not least, as motive for whatever we couldn't allow ourselves. God does indeed work in mysterious ways because that's how the brain itself works. When it needs a god it creates one to which written scripture is a testament...outside of which nowhere to be found. God remains a purely internal project.

[iambiguous]

The Bible is the main source for answering the question "what is a Christian?"

Now you've got it.

Exactly. Someone wants to know what a Christian is because they were told that unless they accept Jesus Christ as their personal savior they will burn in Hell for all of eternity. So you tell them to read the Christian Bible. They read the Bible and ask, "how do I know it is true?" And you tell them, "Because it's the word of God". They then point out that there are others who believe in different Gods and they also have a Scripture. They ask you "why should I believe it is your God and not one of the others"? You link them to the videos, and insist, "after viewing these there is no way that any rational human being can ever doubt it is the Christian God".

But the whole point of being a Christian is to believe that the Christian God does in fact reside in Heaven. And that you must obey His Commandments [from the Bible] on this side of the grave or your soul will wind up in Hell for all the rest of eternity.

It's clear from this "summary" you actually don't know what Christian theology is, or what it states. You seem to confuse it with legalism of some kind, and its God for something distant.

It's not what someone believes that Christian theology is, it's how you make it crystal clear to them that what you believe it is will save their soul. And so far all you've got is the Bible is true because it's the word of the Christian God and it must be the word of the Christian God because it says so in the Christian Bible. That and those videos.

But I don't see it as necessary for me to argue with you about it. The resources are available: you could find out, if you wanted to. But it's evident you don't.

Bingo! The sources being the Christian Bible and the videos!!!

I gave you evidence and arguments. You won't even view what I gave you, though it's incredibly simple to do so.

What evidence? What proof that mere mortals can acquire such that it is on par with the proof that mere mortals can acquire to demonstrate that the Pope resides in the Vatican?

Watch the videos.

I dare you to come up with a reasonable explanation as to why you won't note for us the segment/clip from the video that comes closest to demonstrating that the Christian God does in fact reside in Heaven.

Dare because you and I both know that there isn't any such clip.

Note to others:

Anyone here watch the videos? Anyone here willing to note the segment/clip that that think most demonstrates this?

[Immanuel Can]

...you know the history of Xianity through Roman Catholicism to Protestantism...

That's a sloppy, secular version of the story, not the real one, the sort of account one finds in a rudimentary survey book on European history from a non-theological viewpoint. And it happens because secular writers have a hard time believing doctrine could actually matter at all: so they assume that the reformers must have been just one or another kind of Catholic. You'll find that Luther had once been a priest; but what he discovered put even him outside the RC's forever.

What we speak of as "Protestantism" didn't come out of the RC's, but out of the Bible -- as Luther and his successors rightly pointed out. No Catholic authority helped Luther discover it. And there were earlier followers of the Bible whom the Inquisition ruthlessly exterminated, such as the Waldenses and others, dating all the way back to the days of the catacombs. But in most cases, the Romans or the Inquisition got them. Luther was simply the first major follower of the Biblical text on the subject of salvation who was unable to resist his conscience, but miraculously able to escape the Inquisitors. And the timely production of Gutenberg's printing press made it possible, for the first time in history, for Biblical ideas to be published without the say-so of the RC clergy. So the protests of the Biblical doctrine were, for the first time in history, able to survive the attempts of the clergy to suppress them, and the Reformation ensued.

But look at the conduct of the RC hierarchy with regard to the Protestants. Did they regard them as merely another kind of RC? Did they regard their "reforms" as acceptable? Were they even willing to live-and-let-live with the reformers? Or did they denounce them in purple prose, drive them out with a ruthless hand, hunt them down, and burn them at the stake or massacre them in droves? History gives us that answer.

It's evident there was a profound difference between the two. Secular history, alas, is not terribly interested in that, just as AJ seems oblivious to it. But any Christian knows about it, and knows what was at stake. It was not merely the survival of Biblical authority, but nothing less than the whole matter of salvation. If you can grasp Luther's "5 Solas," you'll see exactly what was so abhorent to the Catholics, and why they kicked men like Luther out of their fold. And you'll understand why they're just not from the same root.

[Alexis Jacobi]

I say that Catholicism-Christianity is a Greco-Christian thing.

I understand why you say that, now.

For you, "Christian" means "Roman Catholic," which goes back, through people like Aquinas, to Aristotle. And you're right: Catholicism is a syncretism of pagan sources and Jewish thought, the "Roman" and the putatively "universal." It's a Romanized clerical institution with universal political ambitions.

[...]

The reason I got into the discussion and was pressing for your definition was simply that I could tell you didn't know anything accurate about Christian theology. I was merely at pains to see that I helped you get better, more accurate information as to what "Christian" really entails. I don't feel I need to "oppose" you, and certainly not because you fail to be a "fanatic." You don't represent any kind of threat or problem to me.

You might be able to understand what my view of Christianity is however you would not ever be able to accept it as either accurate or true. So it is important to note, at the outset, that any idea you have about Christianity, its matrix, will be driven by your specific religious conviction which, as you know, I define as 'fanaticism'. You must also object with vehemence to that term because as a religious fanatic your view of what Christianity is and who Jesus of Nazareth is is the only view or interpretation possible. So your fanatical orientation, your a priori, locks you into an interpretive vicious circle. And one hundred percent of your efforts here on this forum involve you in a defense of your fanatical interpretation.

In my case I am not either situated generally nor specifically within that system. I do not have a *faith-position* that corresponds to yours and I am not here operating as a preacher and apologist (you are) and so when I offer a view or a perspective of what *Christianity* is (I really should use a plural: both Christianities and also Christs) that does not concord with yours you have no choice but to see me as 'ignorant' and incapable of offering a 'definition' as you call it.

Now, and additionally, your rather militant Protestantism forces you, as has been the case historically, to take an extremely biased and extremely critical position of Catholicism. I am not and never have been a Catholic. However I have examined this social and cultural conflict and, according to my research, I have determined that most of Protestantism operates out of this prejudice and bias. There are many reasons for this and some of them *sound*. Except that once one is on the outside of either Christianity one is outside of the controlling and determining need to favor either one or the other. And this is more my position at this point.

What I can say, and with certainty, is that if one wishes to understand Christianity one must, one has no choice in the matter, but to focus on the Greek-Hebrew world and the cultural incident when rebel Hebrews brought a new religious mode to the Gentile and the Greek world. This examination, and one with reduced bias, is closed to you. One must state this and then explain why this is. Doing so one explains you. But what I say, which is also intolerable to your ears, is that you are in a sense a false-Christian. I mean this in the sense of a relatively modern variant insofar as Protestant radicalism has 500+ years of existence. In my own view Protestantism can be looked at with an interposed lens of *appreciation* and *admiration* in some aspects; but it can also be critiqued. Again, I do not perform either of these as a 'believer' since I see Christianity as a 'story' and not so much a 'truth'. But since you set a sort of *trap* -- in fact I set it up so that you'd step into mine -- I am here explaining what 'Christianity' is.

To understand the Judean rebellion against state and theological authority one has to examine the religious and cultural matrix out of which the very early Christian movement arose. Essenes, Zealots, Nasaraeans, Mandaeans, etc. It is necessary to see state Judaism as a rigid power-structure that could not open itself to radical new trends. What interested me about very early Christianity and pre-Christianity was its practical mysticism and zealotry. A movement of people going their own way with extreme adamancy. To turn, literally, *against the world* and to live within a completely oppositional stance. It is strange but also amazing.

But more important, for the Occident, is in the clash and the fusion that occurred when Hebrew mysticism and Hebrew idea-imperialism encountered the Greek intellectual and religious world. The way conceptual orders were *translated* from one epistemological center, with all sorts of variants, into an entirely different *world* -- and then what was born out of that. The world of those early centuries, and the way that selections out of that were brought into a certain *harmony* is where Christian-Catholicism was born. It is a synthesis. It has always been such.

Right here I have mentioned something that is also *intolerable* to you as a means to define beginnings. It flies in the face of your fanatical adamancy because, obviously, it does not highlight Jesus as 'son of God' appeared among men and directing and controlling events from a spiritual center outside of time. The view I work with 'reduces' in this sense the Christian movement to any other expansive religious movement.

Our *Occidental world* in the largest sense, in the most important sense, was born out of this fusion. What disturbs you is seeing and explaining things in this way; giving greater validity to this interpretation than, as in your case, seeing history molded by the 'hand of God' toward the visionary historical end contrived by Christian religionists. Again, to understand you one must see and understand your religious fanaticism as the only means available to you from which to *interpret*. This is religious fanaticism by definition. In this sense, and in this way, I regard you as deranged:

de·range (dĭ-rānj′)
tr.v. de·ranged, de·rang·ing, de·rang·es
1. To disturb the order, arrangement, or functioning of: an asteroid impact large enough to derange the climate.
2. To upset (normal condition or functioning, as of a bodily organ).
3. To cause to be psychotic or otherwise severely mentally unsound.
[French déranger, from Old French desrengier : des-, de- + reng, line (of Germanic origin; see sker- in Indo-European roots).]

