John Vervaeke and Paul Vanderklay on Neoplatonism, Evolution, and Christianity
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- čas přidán 2. 08. 2024
- @johnvervaeke and @PaulVanderKlay come together for a dialogue on neoplatonism, evolution, and Christianity. This is my third dialogue with John Vervaeke and the first appearance of Paul on my channel.
We mention Adam Friended, David Sloan Wilson, Bret Weinstein, Thomas Aquinas, the Apostle Paul, Jacob Faturechi, Origen of Alexandria, Plotinus, Philo of Alexandria, John Scotus Eriugena, Proclus, Maximus the Confessor, Porphyry, Noam Chomsky, Northrop Frye, CS Lewis, Iamblichus, Gregory Shaw, Pseudo-Dionysius, Jonathan Pageau, Numenius, Alvin Platinga, Daniel Dennett, Donald Hoffman, Joscha Bach, Paul Anleitner (aka @DeepTalksTheology ), Sevilla King (aka @aqualityexistence4842 ), Cornelius Platinga, David Bentley Hart, sigmund freud, Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, Hagel, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, DC Schlinder, Von Balthasar, Clare Carlisle, Spinoza, and more.
00:00:00 - Introduction
00:08:30 - The evolutionary argument for Christianity
00:16:20 - John proposes the importance of Neoplationism
00:28:30 - Paul responds to John's proposal
00:37:38 - The origins of Neoplatonism
00:46:45 - The necessity of particularity
01:07:00 - The evolutionary argument against naturalism
01:24:20 - The uniqueness of Christian Neoplatonism
01:28:00 - Hermeneutics of suspicion vs Hermeneutics of beauty
01:36:00 - Closing thoughts and teasers for next time
Link to podcast version of this episode: anchor.fm/transfigured-sam/ep...
Vervaeke's awakening from the meaning crisis: • Ep. 1 - Awakening from...
Vervaeke and Joscha Bach: • Joscha Bach Λ John Ver...
The fact that we can sit here and listen to these 3 great people--all so brilliant--is such a blessing. That seems such a paltry word for it. It's like being in the actual Areopagus of ancient Athens. And the particular nature of the conversation, where each person is not interrupted or talked over, so we can hear their complete brilliant thoughts is instructive. Sam, I thought your second conversation with VVK did not get 1/100,000th the attention it warranted, so I was gleeful that you had this one. Wow. Just wow. Brilliant. Damn, isn't it just amazing that VVK and PVK have converged on this solution--the Courtyard, or the Estuary! Man. I'm blown away. "God is the eternal affordance of self-transcendence." True dat. I want to meet IN PERSON! Look forward to the next convo, the topic of which is essential and of great interest to me--inclusion and exclusivity. Thank you gentlemen. ps. Paul, that beard----gorgeous!
This is very kind thank you for watching and commenting.
@@transfigured3673 Hello friend, Jesus is not the 2nd person of the trinity but God Almighty (the Holy Spirit) Himself who came to earth and became flesh and dwelled among us and went to the cross. Hallelujah. Be blessed
Sam, you are a force to be reckoned with! Love so many of the things you said and made salient to me! 🤗
Jonathan Pageau’s talk “Pentecost of the Zombie Apocalypse “ hits on this idea of courtyard in very deep way.
Yay! John wants to talk more! 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
Neoplatonism points to the virtuous structure of the universe. Plotinus developed-discovered advanced spiritual practices, which themselves are not so nuanced that they can't be learned and applied within reason. How could people not be drawn to such a rich, vibrant orientation that rewards participation, values intelligibility, and affirms and uncovers inner goodness of being and beings, and other such things? We're lucky to be in the same history as all these great people with access to books and stories from our shared past!
Yes :-D
1:29:39 - 1:30:08 YES! John. This is Barfield’s whole point in Saving the appearances: a case study in idolatry. And it’s an argument for perception as iconic & embodied/real (imminently transcendent) vs merely an abstracted image (conceptual idol).
The waterfall is sublime, not pretty. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but not ONLY there. The subjective/objective divide is false and part of Divided Man.
We need to start to THINK iconically.
Look forward to the next talk!
Nice! Can't wait to listen to this. I've wanted to hear you three for a while now.
I love this common grammar language and am very high openness so it makes sense to me, but I’m also close enough in space and relation to fundamentalist presuppositionalists to be skeptical that this will work outside of those open enough to be okay with a form of pluralism.
We are in a similar space. Thanks for watching
Best conversation in This Little Corner I’ve seen in a while. The three of you generated amazing Dialogos. I’m also very happy that Vervaeke is digging into Maximus. An answer to my and Pageau’s prayers.
