Christianity

[Immanuel Can]

Is Alexis an upset Jew still wondering when the Messiah is "popping down" (as in Je_wish)?

I don't know.

He seems to want to self-present as well-informed on "cultural trends," and especially about "the Christian West," or Europe. And some of the books he cites are good ones; though he doesn't seem to be nearly so astute about what "culture" or "Christianity" are as he wants people to think he is; and he's fragile when you test his ideas. He won't defend them properly...that's when he goes ad hom, though he calls it, "getting the context" of somebody's remarks.

What's his agenda? Who really knows?

[attofishpi]

Mmm.

Sad, but I think it's Mossad.

(just kidding around Alexis, love ya work..please don't assassinate any of us)

[Immanuel Can]

Mmm.

Sad, but I think it's Mossad.

(just kidding around Alexis, love ya work..please don't assassinate any of us)

Come to think of it, his complete, indifference to the particulars of Christianity could be explained by that...

I mean, if you don't think a belief system has anything profound to offer, why would one be inclined to parse what one assumes must be mere details? One might well just treat the whole thing as a solid lump, since none of the particulars would matter much to one anyway...

The problem for Jewish people, though, is going to be that there is a very profound difference between "Christians" of a supersessionist background and those with a more literal or dispensational hermeneutic. Knowing the difference could well eventually literally be a matter of life and death, as it was in the Shoah. The Catholic's concordat with Hitler was only possible because of their belief in progressive, post-Biblical, papal "revelations," and their supersessionist reading of the Old Testament. Otherwise, they could never have justified it. In truly Christian terms, they never could.

So if a Jewish person doesn't care about these subtleties, he sure should.

[Alexis Jacobi]

What's his agenda? Who really knows?

Only God knows.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Immanuel Can (the sole true Christian here)

Are you being facetious?

Immanuel Can holds to the most traditional and I could say the classic definition of Christianity. In that sense and beyond doubt he defines himself, ipso facto, as a true Christian. But I am speaking in terms of strict and literal doctrine.

If you (if one) cannot any longer believe in that doctrinal set in a literalist sense then one is a post-Christian. You (one) might still have a relationship with Christianity and be involved with it — but on another level.

IC seems to feel (you IC seem to feel) that I have done something low and ‘cheap’. Not so. What I have done — it is personal — is to have been forced in facing literalism to have clarified my views.

[henry quirk]

What you recommend is sort of folksy advice.

You see folksy where I've simply stripped away obstacles. If religion, Christianity specifically, is about man's relationship with God, your critical movements, your trends in theology, are impediments.

If God requires interpretation by authority for a common man to apprehend Him, then He has a rather large problem, doesn't He?

No, if God is God, He requires no intermediaries, no interpreters, no middlemen. As God, He, I think, would have a really clear understanding of the dangers of allowin' somebody else to run His PR dept.

As I say: my interest is less in the divinity and more in the practical Christian morality. Here too, all your wordly trends and movements seem to be of little consequence. Nuthin' of the trends and movements, these churches and congregations, these shifty and shifting dynamicisms, clears the path for one man to live morally.

No, all that falderol is, as I say, impediment.

it does not in any sense get to the heart of the problem of a collapse of faith. And it does not in any sense speak to what has occurred in the culture over the last 100-150 years.

I believe you've bought into fiction, Alexis: the fiction of a coherent, cohesive Christian culture; the fiction of communal faith.

The Roman Catholic Church of course is a cultural force (and, at its height, a brutal one) but despite past and present displays of that force it was never the catalyst for, or the sustainer of, coherency or cohesion. It was and is primarily a political entity (replace Uncle Sam with Jesus on the recruitment poster and you've nutshell'd it). I have no grudge with the Church but I can only see it for what it is: as I say, a political entity wearin' Christian trappings as both enticement (this way to Salvation!) and threat (this way to Salvation, or else!).

Fundamentally, the Church has little to do with Christianity (one man's relationship with God, and, one livin' morally).

Touchin' briefly on cultural collapse: it does not seem to me this is necessarily a bad thing (we've been livin' in an iteration of the Roman Empire for quite a long time, haven't we? Me, I'm ready, past ready, to be out from under its heel. You?), but it is a thing, exploitable by anyone with a mind to. I'm all for gettin' minimal and leavin' folks to sink or swim within the broad borders of what is permitted and prohibited by a recognition of, and respect for, individual natural rights (I am mine, you are yours, neither of us has any claim on the other). But, as established, I'm superficial & folksy, unaware of, perhaps incapable of being aware of, the oh-so important minutia you invest yourself in and that is important to you.

Pretty much: if you advertise for masters, you'll have masters. Seems to me you're clamorin' for one. Each to his own.

