Christianity

[Dontaskme]

If "Christian" means "everything," then it means precisely nothing.

And that's exactly what it means.

You're being dull again, DAM. Try to be more interesting.

My interesting is never interesting, so there is no try.

Try as you must, you cannot touch the untouchable. Everyone knows that, except you.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Well, any ire I might be inclined to take at such a characterization is severely abated by the fact that it's quite obvious that you have no clue who I am in real life. You don't know, do you? You actually have no information at all on how I live, one way or the other. You have a disembodied "email" persona to go on; so naturally, you're going to remain blissfully unaware of what goes on in real life. So I understand that "seeming." But the facts will have to speak for themselves, in places where they can.

Why in Heaven's name would you have ire under any circumstances? I do notice that you -- sort of -- set yourself up to defend the True Dogma agaist all comers. It appears you have been doing this for years now. And though it also seems that I am coming at you with similar critiques as others bring -- this cannot be helped given the state of things in this point of time -- I always try to express that I am not interested in acrimony and do not seek to exacerbate it. There is far too much of that all around us and, given the trajectory, it is tending to disaster. And there is far much more to be gained by talking all these things through carefully and perseveringly.

I spoke of 'impressions' and what seems and it was expressed very carefully. I said "Your relationship to theology seems academic and to a degree removed from the 'reality' of how people actually live their lives within their faith." It is an entirely fair statement. Your approach is professorial, thus academic, and excludes experiential detail, and I assume you are an academic. There is nothing in se wrong with this at all.

So my purpose is not in any sense to say something cutting to provoke ire, but rather to try to bring out -- in all of us -- what I refer to as our real position and locality. Understanding a person's *locality* (this is a special term in my lexicon) is crucial to understanding what they talk about. In this I tend to believe that we must consider 'the man' (in 'hominem') and looking at the man is a valid and valuable part of examining what that man says.

Some part of this brings me back to discussions we had years ago -- when I was Gustav Bjornstrand (!) I remember that you recommended some Christian church or group in Barranquilla. I think you mentioned it because I said that I'd just been there but I can't remember. But when there -- and it is a strange place as is Colombia generally -- I chanced upon a street preacher who had a great amount of personal charisma, worked out on the streets among the really & truly poor, and attracted large groups of people. I sat down in one of the plastic chairs and took in what I can only describe as his 'evangelical performance'.

I guess it must happen that they are 'performances' given what goes on in Evangelical and certainly Pentecostal churches. It can be and often is a sort of rehearsal of madness. The use of the 'self' as an evangelizing tool. The self-consciousness. The build-up to emotional crescendo. This preacher noticed me, of course, and afterward approached me. He was of course hoping that I would make a donation to his cause. It was very odd: a knew by looking at him that he was a crafty 'manipulator' of crowds and had mastered, to some degree, the psychological techniques required. I also sensed that he could not be trusted in the sense that I would define *trust*. But I thought about him a lot. I thought a lot about how the Christian message is purveyed. There is a high-level message and messenger and then there is a low-level message and messenger. Are the 'Christianities' different? And if so, what exact difference does it make? Since the relevancy to most Christians is not in what happens, or what will be received, in this world, but in the world to come.

I think my point here has to do with 'circumstance' and 'situation'. Any message, but here we are considering the Christian message, whatever it actually is, is purveyed to a context. And that context, as on the dirt-poor streets of Barranquilla and among those denizens, is a really strange context. It is frankly unlike anything all those who write on this forum experience in their *worlds* (unless they travel to other *worlds*) So in this sense the 'context' is a distortion. It is where the human madness is (madness, desperation, extreme need, unfulfilled desire, the sense of never having enough on all levels, the proximity of impoverished disaster)(I could go on because this is the world I live so close to and I do not avoid seeing and feeling it).

So you may be able to see that I tend to see 'the message of Christ' as coming from a region beyond the world. It comes from very very far away (it is just a metaphor this sense of distance). But it has to 'penetrate' the world, just as it has to penetrate a given person. Yet each place or zone is a sort of 'substance' that is either dense or translucent, thick or fine. It s a metaphor but a useful one.

