Christianity

[Alexis Jacobi]

Any 'metaphysician' who knows The Truth is almost certainly a nutcase. Look no further than this forum for examples.

So, it’s just you and me then?

[Alexis Jacobi]

In effect you are looking for an analytic a posteriori proposition.

Something like what you say is probably the case, that is if I understand what you are getting at (and if you do). If I am to refer to my own *experience* (inner experience, intuition, non-rational perception, understanding), yes, in this sense I have been trying to carve out of what is existent (in uncovered idea) a sound base in an ever-shifting world. I wonder if that is not true for everyone. We ‘discover’ what we already ‘know’. It’s that or the Delphic Sibyl . . .

[uwot]

Something like what you say is probably the case, that is if I understand what you are getting at (and if you do).

Welcome back Gus.

[Alexis Jacobi]

I think that if you look to the "Occidental Paideia," then what you're looking to is the same variation of alleged "Christianity" that allowed Hitler to bring institutional religious and moral elements into his program....namely, a soulless religiosity devoid of the life of God. And no, I don't suppose this will "renovate" Europe or anywhere else, though I have no doubt it will promise it will.

I guess this proves the assertion that all roads in their winding eventually lead to a confrontation with Hitler?

I am looking at a title: Early Christianity and Greek Paideia by Werner Jaeger. Another title that had a strong influence on me is Christopher Dawson’s The Historic Reality of Christian Culture: A Way to the Renewal of Human Life. Also The Legacy of Greece edited by RW Livingstone and specifically the included essay on religion by WR Inge.

Everyone that I am aware of, of those who wrote in the Interwar period, have a relationship to the paideia I present (and I use the term as one of convenience: it does mean ‘what we teach to children’ but I mean it as the foundation and the base of our culture).

I understand that you will likely link Werner Jaeger with German and Hitlerian policies, and with fascist and conservative movements in Europe prior to the Second World War; and you will (unless I am wrong) make the assertion that unless the entire culture becomes the sort of Christian that you define yourself as being, that the end result will be a Hitlerian hell.

Yet what I think contradicts this assertion — which is I think connected to your own apologetics — is that there was a similar and related school of thought which is represented by Christopher Dawson, RW Livingstone and WR Inge. And they developed ideas that resisted the sort of madness that overtook Germany and possessed the lunatic you refer to.

However, and I am anticipating what you are trying to say, and also where you seem to want to go, I do not believe it is good for Occidental man — the Indo-Europeans — to come ‘wholly’ under the influence of the Eastern religion, that is to say enthusiastic Christianity. It does not turn out well. If we can be said to have a proper course it is through the sober-headedness of those in the Greek tradition we admire. My view is that this is ‘our Indo-European tradition’. It is our way-of-being. It has to be cultivated and accentuated, not suppressed.

I also believe that each people and each region of the world — my chief concern is Europe (and I obviously extend this to the US, Canada, Australia, etc. and exclude to a certain degree Latin America, for reasons that I can explain) — will and must develop a unique relationship through their own matrix and traditions to Christianity. And in that process they will define, in some sense, a different and distinct Christianity. European Christianity is different from African Christianity, or Latin American Christianity, and these different people (or nations if you will) have different ways of being.

One problem with Christianity is that it proposes a sort of sameness — that everyone must come under the influence of s specific unity in a very specific and indeed regimented way. There are numerous voices (philosophers) within Europe (Alain de Benoist is one) who are not Christians, they are pagans according to their own definition, and they do not like and they resent being imposed on through ‘the religion of the East’ which demands a sort of uniformity. The similarity to Islam has to be seen. We resist Islam because it is totalitarian and leveling and destroys diversity and multiplicity, and strict Christianity is also resisted (as Protestants resist Catholicism I might add) for similar reasons and with sound reasons.

So, I see Occidental Paideia differently than you do, but obviously because if anything I would define myself as Greco-Christian with a definite emphasis on the Greco. I will always tend to throw-off any sort of constraining yoke that I sense in certain Christian forms (the mad Pentecostals for example, or the ‘possession’ that seems to come about in the Southern churches.)

I define an ‘intellectual Christianity’ but obviously incline to a more Johannine and logos-based or logos-oriented definition. I do not think there is another option, for me in any case.

