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
I've seen nothing to suggest possible terrorists posting on Free Republic.
Nor have I ever called anybody a "terrorist".
But it is very interesting to note that in your mind, at least, "terrorist" and "heretic" are pretty much the same thing, no doubt deserving the same fate, right?
Which is why I come back, and back, and back again to the question of our Freemason Founders.
Do you consider them too as "heretics", and so reject their Constitution accordingly?
No, Crossan is a historian, as opposed to, say, a writer of Christian apologetics.
I think you once claimed you knew the difference.
Crossan applied strict historical standards to all the documents related to biblical history.
Of course, from a religious perspective, as I warned you in the beginning, you won't like his results.
But that's real history, as opposed to religious apologetics.
I think I've explained all of this now several times.
Do you ever pay attention?
Thanks for your support, but Kevmo's posts seem to be exactly what spirited irish wants.
I've seen people like Kevmo on Free Republic, on rare occasions before.
Usually they burn themselves out eventually, but "eventually" can take a long time coming...
FRiend, I understand your basic schtick was pretending to be a "historian", and now that you've been exposed, you fall back on pretending that there are no historians, that the only real history is your interpretation of biblical texts.
But history is a real discipline, and there are real historians who don't always confirm biblical texts.
But one who apparently does is Bill O'Reilly, who I've been working through, slowly, withholding judgment until the end.
So far, I've not read anything from O'Reilly that Kevmo would call "heretical".
But am only half finished...
In going on ten years posting here, I've had two or three other, similar experiences, where it seems like they just want to get something desperately important off their chest, and so they hammer hammer at the most convenient nail, which naturally, is me.
Eventually they do burn out, though on one occasion years ago the mods finally jumped in and deleted the whole thread!
I was disappointed, but that thread was getting pretty rough.
And deleting the whole thread did seem to have a beneficial effect in showing everybody that there really are limits here as to how un-Friendly you can get with other posters.
After that, even the most un-Friendly posters there tried to "talk civilized". ;-)
By comparison, except for the incessant howling of "heretic", this thread is still relatively mild mannered.
;-)
tactcalogic: “I think we have much more serious political issues to deal with right now than hunting heretics.”
Spirited: It’s because you do not know the definition of heresy that you do not recognize yourself as well as BroJoek as heresy hunters.
Both of you are at variance with the essay “Damnnable Heresy,...” because the theories and opinions you hold are contrary to those delineated throughout the essay.
So what is heresy? According to on-line dictionaries, the definition of heresy depends on particular religious beliefs, even those thought to be ‘scientific.’
For example, Christianity loosely defines heresy as opinions and teachings (i.e.), contrary to revealed truth. This makes evolution a heresy since it is contrary to creation ex nihilo.
Miriam Webster on-line further defines heresy as dissent or deviation from a dominant theory, opinion, or practice.
So for example, to dissent against the theories of Darwinism and Dialectical Materialism in the Soviet Union was to be branded an evil heretic deserving of death. Disbelief in either of these evolutionary conceptions was not tolerated. Thus Soviets “burned at the stake” in excess of 60,000,000 heretics, and other undesirables.
It is because of the particular theories and opinions held by BroJoeK and tacticalogic which are in opposition to those advanced in the essay that they are “hunting intolerable heretics” in this thread. Going by the relentless attacks launched by BroJoeK against Linda Kimball, YHAOS, and Spirited Irish, it appears they are particularly evil heretics. Thus he does his best to verbally “burn them at the stake” over and over and over.
Thank you ever so much, dear marron, for your wonderful, deeply insightful "maunderings!"
Classic Alisky agitprop - accuse the other side of what you're doing. In the entire span of this thread neither BroJoeK nor I have ever leveled accusations of heresy.
Dear BroJoeK, I think your grandfather must have been a very wise, perceptive man.
I think marron spoke truly in saying —
You have the religion of the written doctrines, and the religion as it is lived out. So you’ll find people whose theology is sketchy but in whom God is alive, who know God and walk with him; and you’ll find people whose theology is right on the money but are deader than a hammer. And every variation in between.It seems that Thomas Jefferson did not regard Jesus Christ as the divine Son of God. But he did regard him as a very great moral teacher. And Jefferson knew, as did Adams, Franklin, Washington, et al., that our Constitutional republic could not work for an immoral people.
Which is likely why Franklin, when asked what the Framers had wrought in Philadelphia, replied: "A republic — if you can keep it."
