Bing's Jesus Christ

it is time to remember Bing's simple Jesus:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iz1UdOW6QRg

Pythagoras of Samos and John of Patmos

Pythagoras has been to space,
what John of Patmos has been to time

the unnatural selection at Nicaea

Theodosius I appears to be the factor of unnatural selection of the Nicene Creed

deaths of God

accidental theocide
negligent theocide
involuntary godslaughter
voluntary godslaughter

a Nietzschean annotation

"all epochs are immediate to God*" -- Ranke

                                            *which is dead -- Nietzsche

a meaningless story?

a history of meaninglessness in human history ?

National Geographic's apocalypses of human social psychology

The general title of these two National Geographic series is "Apocalypse" (http://natgeotv.com/asia/apocalypse-world-war-i; http://natgeotv.com/asia/apocalypse-the-second-world-war), by which the creators mean terrible, dramatic events in human history (since not the end of the world). But what the two series really are is an apocalypse, an un-covering (Greek apokalupsis, from apokaluptein ‘uncover, reveal,’ from apo- ‘un-’ + kaluptein ‘to cover.'), a revealing of the human being, individually, socially and collectively.

These films can be viewed more usefully as lessons in realistic social psychology than as just past, if relevant, history.

meanings in the history of Greek philosophy

there is no one "answer", truth or understanding of the story of Greek philosophy; there is what and how one understands the meaning in the story.

Let there be Socrates.

perhaps Socrates' search for the permanent Good, Just, Beautiful,... was like saying: 'Let there be God, and there was God'?

"...for they know not what they do"?

a dividing of judgements?
those who do, and those who don't...

Father, condemn them for they know what they do.

the anthropophanies of theophanies

studying the actual history of interpretations and beliefs of "theophanies" – be they concerning Jacob's ladder, Abraham's guests, or on Sinai, Tabor, Damascus,... – is very revealing of man.
more in fact of men.
historical earthly anthropophanies

Platonicide

a(nother) conference on Plato?
yes, indeed, again again...dissection of the dissected, dismemberment of the long-ago dismembered by academic section reports

in short: Plato sub specie academiae
ie Platonicide

the all-consuming mass spiritual malaise

consumer shopping as a globalized/ing popular symptom of mass spiritual malaise

God is love?

whether "God is love"...
and "man" a creature...
(or chance indifferent designer...
and man evolved matter...)

certainly the human is a pitiable being that needs it.

internationalized equalities

'all nations are equally exceptional'

or,

'all nations are created equal'

apples from Eve’s to Jobs’

from Eve's to Jobs' apple...the history of default (un)consciousness

competing ontologies

competing ontologies: Mosaic, Plotinian, Lucretian, Augustinian, Boehmian, "Newtonian", Nietzschean, Haeckelian, Gamovian, et al

fighting the inner foe?

who amongst those warring against foreign, external foes have already faced their own inner ones?

premeditated philosophicide?

Premeditated Philosophicide:

The Kant Murder of Pythagorean Philosophy.

By Strangling

passed Christmases

the history of the psychology of "Christmas"

all the world’s a stage?

all the world's on the stage

gnothi seauton?, again

oh man, fool thyself

motivating God

a history of motives attributed to "God"

the trials and tribulations of religions(s)

what is done to/with religion(s) in academic departments, articles and books...

and seminaries, cathedrals...

the subject(ion)s of “God”

for centuries "God" was subjected to theology/ians; for some 12-15 decades "He" has been subjected to science/tists.

great insects of history

a history of insects that changed the course of (human) history

after a desert of doubt

strong religious believers who have not previously traveled long lost in a broad desert of doubt are really unbelievable

mirror mirror on the past…

human history lives in a mirror

atheists reject life, not God

atheists really rather reject the world's pain, suffering and justlessness

the (w)holy-other delusion?

are we to accept that "God" is not [(w)holy] other than a communicable delusion

unconscious sleepers

those who are asleep seldom realize it

Graham, Barth, Steiner

Billy Graham evangelist, Karl Barth theologian, Rudolf Steiner seer

hierarchy of claim

when the myth of Er is not merely myth

climbing up the ladder of material comfort, standards and possessions is a real level of life and development, but an inadequate one if eg the myth of Er is not merely myth

the limits of Kant’s limits

Kant's limits are too limited.

epistemic -- and abstracted from life at that.

not cosmically earthly

the myths we live by

self-mythifications?

sic transit gloria humanae

learn, earn, discover, invent...what we will...what survives, Goethe?

ignobling advertising

advertising as mirror insult to greatness and nobility in man

ugly is beautiful?

ugly is beautiful: divine justice replaced by earthly equality

mind pollution

dazed inside, by the murky, turgid, polluted mental climate full of swirling terms and theories

deux ex caelum post-mortem dei

many live now in an era post-mortem dei still as if in a (un)Realistic novel with divine seredipity, special providences deux ex machina/caelum

disbeliefing: a history

a history of disbelieving(s)

unconscious actors

most are not indifferent to the "play" we are in, but don't recognize that we are

the world-views of Brave New Worlders...

in the minds of Brave New Worlders, history is less irrelevant than unreal and/because unknown

Plato and Christ

Plato's cave and Christ's tomb

Thales vs d'Holbach

Thales: "Everything is full of gods"
d'Holbach: "Everything if void of gods"

"...for no one may see me and live..."

quite probably a human seeing "God" would be like an ant in the focused sunlight of a magnifying glass

Darwin and the logos spermatikos?

it could be said rather than he came somewhat slowly and reluctantly to accept a alogos spermatikos.

