Christian apology by a non-Christian

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

Hello. This is my first post here. I began this conversation on another forum but I think there may be more life and activity on this forum.
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Clearly 'we' are at a point of a general and overt reassessment of the Christian belief-system. It is obvious that huge swaths of persons in our cultures have or are abandoning a Christian faith of their forefathers and either reject altogether the theological-doctrinal dictates altogether or else seek another type of faithfulness in a different religio-philosophical system. To some such an exodus, to use a wry term, makes complete sense and hardly needs to be defended. To come to such a point is evidence of intelligence, of clear-seeing, and a desire to live on reasonable and rational terms. To hold to a Christian faith is seen as regressive, illogical, non-progressive and perhaps even 'romantic' insofar as such a faith may be longing for a time that no longer exists; longing for established social mores that have been upended and revised; and in a general sense---almost as a perception of a sort of 'metaphysical miasma' that interweaves with our reality---of a deep paranoia/confusion about modern life and where it leads.

But I suggest that in no sense is this a simple issue. I suggest that there are numerous currents that flow through a general rejection of Christianity. Indeed, the closer one moves toward a definition of such rejection the nearer one comes to a very confusing nexus of motivations. It is possible that, in comparison to a sort of 'mindless existence' offered by consumer and entertainment culture that a 'thoughtful' Christian faith and practice, one that is grounded in social responsibility, commitment to a healthy family environment with emphasis on good relations, self-improvement, education and higher ideals, may indeed be recognizably superior to a life lived with no doctrinal system in place. Viewed in this way, a falling away from an intelligent faithfulness, if such a think is possible, and it seems that with some Christian theologians and their expressions of thoughtfulness it indeed is possible, that a rejection of one's Christian background may be a downward or backward step. It is possible that a rejection of such a doctrinal foundation with its parameters may be 'simply' a desire to live an uncontrolled, unregulated life.

There are many levels of complication. For example in those people who reject certain moral or moralizing aspects of Christian ethics---say in respect to sexuality---because they just don't buy or accept the authoritarian moral dictatorship of rigid Christians. Or that there exist too many bizarre Christian sects and Christian-derived sects (Mormon, Adventist, Pentecostal) which, when examined even superficially, seem filled with hopping nutcases. Not to mention of course the political aspect of conservative evangelicals most strongly noted in USA and to a lesser degree in Britain.

Now, it is not possible for me, nor honest, to approach this conversation from a 'faith-perspective' because, though I may have some level of 'faith' in existence, or some sort of god-behind-the-scenes, perhaps something akin to Providence, and a general, surrounding intelligence, yet I do not know how to have faith in the Christian god nor in Jesus Christ. I am formally 'on the outside' and it is likely there is no going 'back inside' for indeed what is really there? And what is 'the inside'?

But I came across, some time ago, a small volume of The Book of Common Prayer (According to the use of the Protestant Episcopal Church) which attracted me simply because it was such a nice little volume, nicely formatted and so forth. When I began to read it I noted that the value it represented overall and the subject matter was not at all of an inferior sort, indeed it was uniquely sophisticated. And I imagined such a person who might have internalized the ideas, the metaphysic, the values, in short (for want of a better word) the 'thoughtfulness' of the entire view presented (about life), and felt that such a Person is in some sense of a superior order and, also, that it is rare to encounter persons of depth, solidity, established value, commitment, etc.

Well, this is more or less the purpose of this topic: I thought to extract snips from this Common Prayer Book and perhaps from other Christian sources too, and try to comment on them in a 'fair' way if such is possible.

To start right at the very beginning I thought to snip out a phrase from the mere Preface:

• "It is a most invaluable part of that 'blessed liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free', that in his worship different forms and usages may without offense be allowed, provided the substance of the Faith be kept entire; and that, in every Church, what cannot be clearly determined to belong to Doctrine must be referred to Discipline; and therefor, by common consent and authority, may be altered, abridged, enlarged, amended, or otherwise disposed of, as may seem most convenient for the edification of the people, 'according to the various exigency of times and occasions' "

'The substance of the faith'---what an interesting notion if viewed, perhaps, from a removed height! Some 'stuff' that one can have and hold, perhaps, as if it were a Quantity. Or am I merely confused in sensing something rather 'large and important' in that term?

[Skip]

I honestly cannot tell whether you`re defending Christianity or condemning it.

``Substance of the faith`` sounds large and important - as it`s mean to - but really doesn`t mean anything, since neither the faith nor its substance have ever been defined, and making any abridgments or amendments is the privilege of a very few, very powerful men with deeply vested interests.
I don`t think they`re upholding a universal human value system, or that removing them from power will result in the world dissolving into mindless hedonism.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

'Faith', quite literally by definition, at least according to its own terms, cannot be exactly defined. Faith is something that, for a believer, is held and in a very real sense 'operated'. People of faith in all the traditions I am aware of have and use their faith. I would also say that as it pertains to a religious/spiritual faith that the having of it is understood as having an almost specific 'quantity' of something. In any case, something that others, of lesser or of little or no faith, do not have. I am thinking of the Afro-Cuban traditions where faith is also knowledge and a powerful 'faithful person' is one who has 'ache': personal power. It seems to revolve around the belief/understanding that a person rich in 'ache' can effect changes in reality 'spiritually' (as against others who cannot or can only with lesser effect).