What are you talking about when you yourself do not believe in any part of the picture that is revealed in the Gospels? But you are giving advice about how Christianity is to be understood? On what basis?

Just a heathen tossin' two cents on the table: that's me. Not a one is obligated to pay attention to a deist holdin' forth. Up to now, no one has.

That might be true for very simple people, and certainly for people who may only have or have had the Gospels to read. Yet I can assure you that the issue is a great deal more complex than what you present.

No, it's not. This thread has entertained and taught me. The back & forth between you and Mannie was revealin' of so much. But everything laid atop Christianity (naturally and forced) doesn't, can't, define what is plain and direct about it. Yes, we simple people as we plow our fields and live our lives and celebrate our simple pleasures and worry over our plain little problems, yes, we look for the root of it. And we wonder, why folks such as yourself are hellbent on stayin' well away from that root. If Christianity is true: the Gospel ought be enough. And yet you, a Christian, say it is not.

Curious.

-----

And you seem very much on the outside of contemporary socio-political conversations that are going on around us now. That is, how the Right and the so-called Far-Right ground their reactionary attitudes. Or how the Left and the so-called Far Left orient themselves within post-Christian categories.

This is true. The superficial & folksy lens thru which I see the world is not at all immersed in what seems to me to be titanic struggles to decide who gets to put his boot on which guy's face. All these ridiculous categories (most prominent, least defined, bein' the Left and the Right), these are boondoggles. Perhaps it takes a superficial & folksy head not to be taken in by it all.

Why must you insist that the only area that interests you is the one that I or others must interest in?

I don't believe I've done anything but ask questions and attempt to make a point. As I say, not a one has an obligation to answer or take my point to heart. You've made it clear I'm a trifle and yet here we are, makin' with the back & forth. Mebbe your intent was to bulldog me into shuttin' up? Put me in my place? Obviously, I'm too superficial & folksy to be moved that way.

As far as I am aware I am the only one who has written about 'degraded culture' and 'lack of agreement'.

Oh, several, in their own ways, thru their own lens, have touched on it.

And I personally have a difficult time relating to or even locating the 'personality of Jesus' and, no, Jesus is not very 'iconic' for me (personally).

An interestin', and, I think, damning, admission.

[Immanuel Can]

Immanuel Can holds to the most traditional and I could say the classic definition of Christianity.

Only in the sense that I hold that Christ Himself is the prototype and decider of what a "Christian" is.

I see that in contrast, you accept all the accretions and additions upon that term made by unprincipled men as necessary parts of the final definition. So my definition is indeed "classic" and criterial; and yours is postmodern and infinitely flexible...if you actually have a definition at all, which is very difficult to discern.

...he defines himself, ipso facto, as a true Christian.

As "a Christian," and a real one, yes, of course; but not as the prototype of one, not as perfect, not as superior to others. Indeed, I am certain there are far better Christians than I am...but only inasmuch as they are more obedient to Christ's teachings and more personally conformed to the Divine prototype of Christ, not if they have abandoned those teachings for the doctrines of men.

And the Bible says that's how it is, too. (Col. 2:18-19, for example)

But I am speaking in terms of strict and literal doctrine.

The strict and literal is as the above.

If you (if one) cannot any longer believe in that doctrinal set in a literalist sense then one is a post-Christian.

If you do that, then you were never a Christian in the first place. See 1 John 2:19.

You (one) might still have a relationship with Christianity and be involved with it — but on another level.

That level is what's called "apostacy," yet another Biblical label.

IC seems to feel (you IC seem to feel) that I have done something low and ‘cheap’. Not so. What I have done — it is personal — is to have been forced in facing literalism to have clarified my views.

It is not clarifying of your views that is "cheap." It's recourse to the gratuitiously ad hominem that is cheap and beneath a person of reason. It is, transparently, a deflection from the issues in hand (clarifying your own views) to throwing mud at others, in the hopes that in the ensuing confusion of defensive moves, your interlocutor will forget to call you to account for those views on a rational basis.

In other words, it's an anti-philosophical strategy, not a rational objection -- far less a "clarification."

Now, if you gave over the anti-philosophical strategies, you'd be a better philosopher. But you'd also find yourself having to make a better rational defense or "clarification" of your views...a thing you actually seem at pains not to be asked to do.

So again, I would ask for your criterial definition of "Christian." What makes a "Christian," and what makes a person not one, according to your "clarified" view?

[Alexis Jacobi]

AJ: If you suddenly lose your sense of forward motion, and in this sense if a Belief in God in a full metaphysical sense gives you a forward motion (in ethics, culture, in your building projects on Earth, and your eventual translation to 'the fruitful fields of Heaven), but then hits the Brick Wall I refer to, what will happen to you? That is you as a being in motion and with a trajectory? The metaphor implies 'going splat', right? It implies having your forward motion stopped abruptly.