[Immanuel Can]

I think that if you look to the "Occidental Paideia," then what you're looking to is the same variation of alleged "Christianity" that allowed Hitler to bring institutional religious and moral elements into his program....namely, a soulless religiosity devoid of the life of God. And no, I don't suppose this will "renovate" Europe or anywhere else, though I have no doubt it will promise it will.

I guess this proves the assertion that all roads in their winding eventually lead to a confrontation with Hitler?

As you know, they do if you're Jewish.

I understand that you will likely link Werner Jaeger with German and Hitlerian policies, and with fascist and conservative movements in Europe prior to the Second World War;

I didn't. But it's interesting that you suspect that.

...and you will (unless I am wrong) make the assertion that unless the entire culture becomes the sort of Christian that you define yourself as being, that the end result will be a Hitlerian hell.

No, that's not an assertion I've made.

Christianity -- real Christianity -- has no political ambitions, no desire to take over the culture or the political system. Yeshua Himself said, "My kingdom is not of this world." So any version of Christianity that forgets that has gone off the tracks.

Yet what I think contradicts this assertion — which is I think connected to your own apologetics — is that there was a similar and related school of thought which is represented by Christopher Dawson, RW Livingstone and WR Inge. And they developed ideas that resisted the sort of madness that overtook Germany and possessed the lunatic you refer to.

"Righteous Gentiles," the Jewish people call them: most particularly, those who actively rescued people from the Holocaust.

...the sober-headedness of those in the Greek tradition we admire...

Greek culture was only "sober minded" in the imagination of people who read Socrates, and think his cool dialogue represents the general cultural tone. I think you'll find that the ancient Greeks were just as wild, xenophobic, polytheistic, perverted, homicidal and generally vicioius as, say, the Romans. They just lived on a different patch of ground.

Remember that they killed Socrates.

Now, if we could speak of some "Ideal Greek" culture, a sort of "universal university" or something, one unlike the Greek culture that actually existed, I think you might have reason for hope. But a more realistic look at history won't permit that sort of idealizing, I would say.

I also believe that each people and each region of the world — my chief concern is Europe (and I obviously extend this to the US, Canada, Australia, etc. and exclude to a certain degree Latin America, for reasons that I can explain) — will and must develop a unique relationship through their own matrix and traditions to Christianity. And in that process they will define, in some sense, a different and distinct Christianity. European Christianity is different from African Christianity, or Latin American Christianity, and these different people (or nations if you will) have different ways of being.

Christianity itself is trans-cultural, in that it does not liquidate the cultures in which it arrives; far from it, it tends to meld with them and sustain them, as sociologists like Lamin Saneh have shown in the case of Sub-Saharan Africa, for instance. At the same time, there are elements of Christianity (just as there are in Judaism, say) that are non-negotiables: supercultural features that the receptor culture must surrender, in order to be authentically Christian.

So, for example, there's no problem with whether or not baptism is performed in a special tank or a public swimming pool, in a lake, a wadi, a ditch, a river, a culvert, the ocean...all are options, with the only question being, what's on hand? There is no special "Christianness" to any of those answers, and any culture is free to innovate, in that regard.

In contrast, consider something like polytheism. No Christian and no Jew can be a polytheist. It's simply outside of the basic definition of what it means to be a Christian, and it's outside what it means to be an observant or devout Jew, even if the genetic link remains. That's what I mean by "supercultural non-negotiables."

One problem with Christianity is that it proposes a sort of sameness — that everyone must come under the influence of s specific unity in a very specific and indeed regimented way.

That's a very Catholic perspective. "Catholic," as you may know, means "universal": it's a group whose prime claim is to universal authority. I have made no such claim, and wouldn't. What I would say, which the Catholics would not, is that the authority is Scripture, and that any "universality" of the truth must be by free belief of what is the truth. I do not believe in imposing a culture on anyone, nor any political program.

That's why your concern and mine are also a little different: your interest seems to be (correct me if I'm wrong) in saving a culture. Mine is in saving a soul.

I will always tend to throw-off any sort of constraining yoke that I sense in certain Christian forms (the mad Pentecostals for example, or the ‘possession’ that seems to come about in the Southern churches.)