Faithful people, as I have understood them, face the events of reality with a different outlook or internal stance. Faith often seems to function as a platform of certainty (or perhaps 'acceptance') of all the events of reality which can occur to a person in their life, within this plane of existence. It is much more it seems to me than a naive belief that one can magically change reality (through prayer, say), but a sort of inner platform from which to face the vicissitudes of an unstable and sometimes treacherous external reality. Perhaps in an ultimate sense such a faith is the belief/knowledge that with a faithful relationship and attitude all events of reality can and do function toward the ultimate benefit of the 'soul' of the individual. A 'sophisticated faith' is by no means a gratuitous achievement, and in this sense a faithful relationship to existence can be seen as a unique and powerful position. What it might be contrasted against is an individual who stands in essentially a 'paranoid' relationship to reality, or perhaps the word is 'anxious'.

So, the idea of 'a substance of faith' is not altogether just a puffed up phrase. Also, it is not hard to imagine (fairly) a person who has worked their whole life to have faith, or one who lives in it, so that if they were to use such a phrase as 'substance of [the] faith', it would not be for pretension but to describe something real for them.

I honestly cannot tell whether you`re defending Christianity or condemning it.

This is good, in fact. I have achieved what I initially desired to establish: a fair stance toward the examination of something that does not take a polarized, black and white position a priori. I have noticed that once a polarized position has been established there is usually no possibility of conversation but only battles for ascendency.

...and making any abridgments or amendments is the privilege of a very few, very powerful men with deeply vested interests

While I think I may understand what you are saying, or referring to, I would suggest that coming up with alternative interpretations and methods of praxis vis-a-vis 'Christianity' is an endeavor of theology, and theology is fluid, eloquent and capable of working with 'essences' within any and all religious traditions and bringing them again to the forefront for consideration.

I will offer one simple example from one of the stories in the Christian tradition, that of Jesus (within the stories for which there is no good reason, necessarily, to believe this was some sort of 'direct quote' of the man himself) when he said

• 'You have heard it said that...[statement]...But I say unto you'.

With this 'attitude' toward a given knowledge-base or belief-system or religious policy or state policy, one is offered the possibility of 'radical reinterpretation'. If one is allowed such an attitude, and if one uses it as a basis of 'praxis', all different manner of possibilities open up. One could apply this in a direct sense in the following way. Christianity in general is thoroughly dominated by fundamentalists and fundamentalism. But a radically different position is possible and I suggest that it exists but is rather smothered. So, one could say You have heard it said that Christianity is thus-and-such and to be a Christian you must do/say/think thus-and-such, but I/we propose that [and here you fill in the blank with theological interpretations, a religion-philosophical restatement).

And it would indeed seem that such a luxury of interpretation is not at all in the hands of vested interests but quite the opposite: it is given to anyone who has a heart and mind and a desire to concretize ideas about the pesky question(s) of How should we live?

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

A couple of notes.

To be fair I think we have to note right at the beginning that in every time and place in our human history, to hardly noticeable differences in degree, we have been thoroughly enmeshed within what we can now recognize as 'superstitious' structures of perception through which reality is looked at. We see this so clearly when we examine the Bible stories, but I think we must also recognize the same when we examine, let us say, the background out of which Buddhism arose. One thing gives birth to another and the secondary 'birth' may be infinitely more mature. Just a couple of quick references for the sake of 'fairness'. The origins of religions structures int he Orient, at a social plane, were tied to ideas of 'divine kingship' and to an ancestry that flowed downward from a divine plane. It is interesting to note that such a view structure made a fairly recent entrance into history in the form of a warring culture under rulership of such a 'divine king' in the form of the descendent of a Sun Goddess in the form of the Japanese Emperor Showa (Hirohito). Interesting to note the protrusion of such an overt superstitious ideal as an 'incarnate divinity' into the modern world. It is interesting to note that the means by which such a belief could even be held is deeply linked to obviously untenable superstitious notions. In these religions otherworldliness was as tangible as this-worldliness, and powerful beings in this world became powerful spirit-helper beings in the next. The world was a two-part creation and man maintained relationships with the powerful beings in 'the other world' through ritual, mantra and the like.

Buddhism, for example Mahayana, was not an exception in any sense. It represented a supernatural package with little reference to its modern derivatives, those expounded in the West as 'sane alternatives'. Mahayana had gods, magic, a elaborate pantheon, sublime heavens and terrible hells, priests arrayed in glorious robes, monks and nuns, who were understood to have a very real power over souls and entities of the 'other world'. A non-magical 'confucianism' is a much later development, comparable in this sense to Roman Catholic theological and ethical mandates. Only is it wise to point this out.

It is wise to understand that any and all cultures that we could name have a similar 'link' with a deeply superstitious myth-religious basis and it is also quite interesting to point this out in relation to the Greek---even or even especially in Plato. In Timaeus and the myths described in The Republic for example. Every culture has such a background and all modern world views derive from all the trails and tribulations of long processes. The quotation from the Tibetan Buddhist (who was this individual?) could in this sense be compared to a modern Christian exegete who---and they exist!---negates nearly completely the 'facticity' of Biblical content in favor of other, more mature, exegetic means and ways. And principally, as I slowly reveal my hand, this is what I am interested in exploring: the world of our values, our accepted values, seems always to derive from these ancient structures.

