Posted on 09/20/2013 4:29:03 AM PDT by spirited irish
“Who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ? He is antichrist, that denieth the Father and the Son” (1 John 2:22).
“And the fifth angel sounded the trumpet, and I saw a star fall from heaven upon the earth, and there was given to him the key of the bottomless pit." (Rev. 9:1)
In his Concise Commentary Matthew Henry identifies falling stars as tepid, indecisive, weak or apostate clergy who,
"Having ceased to be a minister of Christ, he who is represented by this star becomes the minister of the devil; and lets loose the powers of hell against the churches of Christ."
John identifies antichrists, in this case clergy who serve the devil rather than Christ, sequentially. First, like Bultmann, Teilhard de Chardin, Robert Funk, Paul Tillich, and John Shelby Spong, they specifically deny the living, personal Holy Trinity in favor of Gnostic pagan, immanent or Eastern pantheist conceptions. Though God the Father Almighty in three Persons upholds the souls of men and maintains life and creation, His substance is not within nature (space-time dimension) as pantheism maintains, but outside of it. Sinful men live within nature and are burdened by time and mortality; God is not.
Second, the specific denial of the Father logically negates Jesus the Christ, the Word who was in the beginning (John 1), was with God, and is God from the creation of all things (1 John 1). In a pre-incarnate theophany, Jesus is the Angel who spoke “mouth to mouth” to Moses (Num. 12:6-9; John 9:20) and at sundry times and in many ways “spoke in times past to the fathers by the prophets, last of all…” (Hebrews 1:1) Jesus the Christ is the incarnate Son of God who is the life and light of men, who by His shed blood on the Cross died for the remission of all sins and bestowed the privilege of adoption on all who put their faith in Him.
Therefore, to deny the Holy Father is to logically deny the deity of Jesus Christ, the incarnate Son of God, hence,
“…every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist . . . and even now already is it in the world” (1 John 4:3).
According to Peter (2 Peter 2:1), falling stars will work among the faithful, teaching damnable heresies that deny the Lord, cause the fall of men into unbelief, and bring destruction upon themselves:
“The natural parents of modern unbelief turn out to have been the guardians of belief.” Many thinking people came at last “to realize that it was religion, not science or social change that gave birth to unbelief. Having made God more and more like man---intellectually, morally, emotionally---the shapers of religion made it feasible to abandon God, to believe simply in man.” (James Turner of the University of Michigan in “American Babylon,” Richard John Neuhaus, p. 95)
Falling Stars and Damnable Heresy
Almost thirty years ago, two well-respected social science scholars, William Sims Bainbridge and Rodney Stark found themselves alarmed by what they saw as a rising tide of irrationalism, superstition and occultism---channeling cults, spirit familiars, necromancers, Wiccans, Satanists, Luciferians, goddess worshippers, 'gay' shamans, Hermetic magicians and other occult madness at every level of society, particularly within the most influential--- Hollywood, academia and the highest corridors of political power.
Like many scientists, they were equally concerned by Christian opposition to naturalistic evolution. As is common in the science community, they assumed the cause of these social pathologies was somehow due to fundamentalism, their term for authentic Christian theism as opposed to liberalized Christianity. Yet to their credit, the research they undertook to discover the cause was conducted both scientifically and with great integrity. What they found was so startling it caused them to re-evaluate their attitude toward authentic Christian theism. Their findings led them to say:
"It would be a mistake to conclude that fundamentalists oppose all science (when in reality they but oppose) a single theory (that) directly contradicts the bible. But it would be an equally great mistake to conclude that religious liberals and the irreligious possess superior minds of great rationality, to see them as modern personalities who have no need of the supernatural or any propensity to believe unscientific superstitions. On the contrary...they are much more likely to accept the new superstitions. It is the fundamentalists who appear most virtuous according to scientific standards when we examine the cults and pseudo-sciences proliferating in our society today." ("Superstitions, Old and New," The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. IV, No. 4; summer, 1980)
In more detail they observed that authentic ‘born again’ Christians are far less likely to accept cults and pseudoscientific beliefs while the irreligious and liberalized Christians (i.e., progressive Catholics, Protestant emergent, NAR, word faith, prosperity gospel) are open to unscientific notions. In fact, these two groups are most disposed toward occultism.
As Bainbridge and Stark admitted, evolution directly contradicts the Bible, beginning with the Genesis account of creation ex nihilo. This means that evolution is the antithesis of the Genesis account. For this reason, discerning Christians refuse to submit to the evolutionary thinking that has swept Western and American society. Nor do they accept the evolutionary theism brought into the whole body of the Church by weak, tepid, indecisive, or apostate clergy.