Great conversation. I think that I finally grok what John has been getting at with "the religion that is not a religion." He is really saying that we need "a neo-platonism that isn't historical neo-platonism" in its grammatical capacity.
This is something that has always troubled me in John's thought. He talks a lot about how we need to account for pluralism, but I could never see how pluralism doesn't just collapse into a sneering too-clever nihilism for the people "who really understand." In other words, the cosmopolitan elite vulture class that lacks any solidarity with the societies over which they sit. I now see the RTNAR as John's name for a bridge that could join different worldviews within a pluralistic society.
Excellent conversation thank you all!
looking forward to this!
Excited to hear your thoughts!
This was a brilliant discussion, guys. Subscribed! And can't wait for the next one 🙏✨
Great conversation! Really enjoyed it!
More courtyards embodying beauty and excellent dialogos please. All 3 of you, individually brought a ton to this recursively expanding body of logos and understanding. I don't expect any of that to land or make sense but really appreciate this content guys! Cheers.
Great conversation!!! I'm definitely gonna subscribe to the channel.
One thing I really wanted to see is JV explaining his distinction between incorporation, embodiment and incarnation in a little bit more depth.
Oh man, Sam! I'm still working my way through this, but we NEED to talk. Your framing of this whole conversation was absolutely brilliant. I think there's this longstanding problem (and maybe you all get to this later in the convo) about whether or not any perception of what we deem to be true, good, or beautiful can only be a statement about what is evolutionarily advantageous. If all we have is what is evolutionarily advantageous to our species, then we obviously undercut any ability to make any claims to objective, universal, and transcultural truths thus undermining rationality and the very empiricism that led us to trust the scientific process that produced evolutionary theory (I think there's relevance here to my latest wildly unpopular video on Star Trek and Transcultural Truths).
On the other hand, if what is optimally functional for the species is a reflection of harmony with some objective fount of all truth, goodness, and beauty, then some idea or religious narrative having "social utility" isn't MERELY a utilitarian argument.
I'd love to talk again soon. Let's make it happen
Just a few short of 1k subs. Great job Sam!
Just a few more JBP tweets and I'll be there
that was great... i felt it move the ball forward on some of my thought.. just listening to it.
A very profound discussion! I'm liking the analogies being used to illustrate this proposal, John is so very humble I love it.
I’m here. Guess my invitation must have gotten lost in the emails.
lol
Courtyard=Estuary?? Sounds similar to me!
Good conversation, Sam. Well done.
Thanks anselman that means a lot
54:00 In the Retractions Agustine presents in as the current/final form of the perennial religion, Barfield includes this quote from Augustine in the footnotes in Saving the Appearances.
Neo Platonism needs a body. It needs an incarnation.
100% amen agree
Nailed it.
What doesn’t? 😏
@@WhiteStoneName I have a feeling John would help me to make more sense of my body question.
@@shari6063 On the contrary , you might make more sense of it to him, When it incarnates it becomes reli-go.JV is basically choosing the idea of love rather than the reality of it. No man can love an idea, but everyman can love a face,
John's pulling out the notion of neoplatonism's value to evolve the inteligibility of the sacred within religio seems a precedent in furthering the development within "this corner of the internet." I could not help but to feel this specific dialogue might hold up as capsule in time for what, hopefully, becomes evolving dialogues that incorporate a wider array of practitioners from various religious traditions, as well as academically centered philosophers and scientists.
With that said, thank you to John, and of course Sam and Paul for your openness, fellowship, and agape to mimic beauty and truth.
I’m currently working on thinking about how Origen & Memoria work with Barfield’s “unepresented” & what this means for ontology, necessarily so. And how vision works, both biological and intellectual.
Research grant DENIED
Excellent - thank you
Thanks for listening
I wonder if evolution at higher order levels than just the genetic level can explain the idea that evolution seems to progress faster than random mutation would allow. For example, if there are more sources of variation and selection than is initially apparent, then one would expect that the purely genetic account would be insufficient. In particular, Michael Levin's work comes to mind (e.g. higher order morphology is encoded and determined by voltage patterns between cells as opposed to genetic differences within cells). See Curt's discussion with him for details (/watch?v=Z0TNfysTazc). I would recommend that discussion in general if you (whoever is reading this) haven't seen it.
This point isn't a reductionistic refutation of the points brought up in the discussion by the way. If anything, it might provide a point of continuity between the material and the spiritual, if one wants to use that word.