So you should. Likewise, I'm sure.

I define an ‘intellectual Christianity’ but obviously incline to a more Johannine and logos-based or logos-oriented definition. I do not think there is another option, for me in any case.

Christianity, I would say, can certainly be "intellectual" in the best sense: after all, it's occupied much scholarship, intelligence and theorizing in the Western tradition for 2,000 years -- far longer, when one considers the Jewish tradition, too. There is no subject matter upon which the human race has expended more thought, care and attention, and no force which has contributed so much to things like the arts, law, charity, technology and morality. Fair enough.

But in another sense, Christianity can never be merely "intellectual." That is, in the cold, distant sense of the word, where one tries to stand all the way back and take stock of a thing as if it were an alien object. Any understanding of Christianity that does not get to the heart, and which requires no personal decisions, is just bound to be empty, dead and ultimately superficial.

And I think that's deliberate, on God's part. He does not let human beings ever treat Him like a mere object for their inspection, or as a lab specimen. He will not let you hear His voice and remain unmoved. Instead, one always has the alternative of hearing His voice, or hearing nothing at all.

If one wants to know God, one always has to let the truth hit home with oneself. One has to listen to obey, not merely listen to reason-out. That is becaust the thing God most fervently requires of us is our personal relationship to Him. And that relationship is entirely contingent on us coming to him on the terms that make such a relationship even possible.

I think that you will always find that those who refuse that get no knowledge worth having.

[Alexis Jacobi]

I didn't. But it's interesting that you suspect that.

A point of clarification:

I suspected that -- which is to say that I attempted to divine (and guessing often does not hit the mark in forum exchanges as we all know) -- that you linked the term Occidental Paideia to Werner Jaeger who lived and taught in Germany prior to leaving, or perhaps escaping, in 1939. 'Occidental paideia' is a term associated with Jaeger. You read a good deal so I figured you might have known.

There are questions about Werner Jaeger's affiliations and at times he is associated with Heidegger. He attempts to define a wider humanism with his notion of Occidental paideia and for some the term 'humanism' is highly suspect. Just as now the term *Occidental* is suspect.

I speak about Occidental Paideia . . . and you bring up references to Hitler. For this reason what I suspected was not very outlandish. Nor is it that interesting that I made this connection.

[Immanuel Can]

You read a good deal so I figured you might have known.

I didn't, actually.

There are questions about Werner Jaeger's affiliations and at times he is associated with Heidegger. He attempts to define a wider humanism with his notion of Occidental paideia and for some the term 'humanism' is highly suspect. Just as now the term *Occidental* is suspect.

I do think they're both pretty dodgy terms. But in my mind, I had not associated either with Hitler.

I speak about Occidental Paideia . . . and you bring up references to Hitler.

Coincidentally. The anticipation you had was grounded in what you knew about Jaeger's history, apparently. I did not know that, and raised the spectre of Hitler in a different context and with a different purpose. But I accept that there's perhaps a link there.

What I was objecting to was superficial, quasi-Christian religiosity, which was the very thing that allowed the institutional church's Concordat with Hitler. For me, it's the "righteous Gentiles" who are the heroes of that story: they were the only people who were even nominally "Christian" who have a right to look at themselves squarely in the mirror after the Holocaust.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Christianity -- real Christianity -- has no political ambitions, no desire to take over the culture or the political system. Yeshua Himself said, "My kingdom is not of this world." So any version of Christianity that forgets that has gone off the tracks.

The figure Jesus said many different things, and those many different things all have to become subject to hermeneutical processes. How things are interpreted is, as I have mentioned, a crucial and a fraught endeavor. Obviously the word is linked to Hermes and to an idea of translation from one realm to another. Dodd goes into this in his analysis of the Johannine Gospel. By reference to "Hermes" I am not referring to a god, I am referring to the way a certain mind is constructed. The 'lens' through which any one of us views the world. All lenses are not the same. Nor can they be, nor should they be.

If you were to have said "Any version of Christianity that forgets that has gone off the tracks, according to me (or my understanding)" I would have felt differently about your statement!

I cannot go along with you and your assertion that you define the 'real Christianity'. It implies that other versions are not real. I do understand how you employ hard logic however. (And once we had a conversation about 'predicates' and about 'predication').

