Free Republic
Browse · Search
Religion
Topics · Post Article

To: xzins; Alamo-Girl; MHGinTN; hosepipe; Yaelle; marron; YHAOS; Thales Miletus; metmom; thouworm
So, I imagine good and evil are not real to these people, then.

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:

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]

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]

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!

182 posted on 01/22/2015 9:54:29 AM PST by betty boop (Say good-bye to mathematical logic if you wish to preserve your relations with concrete realities!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 167 | View Replies ]


To: betty boop; xzins; MHGinTN; hosepipe; Yaelle; marron; YHAOS; Thales Miletus; metmom; thouworm
Well and truly said, dearest sister in Christ!

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?

Amen!

Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. - John Adams


183 posted on 01/22/2015 10:23:29 AM PST by Alamo-Girl
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 182 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
Religion
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson