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/lit/ - Literature

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15023983 No.15023983 [Reply] [Original]

How can I reconcile the cyclical concept of Time with Christianity?

I believe that renewal is necessary, anything that lives long enough (a human, or a society etc) will corrupt, become weak and a mere shadow of its former self. Thus death, destruction - ultimately chaos - is necessary for the world to go around. Order is born out of chaos.

>> No.15023998

>>15023983
You watch The Matrix trilogy and read C. S. Lewis' Cosmic Trilogy. Those 6 works will give you all you need to know...

>> No.15024320

bump

>> No.15024331

You are retarded op

Read more history

>> No.15024355

>>15023983
The Old Testament isnt cyclical. Its literally a series of covenants ending in the universal covenant in Jesus, after which you proceed towards an eschatological ending. There is a "in the beginning" and absolute end, just as there is an alpha and omega.

Your concept of cyclical time is literally pagan and incorrect. Get thee behind me.

>> No.15024360

>>15024331
/thread

>> No.15024371

>>15024355
Apocalypse cults have existed before christianity

>> No.15024382

>>15023983
Think! But just remember that beliefs are not things mere which you can crossover and have here or there but must BE beliefs. Truth is at the head of it, and character is the reciprocal and direction.

>> No.15024391

>>15024371
OP wants to reconcile it with christianity, i would assume whatever false notions of time within mithrism or earth mother cults is not relevant to his interest. The fact is, the God of the old testament is a God of history that intervenes in shit like exodus and the destruction of the first and second temple, and the third is in the person of the redeemer.

>> No.15024403

>>15023983
You’re going to need to be able to do some serious mental gymnastics if you want a non-eschatological Christianity. I’m convinced that the Christian paradigm requires a beginning and an end to frame meaning, which probably has some pragmatic benefits for the survival of the believers, but that’s another story.

Perhaps an eternal cycle could come during Christ’s final reign after the apocalypse. That is, if you believe in that sort of thing.

>> No.15024438

>>15023983

you can't, really. And why would you?

Spengler tried to make a secular version of the apocalypse. But the earth will eventually fade into dust. there is no cycle

Perhaps we could think of the cycle like this;

man is born, man sins, man passes through the waters (baptism), man is redeemed from his suffering, man walks through the wilderness of life faithfully, man passes away, man comes to judgement before God, man steps into eternal life

moses is born, moses sins, moses passes through the waters (the red sea), moses is redemeed from his suffering (slavery in egypt) moses wanders through the wilderness receiving manna from heaven, moses stands before the burning bush

there is a kind of recurring theme where the self-death leads to the birth of righteousness or a new, greener, path. the more you let the self die and become christlike, the more christ lives in you,

>> No.15024449

>>15024438
>the more you let the self die and become christlike, the more christ lives in you,

Instructions unclear, I killed myself to be more like Christ, and it’s starting to get very hot, and I no longer feel god’s presence. Pls hellp

>> No.15024475

You can't. Abrahamic Religions are firmly rooted in the Semitic Worldview, and they demand strictly linear time. The entire conception of the religion requires it, Cyclical Time would make orthodoxy completely wrong, and a correct interpretation to understand how Christianity could possibly make sense in a world with cycles would be comically heretical.

One could argue that Yahweh operates the world on a broadly linear timeline, but that he allows cycles to occur within that linear timeline, but that's not really cyclical time.

>> No.15024510

>>15024355
>Your concept of cyclical time is literally pagan
I know, that's why I made the thread, dummy

>> No.15024551

>>15024475
>One could argue that Yahweh operates the world on a broadly linear timeline, but that he allows cycles to occur within that linear timeline
If I limit the idea of cyclical time to history, would it be reconciled? Could I say that God operates linearly, but because of the corrupt nature of Man and the free will granted to him by God, he - and by extension his society - falls into sin, corruption and decay?

I mean the OT is filled with ups and downs. The Jews went from kingship to serfdom throughout the text, how is this not a cyclical historical occurrence?

>> No.15024564

>>15024551
Just for clarification: I don't believe in the Cyclical concept of Time in Metapsychics, only in History. I don't see why this couldn't be reconciled with Christianity.

