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Re: ✠
December 12, 2011, 05:49:15 AM
I don't know, I'd rather just scrap it and go one to something better. Not put a giant band aid on something that is already broken.


Perhaps I am being impatient.

Re: ✠
December 12, 2011, 07:41:47 AM
Occupying Christianity can work by rooting out the secular humanism in gospel interpretations as heresy; human fraternity is strictly spiritual, never biological and only by God's judgement, never by man's.

But if it is an anthropomorphic God of brotherly love, equality and humanism as embodied by Jesus and preached in the gospels, what is the bloody difference between 'god' and man's judgement? This is the entire universe viewed through the lense of the humanism of 2000 year old peasants. If your idea of christianity is not the gospels, then why call it 'christianity'? It's more playing with definitions.

Re: ✠
December 12, 2011, 07:50:44 AM
Christianity is DEAD in the West no matter how you look at it. Even in America where large portions of the population say that they believe in god are "vanilla" Christians. They hardly understand Christianity and wear religious jewelry. Maybe show up at midnight mass on Christmas. Thats about it. It is nothing but a rotting husk. I say we support the GROWING interest there seems to be in revivalist Germanic/Scandinavian paganism. Lets embrace this resurgence and help it come to pass.

Yes. And eastern spirituality, particularly Zen buddhism and it's emphasis on 'emptiness' or sunyata. This is sooo much more perceptive of the nature of the self, consciousness and ultimetly man's place in the universe compared with anthropomophic christianity with its rediculous emphasis on how unique, timeless, enduring and basically important everyone's ego (read: soul) is.

Re: ✠
December 12, 2011, 07:55:16 AM
AVFN and fallot: you make good points. However, Christianity is a protean doctrine. The Catholic church is one of the most anti-egalitarian organizations on earth, or at least was; further, some parts of the Bible clearly contra-indicate any egalitarian view (the parable of the five talents comes to mind). Finally, look around you: the conservatives, especially those who mention nationalism, tradition or a fighting spirit, are disproportionately Christian. We need alliance with these people.

Conservative christians who mention nationalism mixed with fighting spirit are usually rednecks. I need an alliance with redneck christians like I need aids. They may hit on things that seem appealing, but it's usually accidental, contingent on time and place and totally non-examined. They would not be open to modifying ideas when needed.

Re: ✠
December 12, 2011, 07:58:58 AM
Asserting that Christianity is egalitarian and that its conception of God is anthropomorphic is pretty much denying brilliant thinkers such as St. Thomas Aquinas, the monks who composed the Philokalia, Louis de Bonald, Josephe de Maistre, and Dante Alighieri. Christianity is patriarchal religion par excellence, and patriarchy is pretty much the most rigid heirarchical form of government and spirituality possible. Burning heretics is burning the weak (of course we offer them the sacraments beforehand), and original sin is the recognition that all men need to be improved. The central basis of Christian thought is not Christ's teaching so much as His incarnation, His unification of the human and divine nature, i.e. strive towards the transcendent. We are your future, and you will all kneel to the cross and to Rome. Vive la roi!
Classicism in art, royalism in politics, Catholicism in religion

Re: ✠
December 12, 2011, 08:02:03 AM
Asserting that Christianity is egalitarian and that its conception of God is anthropomorphic is pretty much denying brilliant thinkers such as St. Thomas Aquinas, the monks who composed the Philokalia, Louis de Bonald, Josephe de Maistre, and Dante Alighieri. Christianity is patriarchal religion par excellence, and patriarchy is pretty much the most rigid heirarchical form of government and spirituality possible. Burning heretics is burning the weak (of course we offer them the sacraments beforehand), and original sin is the recognition that all men need to be improved. The central basis of Christian thought is not Christ's teaching so much as His incarnation, His unification of the human and divine nature, i.e. strive towards the transcendent. We are your future, and you will all kneel to the cross and to Rome. Vive la roi!

Right, so you're saying leave the core books of christianity aside (the gospels) and take secondary commentary as representative of the real thing! You can argue as much as you want about the central basis of christian thought... and placing primacy on seconard commentary will only invite enless such debates... because there are so many interpretations. It's pointless

Re: ✠
December 12, 2011, 08:11:33 AM
Sola scriptura is a Protestant heresy, not an inherent aspect of Christianity.
Classicism in art, royalism in politics, Catholicism in religion

Re: ✠
December 12, 2011, 08:14:57 AM
I have no idea what the sola scriptura is, but you could just as easily argue that catholic exposition of the gospels is catholic heresay.