Whereas in my view there is so many necessarily uncertain areas about numerous doctrinal points. A sober-headed view is needed and also better. Put another way I would say that that is my view and one based on a somewhat wide reading of the views of others.

There are simply too many points of view on 'the kingdom'. But don't interpret what I say as disrespect of you personally. I admire people who have strong positions and defend them. And you are certainly capable of and interested in defining your views.

My view is this: It is precisely because some Christians place so much emphasis on 'afterworld' and 'heavenly world' and a world beyond this world, that a conflict arises within the Indo-European person or Indo-European sensibility. I do not see the Greek mind, or the Greek soul, as being highly inclined to placing great, or perhaps the larger portion, of emphasis on the life beyond this life. In a way it is not 'manly'.

The reason I say this (I am by no means the first to notice it) is because I have made at least some effort to examine the existential ethic (for want of a better word) of that Indo-European person. It is hard to find sources but I did find one in The Culture of the Teutons by Vilhelm Grönbech (a Dane, and the volumes were written around 1909). What I learned when I read it (a part of it -- it is comprised of two volumes and is extensive) is that the foundation of existential understanding for the Indo-European is essentially different from that of, in this case, those of the Eastern religions. That difference of view, that different focus of emphasis, is the difference that makes all the difference. Europe was created out of that sensibility and focus. And this is how it should be.

The bedrock of the Indo-European soul, the Indo-European man, the Indo-European existential ethics, is in a view which places core value in this life. I do not think that this necessarily negates that another view -- for example Hamlet's concern over 'What dreams may come' -- is not real, or possible, or possible, or definite, but I do not think it leads to productive outcomes when or if one disassociates oneself from this life through the otherworldly manoeuvre. It can be rather neurotic.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Greek culture was only "sober minded" in the imagination of people who read Socrates, and think his cool dialogue represents the general cultural tone. I think you'll find that the ancient Greeks were just as wild, xenophobic, polytheistic, perverted, homicidal and generally vicioius as, say, the Romans. They just lived on a different patch of ground.

This does not change the fact of Greek sobriety -- as an ideal. It is an Ideal that has had, and should have, a great influence. That sober idealism can be referred to, admired, sought after and also imitated.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Remember that they killed Socrates.

It is also equally possible to say ... he killed himself. (But I get your point).

[Alexis Jacobi]

Christianity itself is trans-cultural, in that it does not liquidate the cultures in which it arrives; far from it, it tends to meld with them and sustain them, as sociologists like Lamin Saneh have shown in the case of Sub-Saharan Africa, for instance. At the same time, there are elements of Christianity (just as there are in Judaism, say) that are non-negotiables: supercultural features that the receptor culture must surrender, in order to be authentically Christian.

Some posts back I referenced The Homeric Gods by Walter F. Otto. It is true that Christianity, as a cultural imposition, supplanted the telluric gods of Europe. And it is true that a different structure of view, in so many different categories, superseded and in that sense ended what we might refer to as worship of those gods. Yet I think we know enough now to understand -- as Jung might say -- that they do not quite or absolutely disappear. They tend to 'go underground' and yet they still can be seen, or felt. The telluric gods are generally associated with nature-process. And the arrival of Christianity, or Judaism, or Jainism, or Buddhism, does not fundamentally change Nature, which remains the same. To the degree that Man is a product of nature, these telluric gods exist and I think will always exist.

The 'Christian idea' therefore has to be, I think, clarified, refined, adjusted, as also integrated and lived in accord with.

You might think I am trying to be difficult? That is not what I am up to. If as you say Christianity does not liquidate the cultures in which it arrives (this point is debated by those who become subject to its arrival!), then you are, at least, seeing and understanding the point I wish to make and which I feel has validity: A given people will incorporate, or adapt, or adjust, to a powerful idea-set that comes to bear on them. But they will each do it in their own way.

I focus on the way that Europe did this, and Indo-Europeans, and I have (I guess I would put it like this) admiration for what they achieved. But my real point and a larger point is that I recognize that I am *an outcome* of what they did, or what was done.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Coincidentally. The anticipation you had was grounded in what you knew about Jaeger's history, apparently. I did not know that, and raised the spectre of Hitler in a different context and with a different purpose. But I accept that there's perhaps a link there.