This isn't a bad observation for nominalists. It's actually a very good one, and apt, I would say.

Lewis refers to this phenomenon as "the religion of all good men," meaning, "the belief that all men are good, that all good men are nominally 'Christian' and that all one has to do to convince oneself that one is "good' is to be civlilized, part of the culture, and nominally "Christian."

This was descriptive of the kind of pseudo-Christianity in Lewis's England. There's little reason to think it was better elsewhere, though the proportion of sincere belief may have been as good in places like America. In any case, what's clear is that there were two types of people operating under the banner "Christian" those who really were, and those who only nominally were. It does not take any genuis to see that the same phenomenon could be described in any religious or ideological camp: there are always those who believe in a firmly, and those who believe in only a superficial sense. But in Christianity's case, the division is exacerbated all the more between the start division between the two. In other ideologies, there may be more of a gradient. Still, the two kinds exist everywhere.

I don't disagree that it was that sort of nominalism that gave impetus to Western culture, or that the loss of it made Western civilization "go splat," in a manner of speaking: I simply point out that nothing in that "religion of all good men" was actually Christian at all. Thus, those who "lost their faith" in that moment were mere nominalists, cultural pseudo-Christians with no deep faith at all.

From here on out I will only be able to speak toward Immanuel Can in the third person. The reason is that he seems to have taken many things, many statements, many attempts at clarification, and in my view the truth about things, as personal attacks. I understand this because when one's internal edifice is assaulted, be it through sincerity or through insincere or malicious violence, the structure on which the self sits is threatened. And when threatened at this level there is always reaction.

So to avoid that I will take a more distant position. I have no desire to offend anyone nor to put anyone down (as the popular saying goes). I am involved in a project of getting clear about what is going on now in our culture and this means also knowing, understanding, what is going on within individuals (and that is what 'context' refers to).

Dubious says that things must be expressed more succinctly. Impossible. It is not possible to solve convolution and complexity through simplistic reductions. And everything about our present, and about ourselves, is convoluted and complex. I assume that no one here will have the sustaining power to keep alert and interested here. Sleepy intellects! But that is not so much as it should be but the way it is! If you cannot pay attention to 'what is going on' and why it is going on, and if you essentially have no real and persevering interest in the issues, then (and here I will refer to Gurdjieff with a wink and a nod to Nick) then go the hell back to sleep.

My reference-point going forward will be solely the introduction to Philip Rieff's The Triumph of the Therapeutic: Uses of Faith After Freud. An extremely brief summary is that when the possibility of belief that was formerly defined as *Christian* collapsed, and indeed it collapsed, that the inevitable result was 'turning inward' through perspectives and actions defined as psychological. And this is what 'the therapeutic' refers to. What is therapeutic has penetrated exceedingly profoundly into the fibres of our culture. In a sense it is a New Anthropology. Who will understand this right at the outset? Few. Because where we have wound up and why we have wound up there is not an easy topic. It is convoluted and complex. Deal with it.

Lewis refers to this phenomenon as "the religion of all good men," meaning, "the belief that all men are good, that all good men are nominally 'Christian' and that all one has to do to convince oneself that one is "good' is to be civilized, part of the culture, and nominally "Christian."

Immanuel Can misses the point: Christianity as a possible belief-system has collapsed. It lies in ruins. It will not be recovered. And for all Lewis's eloquent and thoughtful expression, which made for provocative reading, he did not stop or modify the current as it pulled down the 'edifice'. The edifice collapsed. That is my position and my view but it is not my *choice*. By noting this I do not 'make it so'. In the Occident it is largely the case.

It does not take any genuis to see that the same phenomenon could be described in any religious or ideological camp: there are always those who believe in a firmly, and those who believe in only a superficial sense. But in Christianity's case, the division is exacerbated all the more between the stark division between the two. In other ideologies, there may be more of a gradient. Still, the two kinds exist everywhere.

I can certainly agree with Immanuel Can that within any religious community there will be (and there certainly still are) those who manage to 'believe sincerely' and with strength and vigor. However, this does not change the fact that within the larger corporate body, and within those who hold to a new and emergent metaphysics (I define science and psychology as 'new metaphysics' and the new belief system, still emerging, as also being a sort-of metaphysics), that the possibility of belief through the Former Picture has 'vanished into thin air'.

Those who manage to hold to the former belief system -- and this must be taken to mean those who explain their belief through literal reference to the Old Stories as embodying truth in an historical sense -- only manage to do so by an act of the will. They must, and quite literally, believe things impossible to believe in order to keep the general cloth of their belief intact. (And again the reference is to a literal belief in the Adam & Eve story. The first and core fiction is there and many additional fictions have been layered over those that comprise the core).