Re: ✠
December 12, 2011, 08:18:32 AM
You could, but I wouldn't accept your argument unless it was grounded in a defensible philosophical analysis. We'd have to use the scholastic method, in other words, to determine the validity of such a conclusion, and that would be worthy of a novel. Oh, looks like it's already been written...

http://newadvent.org/summa/

Classicism in art, royalism in politics, Catholicism in religion

Re: ✠
December 12, 2011, 02:28:38 PM
For me, the situation is simple:

We have a broken civilization, in which there are remnants of the old and parts of the new.

I think we should rebuild the remnants of the old, exclude the illogical parts of the new, and then shape the aggregate toward values that are not only sensible, but "rising," or give us hope for a future that is not only functional, but beautiful and inspiring.

Like ancient Rome.

If Christianity is 85% Pagan, we have 15% of it to purge through blood, steel and fire.

That's better than trying to start over, considering that 99% of the people who come in the door will expect the new and not the old, and thus reject the old any time they see it because it is beyond their understanding.

If resurrecting the Pagan faiths is a good idea, how do we explain Wicca? A worse disaster than Christianity. How about modern Buddhism? A terrible idea.

I am not saying accept Christianity. I am saying something more subversive... conquer it.

Re: ✠
December 12, 2011, 04:25:56 PM
Asserting that Christianity is egalitarian and that its conception of God is anthropomorphic is pretty much denying brilliant thinkers such as St. Thomas Aquinas, the monks who composed the Philokalia, Louis de Bonald, Josephe de Maistre, and Dante Alighieri. Christianity is patriarchal religion par excellence, and patriarchy is pretty much the most rigid heirarchical form of government and spirituality possible. Burning heretics is burning the weak (of course we offer them the sacraments beforehand), and original sin is the recognition that all men need to be improved. The central basis of Christian thought is not Christ's teaching so much as His incarnation, His unification of the human and divine nature, i.e. strive towards the transcendent. We are your future, and you will all kneel to the cross and to Rome. Vive la roi!
Thinkers like Aquinas, although intelligent, made shit up to suit the times and their own thinking. Sort of like almost everyone did from the Dark Ages all the way up till now.


You're forgetting all of the venerated females in Christianity. Arguably, Mary is just as big as Jesus in some aspects.

Re: ✠
December 12, 2011, 06:37:18 PM
Yes, I'm sure the entire corpus of St. Thomas Aquinas, with all of its philosophical depth, could be summarized as him 'making shit up'.

Also, patriarchy isn't the denial of the value of women, it's a dignification of their natural relationships with men. I venerate the female saints of the Faith as much as any other good Catholic does.
Classicism in art, royalism in politics, Catholicism in religion

Re: ✠
December 12, 2011, 07:26:58 PM
Conservationist, I get the impression that what you are suggesting is somewhere between a marriage-of-convenience and meta-political entryism. On the one hand, I'm not completely opposed to such an initiative. I'm neither an intransigent nor a dogmatist. The spiritualties of the future will not and cannot be the same as those of the past. Changes will develop, and on a practical level may be made to develop. However, I believe what you are proposing is undesirable for two reasons.

Firslty I believe that in essence the ideologies at the core of Christianity and pre-Christian European religions are incompatable. Christianity is by definition the worship of Christ. The story of Christ, as reported by the apostles, is of a man who submitted, without sturggle or fight, to suffering and death at the hands of his enemy in order to show that our existence is profane and valueless and to allow all people, regardless of their transgressions and/or incompetence, the opportunity to achieve everlasting life as long as they are subservient. Furthermore, Christ was a Jewish reformer, and Judaism, then and now, is monotheist and dualist. This means that our existence is interpreted as an undesirable and sinful tangent to the true being of a beyond which we are incapable of accessing without, again, subservience to His law. I cannot possibly imagine a doctrine further from the heroic/tragic triumphal overcoming-through-struggle that is clearly displayed in traditional European mythology from the Táin to the Iliad. If one were to conjure some form of syncretism between paganism and Christianity one of these central doctrines would eventually have to win out over the other because of their incompatibilty. How do we know this? Because history has shown us so. When Christianity came to Europe it did indeed adopt many pagan practices and aesthetics. Christianity was undoubtedly Europeanised, and I suspect that is what you have been driving at with your 'pagan roots of Xianity' comments. Indeed, the legal and administrative structure of the catholic church, along with many customs and rituals, were lifted directly from pagan Rome (or, more accurately, these structures assimilated the new religion). However, the process of Xianisation in Europe did not stop, and has not stopped. The protestant reformation, quite logically, looked at the bible and found absolutely no foundation for the pope or the catholic church's hierarchical structure or extensive canonical tradition, and consequently binned it all. Today, liberal atheists continue the reformation (albeit unconciously) by removing the 'superstition' of God and all notions of spirituality whilst upholding the core morality and ideology of egalitarianism and the profanity of our existence.