And when I think of *the message* that is to be brought down there I am frankly uncertain what can actually make its way through the 'distortion'. When the *as above* communicates to the *so below* if you catch my drift. But then there is also the fact that the messengers working in such a distorted area is also distorted, as I suppose the preacher I describe was. (It seemed so).

I tend to think of such situations -- realities, our realities -- as Melville attempted in The Confidence Man. Melville was big on odd metaphors!

Perhaps you are asking "Where am I going here?" Not really anywhere in particular. Just musing.

Where I personally stand is in a practical awareness that *the world* is on the verge of madness. I know that it goes in cycles, of course, and there have been other similar times. Perhaps it will abate. But what interests me is, in fact, 'the condition of madness' and then what 'taking the cure' means. I think that you interpret me as a 'postmodern', and in some sense how could this be wrong? (since we are all in a postmodern condition). But actually I think 'the cure' is a real thing and I think it is, shall I say, encountered on an inner plane.

Excuse my dancing star . . .

And I have made it plain that, in terms of what I am up to and such, I distinguish between my own *inner plane* and what I understand to be the *outer plane*. The *outer plane* is in total disarray! (cue Promethean in his drivers seat singing mad-song, but other examples would suffice).

[Immanuel Can]

I do notice that you -- sort of -- set yourself up to defend the True Dogma agaist all comers.

People should always stand for the truth.

If you're not standing for the truth, what are you standing for?

I said "Your relationship to theology seems academic and to a degree removed from the 'reality' of how people actually live their lives within their faith."

And I agreed: that's how it seems to you. Why should I doubt your word about what seems to you?

I assume you are an academic.

No comment.

...we must consider 'the man' (in 'hominem')

No, that's "ad hominem." And it's a fallacy.

I chanced upon a street preacher...

I do not know of whom you speak, and cannot speak for him. I hope he was a sincere and nice man, and lived his faith.

But if he didn't...what would you want from me on that?

He was of course hoping that I would make a donation to his cause.

That should make you instantly suspicious. And rightfully so.

Are the 'Christianities' different?

It depends how you're using that word. There is, actually only one "Christianity." It contains some latitude for difference, but also requires some core essentials, as I have been attempting to outline to you.

...on the dirt-poor streets of Barranquilla and among those denizens...

I have been on those streets, and walked among those denizens, in Barranquilla. And in Cartagena, as well. In the Nelson Mandela barrio, to be precise.

Christ loved the poor. The rich and religious hated Him. That should tell you something about the difference between "Christendom" nominally considered and real "Christianity." If there was a distinction between the two in Christ's day, it has not disappeared.

Perhaps you are asking "Where am I going here?" Not really anywhere in particular. Just musing.

Musing is good. Please continue as you wish.

Where I personally stand is in a practical awareness that *the world* is on the verge of madness. I know that it goes in cycles, of course, and there have been other similar times. Perhaps it will abate. But what interests me is, in fact, 'the condition of madness' and then what 'taking the cure' means. I think that you interpret me as a 'postmodern', and in some sense how could this be wrong? (since we are all in a postmodern condition). But actually I think 'the cure' is a real thing and I think it is, shall I say, encountered on an inner plane.

Well, we're all under pressure from the Postmodern ethos. In that sense, you could say that slipping into Postmodern thinking, at least temporarily, is inevitable for us. It takes a continual effort to extricate one's head from that pit of confusion.

For Postmodernism, in some ways, is very reflective of the world as we now experience it; it contains some truth. But it does not stop with mere description of how things seem today, but rages on into phony histories of "oppression," into crass forms of Relativism and knee-jerk, unintellectual cynicism, and so forth. And, with the CRT twist added, becomes a grindingly stupid form of Neo-Marxism, full of prescriptions of which we all do well to be wary.

That's our situation at the start. But it's not our fate. We don't have to capitulate to the total package of Postmodernism, simply because of where or when we have been born.

[RCSaunders]

Yes, of course. I was referring to your phrase, "objective definition," of Christianity. Not sure what that was supposed to mean, bit it is obvious if Christian means, as you say, "everything," with that tag, it means nothing.

There are objective definitions of everything that has a definition. There's an objective defintion of "dog" and "cat."

But in the case of Christianity, the objective definition is "Somebody who is saved by Christ." If a person has no relationship to Him, then he is, by Biblical definition, "lost" and "perishing."