Over eighty years ago, Rev. C. Leopold Clarke wrote that priests who embrace evolution (evolutionary theists) are apostates from the ‘Truth as it is in Jesus.’ (1 John2:2) Rev. Clarke, a lecturer at a London Bible college, discerned that evolution is the antithesis to the Revelation of God in the Deity of Jesus Christ, thus it is the greatest and most active agent of moral and spiritual disintegration:
“It is a battering-ram of unbelief---a sapping and mining operation that intends to blow Religion sky-high. The one thing which the human mind demands in its conception of God, is that, being Almighty, He works sovereignly and miraculously---and this is the thing with which Evolution dispenses….Already a tremendous effect, on a wide scale has been produced by the impact of this teaching---an effect which can only be likened to the…collapse of foundations…” (Evolution and the Break-Up of Christendom, Philip Bell, creation.com, Nov. 27, 2012)
The faith of the Christian Church and of the average Christian has had, and still has, its foundation as much in the literal and historic meaning of Genesis, the book of beginnings revealed ‘mouth to mouth’ by the Angel to Moses, as in that of the person and deity of Jesus Christ. But how horrible a travesty of the sacred office of the Christian Ministry to see church leaders more eager to be abreast of the times, than earnestly contending for the Faith once delivered unto the saints (Jude 1:3). It is high time, said Rev. Clarke, that the Church,
“…. separated herself from the humiliating entanglement attending her desire to be thought up to date…What, after all, have custodians of Divine Revelation to do making terms with speculative Biology, which has….no message of comfort or help to the soul?” (ibid)
The primary tactic employed by priests eager to accommodate themselves and the Church to modern science and evolutionary thinking is predictable. It is the argument that evolution is entirely compatible with the Bible when we see Genesis, especially the first three chapters, in a non-literal, non-historical context. This is the argument embraced and advanced by mega-church pastor Timothy J. Keller.
With a position paper Keller published with the theistic evolutionary organization Bio Logos he joined the ranks of falling stars (Catholic and Protestant priests) stretching back to the Renaissance. Their slippery-slide into apostasy began when they gave into the temptation to embrace a non-literal, non-historical view of Genesis. (A response to Timothy Keller’s ‘Creation, Evolution and Christian Laypeople,” Lita Cosner, Sept. 9, 2010, creation.com)
This is not a heresy unique to modern times. The early Church Fathers dealt with this damnable heresy as well, counting it among the heretical tendencies of the Origenists. Fourth-century Fathers such as John Chrysostom, Basil the Great and Ephraim the Syrian, all of whom wrote commentaries on Genesis, specifically warned against treating Genesis as an unhistorical myth or allegory. John Chrysostom strongly warned against paying heed to these heretics,
“…let us stop up our hearing against them, and let us believe the Divine Scripture, and following what is written in it, let us strive to preserve in our souls sound dogmas.” (Genesis, Creation, and Early Man, Fr. Seraphim Rose, p. 31)
As St. Cyril of Alexandria wrote, higher theological, spiritual meaning is founded upon humble, simple faith in the literal and historic meaning of Genesis and one cannot apprehend rightly the Scriptures without believing in the historical reality of the events and people they describe. (ibid, Seraphim Rose, p. 40)
In the integral worldview teachings of the Fathers, neither the literal nor historical meaning of the Revelations of the pre-incarnate Jesus, the Angel who spoke to Moses, can be regarded as expendable. There are at least four critically important reasons why. First, to reduce the Revelation of God to allegory and myth is to contradict and usurp the authority of God, ultimately deny the deity of Jesus Christ; twist, distort, add to and subtract from the entire Bible and finally, to imperil the salvation of believers.
Scenarios commonly proposed by modern Origenists posit a cleverly disguised pantheist/immanent nature deity subject to the space-time dimension and forces of evolution. But as noted previously, it is sinful man who carries the burden of time, not God. This is a crucial point, for when evolutionary theists add millions and billions of zeros (time) to God they have transferred their own limitations onto Him. They have ‘limited’ God and made Him over in their own image. This is not only idolatrous but satanic.
Additionally, evolution inverts creation. In place of God’s good creation from which men fell there is an evolutionary escalator starting at the bottom with matter, then progressing upward toward life, then up and through the life and death of millions of evolved creatures that preceded humans by millions of years until at long last an apish humanoid emerges into which a deity that is always in a state of becoming (evolving) places a soul.