>> No.15024575

>>15024551
Sure. You're still committing a grievous heresy, and a lot of the big-brain background stuff just doesn't work out, and let's not even get into the entire "free will" debacle, but this is essentially what Medieval European peasants did to jam their native views on cyclical time into a foreignly imposed Christianity. It's heresy, and the church spent a lot of effort trying to squash it, but it wasn't until Protestantism that people actually started ditching said views on cyclical time.

>> No.15024599
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15024599

>>15023983
Linear/sequential time is actually cyclical, you've just been conditioned by the Architectonic Order of the Eschaton to forget just how many times the timeline has been restarted now. It's the only way to ensure their absolute control.

>> No.15024611

>>15024575

is it that bad to say some things work in cycles?
To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: 2. A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; 3.

i.e, there are natural cycles. civilisations rise and civilisations fall, thunderstorms come and thunderstorms go, tides come in and tides go out etc.

>> No.15024645

>>15023983
It's not time that is cyclical, but human societies are.

>> No.15024670

>>15024611
Not at all, that makes perfect sense and is entirely in line with reality. The problem is that Semitic religions aren't in line with realty, and according to Semitic religion the world works entirely because of the precise will of the gods; Judaism (and from it, all Abrahamic religions) say that there's just one god, Yahweh, so everything happens because Yahweh wills it. While he can will that some things operate in a manner that appears cyclical (IE, the seasons) in truth everything is happening because he wanted it to unfold that way. Calvinism and orthodox Sunni Islam take this to their logical conclusions with Double Predestination (you completely and utterly lack free will at a fundamental level). There's actually a term for this (gravity would shut off if Allah wanted you to float), but I'm brainfarting on it. Catholic orthodoxy held that Yahweh had essentially willed-from-here-on-out a number of things, such that he doesn't need to actively hold everyone down to keep them from floating off the planet.

But that's not cyclical time, as cyclical time requires that the cycles are ultimately fundamental processes of reality. They can be emergent from other phenomenon, but the cycle itself is still fundamental in as much as the things that it emerges from exist. The cyclical nature would have to come before divinity, such that even Yahweh would be subject to it, and the supremacy of Yahweh is absolutely not up for debate.

I'm curious about why you're engaged in this endeavor.

>> No.15024704

The works of man decay and degrade because they are built on a static, rigid plan. For a lesson on permanence and renewal look to ecology. A multipart, self-sustaining system like a forest maintains itself indefinitely by turning its waste into fuel for the new. Dead plant matter becomes the humus of the soil horizon which provides nutrients to the next generation of plants. Everything is part of a closed cycle that replicates its own stable form and maintains its structural integrity.
Very few religious doctrines or societal templates appreciate this self-renewing cyclical process.

>> No.15024745

>>15024645
>but human societies are.
*History is.

I should have specified in my Original Post that I meant to say History is cyclical, not Time.

>> No.15024803

>>15024670
I have to clarify: You're right, Cyclical Time is completely irreconcilable with Christianity, but due to haste of thought I conflated Time and History.

>I'm curious about why you're engaged in this endeavor.
I'm a right winger (the European kind, not some American cuckservative/lolibertarain) and I guess my brain is just wired that way. When I try to look at our society and find a remedy for the utter madness, I find that the only thing that could bring about what I'm envisioning is total chaos >> Order is born out of chaos.

Society would be fine with living under the status quo as along as their most primal, decadent urges are content thus change could never happened in a "natural" way.

The reason I think that History is Cyclical is because I believe that Chaos could potentially bring forth something Good. It's not like humanity hasn't been in a similar place before, Rome comes to mind.

>> No.15025505

bump

>> No.15026402

>>15024745
History and Time are the same thing. Man IS history, he IS Time, for this world is ever-becoming. Time is nothing but Movement. Time and history bear us forward like a rushing stream. Ortega y Gasset wrote that man has no nature, what he has is history. Without history, without his memory, man is nothing. Due to the constantly flowing and mutable nature of the world of men, human societies tend to disappear just as quickly as they appear, mostly because of human arrogance. History shows that civilizations almost always collapse at the peak of their perfection, for man is an imperfect being. He can strive for perfection but will never reach it. The only thing that is perfect and eternal is the world of God. His world is Being. The world of men operates on completely different laws to the world of God. In times like these where man has become too proud and deliberately forgets his own history and in doing so negates the Movement of Time, he digs his own grave. But God will always remain.