The vicious cacodaemonia of ISIS

the cacodemons inspiring brutish men for current murderous example in northern Iraq are inspired by a spirit virtually the opposite to the spirit of Isis (with her eudaemonia)

human evil

to take any theoretical character out of a current consideration of evil...
watch a deliberately posted video of a massacre in northern Iraq...

Catholic and Protestant, Sunni and Shia

the very names Catholic and Protestant, Sunni and Shia show the character, inner and outer, individual and social, of man

Augustine in hell

will St. Augustine (have) burn(t) in hell longer for having condemned -- if only at least in fearful believe -- most Adams and Eves to an eternity there?

7 ecumenical councils?

closer to reality: the 7 unecuminical councils

sinners out of the hands of an absent God

traditional Christian "sins" seem almost quaint considering the demonic brutality revealed in the 20th century's "man's inhumanity to man"

moments of the descent?

the "psychologies" of eg Locke or Hobbes as stages of human anthropography?

the senses of Locke and Plotinus

Locke: there is nothing in the mind that was not previously in the senses
Plotinus: there is nothing in the senses that was not previously in the Mind

ones' intellectual ancestry

for those for whom the ideas and lives of "Zarathustra", Plato, Plotinus, Origen, Aquinas, Ockham, Ficino, Luther, Hume, Goethe, Strauss,...are a complicated family personal(ized by study) history...

science stole history

a grandchild of natural philosophy, science, stole history from humanity while it was dozing in church

sentenced to hard labor scholarship

many "scholars" work and write as if they had been sentenced to a life of hard labor
some quarrying common stones
others digging holes only to refill them

senseless suffering and death? theodicy...or pathodicy or thanodicy?

theodicy, at heart, or in mind...
is it not rather a pathodicy that is sought...
an attempt to justify, to give sense to suffering, so that for recent popular necessary example: "they did not die in vain"
or thanodicy, as an attempt to make sense, to justify a death, especially if and when it seems premature, unnatural, senseless?

America's missing cacosophy

it is certainly clear that when one must look to a book like Moby Dick or even Biblical or Church Father demonology for an understanding of "evil" in man, that one can say America has long had an inadequate cacosophy

WTC and "moral evil"

the second, more "successful" attack on the World Trade Center in NYC in 2001, is an historical example of "moral (as Lisbon was in 1755 of "natural) evil"
but one which cannot be realistically understood without clear knowledge of the prior decades of American imperial (overt and covert) history which lead up to it.
(though a preponderantly emotional position was, is and will be popular, naturally.)

the sociocultural history of ?s

need a social and cultural history of the "questions" humans asked of the world, including when and where and who recognized: they did not have "the" answers; which questions were asked at what times and places; how conscious and reflective were those with such questions of "questions" of other times having asked questions; when and where was it thought that such "questions" were universal; when where and why were such "questions" accursing (eg Heine, Dostoyevsky) and when eg blithe, "naturally" human;...

"they didn't die in vain"?

"God" being impolitic and dis-agreeable to discuss...
as well evidently as missing...

now, rather than finding a shared justification for death into eg "God's loving arms"...
deaths are giving meaning – so that "they did not die in vain" – by viewing deaths as meaningful
not hereafter above
but here and now
for others...

hermits and seekers left society...

to go into the deserts, mountains, caves...

seeking a God...

Which Wasn't there?

lattes for apes?

sitting in Starbucks Europeiski Moscow...

they all seem quite undisturbed...

and certainly distracted...

whether their ur-ancestors were apes or angels

disbelieving hell and God

it is enlightening to consider that historically "hell" was disbelieved before "God"
(was "heaven" last of all?)

the angels of ideas, emotions, customs...

traditions of ideas and emotions, social customs and mores are the governing "angels" (and demons)...the fateful "astrologies" of social, idea, and human history over and via which humans 'live, move and have their being'

...And all the ideas and emotions merely players?

All the world's a stage,

And all the ideas and emotions mainly players

cacology? cacosophy? pathosophy? demonosophy?

rather than a merely intellectual theodicy,
or even an anthropodicy...
a cacology (knowledge/study of evil) and better a cacosophy (wisdom of...)
a pathosophy (wisdom of suffering)
even a demonosophy
are needed.
(if only to play more seriously with as ideas)

exploring Jefferson's "country of spirits"

Steiner as cartographer of Jefferson's "country of spirits*"?

