God and morality

[phyllo]

Curious Gary wrote:
Can you give a comparison of the meaning of Christianity as seen through a "warrior" society versus as seen through an "agrarian" society? What does Christianity mean to a warrior society that is different from an agrarian society? What is the fundamental difference between the two interpretations? What parts of Scripture do warriors stress, and what parts of Scripture do farmers stress?

The Germanization of Christianity was not the civilizing of the Germans, but the Germanizing of Christ.

A rip-roaring yarn, to be sure.

But how is it "a comparison of the meaning of Christianity as seen through a "warrior" society versus as seen through an "agrarian" society"?

The Romans didn't conquer most of the world by growing extremely large turnips. They had a huge military and they used it. The Romans were a military or warrior society.

And how does this apply to "warrior" societies and "agrarian" societies now?

I'll answer Gary : On the battlefield, you pray for victory. On the farm, you pray for a good harvest. In the marketplace, you pray to sell your wares at a good price or to buy at a good price.

[Immanuel Can]

I pointed out to IC that his brand of Christianity allows him to fully and completely disregard European Christianity as an intricate, enduring, civilizing historical process, and quite literally to establish a position in our ultra-modernity, after vast transformations in thought and understanding of the world, and “hop over” 1,900 years of history and back into The Gospel Picture! This is fantastic and really quite amazing!

I don't "ignore" it at all, in fact. I agree that the halo effect of Christianity has been a huge amount of political reform, education, ethics, art, and all kinds of civilizational benefits. But that's quite a different thing from saying that these halo benefits are themselves intrinsically "Christian" now, which is what you're supposing, it seems.

Take education. Most of the great universities were started as theological institutions of learning. All of the ones in my region were. Not one was started by an Atheist society, or by Islamists, or by any other religion, either. However, there's nothing particularly "Christian" about most of them today; they're secular and as pagan as you can possibly imagine, with -- at most -- one or two of their smaller "colleges" retaining some nominal link to one or another denomination of "Christianity." But for all real purposes, they're completely secularized now.

They are part of the halo effect. They're the residual benefit of a society that once took seriously the idea of ennobling ordinary people through higher education and good theology. But they aren't "Christian" now, and most people who attend them remain blissfully unaware they had any theological commitments at all at their founding.

For halos fade. And our institutions of higher learning are losing their moral and pedagogical compass, and wandering in a bewildered way. The student activities on campus, the demonstrations and protests, are no longer informed by actual disciplined, accurate and truthful thinking, or by clear ethical positions, but rather by wild radicalism and simplistic advocacy of causes poorly understood by the participants. The institutions themselves have become propagandistic and detached from the real world, in most faculties -- particularly in the Humanities, which instead of "humanizing" anyone are now awash with idiot "subjects" with no subject-discipline behind them, and just Critical Theory propaganda to structure their whole pattern of inquiry. (And in no subject is this worse than in their Faculties of Education themselves, so their whole teaching project is off the rails.) Nothing of the truly "Christian" remains, in most of them.

In the same way, I'm pointing out to you that you cannot restore civilization to a "Christian" condition without making people really believe in Christianity. People who know they're just being sold a civilizational fix-up kit that's devoid of actual truth claims will never have the allegiance to the Christian worldview that would renew those institutions. So your project of pseudo-Christianizing, without the expedient of making actual Christians, is doomed not to succeed in restoring anything. It was only because so many of us once believed in Christianity that these things were possible in the first place.

[MikeNovack]

But how is it "a comparison of the meaning of Christianity as seen through a "warrior" society versus as seen through an "agrarian" society"?

The Romans didn't conquer most of the world by growing extremely large turnips. They had a huge military and they used it. The Romans were a military or warrior society.

A "warrior society" can conduct raids. An "agrarian society" can conduct wars. The Romans conquered a large chunk of the world by superior logistics.

[MikeNovack]

Take education. Most of the great universities were started as theological institutions of learning. All of the ones in my region were. Not one was started by an Atheist society, or by Islamists, or by any other religion, either.

Salerno and its famous medical college? It's legendary origin was the meeting of four (who discovered they were all doctors) Pagan, Christian, Jewish, and Muslim.

Sorry IC, but contemporaneous with the old universities of Christian Europe were ones in the Muslim countries founded under Islam. Of course since Morocco was one of the centers of this, what is now southern Spain also.

Pagan? Well how about the Mouseion? (the school research center famous for its library, "the Library of Alexandria")

[Alexis Jacobi]

The Romans didn't conquer most of the world by growing extremely large turnips…

But in fact the turnip (rapum) was a key ingredient in powering the Roman forces, and the cultivation of the turnip had much to do with the settling and civilizing process. The Legions brought tons of turnips to feed their horses, cattle and pigs. When the Northern tribes started cultivating turnips they didn’t have to slaughter their herds in early Winter as it provided fodder.

[phyllo]

Trump should use turnip power in Iran.

Much cheaper than smart bombs.

[Alexis Jacobi]

I don't "ignore" it at all, in fact. I agree that the halo effect of Christianity has been a huge amount of political reform, education, ethics, art, and all kinds of civilizational benefits. But that's quite a different thing from saying that these halo benefits are themselves intrinsically "Christian" now, which is what you're supposing, it seems.

No, I think what I am “supposing” is a whole assortment of things that have relevance in our present. I brought up the “German” thing — the Protestant revolution and so many effects that follow from it — because “it” actually seemed to portend not a new birth for Christian civilization, but quite strangely the death of even the capability of “believing in” the Christian story. Once one starts on that path of dis-belief, or dismantling belief, it tends to increase in intensity.

