/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.22960415]

>original sin
>temporal fall
>filioque
>nonexistence of past and future
>limbo
>baby hell
>divine command theory
>willfull erection control
>predestination
>total depravity
>just war theory
>ineradicable priesthood
how was one guy responsible for so many trash ideas?

[Anonymous No.22960432]

>>22960415
He was a manichean shitposter that xtians took too seriously

[Anonymous No.22960504]

Some of his ideas are garbage but some are extremely good attempts to adapt a persecuted religion to a state religion.

[Anonymous No.22960508]

>>22960504
Which ones

[Anonymous No.22960530]

>>22960504
he was born 30 years after nicaea

[Anonymous No.22960549]

>>22960415
>total depravity

You're young, I'll bet.

Protip: the older you get, the more you'll be convinced of the absolute wickedness of fallen man divorced from God.

[Anonymous No.22960561]

>>22960549
>boomer babble

[Anonymous No.22960569]

>>22960549
Total depravity is Calvinism. I don't know where OP got that.

[Anonymous No.22960571]

>>22960549
God is cringe.

[Anonymous No.22960833]

>>22960415
>nonexistence of past and future
he was right about that.

[Anonymous No.22960835]

>willfull erection control
Source??

[Anonymous No.22960862]

>>22960415
>>original sin
A fact attested by Scripture. "B-b-but Augustine introduced the concept of everyone's sharing in the guilt of Adam as well, not merely the effects of his sin!" Meaningless in the broad scheme of things.

>>temporal fall
Literally nobody before the 20th century believed in an atemporal fall.

>>filioque
It was a thing in other Latin thinkers as well.

>>divine command theory
Perfectly sensible metaethical theory. Augustine wasn't even an Ockhamite voluntarist.

>>predestination
A fact attested by Scripture and a metaphysical necessity when presuming an eternal God.

>>total depravity
That's Calvinist. Nothing to do with Augustine per se.

As an EO, I consider Augustine far inferior to other fathers, but he's a good litmus test for sensible theology -- people who positively loathe him are commie libtard faggots. And OP is very clearly a faggot.

[Anonymous No.22961320]

>>22960862
>"B-b-but Augustine introduced the concept of everyone's sharing in the guilt of Adam as well, not merely the effects of his sin!" Meaningless in the broad scheme of things.
The fact that you think the difference is meaningless says a lot.

[Anonymous No.22961417]

Augustine is an immensely intelligent genius of titanic cerebellum. Unfortunately his human soul was utterly compromised by vanity and pride, and every single thought of his is ruined by a sinister arrogance intent on making his particular beliefs into rational universals.

It is not hard to see that Augustine's primary reason for being Christian is filial devotion to Monica. He disparaged over her judgement of his unrepentent womanizing. He could never admit this to himself so he built a giant castle of rationalized insanity which is now called Christianity, and whose labyrinthine halls ensnare and bewilder tens of billions of souls, usually young Christian men attempting to uphold the parental Christian worldview that is aggressively normative.

Augustine was a dogshit person who abandoned his own wife and children in order to make a name for himself.

[Anonymous No.22961463]

>>22961417
>Augustine was a dogshit person who abandoned his own wife and children in order to make a name for himself.

You can't even get the basics of the history right. Augustine never married. It broke up with his long time concubine, essentially girlfriend, but kept raising their son. He never abandoned his son, his son got sick and died around the same time his mother did, because it is antiquity and people die of disease not uncommonly.

[Anonymous No.22961470]

>original sin
I don't get. I read the bible and at the i don't understand how this idea even came from and how does it make sense for people.

[Anonymous No.22961492]

>>22960415
>willfull erection control
This is easy to do though

[Anonymous No.22961506]

>>22960415
he was a whoremonger, thus he is based and my patron saint

[Anonymous No.22961558]

>>22960415
Aabrahomos... Just don't like them, besides Gnostics, who could arguably just get rid of the abrahomo side of their faith.

[Anonymous No.22961626]

>>22961463
I have read the Confessions, about 4 or 5 years ago. I recalled a scene in which Augustine departs then in sadness. Prompted by your rude accusation of ignorance to history, I have gone back through the text to find the scene.

It is not as I recall. Unfortunately the scene (VI.15) is rather ambiguous. He seems to be intentionally evasive in my honest estimation.

The "concubine" (your word, not Augustine's) is never named (!). The reason and immediate circumstances for her departure is not explained. Adeodatus, the son, and this woman followed Augustine to Italy. We are told "Meanwhile I was sinning more and more. The woman with whom I had been living was torn from my side as an obstacle to my marriage and this was a blow which crushed my heart to bleeding because I loved her dearly. She went back to Africa, vowing never to give herself to any other man, and left with me the son [Adeodatus] whom she had borne me.... I was impatient at the delay of two years which had to pass before the girl whom I asked to marry [another woman] became my wife, and because I was more of a slave of lust than a true lover of marriage, I took another mistress..."

So your correction about Adeodatus is valid and true-- he staid with Augustine, I think until death, but he does not describe the scene of Adeodatus' death.

He remains a supreme dirtbag dogshit human, because there would have been no theological obstacle to marrying the "concubine" with whom he had already spent 15 or so years, and with whom he was raising a son. Moreover, he proposed to someone else (marrying up? that would be very like him), could not wait for the engagement, and promptly took ANOTHER "concubine." There is no excuse whatsoever for this morally corrupt gauntlet of failed marriage and failed family life. Augustine knew perfectly well that the life of a married man is just as theologically valid as the celibant life. Classic Catholic Bullshit. A young man seeks the priesthood because he reckons the celibant life is the high road highway to Heaven, but fails to realize the difficulty of this life, and takes his sex on the side rather than admit his sexual appetites disqualify him from the priesthood. I have seen it a thousand times.

What would that "concubine" say? What would her side of the story be? We shall never know, for only one of the two made it a mission to become a Great Writer, and he controls his narrative, and seems to dance around this particular controversy like a shadow chases him in his conscience.

[Anonymous No.22961644]

>>22961470
Because ritual sacrifices are done as part of atonement for sins, i.e. butchering and burning animals. So when viewing Jesus himself as the ultimate sacrificial "lamb of God" original sin is a way of further substantiating the act. Augustine believed in substitutionary atonement and worship of Jesus as the only way to counter sexual sinfulness and imminent punishment that we all inherited from Adam and Eve. Much of Christianity revolves around reasoning like this, where expounding on the text is concerned with conveying the dire nature of correct belief in Jesus.

[Anonymous No.22961652]

>>22961470
>I read the bible and at the i don't understand how this idea even came from

Romans 5 is a key text.

Romans 5:12, 18-19: “Therefore as sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all men sinned....

“So then as through one transgression there resulted condemnation to all men, even so through one act of righteousness there resulted justification of life to all men.

“For as through the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the One the many will be made righteous.”

The doctrine is unpacked here: http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc/p1s2c1p7.htm, with pic related

See also https://www.arcaneknowledge.org/catholic/original.htm, in particular, Part IV, St. Augustine’s Teaching on Original Sin.

[Anonymous No.22961796]

How come the Christian anons in this place are so much smarter and well read than pretty much any other group i've seen in the internet

[Anonymous No.22961819]

>>22961796
They aren't it is a bunch of lunatic posturing. They are excited by the notion that their ridiculous Jew on a Stick religion can be intellectual (it can't, it can only be rationalized in the same manner all absurdities can be rationalized, and which, if they paid any attention or did any thinking, they would know can be used to build up a rationalized Islam or Judaism just as easily.)

[Anonymous No.22961834]

>>22961644
And how is he even consider as sacrifice for jewish god, if cross was Roman? I would say he was quasi-sacrifice for Roman state-being of empire.

>>22961652
So from this lines I see that from Paul perspective - material state and mortality is man state of falling from god. And Jesus provides literally way out from mortality, from material being to spiritual as shizo gnostic wet dream.


Do modern Christian still follow this?

How this became idea of tarnished soul that make dead infants go to hell?

[Anonymous No.22961865]

>>22961819
Say what you will, I merely have to look at this kind of comment to know that I made the right choice in not considering myself one of you. It is always the atheist saying this kind of thing, whilst the others around here are having good and thoughtful discussions. This can be generalized and it often is, from what I've seen. Either way, I'm not expecting a discussion as that will ruin the thread, as you've nearly done already

> you cannot teach a summer insect about ice

[Anonymous No.22961932]

>>22961626
>The "concubine" (your word, not Augustine's) is never named (!). The reason and immediate circumstances for her departure is not explained

This is also wrong. They were from different social classes and, while I don't recall it being quite illegal for him to marry her, it wasn't acceptable in the culture either.

He specifically talks about why they split up. It's in the period before his conversion. He was under pressure to marry for a long time, since this is what a man did at his age when he was a rising star in the imperial court. He got betrothed to an underaged noble girl he had never met (and did never meet). He had to send his girlfriend away because he couldn't very well keep seeing a woman while he's waiting to go back home to marry some other woman. It was pretty much social pressure. And he provides for he old GF financially, he doesn't just dump her in Italy but also pays for her to go back home.

His whole life was dominated by social pressure. It's the entire reason he went to Rome and then to Milan (then the capital). He specifically reflects on he comes across a drunk one day and realizes the drunk is happier than he is, even though he would never trade places with the drunk because he has been conditioned to chase social status from birth.