Yet in the modern period, there are many people who evidently believe that the ability to act immorally is the very proof of their "liberty."
You wrote: "Our Founders explicitly rejected state religions because, in their eyes and in ours, such had already 'been tried and failed.'" Oh, so true, dear BroJoeK.
On the other hand, evidently it's okay with lots of people nowadays to have a state-established "secular religion," which turns out to be the progressive State itself....
Dear friend, you poke lots of fun at spirited irish. Her research into gnosticism and its history is impressive; it is clear she is deeply alarmed by her findings, because she can clearly see how gnostic thinking has entered into the very climate of opinion of the intellectual elites of our society and their enablers in the media and academe.
I, too, am profoundly disturbed by this: They are engaged in the systematic falsification of Reality. And absolutely no good can come from that sort of thing.
Have a blessed Merry Christmas, dear BroJoeK — you and all your dear ones!
Dear Ms irish: Have you not been reading your own thread?
Did you not notice your own comrade-in-arms, Kevmo, for dozens of posts now has been howling, howling like a wolf, in nearly every sentence, the word "heretic" at yours truly, BroJoeK?
Indeed, is that not your whole purpose here, to seek-and-destroy "heretics" like, oh, just saying, BroJoeK & tacticalogic?
I mean, truly, Ms irish, if you can get enough of your own mob yelling "heretics" and "blasphemers" at us, maybe you can force the mods to step in and crucify, er, I mean "zot" all those nasty people here defending our Freemason Founders religious ideas.
Wouldn't that be a great day for spirited irish, orthodoxy and Free Republic?
Wouldn't it?
Ms irish, I think all of us here (Kevmo possibly excepted) understand the definition of the word "heresy".
We all "grasp" that in a certain sense all of us are "heretics" all of the time, because none of us ever accepts everything that falls under the rubric of "orthodox accepted conventional wisdom".
But we don't run around howling the word "heretic" at others or ourselves, for the very serious reason that historically words like "heretic", "blasphemer", "apostate", "infidel" & others have meant trials, convictions and murders -- burning at the stake, crucifixions, stonings -- for many thousands, if not millions.
Even today, after centuries of "enlightenment", these words still, still send waves of fear up the backs of brave men & women.
Nobody wants to be called a "heretic" and nearly all of us avoid using such terms, except in technical-historical contexts -- i.e., were reformers like Jan Hus and Girolamo Savonarola burned at the stake for heresy, or was it something else?
And now, Ms irish, some of your own compatriots have launched a witch-hunt against certain FReepers-in-good-standing, people who, if I dare say it, have survived many other such "battles" but are never-the-less rather persistent in responding whenever their BS-meters hit the "red zone".
And yet, Ms irish, you can't see it.
You look and look, and for you it's not there.
And though neither tacticalogic nor myself have called anybody a "heretic", to Ms irish that's the real problem.
We are out there hunting you to charge with "heresy" -- according to you.
You can't see that the reverse is what's really happening, can you?
Have you thought of getting new eye-glasses?
Just fascinating, dear brother in Christ! What the amplituhedron suggests is that our notions of space and time are merely "constructs" emergent from a "deep geometry," and not primary facts of Reality. I.e., space and time are derivitative from something else....
Thank you so very much, dear TXnMA, for the links to these fascinating articles!
Dear Ms boop: Gnosticism is a real word which first described real people (Greeks) who lived thousands of years ago.
These people rejected the material world, in favor of the spiritual realm.
When some of them first became Christians, they brought this dualism with them, and decided that Jesus Christ could not have been a real material human being, but must have been a spiritual projection of God.
So Gnostics were considered one of two great heresies facing the early Rome-centered Church.
The other was Arianism, which took the opposite opinion.
Arians said that Jesus was only a man, not God.
Arians were highly influenced by Jewish thinking which has always insisted that God is One, not some multi-headed monster.
Beginning in 325 AD the Roman Emperor Constantine brought all these bishops together at Nicaea and hammered out a compromise, wherein eventually God was fully defined (!) as One Person of Three "Substances."
And doesn't that sound just won--der--full, a com-pro-mise, where everybody stood around holding hands, singing Kum Bye Ya, praising God-in-three-persons, and all lived happily ever after, right??
And in the midst of all this happy wonderment, Emperor Constantine announced the "catch": anyone who disagreed with his new creed would be put to death, and their property seized by the state.
