In the Bhagavad Gita Krishna tells Arjuna to fight in a bloody civil war and kill his family members and former friends, and that if he refuses to do this he sins against his dharma - somehow I don't think DBH would much care for that kind of reasoning.
The universalist God erases Death but never erases any murderers. There is part of His creation which He hates, and ultimately will abolish, but no human consciousnessness ultimately is in that set of things. Its possible, but I think it has to at least be acknowledged that its very strange
Really good stuff I will have to read twice to fully wrap my head around.
I remember reading "The Grand Demonstration" by Jay Adams years ago and after that I never questioned the goodness of God in light of the doctrine of eternal hell ever again; I realized the audacity of what it was as a fallen temporal creation to question the morality and justice of God and began to repent in humility.
It scares me when I see people trying to argue for universalism or make excuses for God knowing their motives are destain for what God has revealed to us, as if they are standing on a seat of higher moral authority looking down on God judging Him, often virtue signaling this to other fallen humans.
I wonder if supra-traditionalism is an apt term, where we maintain the skeletal Biblical doctrinal structure and first 4 councils, but the church body does change and grow to some degree with a future focus (also remember a video on "right-Hegelianism" by Thomas777 who's a Calvinist, that gave a dialectical/synthesis view of humanity and the church that was growing towards God's end but was over my head and idk if was right or not). As we can't even grasp or recreate the zeitgeist of 100 years ago, much less 2000 years ago.
Something else I've been thinking about is the Girardian sacrifice and the spirits of the age, where we went through a "tyrannical father" patriarchal period, which was good in many respects, but sometimes our grandfathers could be cold and distant, harsh. Then this leads to the "overbearing mother" of the 60's revolution leading to its peak at wokeness, female teachers trying to force pronouns, which leads to the "vengeful son" which is represented by the Luigi shooter. Uncle Ted being a vengeful son before his time so he wasn't readily accepted.
That the only way to combat this chaotic mimetic spirit, is to transform the vengeful son into the prodigal son in humility, repenting back to God and transforming that rage and anger many young guys have, to building positive constructive ends instead (saw a Jason Mironchuk podcast on this), rather than chaos and destruction out of pure resentment.
All the change the Church undergoes is reflective of the Bible itself. The OT was given as a vision not only of where we came from but also, in conjunction with Revelation, where we are going. When it comes to Hegelianism, it can be useful or not, but its value is as a subsidiary, a philosophical call to take history seriously. But I don't think there is a necessary need for an antithesis to reach the "goal" of some final synthesis. In the Bible, it is far more personal, in violating covenant or using bad intentions to good ends, than simply the whiplash of a socially embedded idea.
(…the New Testament lacks the time-out-mind haziness of myth…)
Same for the OT, as far as I’m concerned.
"Not only individual episodes, but the composition of the Old Testament as a whole is also full of gaps or discontinuities. “[It] is incomparably less unified than the Homeric poems.” However, “the greater the separateness and horizontal disconnection…the stronger is their general vertical connection…which is entirely lacking in Homer” (17). It is precisely through these discontinuities, or these episodic gaps, that the invisible dimension of historical reality filters in, that a sense of depth and background is conveyed, and a profound concern for essential truth beyond the empirical details is communicated at all levels. Even at the psychological level, “the great figures of the Old Testament are so much more fully developed, so much more fraught with their own biographical past, so much more distinct as individuals, than are the Homeric heroes” (17). In other words, these characters have a history; the old man of today is no longer the person he was in his youth. In contrast, the “life-histories” of Homeric heroes “are clearly set forth once and for all”; even Odysseus, who goes through so many events for such a long time, “on his return is exactly the same as he was when he left Ithaca two decades earlier. But what a road, what a fate, lie between the Jacob who cheated his father out of his blessing and the old man whose favorite son has been torn to pieces by a wild beast” (17). Circumstances, and above all, the will of God, change and mold the biblical characters. “Indeed generally, this element of development gives the Old Testament stories a historical character, even when the subject is purely legendary and traditional.” This is also why, as opposed to Homer, who “remains within the legendary with all his material…the Old Testament comes closer and closer to history as the narrative proceeds” (18–19). It is as if anything that the Homeric style touches becomes legend, regardless of its historical or ontological status, and the opposite happens with the biblical style: even if the material is legendary, it acquires the flavor of history. It is there because it is felt to be true. - Cesareo Bandera “A Refuge of Lies.” With extensive quotes from Auerbach's Mimesis Chapter 1 - Odysseus' Scar
“… There are variety of beliefs, customs, notions, orientations, and so on that are fuzzy and unclear. They are just what they are. Things are done because that has always been the way they have been done, with little historical consciousness. Traditionalists, in contrast, attempt to justify, rationalize, explain, and explore all of these intricacies. They often come apart at the seams in reckoning inconsistences and aberrations,…”
Put another way, nothing can bear close scrutiny from the imperfect and fallen mind of man. Humility is definitely the order of the day.