Evolution amputates the entire historical precedent from the Gospel and makes Jesus Christ unnecessary as the atheist Frank Zindler enthusiastically points out:
“The most devastating thing that biology did to Christianity was the discovery of biological evolution. Now that we know that Adam and Eve never were real people the central myth of Christianity is destroyed. If there never was an Adam and Eve, there never was an original sin. If there never was an original sin there is no need of salvation. If there is no need of salvation there is no need of a saviour. And I submit that puts Jesus…into the ranks of the unemployed. I think evolution absolutely is the death knell of Christianity.” (“Atheism vs. Christianity,” 1996, Lita Cosner, creation.com, June 13, 2013)
None of this was lost on Darwin’s bulldog, Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1985). Huxley was thoroughly familiar with the Bible, thus he understood that if Genesis is not the authoritative Word of God, is not historical and literal despite its’ symbolic and poetic elements, then the entirety of Scripture becomes a collection of fairytales resulting in tragic downward spiraling consequences as the Catholic Kolbe Center for the Study of Creation makes clear in part:
“By denying the historical truth of the first chapters of Genesis, theistic evolutionism has fostered a preoccupation with natural causes almost to the exclusion of supernatural ones. By denying the several supernatural creative acts of God in Genesis, and by downplaying the importance of the supernatural activity of Satan, theistic evolutionists slip into a naturalistic mentality which seeks to explain everything in terms of natural causes. Once this mentality takes hold, it is easy for men to regard the concept of spiritual warfare as a holdover from the days of primitive superstition. Diabolical activity is reduced to material or psychological causes. The devil and his demons come to be seen as irrelevant. Soon ‘hell’ joins the devil and his demons in the category of antiquated concepts. And the theistic evolutionist easily makes the fatal mistake of thinking that he has nothing more to fear from the devil and his angels. According to Fr. Gabriele Amorth, the chief exorcist of Rome, there is a tremendous increase in diabolical activity and influence in the formerly Christian world. And yet most of the bishops of Europe no longer believe in the existence of evil spirits….To the Fathers of the Church who believed in the truth of Genesis, this would be incredible. But in view of the almost universal acceptance of theistic evolution, it is hardly surprising.” (The Difference it makes: The Importance of the Traditional Doctrine of Creation, Hugh Owen, kolbecenter.org)
Huxley had ‘zero’ respect for modern Origenists and received enormous pleasure from heaping piles of hot coals and burning contempt upon them, thereby exposing their shallow-reasoning, hypocrisy, timidity, fear of non-acceptance, and unfaithfulness. With sarcasm dripping from his words he quipped,
“I am fairly at a loss to comprehend how any one, for a moment, can doubt that Christian theology must stand or fall with the historical trustworthiness of the Jewish Scriptures. The very conception of the Messiah, or Christ, is inextricably interwoven with Jewish history; the identification of Jesus of Nazareth with that Messiah rests upon the interpretation of passages of the Hebrew Scriptures which have no evidential value unless they possess the historical character assigned to them. If the covenant with Abraham was not made; if circumcision and sacrifices were not ordained by Jahveh; if the “ten words” were not written by God’s hand on the stone tables; if Abraham is more or less a mythical hero, such as Theseus; the story of the Deluge a fiction; that of the Fall a legend; and that of the creation the dream of a seer; if all these definite and detailed narratives of apparently real events have no more value as history than have the stories of the regal period of Rome—what is to be said about the Messianic doctrine, which is so much less clearly enunciated? And what about the authority of the writers of the books of the New Testament, who, on this theory, have not merely accepted flimsy fictions for solid truths, but have built the very foundations of Christian dogma upon legendary quicksands?” (Darwin’s Bulldog---Thomas Huxley, Russell Grigg, creation.com, Oct. 14, 2008)
Pouring more contempt on them he asked,
“When Jesus spoke, as of a matter of fact, that "the Flood came and destroyed them all," did he believe that the Deluge really took place, or not? It seems to me that, as the narrative mentions Noah’s wife, and his sons’ wives, there is good scriptural warranty for the statement that the antediluvians married and were given in marriage; and I should have thought that their eating and drinking might be assumed by the firmest believer in the literal truth of the story. Moreover, I venture to ask what sort of value, as an illustration of God’s methods of dealing with sin, has an account of an event that never happened? If no Flood swept the careless people away, how is the warning of more worth than the cry of “Wolf” when there is no wolf? If Jonah’s three days’ residence in the whale is not an “admitted reality,” how could it “warrant belief” in the “coming resurrection?” … Suppose that a Conservative orator warns his hearers to beware of great political and social changes, lest they end, as in France, in the domination of a Robespierre; what becomes, not only of his argument, but of his veracity, if he, personally, does not believe that Robespierre existed and did the deeds attributed to him?” (ibid)
Concerning Matthew 19:5:
“If divine authority is not here claimed for the twenty-fourth verse of the second chapter of Genesis, what is the value of language? And again, I ask, if one may play fast and loose with the story of the Fall as a “type” or “allegory,” what becomes of the foundation of Pauline theology?” (ibid)
And concerning Cor. 15:21-22:
“If Adam may be held to be no more real a personage than Prometheus, and if the story of the Fall is merely an instructive “type,” comparable to the profound Promethean mythus, what value has Paul’s dialectic?” (ibid)
After much thought, C.S. Lewis concluded that evolution is the central, most radical lie at the center of a vast network of lies within which modern Westerners are entangled while Rev. Clarke identifies the central lie as the Gospel of another Spirit. The fiendish aim of this Spirit is to help men lose God, not find Him, and by contradicting the Divine Redeemer, compromising Priests are serving this Spirit and its’ diabolical purposes. To contradict the Divine Redeemer is the very essence of unfaithfulness, and that it should be done while reverence is professed,
“…. is an illustration of the intellectual and moral topsy-turvydom of Modernism…’He whom God hath sent speaketh the Words of God,’ claimed Christ of Himself (John 3:34), and no assumption of error can hold water in the face of that declaration, without blasphemy.” Evolutionary theists are serving the devil, therefore “no considerations of Christian charity, of tolerance, of policy, can exonerate Christian leaders or Churches who fail to condemn and to sever themselves from compromising, cowardly, shilly-shallying priests”---the falling stars who “challenge the Divine Authority of Jesus Christ.” (ibid)
The rebuttals, warnings and counsels of the Fathers against listening to Origenists (and their modern evolutionary counterparts) indicates that the spirit of antichrist operating through modern rationalistic criticism of the Revelation of God is not a heresy unique to our times but was inveighed against by early Church Fathers.