These are the fact my children! It is a rough road for those who are stuck in literalism. It is not that much easier however for those who can handle the nuances of allegory! What about the 'theo-poetic? That remains an option except it is a rather fragile one. Language-management cannot sustain a collapsed structure.

The only way out is through. Now, let me pose this question: What does going through and getting through mean to each one who writes here? I assert that no one of you can avoid forward movement. You are in forward movement even if that movement appears as backward-going.

Thus, those who "lost their faith" in that moment were mere nominalists, cultural pseudo-Christians with no deep faith at all.

This is actually a trick of rhetorical usage. Obviously, within a cultish setting, there are still people who through an act of their will choose or force themselves to believe fictions (to take the Story as literal). I grant that. It is, I have asserted, the manoeuvre and the strategy to which Immanuel Can committed himself lo the many years.

But to say that those who could no longer believe the fictions -- and Heaven knows there are fictions piled upon fictions -- therefore show themselves as (naughty term) nominalists -- this does not follow. Through pursuit of the truth fictions are overturned. They are seen through. And as a result Man at a soul level must reorient himself. That is a truthful and an honest endeavor.

To have 'lost faith' will necessarily provoke a 'recovery of faith'. But the question here is How? In what way? Through forcing oneself to re-reside in punctured mythology? Or in a real and honest assessment of 'what happened'?

Here is the point that I suggest that Immanuel Can is involved in lies and lying. In order to believe in those things which can only be believed through a (childish) effort of the will is how I define this particular and peculiar dishonesty.

But how then can one 'have faith'? And then to what are we to 'have faith'? Faith in what exactly? You see these things must be fairly, reasonably, clearly and honestly explained.

[Walker]

I reckon most who pipe up n this thread have no clue what his principles (metaphysical or practical) actually are. They know what they've been told, is all.

He [I assume he means AJ?} doesn't have any such idea himself. He's just spitballing.

He hasn't even a clue what the difference might be between a professing "Christian" and a real one.

He certainly has no idea who Christ is...and apparently, is more interested in his fantasy versions than in reality.

Spitballing:

Spitballing is throwing out ideas for discussion, brainstorming, expressing solutions to a problem in order to see how they are received. Spitballing is not a definitive solution or conclusion, and is often not taken seriously. The word spitball was first used in the 1700s to mean a tool to blacken one’s boots. Later, the word spitball was used to mean a chewed up wad of paper used as a missile by a child. Still later, a spitball was a certain type of baseball pitch that involved applying spit to the ball to make it wobble. Spitballing came into use as early as the 1930s, and perhaps earlier. The exact origin is in dispute, but most people believe in originated in the advertising business. Related words are spitball, spitballs, spitballed.

I address this mostly to Henry:

As we all well know there is only one true and say classically defined Christian here and that is Immanuel Can. Immanuel Can knows the 'real truth'' and therefore he can speak with genuine authority. There is no other classically oriented Christian and there are numerous post-Christians -- except perhaps Nick.

But Nick is, and I think must be seen by Immanuel Can (the sole true Christian here) a bit unorthodox (no pun intended here!) given that he can, and does, incorporate Platonic thought (symbols & ideas) and also Gurdjieffian ideas -- and those ideas have a non-traditional origin and are certainly well on the outside of accepted, doctrinal Christianity. So in this sense Nick's position is also post-Christian but in a sense of being post-Orthodox (Greek Church) Christian.

His central idea is that Christianity -- and I gather the figure of Christ? -- heralds an evolutionary step not just for one person but for humankind. He seems to downplay the notion of a 'personal God' though. I am uncertain to what degree he would define Jesus Christ as a man/god. As God the Father (the sole and only one) incarnated into a human body and for a specific purpose of freeing man from a specific sort of bondage.

What Dubious is is harder to get at. He keeps himself shrouded. All that I have heard him say is that the universe is infinitely huge and that atoms & molecules coalesced somehow into what we are and what we see.

Belinda is also a post-Christian who reinterprets Christ into the only image she can conceive. An activist really. Certainly not a 'divine man' since, I gather, any conventional theological definition she does not hold. She seems to have translated her contextual social and cultural Christianity, seen through English political lenses (post-war) into a sort of social doctrine. She might have the most in common with some exponents of Liberation Theology.

Now a correction: I certainly do know what the "principles (metaphysical or practical) actually are" in relation to Christian belief and understanding. I have a clear grasp of the metaphysical principles upon which the beliefs are grounded and I very definitely have a clear sense of the practical and ethical admonitions.

