/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.21062902]

>It is at this point that the snake arrives—who is not, of course, the “devil” (a figure regarding whom the original authors of the story had not the faintest concept), but only the “wisest” or “shrewdest” of the various animals YHVH had fashioned in the course of his early, thwarted attempts at providing Adam with an assistant (3:1). When Eve guilelessly repeats the propaganda of the ruling regime about poison fruit (3:2-3), the snake disabuses her of the official indoctrination that keeps her in bondage: Of course you will not die if you eat of the tree of knowledge, he tells her; YHVH wants you to believe that because he knows that, if you eat, your eyes will be opened, knowing what is good and what bad, and thus you will become like the gods themselves (3:4-5). Again, this cannot be stated with sufficient emphasis: within the mythic narrative itself, in its plainest and meagerest literal sense, it is YHVH who has misled his creatures and it is the snake who is telling the truth. More to the point, though, there are YHVH’s own words to his fellow landed gentry: after having discovered and suppressed the peasant insurrection, and after having dealt with the agent provocateur behind this whole disastrous situation, he hastens to the other gods and, in something of a panic, tells them that the two little clay gardeners have been awakened from their conditioning and have indeed become like the gods, knowing the truth of things; this is terrifying, because now they need only eat also of the other magic tree to become immortals, and then the revolution will be complete

Has DBH jumped the shark?

[Anonymous No.21062907]

>>21062902
He looks like a young Robert Brandom

[Anonymous No.21062926]

He's turning into a gnostic.
Christianity does in fact make more sense if you acknowledge the God of the old testament as being an incompetent seething faggot.

[Anonymous No.21062932]

>>21062926
>Turning into a gnostic

[Anonymous No.21062979]

>>21062926
it makes sense if u realise that the bible is inspired by the holy ghost and not literally written by god, so they were still restrained by human perspectives, which is why god is described as 'jealous' etc.

[Anonymous No.21063007]

>>21062902
Is this real?

[Anonymous No.21063014]

>>21063007
Yes it's from his substack.

https://davidbentleyhart.substack.com/

Sensus Plenior II. It's paywalled though.

[Anonymous No.21063025]

>>21062926
Finally somebody with sense.

[Anonymous No.21063031]

>>21063014
How has he not been excommunicated? This is a really bad look for the Easterners. If the Americans won't the Greeks should separate over it. If the Greeks won't, how do they claim to be Orthodox anymore?

[Anonymous No.21063044]

>>21063031
I take DBH to be an example of someone who engages in theology without the required reflection and prayer. Turning into a gnostic heretic was inevitable, especially with his predilection for aiming incredibly vitriolic attacks on his detractors.

[Anonymous No.21063059]

>>21063031
Oh I wish he’d be excommunicated, but I assume he is not known enough. Who is his bishop?

[Anonymous No.21063066]

>>21063059
>Implying excommunication would mean anything to him
DBH is on the record saying some ecumenical councils are wrong because he disagrees with them and wrote pic related.

[Anonymous No.21063071]

>>21063044
>>21063059
He is one of the most prominent theologians in the world. He must go to Church somewhere--who is his priest? Does his priest not know?

[Anonymous No.21063074]

https://youtu.be/fJRVJwnhVzI

[Anonymous No.21063081]

>>21063066
All the more reason he ought to be excommunicated, if the American and Greek Orthodox Churches are to be considered Orthodox. If they cannot muster even enough internal agreement to excommunicate an open and obvious heretic, how can they even call themselves a Church?

[Anonymous No.21063082]

>>21063071
Very likely he has a leftist cuck bishop who agrees with him. Despite all the big talk from the Orthobros the American Orthodox Church is cucked as hell.

[Anonymous No.21063085]

>>21063059
>>21063071
he doesnt need to be excommunicated, he excommunicates himself by committing heresy and 'eats and drinks' judgement upon himself every time he communes.

>>21063031
A local church only ceases to be orthodox when the bishop formally professes heresy. bentley hart isnt a priest or let alone a bishop

[Anonymous No.21063089]

>>21063082
What I am saying is that Catholics ought to make a great point about this. If there is a Catholic theologian of near equal prominence who is so openly heretical, I would hope he would be brought to our attention.