(*cf. Jefferson's letter to Reverend Isaac Story, Washington, December 5, 1801)

"Big Bang" -- inconceivable? unimaginable? unbelievable?

computer-generated imagery of the misnamed "Big Bang" and early development of the universe are accepted now as blithely as the oft rejected, disbelieved account in the first book of the Bible Genesis.

now people are sure they can imagine just how the universe began, and it is seen, accepted and taught with as little circumspection as once was the first book of the Bible

but, simple questions to show our human limits in conceiving it...
why name the Bang "Big" if it began infinitely small?
how could there be a "Bang", big or small, where there was as yet no space or matter in which it could be heard?
why believe the current popular CGI image of a black emptiness in which a sudden burst of light occurs where and when there was no dark empty space before?

to hell with Hell?

due to its inhumane immorality John Hick seems to have declared Hell inexistent

three theodicies: India, Israel, Italy

truly searching for Truth?

a search for Truth can only truly begin after realizing one doesn't have it

historically... socially... individually...

and that whether one had, lost or disbelieved it

a history of God's mind and motives

need a history of Western conceptions of the "psychology" and motives of "God"

the Christian theodicy

                     the ultimate theodicy?

Muir or Moses?

compare the peak experiences of Moses and Muir

well, naturally...

nature as home
nature as cage
nature as stage

"Luther" 2017?

they will celebrate a Luther disregarding the essentials he so ardently claimed to know

i.e., they will remake Luther in their own preferred image(s)

in the spirit of Tertullian and Ockham...

Tertullian rejects pre-existence spirit
Ockham transcendent

Luther's inner darkness

rejecting "inner light"
Luther believed in a kind of inner darkness

imago dei?

or more realistically?
imago simia

Herman's "Cave and Light" conceived in the cave

Arthur Herman's Cave and Light was written by a somewhat conscious cave-dweller, for unconscious cave-dwellers

another Calvary of Calvary

the new film Calvary (2014), can lead to deeper ideas and reflections on the human being, good and evil, the question of God...

so it is best to not learn the mundane thoughts of its writer-director John Michael McDonagh

Darwin contra Dionysius

consider Darwin of Down and (pseudo-)Dionysius the Areopagite on Nature

vita contemplativa in Moscow?

a vita contemplativa amidst Moscow's multi-million-fold, multifarious vita activa is realistically, but truly, irrelevant

afterlife?

beforelife?

fallen happiness?

in the "pursuit of happiness" most have forgotten "the fall of man"

Socrates' and Moses'?

what has Athens to do with Mt Sinai?
Socrates' daemon and Moses' I am?

augustine and nietzsche sub specie...

Augustine seeks in his life and writings to make sense of his life, world and time sub specie dei
Nietzsche sub specie nihil

crossing to that world

how few are really willing and able to erect an inner cross amidst this world's surrounding life for that in another

truth or academics

heading for truth...

captivated by knowledge institutionalized

Kerouac's Tour Grand?

is Kerouac's road-trip and its account to be judged great...
if compared to that of Herodotus, Pausanias, Marco Polo,...
Grand Tourists
Goethe fleeing Weimar in Italy
Bayard Taylor afoot in Europe
the daemonic Richard Burton...

and if not in his life on the road
then in his engagement with such precursors?

seems rather he traveled lite

sophophobes in philosophy departments?

philosophy                                    phobosophy/sophophobia

"miracle, mystery, and authority"?

is not the problem now already rather their absence

hell yeah

was Voltaire not wrong about God needing be invented...
rather hell

"the (all-too-human) Humanities"

the "Humanities departments" have for decades not themselves much merited any lingering aura of authority they still may have been imagined to bear from their distant ancestors Religion and Philosophy

the ultimate "meta-narrative" ?

be  protests, rejections, disbelievings, condemnations,...
moral and/or intellectual
erudite and/or emotional
Faustian and/or purely scholarly

even the rejection of "narratives" and meta-narratives is done sub specie aeternitatis
(be that only filled by a ?)

post-mortems

compare the concepts of the post-mortem states of Dante and Goethe

on the road to Damascus, on the road to Vincennes

compare the experiences on the roads, of Paul and Rousseau
abstractly stated: their contexts, experiences, confrontations, anthropologies, conclusions
e.g.
against the Old Adam for the New
against the Civic for the Natural

God falsely sentenced to death (5-6 am first draft)

it was rather "man" who "died", or should have (been recognized to have) "died", in the human horrors of the "1930s" and "1940s", to have been put to death for the crimes...

if "God" not isn't, but never was, then His death, guilt or complicity were obviously impossible
in such case He could not have been at the scenes of the crimes
and in any (and all) cases, the murderers (not of "God" but of humans) were members of "mankind", and they merited at least the verbal, rhetorical death penalty

mankind had been disobeyed his higher self...in deed, word and thought
(and whether conceived sub specie dei or sub specie humaniae)

and these thoughts are just foolish child's play about and with those terrible realities
it was not "God" that died, or should (have) be(en) blamed for the crimes en masse and en individual

"man" was guilty of the crimes, but "God" was given the blame

were the many criminals less culpable due to underage? diminished responsibility? insanity?
had "mankind" not yet already entered historical maturity, manhood?
if not en masse, then in its (mis)leaders good and evil?
"just following orders"

yes, otherwise they would not have falsely accused "God" of the crimes
a lie to their selves

and even if the Falsely Accused, the Mis-blamed Is
it is "man" who was responsible for the crimes...
too old for diminished responsibility or a defense of negligent and/or involuntary manslaughtering

blaming anOther, man had/s still not "come of age", even before, during and/or after the human horrors of that time.