From the scholarly writings of the Eastern Orthodox priest, Fr. Seraphim Rose, to the incisive analysis, rebuttals and warnings of the Catholic Kolbe Center, creation.com, Creation Research Institute, Rev. Clarke, and many other stalwart defenders of the faith once delivered, all are a clear, compelling call to the whole body of the Church to hold fast to the traditional doctrine of creation as it was handed down from the Apostles, for as God spoke and Jesus is the Living Word incarnate, it is incumbent upon the faithful to submit their wills to the Divine Will and Authority of God rather than to the damnable heresy proffered by falling stars eager to embrace naturalistic science and the devil's antithesis--- evolution. But if it seem evil to you to serve the Lord,
“…you have your choice: choose this day that which pleases you, whom you would rather serve….but as for me and my house we will serve the Lord.” Joshua 24:15
Sadly, Ms irish, it's you who are vastly more ignorant than you pretend to be.
And not just ignorant, but utterly dishonest, in utterly refusing to answer the basic question, which your entire thesis cries out to be answered: were our Founding Fathers wicked, satanic, Gnostic Freemasons, or not?
If yes, why, if no why not?
Your drivel about "inner circles" and "outer circles" is total cop-out, since some of our Founders were as "inner circle" as you can get, and others were their close, like-minded friends.
So there is no suggestion in any account which claims that some "inner circle" Founders practiced religious beliefs that others did not share.
Indeed, the whole point of our Founders' religious beliefs was tolerance of others' faiths -- and such tolerance was utterly alien to most of Christianity at the time, but was totally consistent with teachings of the Freemasons.
Ms irish, please, please remember this: in his will, the highest ranking Freemason in America, the inner-most of the "inner circle" of American Freemasons -- our Founder Benjamin Franklin -- gave money to every church in Philadelphia, including Jewish synagogues.
That is the essence of American Freemasonry, and all your rubbish nonsense about Gnostic, satanic statist masons -- at least as it might apply to our Founders -- is just garbage-talk.
Give it up!
Slip-sliding away, eh?
Agreeing with me while pretending to disagree?
What's up with that?
The fact, which you lamely acknowledge while refusing to outright admit, is that there was no -- zero, zip, nada -- Christian tradition of constitutionally limited republican federal government before our Founders' Constitution.
Indeed, at the time "Christendom", meaning the deadly alliance of Church and monarchy which then ruled all of Europe, represented the most wicked and evil form of government we can now imagine.
That is why our Founders' opposition-Freemasonry was utterly vital to our freedoms (such as still remain), and why you should demur demurely in criticizing them. ;-)
Turning and wheeling and refusing to face the question head-on, yet again!
Were our Founders wicked, satanic, Gnostic Freemasons or not?
And don't tell me "inner circle" "outer circle" BS -- since you have no actual evidence for any of it.
You don't know who was "inner circle" or "outer circle", or if any of them believed something different from the others.
You only claim it because that can be forced to fit into your own simplistic narrative of "Christians = good, Freemasons = evil".
The reality is that when good American Christians became Freemasons, they re-made Freemasonry in their own image.
And they took from Freemasonry many values which could not then be found in Christianity -- most notably the very first clause of our First Amendment:
So all this other rubbish-talk from you and Ms irish, about wicked satanic Gnostic statist Freemasons, refuses to acknowledge the historical fact that our Founders looked on their Freemasonry very differently.
Of course, but Kevmo has raised the issue of historically verifiable facts, and I pointed out there are differences between "historical fact" versus "scientific fact", versus "religious faith".
By standards of much of what we call "ancient history", the Bible generally and Gospels specifically are rather well attested to.
