Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri May 20, 2022 1:24 am"Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless someone is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which has been born of the flesh is flesh, and that which has been born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be amazed that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ "(John 3:5-7)
And He [Jesus] was saying to them, “You are from below, I am from above; you are of this world, I am not of this world. Therefore I said to you that you will die in your sins; for unless you believe that I am, you will die in your sins.” (John 8:23-24)
So, we must I think stop from time to time in this strange but interesting conversation here on-going on this philosophy forum. We must stop and attempt to redefine *where we are* now -- in the conversation of course, but really our issue, the severe problem we face, is where we ourselves *stand* in relation to the giant problems that we have no choice but to face, given that these giant problems begin to encroach and impinge upon is.
Now, I can make this plain as day by simple reference to the fact that 'out there' in the social conversation/culture war/civil war(s) that we have all noticed developing (and now the economic and psychological factors have made themselves very evident) there is constantly -- still! -- daily references to the spectre of
Hitler. It is a diabolical image, of course, but one directly tied to perceptual structures and psychological 'reality'. It is in a certain sense an image more 'real' than that of God (I mean in the way it
functions).
Nazi, fascism, violent intolerance, suppression of speech, broaching of the topic that speech, saying something, can be considered an act of war, a 'violence' against another person or some sacred idea they hold, and now the outbreak of war in Europe that tantalizes major players to get deeply involved, and though predictions are impossible, the strange fact is the *mirroring* factor, the circling-back of history, or the octaval reappearance (one might say) of a spirit of chaos that sure looks like the 1930s. My point is not to indulge in dramatic fantasies and nourish spectres, but only to point out that -- but what is it that must be pointed out?
There is a crisis developing and crises always *come to a head*. There is nothing I or any of could say, therefore nothing that any one of us could do, to avert the culmination of crisis, but what we can do is to gather ourselves together, collect ourselves, and hope that we can maintain an inner equilibrium in the face of events that call forth hysterical reaction.
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AJ to IC: You do not own the regeneration processes friend.
IC: Of course I don't. I never claimed I did. Christ does, though.
First, I am forced to 'make clarifying declarations'. I am forced to confront, and to a degree to oppose, what Immanuel Can says. But please note that what IC does is important to notice and understand: he establishes polarizations and oppositions. Why? Well because they serve him. But let me broaden this observation to the farthest point: Christianity operates through the establishment of extreme oppositions. Indeed it has a profoundly Manichean understructure that, though officially repressed, nevertheless still functions through the figure of Satan.
The Christian God is divided off from a total picture of what Life is when God is defined as *wholly and absolutely good* and everything else, including all life's paradoxes, including everything that makes life life! is assigned to the Dark Angel. The point is not to attempt to resolve this *picture* but simply to present it so that it can be examined.
Now, it seems that IC's declaration -- an invitation to *bite* on an absolutist bait that he dangles from time to time which, I suggest, has had and still has a profound attractiveness for the wavering soul -- proposes a 'resolution'. I would not deny that it functions in this way. Nor would I deny that the function should be dismissed (or undermined) if another person takes the *bait* and jumps headlong into the current of 'becoming a Christian'. This is my own peculiar conflict. I have examined the innards of Christian philosophy and it really does offer, and in fact it is, a viable life-path. Christianity is extraordinarily rich on so many levels that all that it is cannot be dismissed. Nor should it be.
Yet I question the 'absolutism' in these declarative statements. So what I propose is *interpretation*. And interpretation opens up a more subtle relationship to what is declared and revealed in these absolutist statements
even though and
even if they are Biblical and are said to represent Absolute Truth. To interpret (hermeneutics generally) is always an endeavor that will cause one to run afoul of hierarchies of authority. But what I can say is that there is, indeed there is, a way to *take* the statements made by the Gospel Jesus Christ in John that 'opens up' arrays of possibility that expand out from the hard and fast program that, as I see it, Immanuel Can presents himself as and sees himself as 'representing'.
Immanuel Can then, to employ a certain lens, shelters himself behind the God Image (as absolute authority) and thus empowers himself. All he need do is say "No, not me, God!" and all contradictory or opposing or questioning statements -- anything brought out against his argument -- are so many 'bullets that miss'. No bullet can ever hit. In the final analysis this is the refuge and the fort of a religious fanatic.