"God" is at most to be blamed for having instigated, for having inspired, the life of the criminals...
for have created a creature (or conditions) that does not want – or seem(s) incapable – to realize itself its own guilt

was "man" of diminished capacity due to age?
was "man" of diminished capacity due to mitigating circumstances?
is "man" not also to be charged with false accusation (aka "bearing false witness"): blaming "God"?
and putting "God" to a pathetic, rhetorical death for crimes he himself committed?

applied contemporary idea archaeology

applied contemporary idea archaeology – studying those ideas from the past living in the present

not the death on the cross

but the death of the cross

(and all that that means)

Original Error

what shall be concluded about mankind's Western history when it is recognized that "Original Sin" as understood and articulated by Augustine was based on a weak, erred translation on Romans 5:12?

mental dead ends...

logical positivism
post-modernism

Unexamined History

a history of history's unexamined assumptions

that's enough

how and why we got here is useless to most

that's the situation is enough

athens, mt. sinai, golgotha, a road to the Damascus

the history of philosophy as a series of footnotes on Plato...

the reflections and refractions, reverberations and echoes of events on Mt. Sinai...

the meanings of a cross and empty tomb...

and, the enlightening experience of falling off a horse on the road to Damascus...

Daylight Apocalyptic Savings Time?

collective time now more casual*, without any inherent meaning

*casual (adj.) Look up casual at Dictionary.com: late 14c., "subject to or produced by chance," from Middle French casuel (15c.), from Late Latin casualis "by chance," from Latin casus "chance, occasion, opportunity; accident, event"

Middling Platonism

studying and classifying Middle Platonism?

real social psychology

being able to discern on sight how much a person – in "thought, word, deed", dress, demeanor, diet,... – is not of the crowd, but their own

breathing THE ?

one can search, quest, for "the meaning of life"

and one can breath with the question
(or rather breath an absence)

Ding an sich? – Jesus-in-Himself?

as Kant held we can not know the Ding an sich

so through all scholarly research it seems impossible to know

the real Jesus-in-Himself

trans-Darwinian happiness

the deeper problem with human happiness is that need "not of this world"

the histories of ideas in history

not the history of ideas...

rather

the histories of ideas

or the histories of ideas in history

(those of e.g. Exodus 20.3, or John 18:36, Republic 10.614-10.621, Vendidad 19.3)

pop politics

popular politics are not bad,

if you have a good populus

"...passing through nature to..."

Thou know’st ’tis common. All that lives must die,

Passing through nature to...nullity?

that's a hell of a reason

considering the massive, brutal and systematic inhumanity of man to man* in the 20th century..
one can only hope that it was a reasonable mistake for the 17th and 18th centuries to have disbelieved in hell

*from Robert Burns' 1784 poem Man was made to mourn: A Dirge

The Comedy in Leibnitz's Théodicée?

Leibnitz does not consider Dante's Comedy in his Théodicée
though that is Dante's "response" to the "problem of theodicy"

the deaths of God

"God" died slowly, in differing parts...
as a wise, loving, attentive Father he died for some at Lisbon
as a Creative Designer he died for others later (e.g. Darwin)
as a Scipt(ure)-writer he died for some unconvinced readers (e.g. Strauss, Nietzsche)

BREAKING NEWS: In the .0000000000000000000000000000000001 second...

In the .0000000000000000000000000000000001 beginning, Nothing happened, and expanded 100 trillion trillion times as the universe...*

isn't that just incredible!?

(but, really, even if purely myth, is the Mosaic account more unbelievable?)

*cf. http://news.discovery.com/space/astronomy/big-bangs-smoking-gun-discovered-140317.htm#mkcpgn=fbdsc8: "Computer models indicate that the universe expanded by 100 trillion trillion times in .0000000000000000000000000000000001 (10 to the minus-34) seconds after the Big Bang explosion 13.8 billion years ago."

the authoritarian smile

the authoritarian state of socialized smiling

      

Dante's theodicy...

is a commedia

"theodicy" suffers

few thinkers on theodicy seem to have suffered enough

theoretical theodicy suffers deeply from being too theoretical

a study requirement for a PhD dissertation on theodicy should be "having nearly died or the equivalent"

dozing theology sub specie scientiae

theology and theologians – at least in the 20th century and now – cannot be well understood without recognizing that they think, speak and write about theology – it would be too much to say of "God", but of all things related to a diversified and proliferated theology(ies), religion(s), Bible studies, exegesis (also of exegesis), etc, etc, etc – in a kind of blithe earthly doze, and that in a mentality, individually and collegially, intellectualized, ie in a widely-shared intellectualizing system which is rather sub specie scientiae, sub specie mundi, than with/in any real sense theology sub specie dei.

solipsism à la California

here is a typical announcement for a course in women's self-improvement:

"Are you ready to release old people-pleasing patterns and give yourself permission to play and put yourself first?"

when such ideas can be clearly distinguished from solipsism, narcissism, ego-centrism,...

then these ideas might have some minimally clear value and meaning.