These are actually not hard terms. What's hard is imaginging, when one has no relationship to God through Christ, that one could actually have such a thing. What one has never experienced, one has a very hard time imagining, of course.

How can

"... in the case of Christianity, the objective definition be "Somebody who is saved by Christ,"

when, "saved in Christ," means something different in different flavors of what is called Christianity: To the Calvinists and Reformed it means those who were predestined for salvation which they can neither reject or lose, to the Wesleyans and Methodists it means those who have embraced Christ as Savior so long as their faith persists, but they can fall away, and to the Universalists it means everyone is saved (on the grounds that Christ died for all the sins of the world, and Romans 5:12-18, especially 18, "So then, just as one trespass brought condemnation for all men, so also one act of righteousness brought justification and life for all men," and of course Catholics believe salvation is in Christ, so long as one keeps all the sacraments and doesn't die before confessing their sins, and then there are the Mormons, Latter Day Saints, Adventists, etc. etc. etc. all with a slightly different twist on what it means to be, "saved in Christ."

[Alexis Jacobi]

If you're not standing for the truth, what are you standing for?

There is, conceivably and necessarily, the truth, and then there are derivations and interpretations about what is true. And there are also truth-claims. My purpose for engaging here is ultimately to gain more clarity. Not so much about what you or they believe (to be true) but what I ultimately believe to be true.

AJ: I chanced upon a street preacher...

IC: I do not know of whom you speak, and cannot speak for him. I hope he was a sincere and nice man, and lived his faith.

Most of what I say -- this is my impression -- is misunderstood by you. I simply brought out an anecdote about a Christian preacher (within the Evangelical tradition). I tried to state that even though I think he was a charlatan (in some ways) and possibly a con-artist in others, it is still not at all impossible that 'the Spirit' worked through him. And he seemed a delightful (a convention of speech), charismatic man.

He worked in 'murk' and within a sort of denseness (social strata composed of people who can be described as murky and also as dense) and he also came from that strata. If you think I judge him I do not. In fact I can say I admire him in certain ways. But I also notice his foxiness, his craftiness, and that within his missionizing project he was also there to get for himself. Thus I merely point to a confusion of objectives or perhaps contradiction within objectives.

Welcome to Earth.

AJ: He was of course hoping that I would make a donation to his cause.

IC: That should make you instantly suspicious. And rightfully so.

And this is also odd: I do not find it odd or necessarily suspect that he would hope for contribution. "Tan duro trabajo yo!" he told me, and I believed him. The point I'd make has nuance: were I to have helped him (with some money or other assistance) I could be sure that on some level it would have benefited those whom he served. And if this happened the non-incarnate, metaphysical Jesus-God would also be happy. I do not mean to be clever or ridiculing but this is how things work down here.

Simultaneously, it would have benefited him in his *foxy endeavors*. Usually this has to do with wine women and song as we all know.

It depends how you're using that word. There is, actually only one "Christianity." It contains some latitude for difference, but also requires some core essentials, as I have been attempting to outline to you.

Well, like you I am also endeavoring to *outline* things. Two can play at this game!

There is a large degree of latitude and, in fact, one size does not fit all. What is suitable for one people may not be suitable for another. Yet because Jesus Christ is portrayed (I don't know what other word to use) as a person with a recognizable personality, it is made to seem that a one-size-fits-all-answer will be given.

Be you in Chattanooga or in Rangoon the answer must be the same!

One of the things I have made efforts to *outline* as to do with that "latitude for difference". The example I use is that of early Mediaval Germanic Christianity. Receiving the doctrines, the doctrines were modified. A different Christianity emerged.

The other aspect of this is that even those various persons, in those earliest days, who assembled around Jesus, interpreted him or his message differently. The most powerful "fabricator" of an interpretation is certain Paul as everyone knows.

And it is possible, and it certainly has been done, that his interpretation -- which is not necessarily the truth of Jesus Christ (which must also be interpreted) -- is challenged and also contradicted.

Who has the ultimate right to interpret? This is not a small issue.

[Immanuel Can]

...saved in Christ," means something different in different flavors of what is called Christianity

The problem is not at all inherent to Christianity. You've identified it: it's in "what is called Christianity." If one identifies everything as "Christianity," then one is going to have no substantive definition of "Christianity."