And yes, he takes another concubine because he can't overcome his need for sex and concupiscence. He acknowledges all of this. This was not an odd thing for a Roman noble in the court to do at the time, it was considered fine by the corrupt morals of the time, and he was being encouraged to "do the right thing," by dumping his too-low-class mate.

It is only after this that he converts. When he converts is when he gets rid of the new GF and calls off the marriage. His son is with him and even a character in the early dialogues until he gets sick and dies.

Augustine, seeing all the harm he has caused, swears off relationships, sells the family property, moves back to North Africa, and founds a mendicant type monestary. Only later, against his will, is he made a bishop; he had intended to focus on writing and laments the demands of his position.

[Anonymous No.22961971]

>>22961932
I am sorry but this entire post is pithy nothing. In every society with monagamy, such as 4th century Roman society, the norm is lifelong fidelity to, and family with, one person. You may dance all you like with your fourth century aristocratic conventions and your ridiculously contingent idea of mere social pressure as a valid reason. Social pressure has nothing to do with religion or morality. In fact, if anything it is opposed to these.

If Augustine, or a man with a similar reputation in this regard, attempted to date my sister, I would shoot him like the dog he is.

The Great Examplar of Virtue in your tradition was a petty philanderer with more important things to do than right his past wrongs.

[Anonymous No.22961976]

>>22960862
>Literally nobody before the 20th century believed in an atemporal fall.
compare the writings of the eastern fathers alongside with augustine's later work after he got spooked by origenism and had to make up a new theory, it's pretty clear that the consensus teaching of the early church was not that eden existed in 4000 bc mesopotamia

[Anonymous No.22961988]

>>22961463
>>22961626
augustine was engaged to a 10 year old girl before he converted

[Anonymous No.22962002]

>>22961834
>And Jesus provides literally way out from mortality, from material being to spiritual as shizo gnostic wet dream.


>Do modern Christian still follow this?

NTA, but yes and no. In Protestantism, especially American Evangelicalism, there is not as much focus on the transformation of man, "sanctification," in Protestant terms. "Justification," freedom from punishment (and thus reward in Heaven) is going to be the overwhelming focus. In its most simplistic form, this can boil down to "believe with an act of pure contrition and be saved; fail to do this and be damned." That said, there can also be a lot of nuance, and then you have to consider the Reformed view, where God has already picked out all those who will be saved based on nothing related to their person/traits since before the world began.

In the Catholic and Orthodox traditions, which would be decently large majority of all Christians but a minority in the Anglo-American world, there is a much larger focus on the transformation of the individual person. Rather than sanctification, there is the idea of illumination (revelation of knowledge/attainment of gnosis), theosis, and diefication (man, through the working of the Spirit, becomes a finite mirror image of the infinite God, the Imago Dei restored). This is what they say Saint Paul is talking about when he says to "put on the new man," or what Ezekiel speaks of when God says "I will replace your heart of stone with one of flesh."

But this obviously doesn't happen through some sort of instant change and divine autopilot; we know this from simple life experience. Belief doesn't remake us entirely and there are sinners who go to church. This is why spiritual discipline, fasting, penance, the sacraments, etc. are all more important for Catholics/Orthodox/Coptics/Orientals. There is a whole tradition of apophatic contemplation that shares some strong similarities with Zen practice (although also huge differences). A person must empty themselves, becoming "poor in spirit," that they might be infused with a new spirit, since God created man free and we must choose God over the flesh. This is the "crucifixion of the flesh," of which Saint Paul speaks.

Parts of Platonism were very influential in Christianity, or even Judaism before that (Philo). Platonist orthodox Christianity (Origen) and Gnosticism both actually predate Neoplatonism and probably influenced it. Neoplatonism is sort of an abstraction and re-paganization of stuff going on in Christianity and Judaism in Alexandria at the same time, Origen overlaps Plotinus but is from the prior generation and they were probably in the same circles.

Gnosticism wasn't so much suppressed as sublated into orthodox Christianity. Only the really wild anti-Jewish gnostic myths were totally at odds with the mainstream, Pagel's even argues that John is a gnostic Gospel of sorts. But mainline ancient Christianity also sees creation and the body as good in some ways, only corrupted by the fall.

[Anonymous No.22962032]

>>22961834
>Do modern Christian still follow this?

Certainly Catholics believe in original sin -- not your gloss, of course, but the doctrine as it's set forth in the Catechism. Some Eastern Orthodox dispute certain nuances of the Catholic understanding, but at least arguably this perceived disagreement turns more on semantic than on substantive issues, as explained here: https://journal.orthodoxwestblogs.com/2019/01/24/original-and-ancestral-sin-a-church-dividing-issue/

>How this became idea of tarnished soul that make dead infants go to hell?
That's discussed a bit in the above link. It is a question of the meaning and scope of Christ's words in John 3:5, "Jesus answered, 'Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.' " He is speaking here of baptism. Now, does it follow from these words that an infant who dies prior to being baptized "cannot enter into the kingdom of God"?

The Catholic view is set forth, in brief, in paragraph 1261 of the Catechism, pic related (source: http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc/p2s2c1a1.htm).).

[Anonymous No.22962044]

>>22961988
Which was common for the time and he was never in the same room as the girl. It was an arranged marriage, she was in North Africa and he in Italy.

>>22961834
>>22962002
Anyhow, it isn't all Platonist influence. Stoicism was hugely influential as well, especially the idea of the Logos Spermatikos.

As for infant damnation and the Augustinian original sin, you can largely chalk that up to the Church being shaken apart by schism and controversy at that time.

Augustine was a trench fighter for orthodoxy and union, and he takes contradictory positions to try to keep the Church from fracturing. We have more from him than any other writer from antiquity, thousands of pages.

The idea of original sin as being passed down through seed is just speculation of the sort that would be harmless if it hadn't gained so much steam. Really, when Augustine develops this, he is trying to find some way to critique the Donatists. According to them, anyone whose Apostolic succession came down via bishops who had cooperated in persecutions by turning books over to be burnt wasn't a real priest, and so none of their baptisms count. What Augustine wants to show is that this implies that infants all over the Empire aren't actually protected by baptism and this is absurd.

Notably, Augustinian original sin never became a thing in the Greek East. They have ancestral sin, which sounds very similar at first glance, but which I think is way more biblically defensible. This is a place I think the Orthodox get it most right.

Over time, the Catholics have slowly moved away from Augustine's position while the Reformed are most committed to the harshest reading of it: "vipers in diapers," theology if you will. Augustine wasn't really on board with anything like that if you read his whole corpus, rather he is cherry picked to support those positions.

Also, it's worth noting that while the Orthodox are more vocal about theosis, it is still core Catholic teaching. Saint Athanasius' "God became man that man might become God," is in the Catechism.

[Anonymous No.22962058]

>>22962044
>Which was common for the time

What the fuck is the point of belonging to an orthodox religion that claims to know right and wrong in absolute terms when you are going to lean on a cheap historical relativism to excuse the bad behavior of its founders?

(The secret agenda of Catholicity is perpetuation of Catholicity. It pretends meanwhile to relate God to Man. Of course none of that dogma stuff really matters when it comes to "Defending the Faith", whether that means excusing Augustine's adultery and unseemly marriage proposals or excusong McCarick's proclivity for boy touching.)

[Anonymous No.22962059]

>>22962044
And if you want to be a bit more sympathetic to Augustine from going so firebrand, you can consider that the Donatists tried to assassinate him and killed a bunch of his partitioners during the height of the conflict.

[Anonymous No.22962070]

>>22962058
>Saint engages in fornication BEFORE conversion and gets engaged to young girl BEFORE conversion.
>Saint converts. Stops fornicating and calls off marriage to young girl without ever seeing her.
>"Zomg, Christians BTFO!"

Wait until you find out that Saint Paul the Apostles persecuted Christians before his conversion and looks on at the martyrdom of Saint Stephen "and approve[s]." It's almost like the point is redemption from sin.

[Anonymous No.22962089]

>>22962070
No sir, Augustine was already a Christian and Monica had already died when he decided to send "her" back to Africa so he could hang out with his new buddy Ambrose. (By the way he could have been a married priest at this point in time, as universal priesthood celibacy would not be established for several more centuries, another curiosity of the early church that is never talked about).

I have read the entire New Testament several times, I am already quite familiar with Paul and his gay-boy-thorn-in-side complex, his Greco-Roman sexuality in a Jew body that became a maelstrom of self-hatred that resolved itself by conversion to the Deus Ex Machina New Religion in vogue in first century Damascus, hence why he is the anti-Jew that longed for Christianity to cut all ties with Judaism.

[Anonymous No.22962102]

>>22960415
>nonexistence of past and future
Gonna have to explain this one to me

[Anonymous No.22962112]

Acts 4:28
To do what Your hand and Your counsel predestined to take place.

Rom. 8:29
Because those whom He foreknew, He also predestinated to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the Firstborn among many brothers;
Rom. 8:30
And those whom He predestinated, these He also called; and those whom He called, these He also justified; and those whom He justified, these He also glorified.

