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That comment moved me as well...
I so like the drama of it all...
In the sense of Dirty Harry.... "WELL do you Punk?"
Posted on 01/06/2015 5:13:00 AM PST by metmom
HUGGS!
I imagine likewise, dear brother in Christ.
To "these people," good and evil are merely superstitious holdovers from a lesser-evolved human past premised on a moral law issuing from a totally fictitious being; i.e., God.
But they loudly proclaim that "God is dead, and we have killed him." So much for the foundation of moral law. All that is left is moral relativism: There is no "objective" good or evil, there is only opinion; and one man's opinion is just as good as the next man's.
Unless one man's power is greater than another's. In which case, not justice, but force, will carry the day.
Somehow, these folks regard this sort of mental masturbation as "liberating." Yet, liberating — for what? To what end?
These folks are fools within the classical meaning of that word. In the Hebrew scriptures (Psalms 14, 53), the fool is the nabal, "the man who says in his heart, 'There is no God.'" Plato diagnosed the situation of the person saying such as self-confessing a state of pneumopathological disorder (nosos). Cicero called a person in this spiritual condition insipiens, on grounds that such a position ineluctably entails "contempt for reason."
Yet as Jacob Holsinger Sherman points out [in Partakers of the Divine, 2014], WRT the proselytizers of the "God is dead" school:
This antagonist is not an atheist in the modern sense, but something more twisted and actively corrupt. In biblical wisdom literature, the Fool ... not only denies God in his heart, but aggressively seeks to oppress and devour the upright.... [Eric] Voegelin complements the Psalmist's description of the Fool with other characterizations in Isaiah and Jeremiah (e.g., Isa. 32:6: "For fools speak folly, and their minds plot iniquity; to practice ungodliness, to utter error concerning the Lord, to leave the craving of the hungry unsatisfied, and to deprive the thirsty of drink"), and so concludes:Sherman adds: "The key to understanding the Fool's role ... is to realize that his denial of God is not merely the withholding of assent to a theological proposition, but a dynamic state of personal corruption." [op. cit Sherman, p. 103]
The fool of the psalm is certainly not a man wanting in intellectual acumen or worldly judgment.... In these Israelite contexts, the contempt, the nebala, does not necessarily denote so differentiated a phenomenon as dogmatic atheism, but rather a state of spiritual dullness that will permit the indulgence of greed, sex, and power without fear of divine judgment. [Volume 12, the Collected Works of Eric Voegelin: Published Essays, p. 385]
Notwithstanding, "we" are to understand that there is no such thing as God; no such thing as Good and Evil. Beauty, love, divine mercy and justice are all fictions, too.
There is also no such thing as Satan. For as the Father of Lies himself boasts, "The greatest lie I ever told was that I do not exist." [And these Fools believed me! So they are mine!]
Must close, with one last thought: The resolution of the culture war that is destroying America — thanks to the politics of division so ably orchestrated and promulgated by the sitting POTUS — boils down to the question: Do you believe in God, or not?
Thank you so much for writing, dear xzins!
That comment moved me as well...
I so like the drama of it all...
In the sense of Dirty Harry.... "WELL do you Punk?"
Indeed, dearest sister in Christ, I found P. S. Wesson's Time as an Illusion an extraordinarily insightful and thought-provocative article — especially his hypothesis of physical death as "phase change." What could he possibly have meant by this?
So, facing this puzzling question, I can only go back to what I already know; in this case, first to Plato.
In Timaeus, Plato baldly states that "death is but the separation of body and soul, nothing more." What could he possibly have meant by this declaration?
It helps to know that, for Plato, the soul is immortal; the body mortal. That is to say, the living person persists in time as the manifestation of the intense, abiding cooperation of spiritual and physical principles. Plato suggests that, at death, the physical principle dissolves. That is to say, the body aspect becomes wholly subject to the second law of thermodynamics when the soul, understood as the "form" of the physical body, "withdraws." This is the meaning of what we humans call "death."
Plato's main insight here is that the soul does not perish along with the physical body, but persists eternally. The "crisis" of death is much feared — even though according to Wesson, it may be only a "phase change" WRT the eternal life of the soul.
Similarly, it occurs to me that birth is also a "crisis" — but one which no man living has ever been able to describe. But Christians — and classical Greeks — describe this "crisis" as the mortalization — the physical incarnation — of an immortal soul. That is to say, an "intangible entity" attracts and organizes its own physical expression in time, for a time....
Death is but the reverse of this process of Birth. But the soul persists inviolate regardless of whichever transaction — birth or death — is taking place.
