andrewcriddle

This is in danger of becoming a mixture of what I myself believe to be true about Christ God etc, and what I believe Early Christians believed. I'm going to try in my answer to emphasize what I think Early Christians believed.

a/ Demons as spiritual intelligences can be in two-way communication with humans.

b/ To be in heaven is to be with God and share in His transcendence of space-time as we know it on earth.

c/ In Orthodox Christianity Jesus is fully God and fully man in the sense that his deity does not diminish his humanity nor his humanity diminish his deity. If I understand what you mean by superstitious/supernatural ideas (and I'm not at all confident I do) then I don't think this idea of the incarnation, properly understood, is in itself what you mean by a superstitious/supernatural belief. However Early Christians expressed their understanding of the incarnation by saying that Jesus worked miracles because he was God as well as being man. I think that this is what you would regard as a superstitious/supernatural idea but it is something Early Christians definitely believed.


Andrew Criddle

Elijah

Yea we should try to focus on what they believed but I am curious to what you consider the differences between your understanding of truth in regards to “Christ God” from the early Christians like Jesus and Paul.
So these daemons could be heard physically and not in your mind? So in Mark the daemons are heard by their own physical bodies and aren’t speaking through the people? Could they be seen as well?

So do you think that the spirit of Christ isn’t the meme his sacrifice cut into the world but his supernatural ghost?
Sounds like pagan heaven to me. I think eternal life and a resurrection of the dead is Christian but what you’re suggesting sounds like the supernatural superstitious pagan version of heaven. Dreamland for the dead and not the eternal/constant side of the universe.
Sounds like genie in the flesh stuff to me. (hopefully I’m wrong) This is the supernatural version I’m referring to. Genie throws on some flesh and comes to earth. Doesn’t take the philosophy or the politics of the time into account in interpreting scripture.
Does the miracles that Moses and Elijah did make them God as well?

I think early Christians need to be understood under a philosophical/political light and not the superstitious assumption. The supernatural daemons, supernatural heaven and god in flesh stuff is just crazy talk… and it was just as crazy then as it is now.

I apologize in advance if I mischaracterized your position and assumed wrongly... I don’t want to accuse someone with a rational understanding of God and Christ as superstitious.

andrewcriddle

My understanding of the Incarnation is closely related to my understanding of what the New Testament writers believed. There are other points, such as their tendency to explain what we would regard as mental illness in terms of evil spiritual forces, where my understanding of things diverges from that of the Early Christians.
In Mark the demons speak through people. This allows us, if we wish, to interpret them as parts of the possessed person's own personality. However, (as pointed out by other posters earlier in this thread) the evidence is that the Early Christians did not so interpret them.

Demons could be seen but in vision rather than by normal sight.

(I've snipped discussion of some IMO strange alternatives.)
I think (but am not sure) that you may be confusing Orthodox Christology with Apollinarianism. In Apollinarianism Christ is a divine mind in a human body. This is not the Orthodox position.
No, although FWIW there does seem to have been a tendency in the Judaism of the time to exalt Moses to a superhuman status. The fact that a certain set of ideas is IYO false is not evidence that a group of people (such as Early Christians) did not really hold those ideas.
I probably do hold ideas which you would consider superstitious, but I'm afraid you haven't made it clear to me the basis on which you draw the line between the spiritual reality which IIUC you accept and the superstitious errors which you reject.

Andrew Criddle

Elijah

I’m sorry that didn’t really help explain to me what exactly you believe. Mental was spiritual then; the little voice in their heads was a daemon (like Screwtape Letters.) but not a supernatural entity. The mind’s eye was supposedly able to discern the spiritual elements of the world like ideas from the sensible.
What evidence? I’ve been asking for a text that is thought to best illustrate the nature of daemons at the time.
Like memes/ideas. You didn’t answer if the Spirit of Christ should be understood closer to his meme or his ghost. What about Spirit of: Error, Truth, Glory, Self-Control, Love, Uncleanness, Whoredome, Confusion, Knowledge, Counsel, Wisdom, Skill and Jealousy. Should we understand those spirits like memeplexes or supernatural entities and if we should understand them rationally why should we understand unclean spirits and the spirit of the antichrist as supernatural?
No I’m trying to figure out what you understand the orthodox position to be because from my POV there isn’t one even in a single church. The understanding of God, Christ and the world varies too much for there to be an orthodox position. What makes your understanding of God and Jesus not a genie in the flesh concept of Christ?
So why do you think the miracles are what make Jesus actually God to them then and not just a sign of God’s approval of his mission?
Philosophical spiritual; as in ideals and forms and memes and universals in the cosmos is what I accept as the spiritual entities being discussed not supernatural superstitious entities suited only for cartoons. Spiritual from the philosophers perspective is OK by me but spiritual from the nonsense perspective needs to be proven before I assume the writer is a moron.

There is one understanding of Christianity you have as a child when you don’t understand the world or the ideology that looks very similar to a cartoon. There is another after you understand the world and have studied some of the philosophy that was influencing Christ. In one church both of these ideologies exist; between the kids that have gone there for a few years and the old widow who’s been there longer than the preacher has been alive. To just assume that they all had a child’s understanding of the world back then is unsupported by the philosophies of the time.

andrewcriddle

We may well regard Socrates Daemon for example as an aspect of Socrates' personality rather than an autonomous intelligence. That is quite different from claiming that people in the Ancient World looked at things in the same way.