The more curious aspect of this state -- the state from which all your efforts here take place -- is that you see yourself as 'normal', as 'one of the good', as one of 'god's chosen', and as a vital actor not only in your family and community but on the world and geo-political stage. When your fanaticism get empowered by Americanism (this requires a whole other definition) it lunges into extremely bizarre territories. Again all of this has to be discussed slowly and carefully.

So you see that according to how I present the case for the view of Christianity I open it up significantly rather than try to shut it down. Is my approach suitable or helpful for one solely interested in installing religiousness in him? Say religious fanaticism similar to yours? That is, like the sort of faith that we notice among those who flock to Evangelical ceremonies such as those conducted by Benny Hinn and the thousands of Evangelical derivatives? No indeed! To what would one convert under my influence?

What is the *end result* of the approach that I take? Is it good or is it bad? Is it helpful or harmful?

If I had to make some summarizing statement it would be something like this: religiously-oriented people need and require a religious platform or *myth-structure* in which to situate themselves. But the act of engaging with the self through prayer, meditation and exposure to elevated and elevating ideas will, generally speaking, result in a 'better' sort of human being. So when I was doing my research it became plain to me that the general Catholic social teaching and doctrine was a very admirable synthesis of practical applied ethics. I still feel that way. And this is why I once referred to Liturgical Prayer: Its History and Spirit (Abbot Cabrol) as an extremely admirable condensation of an ethics that a person would do very well to incorporate and practice. I am not closed though to see similar Protestant compendiums in a similar way. But I do not like much at all the relatively recent merger between Protestant radicalism and extremism with Americanism. And Christian and Evangelical Zionism is abject in my own view. It might also merge into what I'd consider *evil*.

So what is and where is 'god'? I tend, still, to refer to Vedic notions of 'higher self' or 'atman' (some spark of divinity and revelatory intelligence inside of all living beings (not just human beings). I definitely veer way from Christian fanaticism and yet I have a certain respect of a sense of solidarity with some Catholics of a 'traditionalist' sort. Only because I have examined so much of the very earliest liturgical documents. The entire *Occidental body* is infused with this *stuff* as is all our art, music, literature etc. If we detach from that, we detach from so much that has *supreme value*.

People like you, who are religious fanatics, who incorporate zealotry and Americanism, who do exclude all other perspectives except your own, who are 'virulent' as well as 'deranged', are in my view destructive to the sort of understanding I propose is possible. My opposition to you is principled though intolerable to your self-view. As "god's child" as "Jesus' mouthpiece" and all the rest.

However, my opposition to you will not allow me to devalue what is to be valued within Greco-Christianity. Nor can I go along with the sort of idea-imperialism that vilifies pagan concepts. It is an odd place to be in but it is the one that seems right to me.

[Immanuel Can]

And you tell them, "Because it's the word of God". They then point out that there are others who believe in different Gods and they also have a Scripture. They ask you "why should I believe it is your God and not one of the others"? You link them to the videos, and insist, "after viewing these there is no way that any rational human being can ever doubt it is the Christian God".

This is your fabricated conversation, obviously. It's one I have never offered. And I have offered you much better arguments.

However, I don't feel any need to respond further to the wild extravagances of your imagination. But I am very impressed with the fact that any suggestion of there being rational evidence puts you into a terror. That's interesting. And I'm interested in how you're desperately seeking somebody to watch them for you, and to provide you with some way to convince you that in hiding from them, you haven't missed anything.

I can sense your anxiety in your conduct. You're really afraid to face a challenge. So while I read things by Hume, Nietzsche, Kant, Rand and Gray, you won't even look at a few short videos surveying some major arguments against Atheism.

Your lack of nerve betrays you. You're afraid your view will not stand up even to rudimentary critique. That's why you're so desperate not to look at the evidence.

And you know what? You're probably right. Your own form of skeptical confidence probably isn't sophisticated enough to survive the experience.

[Immanuel Can]

You might be able to understand what my view of Christianity is however you would not ever be able to accept it as either accurate or true.

Right. Because it's not. So it would be absurd to "accept" what's obviously untrue.

...you have no choice but to see me as 'ignorant' and incapable of offering a 'definition' as you call it.

Well, you flatly and repeatedly refused: so that pretty much gives me "no choice."

Now, and additionally, your rather militant Protestantism forces you, as has been the case historically, to take an extremely biased and extremely critical position of Catholicism.

Go check the Catholics. What did they say and do about the reformers?

If you won't believe the reformers themselves, just look at what the Catholic hierarchy did and said. That will convince you they saw that there was a fundamental shattering of their beliefs and authority in the Reformation. Check out the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre, or the burning of people like William Tyndale for the crime of having the temerity to circulate the Bible to the common people -- and you'll know the truth. The Catholic clergy feared the Bible, and wanted desperately to vest authority in themselves. It was the Bible itself that put an end to that.

[Alexis Jacobi]

So, all over again Immanuel: simply adamant expressions of religious fanaticism extressed through a Protestant-Evangelical lens and mouthpiece. I surely get it . . .

And keeping things in the Christmas spirit:

I learned to appreciate Jimmy Swaggart when I read Harold Bloom's take on his music and preaching.

You kinda have to ask though what those worshipful people are doing as they conduct their spiritual life there in an enormous group and go so deeply into their self-rapture. What is the function of religious exhilaration? The more one looks into it the more universal it appears to be.

[Belinda]

...you know the history of Xianity through Roman Catholicism to Protestantism...

That's a sloppy, secular version of the story, not the real one, the sort of account one finds in a rudimentary survey book on European history from a non-theological viewpoint. And it happens because secular writers have a hard time believing doctrine could actually matter at all: so they assume that the reformers must have been just one or another kind of Catholic. You'll find that Luther had once been a priest; but what he discovered put even him outside the RC's forever.

What we speak of as "Protestantism" didn't come out of the RC's, but out of the Bible -- as Luther and his successors rightly pointed out. No Catholic authority helped Luther discover it. And there were earlier followers of the Bible whom the Inquisition ruthlessly exterminated, such as the Waldenses and others, dating all the way back to the days of the catacombs. But in most cases, the Romans or the Inquisition got them. Luther was simply the first major follower of the Biblical text on the subject of salvation who was unable to resist his conscience, but miraculously able to escape the Inquisitors. And the timely production of Gutenberg's printing press made it possible, for the first time in history, for Biblical ideas to be published without the say-so of the RC clergy. So the protests of the Biblical doctrine were, for the first time in history, able to survive the attempts of the clergy to suppress them, and the Reformation ensued.

But look at the conduct of the RC hierarchy with regard to the Protestants. Did they regard them as merely another kind of RC? Did they regard their "reforms" as acceptable? Were they even willing to live-and-let-live with the reformers? Or did they denounce them in purple prose, drive them out with a ruthless hand, hunt them down, and burn them at the stake or massacre them in droves? History gives us that answer.

It's evident there was a profound difference between the two. Secular history, alas, is not terribly interested in that, just as AJ seems oblivious to it. But any Christian knows about it, and knows what was at stake. It was not merely the survival of Biblical authority, but nothing less than the whole matter of salvation. If you can grasp Luther's "5 Solas," you'll see exactly what was so abhorent to the Catholics, and why they kicked men like Luther out of their fold. And you'll understand why they're just not from the same root.

If it had not been for Roman Catholic Christendom and/or Celtic Xianity notably in Ireland, there would have been no European civilisation as we know it and therefore no culture to nurture a Martin Luther, and no economic or cultural base for a printing press. Without scholarly monks there was practically no written material at all.

[Immanuel Can]

If it had not been for Roman Catholic Christendom and/or Celtic Xianity notably in Ireland, there would have been no European civilisation as we know it

Well, there would Catholicism left over, plausibly. And European civilization surely would have been different somehow; but we'll never know.

The providential hand of God is not as weak as you might suppose. While secularists may think things were on "a razor's edge," nothing is so precarious with God. It's that we mere humans so often lose control of circumstances that makes us think that maybe God does, too.

We mustn't mistake subtlety for weakness. That God does not always operate by lavish miracles every time should not prevent us from seeing the hand of Providence at work in history's little events and the smaller corners of the world. Christianity never had a chance of disappearing, so long as God is involved.

[Immanuel Can]

... religious fanaticism...

That sure helps you, doesn't it? The ad hominem gives you a lot of comfort.

You think you don't have to face the facts a person points out to you, so long as you can employ a cheap label.

Well, I guess we all need our consolations. It wouldn't work for me, but if it works for you, I guess you'll have at it.

It's like the old joke: "When we're out of arguments, we must resort to cream pies."

[Harbal]

The providential hand of God is not as weak as you might suppose. While secularists may think things were on "a razor's edge," nothing is so precarious with God. It's that we mere humans so often lose control of circumstances that makes us think that maybe God does, too.