Cosmogenesis -- The Rock Opera

[email to an atheist friend:]

Hey, the atheists may be right, but the scientists today are myth-makers none the less than the creationists.

watching another "docudrama" on the origin of the universe..

rather than accept the absurd incredibility of the "scientific" "Singularity" (with a capital S) -- where Nothing Happened -- I would rather believe the Mosaic account where it is at least comprehensibly claimed "God created", even if Moses and God didn't exist and Genesis is a complete fiction, because it at least pretends to make sense, whereas the ultra-mini-atomic Singularity becoming the universe asks me to be stupider and more gullible than the dumbest hillbilly creationist.

and if the first chapters of Genesis seem childish, the ever-repeated variations of CGI like-real "images" of the big bang and all the rest, which show such a lovely, cozy cosmogenesis, are presented to naive viewers as if real facts, and with thus about the same seriousness as a Sunday school class.

psychologies' theologies

rather than theology actually being anthropology
theology is more personal psychology

the living school

more likely an ordeal... an experience... an education
than a place for answers and solutions

self-bespelled

to be explained:
the self-bespelling spirit evident throughout the history of theology and philosophy

a peak's peek

seeking via theologians charts
to climb through the vagaries, fogs and clouds
up to peek from a peak

the mundane comedy

the low dramas of our lives
sub specie mundi

freedom of divine choice

people now happily choose a Jesus Christ or Buddha or Krishna to suit themselves

the mall contra the ✞

the pathos, ethos and telos of a mall and Golgotha are human antipodes

terra cognita

traveled and travailed for 40+ years in our history
most are lost, but mercifully don't know

"nationalists"

humans still at the level of brute

in body, soul, mind, and spirit

pathos + theology =>

pathetic theology

inebriated theologians

theology -- orthodox, liberal, hip, et al -- often was and is of a kind of spirit that allowed even the death of God theologians their inebriated and sentimental musings on "God", man and their relation

post-Soviet disbelievers

the wake of Soviet atheism is wide even in the minds and beliefs of many post-Soviet Russians

one "ultimate concern"

or one's ultimate disconcertion

things fall apart, the center cannot hold?

things fell apart, the center did not hold

the history of our travel

as a smart traveler studies the history of the country to which he will travel
so should one study the history of the one in which we travail

waiting for Godot?

don't

unreal estates?, Florence, Italy

beyond "the pillars of Kant"

the ne plus ultra of the pillars of Hercules
explorers: Prince Henry, Dias, Columbus, da Gama, Magellan, et al
the pillars of Kant
explorers: Hamann, Hegel, Goethe, Blake, Coleridge, Steiner,...Leary, Castaneda, et al

obstacle courses to God

theological studies?

Jefferson contra Augustine

fallen, repenting sin
naturally pursuing happiness

our ultimate, avoided ?

is our daily life
sub specie dei
or
sub specie nihilis*

*not sure about the Latin ending here.

the God-forsaken malls

it is less that "God" is missing from a mall
than that people are too busy to notice

just another day?

then run...
escape...
seek, write, scream, "die",...

poor, lost poetry

one problem with and for poetry is the lack of a common understanding of the "real world"
or the real in the world
the other is the kindred problem -- little enough conscious amidst all the clutter and confusion -- of the "inner world", aka self, aka person

In the beginning...

"In the beginning was the word..."
and then the theologians got hold of it

the Christ-coma of Barth

in essence, Barth's "Christ" is a replacement for the "higher self"

Barth leaves the "Christian" in a kind of dogma-induced Christ-coma

Bibliosyncratizations

Let us make Bible in our own images

Augustine and Goethe?

needed: a comparison of their ideas of man's origin, life and goals would be very clarifying

Maslow or Dante on Self-Actualization?

Maslow was too light-headed on self-actualization...
simply: what is the self actualized of a vicious individual?

Maslow needs two parts Dante

sub specie aeternitatis through the clouds

most attempts to view matters sub specie aeternitatis are often unclear due to low fog and overhead clouds
mostly over academic humanities' department buildings

wholly other or partly other?

"das ganze Andere", "the wholly other" -- in addition to its vagueness of content of the "other" -- assumes that the concept of some capable microcosmicity, or imago dei, or scintilla is at best weak, at worst non-existent
"abstract" academic "psychology of religious experience" vs those traditions in which man is partly other

pilgrimage a la Dante and Columbus

after the descent

the only way back, through the earthly

some mysterious combination of Dante's and Columbus's

pilgrimage amidst pluralism

neither terra incognita, nor mare incognitum...
not in forest or deserts...
but in medias res the multitude of religions, philosophies, sciences, beliefs,...
trying to penetrate through to Insight, to "God", to Meaning.

Incredo

"the belief in God" must now be that somehow in all of mankind's trivial and terrible
there is yet some barely credible Meaning

hemlock and a cross

few ever have drunk hemlock calmly
and even one many believe to have been greater is reported by two to have felt forsaken

Up with a multicultural, multinational, multireligious,...global Thor!

what the world could really use is a god like Thor upgraded, who could use surgical lightning strikes -- even out of the blue -- to the multifarious and much-deserving bad guys everywhere!

each individual's life "Bible"

each individual person's life is their own lived and sometimes written "Bible" (their making sense of their world)
but there are so many plagiarists.

here be no dragons...

who now in this time of mind even imagines to fear that a dragon or devil might stick his head out of a sidewalk or building wall?

second Sinai scenario

Moses ascends the mountain, but then sees no sense to descend and try to explain...

our earthly home?

walking down a street in Moscow on this lovely sunny day, an insight to our life:

the society, culture and mind of this time is not at all that mankind is some spirit come down to earth
rather that the earthly, physical life is the home and goal of man

the gnostic scientific claims of cosmogenesis

natural scientists came to reject the unbelievable Mosaic account of creation in Genesis
but their own cosmogony of the exploding singularity is little less unbelievable
and such claims, not to any supernatural, divine knowledge of origins, but to a reasonable, scientific, natural one, are also not modestly agnostic

...Nothing happened

In the beginning God created...