[Anonymous No.21063090]

>>21063066
He’d still have to be a bit humiliated by a public decree

[Anonymous No.21063095]

>>21063085
This is false. Excommunication is a punishment meant not just for the reform of the sinner, but to prevent scandal. David Bentley Hart ought to be publicly cast out, for he has spread his errors very publicly. If his Bishop is aware, and does nothing, the Bishop enjoins himself to the error. This is not the case of a suspected heretic. David Bentley Hart openly denies councils and published plain gnostic heresy. He calls God a liar!! It's blasphemous in the plainest terms. If the Orthodox Churches do not address this in an Orthodox way, how do they call themselves Orthodox?

[Anonymous No.21063146]

>>21063095
it doesnt matter since they still have holy orders, so they still have valid sacraments, neither have they made agreement with his work a condition for communion. work out your own salvation with fear and trembling and stop being a autismo

[Anonymous No.21063166]

This reminded me of this:
https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/national/queensland/rebel-brisbane-priest-slapped-with-worldwide-ban-20090605-by7k.html

[Anonymous No.21063175]

>>21062902
whats his name?

[Anonymous No.21063176]

>>21063166
https://stmaryssouthbrisbane.com/our-spirituality/guiding-principles

Sigh....

[Anonymous No.21063179]

>>21063175
DBH

[Anonymous No.21063182]

>>21063166
>>21063176
He was excommunicated. Hart is not.

[Anonymous No.21063188]

>>21063182
Yes we've been over this. The American Orthodox Church is cucked and Orthobros who say it's some bastion of traditionalist orthodoxy against Catholicism are delusional. The only Orthodox bastion is Mt Athos, everywhere else faces the exact same issues with lukewarmness and liberalism that Catholicism does.

[Anonymous No.21063247]

>>21062902
>As Genesis shows us, the origin of sin the world is not knowledge, as is often said (as though God were interdicting our intellectual development, which would be absurd); it is knowledge of good and evil. In this context knowledge means decision. What is not acceptable to God is that we should decide on our own what is good and what is evil. Biblically, the good is in fact the will of God. That is all. What God decides, whatever it may be, is good. If then we decide what the good is, we substitute our will for God's. We construct morality when we say and do what is good, and it is then that we are sinners. To elaborate a moral system is to show oneself to be a sinner before God, not because the conduct is bad, but because, even if it is good, another good is substituted for the will of God.

[Anonymous No.21063264]

>>21063247
Damn, good shit. I might have to read Ellul.

[Anonymous No.21063283]

>>21063247
haha yes, of course a acadummie would fall for the gnosis meme and see it as a 'ascent' rather than a descent

[Anonymous No.21063322]

>>21063283
Not what Ellul believes.
>There is no question of union with God. Jesus alone is in total union with God. Such union is brought about by the fact that God comes (down) to us, not by our spiritual intensity or psychological action or by any attempt to climb up to him. The idea of a possible union with God is ruled out by the revelation of cherubim guarding against any return to Paradise. As I have often said, there is no possible ascent to God, or access to him. But this is what mystics passionately seek. They want union with God. They have discipline. They follow a path to the inner void where the soul is filled by the holy spirit and access opens up to God. This is the exact opposite of what the Bible teaches. The antithesis is even more radical if one accepts the common etymology whereby “mystic” comes from muein, to be mute or speechless. How can this be when God’s work is wholly that of the Word? God himself speaks, and he calls upon us to bear witness by the Word. There could hardly be a greater contradiction. In fact all mystical experiences are ineffable, and Paul is totally against anything of this kind. If we follow Jesus, it is not a matter of looking up to heaven (“Why do you look up to heaven?” etc.) but of being on earth and concretely living out the will of God that was done in Jesus Christ.

[Anonymous No.21063329]

>>21063090
Not even slightly, he'd relish the chance for another everyone who disagrees with me is an idiot op-ed

[Anonymous No.21063344]

>>21063329
>I know Michael McClymond, and for some years have been watching the slow evolution of the gigantic book that has now appeared under the title The Devil’s Redemption, in the rather grim way that one might watch a tsunami gathering on the horizon. McClymond is a historian of American Christianity, and a fairly decent one I imagine.

>But at some point he got it into his head that this rather narrow range of expertise had prepared him to undertake a task that required training and skills in classical languages and history, late antique metaphysics and culture, patristics, Church history, theology, and philosophy that he most definitely does not possess. And the result has been a disaster: an immense book that is clearly a labor of love, or at least of passion, but that no competent specialist would mistake for a work of serious scholarship. It is a feat of stupendous energy, admittedly; but energy and capacity are not the same thing. In its short existence, the book has already become something of a joke in certain of the more rarefied academic circles. But, out in the great, more casually learned world of the general readership, one also sees it being cited again and again as a real authority against genuinely accomplished scholars (among whom I include myself), and then sees those scholars feeling obliged to reply to it as though the book really merited their attention. All of which is a gross disservice to those genuinely scrupulous scholars whose work should be taken seriously. And so, since I already have a reputation for bad manners, I feel it falls to me to say aloud what many of us have been whispering in private.

When I read this I knew DBH was a fart sniffing pseud. Imagine treating one of your peers like they're a random faggot on a message board your arguing with.

[Anonymous No.21063589]

>>21063089
>If there is a Catholic theologian of near equal prominence who is so openly heretical
The most famous Czech theologian of our time (Tomáš Halík) is a Catholic priest who is pro-gay marriage, pro-women's ordination and thinks abortion laws should be liberal.

[Anonymous No.21063594]

>>21063589
And there is of course James Martin from the USA and the entire hierarchy of Germany.

[Anonymous No.21063771]

>>21063589
>>21063594
The gay stuff is terrible, but the proponents are very careful about their phrasing, making it very difficult to actually pin them down on heresy without open Polemics, which much of the hierarchy is too squeamish to do. But there is a reason catching heretics is compared to catching foxes. Hart is a different case. It's not just material heresy, and he's not hiding it. He is formally a heretic and a blasphemer. As quoted above, he calls God a liar. A very different kind of thing. Both situations are tragic, and it might seem like a silly point to make, but heretics who try to look Catholic at least have to pretend not to be heretics. But if heterodoxy is openly declared and nothing is done, what claim can there be to orthodoxy?

[Anonymous No.21064150]

>>21063322
Damn what a retard

[Anonymous No.21064369]

>>21062926
>He's turning into a gnostic.
Source?

[Anonymous No.21064413]

>>21062907
You're becoming annoying

[Anonymous No.21065007]

>>21063095
>He calls God a liar!
YHVH, not God.

[Anonymous No.21065286]

>makes atheists seethe
>makes ortholarpers seethe
seems pretty based to me

[Anonymous No.21065329]

>>21063082
Not in my experience, though I mostly have an outsiders perspective

[Anonymous No.21065367]

>>21062902
FFS, it's at the point now that some literally who e-convert has a better grasp of Orthodox Christianity and of the Bible than DBH does.

>Hence, it’s at this point that the Serpent (who is, without doubt, Satan) truly begins his attack on the woman by lying to her; and this lie was twofold. First, the Serpent states that Adam and Eve wouldn’t die if they ate from the tree; contra Kristi, this is false because, as stated before, they indeed had to die through animal sacrifice (see here for more). Second, the Serpent implies that God didn’t want man to have the knowledge of good and evil, or to be like Him. This is ludicrous! As I explained at length above, the entire reason why God created man was in order for him to possess this knowledge! Man was literally made in “the image and likeness of God” (Gen. 1:26-27); this would be a pretty poor design if the Lord had no intentions on making us like Him! Indeed, as Seraphim Hamilton demonstrates, the entire narrative of Scripture revolves around mankind’s exaltation to the heavenly court to reign with God. Thus, the greatest lie Satan ever told was that God wanted anything other than our greatest possible end.
https://ancientinsights.wordpress.com/2021/11/29/what-happened-in-the-garden/

[Anonymous No.21067170]

>>21065367
>https://ancientinsights.wordpress.com/2021/11/29/what-happened-in-the-garden/
All this just makes me wonder if metaphysically the Gnostic point of view and the traditional point of view in its most profound interpretation actually reconcile well, and only differ on the literal level. On such a level no doubt the Gnostic account is heretical, but the spirit of it is actually not distinct from the traditional account.

[Anonymous No.21067179]

>>It is at this point that the snake arrives—who is not, of course, the “devil”

You're right, he's actually Horan from Phoenician mythology, where the Adam and Eve story originated from