But what I have said must be included and understood if what I think and believe is to be fairly and accurately represented. It is this: What Christianity is is a 'picture', a scenario, you could even call it a dramatic play, that is enacted within the Gospel narratives. The audience of that drama is the reader. However, when these Gospels were first read it was only by a literary élite. And therefore the meaning in them was translated into terms that could be socially applied. And that is what Christianity is substantially: rules and regulations provided within an elaborated 'picture' (the drama of the Gospels). The Gospels are 'apologetic enactments' into which a reader enters and, depending on his or her character, believes in what is communicated to varying degrees.

If I say this must this mean that I do not, or cannot, regard them as they are presented as being? That is, absolute, sacred, revelations? Presently, I am inclined to believe just that. As I have said numerous times I do not regard the picture as being where the truth is. The truth exists, if it ever existed, and if in fact it does exist, independent of any Story. And narrative. And vehicle through which certain truths are revealed.

In contradistinction, and this is important to state clearly, Immanuel Can believes absolutely and literally in the drama as it is presented through the Gospel stories. And he goes even further: He believes not only in those dramas but also in the truthfulness and accuracy of other parts of the Bible stories, specifically the Genesis story. These are not stories or allegories, but descriptions of 'real events' in real time and as parts of Earth history.

I reckon most who pipe up in this thread have no clue what his principles (metaphysical or practical) actually are. They know what they've been told, is all.

If this is so then what you-plural must necessarily do is to listen to others who do know what those principles -- metaphysical and practical -- actually are. If when you or they 'pipe up' about those principles, or in relation to them, everything that you-plural say will be, can only be, guesses at best and distortions at worst.

Please understand that I am just trying to clarify what is really going on.

If I say this must this mean that I do not, or cannot, regard them as they are presented as being? That is, absolute, sacred, revelations? Presently, I am inclined to believe just that. As I have said numerous times I do not regard the picture as being where the truth is. The truth exists, if it ever existed, and if in fact it does exist, independent of any Story. And narrative. And vehicle through which certain truths are revealed.

They are sacred revelations because they are accurate statements and explanations of natural causation; and natural causation includes unbounded intercession by God, which is how Moses parted the sea, how David defeated Goliath with inevitable consequences, how Daniel walked amongst the lions, and so on.

The specifics of those incidents have been applied to imagined conditions in another time and place, but the principles that shape the specifics of outcome are the natural laws of physics, natural laws which include intercessions by God. When the outcome of these intercessions are incomprehensible (unrecognized order), then to fit into the limitations of ignorance they can be explained away in either a scientific system propped up by large fudge factors such as Dark Matter, or by pure fantasy (a courtesy distinction).

[Immanuel Can]

From here on out I will only be able to speak toward Immanuel Can in the third person.

Wow. That's cowardly.

But carry on. It won't make a difference.

... when one's internal edifice is assaulted, be it through sincerity or through insincere or malicious violence, the structure on which the self sits is threatened. And when threatened at this level there is always reaction.

Now you're just being funny.

There's no threat even possible from somebody who can't even figure out what a "Christian" is. He doesn't even know where the object of his "scathing critique" (if we can call it that) can be found.

I have no desire to offend anyone

Well, not unless they question your theory. After that, you go ad hominem to escape further scrutiny. And the very point of that is to substitute offence for substance.

But how you expect to "put down" that which you cannot even locate is a mystery.

Dubious says that things must be expressed more succinctly.

For once, he's right. Honest ideas can always be expressed frankly. It's only when obfuscation is the point that they can't.

Lewis refers to this phenomenon as "the religion of all good men," meaning, "the belief that all men are good, that all good men are nominally 'Christian' and that all one has to do to convince oneself that one is "good' is to be civilized, part of the culture, and nominally "Christian."

Immanuel Can misses the point

Lewis does, you allege.

Christianity as a possible belief-system has collapsed.

You've given no evidence at all for this, of course. And there is none: not in Reiff, not in Nietzsche, and not in anything you've said. That's a wish, not a fact.

The truth is, you don't even know what a "Christian" is, since you have no definition of that concept. So any predications you make refer to nothing in particular. But even if it were true that something once nominally called "Christian" had collapsed, you've done zippo to show that this is what real "Christianity" ever was.

The facade fell, and you take it for the house.

It does not take any genuis to see that the same phenomenon could be described in any religious or ideological camp: there are always those who believe in a firmly, and those who believe in only a superficial sense. But in Christianity's case, the division is exacerbated all the more between the stark division between the two. In other ideologies, there may be more of a gradient. Still, the two kinds exist everywhere.

I can certainly agree with Immanuel Can that within any religious community there will be (and there certainly still are) those who manage to 'believe sincerely' and with strength and vigor.

And yet, you make no distinction at all between the two. And you try to present your analysis as intellectual?

Thus, those who "lost their faith" in that moment were mere nominalists, cultural pseudo-Christians with no deep faith at all.