1 Cor. 2:7
But we speak God's wisdom in a mystery, the wisdom which has been hidden, which God predestined before the ages for our glory,

Eph. 1:5
Predestinating us unto sonship through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will,

Eph. 1:11
In whom also we were designated as an inheritance, having been predestinated according to the purpose of the One who works all things according to the counsel of His will,

[Anonymous No.22962123]

>>22962089
You have your chronology all messed up. Augustine doesn't even write the at Cassiciacum Dialogues until after having left his concubine AND broken off his marriage; the marriage is decisively broken off in 385, the relationship almost two years prior. These are before his baptism. He doesn't get baptized until Easter 386. None of his works date to before 386.

[Anonymous No.22962126]

>>22961470
>>22961652
I'd also say to read Romans 7 where it talks about the corruption of the will

[Anonymous No.22962143]

>>22962089
You also have your church history wrong. Priests were indeed allowed to marry, or at least to be ordained after marriage in many places until the Gregorian Reforms. The practice of bishops being celibate is far stronger and goes back to the ancient church. Part of the reason that celibacy was made universal was because noble bishops began to have kids and then try to use the bishopric as a hereditary fiefdom, corrupting the church and making it into a family inheritance.

The Synod of Elvira is advising against marriage, but particularly for bishops and marriage after ordination in the early 300s. Augustine himself attends the Council of Carthage which also lays down rules of bishops not marrying.

The difference is that this did not go down to the rest of the priesthood. Monks and nuns, of course, were always supposed to be celibate.

[Anonymous No.22962144]

>>22961834
>from material being to spiritual as shizo gnostic wet dream.
Kind of. Christianity teaches the ressurection of bodies and the perfecting of the world. It's not anti material in any gnostic sense at all

[Anonymous No.22962145]

>>22962123
You know damn well Augustine's spiritual conversion was in the garden. And you know damn well he waited around as a catechumen for some time before being baptized. Nobody reads Confessions to find out how the water splashed on his head. We read Confessions for the Garden, in Book VIII. "She" gets dismissed to Africa in Book VI.

If you are confused it is not your fault. Augustine is being deliberately obscurantist about the timeline, precisely for the reasons I am raising.

[Anonymous No.22962155]

>>22962143
And why did Augstine have to become a Bishop again? I know his ego wanted it badly but surely one can obtain salvation without a mitre.

My point is he could have easily taken up a religious life without dumping "her" like a hot potato, attempting to marry someone else and then having an affair with a housekeeper instead. None of that is excusable or moral or Catholic. It is just Augustine fucking around and trying to avail himself of any responsibility, because he wanted to be totally free to go LARP as Ambrose, his idol and rival.

The man is a piece, I will give you that.

[Anonymous No.22962167]

>>22962145
No, you are confused by the fact that the book is not in chronological order and jumps around all over the place. Go open any Augustine biography. He gets rid of the betrothal after the conversion. He gets rid of his partner after agreeing to get betrothed. The events are years apart.

[Anonymous No.22962178]

>>22961834
>And how is he even consider as sacrifice for jewish god, if cross was Roman? I would say he was quasi-sacrifice for Roman state-being of empire.

Christianity basically became post-Romanism and you could even go conspiracy theory by arguing that Roman agents were responsible for developing it in order to subvert Jewish eschatology. Certainly after the empire had purged all the Christian leadership in the early 300's it became primed in the following generations for adoption as a state religion.

More to the point, Christianity (as pushed by Paul), is not deeply Jewish. It takes what is convenient and rejects the rest. But the reason it could carry on under the Jewish god is that the Septuagint was already well established, written in the same language as New Testament works. Non-Jewish interpretations could thus be applied across these texts, which can appear pagan or platonist. However, ultimately it is a cosmopolitan religion, without concern for any bright lines between differing cultures, and promising eternal salvation and reward with little to no barrier to entry.

Galatians 3
26 So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, 27 for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. 28 There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. 29 If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.

[Anonymous No.22962182]

>>22962167
What do you mean by coversion? He has several. He has the conversion away from the Manichees and becomes open to the idea of Christianity. Then he has the conversion after meeting Ambrose in the garden, where he decides to renounce sex forever in a state of immense psychological distress (ripping his own hair out, wailing). Then later he gets baptized. I admit I am confused when exactly Augustone converted to Christianity. He seems to be as well.

[Anonymous No.22962204]

>>22961834
>I would say he was quasi-sacrifice for Roman state-being of empire.
No not at all. Rome clearly represents the evil forces of the world. Human government was first established by Tubal Cain and was the attempt by fallen man to order the world after his own understanding of good and evil. Being crucified by the Romans clearly shows the distinction between the kingdom of heaven and the kingdom of man. It was man's satanic impulse to overthrow God

[Anonymous No.22962212]

>hey bro
>we made a god and now we are scared of him
>isn't that cool
>come on, be scared with us

[Anonymous No.22962233]

>>22962182
You could place the conversion at his baptism, when he joins the Catechumenate, or his experience in the garden shortly before then. We know the approximate dates of these. The garden conversion is late 386. I had a typo before, his baptism is Easter 387, not 386.

The marriage arrangement comes shortly after the move from Rome to Milan. Augustine's partner has been back in North Africa for at 18-24 months before the garden scene.

[Anonymous No.22962238]

>>22962233
Careful with your pre Julian years my dude, I don't trust your math one bit.

[Anonymous No.22962272]

>>22962178
>>22962044
Thx, you have made it more clear for me.

[Anonymous No.22962587]

>>22962238
This is the logical order. How could he leave his concubine in order to get engaged AFTER he has already left his engagement to follow his new religion?

This is how it is told in the Confessions as well, it's just that the narrative isn't in temporal ordering, and this isn't a contested issue among Augustine scholars. The idea that he leaves the concubine after conversion and breaking off his engagement is based totally on your feels.

Even if the real order was as you say and it's all obfuscation, there is absolutely no surviving evidence this is the case, so again, feels.

[Anonymous No.22962609]

>>22962212
>hey bro, we decided that God doesnt exist, morality is fake and gay, everything is subjective, just do what feels good
>you wanna come do drugs with us, edge to pr0n, have sex with whores, play vidya all day, get obese, and consoom with us?
>bro, stop moralfagging and enjoy the cheese pizza with us. morality isn't real. there is no form of the good, if something feels good that means it IS good dawg

[Anonymous No.22962672]

>>22962587
I apologize, I allowed us to get way off track by takig your chronologu bate. If you review the above tit for tat you will see that neither of us keeps track of the point we are making.

I want to be open to whatever it is you are trying to argue. Let's take a few steps back to your point that
>the whole point of Confessions is to celebrate a conversion away from the sin you are accusing Augustine of

Having collected my thoughts a bit, the proper reply to this should have been:

"Augustine was clearly exploring Christianity and moving more and more in that direction, especially since arriving in Italy. At some point he determined to abandon "her" (his kind term for a woman he spent 15+ years with and raised a son with). Why? Was it to help him become a better Christian? Or was Augustine jumping ladders to a higher status wife? Or was he trying to make himself single to become an Ambrosian mold?

I think his real motivation was to become a Bishop. He concealed this wanton reasoning from himself by proposing to a woman he had no intent to marry. Then he broke it off, had one more romp for the fuck of it, and dawned his hat."

[Anonymous No.22962793]

>>22962672
>Augustine's real plan was to become a bishop because he wanted power... which is why he left to imperial court to return to rural North Africa.
>Yup, it was all a cunning plot where by he would spend the next 9 years isolated because he just new that, against all precedent, the sitting bishop of Hippo would decide to press gang him into becoming bishop a decade later because he needed someone who spoke better Latin and Punic.
>And he set his sights on the relatively unimportant city of Hippo because... reasons.

This makes no sense. If he wanted power he would have stayed a part of the imperial court.

[Anonymous No.22962911]

>>22962793
He did not want temporal power. He knew on his death bed that he had secured massive posthumous reputation. That was his drive. It is the drive of all great men: infamy, originality, posthumous influence.

Augustine was a massive intellectual ego, not some powergrubbing cretin.

[Anonymous No.22963347]

bump

[Anonymous No.22964585]

Its hard to read the Bible and not believe in predestination
>Romans 9:18
>So then He has mercy on whom He wills, and He hardens whom He wills

[Anonymous No.22965129]

>>22964585
The culture of Saint Paul didn't have any concept of Reformation determinism via "classical" theism (i.e. God is a really powerful entity who sits outside/beside the world and is defined by the limits of the world). Paul inherited the Jewish and Greek ideas of fate and destiny. Consider Heraclitus' "character is destiny."

It produces a sort of fatalism but it is not the fatalism or Calvin or reductionist, smallist materialism. God tells Cain to avoid sin before murders Abel, implying agency off the bat. A guy specifically asks Jesus what he has to do to get to the Kingdom of Heaven and he tells him to obey the commandments and give away his wealth, not "it is metaphysically impossible for you to do anything, only a miracle done entirely by me can save you." "Poor Jerusalem, IF ONLY you had repented..."

There isn't a contradiction here if you recognize that early Christians up through the Medievals were panentheists, not "classical theists," which is an early modern conception. Saint Augustine has it that "God is within everything but contained in nothing." Saint Aquinas has it that God is present to everything. For Augustine and for Saint Bonneventure, man gains no knowledge except for God, so the idea of man acting over here and God over there, and man needing special "miracles" to be in contact with God in any way is incoherent. Boethius sets the frame for considering how an eternal God is outside of time in our sense, present to every moment, which makes reintroducing the temporal ordering of salvation in Arminianism some what strange.

