By way of the West’s acceptance of Darwinism-—which opened the door wide to the return of neopagan materialism and pantheism-—the West has almost completely returned to the way of thinking-—though revamped and modernized-— that held sway prior to Jesus Christ.
Nature-—whether large bodies such as planets or materialism’s unseen energy-—was divine and all things spiritual were endowments of Nature. The anthropomorphization of nature had the effect of endowing nature with mind, will, and conscience-—deeply flawed though it was.
With the higher thinking of Plato, and then later through Christian scholars, mind, will, and conscience were liberated from nature, and nature was dedivinized.
The ‘isms’ that emerged out of the Franco-Germanic Enlightenment (ie., positivism, materialism, socialism, Darwinism,etc) redivinized nature and re-embedded the spiritual within it. Hence mind, will, and conscience are no longer endowments of man but of Divine Nature.
It’s in this light that gobbledygook (betty’s excellent description) such as determinism (and its variants), the triune brain theory, all variants of Darwinism, terms such as ‘fully caused and determined,’ and so forth come into focus.
Another word for all of this is gnosticism, the term employed by Voegelin. Though ultimately pantheist, it is also the great beast of heresy that disguises itself as many other things, such as Liberal Christianity.
Tertullian said of gnosticism that it spreads confusion and outright chaos. He also warned that unless we take it upon ourselves to understand and analyze it that we will mosty definitely fall victim to it. As we have.
I will leave most the reply to betty boop as this is her expertise and she is particularly knowledgeable of Plato and Voegelin.
But I would add one general observation – that it has always been the tendency of man to reduce “all that there is” to his own terms as if he is the center of it.
Even in a physical sense, when he is aware of his place on a worldline in warped space/time (relativity) he nevertheless uses terms such as “time” as if it were absolute and somehow he the center of the universe.
But the humble man can detach himself and look and see.
The archeological record is full of evidence that man carves out figures in wood or stone, declaring that they are “god” and falling down to worship them.
It is as if man has some egocentric need to be able to touch the divine, to bring God down to his terms - or worse, to subordinate God to his own will.
We see the same phenomenon as mortal men declaring themselves to be divine are able to gather followings and worse, continue their devotion for generations.
And we can see it as man proliferates extra-Scriptural doctrines and traditions trying to make the words of God sensible to himself or accepting of his desire to behave in the way he wants to behave.
Worse, men tend to add to the words of God – or ignore many of them – in the quest.
The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD, and against his anointed, [saying], Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us.
He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision.
Then shall he speak unto them in his wrath, and vex them in his sore displeasure. – Psalms 2:1-5