"Saved by Christ" means one thing. That people often refuse to accept what it means is the real problem.

[Alexis Jacobi]

"Saved by Christ" means one thing. That people often refuse to accept what it means is the real problem.

That can't be right. We.do.not.know.what.salvation.is.and.no.one.can.explain.it.

[Immanuel Can]

If you're not standing for the truth, what are you standing for?

My purpose for engaging here is ultimately to gain more clarity. Not so much about what you or they believe (to be true) but what I ultimately believe to be true.

And so you should.

But we're talking about the same thing: truth. That you think it's one thing, and I think it's another, means only one of two things...either both of us are wrong, or one of us is. But we both know there's no way we're both right, because the law of non-contradiction shows that's impossible.

So the only question is, "Who, if either of us, has the truth, in this case?"

AJ: I chanced upon a street preacher...

IC: I do not know of whom you speak, and cannot speak for him. I hope he was a sincere and nice man, and lived his faith.

...he seemed a delightful (a convention of speech), charismatic man.

So far, so good.

I also notice his foxiness, his craftiness, and that within his missionizing project he was also there to get for himself.

That would suggest he was not sincere. Too bad.

It depends how you're using that word. There is, actually only one "Christianity." It contains some latitude for difference, but also requires some core essentials, as I have been attempting to outline to you.

Well, like you I am also endeavoring to *outline* things. Two can play at this game!

I was unaware that trying to explain the distinctive features of Christianity could be construed as a "game."

Be you in Chattanooga or in Rangoon the answer must be the same!

Be you a human being, the answer must be the same.

The other aspect of this is that even those various persons, in those earliest days, who assembled around Jesus, interpreted him or his message differently. The most powerful "fabricator" of an interpretation is certain Paul as everyone knows.

I don't think this. But continue...

Who has the ultimate right to interpret? This is not a small issue.

Jesus Christ has the ultimate right. Who else would you ever suggest? But you could also consider John 14:225-26.

To parallel, who has "the right to interpret" what you meant? That's easy: you do. Anybody's interpretations of "What Alexis meant," will have to be measured against "What Alexis actually meant." And those interpretations will be better or worse, accordingly.

[Immanuel Can]

"Saved by Christ" means one thing. That people often refuse to accept what it means is the real problem.

That can't be right.

We do know. The words are simple: it's the willingness to accept them that's hard.

[Alexis Jacobi]

We do know. The words are simple: it's the willingness to accept them that's hard.

Words are always simple or perhaps ‘easy’. But if that is all that is entailed — in your definition of what Christianity requires — then it has been made ridiculous.

However, I do not profess certainty about any of this. It is better if I say “I do not know what salvation means”.

In a larger sense I think that people have lost a sense of what it means. And so it tends to become meaningless. And people carry on as best they can.

[Dubious]

We do know. The words are simple: it's the willingness to accept them that's hard.

Words are always simple or perhaps ‘easy’. But if that is all that is entailed — in your definition of what Christianity requires — then it has been made ridiculous.

However, I do not profess certainty about any of this. It is better if I say “I do not know what salvation means”.

In a larger sense I think that people have lost a sense of what it means. And so it tends to become meaningless. And people carry on as best they can.

To me it means what makes human error rectifiable in this world. That which surrenders to conscience for arbitration in an effort to rebalance. It certainly has nothing to do with some guy being tortured and sacrificed to make up in bulk for all our human transgressions. Where's the education in that! It's not necessary that "salvation" only refers to an afterlife. Whatever salvation there is exists only in this life.

[uwot]

It's because anthropomorphic representations of the source of the intelligence that is responsible for the creation of the universe are precisely what makes the existence of such a source so implausible and unbelievable to atheists and materialists.

seeds, you are trivialising atheists. It is not anthropomorphism we are not persuaded by; it is the hypothetical "intelligence that is responsible for the creation of the universe". Such an intelligence may be real, but the arguments and evidence are only compelling to those who wish to believe.

[Belinda]

...saved in Christ," means something different in different flavors of what is called Christianity

The problem is not at all inherent to Christianity. You've identified it: it's in "what is called Christianity." If one identifies everything as "Christianity," then one is going to have no substantive definition of "Christianity."

