/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.21741439]

I am finding contradictory information, was hoping one of you could clear this up.
I read Last Temptation Of Christ and really enjoyed it. But I wasn’t sure if Kazantzakos was an atheist, or if he was a believer with very heterodox views on God. So I looked it up, and I find different resources saying both.
I have a few questions:
1) was Kazantzakos an atheist, or did he believe in God?
2) why do I find resources saying different answers? Is it people being dumb and talking out of their ass, or did he evolve on this topic over time?
3) now that I have read Last Temptation Of Christ, what else should I read? Both other books by Kazantzakos, as well as books by different authors

[Anonymous No.21741444]

>>21741439
He’s a hack

[Anonymous No.21741452]

>>21741444
An atheist hack, or a hack who believes in God?

[Anonymous No.21741454]

>>21741444
Also, why why do I find resources saying different answers? Is it people being dumb and talking out of their ass, or did this hack evolve on this topic over time?

[Anonymous No.21741459]

>>21741444
Lastly, now that I have read Last Temptation Of Christ, what else should I read? Both other books by the hack, as well as books by different hacks

[Anonymous No.21741473]

>>21741452
An Arian hack possibly.

[Anonymous No.21741516]

>>21741439
He's very heterodox, if at all a believer. Check out Saviors of God for more information.
Next, you should try Zorba or The Fratricides.

[Anonymous No.21741525]

>>21741516
No. If I wanted to rub shit in my eyes I would walk into the foyer in your bugapartment

[Anonymous No.21741535]

>>21741516
Thank you, I will read Saviors Of God, then Zorba, then The Fratricides

[Anonymous No.21741536]

>>21741525
He was talking to me anon

[Anonymous No.21742337]

1. I have read Zorba and Saviors of God. I read he was an Orthodox Christian, but he was excommunicated I believe, and was very sad about this.
From what I read in Zorba he does not appreciate the renunciation of life representative of Buddha, yet in Zorba and Savior there is a sort of eternalism, and an idea of reality as consciousness that seeks to always expand itself in any way it can.
I believe he believed that reality is intelligent and conscious. That means God, though the word itself almost has no meaning these days.
2. People just make shit up like I am now.
3. Saviours is very short and explicitly religious/spiritual in nature. Zorba is his most famous work and I believe the most influential one on the author. Zorba is the model for how to live. Osho also took on Zorba as a symbol for how to live and called it Zorba the Buddha. If you don't understand or have experience of meditation you should do that too to understand what presence is, look up all the words and systems related to it, and you'll see that crop up everywhere in literature and religion once you have felt it and know the keywords.

[Anonymous No.21742356]

Fun fact: He got excommunicated by the Greek orthodox church for writing this book.

[Anonymous No.21742483]

>>21741439
Read Christ Recrucified, his most underrated work.

[Cluster B !GY4CZZOlWY No.21742489]

>>21741439
Why would you read a modern Greek?

[Anonymous No.21742891]

>>21742489
To prevent me from becoming a worthless tripfag

[Anonymous No.21742911]

>>21741439
Kazantzakis was the type of "Christian" (Orthodox, even) who simped for communism so much so that he not only turned a blind eye to the first hand accounts of Panait Istrati, a subhuman atheist and until then also a simp for communism, but among the first to describe its horrors and failures, with the proverbial "But where is the omelette?", but actually advised him against it and renounced him, along with all the socialist hipster French faggot elites of the period, from Henri Barbusse to Romain Rolland.

These are very similar to the "Christians" (Orthodox, even) of today. It's all memes and personal interpretations to fit & justify whatever worldview you already have, molded into you by your entourage. Read it lightly, as sweetened fairy-tales of the likes of Dostoevsky.

[Anonymous No.21743070]

>>21741439
Does the book differ from the movie a lot? The movie didn't seem to heterodox at all. Jesus in the garden demonstrated that Jesus was hesitant about the crucifixtion. I don't think showing Jesus's hesitation as the last temptation is unbiblical. I did interpret the period after Jesus came down from the cross as something that he was thinking about in his mind, and not something that literally happened though.

[Anonymous No.21743356]

>>21741439
i know nothing about what kazantzakis believed personally but he tried pretty hard to keep the last temptation within the technical bounds of orthodoxy even as he subverted it. christians who dismiss it as heretical either misread it or misapply 'heresy' to mean 'showing me a jesus i don't like'.