One small note about the Bible itself because it seems relevant here. It is also a point that can produce a chuckle because it opens up to an absurdity. When 'believing' or fundamentalistic Christians refer to quotations of the Bible, they might avail themselves of the numerous 'direct quotations' of God, as if they were captured or recorded speech! The notion is so utterly absurd to our ears that it simply cannot be maintained. For a 'believer', who may be a failure hermeneutically or for who 'hermeneutical processes' may terrify, the Bible seems to become a sort of 'transcript of the mind of God'. And even when not taken literally has literal intentions and is understood 'literally'.

• "So the LORD said, 'I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens, for I am sorry that I have made them.' "
  
  " 'Leave this place, you and the people you brought up out of Egypt, and go up to the land I promised on oath to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, saying, "I will give it to your descendants." I will send an angel before you and drive out the Canaanites, Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. Go up to the land flowing with milk and honey. But I will not go with you, because you are a stiff-necked people and I might destroy you on the way.' ”

Among so may that could be listed!

There are so many problems in this that, realistically, one is perhaps better off completely distancing oneself from the text entirely. Unless one is shown some other means, some other hermeneutical tricks or juggling, with which to salvage meaning or value.

To exist comfortably within any fundamentalism, and many forms exist not only the overtly religious (but 'fundamentalism' requires a somewhat lengthy definition), will produce in a certain sort of man today a feeling of deep discomfort and enclosure within lies and deceptions, partial or shadow-truths, mythic representations in mask of truth, etc. Whole structures of view that are 'graveyards'. But while this is true, graveyards are also known to be places of a certain beauty in their way. They are places for meditation on the long-dead, the forever lying still, and for those who can now no longer speak for themselves of defend them ideas. They must lie there while we tell them all their faults and errors and shortcomings as we see ourselves in a New Era of accurate view of Reality.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

This is what I have been thinking over the last few days, which is a violation or a jump-ahead from what I envisioned: to examine value-content within a Episcopal Book of Prayer. I have been reading about the question of Christian Fundamentalism and reading some material by one James Barr. He represents the critical approach to study of the Bible which, as one gets familiar with it, decimates the possibility of a conservative/fundamentalist platform of faith as grounded in 'historical facticity'. But these thoughts occurred to me:

1) When the clear channel to a faith-based religion was undermined by decimating a faith-position founded on facticity---and it has been undermined---many religiously oriented people veered out of Judeo-Christian orbit, which became 'unsustainable' when faith did not correspond to reality or history, either toward agnosticism or a vague theism or perhaps also to simply 'no further thought on the matter', and the attractions, and distractions, of life in the moment in a consumer-culture present. Also though, it seems, many of these people with a sort of interior religious bent veered off into Eastern religious philosophies, metaphysics, ethics and life-style. And constructing a position within some branch of these traditions, cast then their gaze back on the Western Canon in general; analyzing it, 'judging' it, critiquing it, and also desiring to expand it. The most tenable position appears to be forms of Buddhism which focus on a specific interpretation of phenomena but principally on the mind of a given person in relation to phenomena. It provides an attractive 'refuge' (perhaps one could see it like that), but is it not also in some sense a 'religious position'? One notable characteristic is that those who take refuge in it seem to break away from almost all connectivity to those elements within the 'Western Canon'. After all there is no intellectual linkage between Buddhist thought and its designs and Western thought (and its designs). I am curious what opinions those here have on this topic.

2) We may arrive at 'faith' (in a pietistic sense). But a faith-position with a solid grounding in historicity and facticity is not possible. Such a position has been decimated. What this means is that a faith position is still viable but only as a faith-position. Every link to fact has been challenged or broken. This God in history who does things in history. Original gardens, exiles, floods, sojourns in bellies of whales, magical journeys through deserts and through seas. When you start to unravel the ball the unravelling does not end and in exactly the sense of 'Seek the truth and the truth sets you free', you wind up with no more faith-ground to stand on insofar as it is linked to facticity and historicity. An odd problem! And there you are, fully in the present, staring at your neighbor, the crazy world cacophonous and cruel right out your window.

And so a gap opens: the faith-position is undermined by the critical/scholarly position and the faith-position is left standing with no support except in vague 'faith'. It either sinks to the ground and melds back into it, or perhaps manages to stay afloat, supported by other non-factitious strains of thought.

3) What could be the position and 'teaching' of a Radical Christianity? A Christianity which has effectively 'died' but then resurrected?

All aspects of the origin of religion including what allowed for the development of the highest theology and the better ethics and social organization, is steeped in fabulations, mysterious visitations, dream-impositions, distortions, sleight-of-hand, tricks of the mind, absurdities, impossibilities, projections, psychological manipulations, lies. A Radical Christianity sweeps it all off the table. It fearlessly pursues truth at all cost and peels back the layers of falsity until only an 'essence' remains: an essence inspired by contact with a transcendental consciousness? Or simply a projection of a human valuation-project projected through the fantastic? What really remains after all the layers have been peeled away?

A museum of thinking? A swamp with an impossible number of hidden traps? A deeply interesting historical graveyard? But what, if in fact it is 'real', can be said of a 'transcendental consciousness'?

Not much. Because one encounters such a thing through the vehicle of one's own consciousness, as a solitary experience, as for example in meditation and speculation. One *senses* and calls it 'knowledge' but it is always personal, subjective, internal and imperfect.