So here I could embark on a conceptual undertaking of making statements about what being 'born of the spirit' can mean. The 'spirit' in my interpretation is free-ranging. In fact, and this is an understructure that runs all through John and the Johannine epistles, there is a Hermetic (mercurial) substructure to it. Hermes is the intermediary and *messenger* (angel) that spans the upper world and the lower world. And what
message is brought? Well, what requires rebirth? Deadened souls certainly. This implies *thirst* if not even *dying of thirst*. But what nourishes? Well to answer that question ask any person, anywhere, who embarks on a path of self-renovation. If one accepts that 1) a person can and does become deadened, then 2) it is immediately and concomitantly proposed that, through all sorts of processes, a person can rebirth themselves or 'be rebirthed' since we are not, hardly at all, the authors or the controllers of life's genuine processes. We simply are in life and the story of life flows around us. Similarly, we are in bodies and these bodies do everything without our conscious decision and choice.
So what is referred to with these Johannine declarations can be expanded to any point. If they are true (and psychological death and rebirth are 'as true as rain', they are universal. No one
owns them.
But here of course we would have to veer into those cultural and social systems that are, in fact, overseen and controlled by hierarchical structures. So in a sense there are 'Christian Clubs' that you join. And by subscribing and paying membership dues you agree, on different planes, to 'abide by the rules'. All social systems have such structures and make similar demands.
Everyone has to make their social commitments, right? We make our commitments to the State for example. Or simply our neighborhood or a neighborhood council or indeed the covenants of a housing project, our social circle, etc. A church structure can be examined in this way. I have researched early Christianity and it *functioned* as a form of induction into 'higher things' and new sets of commitment. I do not negate 'being born from above' but, and I am sorry for my heretical posture, I do not believe that man controls or dictates who has access to such processes. But at the same time I do not negate hierarchical structures that oversee such processes, indeed all processes. I mean getting a doctorate is highly supervised. You have to satisfy all sorts of requirements. These structures have relevancy.
The following is from Jung's
Aion. Everything about Jung is a bit bizarre but he really does have significant insights that, in my view, must be taken into consideration. The shattering of the God Image is what is referred to with the reference to Job, and Job's crisis, in a way that can be supported by coherent discourse, is also the crisis we face in a world (
our world, our personal perceptual world) where the horizon was erased. Job's crisis and nihilism have a certain connection, no?
So there is clearly a
mythological backdrop to the Christian story. It proposes to know the most hidden, but the most relevant, things about life, human destiny and the destiny -- literally! -- of the world and the kosmos. It presents a map and, if Jung is right, the map can be examined from a variety of perspectives. Jung does this through a psychological lens but, and this is odd, also as a visionary (which does mean, to one degree of other, as a prophet). Jung is involved in a vastly
hermeneutical project in the most original sense of the word.
I have divided this into paragraphs that were not in the original:
It is the same problem as in Job. As the highest value and
supreme dominant in the psychic hierarchy, the God-image is
immediately related to, or identical with, the self, and every-
thing that happens to the God-image has an effect on the latter.
Any uncertainty about the God-image causes a profound uneasi-
ness in the self, for which reason the question is generally
ignored because of its painfulness. But that does not mean that
it remains unasked in the unconscious. What is more, it is
answered by views and beliefs like materialism, atheism, and
similar substitutes, which spread like epidemics. They crop up
wherever and whenever one waits in vain for the legitimate
answer. The ersatz product represses the real question into the
unconscious and destroys the continuity of historical tradition
which is the hallmark of civilization. The result is bewilder-
ment and confusion.
Christianity has insisted on God's goodness
as a loving Father and has done its best to rob evil of substance.
The early Christian prophecy concerning the Antichrist, and
certain ideas in late Jewish theology, could have suggested to us
that the Christian answer to the problem of Job omits to men-
tion the corollary, the sinister reality of which is now being
demonstrated before our eyes by the splitting of our world:
the destruction of the God-image is followed by the annulment
of the human personality. Materialistic atheism with its utopian
chimeras forms the religion of all those rationalistic movements
which delegate the freedom of personality to the masses and
thereby extinguish it. The advocates of Christianity squander
their energies in the mere preservation of what has come down
to them, with no thought of building on to their house and
making it roomier. Stagnation in these matters is threatened in
the long run with a lethal end.