That doesn't make them "scientific facts", but it can provide comfort for people of faith that their beliefs are grounded in something solid.
Ultimately, beliefs in the super-natural are beyond any scientific or historical proofs, and greatly depend on our personal experiences to focus and make real...
Of course, by casual observation I don't know of any "Obamatrons" on Free Republic.
Perhaps you can point some of them out to me?
That is, when you're not too busy with "four D’s in action . . . ducking, dancing, dodging, and discharging (great gaseous displays)."
YHAOS referring to conservatives: "Who dat?
You personify that tendency more than anyone I know.
Politically, I come closer to being a Jeffersonian liberal than anything (the difference usually is not worth the explanation).
Principally, of course, I am a Christian."
First, FRiend, you raised the issue, and now you're ducking, dancing dodging & discharging to avoid it: who precisely is using ad hominem attacks here?
You claimed it is "Obamatrons", but refuse to name any.
I say that I'm rather routinely ad hominemed by posters claiming to be "more conservative than thou".
Now I say that my claim is at least as true as yours, and I challenge you to prove otherwise... ;-)
Second, I'm interested to note your association with Thomas Jefferson's political ideas, though not necessarily with his version of Christianity.
What if it were historically true that you can't have one without the other?
Which would you chose, FRiend YHAOS?
YHAOS: "I have, yet, to receive a response.
Would you care to get in front of that parade?"
Seems to me that I've already answered enough of your unserious questions with far more seriousness than they deserved.
Indeed, I'm not at all certain if careful distinctions between historical fact, biblical allegories and religious creeds serve any purpose, in Church or outside it.
YHAOS: "Your error surely."
Granted.
A quick word search on "Queen of Sciences" shows it came from the_Watchman in post #38 of this thread.
I first used it to you on post #55 of our current thread.
YHAOS: "Do you claim the many facets exhibited by Liberals in their quest to control our lives extends beyond their interest in controlling our backsides?... etc, etc."
Sorry, those are not questions I've given any thought to, but if you wish to enlighten us on them, please feel free...
YHAOS: "Studied incomprehension."
YHAOS: "Studied incomprehension."
YHAOS: "Studied incomprehension."
YHAOS: "intense studied incomprehension?"
YHAOS: "studied incomprehension."
I disagree, but you have obviously found an ever-so-clever way to avoid the questions, and instead discharge great gaseous displays...
YHAOS: "Miz boop, spirited, kevmo, and several others have spent an inordinate amount of their valuable time (especially boop and spirited) explaining their ideas.
Their reward has been your disrespect and contemptuous dismissal of their sincerity..."
But Ms irish's accusations against Freemasons, especially our Founders' Freemasonry, are not serious.
Instead, they are the product of a mis-informed and malice-intending mind.
So she deserves all the rebuke she's received from me, and much more.
You and Ms boop's weak efforts to defend irish only cast your own characters into grave doubt, FRiend.
So you should stop doing it.
Just acknowledge that our Founders were not the Freemasons irish claims to have been wicked, satanic, Gnostic & statists.
And you can start with dispensing with all that "ducking, dancing, dodging, and discharging."
In fact, all our major Founders (which does not include Thomas Paine) were Christians who were somewhat influenced by deistic ideas -- some more than others.
Terms like "deistic Christians" or "Christian deists" certainly apply to the likes of Franklin, Adams, Jefferson, & Madison, in lesser degrees to Washington & others.
Indeed, consider Washington's close friend, John Jay, whom Washington appointed as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court -- Jay was a devout Christian, but is not known to disagree with any Founder on political philosophies.
Point is: at that time in America, Christianity and Deism meant more-or-less the same thing politically.
YHAOS: "If Jefferson for example, as many claim, was a Deist, he was very unconventional, and in blatant defiance of all the usual characteristics defining the term."
The correct terms for Jefferson and most Founders are "Christian Deists" or "Deistic Christians".
So it is totally unfair to accuse our Founders of being satanic, gnostic Freemason statists.
YHAOS: "To merely declare Jefferson, or any of the other Founders, a “Deist” without going into specifics, simply allows Christian Deniers (like you) the opportunity to declare that America was not founded on Judeo-Christian belief and principles."
Well, FRiend, does that "like you" refer to yours truly, BroJoeK?
If so, then there's only one important question here: when are you going to stop lying about me?
Here's the truth of this matter: of course there were some "Judeo-Christian...principles" in our Founders' Constitution -- as opposed to, say, different Muslim or Buddhist principles.
However, our unique Constitution's principles are in strong opposition to the example of all-"Christendom's" union of Church and centralized all-powerful monarchy.
In that sense, our Founders were anti-Christian!
Learn it, love it, live it!
YHAOS: "Misconstrue that, Pretender."
When will you stop lying, Pretender?
YHAOS: "Do not suppose this is written for your benefit."