This is actually a trick of rhetorical usage.

Not at all. It's a sociological fact. And it's not at all unique to me.

Not just Lewis but modern sociologists like Peter Berger or Rodney Stark or Forbes and Mahan...they all observe that postmodernity is no less "religious" than previous ages: rather, it is differently-religious, in that the old superstitions and beliefs have taken on new forms. But they all agree that the old "secularization hypothesis," which you are channeling, is a myth. You're so far behind the times you don't even know about all this.

And you've got Reiff dead backward. Reiff is not criticizing religions: he's criticizing the culture that supposes secularization is possible!

That is, he's pointing out that modern men have no longer any basis for morals, meaning, teleology, identity and such things, even though they remain desperate to have them. They seek them through the "therapeutic," which means "good feelings." And Reiff is saying that all that is a fool's errand. As he so aptly puts it, "The question is no longer as Dostoevsky put it, 'Can civilized men believe?' Rather: ' Can unbelieving men be civilized?'" (4) Those are his words.

And contrary to you and your appeal to Jung and Freud, he writes, "all attempts at connnecting the doctrines of psychotherapy with the old faiths are patently misconceived. At its most innocuous, these therapeutic religiosities represent a failure of nerve by both psychologists and clergymen." (218)

In other words, no go, Charlie.

In fact, Reiff says nothing at all about those who were not, in the first place, merely nominal in their professed "Christianity." And with good reasons: he knows very well they still exist, and their faith was not shaken by the various blandishments by the secularizers. There was never any reason for them to be.

Reiff's book was first published almost sixty (60) years ago. The amazing thing is that secularists have still not taken what he exposed to their scrutiny to heart, and still try to ground law, rights, morality, and other elements of civilization in nothing but the therapeutic, even though Reiff explained very incisively why that would never work. But his critique is of the secularization hypothesis, not of religion.

Did you really read him?

If you did, let's talk about what that book says, not about what you wish you could have gotten him to say in order to fortify your pet theory.

[Alexis Jacobi]

AJ said: "What you recommend is sort of folksy advice."

You see folksy where I've simply stripped away obstacles. If religion, Christianity specifically, is about man's relationship with God, your critical movements, your trends in theology, are impediments.

Incorrect. I see folksy as your attempt to imagine and believe that you can reduce things to simplicities through a folksy demeanor. You have not stripped away any obstacles for the simple reason (please do not take this as offensive!) that you are not fully cognizant of the obstacles. I suggest to you that if you were to become cognizant, honestly, of the obstacles you'd be more of a participant in this conversation.

Talk about your *relationship to God*. If this is real for you (it isn't because you are not a theist!) then you'd be able to present a case that would move some other to a faith-position.

If God requires interpretation by authority for a common man to apprehend Him, then He has a rather large problem, doesn't He?

You will have to present your proposed *simple man* so that his theology -- the reason why he believes in God and even what God is -- can be examined.

No, if God is God, He requires no intermediaries, no interpreters, no middlemen. As God, He, I think, would have a really clear understanding of the dangers of allowin' somebody else to run His PR dept.

Then you're f***cked because God is absolutely unrevealed in any way that any average person could see with his two bare eyes. If God were revealed to you you'd not be a deist you'd be a theist.

According to you any average and simple man simply walks out into a field and ::: shazzam ::: God is revealed. If the God you define (I recognize that you have no definition of God and this is an absurd theatre) then there would be no God-understanding problem. Agreement would be as obvious as agreeing that 1 + 1 = 2.

As I say: my interest is less in the divinity and more in the practical Christian morality. Here too, all your wordly trends and movements seem to be of little consequence. Nuthin' of the trends and movements, these churches and congregations, these shifty and shifting dynamicisms, clears the path for one man to live morally.

Yes, I did get that when you referenced the Jefferson Bible. Jefferson, and he showed it by what he did, is a post-Christian and essentially a non-Christian. Although I'd imagine that he could make an eloquent case in his defense of a derived moral and ethical system.

No, all that falderol is, as I say, impediment.

You can say anything you want and it does not thereby make it so.

AJ: It does not in any sense get to the heart of the problem of a collapse of faith. And it does not in any sense speak to what has occurred in the culture over the last 100-150 years.

HQ: I believe you've bought into fiction, Alexis: the fiction of a coherent, cohesive Christian culture; the fiction of communal faith.

I think this statement misleads from what I have called *the facts*. Whether or not there is a definable 'Christian culture' in a general sense, or whether there are gradations of relationship and location within a 'real and genuine faith' or not, it is a real thing that in the Occident the Christian faith has collapsed. This is not something I have made up and I have no part in it. It has happened.

