/lit/ - Literature

>>12154923
>t. brainlet

>>12154923
Careful, or somebody will post a picture of someone in a hat.

>>12154923
Why are Hebrew characters so ugly? Other languages have aesthetically interesting writing, like Sanskrit, Japanese, Russian, etc. But Hebrew text just looks so plain and bland.

God is incomplete precisely because of his utter perfection and estrangement from human experience. This is mediated through Christianity by the event of the Reincarnation, because the radical position of Christian philosophy is that God is fully divine only when he is fully human. He has to experience all the sorrow of the human condition, including the doubt in the divine, as we see on the Cross when Christ pronounces "why hast thou forsaken me", and ultimately death itself. The overwhelming paradox of Christian theology, which is totally missed by the secular fascination with Jesus as a good preacher,, is that Christ suffering on the Cross is the very image of divinity in its full glory.

>>12155061
>Christ suffering on the Cross is the very image of divinity in its full glory.
Very good post. Thank you anon.

>>12155061
Nice sermon. Didn't address the OP.

>>12154973
Hebrew is literally one of the best looking writing systems you ultimate pleb.

>>12155061
Fascinating point and an underrated post. Well done anon.

>>12154923
Almost as if the god of the jews was in fact an evil demon posing as the Absolute.

>>12155061
So God is not omniscient nor compassionate. Omniscience coupled with compassion would imply a perfect understanding of the human condition, including suffering, mortality, etc.

>>12155428
>t. hook nosed desert dwelling yarmulke wearing jew

>>12155166
>>12155419
>>12155451
>>12155562
It...wasn't a groundbreaking point.

>>12155061
based

>>12155600
you need to understand that /lit/'s 'Christian' population is made of memers

>>12155722
At east a few of us are quite sincere. Im going through the process of becoming Catholic. Very tired of my sinful life, its hopeless vanity.

Another friend of mine became a devout Sufi Muslim, prays 5 times a day, fasts for Ramadan, gave up drinking and drugs, is studying Arabic

A lot of people are coming to the conclusion that secular modern life is a hollow charade founded on metaphysical lies that are highly unusual in the history of ideas (the term "religious" denoting basically all human thought prior to the 17th century, and quite a bit thereafter) and have begun to notice that human sinfulness is destroying and consuming lives at a violent pace.

>>12155758
So you don't actually believe, you "believe" for self help and some vague angst about society.

>>12155782
No, I believe God exists with the same amount of certainty that I believe I exist. I believe man was created in the Image of God and possesses a meaning, dignity and destiny unlike any other aspect of material. These are facts to me as real as the moons of Jupiter.

I am less certain of the status of Jesus, but he was almost surely sent to man by God Himself.

I strongly suspect that prayer is keeping the world from falling into total disarray.

I believe many of my intellectual doubts about specific facts in Christianity are manifestations of my ego attempting to pursuade me to continue living a life where my decisions are not accountable to anyone but myself and certain conventions and worldly powers. I do not think for one second that I am intelligent or knowledgeable enough to toss aside 2000 years of Tradition, rooted in the intellects the likes of St. Augustine, Aquinas, and also the vast moral genius of St. Francis, St. Therese of Avila, St. John of the Cross etc., to say nothing of thousands of lesser bright minds and hearts and untold millions of people doing untold billions of heart breakingly good acts.

I think modern states are essentially demonic, that war, poverty and political decay are all a result of the sinfulness of mankind.

>>12155837
>I think modern states are essentially demonic, that war, poverty and political decay are all a result of the sinfulness of mankind.
Is that why Tolstoy was an anarchist

>>12154923
Where does He describe himself as jealous?

>>12155782

And no I definitely dont "believe for self help." I am totally broken and long to be held in the hands of my God, to be granted His grace so as to do His work. Self help involves developing certain habit tricks or methods, along with systems of terminlogy, so one can do what one wanted. Following God means you abandon the idea that you get to choose what your life is for.

I wanted to be a well respected writer/academic who went on adventures, had lots of sex appeal and also did nice, good things on the side so I could pretend I was good. Everything failed, quickly and fantastically, and it is my good fortune that everything failed or I may have never sought the eternal.

>>12155061
This is delved into in episode 125 of Waking Up

My thoughts: Jesus and Christians are the bread of life - which is really the tree of life.
A truly selfish person would preach selflessness. Christians aspire to be meek and selfless.
They're the tree of life for the strong to feed from.

>>12155859
Im not terribly familiar with Tolstoys Christian anarchism, but I do not think it is difficult to see how Christianity and states are fundamentally incompatible. They can (and probably must) exist alongside one another, but the state is set on ruling the world while the Christian is an exile from the Kingdom of God trying to get back home and avoid all the worldly temptations that distract from this mission.

