/lit/ - Literature

>>22751958
Saint Augustine went through a similar problem. His autobiography, Confessions, is quite good. He had an excellent job in the imperial court but gave it up, went full volcel, and sold all his family's property to seek truth.

>>22738620
It's sad. Sad because the faith is so misunderstood, reduced to merely a story of "avoiding punishment and gaining reward." Sad because the Reformation turned reason and faith into opposites, not sisters, the two wings of Saint Aquinas' "two winged bird." Sad because the pride that leads these people will never allow them to experience the peace that surpasses all understanding, mystical union with the divine, and the true freedom from being ruled over by the Logos instead of by our disordered drives, desires, ignorance, and mere circumstance.

Let us pray for them, that they might be healed. That they might recognize that we are all worthless singers, and yet that "God loved us even when we were sinners." Let us pray that the words of Joel be fulfilled, that we should see God's Spirit poured out on all flesh.

Let us not have anger against them, but only welcoming love. For but by the grace of God we would remain unrepentant sinners as well, for we too are trapped in this fallen world.

Our minds are to be temples to the living God. Our souls joined, "in Christ, as Christ is in the Father" (John 17). We are given the example of Mary, a perfect vessel of the Logos, the Theotokos. Let us pray that we might be like her, perfectly responsive to the commands of God.

Glory to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, both now and then and on to ages and ages amen.

>>22737716
It's a good one. But Romans 7 says much the same and has great prose too.

The "Good News," isn't just about salvation from punishment and reward. It's about mystical union with the divine now being possible. Our authentic purpose is the contemplation of God. The soul is in the image of God, a mirror for reflecting the divine light.

Saint Paul and Saint John talk about "living in God," "God living in us," "I must decrease so that Christ might increase," the value of the spirit over the flesh, living into the "fullness of God," etc. Saint Peter talks if putting off our will and living with the will of God.

This has been badly lost in modern Christianity. Thomas Merton writes articulately about this in his "The Inner Experience."

It's inauthentic to live for the mutable things of this world. True authenticity of found in contemplation of the divine. Seek the immutable, that which cannot be lost, and there will be no sorrow.

They focus on asceticism as a way to discipline the mind and spirit. Evagrius is particularly good on this.

But physical fitness is not a good in its own right. It is a good in that it allows us to derive other goods. Saint Augustine talks about this. We must distinguish between goods that are sought for the sake of something else (e.g. Aristotle's example of money), versus things sought for their own sake, namely God.

For Aristotle, happiness is the thing we seek for its own sake. However, Aristotle later says that man becomes most happy through fulfilling his telos, in doing what makes man unique, exploring his reason. Thus, the ideal life is a life of contemplation. Augustine follows this, but adds that contemplation of God, the true infinite, is the highest good.

Saint Bernard of Clairvaux expands on this from a different angle, showing how we first love God because of what God does for it, then we love God because of who God is, and finally we recognize that all human knowledge of God is finite and incomplete, and that we can only love God fully appropriately through God's infinite love, supplied to us via grace.

>>22684934
Goals are things you accomplish. It is not a goal to see "the destruction of the planet," nor is Earth destroyed. Rather, in Revelations, God "makes everything new."

The goal of Christianity is likewise not to have children. Paul explicitly says that those who can avoid temptation should not marry, so as to be able to devote their lives to God. The goal of Christianity is to love God with one's whole mind, body, and soul, and to love one's neighbor as oneself. It is to put on a "new man," to live "in God," with "God in us." The goal is mystical union. Saint Irenaus quotes by Saint Athanasius: "God became man that man might become God," not a God-like man, but live "in God." Christ is a bridge to mystical union. See pic related.

Christianity as only about salvation from judgement and reward is a Christianity that is lost half the Gospel.

I've generally seen it this way:

The poor in spirit are less strong willed, less attached to their own spirit and will, and the things of this life, as well as the things of the self. Saint Paul talks about how "I must decrease," so that "Christ might increase."