Christ almighty, I am 12 minutes in and the monologue hasn't stopped. Fantastic discussion though! I have so much to read, it's completely crazy. :)
John! I was going to ask in the comments if you had done a deep dive into Meek and Polanyi. “Loving to Know” is another book of hers I would look into as well as Dru Johnson’s “Ritual Knowing”. He was a student of Meek’s and takes it in a kore particular direction, stating that God primarily used embodiment and ritual to teach the Israelites truths about himself.
@ 1:17 ... "The success of an embodied thing is a revelation of truth itself". My favorite part of this video. My question is what is successful embodiment? That which holds us together, and bridges culture and time? That which directs us towards the Good? Success can be defined in many ways by many religions. I admit I'm a bit of a universalist. Any thoughts about this out there? Also, this video has taught me to rethink propositional knowledge. I used to down play propositional knowledge but now not so much. This is a great teaching video Sam. Thank you.
right, the ability the know what success means is very tricky
Subbed
Oh boy!
Darn you Sam, I am trying to get through Sheldrake's book on the Physics of Angels on audiobook, but there's no way I am not listening to this.
Sorry not sorry
I’m really happy that you’re listening to that book, Nate.
1:01:53 exactly. At some point listening to all these I’ve developed a mental picture of these participants to have a conversation with in my head. I’ve asked this of multiple people and as of yet no one else related to this internal dialogue frame.
I hope the version of me in your head is interesting!
Paul mentioned the Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism being around in various circles for quite a while. It’s there from the beginning of the theory. Darwin himself, a careful thinker, was the first to articulate it:
“With me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man’s mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey’s mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?”
That's a fascinating quote! I was unaware that Darwin himself had thought about these issues. Thanks for sharing.
24:56 "evolution doesn't push forward toward perfection" is an interestingly teleological and eschatological claim. I'm not saying it'ss a strange or unique claim, but hearing John say it this way strikes me as interesting. Here we're speaking of "evolution" as possessing some agency (or lack their of in John's case) or their being some agentic will behind that process. I get that inferring a teleological aim is outside of the discipline of science, but denying a teleological aim is also a philosophical statement.
We should definitely talk again soon
Beauty will save the world - Dostoyevsky
A Unitarian, a non-theist, and a Reformed Pastor walk into a bar… there must be a joke there somewhere.
Wonderful conversation!
Thanks for listening
Awesome little corner of the internet. Trying to deal with the problem of too much good content... Have yet to dive into John's meaning crisis series.
1:30:14 “Beauty is when appearance discloses the depth of realness.” The entire video was worth watching for the hermeneutic’s of suspicion vs. hermeneutic’s of beauty language.
Did Vervaeke say, feed two birds with one *scone* ?
Hi Sam. Great talk! Would it be possible for you to post the books on Origen you mentioned? I'll also be taking a look at your episodes about the early church fathers. Thanks so much!
www.amazon.com/Origen-First-Principles-Oxford-Christian/dp/0198845316/ref=pd_lpo_1?pd_rd_i=0198845316&psc=1
the kindle copy is free on amazon
@@As-fs6qd Would you have a link? I can't find the Kindle version on Amazon.
44:30 *plugs his video on Christian perennialism vs religious pluralism*, which I think John would like.
Neoplatonism married Christianity. It was a revelation & greater articulation of what always was and has been. But it’s part of the evolution of consciousness.
Neoplatonism is not in the Bible. The groom of Christianity is Jesus, not Plato.
@@modustrollens7833 oh! Thanks.
This is hard for me to understand but I like this idea that beauty as also shocking.
40:21 Yep, agree with Jacob, see also my Barker link
I agree with Rene Girard. He said that Christianity is also anthropologically true.
1:42:30 YES! Apokatastasis!! John is a hero. Now, he just needs to bring in personlism and panentheism, which is part of the whole package. 😉
Based VVK
Oh, you mean the doctrine that was condemned as heretical at the Fifth Ecumenical Council of 553? I don't know what those other things are, but they sound heretical too. Read your church history.
Epektasis - the infinite, ever intensifying outreach of the soul toward Divinity which never reaches an ultimate point of cessation or satiety- not apokatastasis, the universal reconciliation of all things in God. But I imagine Vervaeke would have positive things to say of apokatastasis too.
PVK has the best Santa beard.
1:03:07 That was always my feeling about "Dionysius the Areopagite". He was not a fraud, and I think the "pseudo-" prefix need not imply that. I also wonder if he might actually have used some material derived from the disciple mentioned in Acts.but that might be just my wishful thinking.
Sam you bring out the best in Paul.
If Sam brings out the best what does Hank bring out in me... :)))
@@VanderKlips The absolute worst.
1:25:55 ICONS!
ICON!