Predestination comes because modern Protestant thinkers have decided to strip out the idea of theosis and illumination. God isn't more "inward to us than our innermost self," but infinitely outside us. God "living in us," and Christ's prayer on John 17, that we would be "one in him," as he is "one with the Father," total union, is taken more as metaphor

This is where you get modern predestination. If God is all powerful, man cannot have any freedom because it would act as a limit on God's power. The problem here is that God still sits outside the world and is defined by what God is not. This God is not fully transcendent, not fully without any limit, and so this vision of God is incompatible with freedom.

Adam can't have chosen rebellion because then all of God's relationship with creation is determined by just one man's actions. So God created Adam broken and creates what God hates "for his own good pleasure." So too, every act of the devil is for "God's good pleasure." Salvation must occur before creation via election, and Christ work becomes sort of meaningless, just the mechanism by which election, the real decision, is implemented.

It's a very unfortunate way of allowing one's limitations in logic to paint a picture where God creates most people for suffering because God enjoys suffering.

[Anonymous No.22965149]

>>22965129
>Adam can't have chosen rebellion because then all of God's relationship with creation is determined by just one man's actions. So God created Adam broken and creates what God hates "for his own good pleasure." So too, every act of the devil is for "God's good pleasure." Salvation must occur before creation via election, and Christ work becomes sort of meaningless, just the mechanism by which election, the real decision, is implemented.

Of course. God is Evil.

[Anonymous No.22965229]

>>22965149
>Of course. God is Evil.
The triumph of Reformed Theology everyone.

Luther similarly has an interchange with Erasmus on predestination where he says: "if God seems evil, this only shows us how evil we are." And later, "if God did not seem like the most monsterous evil, it would not take faith to follow him and so it would be no credit."

But this position seems problematic in a theology where man cannot have faith via reason, but only through a sort of miraculous mind control. It also seems to throw out all the lines about union with God (man is now detestable to God even when redeemed, a snow covered pile of dung) and with all the lines about the Spirit granting special knowledge of God and the eternal things. These lines must be ignored or reread, for if we are given knowledge of the height, and the depth, and the breadth of the fullness of God, how are we forced into "God is evil but evil is really good and we just can't see it."

Satan was really working his magic in these days, first corrupting the Church, then corrupting the reformers, giving rise to ideas like "every prince a Pope in his own lands," and "kill and maim the peasants when they rise up in defense of their own faith, turn the monks and nuns out into the street, and do not worry too much of the soldiers rape them first, gotta break some eggs to make an omelet." The destruction of contemplative orders who had no real role in social life should have been particularly a red flag. Why must you destroy all signs of piety contrary to your new secular ruled faith?

If the Gnostics decided that the problem of evil could only be solved by claiming God did not make the world, the Reformed decided that God must simply be evil. It begs the question, where as Luther was manipulated through vice, was Calvin actually praying to an "angel of light," who told him he desired the torment of babes"for my own good pleasure?" Did he know who his master was?

[Anonymous No.22965300]

>>22960415
>willfull erection control
>predestination
>nonexistence of past and future
Didn't he say the exact opposite?

[Anonymous No.22965303]

>>22961417
this is the pseud garbage that get me back to this board

[Anonymous No.22965322]

>>22961932
>I can't marry her because society wouldn't like it
Whichever way you swing it, this isn't a Christian sentiment.

[Anonymous No.22965409]

>>22961626
t. Screwtape
This unironically reads like what the demons in Augustine's head would have told him to discourage him lol

[Anonymous No.22965426]

>>22962112
None of that necessitates a Calvinist/Augustinian world view. That it is God's purpose that directs human history (and not the other way round) is undeniable for a Christian. This does not mean that God condemns men for actions outside of their control, or that He gives only some the capacity to repent.

[Anonymous No.22965434]

>>22961796
Cause there's a wealth of knowledge in the Bible and theology.

[Anonymous No.22965452]

>>22965129
I've always seen the whole predestination thing as almost word play nonsense.
>if god is all powerful could he make an immovable object that he can't move?
Is similar in nature to
>if god is all knowing can we really have free will or is it all already determined?
I don't think the former is precluded by the latter

[Anonymous No.22965455]

>>22965409
Yes, I am aware that CS Lewis decided to label all the doubts in his mind as "Satan."

Do you do this? Sounds like a recipe for scizophrenia (thoughts in the mind attributed to sinister externalities).

I mean, how could you possibly tell a demonic notion from an angelic one? Except by comparing the thought in question to some orthodoxy previously absorbed? And how can you examine that orthodoxy if you automatically dismiss all doubts of it as Satan?

God, CS Lewis was fucking sick in the head.

[Anonymous No.22965474]

>>22965455
Even Jesus had Satan whispering in his ear for 40 days in the desert, if we read the same text (the Bible), it's certainly possible that demons can try to give you bad thoughts and feed off of negative energy.
"Idle hands are the devil's workshop" and so forth.
Personally I believe most mental illnesses are just demons or bad spirits plaguing a man. A "reprobate mind" implies some of this.

[Anonymous No.22965476]

>>22962609
it's unbelievable to me that atheists think they can strip god from society but then cling to the good parts of christianity. julian baggini is an academic atheist who, in his book, writes about the difficulties in his objective of doing this. you literally can't because then everything is subjective and it's insanity. western atheists are just bizarre to me because they unknowingly cling to so many objective moral truths from the god but pass it off as if it's just common sense and for "human well being" or "human flourishing" but then champion gender affirmation surgery and abortion.

[Anonymous No.22965492]

>>22965476
>>22962609
Luckily, as inherently programmed into human nature, atheists or other amorals are self destructive (the wages of sin are death)
In the future I think there will be a return to level headed, Christian based thought in the west because the people having (successful non dead end) children are Christians. The only way for these amoral weirdos to influence kids is through academia and the media, they don't have kids of their own or if they do they become gay or trans which solves itself.
>but what about when they adopt
The kids adopted by these freaks often end up very scarred and reactionary to their parents' shitty upbringing. You're going to see a massive uptick in 15-20 years of all these victims of trans and gay parenting speaking out about how they were groomed or set up for failure and now their bodies are ruined.

[Anonymous No.22965603]

>>22965452
Right, as C. Wade Savage had shown "God cannot make a rock he cannot lift," is logically equivalent with "if there are rocks, God can lift them."

Although I don't think the reduction to notation totally solves the problems here. The problem goes deeper. Omnipotence, the ability to "do anything," is in many ways similar to the idea of "absolute freedom," as defined as "total lack of constraint."

You can do a Hegelian type dialectical analysis to show that absolute freedom reveals itself to be a contradiction (and indeed Hegel himself does this in the beginning of the Philosophy of Right, although it isn't as crisp as the formulations he tends to do in the Logic).

The problem with absolute freedom is that doing anything turns out to be a type of constraint. If I pick A, C, and E, I am no longer free to have picked A, B, and C, or just A, or none of the above.

Imagine an infinite blank canvas before you. You are free to draw anything you like. However, if you draw a shape with three sides, you are not free to have drawn a square.

Choice is its own form of limitation. One cannot choose P and not-P. So, in order to maintain absolute freedom an entity must flee from all definiteness and choose nothing. But that means absolute freedom reveals itself to be the total lack of choice, the exact opposite of freedom. The two collapse into one another and we need freedom to sublate its antithesis in order to produce a new term where freedom is the ability to choose between actualities.

Perhaps Saint Aquinas isn't in trouble because he has a more panentheistic view of God and his God is being itself and prior to temporality. What is actualized is what is and is chosen eternally. Thomism seems like it might work with some tweaks, although divine simplicity has all sorts of other problems that folks like Plantinga have pointed out. I think it works better when we combine personalism with Thomism, as many modern Catholic thinkers do.

Either way, the Reformation thinkers beat themselves into circles trying to use simplistic logic to solve these things, assuming that mystery cannot be beyond them (Erasmus point against Luther).

They abandon the apophatic tradition of Pseudo Dionysius, Eriugena, Eckhart, etc. and end up stuck only interacting with man's finite image of God.

This is why faith becomes the enemy of reason in so many Protestant traditions. Blind faith is the only way to overcome such dillemas once you've wed yourself to these antimones. The Bible makes this harder because Hebrew poetics often speaks in hyperbole, making statements about ALL, etc. So, the Calvinist points to Psalm 14 and says "NONE seek God, ALL are evil," even though the Psalm mentions the righteous men just lines later.

I think the other difficulty is that the Bible is written with historicism in mind. We get divine light through human voices. Texts are specifically in the first person, and yet people ignore this and just take the text as the word of God.

[Anonymous No.22965613]

>>22965603
My thoughts are that contradictions are supposed to make us think about intersubjectivity. Why does Saint Stephen's narrative of Abraham's life have a slightly different chronology from Genesis? Why do the two creation stories seem somewhat contradictory? Why are there two creation stories? Well, it seems like from the first pages we are being told we have to look deeply, with discernment.

"the Spirit gives life, but the flesh profits nothing," from John, the main interpretive line for Origen and Erasmus. You cannot neglect the anagogical interpretations.

[Anonymous No.22965660]

>>22965229
>the Reformed decided that God must simply be evil

Yes. Calvinism is the completion of Gnosticism. Pray that you will granted Death, the only salvation from the principle of Evil.