I do not and never did deny that there are 'pockets' where faithfulness still exists and carries on. But in the largest sense -- and you of course are exemplary! -- the former faith-system has generally collapsed. What I do and what I am doing is to try to see this with clear eyes.

The Roman Catholic Church of course is a cultural force (and, at its height, a brutal one) but despite past and present displays of that force it was never the catalyst for, or the sustainer of, coherency or cohesion. It was and is primarily a political entity (replace Uncle Sam with Jesus on the recruitment poster and you've nutshell'd it). I have no grudge with the Church but I can only see it for what it is: as I say, a political entity wearin' Christian trappings as both enticement (this way to Salvation!) and threat (this way to Salvation, or else!).

This statement is too blunt, to broad, to be of much use to me in my own endeavors. But if it helps you then have at it. I do understand what you are trying to say however. But your statement is far too reductive and non-nuanced.

A real and genuine faith that is grounded on a realistic and verifiable theology, and one agreed upon by most, would necessarily be religious, philosophical, political, economic, aesthetic -- indeed it would determine all activities and all activities would be a response to the defined and realized metaphysics. It would be 'self-evident' as well. I am not sure if I make my point clear. The reason why so much of our affairs in this world are in disorder (I am especially cognizant that things seem to be moving to a critical point) is because of the contrast and chasm between belief-systems.

Fundamentally, the Church has little to do with Christianity (one man's relationship with God, and, one livin' morally).

You are speaking from a point way way on a far side of modernity. The Church in the early days sat among illiterate and rather barbarous persons. The Church was, and still is (in Pentecostalism for example) a civilizing institution. So in fact I must disagree with you quite directly and substantially. The Church was an education-institution and the paideia it managed was, in the main, the Occidental canon.

Touchin' briefly on cultural collapse: it does not seem to me this is necessarily a bad thing (we've been livin' in an iteration of the Roman Empire for quite a long time, haven't we? Me, I'm ready, past ready, to be out from under its heel. You?), but it is a thing, exploitable by anyone with a mind to. I'm all for gettin' minimal and leavin' folks to sink or swim within the broad borders of what is permitted and prohibited by a recognition of, and respect for, individual natural rights (I am mine, you are yours, neither of us has any claim on the other). But, as established, I'm superficial & folksy, unaware of, perhaps incapable of being aware of, the oh-so important minutia you invest yourself in and that is important to you.

It does not matter what I am ready for or resisting. It is more a question of what happened and what is happening.

But, as established, I'm superficial & folksy, unaware of, perhaps incapable of being aware of, the oh-so important minutia you invest yourself in and that is important to you.

It is not minutia, it is essential substance. But as I have said a few times: Do not be offended. If cowboy talk and cowboy discourse seems sufficient to you, and if by wearing that poncho an' silver spurs you feel that you can better make your points, it is really none of my business.

Do you have any talent on the gee-tar?

This thread has entertained and taught me. The back & forth between you and Mannie was revealin' of so much. But everything laid atop Christianity (naturally and forced) doesn't, can't, define what is plain and direct about it. Yes, we simple people as we plow our fields and live our lives and celebrate our simple pleasures and worry over our plain little problems, yes, we look for the root of it. And we wonder, why folks such as yourself are hellbent on stayin' well away from that root. If Christianity is true: the Gospel ought be enough. And yet you, a Christian, say it is not.

Actually this is a question better directed to yourself. You are making a series of statements. And each one requires a careful and a somewhat detailed response -- despite the fact that you imagine you are dealing in 'last words and 'final statements'.

[attofishpi]

But I am speaking in terms of strict and literal doctrine.

If you (if one) cannot any longer believe in that doctrinal set in a literalist sense then one is a post-Christian

Rubbish. Is that your opinion of what defines a Christian (or are you in talking in terms of IC definition.)?

Indeed, when you say literal, you are including all that Jewish nonsense to be included to make one Christian?

My reference-point going forward will be solely the introduction to Philip Rieff's The Triumph of the Therapeutic: Uses of Faith After Freud. An extremely brief summary is that when the possibility of belief that was formerly defined as *Christian* collapsed, and indeed it collapsed, that the inevitable result was 'turning inward' through perspectives and action...

I don't think Christianity has ever been "formerly defined", indeed, who would have the right to do so aside from Christ himself?
When I was in primary school I must have asked the teacher a reasonable question, all i remember her answer was: "If you believe in Christ, then you are a Christian." - of course, that stuck with me as I grew to real eyes that there were copious amounts of denominations some with ridiculous shit going on.

So please do provide, what this original formal definition of Christianity was.

[Alexis Jacobi]

But I am speaking in terms of strict and literal doctrine.

If you (if one) cannot any longer believe in that doctrinal set in a literalist sense then one is a post-Christian

Rubbish. Is that your opinion of what defines a Christian (or are you in talking in terms of IC definition.)?