But there is a historical mystery, and it can be investigated or approached: the opening up of consciousness in the Western world that led to the discovery---rare and even impossible and even perhaps unlikely---of experimental science in a small window of opportunity in time that was also the outcome of a group of different influences all functioning together, not the least being that mysterious and terrible entity known as Judeo-Christianity. I have yet to see any clear exposition demonstrating how the faith position in Western culture may have contributed to the discovery of experimental science but some say it exists. Yet the faith position might have allowed for the opening up of imagination to all manner of possibilities, and the 'belief' that such a thing is not only possible but promised. Inevitable?

Promised lands that become unimagined lands of power and possibility?

4) What is the relationship between this 'transcendental consciousness' and this extremely rare and improbable event in 17th and 18th and 19th century European culture that allowed for it [experimental science] it to come on the scene? When in no other place it did? What is the connection between 'divinity' and divine consciousness which *should be* the author of all possibilities of ascension, higher knowledge, genius, advancement and the transforming events of this specific time-period? In short all that allows for the 'good life' to be claimed and lived? And we have indeed come into this possibility.

How shall we, after peeling away all the mystifications, how shall we define 'divinity' and the divine in the human world? And in possession of some level of awareness---an awake moment within a mere momentary flash that is our life---what shall we do with our awareness, our life?

[Skip]

First, I must point out that the pivotal quote said "substance of the faith" - i.e. Anglican canon - not "substance of faith" - that is, general belief in things unseen. This distinction matters. The reference to change and adaptation is within the confines of a hierarchical organization: the Anglican church. It doesn't consider even its nearest theological relatives, the Roman Catholic and Lutheran churches, and holds the non-Christian faiths of Britain's subject peoples beneath contempt.

But a radically different position is possible and I suggest that it exists but is rather smothered.

Indeed - by every church that has ever held official control of a population. The RC slaughtered the Cathars (created the first Inquisition, just for this sect) who were far more fundamentally Christian than the church hierarchy. It's not the most fundamentalist that direct a theology - it's the group closest to the political and economic power. And they lead the faithful toward the interests of those powers.

So, one could say You have heard it said that Christianity is thus-and-such and to be a Christian you must do/say/think thus-and-such, but I/we propose that [and here you fill in the blank with theological interpretations, a religion-philosophical restatement).

One could say that. And many have. It didn't work out terribly well for Jesus, but Martin Luther started a substantial movement and Joseph Smith got to rule over a little band of dissenters and had lots of wives. A departure from established churches becomes possible in moments of history wherein the established church looses its political grip for some reason. Like: the Hebrew elders defer to a Roman governor; the king of England is powerful enough to get his divorce without the pope's blessing; the Catholic church was too corrupt for the disciplined German mind; an American colony has won independence from the Anglican empire.

Oh, I see you've been busy. Will have to take time to read and return later. TBC

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

Hello there! Yes, been busy. I have a bit of an obsession with these questions/issues. I had prepared these posts for another forum where I thought an expanded conversation would be possible but it don't work out. Please excuse the bulk of these last posts. But they all circle around my main question[s].

One small if humoristic observation. How could one say that it didn't work out for Jesus!? This has always baffled me. The whole purpose of the Advent was for him to become a final sacrifice. It was written into the fabric of the creation. According to the story-line this was inevitable and necessary. Indeed it is also, according to the story-line, the highest possible good: to lay down one's life for a friend. All sacrifices of a like sort must be undertaken as a deep honor. So, in this sense, it worked perfectly!

A departure from established churches becomes possible in moments of history wherein the established church looses its political grip for some reason.

Yes indeed. And if this is so we are now, in this present, on the verge of the most radical departure from any level of authority. A curious and interesting fact. I do entirely concede the point I think you are making. Mind-control and dominance of the human protoplasm has always been, and still very much is, the first and final frontier of power-struggle.

[Skip]

I may seem overly simplistic, compared to your scholarly approach, but that's because I can take only one short statement at a time, because of frequent interruptions. And I want clarity, at least in tiny spotlights.

[faith] is much more it seems to me than a naive belief that one can magically change reality (through prayer, say), but a sort of inner platform from which to face the vicissitudes of an unstable and sometimes treacherous external reality.

That is so, on a strictly individual basis, and says almost nothing about organized religion. It is equally true of a Navajo on The Beauty Way as it is of a Carmelite nun. In both cases, though, magical thinking plays a large part in their serenity.

Interesting to note the protrusion of such an overt superstitious ideal as an 'incarnate divinity' into the modern world.

and

How could one say that it didn't work out for Jesus!? This has always baffled me. The whole purpose of the Advent was for him to become a final sacrifice.

This would be a totally insignificant sacrifice without the divinity incarnate part of the story. So, from the old religion's point of view, this upstart heretic must be got rid of. From the new religion's point of view, the death of the god-man is its very basis for existence; whatever theology he may have preached is secondary and subject to interpretation. From the preacher's own point of view, he was a dismal failure: only a tiny handful of the people he hoped to convince actually followed him. He wasn't interested in converting Romans - and even less, I would imagine, in forcing the world to its knees.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

That is so, on a strictly individual basis, and says almost nothing about organized religion. It is equally true of a Navajo on The Beauty Way as it is of a Carmelite nun. In both cases, though, magical thinking plays a large part in their serenity.

It doesn't necessarily speak about organized religion, that is true, and organizations of all sorts, unless I am mistaken, always have problematic aspects. I suppose I should say that---for the record---I am not so much right now concerned for that whole question as I am for the individual in our present (in secular society) thinking about religious/philosophical questions.

I would accept your statement that 'magical thinking plays a large part in their serenity'. But your statement is made by one, apparently, outside of a comforting belief-system. Myself, I have lived and operated within far more literal 'magical belief systems' and so feel I know at least somewhat intimately what that can be about and so it induces me to approach these questions a little differently. I suppose this is one reason I can weave ambiguously in and out of the questions. I have the luxury of a somewhat fluid definition of psyche in the world.

This would be a totally insignificant sacrifice without the divinity incarnate part of the story. So, from the old religion's point of view, this upstart heretic must be got rid of. From the new religion's point of view, the death of the god-man is its very basis for existence; whatever theology he may have preached is secondary and subject to interpretation. From the preacher's own point of view, he was a dismal failure: only a tiny handful of the people he hoped to convince actually followed him. He wasn't interested in converting Romans - and even less, I would imagine, in forcing the world to its knees.

I see your point. I would say though that it is only from a Christian perspective that a heretic was put to death: this is their interpretation of events, their handling of the story, and their story-line that functions against those pesky Jews. From a Jewish perspective, at least back-in-the-day, there was never really an event. I say this because my understanding is that within Jewish histories the man Jesus simply did not figure.

From the preacher's own point of view, he was a dismal failure: only a tiny handful of the people he hoped to convince actually followed him. He wasn't interested in converting Romans - and even less, I would imagine, in forcing the world to its knees.

Still, on whatever level, for good or for evil or for that peculiar admixture of the two that comprises our reality, 'he' could not be said to have been a failure even if only a tiny group followed him. Ideas are very powerful, and it is the grand ideas that move history. There are two distinct poles: one pole feels that Judeo-Christian religion has been a terrible tragedy, while the other sees all the positive features. I tend in fact toward the latter but this does not mean that I cannot see the destructive side too.

Something was put into motion. Something moved in culture and in history's moments.

(I have made this statement before and it has not been received so well. But I am of the school of thinking that understands the occurrence of a melding of influences that comprise 'a Mediterranean self'. Judea, Greece, Rome all being combined in such a way that literally our self---the possibilities of being, the parameters of value, the scope of vision, the limits of perception, a basic orientation---arise out of this peculiar mix of modes of perception and 'praxis' (always have liked that word). If this is so, we cannot 'cut out' from ourselves this fantastic religious element. Indeed, fantastic imagination is very much alive and stalks the land. True, one could call it deranged, intoxicated, feverish and lunatic. I see this in this sense: that every man lives within the structure of his personal 'novel'. His imagined world. The world of his projection of imagination. But any understanding, at whatever level, is held in the mind in this way. We all live in our novelesque.)

[a theology]...is secondary and subject to interpretation

Bringing us to the first well-published theologian-of-sorts: St Paul*. There was another school (the Jerusalem school, which disappeared), but clearly the Pauline framework took on giant proportions. We could also refer to a more underground movement too---the so-called Gnostics. All these influences melded in Mediterranean culture.

Militant civics, philosophy and rationalism, all under a holy shroud. (Roma, Greece, Judea). Culture-construction, the ability to think and present ideas, and fantastic imagination to carry them through. An evil, contrived, tyrannical cultural system, devious uses of the mind to control and manipulate and Faustian tools to build it, and a psychotic dystopian vision to extrude it into reality. (Take your pick!)

And all things in and about the world are always matters of interpretation, aren't they?
______________________________

*It is curious that the story-line in Genesis offers a unique, unexplained, 'invisible' possibility: that of this mysterious Enoch. Whole fantatico-magical systems have been built up around this figure. Whole worlds of imagined possibility remain open with the idea of the existence of such an individual.

[bobevenson]

All of Christianity (as well as all other religions, I might add) is a scam except for the spiritual truth of the book of Revelation, which "The Ouzo Prophecy" elaborates upon.

[Skip]

From a Jewish perspective, at least back-in-the-day, there was never really an event. I say this because my understanding is that within Jewish histories the man Jesus simply did not figure.

Because they got rid of him before he could do any damage to Judaism.
(Assuming there was any such historical event at all. Certainly, the Roman armies did quite a lot of crucifying all over their occupied territories. Why not a troublemaker in Judea?)
The story was then carried to Rome, where it found more fertile ground in a badly corrupted pantheism. Then - 300 years later! - it was packaged for export to the pagan subjects of the Roman empire, and Jehovah, who wouldn't have touched it at home - was packaged in with it, and promoted from tribal god to to lord of the known world; another 1200 years later, it was re-written in Spanish for export to the New World and English for the empire, with (post-Enlightenment) another hefty promotion to creator of a much enlarged universe. The story, the regional deity and the sacrificial youth kept on growing with every conquest. That's why Christianity became impossible to credit - and stomach: because of those quantum leaps in claims to power.

Thunderstorm warning. Must log off. A bientot.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

Because they got rid of him before he could do any damage to Judaism.

He did far more harm to Judaism dead, in fact. That 'by the way'.