[Anonymous No.22965693]

>>22965603
Yeah I think all this extra-biblical rationalizing only serves to confuse things. Man was not meant to know the exact dimensions and bounds of God, we are simply called to believe and obey.

[Anonymous No.22965695]

>>22965229
>the Reformed decided that God must simply be evil

Yes. Calvinism is the completion of Gnosticism. Pray that you will be granted Death, the only salvation from the principle of Evil.

[Anonymous No.22965785]

>>22965693
I don't think that works. If you say, "man wasn't meant to think, just read the text and obey it, it's clear what it means," you immediately run into problems.

Even before Christianity, Judaism had split into different sects. It only reunified later, after the Diaspora. Christianity likewise had an incredible diversity in the early church, and it was a centuries long project to pull that all mostly together.

"Just read and obey," ends up becoming either "just obey my interpretation, which is the right one," or "everyone reads the text and comes to their own conclusion."

The problem in the first one is that it very easily falls into authoritarian abuse or false teachers controlling the church. False teachers who then claim that everything that doesn't agree with them is unbiblcal. The Reformed in particular have a problem with using the adjective "Biblical" to be a synonym for "Reformed," and everything else, even if it is citing Scripture every other line is "unbiblcal."

The problem with the other way can be seen in the US. You have endless schisms and each church becomes an island onto itself. It isn't a unified body, but a body decomposing. It can't play any sort of a large social role and be a pillar around which cultural life is organized because each isolated island has just a few dozen members normally. So religious life becomes either entirely private or just two hours on Sundays. It also makes it easier for the church to then be dominated by the state, or for it's only social role to be co-opted into some political party.

The Council/Synod process has its own problems but at least it is aware that it is part of a historical, fallible process, that is nonetheless the type of process God reveals the divine will in throughout the Bible. There is one Baptism and one Body, Saint Paul says as much.

[Anonymous No.22965871]

>>22965695
It's different in some key ways but similar in others. While not all Calvinists do this, I have run into some who essentially claim that anyone who isn't also an ultra-Calvinist isn't really a Christian. They worship their own idea of God, not the true God. The true Church is very small indeed. Catholics, Orthodox, Coptics, Methodists, Lutherans, etc. just attend "pagan temples," to worship themselves.

And God finds the elect repulsive too, but saves them based on nothing fathomable. The vast majority of all humanity, and all Christians, including the infants, was created destined for unending torment for the good pleasure of the God who made them wicked and sinful and justly tortures them.

God "hates" most people. Those who claim to be Christians and lack this gnosis of the true theology are almost certainly not elect, and destined for the pit.

Also, everyone wants to rape and eat babies etc. at all times, and only divine intervention has allowed the world to not be completely awful. But this is done for the benefit of the elect alone.

Granted, these guys were an extreme case. I don't think most Reformed outright deny that any other Christians might not be destined for Hell, but there is definetly a flavor of "if you really were saved you'd have the Spirit and it would give you the gnosis that reveals our theology to you." But at the same time, you shouldn't need to the Spirit because this is exactly what the Bible says and anyone disagreeing is intentionally misreading their desires into it, so...

[Anonymous No.22965873]

>>22965785
>The problem with the other way can be seen in the US. You have endless schisms and each church becomes an island onto itself. It isn't a unified body, but a body decomposing. It can't play any sort of a large social role and be a pillar around which cultural life is organized because each isolated island has just a few dozen members normally. So religious life becomes either entirely private or just two hours on Sundays
You're clearly not familiar with US churches. There is all kinds of good work done around the US by Lutheran, Methodist, Baptist, and other denominations. They have great church communities all around the country and they have their own hierarchies of bishops and conferences etc. to decide larger matters.
>It also makes it easier for the church to then be dominated by the state, or for its only social role to be co-opted into some political party.
This is an INCREDIBLY ironic statement given your next paragraph because the Orthodox Church from the beginning has been a mouthpiece and tool of the emperor, they invented cesaropapism and the ruler of the Byzantine empire was from day 1 of official Greek Orthodoxy viewed as literally God on earth. And you can see throughout Russian history up to the modern day how the Orthodox Church was subservient to the czars.
And then, with Catholicism, you can see hundreds of examples of Popes being used by the different European states and the pope himself manipulating wars and European affairs.
To sum this up
>dominated by the state
The entire history of the Orthodox Church does this
The Babylonian Captivity of the popes in Avignon being puppets of the French does this
>co opted by some political party
Cesaropapism is the literal foundation of Orthodoxy
Borgia popes, Medici popes, Avignon, the Great Schism (Two Popes period), and so on with Catholicism

[Anonymous No.22965891]

>>22965873
You clearly don't know anything about Byzantine history and the nature of Caesaropapism therein -- outside of the era of Justinian, the Orthodox church exercised a huge degree of autonomy from the Basileidi and no Emperor was ever able to enforce his particular theological views on the Church if there wasn't already widespread acceptance of them amongst the clergy. The Emperors had control over exoteric matters, ie. clerical appointments, but had no direct influence over esoteric matters like actual doctrine. Caesaropapism is just a Western distortion to slander Orthodoxy and retrojection of Russian and Soviet practices (which were far more Caesaropapist than the Greeks ever were) onto the Eastern Roman Empire.

[Anonymous No.22965947]

>>22965891
Every book I've ever read on the subject has pointed to caesaropapism in EO being an absolute heresy
It's talked about in the bottom paragraph of the left page

[Anonymous No.22965969]

>>22965873
I don't get why you thought that Orthodox weren't included in the comments on schism. The Russian church is the poster child of this. Protestants had this problem extremely bad early on, but they no longer have that problem. That said, they don't have the problem because mainline Protestantism has become socially and electorally irrelevant, essentially dying in Europe, so it's not even in the interest of secular powers to bother with them any more.

Mainline Protestantism does so better on unity, but they've also collapsed in relevance over all. Look at church attendence or % of people who find religion important in Europe. In America, it's the mainline churches that have collapsed the hardest, although now Evangelicals are starting to see the same thing.

Somehow, American Evangelicals have managed to avoid any semblance of unity AND yet still be captured by a secular power (the GOP, and even more the personage of Donald Trump, who even gets presented as a prophet or "King Cyrus.")

The modern liberal state has little incentive to control the church because it wields little influence.

The Papacy, while flawed, allowed for an independent church and the Gregorian Reforms, which kept bishoprics from becoming hereditary fiefdoms. It is a victory only in comparison, but one nonetheless. You can see the flip side in things like the King of England and German princes becoming the heads of their mandatory state church, "popes in their own land."

[Anonymous No.22965980]

>>22965474
Yeah you are totally mad and cannot see it. Christianity is a mental illness. No other system purporting to be an explanation of reality accuses all contraries to be the work of Satan.

[Anonymous No.22965997]

>>22965969
As has been shown by the reunion of several Eastern Rite churches, the solution to the Orthodox problem with their states and schisms is return to communion with Holy Mother Church. This does not mean undoing beautiful traditions, but it does mean both sides being willing to let go of power squabbles and errors. I am cautiously optimistic about further progress in this area.

[Anonymous No.22966022]

>>22965997
>the solution to the Orthodox problem with their states and schisms is return to communion with Holy Mother Church.

heh, that cat is out of the bag... has run off and become feral, and birthed more wild kitties, and they in turn. It is OVER! Do not be fooled by the billion+ "Catholics." These are mostly very superstitious Latinos who could care less about ecumenism and only attend Mass because they believe in the rituals, not the dogmas. The superstitions of Hispanic ladies are all that is keeping Catholicism alive. Left to the reactionary theologians, it would collapse immediately for what it is, a hermetic system of lies having no place in modernity. (I do not like modernity either, but modernity is the new pope-- that he reigns is undeniable).

[Anonymous No.22966037]

>>22965969
There's really no indication that Protestantism is "dying" anymore than the general trend of people all over the world becoming irreligious. You get this information from skewed and limited polls that can say anything you want them to say.
If this is to be some kind of indictment of Protestantism, a much bigger indictment exists of the orthodox losing their capital and being slaughtered by Turks for centuries. The same goes for Catholics who have been some of the biggest victims of mass slaughter by their downtrodden populations since the French Revolution. Consider the sheer brutality of the Spanish civil war against Catholics. You don't see people rising up and slaughtering Protestants due to grievances in the same way.
>the Gregorian Reforms, which kept bishoprics from becoming hereditary fiefdoms
The Gregorian reforms were a good idea but unfortunately they were just ignored as lay investiture continued after all over Europe. This in many ways crumbles the whole idea that it is absolutely necessary to get your salvation from a priest or bishop etc. because many of the priest throughout history were appointed by unordained rulers, meaning either all of their subject populations were in error and lost salvation, or the Catholic Church was wrong.

[Anonymous No.22966062]

>>22965980
There is precedent for this in other religions but I don't care to justify it by those means since other religions are irrelevant to Christianity and it's Truth.

[Anonymous No.22966192]

>>22966062
Islam may have a worse notion of Satan, I am not sure. I have not studied much of it.

Nobody will ever surpass CS Lewis's psychological abomination of a Satan. Screwtape Letters is one of the most fucked up portraits of a human psyche ever advanced. CS Lewis is a disgusting man.

[Anonymous No.22966310]

>>22966192
That is your opinion.