In the Bhagavad Gita Krishna tells Arjuna to fight in a bloody civil war and kill his family members and former friends, and that if he refuses to do this he sins against his dharma - somehow I don't think DBH would much care for that kind of reasoning.
The universalist God erases Death but never erases any murderers. There is part of His creation which He hates, and ultimately will abolish, but no human consciousnessness ultimately is in that set of things. Its possible, but I think it has to at least be acknowledged that its very strange
Really good stuff I will have to read twice to fully wrap my head around.
I remember reading "The Grand Demonstration" by Jay Adams years ago and after that I never questioned the goodness of God in light of the doctrine of eternal hell ever again; I realized the audacity of what it was as a fallen temporal creation to question the morality and justice of God and began to repent in humility.
It scares me when I see people trying to argue for universalism or make excuses for God knowing their motives are destain for what God has revealed to us, as if they are standing on a seat of higher moral authority looking down on God judging Him, often virtue signaling this to other fallen humans.
I wonder if supra-traditionalism is an apt term, where we maintain the skeletal Biblical doctrinal structure and first 4 councils, but the church body does change and grow to some degree with a future focus (also remember a video on "right-Hegelianism" by Thomas777 who's a Calvinist, that gave a dialectical/synthesis view of humanity and the church that was growing towards God's end but was over my head and idk if was right or not). As we can't even grasp or recreate the zeitgeist of 100 years ago, much less 2000 years ago.
Something else I've been thinking about is the Girardian sacrifice and the spirits of the age, where we went through a "tyrannical father" patriarchal period, which was good in many respects, but sometimes our grandfathers could be cold and distant, harsh. Then this leads to the "overbearing mother" of the 60's revolution leading to its peak at wokeness, female teachers trying to force pronouns, which leads to the "vengeful son" which is represented by the Luigi shooter. Uncle Ted being a vengeful son before his time so he wasn't readily accepted.
That the only way to combat this chaotic mimetic spirit, is to transform the vengeful son into the prodigal son in humility, repenting back to God and transforming that rage and anger many young guys have, to building positive constructive ends instead (saw a Jason Mironchuk podcast on this), rather than chaos and destruction out of pure resentment.
All the change the Church undergoes is reflective of the Bible itself. The OT was given as a vision not only of where we came from but also, in conjunction with Revelation, where we are going. When it comes to Hegelianism, it can be useful or not, but its value is as a subsidiary, a philosophical call to take history seriously. But I don't think there is a necessary need for an antithesis to reach the "goal" of some final synthesis. In the Bible, it is far more personal, in violating covenant or using bad intentions to good ends, than simply the whiplash of a socially embedded idea.
(…the New Testament lacks the time-out-mind haziness of myth…)
Same for the OT, as far as I’m concerned.
"Not only individual episodes, but the composition of the Old Testament as a whole is also full of gaps or discontinuities. “[It] is incomparably less unified than the Homeric poems.” However, “the greater the separateness and horizontal disconnection…the stronger is their general vertical connection…which is entirely lacking in Homer” (17). It is precisely through these discontinuities, or these episodic gaps, that the invisible dimension of historical reality filters in, that a sense of depth and background is conveyed, and a profound concern for essential truth beyond the empirical details is communicated at all levels. Even at the psychological level, “the great figures of the Old Testament are so much more fully developed, so much more fraught with their own biographical past, so much more distinct as individuals, than are the Homeric heroes” (17). In other words, these characters have a history; the old man of today is no longer the person he was in his youth. In contrast, the “life-histories” of Homeric heroes “are clearly set forth once and for all”; even Odysseus, who goes through so many events for such a long time, “on his return is exactly the same as he was when he left Ithaca two decades earlier. But what a road, what a fate, lie between the Jacob who cheated his father out of his blessing and the old man whose favorite son has been torn to pieces by a wild beast” (17). Circumstances, and above all, the will of God, change and mold the biblical characters. “Indeed generally, this element of development gives the Old Testament stories a historical character, even when the subject is purely legendary and traditional.” This is also why, as opposed to Homer, who “remains within the legendary with all his material…the Old Testament comes closer and closer to history as the narrative proceeds” (18–19). It is as if anything that the Homeric style touches becomes legend, regardless of its historical or ontological status, and the opposite happens with the biblical style: even if the material is legendary, it acquires the flavor of history. It is there because it is felt to be true. - Cesareo Bandera “A Refuge of Lies.” With extensive quotes from Auerbach's Mimesis Chapter 1 - Odysseus' Scar
Your words here are like a cool drink of water in the desert. Thank you, Cal.
“… There are variety of beliefs, customs, notions, orientations, and so on that are fuzzy and unclear. They are just what they are. Things are done because that has always been the way they have been done, with little historical consciousness. Traditionalists, in contrast, attempt to justify, rationalize, explain, and explore all of these intricacies. They often come apart at the seams in reckoning inconsistences and aberrations,…”
Put another way, nothing can bear close scrutiny from the imperfect and fallen mind of man. Humility is definitely the order of the day.
Reading this was like a “cold ice bath”, really good article Cal.