We mustn't mistake subtlety for weakness. That God does not always operate by lavish miracles every time should not prevent us from seeing the hand of Providence at work in history's little events and the smaller corners of the world. Christianity never had a chance of disappearing, so long as God is involved.

Reading this made me wonder, IC: In your ordinary daily life, when you are not arguing about God on the forum, do you actually think about him much?

[Immanuel Can]

Reading this made me wonder, IC: In your ordinary daily life, when you are not arguing about God on the forum, do you actually think about him much?

Actual question?

Or just a kind of half-hearted sideswipe?

[Alexis Jacobi]

That's a sloppy, secular version of the story, not the real one, the sort of account one finds in a rudimentary survey book on European history from a non-theological viewpoint. And it happens because secular writers have a hard time believing doctrine could actually matter at all: so they assume that the reformers must have been just one or another kind of Catholic. You'll find that Luther had once been a priest; but what he discovered put even him outside the RC's forever.

What I do, speaking generally, in this conversation is to acknowledge what you call the theological viewpoint while simultaneously demonstrating that it can, and in my view should, be compared to other theological systems in order to better make sense of what, in fact, is being referred to. Doing that, the tendency to 'condemn' or to vilify other notions of god, other pictures of divinity, is put in check. And as you know Immanuel I regard your brand of zealotry as a disease of the mind. It must be checked. It must be curtailed.

Secular writers and the secular viewpoint most certainly have a crucial role. Ah, except that for your brand of zealotry they are always problematic. Nevertheless I referenced Christopher Dawson who wrote a great deal on the formation of Europe and who also regarded Christian doctrine and praxis as being capable of 'renewing' culture and society. I have shown great respect for the theological element within Christianity. I simply explain divinity differently than you do. But the difference is crucial. What is that difference? For you 'god' is out there somewhere, or up there, and when you visualize god you visualize an entity who, responding to you, beams down to you succor and whatever it is that you mean by the term *salvation*. It is the visualization of a child IMHO.

I visualize god as something realized inside of oneself. And my reference is those mystics and adepts who have written on the topic. The primary value of a spiritual life is to establish oneself in relation to something interior. While I definitely note that external structures are crucial and inevitable, ideally the focus of spiritual life is internal.

However, there is nothing unproblematic about a national, a civilizational, and a cultural religion. Just as I have shown by referring to the Jimmy Swaggart video that ecstatic religious trance is ... strange ... in so many ways it also opens people up to irrational impulses and to forms of *possession*. What these really are, and what really goes on there, is anyone's guess. But social gatherings always have that element, don't they? And religious spectacles especially. Now I assume that you also raise up your hands and arms and pray ecstatically to 'Jesus' and the 'holy spirit' because this is part-and-parcel of evangelical practice. Maybe you also allow some barrier to be broken down inside you and cry like Benny Hinn or the millions & millions of people who seek our enthusiastic religious experience for so many different reasons -- reasons that can be examined both from a theological-sociological perspective and from a more strict theological one. Because I studied Vaishnavism in some depth I am aware that all of India in the Medieval era came under the influence of an intense, devotional and ecstatic religious movement. It was a sort of devotional contagion and as such it can be compared to the rise of Pentecostalism which has recently spread like wildfire all over the planet. What is this? What really is going on there? What do people seek? How and why are they fulfilled through this sort of mass-activity?

Can theology alone answer those questions? I do not think so.

Here is a bhajan but directed to Yeshu (Jesus).

Here's a Carnatic devotional song.

Praise Govinda! Praise Govinda ! Govinda be Praised, O You mindless fool !
This endless repeating of grammatical rules
Will not protect thee from thy deathly coils

O Mindless fool, discard thy greed for amassing lucre
And turn thy mind on the real, devoid of passion
Accept thy past karmic actions, as thy anchor
And satiate thy mind, accepting Reality, free of rancor

Delude not, thyself, with lustful desires
For the cut of the navel or the curve of the breast
As all bodies are formed by fat and flesh, that expires
Remind thyself over and over, this fact, to attest

Life is ever changing, transitory and uncertain
As a dancing droplet on a lotus leaf
Know, this world is prey to disease and conceit
In constant sorrow and grief, so replete

While you earn and support your family's welfare
You get their love and solicitous good wishes
But when with old age and infirmity, your body withers
your kin do not have for you, even a word to spare

While one lives, and contacts abound
Solicitous kin, inquire to thy good health and well being
But, when the soul departs, and death knells sound
The sight of thy corpse, sees even your wife fleeing

The child is lost in the playground of childhood
Youth is lost in the attachment of woman
The old are in their own pasts enmeshed
Alas, there are none left to be one with the Brahman

[etc.]