>>12155837
>he still believes he exists
lmao

>>12156027
>he thinks he knows subtle buddhist wisdom but his life doesnt change at all
not laughing

>>12156052
>he thinks
l m a o

>>12155901
This despite the fact that the Vatican is literally a state, the power of the church being boosted exponentially by being adopted as the Roman state religion, and Paul telling his flock that the government is appointed by God (Romans 13:1-7)

>>12155861
In The Bible

>>12155861
Exodus 20:5
"For I the LORD your God am a jealous God"

Exodus 34:14
"The LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God"

>>12157590
Hi Jealous, I'm da- oh wait, the joke has already written itself.

>>12154973
Paleo-Hebrew was closer to western alphabets. The square script isn't cursive like Arabic but its manuscript varieties can be highly ornamental.

>>12157500
Im not a theologian and Im new to Catholicism. The Vatican is not much of a state nowadays, more an official status, although the papacy clearly got itself too involved in the politics of late medieval Italy... and France... and Europe generally. There are obvious dangers to what Hauerwas/Willimon called Constantinism, or the political order becoming subject to the Church. It seems to me Christianity was a victim of its own success in a sense, going from persecuted minority to Romes official religion in just a few decades.

"My Kingdom is not of this world." The major emphasis on Christs ministry was that mans loyalty ought to be to the Kingdom of God above all else.

Romans 12:21 Do not be conquered by evil but conquer with good. Romans 13:1 Let everyone obey the authorities that are over him, for there is no authority except from God... 13:3 Rulers cause no fear when a man does what is right.

Paul is advocating martyrdom in the face of oppression. Let God judge your enemies, it is your task to love them. Do not fear their earthly rule, keep your eyes on Gods authority. Hes not saying all earthly authority is chartered by God. That even contradicts his life and death.

>>12157600
>The Vatican is not much of a state nowadays
It is literally a UN-recognised state, and actively sought independent statehood after the unification of Italy. They got it by making a deal with Mussolini in the Lateran treaty of 1929. The church has always been involved in worldly politics.

>Hes not saying all earthly authority is chartered by God
Except he literally says that. Romans 13:1 finishes with "and those that exist have been established by God." which you conveniently left out. And in 13:6 he says it even more explicitly "This is why you also pay taxes, for the authorities are ministers of God, devoting themselves to this very thing."

>>12155061
I thank god every day that the vedic scriptures exist so I'm not subjected to this schizophrenic mental gymnastics for spiritual health

>>12157647
My NAB translation reads "let everyone obey the authorities that are over him, for there is no authority except from God, and all authority that exists is established by God."

I think it is easy to mistake your reading, but we should understand what Paul is saying probably wasnt an explicit contradiction of his own life and martyrdom.

If you read before and after its more clear. "The ruler is Gods servant to work for your good" does not mean, for example, that Nero was charteres by God to serve Christianity, except that his earthly authority posed a severe moral challenge which was also an opportunity for good to triumph over evil. "You must obey, then, not only to escape punishment, but also for conscience' sake." He is not telling Christians to obey Neros law to avoid execution, how could that possibly make sense in light of Christs death and his death? He is telling them to avoid Gods punishment.

>>12157659
You have not read the Vedas at all, have you? They are some of the most difficult, bizarre, hyper-ancient, seemingly nonsensical texts that exist. Im not knocking them but they are probably over 4000 years old making their idioms, thought and language extremely hard for modern readers to aprehend. There are parts of the Vedas where the scholarly consensus on meaning is literally "???"

God dammit youre a troll arent you

>>12157680
I'm also using the NAB, thanks. The point is that Paul explicitly said earthly authorities are installed by God, which you denied. Nero's persecution of Christians hadn't started when Paul was writing so I don't know what you're talking about there.

>>12157718
I dont deny that worldly authorities exist as a result of the will of God. I am denying that Paul is commanding Christians to follow their earthly authority in a way that would undermine the true Law. He says explicitely that "there is no authority except from God." He is telling them to not fear earthly retribution because Gods judgement is the final say, not mans.

The confusion lies precisely in the double usage of the word authority for describing earthly and divine authority, a distinction made more difficult by Pauls assertion that Earthly authority is ultimately the result of God. Its a fascinating bit, I never looked at it this hard.

Im not familiar with where this Epistle fits into the overall history so I cannot remark on your argument about timing, although I can say that the Christians were already being persecuted when this was written, perhaps not by Nero (the martyrdom of Stephen at the hands of the Sannhedrin, and persecution by !!Paul himself!! And then of Paul by Jewish authorities)

Fuck Ialdabaoth and fuck psychikoi

>>12155888
>They're the tree of life for the strong to feed from.

>>12155061
But remember that the end of all that is Love, and that it isn't simply some metaphysical stunt pulled by God to show that he can dab in two directions at once