In Luke, Christ tells to people that the Kingdom of Heaven won't be an observable thing we can point to. It will be within. Those who have built up a strong spirit of their own, who are "rich in spirit," must undergo much purgation before they are emptied out so that the Holy Spirit can dwell within them. The poor in spirit are those who, as vessels for the Spirit of God, are more empty. To be rich in spirit is to be rich in human spirit, the spirit of the "old man" that Saint Paul says we must cast off, that we might be born again as new men and live "in the fullness of God."

Jesus' big prayer to the Father in John says "let them be one in me as I am one in you."

The Gospel, the Good News, is that God has become man, creating a bridge between man and God, repairing the original separation caused by sin. The early parts of Romans talk about this, Christ as a new Adam. And this allows us "back towards Eden," into contemplation, mystical union with God. But such contemplation also requires that we leave behind our sinful nature.

This is an invitation to freedom, to be free from being lorded over by desire, instinct, and circumstance (Romans 7), and to be our authentic selves, doing what we were made for, union.

As Saint Athanasius puts it, borrowing from Saint Irenaus, "God became man that man might become God."

This can be taken the wrong way. Our ego, drives, desires, flesh, do not "become God." We must become "poor" in these, utterly destitute, for the union to be perfected, for the seed of baptism to blossom into the spiritual fruit of contemplation, charity, love, etc.

This union is always imperfect in this life, for now we see "through a mirror darkly."

Unfortunately, the Gospel is often reduced to "Christ came so that if you make a sincere plea for forgiveness God shall not torture you for all eternity, and this is all." Or "Christ came as a mechanism to save those who were elect, predestined for salvation since the foundation of the world."

These have truths in them but miss what is most wonderful in the Gospel. Christ himself doesn't give some simple narrative of salvation, but summarizes the Gospel as "turn to God and change the way you think and act, for the Kingdom of Heaven is near!" Matthew 4:17

Too much theology falls into Pelagianism, making Christianity an onerous code of obligations. Being a Christian is something you "get to be," not a list of obligations you "have to do." It is a grace, a gift for us to become more free, more authentic, closer to God.

But the element of freedom can also be totally lost when people focus on predestination and refuse to think the "choice" verbage throughout the Bible is "real." God's freedom is our freedom.

>>22634830
...but the entire Good News is that man became God and is a bridge to God, and that we can now reach God in mystical union. The Kingdom of Heaven is here/within.

What is the point of Christianity without God? Even Saint Paul says this is nonsense.

To quote Saint Irenenius: "God became man that man might become God."

>>22626155
>>22626780
How does the theory explain guys like Augustine? Peterson is writing self help, right? We would pray that we could be like Augustine, confident, happy, living, kind, feeling fully fulfilled and self actualized.

But he threw himself off the hierarchy. He was a very bright student from a wealthy but not super wealthy family. He climbed the ladder, got to teach at Rome, then got into the circle of imperial officials at court in Milan, then the capital. He was a rising star by his mid 30s, the equivalent of some CEO, politician, etc. of our day. His mom found him a rich wife, he was to be married, set for a great life of dominance and status.

Then he converted and threw his entire career away. First he ran off to write philosophy. Then he went home to North Africa and sold most of his family's property and gave it to the poor. What he saved, he saved to establish a monetary where he and fellow Christians did hard manual labor.

He only ended up getting a position of power again because a bishop near him had his eye on him and had a crowd carry him forcibly up to an alter to be ordained. Then he had his hands full. There was a schism in the church, Donatists vs Catholics. He was almost murdered. There were riots. He had to deal with divorces, wills, all sorts of petty stuff when he wanted to write.

And yet he healed wounds, helped families and communities reconcile, freedom slaves en masse from the docks.

How does he fit in? It seems like he gained all by nose diving out of the dominance hierarchy.

He talks about being at the height of his power and seeing a drunk and realizing the drunk was happier than him. Good shit in the Confessions. And of course he goes on to be one of the most influential philosophers of all time and in the literary canon for his prose, aside the theology.

Have any writers refuted this?