Another curious fact is that when one has undermined a given authority and declared that any person can encounter God in accord with his conscience or his own interpretive facility, that moves quite radically in unforeseen directions. It was you who presented Protestantism as the beginning of entire new avenues of progress. This is a bit self-serving since the important early scientists were Catholic believers. Nevertheless, the complete break from the Old Models (of understanding) did begin in radical forms in that epoch and accelerated in the Protestant regions. Curious though how it culminated in dis-belief.

Part of “recovering belief” is romantic, don’t you think? It is the longing to be able to believe and to live in that accord.

It is very difficult for those outside of belief, those in whose cultures belief has collapsed, to restructure it all over again.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Trump should use turnip power in Iran.

Much cheaper than smart bombs.

The turnip (shalgham) is BIG in Iran. I might have to make a koresh to celebrate. But you cannot get turnips in my region sadly.

[Alexis Jacobi]

It is very difficult for those outside of belief, those in whose cultures belief has collapsed, to restructure it all over again.

That is likely one of my principal themes or topics. How can I put it? Let me try. In our recent culture there arose a dissident motivation. It was called Alt Right but in reality that dissident movement was defined earlier. Often it was not Christian because conventional Christianity (say that of Christian Zionism and many Protestant and Evangelical branches) were and are “mainstream”. Very conventional, very timid, very conformist.

So this was reacted against and following those paths didn’t have the energy that other metaphysical models could offer, or promised to offer. Youth tends to be attracted to radicalisms, not conventions.

Because even consider your own Protestant Evangelism: during Luther’s time there were people calling for radical reforms on many levels. Radical social movements were afoot. But they were suppressed by princely powers.

Gary has been calling you out for a near total lack of “social spirit” but the Christian radicalism said to be Jesusonian is anything but conventional. It can overturn entire orders when it is overtaken by “the spirit” (like Anabaptism).

Anyway, what interests me is the plethora of various manifestations of paths of solution (to those senses of discomfort and angst and dissatisfaction that so many people feel today).

[phyllo]

You think there is a longing to believe.

And why would that be?

[Immanuel Can]

Pagan? Well how about the Mouseion? (the school research center famous for its library, "the Library of Alexandria")

We don't really know what it contained. We have some pieces, but most of it was burned...apparently by the pagan authorities. And the Islamic universities that began to lean liberal were all purged by the conservative Islamists. Apparently, neither paganism nor Islamism cares much for liberal education.

[Immanuel Can]

Another curious fact is that when one has undermined a given authority and declared that any person can encounter God in accord with his conscience or his own interpretive facility, that moves quite radically in unforeseen directions.

Indeed it can. Men often make up stuff, and slap the name of God to it. It's certainly a thing to be watched out for.

But that begs the important question, which is "How DOES God Himself choose to encounter human beings?" Is it through His Word directly, or is it only through mediation by some authoritative certification by clergy, and not directly?

And only when that question has been properly answered will we be able to say whether the Protestant attempts to reform or the Catholic efforts to retrench and reassert papal authority were more in keeping with the right intention.

What do you say? Do you suppose God speaks through an illuminati of appointed clergy in a single institution, or by way of His Word, to individuals?

[Gary Childress]

Another curious fact is that when one has undermined a given authority and declared that any person can encounter God in accord with his conscience or his own interpretive facility, that moves quite radically in unforeseen directions.

Indeed it can. Men often make up stuff, and slap the name of God to it. It's certainly a thing to be watched out for.

But that begs the important question, which is "How DOES God Himself choose to encounter human beings?" Is it through His Word directly, or is it only through mediation by some authoritative certification by clergy, and not directly?

And only when that question has been properly answered will we be able to say whether the Protestant attempts to reform or the Catholic efforts to retrench and reassert papal authority were more in keeping with the right intention.

What do you say? Do you suppose God speaks through an illuminati of appointed clergy in a single institution, or by way of His Word, to individuals?

Do you think it's possible that neither of those scenarios is the case?

[Immanuel Can]

Another curious fact is that when one has undermined a given authority and declared that any person can encounter God in accord with his conscience or his own interpretive facility, that moves quite radically in unforeseen directions.

Indeed it can. Men often make up stuff, and slap the name of God to it. It's certainly a thing to be watched out for.

But that begs the important question, which is "How DOES God Himself choose to encounter human beings?" Is it through His Word directly, or is it only through mediation by some authoritative certification by clergy, and not directly?

And only when that question has been properly answered will we be able to say whether the Protestant attempts to reform or the Catholic efforts to retrench and reassert papal authority were more in keeping with the right intention.

What do you say? Do you suppose God speaks through an illuminati of appointed clergy in a single institution, or by way of His Word, to individuals?

Do you think it's possible that neither of those scenarios is the case?

Assuming, as both sides do, that God exists and that He does communicate in some form, what's your alternate scenario?

[Gary Childress]

Indeed it can. Men often make up stuff, and slap the name of God to it. It's certainly a thing to be watched out for.

But that begs the important question, which is "How DOES God Himself choose to encounter human beings?" Is it through His Word directly, or is it only through mediation by some authoritative certification by clergy, and not directly?

And only when that question has been properly answered will we be able to say whether the Protestant attempts to reform or the Catholic efforts to retrench and reassert papal authority were more in keeping with the right intention.

What do you say? Do you suppose God speaks through an illuminati of appointed clergy in a single institution, or by way of His Word, to individuals?

Do you think it's possible that neither of those scenarios is the case?

Assuming, as both sides do, that God exists and that He does communicate in some form, what's your alternate scenario?

The alternative scenario would be that God does not speak through or to anyone at all. Essentially, "neither of the above".