And yet it appears that you've launched false accusations at me, FRiend, and so my question remains: when are you going to stop lying?
So you don’t understand, despite your claims to the contrary. Apparently to the extent you are unable to even adequately articulate your failure of comprehension.
Your bewilderment defies rationality. Give it up. You are only embarrassing yourself, and the forum needs a rest from your incessant scandal mongering of boop, irish,A-G, Kevmo, and others. Your mischaracterizations and misconstructions fool no one.
The latest one I've encountered features quantum geometry of "amplituhedrons", and even comes with illustrations, both enlightening:
and whimsical:
...both under the rubric "Scientists Discover a Jewel at the Heart of Quantum Physics" -- and including the 'modest' claim,
"Physicists have discovered a jewel-like geometric object that dramatically simplifies calculations of particle interactions and challenges the notion that space and time are fundamental components of reality.
“Physicists have discovered a jewel-like geometric object that dramatically simplifies calculations of particle interactions and challenges the notion that space and time are fundamental components of reality.”
Spirited: It sounds as if they’ve discovered something very like the very ancient Cosmic Egg conception found in Sanskrit called Brahmanda. Brahm means ‘Cosmos’
or ‘expanding.’ Anda means ‘Egg’. In line with this idea one Hindu belief was that Brahman (the uncreated Void from which all things emanate or evolve) spontaneously generated itself (the modern theory of abiogenesis) as something like a seed or singularity about 4.3 billion years ago, then by its’ own power has continued to unfold, expand and emanate all that exists with the implied assumption that living beings create themselves as there is no living Creator.
FRiend, I know that's what you really intended to say, but were just to, well, modest to come right out with it.
Have a wonderful day!
I admit to being unable to make sense of that bucket of perjorative confetti that passes for an argument in your world.
BroJoeK: However, our unique Constitution's principles are in strong opposition to the example of all-"Christendom's" union of Church and centralized all-powerful monarchy….In that sense, our Founders were anti-Christian!
Dear friends BroJoeK and YHAOS: I’ve been following your “dialog” regarding certain aspects of the American founding. There appears to be, among other things, a certain perplexity about the character of Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence. May I put in my two cents’ worth?
First of all, thank you YHAOS, dear brother in Christ, for your amazing scholarship in regard to the roots of American order. I particularly appreciate that you go directly to the original sources for the evidence you use in your arguments.
Secondly, dear BroJoeK: I really do think you have an unfortunate habit of conflating [transcendent] theology with the [immanent] Church — i.e., with “institutional religion.” But all churches are human institutions; and, as such, subject to corruption in time. Theology, however, is not so subject.
BroJoeK, you wondered who said, on this thread, “theology is the Queen of Science.” You might have been thinking of a comment I made early on, that theology has been called “the Queen of Metaphysics.” That is, of the highest development of Philosophy. But I digress….
Jefferson has been called “the American Sphynx.” Once I heard that, I wanted to understand him — quite a challenge. It seems his life did not always measure up to his words. As prime example, I give you the lack of correspondence between his sublime declaration that “all men are created equal,” and the fact that he was a slaveowner, of something like 200 souls. And unlike George Washington, who emancipated all his slaves by his Last Will and Testament, Jefferson freed only five souls at his death. And those five are suspected to be his own children, with Sally Hemmings, who he signally did not emancipate.
But Hemmings was by then late in life; and Jefferson might have worried that without the institutional “protections” to which she had become accustomed, she might not have survived.
I cannot know the interior thoughts of Thomas Jefferson. And I certainly am not, nor could be, his judge. But I have some tentative findings about some aspects of the question.
Was Jefferson a Freemason? Clearly, YES. Does this make him a “Gnostic” in the sense so well elaborated by spirited irish on this thread? I very strongly doubt it. Was Jefferson a Christian? By his own words, I strongly doubt that, too. Was he a Deist? NOPE.
Please allow me to defend my “trial conclusions”:
That Jefferson was a Freemason does not, ipso facto, make him a Gnostic.
What little I know about Freemasonry I learned through my Father, a high-degree Freemason. [You may have noticed that I prefer to go to “actual experience” rather than doctrinal formulations as my guide to Reality.]
My Father was a hard-core Newtonian and self-professed Deist. [See below.] There was not a “mystical” bone in his body. I daresay that what attracted him to Freemasonry was its descent in its present American form from, and its subsequent association with, the great Founders and Framers, e.g., Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, et al.. My Father loved those men. All his life he was a genuine American patriot, with a very strong “libertarian” streak that sometimes got him “in trouble” with the “powers that be.”
He also had a very strong sense of human brotherhood, I sense acquired during World War II as an Army Engineer in the throes of the Buna Campaign in the South Pacific. From this experience, I gather he formed two main impressions that stayed with him for the rest of his life: (1) A just God could not have let my dearly beloved brothers die in this senseless war. A just God would not have allowed this war even to happen. (2) The second point refers us back to the first one: My Father’s experience on Buna taught him the importance of mutual aid to one’s brothers. And American Freemasonry historically has expressed as a sort of mutual aid society: A Freemason must come to the aid of a brother in distress.