In the beginning Nothing happened...

when the gods disappeared...

they left music for consolation behind

rejected stark contra-visions: Strauss' and Steiner's

extreme oppositions of Christologies, theologies, anthropologies, Bible readings,...
the Skeptic Strauss (1808-1874)                                the Seer Steiner (1861-1925)

self-loving in California?

when those who profess and promote self-love as some happy solution to human dissatisfaction, can distinguish it clearly from narcissism and solipsism, they might start to do more than babble in their happy dream-ideals

conversations with the dead

spent the week with Origen, Nietzsche, Darwin,...

ideas and images of Moses, Jesus, revelation...

no one, as for years, noticed

free will?

most are not now determined by the stars...
nor fate...
nor the gods...
nor providence...

rather by social group
conventions
genes
and marketing

"all men are created equal"

all men were created equal...

but then...

theo-logy?

theologians have really written less of "God" than man

revelations of revelations

the history of the theology and idea "revelation" is very revealing about mankind

the final exam room

 

theodical theology

in fact, after another excursion through (what remains of) Origen('s system):
"theology" is itself theodicy, or at least theodical

acme

mediocris in climbing a spiritual mountain

saving God

theodicy amounts to saving God for man

reading the theologians on "God"...
one can discern they were on something

theologies of comforting doctrinal sleeps

early Christian doctrinal disputes in one aspect in retrospect seem like arguments on how best to prepare a bed

sleepings

one can sleep in churches and doctrines

one can sleep in departments and fields

do books escape human?

are the Testaments of the Bible, the Phadrus of Plato, the Enneads of Plotinus, the Confessions of Augustine, the Commedia of Dante, Luther's Theses, Newton's Principia, Goethe's Faust, Einstein's Theory of Relativity, Freud's Illusion, etc, et al...in reality more true sub specie dei (or sub specie nihil?) than Cervantes' Don Quixote?

truths in the ashes

a history of the "truths" in the ashes of books worthy of burning would surely be enlightening

disbelievings: hell/Devil heaven/God

historically it seems that, to the extent that they were, Hell and the Devil were disbelieved before God and Heaven

history not for history's sake

what is truly of interest is that in history which constitutes continuing essential elements of our moving world now
not history for history's sake

horizons of mind

even few philosophers escaped, or attempted successfully to, the mental horizons of their times

studying Christianity

one major problem in studying Christianity is the Christians who have written most of the books on it

theology has been written sub specie ...?

sub specie dei

or

sub specie humanitatis

the theology of theological exegesis

most theological exegesis tends to be written as if God Was, not Is
or if He Is, He Is not here and not now, but some other where and when

lessons learned from history?

hardly those from merely the "20th century"

✞ ✝

in post-Soviet Moscow and elsewhere, the cross seems to represent answers to questions people seem not to really have

institutional necropolises of soul and spirit

universities and their departments?

time off for Moscow's "Vaishyas, Shudras"

the crowds in Moscow Metro Kurskaya

the Brahmans of the West uncertain of God...
the Kshatriyas rather busy...

what shall the modern city's "Vaishyas, Shudras, and Untouchables" do but walk around rather inwardly aimless

here be monstrations

most theologians fear -- rightly -- to attempt to climb up "Mt Sinai"

the reliquaries theologies

like pieces believed from the "true" cross in cathedrals
theologians claim to have and describe the divinely revealed Truth in their systems

is the theological less or more true than the physical?

hanging out in Starbucks sub specie mundi

those to be seen casually sitting, sipping and conversing seem unconscious to imagine there was ever a time when time was imagined to be deadly serious

they relax and chat as if time was on their side -- sub specie mundi, not sub specie aeternitatis, and certainly not sub specie mortis

theological dross

dug out a few real nuggets amid 30 pages about "theological" views in modern lit

academic obfuscations

as theology was over time claimed to tend to a, so to say, schooled obfuscation
so has the modern academic mind tended to the same
the most common factor being:
the obfuscators

RIP "AD"?

a final death certificate cannot be issued, but the historical term AD* is MIA in and of history
injured; presumed dead by disbelief

                                                                                            *anno domini

sms to an atheist: the hermeneutical self-imprisoners

reading Schleiermacher and hermeneutics. : ((
so many methodologies and theories, and theories about methodologies and methodologies about theories...
like prisoners themselves adding bars to theirs cells, rather than trying to escape!
scholarly self-imprisoneders

religious studies about religious studies about religious experience

a serious, scholarly study about "religious experience" reveals itself as a study about the study of "religious experience"...

if God is distant in the Churches or nature or cosmos...in many universities it is not religious experience or "God" that one studies in religious studies, but one studies the studies themselves

micro-consumercosm

the consumered man and woman

equality on earth as it is in...