Yes, there was this, ahem, inconvenient matter of Constantine needing money for his treasury and where better to get it than from "heretics", "apostates", etc.?
And so it was, for the better part of 1,500 years, until in the Age of Enlightenment our Founding Fathers said: no more of that.
So today, some of these old "heresies" are rearing their heads again, but, but, but: not so much Gnosticism as that other ancient materialism: Arianism.
Arianism -- not Gnosticism! -- can easily be called the basis for all scientific & philosophical materialism.
In its modern form, Arianism not only insists that Jesus was human, but that there's no such thing as a spiritual realm.
So just where "Gnosticism" might even fit into the modern world -- all but barren of any spiritual references -- I can't imagine.
Then how Gnosticism could be such a great threat as spirited irish proposes, is beyond me.
But, maybe, maybe I missed something obvious, and like spirited irish need to get my eyes checked out?
Or is it Three Persons of one substance...?
Now I forget... oh dear...
No, put that fire out, I'll figure it out soon, I promise!
;-)
§ 1841. The remaining part of the clause declares, that "no religious test shall ever be required, as a qualification to any office or public trust, under the United States." This clause is not introduced merely for the purpose of satisfying the scruples of many respectable persons, who feel an invincible repugnance to any religious test, or affirmation. It had a higher object; to cut off for ever every pretence of any alliance between church and state in the national government. The framers of the constitution were fully sensible of the dangers from this source, marked out in the history of other ages and countries; and not wholly unknown to our own. They knew, that bigotry was unceasingly vigilant in its stratagems, to secure to itself an exclusive ascendancy over the human mind; and that intolerance was ever ready to arm itself with all the terrors of the civil power to exterminate those, who doubted its dogmas, or resisted its infallibility. The Catholic and the Protestant had alternately waged the most ferocious and unrelenting warfare on each other; and Protestantism itself, at the very moment, that it was proclaiming the right of private judgment, prescribed boundaries to that right, beyond which if any one dared to pass, he must seal his rashness with the blood of martyrdom. The history of the parent country, too, could not fail to instruct them in the uses, and the abuses of religious tests. They there found the pains and penalties of non-conformity written in no equivocal language, and enforced with a stern and vindictive jealousy. One hardly knows, how to repress the sentiments of strong indignation, in reading the cool vindication of the laws of England on this subject, (now, happily, for the most part abolished by recent enactments,) by Mr. Justice Blackstone, a man, in many respects distinguished for habitual moderation, and a deep sense of justice. "The second species," says he "of non-conformists, are those, who offend through a mistaken or perverse zeal. Such were esteemed by our laws, enacted since the time of the reformation, to be papists, and protestant dissenters; both of which were supposed to be equally schismatics in not communicating with the national church; with this difference, that the papists divided from it upon material, though erroneous, reasons; but many of the dissenters, upon matters of indifference, or, in other words, upon no reason at all. Yet certainly our ancestors were mistaken in their plans of compulsion and intolerance. The sin of schism, as such, is by no means the object of temporal coercion and punishment. If, through weakness of intellect, through misdirected piety, through perverseness and acerbity of temper, or, (which is often the case,) through a prospect of secular advantage in herding with a party, men quarrel with the ecclesiastical establishment, the civil magistrate has nothing to do with it; unless their tenets and practice are such, as threaten ruin or disturbance to the state. He is bound, indeed, to protect the established church; and, if this can be better effected, by admitting none but its genuine members to offices of trust and emolument, he is certainly at liberty so to do; the disposal of offices being matter of favour and discretion. But, this point being once secured, all persecution for diversity of opinions, however ridiculous or absurd they may be, is contrary to every principle of sound policy and civil freedom. The names and subordination of the clergy, the posture of devotion, the materials and colour of the minister's garment, the joining in a known, or an unknown form of prayer, and other matters of the same kind, must be left to the option of every man's private judgment."
Thank you for your discussion of Gnosticism and Arianism, dear BroJoeK. Very interesting! [I reject both.]
Mainly, I use the term "gnosticism" as Eric Voegelin defines it. Gnosticism is
...a type of thinking that claims absolute cognitive mastery of reality. Relying as it does on a claim to gnosis in the sense of immediate apprehension or vision of truth without the need for critical reflection, Gnosticism considers its knowledge not subject to criticism.... Gnosticism may take a transcendentalizing form (as in the case of the gnostic movement of late antiquity) or immanentizing forms (as in the case of Marxism, Comte's positivism, and other modern movements that seek radical intramundane fulfillment of human beings and society. — "Glossary of Terms," Eric Voegelin, Autobiographical Reflections, 2006; p. 160f.[Voegelin has a habit of stating his terms succinctly and exactly. That can take a little getting used to.]
As you may know, Voegelin was a philosopher of history and politics. His interest in gnosticism as a source of the modern-day "political religions" was particularly acute. His eight-volume History of Political Ideas is chock-full of in-depth studies of leading gnostics in history, from e.g., Hermes Trismagistus, Joachim of Fiore; Conte, Marx, Hegel, Jung, etc., etc. His Modernity Without Restraint details the types of personal and social disorders that manifest when gnostic ideas become dominant in the culture.
As they are today. I'll tell you this, dear BroJoeK: Once you see the gnostic "pattern," you tend to see it a lot nowadays — in academe, in the media, in the institutions; in the street movements; e.g., OWS.
Most obnoxious is the practicing gnostic's habit of forbidding questioning. The gnostic perpetrators are well aware that if their "systems" are subject to critical analysis, they would quickly deconstruct on the non-foundation of their own illogic. Voegelin says that Hegel — whom he praises as a very great genius and master of classical philosophy — was very aware of this danger. But he got around it masterfully:
"In conversations with Hegelians, I have quite regularly found that as soon as one touches on Hegelian premises the Hegelian refuses to enter into the argument and assures you that you cannot understand Hegel unless you accept his premises."Talk about circular, solopsistic thinking!
If I understand correctly, what really flips out spirited irish is her recognition that gnostic systems have a nasty habit of "bumping off God." Such a thing, right there, could only be a "magical operation."
A magical act requires at least a suspension of what we'll call First Reality — if not its outright cancellation — on the part of its observer in order to be successful. WRT the "death of God," this is exactly what Nietzsche, Hegel, and Marx invite you to do. And they tell you just how easy it is to "kill God": Just decide that "God" is only a concept; that is, an abstract construction of the human mind. Then, just abolish the "concept." Ergo, "God is dead" — at least for you....
It's a pretty banal little "trick"; but a whole lot of people fall for it nowadays.
I could go on, but probably should put a sock in it for now. Suffice it to say I see plenty of Gnostics in American public life today, starting with the Obama Administration, which promises a new order of social justice and human happiness; and a new Heaven on Earth that eradicates all the ills of the human condition and satisfies the deepest needs of mankind — by enclosing man's God-given liberty and eschatological future within the steely bonds of State control, not to mention the necessary total sacrifice of the life of the mind involved in this trade-off....
Obama is the "new messiah," dont'cha know???
Thank you so very much for writing, BroJoeK!
...a type of thinking that claims absolute cognitive mastery of reality. Relying as it does on a claim to gnosis in the sense of immediate apprehension or vision of truth without the need for critical reflection, Gnosticism considers its knowledge not subject to criticism.... Gnosticism may take a transcendentalizing form (as in the case of the gnostic movement of late antiquity) or immanentizing forms (as in the case of Marxism, Comte's positivism, and other modern movements that seek radical intramundane fulfillment of human beings and society. — "Glossary of Terms," Eric Voegelin, Autobiographical Reflections, 2006; p. 160f.
Was there something wrong with "hubris"?
Those who deny the deity of Christ are heretics. Simple. Whether they be mormon, Jehovah’s witnesses, gnostics, or whatever. If they call themselves christians and deny the deity of Christ, they are heretics. You are upholding heresy right here on Free Republic. If this were a caucus thread, virtually all of your posts would be deleted.
I’d be happy to explain it to you heretic trolls, but it’s basically feeding trolls and throwing pearls at swine so it aint worth it.
Then don’t.
But you are certainly highly qualified to identify “damnable heretics”,
***Yes, those who deny the deity of Christ are heretics. You are a heretic. And on this thread you’ve proven yourself to be a troll and a liar, and someone who projects his own intentions and all kinds of things. Now you’re in full-fledged troll mode with voluminous postings, and as we finish out this thread the full display of your unfounded beliefs are out like a peacock’s feathers.
My favorite part was where you couldn’t even tell the difference between a historical observation and a religious item of faith. Such lunacy lends itself to your brand of heresy.
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