OK, but I think that the reason we are even talking about this -- about Christianity, about Europe, about paideia, about cultural renovation, about nationalism, about existential definitions and also what sort of religious observance of spiritual life one will have -- is because all of this stuff has come up so strongly in the last 10 years or so.

The issue, the question, is how all of these manifestations will be, and are being, interpreted. (Nationalism, race-conflict, social disagreement, division, identity-politics, CRT, anti-liberalism, religion, fascism, etc.)

I am not opposed to going right to the core of the issue and concern. The reason is, I think, because the spectre of a very real, and a very dangerous, totalitarianism is very much on the horizon. But it appears quite different from what one would think. It is literally, not metaphorically, showing itself. We can refer to Jacques Ellul in this context if you wish. The rise of the capability of a hyper-controlling technology in the hands of powerful *elite* interests.

So what I notice is that while there is a great clamor of concerned voices about, say, Richard Spencer or perhaps Victor Orban, or Rassemblement national (National Rally) in France, or theories of 'great replacement', there is actually a surveillance state that has already arisen and is, at least I think so, far more dangerous.

[Immanuel Can]

Christianity -- real Christianity -- has no political ambitions, no desire to take over the culture or the political system. Yeshua Himself said, "My kingdom is not of this world." So any version of Christianity that forgets that has gone off the tracks.

The figure Jesus said many different things, and those many different things all have to become subject to hermeneutical processes.

Well, hermeneutics can be used, like many things, for good or ill. They are the process by which right interpretation is achieved; but lately, they've been employed for quite a different purpose, namely, for obscuring the obvious truth. People say, "Well, it's all interpretation," so that they don't have to listen to what is plainly being said. And I think that in this context, it's quite clear what Christ was speaking about.

If you were to have said "Any version of Christianity that forgets that has gone off the tracks, according to me (or my understanding)" I would have felt differently about your statement!

I'd go farther: I'd say, "Anybody who forgets that has a huge hermeneutical burded to explain away both the plain meaning of the words and the context in which they are located, and that "according to me," I don't think they can do it.

But they're welcome to try. I've just never seen it done successfully.

I cannot go along with you and your assertion that you define the 'real Christianity'. It implies that other versions are not real.

Well, Christ determines what "real Christian" means. And if my understanding varies from His, then I'm the one who's got it wrong. And Christ Himself defined the terms of true discipleship. So who am I to contradict Him?

I do understand how you employ hard logic however. (And once we had a conversation about 'predicates' and about 'predication').

Logic is a very good thing, of course.

Whereas in my view there is so many necessarily uncertain areas about numerous doctrinal points.

Well, I think that drilling down on those points could be useful. After all, everything always looks foggy until one focuses. Then, sometimes things become much more clear.

Some things are genuinely doctrinally tricky. But much that people take to be disputable is really not. Rather, they choose to keep the whole issue in fuzzy focus so that they can avoid the conclusions toward which they would otherwise be compelled. So we have to beware of that strategy. And it is in this context that appeal to "hermeneutics" is sometimes badly abused.

There are simply too many points of view on 'the kingdom'. But don't interpret what I say as disrespect of you personally. I admire people who have strong positions and defend them. And you are certainly capable of and interested in defining your views.

I know about "kingdom" controversies. I do not think they are so vexed as some people want us to think.

My view is this: It is precisely because some Christians place so much emphasis on 'afterworld' and 'heavenly world' and a world beyond this world, that a conflict arises within the Indo-European person or Indo-European sensibility.

I'm not sure that makes much sense. But if you can explain it, I'll happily consider it.

What I have found is the opposite: that "afterworld" thinking is comparatively rare, and not typical even among the many who dub themselves "religious" or even "Christian." But that those who are most convinced of it are among the finest people -- and most useful and humane people -- you will ever meet.

I do not see the Greek mind, or the Greek soul, as being highly inclined to placing great, or perhaps the larger portion, of emphasis on the life beyond this life. In a way it is not 'manly'.

That's a Stoic sort of perspective. They took the horizons of this life as ultimate, and Fate as this sort of irresistible juggernaut. To be "manly" was to accept the fact of one's inevitable death, in their thinking. But it's horribly fatalistic, as well, and let to a stoic attitude to many things that deserved compassion and alleviation rather than fatal resignation.