My Father was also of the opinion that Freemasonry’s true origin was not (as Voegelin suggested), in Gnostic presuppositions, but in the historical trials and tribulations of the Knights Templar, a militant order of monks answerable only to the Pope himself, who were originally charged to police the Holy Lands, so to protect Christian pilgrims against the depredations of the local Muslims who were dedicated to a policy of exclusion of all non-Muslim persons on their soil. Later on, the Knights Templar were in the vanguard of the contest between irredentist Islam and the Christian West; that is, the Holy Crusade — that CONTINUES TO THIS DAY.
Anyhoot, the Knights Templar were most unfortunate to have extended credit — the institution of modern banking is actually traceable to the Templars — to Philip IV of France, hilariously dubbed “Philip the Fair” by many historians.
Philip owed the Templars an enormous sum of money that he simply could not raise out of the total, then-existing revenues of all of France. His solution to the problem was to declare the Templar Knights “infidels,” arrest and torture them into false confessions, and finally burn a great many if not most of them at the stake, seizing their considerable properties “for the benefit of the Crown” wherever he could lay his hands on them.
So, what is the truth of Freemasonry? Given the information I have, I think American Freemasonry has nothing to do with the “immanentization of the Eschaton” in this world — the completed “paradise on Earth” constructed by human hands within space and time —which is the goal of the Gnostic thinker — and everything to do with promulgating a policy of extending a helping hand to brothers who need help in the organization of their prosaic, daily lives. No Mason can turn a deaf ear to the sufferings of a brother Mason, but must always help him as much as he possibly can to get a grip on his problems, and help him work them through.
It seems to me American Freemasonry is not a “religion.” It is more an ethical code — whose source can finally be located in the Christian doctrine of caritas.
Anyhoot, as earlier suggested, Thomas Jefferson was “a child of the Enlightenment.” In my estimation, the original, main driver of the Enlightenment was the world-changing science of Sir Isaac Newton. His conception of the universe in the abstract terms of matter in its motions according to the [relentlessly deterministic] laws Newton discovered has been the dominant idea of science up to the present day.
In the end, Newton’s description of the universe has been interpreted by close followers as utterly deterministic. Here’s the problem for Jefferson: If you are to establish Liberty as a fundamental human attribute/value, Newton’s conception of order would not be your friend — as much as you might admire the paradigm shift in science that he clearly accomplished. For human Liberty cannot occur in a deterministic world. The actual writings of Jefferson strongly suggest that human liberty must consist in the fact that not all things in the universe are thoroughly determined. He takes pot shots in his published writings on Presbyterians and Calvin himself for effectively saying otherwise. [As you clearly show, dear YHAOS, in the original cites you quote.]
So we ask, what were Newton’s religious views, if any?
Some people claim that he was a Deist. That is, a person who believes that God created the world, and then instantaniously absented Himself from the entire enterprise of his Creation, never to visit it again. God is “clockmaker” of a “clock” that can forever “run” without his intervention.
But even Newton didn’t believe that ! Instead, Newton suggested that, as a mechanism, the universe would inevitably accumulate “errors”; and that God Himself would have to step in, from time to time, to set things “aright” again. Newton’s conception of God, finally, was “the Lord of Life, with His creatures.”
Which tells me that Newton was not a Deist. I expect that what he was, was a Monotheist. He rejected the Trinity on Occam’s Razor grounds. I am inclined to believe that Thomas Jefferson might have done likewise.
In short, TJ – if he rejected the Holy Trinity — could not possibly be considered a Christian.
But does that necessarily make him some sort of “devil?” I think not.
Well, just some thoughts, don’t know where they will lead you, dear brothers in Christ.
Thank you both so much for your correspondence!
You have no evidence for this belief when it comes to the historicity behind the death of Christ. You have a very strong desire to see that be the case, but your desire gives you idealogical blinders over a simple fact of history, and shows that you have disdain for the science behind history.
History is based upon science. That is covered upthread. If you disdain simple history, you have disdain for the science behind it.
Pound sand, Precious.
***Perhaps YHAOS has the gift of prophecy: “Sooner or later trolls become frustrated at their inability to dislodge people committed to the Judeo-Christian Tradition, so they turn to a forum Mod to assist them in committing self-immolation, all the while crying martyrdom. “
There is no science behind history for one to disdain.
Can we please stipulate that words like "Deist" or "Theist" or even "Gnostic" are mostly just that: words, meaning very little to most people, indeed if even one in a hundred can distinguish between a "deist" and a "theist", I'd be amazed.