"Saved by Christ" means one thing. That people often refuse to accept what it means is the real problem.

Immanuel has just moved the goal posts to the position where Immanuel thinks they ought to be, and which were described by RCSaunders as we know from empirical evidence they actually are.

[promethean75]

https://youtu.be/lz9HDvg_mp0

[Alexis Jacobi]

Naturally. But to be a "Christian" at all means to be striving in one direction: toward Christ. And that means that choices can be better or worse, more or less Christian, depending on whether or not they tend toward greater relationship to Christ. So even though all of us may start at somewhat different points, we are all converging, by the same processes and dynamics, toward the single ideal of Christ Himself.

That won't make a lot of sense to somebody who's never been there. But all I can tell you is that it is so, whether it's known from the outside or not.

Since Christians begin from different points, the begin with different challenges, different suppositions, different attitudes, different expectations and yes, different sins. But Christ is devoted to remaking them by the Spirit from what they are to what they should be -- still special individuals, but now reflecting more and more His character, and to be perfected, in the end, by His power.

But that loose definition, Hume, Nietzsche and Heidegger were "Christians."

I mean people who actually believed what Christianity requires. But I know you don't accept the distinction, so there we will have to agree to disagree.

Well, as of late I have been mulling over a great deal related to this. Let me just jump in and say that I had thought that it might be useful to find a person, or a personage, who we could say corresponded to Jesus Christ. Meaning that if Jesus Christ was the logos-agent of a process of tranformation presaged by Isaiah:

So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth:
it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please,
and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.

Then it stands to sound reason that we can find the 'evidence' of this Word's doings in all sort of different areas. Therefore I elect Hamlet as a necessary protogé of Jesus and Shakespeare as the vehicle of the Word. [Why Shakespeare has not been canonized I cannot say. But I will draft an appeal right now]. But if that is so then it completely expands the notion of what this Word is capable of or even what it intends, if intent is recognized, as indeed it seems to be in Isaiah.

Now here is the odd assertion: I would say that Nietzsche is deeply and profoundly involved in the potential of that Word. But I must say that this Word is not to be contained or limited by men or by man. Who can put a cap on it? Who can say where it can and where it cannot go -- to refer to the idea of volition, action and movement expressed in Isaiah?

So, if you were to modify your language to express the fuller range of what the Word in Isaiah connotes, then it will be far more easy to understand the vast and magnificent range of awareness present in Shakespeare but then also some of those works that have come about as a result of influence through the Word's effects in the raucous and unsettled thought of Nietzsche.

In that sense Nietzsche becomes the Word's critique of deathly hypocritical Christendom. And then what about, let us say, Harry Haller of Steppenwolf? Has the Word become demonic in the ideas expressed there? How shall we characterize those men, often the poets and artists, who push the boundaries of what it is possible to think about and to realize? And what force exactly stands behind and animates 'awakening' and 'clarifying vision'? And what about those who embody the agony, as literally it is, of those who resist Christendom's limiting force?

Promethean! L'il brother! Let me give you a bear hug!

See the interesting thing is that the Saints of say the Medieval period -- the notion of who and what is holy and also who and what brings forth messages from the Spirit -- has shifted to unlikely vehicles. So then Hamlet and his deeply unsettled spirit, a spirit of striving against lies and hypocrisy and a man, indeed, in the midst of an existential crisis that resounds through ourselves and into the future -- is what he is and what inspires him godly or ungodly?

So then What does it mean to be a Christian? And what even does *Christ* mean? And who can say exactly what the Word is really up to? Who can control it and who can define it? Well, no one!

And then what is that *one direction* that you emphasize? It seems to me more realistic, if what Isaiah has said is given precedence, that there will be a great deal of zig-zag in these processes. But then what is the final object? Naturally, in reference to Hamlet, it is awareness and self-realization. That is what the Word accomplished. That is what it brought forth. And so the question is: Was this and is this demonic or angelic? To what *world* does it pertain?

I gather that what you have done is to have established Nietzsche as Christ's enemy. Naturally, I see the point you make. But this means, of course, that Christ cannot be the Word that Isaiah refers to (intuits). Or to put it another way Christ must necessarily be defined anew to include potentials and manifestations of awareness and intelligence that have made themselves blazingly known.