the demand for human equality has replaced that for heavenly justice

the soporific social ideals of history

whatever whenever widely agreed on ideas have been soporific

reviewing one's own CV post-mortem?

the reader may consider his own personal ideas, believings and feelings in relation to this idea -- once widely believed, if conceived in different terms -- of one's own curriculum vitae reviewed post-mortem by one's Self

dethroning Anti-Gods

the biographies and anti-theisms of Diderot, La Mettrie, Holbach, et al...necessary contrasts for "Neo-Platonists" et al to know

State of the Disunion Address?

what can a "Harry Haller" think and feel of the speech-writer-written, telepromptered, populus-crafted, inspirational sermonic address of the first black President of the USA in the guiding "People's House" about the "State of the Union" (which has for decades revealed its deep and ardent disunion in the two opposing political party-churches' anathematizings as to the true and right worldly way to serve and guide the political-religion America)?

out-of-(worldly)touch
as pursuing impractical, otherworldly solutions of not how to make a better and prosperous life, but whence, wherefore, whereto...
an outsider
a "Harry Haller" (perhaps somewhat regretting his lonely "unrealistic" concerns)

The Global "Grand Tour"

the aristocratic "Grand Tour" has by and large been replaced by democratic Globetrotting

mythed

loss of collective meaning replaced by a collection of personalized myths?

"Hell, I don't know!"

in an era and world of an uncertain God, fear of hell has been replaced in life by that of dying

the passions of politics in America are so high because they are in fact religious

Hemlock in the "21st century"?

how many might drink hemlock calmly in this time?

Socrates in the mall

if Socrates challenged the gods of goods today...would anyone try him?

the Death of God?

has not for many modern mentalities Death replaced "God" as the ultimate and final source of Meaning in life?

citizen or pilgrim

"Please, make yourself at home."
"Thanks, but I'm just passing through."

a higher standard of (higher) living?

coined around 1902, the expression "standard of living" was used by social scientists and the public to describe the rising conditions, and rising expectations for more and more rising conditions, of a materially-defined middle-class living standard.

it was not conceived in regards to "higher cultural" or intellectual standards of living.

it is kin to the getig world of ancient Iranian cosmology, to the "kingdom ("middle-classdom") of this world" (John 18:36), to the earthly of Augustine's cities, to "civilization" as a verb and noun, to Versailles and its copies, to "lives of quiet desperation" (Thoreau), Gilded Ages, consumerism, affluenza,...

Dante Now?!

those outsiders...preferring a cosmos like "Dante's"
even post-Copernicus, post-"Newton", post-Kant, post-Darwin, post-Nietzsche, post-mortem dei, post-Hubble...

daily historical travel

journeying daily in history...returning to the present with deepened insights and understanding

Two Originations

"In the beginning God..."

Before the beginning nothing...

post-cataclysm catechism

"Man's chief end was to glorify God and to enjoy him forever"

Man's chief end is to seek "God" and to seek him forever
 

Sinai's invisible lightning, silent thunder

"theology" has for centuries been the "Golden Calf" beside Mount Sinai

anesthetic lit

all fiction that does not consider, worry, include...the deepest human questions is just passing distraction...a temporary intellectual anesthesia (even if self-administered, and that for life)

that's a hell of a good book!

certainly not many even can imagine that once upon a time reading entertaining literature was viewed as dangerously near to a path to "hell"

lost in chapter 21?

most are simply lost somehow/when/where/why/etc in the 21st chapter

history of killing with a clear conscience

needed:
a long-term history of the psychologies/beliefs of those certain they can and should kill infidels...
and that they can do so with a clear conscience

Kant aslumber

perhaps if Kant had remained aslumber, or had been awakened by someone other than Hume...

saving God?

how much in the history of theology is essentially a human attempt to save "God"

sub specie Biblia

sub specie Biblia

for those who live and move and (still) have their being in the "Biblical world-view"

from Calvin to Maslow

from different core beliefs, beliefs of the core...

self-denigration <  > self-actualization

The Unexpected Returnee?

if many early "Christians" in fact expected Christ to return soon, now most would be totally shocked if he actually reappeared, be that in flesh or clouds
(aside from those who don't much care either way about Him now or then)

Nietzsche lives?

can it be they have not heard that Nietzsche and his "madman" lived?

yes

Barth < > Steiner

the anthropologies of Karl Barth and Rudolf Steiner are in interesting and clarifying essential contrast
eg in the former "God" is "Wholly Other" from man; in the later, man is a living possible reflection of God.

three mutual anathematizing "Christians"

Billy Graham, Evangelist

Karl Barth, Theologian

Rudolf Steiner, Seer

Don Quixote encounters the Giza Sphinx

theological tomes or Jacob's stones?

to seek to rest one's head on theologies' tomes?

or better (and much more perilously) on one of Jacob's stones?

human limitations -- Kant: noumena :: theology: God

while Kant may have clarified (or for many not) the limits of human knowledge of things-in-themselves, the noumena, much of "theology" makes finding one's way through to God almost impossible
 

theologians sub specie Dei?

much written of "God" in the history of theology, philosophy (and even sometimes science), seems like a self-therapy projected into the universe: man creating and designing with words, ideas, art,...a suitable God, also for consoling ultimate meaning

but how little seems to have been written with any real sense that it was written (and was Being written) sub specie Dei 

erudite quiet desperation

professional intellectual lives of quiet desperation

curricula vitae lived sub specie academiae

a-mazed academics

most less or more contentedly "lost" for life -- and to life -- in their sections of a growing maze of divergent (and often competing or contradicting) ideas, terminologies, theories, methodologies,...

fathers of modern philosophy

were modern "philosophy fathers" any less naive and confident in the assumptions of the veracities of their "systems" than the Church Fathers with their theological speculations and reasonings?
 

the ruined maze of academia

trying to find one's way to "Truth" in academia
 

Feuerbach's theology?