[Anonymous No.21743391]

>>21743356
What are you talking about? It explicitly has Matthew start writing the gospel, and when Jesus starts reading them he goes “these are all lies! I wasn’t born in Bethlehem, my mother wasn’t a virgin, etc.”
It’s very much outside the bounds of orthodoxy, and if you take Christian orthodoxy seriously you have to say it is very heretical

[Anonymous No.21743575]

>>21743391
but he WAS born of a virgin in the book and just didn't know it. matthew had an angel telling him things which were true but beyond human comprehension. mary remembers a vision she had of three angelic magi visiting the child and then matthew miraculously knows about it even though she didn't tell him. the text doesn't quite explicitly spell this out but kazantzakos clearly intended for the reader to piece it together.

[Anonymous No.21743704]

>>21743391
>>21743575
This is part of the struggle of the choice of the man who was Jesus, which is why it happens in the garden. The issue is that God can't suffer as man unless as man he is limited—that he doesn't know knowledge eternally but mortally—etc etc. The Garden is God taking on the burdens of fallibility in full.

Judas being a communist zealot is a lot of fun though.

[Anonymous No.21743714]

>>21743575
>>21743704
I’m not denying that necessarily, I’m just saying that is outside the bounds of orthodoxy, which was the original claim

[Anonymous No.21743839]

>>21743714
but how is jesus being mistaken about his birth outside the bounds of orthodoxy? there may have well been some anathema against the notion and i wouldn't know in that case, but it's certainly not heretical to say that he wasn't omniscient while incarnate. saying that he was incapable of making mistakes because of the divine nature seems like it's verging on monophysitism since it's ignoring that he had just as much of a human nature which would have been capable of being wrong about things.
i remember once seeing william lane craig (i'm not holding him up as an authority here but as a well-read guy who makes an effort to not say heretical things) wonder aloud whether or not jesus might have believed that the earth is flat. it's just not obvious to me how that in of itself would contradict orthodoxy.

[Anonymous No.21743879]

None of the people in this thread understand Kazantzakis. The truth is Kazantzakis believed in a kind of spiritual striving and progressive evolution of belief rather than holding on to strict set of dogmas. He is not an easy man to pigeon hole but as far as belief in God yes he did believe in a god but not the way a normal person does. Kazantzakis was not a fedora tipping le Reddit atheist but God for Kazantzakis was as far as I can tell some supreme force of will inherent in mankind and the universe not a personal god of the bible. His writing is some of the most beautiful and moving I have ever read. if you want to understand more I suggest reading his biographies Report to Greco which explains his thought process but if you are not a spiritually advanced person you won’t understand everything and that’s okay.

[Anonymous No.21743935]

>>21742483
Seconded. I've also seen it titled A Greek Passion.

[Anonymous No.21744335]

>>21743879
>None of the people in this thread understand Kazantzakis
Thankfully, you included yourself in this statement

[Anonymous No.21744363]

>>21743839
I'm going to reiterate what this anon said here >>21743879 in that he is not an easy man to pigeon hole. He's not preaching typical orthodox Christianity, but it would also be wrong to just take some historical heresies and say he's trying to teach them either. That being said, some of the things in the book could be considered various historical heresies. Among them I'd list adoptionism. The belief that Jesus "became" the Son of God rather than it being an eternal part of his nature. The stories in the gospels of Jesus as a child, fully recognizing Himself as the Son of God or others such as Simeon the Just recognizing Him. Christ always, even as an infant, had complete omniscient knowledge on who He was

[Anonymous No.21744441]

>>21743879
So he's basically the sort of alt-Christian who appeals to 15 year olds who want to be "spiritual but not religious", rebellious and edgy but also going for that mystic aesthetic, for whom organized religion and its inherent dogmas are too tough to follow and actually adhere to so they scrap together bits and pieces trying to reinvent the wheel with plenty of comfy leeway.

Also judging by your self sufficient attitude and complete lack of self awareness, he's most likely regarded as some Greek Tolstoyevskian figure with a just as annoying fan base.

[Anonymous No.21744871]

>>21744441
Leo Tolstoy probably isn’t the worst person to compare him to. Both went from Eastern Orthodoxy to a more personal view on spirituality

[Anonymous No.21745841]

Bump’

[Anonymous No.21745877]

>>21743879
>The truth is Kazantzakis believed in a kind of spiritual striving and progressive evolution of belief rather than holding on to strict set of dogmas.
There is no such thing. Just different religions entirely. Prog retards who say equally retarded shit like this might as well say that humans are a type of fish.

[Anonymous No.21745886]

>>21744441
>so they scrap together bits and pieces trying to reinvent the wheel with plenty of comfy leeway.
Yeah. They're the leftist version of internet "tradcaths" only more mind-numbingly stupid

[Anonymous No.21746004]

>>21745886
Tradcaths are doing the opposite of what was described, they’re not reinventing the wheel at all, they’re following an entirely premade religion