So we are here throwing those words around, as if they had deep and profound meanings which everybody understands and agrees to -- but they don't.
In fact, only spirited irish has made a great effort to fill in those words with her definitions, and it turns out that her definitions make those words into metaphorical dirt-bags holding most every wickedness known to mankind.
For that, I reject and rebuke Ms irish's thesis, especially as it may apply to Americans we all admire: our Founders.
Now, lo and behold, it turns out that not only our Founders, Ms boop, but also your own father belonged to a group that irish defines as wicked satanic Gnostic statists.
In that regard, I'll mention that one of my sons-in-law is a Freemason, and what I know for certain about him is that he's a great guy, good and patient with my daughter who is... well, I will not sit silent while ignorant stupid people like spirited irish throw insane stones at Freemasons.
So what do these words really mean, in the American context?
Ms boop, they mean pretty much exactly the way your own father instructed you -- a strong belief in God and in helping out their fellow mankind, but less than orthodox interest in religious creeds, doctrines, dogma & theologies.
Basically, just like Jefferson's Bible, it's Christianity simplified to its simple & most common denominators -- the core of Christianity which everyone of any denomination can agree to.
Beyond that, masons are tolerant of anybody's particular understandings.
And yet spirited irish insists and YHAOS supports her that Freemasons are lumped together with every other satanic wickedness she can imagine.
For that, she deserves to be just as strongly condemned as she condemns Freemasons.
As she sows, so must she reap.
Do you not agree?
betty boop: "Was Jefferson a Freemason?
Clearly, YES.
Does this make him a “Gnostic” in the sense so well elaborated by spirited irish on this thread?
I very strongly doubt it.
Was Jefferson a Christian?
By his own words, I strongly doubt that, too.
Was he a Deist? NOPE. "
There is no record confirming that Jefferson was a Freemason, but he was close friends and of like mind with many who certainly were.
Any alleged "Gnosticism" in Jefferson is a matter of definitions and intentions.
But since spirited irish intends the word as a dirt-bag she can use to vacuum in every wickedness known, we are obliged to categorically reject its application to Jefferson.
Jefferson's link to formal Christianity is also debatable, but it was of a kind with other Founders like John Adams, Madison & Franklin.
The word "Unitarian" meant something different in those days than it does today, but has often been applied to men like Jefferson and Adams.
So Jefferson's deism was akin to that of our other Founders -- call it Christian-deism or deistic-Christian, it was a blend of deistic ideas with a scaled-back Christian outlook, the proportion of each individualized to each Founder's likings.
And if I may say so: that is the core essence of what it means to be a conservative (of our Founders' ideals) American.
Agree or no?
But virtually none of the events reported in the New Testament can be confirmed scientifically.
***” those who demand scientific proof for a historical fact have thrown out the baby with the bathwater, denying wide swaths history so they can deny Christ.”
how can we establish that “fact a” is more likely true than “fact b”?
***Simple. Examine the evidence. Especially when two opposing sides agree to certain facts, those facts are historically very accurate. Both sides admit that Jesus was condemned by the sanhedrin for blasphemy.
In terms of the entire span of ancient history, very little is better documented than the Bible’s New Testament.
***That’s right. So on the mundane things (such as the crucifixion), it can be relied upon. If you don’t want to rely upon it for the reporting of miraculous events, that’s your own issue. But for non-miraculous events, it is historically among the most reliable documents ever produced from those time frames.
So much of it can be said to be “historical fact”.
***Yes. Like the fact that Jesus was condemned to die for heresy.
The term “religious faith”, meaning what we confess to believe about the super-natural, through creeds, doctrines and other teachings of our Church.
***Notice that I am staying away from these discussions. They’re so rarely productive.
Virtually all religious faith goes well beyond what scientific examinations or historical text analyses can confirm.
***In this case we have someone denying very very simple historical facts. There is no doubt that this is driven by what you call a “religious faith” and it “goes well beyond what scientific examinations or historical text analyses can confirm.”
Never-the-less, it does matter to many people of faith that the science and history underlying their beliefs at least do not contradict those beliefs.
***And when the simple facts of history DO contradict such beliefs, you see the level of irrationality demonstrated by followers of scientism (or secular humanism or whatever it’s called) going irrational.
So, for example, if a new ossuary is found and said to belong to James the brother of Jesus, then the whole believing world wants to know: is it for real, or just some modern forgery? At that point the words “science”, “history” and “religious faith” come together in search of truth...
***At least until the new testament documents and similar historical items are found to be reliable. Then you see an irrational departure from truth, no longer a search for it, and in fact it is better described by YHAOS as the 4D’s.
Yes, I “get” that you wish to focus, focus, focus on the guilt of the Jews, but I don’t see it that way.
***Incredible horse manure. My focus is on the death of christ as a historical fact, that He died for claiming equality with God. There is no miracle to deny when investigating this claim.
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