[Anonymous No.22966376]

>>22960415
He was black

[Anonymous No.22966627]

>>22966310
That is such a cheap thing to say. You are intellectually enfeebled by your need for authoriy and established foundation. I have no master. I am a free man. I do not fear hellfire in the quiet night. A god who presides over a Hell is not worth trusting or worshiping. A god who lets Satan roam the earth putting deceptive thoughts into the minds of people who would otherwise obey the will of God is very plainly not a good God, and you might as well worship Satan if that is your idea of God. Christians try to scapegoat all the evil in the world onto Satan. What about earthquakes and bacteria? Children die every day from horrible illnesses. What could this possibly mean? It makes no sense at all. You Christians break down and falter on this reasoning. You retreat into your dogmas and certainties under the burden of a frightful cosmos. You bow your head, place your hand on your heart, and for once you say "I do not know why cancer afflicts children, IT IS A MYSTERY."

God is very real. This reality did not spring into being of its own accord. God does not answer our questions when we ask them. He is utterly Silent. Therefore we must read his nature out of the reality before us and the life of our human souls. If God is good (and we have no other hope) then I promise you, he would not author scriptures for half the world while leaving the other half blind and hellbound. Your religion makes no sense at all. Life itself is THE MYSTERY. Not Suffering .

[Anonymous No.22966665]

>>22966627
Again, that is your misled opinion.

[Anonymous No.22966683]

>>22966665
What is the point of having a mind if you refuse to use it? The Mind is not Satanic. The Mind is Divine. God is creative, not static. Truth is revealed in the unfolding of Being, not a fucking Special Book curated by men in hats.

[Anonymous No.22966711]

>>22966627
>A god who lets Satan roam the earth putting deceptive thoughts into the minds of people who would otherwise obey the will of God is very plainly not a good God, and you might as well worship Satan if that is your idea of God.
because it's meant to be a choice. you choose to love god and others. if the nature of the earth was created differently it wouldn't be a choice, nor would it be sincere. and if you live this life choosing not to love god, then you will spend eternity separate from him, as it is your choice to do so.
>What about earthquakes and bacteria? Children die every day from horrible illnesses. What could this possibly mean? It makes no sense at all
what about them? the world is chaotic because humans rebelled. from suffering can come a great amount of strength and growth, and how much is the suffering due to the action or inaction of mankind? if you're saying god is evil for children suffering, then you must, in this context, accept that they will be with him in his kingdom after their short lives. these same questions have been asked for over 2000 years now. you're not any different than epicurus, and the answers are out there if you look.

[Anonymous No.22966745]

>>22966192
Are you the same guy calling Saint Augustine disgusting while getting half his biography wrong in your attempts to justify this position?

>>22966683
False dichotomy. The Christian has more reason to use their mind than the materialist nihilist, more reason to study philosophy, more reason to spend time in ascetic discipline and contemplation. Not embracing the self-refuting mythos of modernity is not the same thing as "not using your mind."

The modernist cannot even engage with the past. They can't read Plato, Saint Augustine, Eriugena, or Eckhart because their dogma precludes listening to them seriously.

You are correct that the signs of God are in the world are there to seem (Romans 1:20). You are wrong that God is silent. Even those without revelation could see the light. Plato is a prime example. Maimonides, Rumi, Averoese, and Avicenna as well, while the discipline of Dogen is lofty even if his conclusions are faulty.

[Anonymous No.22966754]

>>22966711
>>22966711
It is exceptionally Arrogant to assume nobody outside of your tradition is trying to love God or Mankind. You Christians have a queer sense of Love. You sing swan songs about Caritas. Yet when we come to you for guidance you merely hand us a list of forbidden behaviors. You ask for tithe in return. You hand out crumbs of magical bread. What do you teach men and women to do? To fear hellfire and Satan at every turn. Somewhere in the world a little boy is quivering in his bed, tormented by the idea of hell, for having masturbated. This is your idea of love and teaching. You may point to your Sisters of Charity and your hospitals, but you must recognize Mother Church intends to build churches primarily and hospitals secondarily. The institution's concern is the same as all worldly institutions: perpetuity and growth.

>what about them? the world is chaotic because humans rebeled

Was it God or Satan who unleashed viruses, bacteria and natural disasters at Eden? I do not remember that part of Genesis. You are only saying this outrageous and patently false thing because your theology implies it. Nothing in human or natural history testifies to a beginning of evil.

[Anonymous No.22966764]

>>22966745
>Are you the same guy calling Saint Augustine disgusting while getting half his biography wrong in your attempts to justify this position?

I disagree with the description, naturally, but yes. I remain steadfast: Augustine was already very far along in his conversion when he abandoned his common law wife.

[Anonymous No.22966826]

>>22966745
Take the Abelard pill, Plato and Aristotle were Christians.

Then take the Origen pill: Pythagoras, all the ancient mathematicians, the hermeticists, all that wisdom? Comes from Moses and Solomon.

My Arabic professor even borrowed this theory to claim basically all the culture and wisdom of antiquity should be attributed to Egypt via Moses, and Moses was, of course, a follower of Allah. Thus, Egyptian Muslims founded all civilization.

He also had a thing about them colonizing California during the Dark Ages...

[Anonymous No.22966881]

>>22965947
Read more, retard.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/3163118

[Anonymous No.22966905]

>>22966754
once again:
>A god who lets Satan roam the earth putting deceptive thoughts into the minds of people who would otherwise obey the will of God is very plainly not a good God, and you might as well worship Satan if that is your idea of God
there would be no choice then if there were no temptations to go astray from. if satan can whisper to a man to commit adultery, and he does knowing that it is wrong, he's making that choice. i assume these strawmans are mostly problems you have with with corrupted institutions? i'd gladly do my best to respond with anything scripture related if you'd ask. let's try not to confuse mosaic laws' relevancy in today's world. you could unironically use science to prove the cleanliness laws at the time to be true, though. shellfish for instance and the same goes for porn and masturbation.

>Was it God or Satan who unleashed viruses, bacteria and natural disasters at Eden? I do not remember that part of Genesis. You are only saying this outrageous and patently false thing because your theology implies it. Nothing in human or natural history testifies to a beginning of evil.
i do not know, friend, i was not there. we know god created mankind, then probably some time later the paradise garden where he crafted adam and eve. death was surely in the design, as animals and plants were meant for sustenance. i do not think mankind was designed to ever be immortal either. i do know though, that an immense amount of this world's trouble is from mankind's rebellion against god. hunger, wars, death and diseases(the caananites, for 400 years, practicing ritualistic orgies, sex with livestock and blood sacrifices).

[Anonymous No.22966938]

>>22966905
Human sacrifice is the foundation of all world religions. The origin of the priest is the blood of the innocent. It is fairly obvious even in your present day rituals. You think these men are the keepers of truth. They are the keepers of the most unholy magic ever proffered. The essence of human sacrifice is this: his blood will be our prosperity. Sound familiar?

Your Heaven is my Hell, just like the Man Eaters of old. You love this God. You are excited by the idea of hellfire, where human bodies roast forever.

Christians, excepting St. Francis et al
(the True Gospel) and St. John of the Cross (The Mystical Gospel) are Man Eaters. It is a Death Cult.

[Anonymous No.22966966]

>>22966938
>Human sacrifice is the foundation of all world religions
human sacrifice was an abomination to god. it was stated in deuteronomy and 2 kings. jepthah also didn't kill his daughter, in case you had that as a talking point.
>Your Heaven is my Hell, just like the Man Eaters of old. You love this God. You are excited by the idea of hellfire, where human bodies roast forever.
you have such a cynical view. i don't enjoy the thought of anyone going that way. jesus spoke in metaphors and there is no real clear vivid description of hell. fire with an outer darkness and gnashing of teeth. it could literally just be separation from god and sharing eternity in a place with those who rejected him.

[Anonymous No.22966987]

>>22966966
Remember your lessons from CS Lewis, and Jesus. Look for Satan where you least expect him. The wolf is in sheep's clothing.

[Anonymous No.22967002]

>>22966987
that would explain my current problem of finding a church to attend. everything around me is either a concert hall where the female pastor gives movie reviews or lgbtq rallies.

[Anonymous No.22967055]

>>22967002
What is man to do in this world? Down here evil seeds grow goodly trees, and goodly trees bear wicked fruit. Was Paul the Antichrist? Is Satan the real God? How can they be opposed? One made the other.

Let us make a mindgame of existence, with very high stakes! Or better still, call this what it is, a dream, a fantasy, an unreality with ephemeral and illusory suffering, a pulsing dance of knowledge and ignorance and lies, each called by the other. Ah! To the Devil with all of it!

"Truly My Satan thou art but a Dunce
And dost not know the Garment from the Man
Every Harlot was a Virgin once
Nor canst thou ever change Kate into Nan

Tho thou art Worship'd by the Names Divine
Of Jesus & Jehovah thou art still
The Son of Morn in weary Nights decline
The lost Travellers Dream under the Hill"

[Anonymous No.22967075]

>>22966938
lmao this nigga

[Anonymous No.22967128]

>>22967075
It is the foundation of every known civilization. Archaic man is a horrible, cruel, miserable creature. Look at art from any pre-writing civilization. The human forms are monstrous and tortured. There is scene after scene of horrible violence and death. That was the universe in which Archaic man lived, before gnosis entered the world and allowed mankind to imagine the suffering of others, which in an animal state is only done instinctively and restrictively (recoiling from destroyed flesh).

