Toto

The Second Temptation of Christ

After some pathetically obsequious flattery of the Pope's wisdom,

stephan huller

Yes it's true that the tradition says a lot of stupid things. Nevertheless it has to be said that most non-believers don't get the gospel either. The gospel isn't just a history of Jesus. This is nonsense promoted by English speaking evangelicals which unfortunately pervades every aspect of New Testament studies. I remember using Google to trace the concept of the Jubilee in the gospel narrative and it was Ratzinger who was one of the few people that almost got it (ironically it turns out that I found an evangelical at Fordham who one bettered Razinger's interpretation in one of the books he wrote while John Paul II was on the throne).

I guess my point is, I say my share stupid, stupid things. I act incredibly moronic at times. But I hope that the 10 percent of truly amazing things that I come up is worth putting up with the 90 percent imbecilic content in my brain.

That's sort of how I put up with traditional religion. Yes, there's a lot of stuff that's just incomprehensibly stupid that's directed to the sheep in the church. I've never been behind 'closed doors' to see whether those who make it to the higher ranks exhibit a lot of these traits.

But this this sublimity that lays buried in rubble and that they don't even understand why they have it which IMO is worth spending time with these people. Again, it depends what you want. If the gospel is just some stupid book written by a stupid person for stupid people then it's true - you can find endless source of fodder with these dopes.

But if the gospel was all the things the Marcionites said about it - i.e. "O wonder beyond wonders, rapture, power, and amazement is it, that one can say nothing at all" - and it was written by the greatest genius in human history as a tool to help perfect people who born as smart as him and then just became abused and refashioned in the hands of morons (which I admit is a long series of increasingly improbable propositions) then you can put up with the 2000 stupid things tradition religion does to get at a few gems.

mountainman

Scriptural Exegesis was certainly a tool of the gnostic authors. We have only to open up any gnostic account to see it twisted by the gnostics to their own ends. Arius of Alexandria was the first historical figure to have received multiple attestations as being the Antichrist. Did Arius use Scriptural Exegesis? According to Rowan Williams he did.

"Arius' entire effort consisted precisely in acclimatizing Plotinic logic within biblical creationism."

- ARIUS Heresy and Tradition (2002), p.209
Williams following Kannengiesser

The definition of the antichrist is in the letters of John and is loosely able to be described as those people who refused to confess that Jesus appeared in the flesh - in the ancient historical record. Well. What would Ratzinger know? Maybe Jesus did not appear in the flesh, and the Arian controversy was mis-reported?

To further substantiate this claim, I have written an essay here using many words which may possibly be reduced to the one following picture.

Horatio Parker

Plato is worth stealing.

Chili

Hmmm, I would think that if Christ is a state of mind ("the mind of Christ"), the antichrist should be one too . . . and if one is in heaven the other should be in hell . . . and if a state of mind ends when we die so will the anti-christ.

mountainman

Where do you think the "Holy Trinity" was sourced in the mid 4th century? It's obviously been imported into the Christian pageantry through the Platonists. These people were very influential people in the empire. Plotinus had received imperial patronage.

Plotinus reformulated the statement of the trinity (of Plato) at the very commencement of his whole metaphysical treatment). Porphyry who preserved Plotinus (but whose books Constantine orders burnt 325 CE). The Platonist Iamblichus, who died 325 CE - but I dont know how he died - does anyone know how Iamblichus went west in that year?. Finally also the Platonist Sopater (who was executed by Constantine 336 CE).

Good ideas were bound to resurface. Plato's metaphysical trinity resurfaced. Well after Nicaea.

Here is a summary of what might be called Plato's metaphysical "divinity trinity":


Hopefully we are beginning to understand precisely how this state of affairs came about. As far as I can tell from the evidence, the Christians thieved the identity of key historical Platonists. They also stole very valuable philosophical and metaphysical concepts from the Apostolic lineage of Plato, who had faithfully preserved a canon of Plato's books to Nicaea, only to have them burnt as the 1st order arising out of the Council which celebrated Constantine's 20th year of long service at the top of the dog-eat-dog barbarian scrapheap which relentlessly drove the Roman army at that epoch.

Just out of interest here is Rowan Williams quoting Arius.


Does the god of Arius sound like the god of Jesus or Plato?

youngalexander

I thort that Ratzinger was the Anti-Christ!

Chili

But there is no patent on the trinity = very simple concept . . . and there is nothing divine about the trinity since there is no trinity in heaven as it collapsed with the spiritual baptism of Jesus and then dove descended, and so thus the risen Jesus of Luke was 'Lord and God' with no need for the HS . . . which would be silly in heaven and contradicts onmiscience.