I believe this insight was what drew Justin Martyr to the conclusion that the Incarnation of Christ was the very fulfillment, not only of the patriarchs and the prophets, but of classical (Platonic/Aristotelian) philosophy as well.
I find I stand in Justin Martyr's camp in this regard.
Thank you ever so much for writing, dearest sister in Christ!
Well, isn't that a perfectly understandable statement coming from a person who refuses to be judged? As if that "call" were his to make....
There is a Satan; be he(she) be called malefactor, fool, conniver, anarchist or boss....
The urge to be served and NOT serve, is pregnant with malefaction..
the original problem of the so-called good angels and the fallen angels..
AND the problem as well, with humans..
I found P. S. Wesson’s Time as an Illusion an extraordinarily insightful and thought-provocative article — especially his hypothesis of physical death as “phase change.” What could he possibly have meant by this?
mee too!..
One word... “BUTTERFLY”.. can there be a more perfect metaphor.. object lesson.. in your face teaching.
there are others but this one even a child can understand..
You nail it right there, dearest 'pipe, my beloved brother in Christ!
Perfect, dear hosepipe! Thank you!
Truly, I believe a strong sense of awareness and not 'belonging' in a mortal body happened often among humans over millennia. I suspect Justin Martyr sensed the same and was seeking understanding which he found in Christ and, as you say, saw Christ also fulfilling classical philosophy.
SO very true.
Lovely... bees, termites, ants, hummingbirds, eagles, spiders etc..
Indeed. One might almost say that this sense of "not belonging in a mortal body" is probably more the rule than the exception in human historical experience. It is, however, just not the common sense nowadays; i.e., in "modernity," or the "post-modern world."
The first documentary evidence on this question of which I am aware dates back to ~2,000 B.C. Egypt, to an anonymous text known as "Dispute of a Man, Who Contemplates Suicide, with His Soul." In this "dialogue," the Man is disgusted, and in despair, because he finds himself living in a society so corrupt, so disordered, so oppressive to his own moral and cosmological understandings, that he can't bear to live in it anymore. Hence the contemplation of suicide — a solution that he thinks will spare him from the general corruption of society, and of the prospect of his further contributing to it. He sees his existential position in terms of a stark choice: either of "going along to get along" with the evil of his age, or self-annihilation. The Man thinks the latter may be the better choice.
But his Soul counsels him: You must not take your own life; for it is a precious gift of the gods.
In his brilliant essay "Immortality: Experience and Symbol," Eric Voegelin delineates the problem:
The Man is driven to despair by the troubles of a disordered age and wants to cast off a life that has become senseless; the Soul is introduced as the speaker who militates against the decision.... [T]he struggle between Man and his Soul is concerned with the idea of life as a gift of the gods. Since life is not a man's property to be thrown away when it becomes burdensome but an endowment to be treated as a trust under all conditions, the Soul can point to the command of the gods and the wisdom of the sages which both prohibit the shortening of the alloted span. But Man knows how to plead: the disintegration of order, both personal and public, in the surrounding society deprives life of any conceivable meaning, so that exceptional circumstances will justify a violation of the rule before the gods....Notwithstanding the Man's arguments — who is "pitted against the disorder of society" — his Soul counsels that "he can emerge as victor from the struggle because he carries in himself the full reality of order...."
There is much more to the "Dispute" than this; but I'll leave it there for now. I just cite it here to show that problems of body and soul and of human existence and immortality have been in the forefront of the most consuming, vital questions that human beings have universally asked from as far back as the historical records go.
Obviously, the "Dispute" is pre-Christian by date. But that is not to say that it undermines the greatest truths about Man as part and participant in the Great Hierarchy of Being as revealed — and fulfilled — in Judeo-Christian theology.
I so agree with you: "...Justin Martyr sensed the same and was seeking understanding which he found in Christ and, as you say, saw Christ also fulfilling classical philosophy." To which I would add: And also Christ Who fulfills the main insights of an anonymous work dating from the Egypt of the First Intermediate Period.
The Logos — God's Word of Creation — has been "in the world" ( so to speak) from the very Beginning....
Just some thoughts FWTW. Thank you ever so much for writing, dearest sister in Christ!
Been riding this donkey for 72 years.. i.e. good donkey..
a few more years and expect different transportation..
maybe an upgrade..
I’m only a couple of years behind you. I suspect your phase shift will be glorious indeed.
It is not only fascinating that they were contemplating such things but that they did it in a dialogue and attributed life as a divine gift. And for such an ancient document to have survived all those years, issues of life and death, body and soul must have been very important to them.
Definitely an upgrade, dear hosepipe!
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