I think the "manly" part of Stoicism is the willingness to live and die for one's beliefs. But, as somebody I can't remember once said, "A thing is not made true simply because some fool dies for it." To live and die for one's beliefs is a thing which is only so good as the beliefs for which one lives and dies.

There are many things for which one can live, die, and be "manly." To live and die for the honour of God is the greatest of these. Next to that, dying for Fate is a fool's errand. That was the problem with the Stoics.

But "manliness" -- that deserves its own discussion. For I sense that you share with me, perhaps, the view that we are not being shown a very admirable model of masculinity these days, but that "manly" virtues have much to commend them, so long as they are truly manly.

...the foundation of existential understanding for the Indo-European is essentially different from that of, in this case, those of the Eastern religions...

Interesting. In what way?

The bedrock of the Indo-European soul, the Indo-European man, the Indo-European existential ethics, is in a view which places core value in this life. I do not think that this necessarily negates that another view -- for example Hamlet's concern over 'What dreams may come' -- is not real, or possible, or possible, or definite, but I do not think it leads to productive outcomes when or if one disassociates oneself from this life through the otherworldly manoeuvre. It can be rather neurotic.

Do you know who else was fully convinced that core values all had to be located in this life? Karl Marx. I don't think such a belief automatically led him to good things, do you?

However, I agree that if an effete other-worldliness was the only possible product of belief in the afterlife, we'd have a problem. However, that's not how it actually plays out. Only a person who can relativize this world's benefits to the higher goods of the next is capable of risking investing his life in a cause. And such people have proved the ultimate in manliness.

Or, as Jesus said, “If anyone wants to come after Me, he must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow Me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it; for what good will it do a person if he gains the whole world, but forfeits his soul? Or what will a person give in exchange for his soul?" (Matt. 16:24-26)

[Immanuel Can]

Coincidentally. The anticipation you had was grounded in what you knew about Jaeger's history, apparently. I did not know that, and raised the spectre of Hitler in a different context and with a different purpose. But I accept that there's perhaps a link there.

OK, but I think that the reason we are even talking about this -- about Christianity, about Europe, about paideia, about cultural renovation, about nationalism, about existential definitions and also what sort of religious observance of spiritual life one will have -- is because all of this stuff has come up so strongly in the last 10 years or so.

Oh yes...definitely.

The reason is, I think, because the spectre of a very real, and a very dangerous, totalitarianism is very much on the horizon. But it appears quite different from what one would think. It is literally, not metaphorically, showing itself. We can refer to Jacques Ellul in this context if you wish. The rise of the capability of a hyper-controlling technology in the hands of powerful *elite* interests.

I totally agree.

Right now, I'm reading Dr. Joost Meerlo's treatise The Rape of the Mind: The Psychology of Thought Control, Menticide and Brainwashing. It was written almost half a century ago, and yet the dangers of which it warns could easily have been culled from the internet this morning. The techniques of mass manipulation do not themselves change, though the tools that are being used to achieve them are more sophisticated today. One comes away from his book with the overwhelming recognition that we are "being had," and "had" in the worst way, by our elites.

Next to me, on my desk, is a copy of The WEF's "Covid 19: The Great Reset." If it were not enough that guys like Ellul (who had his own study on propaganda, which I also have) and Meerlo were warning us, the imperious fools at Davos are coming right out and publishing their totalitarian intentions -- a grimy Socialism for the masses, privilege and elitism for them, is the sum of it. It's almost hard to believe that such rogues still crawl between heaven and earth...and these, today are our leaders and heads of technology...

God help us.

So what I notice is that while there is a great clamor of concerned voices about, say, Richard Spencer or perhaps Victor Orban, or Rassemblement national (National Rally) in France, or theories of 'great replacement', there is actually a surveillance state that has already arisen and is, at least I think so, far more dangerous.

I could not agree with you more. That's exactly right. Good call.

[Belinda]

Remember that they killed Socrates.

It is also equally possible to say ... he killed himself. (But I get your point).

Both of these perspectives also point at Jesus. Jesus and Socrates both had integrity . To what were they both faithful unto death ?