Feuerbach's antitheology

posthumous indifference

'what was it all about' for a theologian or philosopher who devoted their selves and lives to their ideas, insights and writings...
and whose work is posthumously completely ignored ...

evangelistic atheism

the canonical evangels of atheism Marx, Strauss, Feuerbach, Freud, et al

the gospels according to Marx, Strauss, Feuerbach, Freud, et al
 

Bildungskosmos

Frashokereti (Yasna 30.9)

Romans 8:20

Scola animarum (Origen)

Theatrum Mundi (Epictetus, et al)

Life is a school (William Rounesville Alger, et al)

Vale of Soul-Making (Keats)

Bildungsleben

Bildungsgeschichte

Heilsgeschichte

Bildungskosmos?
  

individuals' religions

seems almost in the divine plan, for individuals to fashion their own personal religions
(for those individualized enough out of traditional group religions)

killed or hell?

"do or you die"
which is stronger:
the fear of death, of being killed for an evil act, or of going to hell for the terrible deed?

but who worries about "hell" these days?

the anthropography of man

whereas universal-, intellectual-, world-, big-, deep-, meta-, macro-, micro-, transnational-, trans-cultural-, history

or the history of culture, -ideas, -philosophy, -religion, -science, -history, -biography, etc

Geistesgeschichte, Begriffsgeschichte, histoire des mentalite, Heilsgeschichte, Bildungskosmos, et al

are part of the "human story", "human history", they are all parts, portions, aspects or divides of the greater human story which whether it can or not in fact be understood in toto, is surely a "unity" in the sense of it all being related to the human being -- as if gnothi seauton as a whole story reflectively considered -- both individually and collectively considered.

thus: the biography of mankind, the anthropography of man

without an otherworldly hell, a Nazi this-worldly hell?

has any serious, independent, scholarly "philosophical" thinker -- a philodicer, as it were -- considered the actual social and "intellectual" history of a loss of the idea, imaginative belief, and earthly fear of Hell, as well as a real living sense of embodied conscience (Gewissen), and the influence of this in the rise (and brutal realization) of "Nazis(m)" and their fellow travelers, whether willing or not?

(and this is, terribly, just one of many such (in)human histories to trace in the 20th century.)
    

J e e sus, "Steppenwolf"!

a full-grown child has no more knowledge, complexity and insight to all of history, the world and life than to answer "J e e sus"?

Jesus, that is simplistic!

(cf. eg Contra Celsum, IV.9)

a divine mirror

God -- a mirror in the sky?

Bing's and Berlin in Moscow

amid the globalized cheer
again observing people in Moscow amid Bing's version of Berlin's "White Christmas shows how casually people here and most everywhere just passively dream in their milieus

God savers

theologians, eg Barth, in all their writings seem to be trying to save God
or themselves
 

ahumanists?

atheists seem often rather to actually reject man
 

viewed Subjectively?

if theology has a real subject to consider,
then one can wonder how it is considered by the Subject

Jefferson contra Constantine

seeking serious study of histories and ideas of relations of state and church vis-a-vis Constantine and Jefferson

the ultimate "Schadenfreude"!

"...part of the happiness of the blessed consists in contemplating the torments of the damned [in hell]. This sight gives them joy because it is a manifestation of God's justice and hatred of sin, but chiefly because it provides a contrast which heightens their awareness of their own bliss."

-- The Decline of Hell -- Seventeenth-Century Discussions of Eternal Torment, D. P. Walker, p. 29

the ultimate "positive reinforcement"

aka "heaven"

the ultimate "negative reinforcement"

aka, "hell"
 

"Hell yea!" or "Hell no!"

definitive positions

theology is anthropology?

seems rather more the reasoning and projections of the personal psychologies of theologians

the Tower of (theological) Babel

after about 40 years periodic study and consideration...

the problem is much less any theological or historical truth(s) of the Tower of Babel, than it is the reality of the aftermath of the Tower of Babel which is "a confusion of theologies"
 
                   

all-too-mundane theology

done with the seldom-reflective assumption that "God" is neither here, nor near, nor now

theodicy sub specie academiae?

is not someone who studies the ideas and history -- and realities -- related to "theodicy" as a purely intellectual, scholarly or academy task, in a rather deep, incognizant, earthly, "spiritual sleep"?

the results of theodical failure

failing human theodicy tests, "God" is often punished by being denied existence

Fundamentally, they am saying...

Let me sleep!

theology as mirror of anthropography?

theology must be considered less in regards to anthropology than anthropography (the total biography, in part autoanthropography, of mankind)

My Kingdom is of this world ?

the centuries' Christians -- Right now or long ago -- who would make His Kingdom of this world