Secondly, there may come a time when an aliance of sorts is required, but this is not it. The interest in pre-Xian Europe and European values has been on the rise for more than a century now, from Nietzsche to de Benoist, from Wagner to Vikernes. Conversely, Christianity is being discredited more and more. Churches are emptying and Christians are increasingly being ridiculed in the media and popular culture. Now, I don't necessarily revel in this, for I have a respect for the religious in general, and a certain disdain for smug atheists, but to side with Xianity would be like boarding a sinking ship - we would go down with it!

Finally, as for your repeated comments about the pagan origins of Xianity, I don't really follow. Jesus was a Jewish reformer, Judaism was monotheist. The apostles basically preached Judaism for gentiles. So I don't agree that Xianity had pagan roots. I do however, as stated above, recognise that Xianity was Europeanised to a large extent after it became the offical religion of Rome, but, as I have also said, many of its most traditional European features have been the subject of reform and excision because of their incompatibility with the central ideology of the gospels.

Erosion, I disagree with you also. The burning of heretics is not burning the weak, it is burning the other because one is incapable of allowing or comprehending difference - difference which is diversity, diversity which is natural. It is indicative of the narrow, totalitarian and completely unrealistic world-view that has caused so much destruction throughout Europe's history. Nor is original sin a recognition that man needs improvement, it is a statement that man is wrong and cannot right himself. It is a statement that man is not fit to govern himself or to be in charge of his own destiny. It is a statement that I disagree with. Strongly.
"creation in order to subdue the torment of perception" - Wilhelm Worringer
A View From Nihil
Order of the HNW

Re: ✠
December 12, 2011, 09:45:41 PM
Well, your analysis of Christianity is wrong. The central basis of Christianity as pointed out by St. Athanasius is theosis, which means deification, 'God became man so that man might become god.' Christianity has pagan roots in the obvious Neoplatonic influences on the early Church fathers, and the Aristotlian influences on Medieval scholasticism. The burning of heretics is the burning of the weak, in that a proper Christian recognizes irrefutably his obligation to fulfill his duty towards theosis, which means accepting the teleological nature of himself or herself and actualizing that to the greatest degree possible. Christ's death is a sacrifice meant to embody the divinization of mankind, not a story of meek surrender in order to encourage the weak. The mistake you're making is a common one made by most modern opponents of Christianity, which is to be completely unaware of its historical and philosophical dimensions. Protestantism is not Christianity, it's a heresy. Egalitarianism, refusal of diversity and tradition, anti-heirarchical revolutions, these are all Protestantism. Also, traditional Catholicism and Orthodoxy are actually experiencing a renaissance of sorts in intellectual circles today. It isn't widely visible in the mainstream media, but that's because the left has an iron-grip on the media and mainstream academia, and has historically seen the Catholic Church (and by that I mean the Roman Catholic Church of the past, but most especially the Catholic Church as in the eternal philosophy of Catholicism) as its greatest opponent.

I've met people like you before. Your concerns are understandable, because I'm against modernity too. But people such as yourself always seemed shocked when they are introduced to the actual philosophical material of the early Church fathers, such as St. Athanasius, the Philokalia, Psuedo-Dionysius, and the Cappodocian fathers, as if this was some sort of Christianity they never knew existed.
Classicism in art, royalism in politics, Catholicism in religion

Re: ✠
December 12, 2011, 10:20:50 PM
To be clear, do you believe the doctrine yourself Erosion? Anti-modernity and a return to tradition notwithstanding, is this a vision for society or also a personal practice? A return to these traditions is a worldwide phenomenon interestingly; a natural reaction to the sorry state of modern existence one could say. What I think your view lacks (perhaps mistakenly) however, is role models. I would be interested to know how and where such a change would start (hypothetically). Outside certain European countries and (increasingly) a lot of the US, traditional practices are still fresh in the public consciousness. There, youth have something to emulate, something to contribute to towards a stable goal. What would serve this purpose for you?

I'm sure burning heretics has its place, but could you illustrate with a modern example of exactly who or what would merit this punishment if such an order came to be?