'Millions of children heard about Jews for the first time when they were told the story of how the founder of Christianity was killed by wicked men; killed by the Jews; crucified by the Jews. And the next thing they learned was that G-d had punished these wicked men and had cursed the whole of their nation for all time, so that they had become outcasts and were unfit to associate with Christians. When these children grew up, some of them quarreled among themselves about the meaning of the founder of Christianity and about the story of his life, death, and resurrection; and others were Christians only in name; but most of them retained enough Christianity to continue hating the perfidious people, the killers, the deicide race.'

___________________________________________

The story was then carried to Rome, where it found more fertile ground in a badly corrupted pantheism. Then - 300 years later! - it was packaged for export to the pagan subjects of the Roman empire, and Jehovah, who wouldn't have touched it at home - was packaged in with it, and promoted from tribal god to to lord of the known world; another 1200 years later, it was re-written in Spanish for export to the New World and English for the empire, with (post-Enlightenment) another hefty promotion to creator of a much enlarged universe. The story, the regional deity and the sacrificial youth kept on growing with every conquest. That's why Christianity became impossible to credit - and stomach: because of those quantum leaps in claims to power.

No one could deny, as far as I know, any part of that. I am not sure, though, that the issue ends with this statement of the facts.

[Skip]

There you go again, beating me to the web.
Finally had some time to reply to your previous posts, but it looks as if I'll never catch up. Here it is, anyway. Part 1.

To be fair I think we have to note right at the beginning that in every time and place in our human history, to hardly noticeable differences in degree, we have been thoroughly enmeshed within what we can now recognize as 'superstitious' structures of perception through which reality is looked at.

I don’t consider the early animists to have been superstitious. Rather, I think they lived in a world that was very much more alive than ours. Without means of gathering scientific data, it’s perfectly logical to assume that other species, trees, grass, water, clouds and wind have a consciousness like our own: they move; they change; they appear purposeful. In fact, it’s taken science a long time to overcome the religious prejudice against recognizing the kinship between humans and other animals, which primitive people (and modern dog-owners) always recognized.

…. One thing gives birth to another and the secondary 'birth' may be infinitely more mature.

I question what constitutes ‘maturity’ in a belief system. Codification of laws? Coherent plot-line? Organization of ritual? Child sacrifice replaced by goat?

….The origins of religions structures in the Orient, at a social plane, were tied to ideas of 'divine kingship' and to an ancestry that flowed downward from a divine plane….

I think this is true of all civilized religions. And I suspect that civilized kings took divinity upon themselves deliberately…

…the means by which such a belief could even be held is deeply linked to obviously untenable superstitious notions.

…, and were able to convince the people because the tribes which comprised their new nation-states had long revered their dead ancestors. There was nothing untenable about the idea that the benevolent parent isn’t really dead, but still watching over us: the majority of the world’s humans still believe it.

. Mahayana had gods, magic, a elaborate pantheon, sublime heavens and terrible hells, priests arrayed in glorious robes, monks and nuns, who were understood to have a very real power over souls and entities of the 'other world'.

Not unlike the Greek, Egyptian, Mayan, Norse and Roman Catholic systems. You think patron saints are so different from spirit guides? Or drinking the symbolic blood of God’s son is so different from cutting the heart out of an Inca warrior? How about lighting a candle to make a wish? You seriously call RC non-magical?

all cultures that we could name have a similar 'link' with a deeply superstitious myth-religious basis

Obviously. And unsurprisingly. Humans didn’t arise in isolated islands on each continent: they migrated; groups divided, developed far apart or nearby, interacted, traded, warred, raided, intermarried, perhaps reunited millennia later.

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Part 2

The quotation from the Tibetan Buddhist (who was this individual?) could in this sense be compared to a modern Christian exegete who---and they exist!---negates nearly completely the 'facticity' of Biblical content in favor of other, more mature, exegetic means and ways.

I don’t know what an exegete is, but he won’t be welcome in Rome or Mississippi.
I see no way to retain a unified Christianity without the Bible story.

… the world of our values, our accepted values, seems always to derive from these ancient structures.

What else would we derive values from but the evolution of our cultures?

… When 'believing' or fundamentalistic Christians refer to quotations of the Bible…
There are so many problems in this that, realistically, one is perhaps better off completely distancing oneself from the text entirely. Unless one is shown some other means, some other hermeneutical tricks or juggling, with which to salvage meaning or value.

They simply don’t choose the problematic quotations. They choose whichever snippet bolsters their own current agenda – and that’s why the preacher thundering “Thou shalt not kill!” when he’s against abortion, can as loudly thunder: “An eye for an eye!” when firing up the electric chair.

… the critical approach to study of the Bible which, as one gets familiar with it, decimates the possibility of a conservative/fundamentalist platform of faith as grounded in 'historical facticity'.

The prelates have never cared about fact or tenability. They themselves didn’t need to believe whatever propaganda they used to control the masses. And, since the objective is still control and power, logical argument will have no effect on it.

1) When the clear channel to a faith-based religion was undermined …
The most tenable position appears to be forms of Buddhism ….but is it not also in some sense a 'religious position'?….