Humanity has been fighting a very long battle to discover what is happening in one another's minds. The ancient world was unprepared for the mode of sexual confession. Sex and desire operated in profound secrecy under systems of brutal community law. People did not know that homosexuality is common. They did not know that masturbation is common. They did not speak of these things except to forbid them. This is why Paul was driven utterly mad by his homoerotic desires-- he had no idea fully half the men he met felt the same, mysterious, forbidden longings. He thought it was Satan. There was no Kinsey. Admitting to adultery would send you to a scaffold.

We had to achieve drama and the novel to grasp the psyche. First drama of the chorus and the speech, under masks. Masks! So bashful were we to outspeak! Then drama of monologue. Then the self-centered poetry of Wordsworth. There, in confessions of poems, novels and characters, we may read minds, and at last see through a mirror clearly.

Human history is a long story of the human mind discovering itself in other bodies.

[Anonymous No.22967243]

>>22966881
>w-we don't AKSCHUALLY worship the emperor it's [meaningless cope 2000 years later]
>w-we don't AKSCHUALLY bow down, pray to, and worship images and idols it's [heretical cope]
>w-we don't AKSCHUALLY believe Jesus wasn't divine, he's [Arian schismatic cope]
>w-we don't venerate and pray to false idols, pagan deities turned saints, and Buddha they're ACKSHUALLY [trad folklore cope]
Orthodoxy has all the trappings of a deeply pagan, pantheistic, unholy religion
Don't believe me on the Buddha part?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barlaam_and_Josaphat

[Anonymous No.22967258]

>>22961819
You just don't sound as smart as them, sorry.

[Anonymous No.22967259]

>>22967243
Not him, but --
>In the Middle Ages the two were identified as Christian saints, although they were never formally canonized.

[Anonymous No.22967272]

>>22965322
Yeah and he later repented because of it. What's your point?

[Anonymous No.22967277]

>>22967259
Regardless they were worshipped and appraised by orthodox people who were so caught up in praying to idols they accidentally adding fucking BUDDHA to their pantheon. If that isn't an indictment that you're doing something wrong I don't know what is.

[Anonymous No.22967306]

>>22960415
He was a NAFRI chad who spiritually colonized ytoids

[Anonymous No.22967326]

>>22967243
>>22967259
>>22967277
You obviously didn't bother to look the slightest bit into this. Regardless of if the story was vaguely based on the Buddha story, it was radically reorganized and Christianized. People weren't worshipping the figures in the story, it was a popular "conversion of a king," story set in far-off India, a place no one really knew about. It's on par with the "Prestor John," mythos, a curiosity, not part of the religion.

From your own link:
>According to the legend, an Indian king persecuted the Christian Church in his realm. After astrologers predicted that his own son would some day become a Christian, the king imprisoned the young prince Josaphat, who nevertheless met the hermit Saint Barlaam and converted to Christianity. After much tribulation the young prince's father accepted the Christian faith, turned over his throne to Josaphat, and retired to the desert to become a hermit. Josaphat himself later abdicated and went into seclusion with his old teacher Barlaam

Wow, so incredibly Buddhist. How could a Christian possibly find a story about a far off king converting inspiring. They must have been so idolatrous!

Same thing happened with Christianity in China. A corrupted Christianity made it to China via the Manicheans such that Buddah and Jesus got fused into one person that they worshipped.

[Anonymous No.22967329]

>>22967258
read this
>>22967128

[Anonymous No.22967383]

>>22967326
>The story of Barlaam and Josaphat or Joasaph is a Christianized and later version of the story of Siddhartha Gautama, who became the Buddha.[3] The tale derives from a second to fourth century Sanskrit Mahayana Buddhist text, via a Manichaean version,[4] then the Arabic Kitāb Bilawhar wa-Būd̠āsaf (Book of Bilawhar and Budhasaf), current in Baghdad in the eighth century, from where it entered into Middle Eastern Christian circles before appearing in European versions.
When's the last time a Lutheran asked Vishnu for guidance?

[Anonymous No.22967581]

>>22967243
>>w-we don't AKSCHUALLY worship the emperor it's [meaningless cope 2000 years later]
Anon, monarchs were regarded as vicars of Christ in the West and in France and Britain, the Kings were believed to have had a holy touch that could cure subjects of their illnesses. Was this worship?

>>w-we don't AKSCHUALLY bow down, pray to, and worship images and idols it's [heretical cope]
Calvinist retard.

Romans 1:18-23

18 The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness,
19 since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them.
20 For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.
21 For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.
22 Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools
23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles.

As St Paul explains, the issue of idolatry is the result of man's misunderstanding the divine nature and mistaking creaturely qualities for divine ones. God cannot be seen in His essence ([God] alone is immortal and who lives in unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or can see, as 1 Timothy 6:16 says), but He can be seen in His glory, revealed to us by the one and only Son (John 1:14), Who Has revealed Him (John 1:18) and is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation (Colossians 1:15), through Whom all things were made (John 1:3). Everything God created is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving (1 Timothy 4:4), but from Him and through Him and for Him are all things (Romans 11:36), we live, we live for the Lord, and if we die, we die for the Lord (Romans 14:8), and exist so that with one mind and one voice we may glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ (Romans 15:6). All things exist so that through them we may contemplate and glorify God by sharing in the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ (2 Thessalonians 2:14), the glory which He had with the Father before the world began (John 17:5), so that our lowly bodies will be like his glorious body (Philippians 3:21), for what is it is sown in dishonor is raised in glory (1 Corinthians 15:43), for God has made man a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor (Psalm 8:5). Evil has no ontological basis -- it is but the absence or corruption of good. It is taking to see this world as intrinsically good, as opposed to viewing it as solely good when it participates in God's goodness and is used to glorify Him. Or is worshipping Jesus idolatry because His body is a created one, despite its glory?

[Anonymous No.22967613]

>>22967243
>>22967581
>>w-we don't AKSCHUALLY believe Jesus wasn't divine, he's [Arian schismatic cope]
Arius wasn't psilanthropists, retard. He believed Jesus was God and yet a creature, the immediate creator of the world. He was an ontological subordinationist who believed the Word was less divine than the Father, yet immaterial, immortal, omniscient, etc. The homoi(o)ousians weren't Arians, they rejected Nicaea because it sounded too Modalist and Monarchian to them; they were Trinitarians wary of the influence of Marcellus of Ancyra on the council. You're historically illiterate.

[Anonymous No.22967684]

>>22967581
>Anon, monarchs were regarded as vicars of Christ in the West and in France and Britain, the Kings were believed to have had a holy touch that could cure subjects of their illnesses. Was this worship?
this was not good, however they were not seen on the caesaropapist level that EOs saw their ruler as see >>22965947
>and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles.
This is exactly what EO does though, not sure why you quoted scripture that blows out all of their obsession with icons and images
You also didn't refute EOs casually glorifying Buddha

[Anonymous No.22967693]

>>22967326
It's not even that, the ties to Buddha are based on 19th century philological fudging and aren't even credible. This is why folks like >>22967243 and >>22967277 shouldn't get their information from Wikipedia. It was shoddy scholarship aimed at novelty and perennialism sentiment that dominated at the time.

In reality, the story comes out of the Christian East and referring to India is the biggest overlap. The stories have little in common. There is no being hidden from suffering. No Buddhist motifs. Literally all the is similar is that they take place in India and the rest is a very creative attempt to trace the name back to a Buddhist term through five disparate languages, at one point making an appeal to how characters in the difference alphabet look sort of similar.

If "did Eastern Orthodox make Buddha a saint?" was fact checked it would get an F. It's on par with the "Christ is really Crishna," shit. There is no need to make up shit about Eastern influence in the West. You can see plenty of it. Plato, the Orphic cult. Hell, something like the Theory of Forms is found in Egyptian Memphite Theology and it was always a legend that Plato learned the wisdom of the Egyptians when he visited. But the direction isn't even all that clear, as the transmigration of souls seems like it may have came out of Egypt and the Fertile Crescent originally.

In any event, there is also loads unique in Greek and particularly Jewish thought, and so it remains that these two cultures are the cornerstones of the West, particularly the very unique flavor of Jewish monotheism, although Platonism certainly influenced it a lot in turn after the Exile.

[Anonymous No.22967726]

>>22967684
Read the paper I sent, faggot. The Emperors were NEVER able to sway ecclesiastical policy and theology their if there wasn't already support for what they sought to promote. As Anthony Kaldelis was shown, in practice Byzantium could be quite demotic, with popular revolts' threatening the power of emperors and public opinion's being essential to political success. Your screencap demonstrates absolutely nothing.

>not sure why you quoted scripture that blows out all of their obsession with icons and images
It doesn't though. You can't show how it does.

[Anonymous No.22967735]

>>22967726
This beats both points

[Anonymous No.22967738]

>>22967735
>i-is that
>heckin KNEELING!?!?!
>NOOOO I'M LOSING MY MIND

[Anonymous No.22967746]

>>22967383
>People liked a story about a prince and a king becoming just Christian rulers abroad, this is terrible!
>Not like the Lutherans
>schisming the church, massacring the peasants, raping nuns, abolishing monasteries, blaspheming the Blessed Virgin, destroying holy art in a massive scale, seizing church property for private purposes, REMOVING HUNDREDS OF PAGES FROM THE BIBLE, blaspheming the Eucharist, blaspheming the Holy Spirit, rejecting the Church Fathers, denying the communion of the Saints...
>That's fine.

[Anonymous No.22967751]

>>22967738
Kissing too

[Anonymous No.22967756]

>>22967751
He himself went on ahead and bowed down to the ground seven times as he approached his brother. (Genesis 33:3)
I will make those who are of the synagogue of Satan, who claim to be Jews though they are not, but are liars—I will make them come and fall down at your feet and acknowledge that I have loved you. (Revelation 3:9)

[Anonymous No.22967763]

>>22967746
You seem to be mistaking Calvinists for Lutherans. Lutherans typically are quite high church and accept the real presence in the Eucharist, the veneration of Mary, images, saints, etc.

[Anonymous No.22967766]

>>22960530
Exactly? He was in the time it was altering to that. Nicaea council happened with a pagan senate in Rome u faggot. Your comment proves his point dipshit
>>22960415
I'm willing to bet op that you can't even explain what any of those ideas mean

[Anonymous No.22967771]

>>22967751
>Noooooooo! You can't bow down before God. You can't venerate the Queen of Heaven and Theotokos. You're either elect or not that's all it comes down to, stop worshiping it can't make you elect!

[Anonymous No.22967815]

>>22967746
>pope casually claims descent from Isis and Osiris and engraves the Vatican with their images in your path
This is your Vicar of Christ on earth??

[Anonymous No.22967841]

>>22967746
Catholic church:
>already schism'd with EO
>has had a monopoly on massacring peasants for its entire existence
>papal SANCTIONED nun-raping armies (pic related)
And none of that matters with Protestants because Protestants don't revere and sanction these disgusting actions, whereas Catholics literally have to defend anything popes and the church have done and claimed as they are the vicar of Christ and "absolutely necessary" to salvation.

[Anonymous No.22967885]

>>22967746
Oops Popebro accidentally made the Vatican a WHOREHOUSE again surely he is absolutely necessary for salvation tho

[Anonymous No.22967901]

>>22967746
>LIVE ANIMAL SEX VIEWING IN THE VATICAN
>Catholics sleep
>some friar: hey maybe we shouldn't be absolutely subject to the Roman Pontiff guys...
>Catholics: WTF SOMEBODY KILL THIS GUY AND EVERYONE WHO THINKS LIKE THIS

[Anonymous No.22968043]

>>22960549
>the more you'll be convinced of the absolute wickedness of fallen man divorced from God.
No, it's really just other increasingly prideful Christians doing that for me

[Anonymous No.22968082]

>>22967815
>>22967841
>>22967885
>>22967901
Why did you try proving Byzantine Caesaropapism with images from Imperial Russia despite my noting that caricatures of Byzantium as a despotism are just retrojections of Russian absolutism (itself exaggerated and historically distorted) onto the ERE?

[Anonymous No.22968093]

>>22968082
The apple doesn't fall far from the tree

[Anonymous No.22968148]

>>22968093
So you're historically illiterate on both Byzantium and Russia. Got it. It's cute that you think that military officers' kneeling is proof of any sort of absolutism, though. Russia's far right and military circles secretly loathed Nicholas II and saw him as a weakling whose impotency and indecision stymied their own vision of robust, nationalist and proto-fascist Russia, but I suppose they kneeled so that means he was le god lmao.

[Anonymous No.22968195]

>>22967885
Oh, well if it's in a book it just be true ...

[Anonymous No.22968256]

>>22961626
>augustine confessing his sins
>pseud on 4chan uses it as proof of his immorality
Good work jeeves

[Anonymous No.22968267]

>>22968148
Call me when another Christian sect accidentally worships Buddha

[Anonymous No.22968273]

>>22968256
I read the book, and make no claims to my stature. I shared MY OWN thoughts, which you are free to disagree with, but there is nothing pseudointellectual about it, that is horse shit. I did my homework, and you cannot take that from me, little boy.

[Anonymous No.22968323]

>>22968267
Why are you too much of a pussy to concede? But do explain how your Wikipedia sourced claim about a conversion story from India proves anybody EO worships Buddha.

[Anonymous No.22969041]

Why the fuck do brits say erm instead of um?

[Anonymous No.22969048]

>>22969041
Sorry guys wrong thread

[Anonymous No.22969165]

>>22961320
It says so much you can’t even word some of it so you have to communicate in snarky replies, right?

[Anonymous No.22969211]

>>22967306
nafris are a muttoid race that didn't even exist before the fall of rome

[Anonymous No.22969557]

>>22969165
Your syntax is so poor I can't even parse what it is you're trying to say here. Take a breath and try again.

[Anonymous No.22969900]

>Protestantism dead in Europe, like 10-20% active in Protestant countries.
>Protestantism is the US racing to catch up.
>US Evangelicals becoming Trump cultists.
>Meanwhile the religious nations in Europe are Italy, Poland, Hungary, etc. What do they have in common?

[Anonymous No.22969914]

>>22969900
BTW, this image is from before the rapid acceleration in the decline of Protestantism, particularly Evangelicals post-2016 and especially post-2020. Catholic growth ticked up over the same period, and Catholic is now the largest single denomination in the US.

[Anonymous No.22970768]

>>22969914
That's from Hispanics who believe in a Mexican cult version of Catholicism that isn't even the same religion
Might as well get giddy at rising numbers of Islamics moving to your country

[Anonymous No.22971721]

>>22970768
Mexican folk religions are scary as fuck

[Anonymous No.22971760]

>>22971721
aztec genetics make them fucked up like that. they would have war games where the craziest mother fuckers would win and then make babies.

[Anonymous No.22972878]

>>22960415
Don't forget he literally thought sin was stored in the balls

[Anonymous No.22973477]

>>22961652
>, even so through the obedience of the One the many will be made righteous.”

This is why the guy at Sodom and G should have asked "is 1 good person enough"

Bible is an affirmative teaching on this

[Anonymous No.22973479]

>>22961834
>material state [results from] falling from God
I don't think this follows since we require our bodies for resurrection (?)

[Anonymous No.22973524]

>>22962002
>There is a whole tradition of apophatic contemplation that shares some strong similarities with Zen practice (although also huge differences). A person must empty themselves, becoming "poor in spirit," that they might be infused with a new spirit, since God created man free and we must choose God over the flesh. This is the "crucifixion of the flesh," of which Saint Paul speaks.

Do you have references for this? I am new to this and this sounds interesting.

[Anonymous No.22973554]

>>22962058
>excusong McCarick's proclivity for boy touching

This is really my biggest issue with the institution of Church, the Communist Pope and everything that follows from it. I don't understand how someone can synthesis this with the Bible teachings and belonging to the Church.

[Anonymous No.22973561]

>>22962143
Someone needs to tell the church about what are "selection effects" (ie. when you select for some things out of all things) and tell them this practice of selecting faggots .. selects for faggots.

Priests need to be able to marry so you can pick actual heterosexuals for the job.

[Anonymous No.22973584]

>>22973524
Look up St John of the Cross he calls it contemplation. “The Spiritual Canticle” and his poems are a good place to start.

[Anonymous No.22973591]

>>22967243
>w-we don't AKSCHUALLY believe Jesus wasn't divine, he's [Arian schismatic cope]

Which Orthodox Church teaches this? All the ones I know assert that Christ was divine from the beginning, a hypostasis of God.

[Anonymous No.22973602]

>>22968093
It is one of the worst reading sins to do anachronistic readings. You appear to me to be one of those guys who knowingly posts something false to be proven wrong (in order to acquire maybe a better understanding for himself).

[Anonymous No.22973605]

>>22969900
This is probably the best argument against actual existence of God imho. That the faith is dying all around.

[Anonymous No.22974001]

>>22973605
Covid lopped off a good 10 or 20% of church attendance practically overnight. I remember wondering what sort of freakish God would permit covid transmission via Eucharist. Sicko God. Anyways yes, sometimes one feels a little sorry for the Christians. Their portion of the world is ever shrinking.

[Anonymous No.22974073]

>>22960569
Then why is it seemingly believed in books like the Imitation of Christ?

[Anonymous No.22974286]

>>22974001
I think it is pretty telling how easily believers subjugated their own supposedly existential beliefs (belief in God and such) to literally green haired troons at New York Times by not holding service etc.

I am not a believer, nor an atheist, but I cannot see how this behavior by supposed believers fits with their stated beliefs about religion.

They were not subservient to God from 2020-2022, they were willingly (some rebelled, which are the few) subservient to literally libtards.

It is very hard for me to take any religion seriously because of this kind of behavior.

[Anonymous No.22974302]

>>22974286
are you trying to say that because the masses (historically dumb and ignorant) do something to play pretend, the religions are not worth following? Friend, if your view of religion can be summed up as "some religious people do dumb shit" then you got the wrong attitude. It is true that for each one person genuinely trying to be like Christ there are 1000 that only pretend, but that does not say anything about the correctness of the theology. There are bad people in every group

[Anonymous No.22974303]

>>22960415
>>willfull erection control

[Anonymous No.22974310]

>>22974302
I am saying if you say you follow God and then cuck your church service to New York Times, then your God is New York Times and not the God of the Bible.

[Anonymous No.22974958]

>>22960549
This is true. There's no convincing those that disagree, people rationalize their flaws, smart people are good at it.