the simple, sleepy Christology of Bing Crosby

to dislike or disdain Christmas music would be an attitude that few children could normally be born with or grow into, though an adult, aggressive or passive, atheist or agnostic or not, might come to take such a position. but it seems a bit like disliking sweets.

still, though it seems certain that dear Bing Crosby was never troubled by any of history's higher criticism of the Bible, nor of any esotericisms of a cosmic Christ, his simple man of Nazareth -- well and sympathetically told in the first two minutes of the recording linked here -- is a sleeping Christology, for he merely accepts as truth the images and story he tells.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iz1UdOW6QRg

"By Jupiter!" "Oh my Zeus!"

Jupiter

c. 1200, "supreme deity of the ancient Romans," from Latin Iupeter, from PIE *dyeu-peter- "god-father" (originally vocative, "the name naturally occurring most frequently in invocations" [Tucker]), from *deiw-os "god" (see Zeus) + peter "father" in the sense of "male head of a household" (see father). Cf. Greek Zeu pater, vocative of Zeus pater "Father Zeus;" Sanskrit Dyauspita "heavenly father." The planet name is attested from late 13c.

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=Jupiter

Zeus 

supreme god of the ancient Greeks, 1706, from Greek, from PIE *dewos- "god" (cf. Latin deus "god," Old Persian daiva- "demon, evil god," Old Church Slavonic deivai, Sanskrit deva-), from root *dyeu- "to gleam, to shine;" also the root of words for "sky" and "day" (see diurnal). The god-sense is originally "shining," but "whether as originally sun-god or as lightener" is not now clear.

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=Zeus&allowed_in_frame=0

theologizing

it is not only that humans project(ed) themselves on/into "God" (eg Feuerbach, et al)
it is that "theology" comes to being an enclosed, intellectual and/or professional human occupation
fully this-worldly
so that 'theology is anthropology' in this sense too

theology and the forgotten cloud

theology like the "Golden Calf", forgetting there was even a cloud on Sinai

burying gold

theological writings often bury gold in dross
 

the hidden of Kant and Moses

Kant's unknowable thing-in-itself is similar and perhaps related to the beclouded events on Mount Sinai
 

surviving theology

how difficult to find one's way through theology so as to still thereafter seek God

lost en route
 

otherworldly "theology"?

the this-worlding of theology

OMG!

those theologies often forgetful, incognizant, undisturbed...
that God may truly be

this-worldly theologizing

somni-theologizing

theologizing in a kind of drowsy intellectual state

"NO TRESPASSING: Beware of God"

perhaps it is best for most professional theologians that they not realize there really may be a God watching
and reading
 

exegesis or experience

exegetes seem seldom seekers
also as seekers can be too close to history's "enthusiasts"?
as well as socially and academically embarrassing

abandon hope all ye who enter

Kant

Isaiah 6:3 -- Holy, Holy, Holy...?

perhaps rather... 

'Silly, silly, silly, is the Lord of Earth, the whole world is full of his story.'

the science of religion...

was a dead end road which some are still trying to map

mirror mirror on the all

Otto's ideas of the numinous experience, speculative as it is, is another example of man's self-reflection of himself. self-mirroring.

lest ye become as...

the simple believer may naively assume a "loving, fatherly 'God'", while modern theologians naively -- and all-too-seriously -- assume that their words of and about "God" are more than speculating about they know not what

Huxley contra Pythagoras: philosophy after agnosis?

Huxley's agnosis may have been conceived mainly in contrast to Christianity, and Deism or Theism

but it is clear that "philosophy" can hardly have a substantial meaning when there is an assumption that there is no sophia, no wisdom, to be sought and found.

Modern European Church Uncles

Schleiermacher, Kierkegaard, and Otto may be seen as "Modern UnChurch Fathers", or let them be European Church Uncles, both in and out of the confessions, seminaries, university religious studies departments,...

yet however much of a "system" they claimed, or may be found or understood by scholars to have or to have not had (at least in their writings, teachings, or preachings, if not deep, personal beliefs and positions), their's are really just their own personal "theologies" of the world as they experienced and understood it...

more Modern European "Church Uncles" than Church Fathers.

though certainly suitable for academic consideration without end

the Bible's eclipse by...

the earthly...

human reason...

the Enlightenment...

the Bible's via dolorosa

one might speak of a centuries-long via dolorosa and Golgotha of the Bible in history

Bibliocide by Human Causes

By the time the centuries long investigation of the Bible was complete, the patient was dead.

Enter at Your Own Risk: Centuries-Old Bible Study Maze

a serious study of the history of scholarship and study of the Bible is a kind of centuries-old idea-maze in which one enters at the risk of becoming lost, possibly escaping in despair, or having long lost any beliefs and faith one had upon entrance

Plotinus and Moses?

quick answer to an educated skeptical pessimist on their relationship...

they both claimed peak experiences, though one inner, the other on a mountain top in the Sinai...

and both are said to have experienced the Founder and CEO of the Universe, the Top "I"!

"In the beginning, Science..."

most every person who has ever watched a science program on the universe believes they have "seen" the "real" "beginning of the universe" in the increasingly sophisticated imagery of the Big Bang...

just as in times before in Christendom and its secularized descendants there was the Biblical inner imagination and Church imagery of the Creation of the World...

imagery has replaced words to the same effect, and probably the same reality and certainty

need a cultural history of the "beginning of the world"

philosophy? philalethia? philomathy?

philosophy -- "wisdom"? 

     but if few agree that there is and what is "wisdom" (as was not or less the mind of Pythagoras)

philalethia -- "truth"?

     but if the existence of "truth" is so disputed and disagreed...

philomathy – learning

and if a god dies, shall he live again?

a historic necropolis of Gods, ruling-consoling spirits, theologies and theodicies, holy books, mystics, philosophers,...

or are they rather merely asleep in cemeteries

My god!

Moses' ?

Plotinus' ?

Paley's?

fearless theology?

theologians' assumptions that God is distant, distracted, or "dead"

or...

the unfear of the Lord is the beginning of theological erudition

divine self-deception

if all religions past and present...

and all "spiritualities" however conceived...

plus all philosophies...

are really just mankind talking to itself ?...

Leibnitz on God?

what one learns of Leibnitz on God is Leibnitz

(but in this he is just representative of many others.)

Jefferson and Nietzsche

surely it would be interesting, and perhaps quite enlightening, to compare the reactions and relations to "Platonism", also in "Christianity", of Jefferson and Nietzsche!

if religion is the opiate of the masses...

...then what were the theologians, philosophers, metaphysicians, mystics, et al, on?

some heady Italian, German, Latin, French wines?