This would be disillusioned western Christians who were not ready to give up spirituality. I don’t know how much of Buddhism they actually understood: certainly, there was no shortage of gurus to make it easy and palatable. Some also took refuge in various versions of old western paganism or new-age amalgams. I’m not sure how many of those converts were whole-hearted to begin with, or how many returned to Christianity or how many continued to drift out and away from religion.

2) We may arrive at 'faith' (in a pietistic sense). But a faith-position with a solid grounding in historicity and facticity is not possible. Such a position has been decimated. What this means is that a faith position is still viable but only as a faith-position.

All sincere religious belief past the age of 12 has to be faith position.

And there you are, fully in the present, staring at your neighbor, the crazy world cacophonous and cruel right out your window.

And if you feel the breath of deity on your cheek, this will leave you serene. I have known such people, and it doesn’t matter what their religious education was. These are unusual people, and they don’t advertise or proselytize – they just march in anti-war protests, help their cousin move and cook soup in earthquake zones.

3) What could be the position and 'teaching' of a Radical Christianity? A Christianity which has effectively 'died' but then resurrected?

I think some efforts have been made. I don’t know how successfully. I suppose my position would depend on the purpose and tactics of such an experiment.

What really remains after all the layers have been peeled away?

Functional, independent human beings who don’t need religious leadership?

Because one encounters such a thing through the vehicle of one's own consciousness, as a solitary experience, as for example in meditation and speculation. One *senses* and calls it 'knowledge' but it is always personal, subjective, internal and imperfect.

Yes… only, how do you measure the perfection of internal knowledge? It would be unique and thus incomparable.

… the opening up of consciousness in the Western world that led to the discovery---rare and even impossible and even perhaps unlikely---of experimental science in a small window of opportunity in time

I question this. Scientific inquiry had been with us from apehood, it just wasn’t named. Ancient civilizations had medicine and engineering that the arrogant industrial peoples have only recently begun to appreciate. Europe looked like a burgeoning garden of ideas in the Renaissance only because the power of RC had suppressed the pursuit of knowledge for 1200 years. It was really a logjam.

I have yet to see any clear exposition demonstrating how the faith position in Western culture may have contributed to the discovery of experimental science but some say it exists.

Literacy. The only way the son of a poor man could be educated was by the monks, in Latin. So all the bright boys of different nations were able to communicate among themselves. (Girls, of course, were out of luck, as were Blackamoors and Jews.)

Yet the faith position might have allowed for the opening up of imagination to all manner of possibilities, and the 'belief' that such a thing is not only possible but promised. Inevitable?

No. What Christianity promised was lobster on Friday for the bishops and pie-in-the sky for the serfs. Rome brutally squashed any kind of earthly utopian idea; anything that might possibly challenge the status quo.
Some intelligent, inquisitive men joined the priesthood (to get an education - or louse-free underwear) and their influence relaxed the Inquisitors’ stranglehold on the European mind, just a tiny bit. Then came the wealth and cosmopolitan interests of the merchant class, along with some nobles, who not only sent their sons to Jesuit school, but sponsored learning in general.
And, of course, the Reformation made a strong bulwark against Rome; liberated Germany and Holland and England from that stranglehold.

4) What is the relationship between this 'transcendental consciousness' and ….the 'good life' to be claimed and lived?

Why no other place? Because as soon as the European powers got better guns from science, they made sure nobody else had the opportunity. The good life [in this world], which had previously been the exclusive domain of aristocracy and high clergy, was claimed by the newly rich traders of the imperial era, and then American capitalists – not because they were transcendentally conscious, but because they were ruthless.

---what shall we do with our awareness, our life?

The best we each, uniquely, can – as ever.

follow-ups:

I would accept your statement that 'magical thinking plays a large part in their serenity'.

I was referring to prayer and afterlife. However, you’re right: this isn’t my experience.

[Jesus] could not be said to have been a failure even if only a tiny group followed him. Ideas are very powerful, and it is the grand ideas that move history.

He was trying to reform a corrupt Judaism, as Luther wanted to reform a corrupt Catholicism. It was Paul who succeeded in bringing about something quite different, that I doubt Jesus would have approved of. From his own pov, he failed. From yours, he succeeded, simply by getting his name on the door. I'm siding with him.

There was another school (the Jerusalem school, which disappeared), but clearly the Pauline framework took on giant proportions.

Once it had the Vatican throne, it made very, very sure that all other schools of thought ‘disappeared’. I consider Paul on of the arch-villains of philosophy. (The other is Descartes.)

and then:

There are two distinct poles: one pole feels that Judeo-Christian religion has been a terrible tragedy,

Certainly, for Hypatia, the library and western knowledge in the following millennium. Certainly, for the Cathars. Certainly for Giordano Bruno; for the uncounted midwives and herbalists. Certainly, for the castrati in church choirs, the transported orphans of the potato famine, the North American native children of the residential schools and the beaten wives of all the self-righteous patriarchs. Not to mention many, many thousand Saracens and Crusaders.

while the other sees all the positive features. I tend in fact toward the latter but this does not mean that I cannot see the destructive side too.

I’m unaware of any good that could not have happened in the absence of holy Roman Church. Let’s not forget Muhammad and his counter-product - a direct response to Christian military success - probably would not have happened. History would be different, that's all. Probably no better or worse, as the participants were of the same crazy species.

Something was put into motion. Something moved in culture and in history's moments.