I doubt if it will do any good but as a last attempt Address of Tatian to the Greeks particularly chapter 16 My disbelief in memes prevents me from discussing whether something should be regarded as a meme.
My position is Orthodox in the sense that it is the position of the major creeds. Whether or not modern Christians should hold such a position, it was certainly widespread in the Early Church.
It may well be that the emphasis in Early Christian Christology on the miracles of Jesus Christ as establishing his divinity was excessive. But that emphasis was there. See Tome of Leo
I'm afraid that your apparent reluctance to take seriously the possibility that sensible intelligent people in the Ancient World believed things that you regard as absurd makes me doubt whether it is profitable continuing this discussion.

Andrew Criddle

Elijah

Not an aspect of his personality but the voice in his head. The whole, when the student is ready the teacher will appear, mindful of your thoughts stuff. You can listen to the nature of Socrates daemon and tell they’re talking about the voice in his head, by it gives him advice but doesn’t make him do stuff and warns him when danger is near, that’s the voice in your head.
You shouldn’t doubt so much and have more faith that you can support your positions. What exactly there do you think has to be read as supernatural entities and can’t be read as rational spiritual entities from a philosophical prospective like a living ideal?

“For the demons, inspired with frenzy against men by reason of their own wickedness, pervert their minds” Why shouldn’t I read that as a destructive meme?

Especially when the author seems familiar with the philosophers of the period and is arguing against superstitious understandings of God. “who is not visible to human eyes, nor comes within the compass of human art.” Like my definition of supernatural being taking artist representation literally. Why should I read him under a superstitious light if that’s what he is arguing against in the paper and is familiar with the philosophy of the time?

It’s difficult to not read it as supernatural nonsense if that’s all you’re familiar with but with a very basic understanding of idealism it’s hard to see it as just superstitious junk he’s slinging. Also remember he's busting on pagan gods which are just bad understandings/memes of God which he equates to daemons. It sounds supernatural if you don't realize that they reified their ideas.
Hopefully you won’t let your personal beliefs get in the way of having the conversation. Your beliefs in memes isn’t needed, it’s you understanding them that is. Being able to illustrate the main difference between how you think a meme is understood now and how you think a daemon is understood then would probably help this conversation.
Not being able to answer basic questions on how you understand God and Christ makes it very suspect how much thought you have put into this. You should jump at an opportunity to explain the Lord's place in this world.
I think it’s the type of divinity you think they are establishing is the problem. Your concept of god sounds like a superstitious one, but you have been unwilling to discuss your understanding of God. Why would you go that far for a text to prove what should be a basic tenet?
Profitable to continue the conversation? Yeash. You have very unusual behavior in regards to discussing Christ for a Christian.

The problem isn’t me disregarding the possibility of there being superstitious people back then who could write but instead you not being able to consider and properly evaluate if there were rationally individuals and schools of thought back then as well.

Intelligent people surely believed in superstition because “intelligent” is a subjective term but rational people did not believe in superstition because that goes against reason. You may consider yourself an intelligent person who believes in superstition and that may be true but you’re not a rational individual if you believe in superstitions. Christ was rational, Christianity was meant to be understood rationally. Like Jesus said “everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice.” and everyone who is of nonsense hears superstitious garbage. What do you think he was arguing with the Pharisees about? They didn't know the Father.

Amaleq13

You efforts are as appreciated despite that they have been in vain.

You cannot find an account that is too explicit for him to ignore. It doesn't matter that Tatian is clearly referring to demons as independently acting, sentient entities and attempting to explain them as such by describing their non-human nature or their activities. It doesn't matter that memes or reified ideas are not sentient entities about which men have wondered if they have a soul like a man.

His glasses are too thoroughly tinted.

Elijah

Yes with reason.

Everything had a soul. Not that I understand that. Ask No Robots he may be able to explain it.

Weren't you supposed to show me my logical fallacies and show why you should logically decide to interpret it superstitiously?

No Robots

Imo, Elijah, all you have to do is recognize that there is a process by which pure spiritual thought is constantly degraded into folkish superstition. For example, Socrates' purely spiritual inner daemon is degraded into external demons. It is an open question to what degree someone like Tatian holds to the purely spiritual idea, and to what degree he falls into superstition. On the whole, though, the sad history of men is that the pure thought of a genius like Socrates is continually subject to this process of popular vulgarization. It is important to remember that no superstition is absolutely false, but is rather a degradation of something that is absolutely true. The delineation of spiritual truth in counterdistinction to its superstitious analogia is often painstaking work. The key is to stick with the authentic geniuses of the spirit, and then, where necessary, to proceed from them to the analysis of those who distort them.

Elijah

Is your degradation into superstition here dualism or the nonsense superstition that is being offered up? Yea they had spirit externalized (and divided) in matter like Plato and not unified in Mind like Berkeley or maybe Spinoza, but that’s because they were dualists. (and Plato has unity concepts in his work (I think) so the dualism could have just been for explanatory purposes in actuality.) Like I said I’m not sure if you are using superstitious the way it is being used in this discussion, as in nonsense or superstitious as how Brunner views Kant. If it’s how Brunner views Kant then it’s a philosophical disagreement being attacked as superstitious, which happens, but not superstitious thought itself. You have to distinguish between a philosophical dispute and nonsense being pushed forward by a superstitious religious person and not a philosopher at all.

The people here don’t need to get it right, now, they just need to get into the general philosophical discussion and move out of the nonsense stuff. You aren’t going to understand anything of Christ/religion if you are still imagining spirits as if they were cartoons.

Yes Tatian may have fallen into superstitious understandings but that doesn’t seem to be the case judging from the work offered up, he’s going after errors in understanding spiritual entities on part of the Greeks and he’s familiar with their philosophers. He looks like another example of an early Christian being influenced by the philosophy of the time and not just the superstitions.