Christianity

[Alexis Jacobi]

For Brother Dubious:

"Will you walk into my parlor?" said the Spider to the Fly. "'Tis the prettiest little parlor that ever you did spy; The way into my parlor is up a winding stair, And I have many curious things to show when you are there." "Oh no, no," said the little Fly, "to ask me is in vain; For who goes up your winding stair can ne'er come down again."

[Alexis Jacobi]

Frenchies celebrating the Tridentine Mass

[Belinda]

Yep, so, you're sort of "forced" to this position...

Values is the main reason religions exist

...given that your atheism...

The divine is a personification of a society's prevailing values

...precludes you from endorsing this one:

connecting to and relating with the divine and transcendent reality in general is the main reason religions exist

In answer to your question:

Is transcendent reality what you mean when you say
"spiritual-religious aspect" ?

Yes, but especially God and divinity as transcendent reality, because the primary (and spiritual-religious) value of Jesus was relationship with (a personal) God. It seems that you are sort of forced to reject or at least ignore this because you deny the existence of any (personal) God in the first place.

The values demonstrated by the life and work of Jesus fit well with impersonal God. The values of Jesus are if you will excuse the anachronism left-wing : impersonal God is universally egalitarian.

[Alexis Jacobi]

You would learn more from the mass if you asked explicit questions such as "What does 'Satan' mean for me?" Or "What may 'Satan ' have meant for a first century Palestinian Jew?" Or "is my euphoria that the Mass engenders good or bad?" Or "In what way if any is the Mass better than say, participating in a public musical event?"

Those would be pretty sophomoric questions. Really questions for someone entirely new, and on the outside, of even basic levels of understanding.

But the question What is Satan? is a good one. We need that definition as much as one about God.

You say "metaphysics". Why not simply say which metaphysical stance the Mass presumes?

Because I feel I’ve been so steeped in these thoughts and considerations for so many months and years now that I hardly need to repeat it to myself.

But as God’s own metaphysical wind blows us to the thousandth page in this marvelous con-verse-ation in which I am obviously a star (but not the only one in a glorious firmament) we can work out some of these definitions!

I’m excited, rested & ready!

[attofishpi]

Yes, but especially God and divinity as transcendent reality, because the primary (and spiritual-religious) value of Jesus was relationship with (a personal) God. It seems that you are sort of forced to reject or at least ignore this because you deny the existence of any (personal) God in the first place.

The values demonstrated by the life and work of Jesus fit well with impersonal God.

No they don't. They require a God that is extremely personally affective to the will of Jesus.

Just so I understand you Belinda on this God thang, you believe in God as per a pantheist conception of this entity. That you believe this God can create things to the extent that we can perceive reality, but lacks ability to be capable of (or willing to) be personable to actual humans, where it (God) sees fit?

[Alexis Jacobi]

The values of Jesus are if you will excuse the anachronism left-wing : impersonal God is universally egalitarian.

No, this is really quite false. However, my perspective derives from Medieval European Christianity which developed clear notions of “difference” and hierarchy that today, in our Marx-ridden ideological present, are considered thoroughly intolerable — fascistic.

Leveling and equalization are the operative concepts of the Left-Marxists. There is a strong animus to assault hierarchy, not to establish or maintain them.

As they say in the United States: "to be different is to be indecent." The mass crushes beneath it everything that is different, everything that is excellent, individual, qualified and select. Anybody who is not like everybody, who does not think like everybody, runs the risk of being eliminated. —Ortega y Gasset

[henry quirk]

"What is Satan?"

'For, lo, the wicked bend their bow, they make ready their arrow upon the string, that they may privily shoot at the upright in heart.' Book of Psalms

'It lives in the breast of our fellow man and takes on many disguises, but its intention is always the same: to rob the innocent of their faith in humanity and to destroy the light and happiness that all of us seek.' James Lee Burke

Doesn't really answer the question, does it?

Are the wicked 'wicked' solely becuz of a defect in their own souls, or is the defect, the benign imperfection, inflamed and made malign by way of whispers in the ear from someone or something from 'outside'?