All human activity does, all the time. Why do you think this particular unfolding of history was better than the alternatives would have been? Unique – sure. Everything that happens in a particular place is unique. It’s nice to think ours – the time-line of which we are the penultimate offspring is special, but why is it more special than what happened in some other time and place?

And all things in and about the world are always matters of interpretation, aren't they?

Indeed.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

Well you seem to have caught up in any case! I appreciate your comments.

The 'fracturing method' of breaking up a post/statement into small parts with all sorts of ancillary questions/problems that open up can sometimes lead to the problem of endless conversation of related (but interesting!) issues, so I will try to keep my comments within the general lines I have outlined.

I am attempting an 'apology' for Christianity and in this I will naturally have to confront the grand 'counter-argument' that is circling around 'out there' in the world right now. In regard to this, I would say that you embody to a great extent that Critique. You seem to say, in so many words, 'there is no redeeming features'. Whether in fact this is what you think I cannot say exactly and I can only try to restate fairly what it seems to be.

My position in regard to this huge question is not fundamentalistic. I.e. I am not here preaching the gospel or attempting to win converts to a specific religious position. And yet I am aware, and it should be stated, that the perspective that informs me, insofar as it is formed and has substance (when in fact it is developing and experimental and filled with some contradictions), is one of a general defense of Western modes. When I say 'general defense' I mean substantially defense against attack if the intention of the attack is merely to tear down or to destroy (without a counter-constructive alternative). For as I see things---and there are many, many reasons why this occurs---there exists and there moves a 'general attack' against some part of the core that makes up the Western Canon. In fact I don't know exactly how to refer to it that doesn't sound monolithic or reductionist.

Poles in conversations are both necessary (our friends) and work against us (our enemies). It is true that I value and seek to support this thing I am calling 'the Western Canon' (for want of a better term) but this defense occurs at a somewhat abstract level and does not mean, say, 'in support of neo-imperialistic wars', or 'economic hegemony'. But it would assemble a defense of 'civilization' as an effort to concretize the possibilities of the present. I follow Ortega y Gasset in understanding the achievements of civilization as being unique and valuable and worthy of protection. That means educational institutions, legal and civic institutions, and all that allows for an individual to have some moments to exist in the sun and in the possibility of 'the good life'. I see the dumbed-down mass-man as the beneficiary of these great gifts but who seems incapable of really understanding what has been provided to him, and at what cost. My discourse also has as part of its intentionality and 'agenda' the thrust of desiring 'him' (and myself) to wake up to the unimagined possibility of life offered by technical advancement and developed reason.

And so the 'defense' that I am involved in, that is part of my studies and indeed 'my life' right now, certainly underpins my activity here (in this conversation). In this sense I have and take responsibility for this 'intentionality' and this 'agenda'. I came to conclude that any crystallized idea-structure becomes an 'agenda' for overall activity in the world, in relation to the world, in relation to life. It should also be kept in mind that I am informed by certain points-of-view that can be described as 'conservative' but quite differently than what is generally understood by that word. Conservative, to me, means holding to and 'valuating' a group of ideals and concepts and perhaps methods that are part of the foundation of Western thinking and action.

You will already have gathered that I place a special emphasis on the trends and movements within Western culture that led to the discovery of 'experimental science'. I understand this as a unique event. Though it is true that other cultures had engineering skill and other skills no one of them stumbled into this radical methodology known as 'experimental science'.

Briefly, it is my view that what we refer to so generally as 'science' allowed for the transformation of human possibility in ways that any specific religious or moral or ethical tenet could not produce. The other aspect of this is that in substantial and undeniable ways 'science' has opened up for man the possibility of 'the good life' in the sense of the possibility of living fully within one's body for some numbers of decades, or even half a century, or more. This to me has great importance. It is also a starting point for reconsideration of all philosophical, spiritual, religious and existential questions. The fact that we now have such possibilities, that we can live relatively pain-free and fully within our body and our present, is (as I see it) the great achievement.

My understanding is that we do not generally understand this as a truly radical event in human history and we 'take it as granted'. I locate this opening of possibility within about a 300 year period in the heart of Western culture, 'our' Western culture. And I hold to the position that there are 'things to be valued' and tightly held to and also 'protected' about our traditions and our knowledge-base, our valuation-systems, our methods, but more than that: the nature of our 'self', the elements from which it has been constructed.

All these elements and factors combined induce me to consider a more 'fair' and 'reasoned' consideration of the religious philosophy of Christianity. I am not unaware of the negatives, nor the destructives, nor the critical arguments against. But I do perceive that the groups of questions and conflicts in 'Christianity' are at a core and existential level precisely the questions and conflicts exactly and precisely at the center of our very selves. There is no way to be a member of 'our own culture' linguistically, experientially, culturally, socially, and not to be in the midst of these grand problems and issues. For it seems to me that we are dealing on and speaking about the stuff that makes us up at a molecular level.

This does not deny other valuation-possibilities, nor the importance of other cultures, other outlooks, other 'epistemological' bases---not at all, and in fact I think it is 'our traditions' in a philosophical and rationalistic sense that allows for us to consider and incorporate (to reach out and touch, to know, to consider) any and all other possibilities, those of other cultures, historical periods. I see this as a unique and very valuable strength of 'our own traditions'.

The above is, I think, a sort of meta-response to an aspect of your position (as I understand it so far). I will address a few specifics in another post.