Indeed, when you say literal, you are including all that Jewish nonsense to be included to make one Christian?

My reference-point going forward will be solely the introduction to Philip Rieff's The Triumph of the Therapeutic: Uses of Faith After Freud. An extremely brief summary is that when the possibility of belief that was formerly defined as *Christian* collapsed, and indeed it collapsed, that the inevitable result was 'turning inward' through perspectives and action...

I don't think Christianity has ever been "formerly defined", indeed, who would have the right to do so aside from Christ himself?
When I was in primary school I must have asked the teacher a reasonable question, all i remember her answer was: "If you believe in Christ, then you are a Christian." - of course, that stuck with me as I grew to real eyes that there were copious amounts of denominations some with ridiculous shit going on.

So please do provide, what this original formal definition of Christianity was.

I'll start with a definition of what 'Postchristianity' is said to be:

Postchristianity is the situation in which Christianity is no longer the dominant civil religion of a society but has gradually assumed values, culture, and worldviews that are not necessarily Christian. Post-Christian tends to refer to the loss of Christianity's monopoly in historically Christian societies.

you are including all that Jewish nonsense to be included to make one Christian?

Can you say more about what you see as 'Jewish nonsense'?

[attofishpi]

But I am speaking in terms of strict and literal doctrine.

If you (if one) cannot any longer believe in that doctrinal set in a literalist sense then one is a post-Christian

Rubbish. Is that your opinion of what defines a Christian (or are you in talking in terms of IC definition.)?

Indeed, when you say literal, you are including all that Jewish nonsense to be included to make one Christian?

My reference-point going forward will be solely the introduction to Philip Rieff's The Triumph of the Therapeutic: Uses of Faith After Freud. An extremely brief summary is that when the possibility of belief that was formerly defined as *Christian* collapsed, and indeed it collapsed, that the inevitable result was 'turning inward' through perspectives and action...

I don't think Christianity has ever been "formerly defined", indeed, who would have the right to do so aside from Christ himself?
When I was in primary school I must have asked the teacher a reasonable question, all i remember her answer was: "If you believe in Christ, then you are a Christian." - of course, that stuck with me as I grew to real eyes that there were copious amounts of denominations some with ridiculous shit going on.

So please do provide, what this original formal definition of Christianity was.

I'll start with a definition of what 'Postchristianity' is said to be:

Postchristianity is the situation in which Christianity is no longer the dominant civil religion of a society but has gradually assumed values, culture, and worldviews that are not necessarily Christian. Post-Christian tends to refer to the loss of Christianity's monopoly in historically Christian societies.

you are including all that Jewish nonsense to be included to make one Christian?

Can you say more about what you see as 'Jewish nonsense'?

Sure. I note above that you have ignored my key questions. I'll agree to explain what I see as 'Jewish nonsense', when you answer the questions I posed:

1. Is it your opinion that belief in the doctrinal set in a literalist sense is what defines a Christian?
2. Does this literal belief, also require inclusion of Judaic texts?
3. What was this original "formal definition" of Christianity?

[henry quirk]

I suggest to you that if you were to become cognizant, honestly, of the obstacles you'd be more of a participant in this conversation.

If it's not too much trouble: what are the obstacles I'm ignorant of?

I recognize that you have no definition of God

I've offered none (recently) in this thread, true.

You can say anything you want and it does not thereby make it so.

Tell that to the fella you see in the mirror. I believe it applies to him as well.

A real and genuine faith that is grounded on a realistic and verifiable theology, and one agreed upon by most, would necessarily be religious, philosophical, political, economic, aesthetic -- indeed it would determine all activities and all activities would be a response to the defined and realized metaphysics.

A theocracy: is this what you pine for? It does not seem to me, as a deist, He wants such a thing. And as I read the Christian Anarchists (folksy & superficial) it does not seem any of them found or find The Religious State to be the natural or necessary result of Christian thinkin' or livin'.

No, as I say (if I, a deist, am allowed): Christianity is meant for the one, not the many. And, as I say: when authority interposes between one and God most surely men are profitin'. Coffers fill and leashes are applied and God is quietly moved from Reality to Commodity. You say the Church was a civilizing institution, an educating institution. I believe it civilized and educated only so far, and only to keep illiterate and barbarous persons in check. That is: there was no illumination but for the few. The Occidental canon is man's construct, built by him to serve him. Well and fine. As a man of the west I have no interest in tossin' the baby out. The bathwater? Yeah, it's time to change it.

The reason why so much of our affairs in this world are in disorder (I am especially cognizant that things seem to be moving to a critical point) is because of the contrast and chasm, between belief-systems.

I agree, though I don't suppose we'd see eye-to-eye on what belief-systems are in conflict.