I am divided on this.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Are the wicked 'wicked' solely becuz of a defect in their own souls, or is the defect, the benign imperfection, inflamed and made malign by way of whispers in the ear from someone or something from 'outside'?

I am divided on this.

Honestly, to get an understanding of what Satan is, one has to turn back to the Medieval Schoolmen. In simple terms, it is an issue bound up with definitions. The conceptual blending of the ‘picture’ offered by Genesis but refracted through a lens of platonism.

A story provided an understandable picture: the fall of man. But that fall — man’s disobedience — literally contaminated the kosmos.

The Medieval conception involves levels of density with Terra being the most dense condensation point in the Universe. Satan is associated with a corrupted angelic will, and Lucifer and his lieutenant angels were given significant, but not unlimited reign, on the plane of the Earth.

Caves, swamps, pits, rot, noxious odors, bats, deep forests, lead, strange crawling things, but also diabolical entity shunning the light of the ‘medicinal sun’ (associated with God’s eye) were naturally associated with dense spirits.

Think of MacBeth on the heath and those weird Sisters. MacBeth entered an evil fog and encountered Evil Will that took him over and possessed him.

The Medieval way of seeing seems direct and childish to us. But though that is so it was a total picture, a replete picture, and one based in a practicable existential Platonic-Christian philosophy.

Christians today — and we post-Christians — live in the shadows or one might also say the ‘ruins’ of the Scholastic conceptual order.

We can still locate and exhibit Satan — the figure of Hitler is our tangible emblem of “ontological malevolence”, but too examine how Mr FishPie (one example) easily resorts to the use of abbreviation when referring to the malevolence of those nasty KKKers who, like gremlins, lurk in murky historical caverns and breathe noxious, retrograde gasses, infecting the unwary.

Dubious! What structure of chord, what line of melody can lift us out of this chamber in which we seem trapped?!? Help! HELP!!!

[Alexis Jacobi]

Come, let us recite the Rosary.

[Harbal]

It is that era that far more informs us. An entire anthropology was organized, a way of understanding man in this fallen world and man fallen. Christ is God’s hand reached down into the mire to lift one to a higher plane. The idea of assent to ascent is seen as taking place within the body and soul of entrapped man.

Good grief! Jacobi, you must think you are living in one of those sickly, "inspirational", epic, Biblical movies.

Someone pass me a sick bag.

[Harbal]

But the question What is Satan? is a good one. We need that definition as much as one about God.

It's hard to imagine anything I need less.

[Harbal]

Are the wicked 'wicked' solely becuz of a defect in their own souls, or is the defect, the benign imperfection, inflamed and made malign by way of whispers in the ear from someone or something from 'outside'?

I am divided on this.

Well then you need to pull yourself together, henry.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Good grief! Jacobi, you must think you are living in one of those sickly, "inspirational", epic, Biblical movies.

Someone pass me a sick bag.

There there, brother! I’ll cup my hands for you to vomit into. This is a Christian thread man! We are commanded to administer to lepers, the mental infirm, idiots . . .

[Harbal]

Good grief! Jacobi, you must think you are living in one of those sickly, "inspirational", epic, Biblical movies.

Someone pass me a sick bag.

There there, brother! I’ll cup my hands for you to vomit into.

It's okay, the feeling has passed.

This is a Christian thread man!

It's the closest I could find to a termite thread.

We are commanded to administer to lepers, the mental infirm, idiots . . .

You're a scamp, Alexis, a shameless scamp.

[henry quirk]

AJ,

I always enjoy your essays, but this...

...ignores my question.

Again (rephrased): is man Grendel, or is Grendel sumthin' 'other' than man?

Is Evil man's defect, or is Evil the intelligent infection that, as I say, inflames and makes malign an otherwise benign imperfection?

Or: did/does man engineer his own Fall, or was/is he pushed (or tempted to jump)?

As I say: I'm divided. I can make an equal argument for either.