24:00 !!!!!!!! Dr. Vervaeke lays out his entire theory succinctly in ~five minutes in this video!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Dionysius is my Patron Saint. I once heard a Bishop say, regarding the apparent discrepancy between the historical Dionysius the Areopagite and the writings attributed to him, “The Church gave us two saints for the price of one!” As John mentioned, Ancient people didn’t think of writing with pseudonyms as fraudulent like we do; probably no one thought Enoch wrote the Book of Enoch, but the book was still taken very seriously and influenced much of the New Testament (even quoted by Jude). Plus it’s hard to know where “authorship” begins and ends. Did Paul write any of his letters? No, because he says in all of them that someone else is putting pen to paper (or quill to papyrus). Seems ridiculous to argue that he’s not the author because he dictated instead of hand-wrote. What if he had summarized something and a person wrote it in their own words? It still seems that you could call Paul the author to some degree. If the so-called “Pseudo-Dionysius” was inspired by and writing in the *spirit* of the historical Dionysius, the pseudo starts to get pretty fuzzy.
The attribution of Dionysius to those writings isn’t arbitrary; the Dionysius of Acts is convinced by Paul’s speech about the unknown God, and early traditions say that Dionysius witnessed the eclipse at Jesus’ crucifixion and didn’t know what it was until Paul explained it. He was devoted to the unknown God; he first encountered Christ in the darkness of the eclipse. The writings attributed to Dionysius are the most apophatic I’ve encountered. They can even sound atheistic at times. It’s sensible to put the name of Dionysius.
Fifty-second.
Actually, fifty-third. I can't count.
5:18 ego? desire for power via non-talking talking & zero-sum competition hierarchies?
15:10 Obviously, Santa does exist Sam lol
::chuckles::
Also, the short answer to exclusivism & perennialism is “exclusion for inclusion”. Part of being in time & materiality.
"Being" and "Time" are words used by Martin Heidegger, a Nazi. That would seem to explain your penchant for exclusivism and exclusion.
Agreed,,no system can maintain its coherence unless is excludes things. By trying to include all things you corrupt the coherence of all systems thatsdeal with particulars..Opposition is true friendship . see the Quran verse 5;48.
@@modustrollens7833 A false unity will lead to totalirianism in the same way false sense of separateness' does.
@@As-fs6qd good comment. I’ve heard good things about you. I think. At least, if you’re who I think you are. :)
@@As-fs6qd yes!
Concerning comment beginning at (1:44:10) "one of the key ingredients for holding groups together was religion. Religion seems to be a near human universal ... Religion seems to serve purposes of unifying a group ... (and) control moral and ethical behavior within the group ..." is incongruent with the analogy to language, because there are not better or worse languages; even though one of language's purposes is to allow people to communicate, there is no language that is better or worse at allowing the member's of its respective culture to communicate.
Each religion, like each language, is sui generis, and cannot be judged based on comparison with other religions and languages. Even though one function of religion may be to help bind and cohere the group. this is not its sole purpose. The primary purpose of both language and religion is to reveal the relevant features of the meaning of the group to itself. With this Dia-Logical definition of the ultimate purpose of both religion and language, we see that evaluating religions based on standards of evolutionary fitness misses the whole point.
You're right this was an incomplete analogy. I suspect there is no (or very very little) functional differential advantage of English compared to Chinese or any other language. But I do suspect that different religions provide quite different functional advantages and disadvantages. You are right to point that out thanks.
Courtyard = Narthex = Estuary 😉☺️
I rather think that in such company I don't have anything to contribute that isn't already present, but I am grateful to be loitering in this courtyard. It's rather beautiful at sunset. More books on the way for me. :)
The concept that Christianity continuing in existence is proof of functionality which in turn validates the metaphor is interesting. But I'm beginning to believe that the true spreaders of Christianity were merchants and tradesmen while the explainers were academics and elitists. Jesus taught honesty ie, truth in action. The non Jewish merchants and tradesmen who accepted him as God put into practice his honesty and their daily transactions spread the good news. The adaption of the bible as devine truth destroyed honesty; metaphors were no longer metaphors but literal truths. Evolution is honesty expressed.
How will neoplatonism handle the subject object world view? Does it have an ability to redefine reality to include Vervaeke's transjective and Pirsig's quality?
It doesn't and cant ,that's why it hasen't and never will, not to deny it has its usefulness.
I am glad to be Sam's buddy.
Right back at you buddy
Excellent talk Sam
1) on your evolutionary arguement i would wonder if it really has practical application. Each religion thats grown and survived has proven something about its ability- this would hold true of even smaller religions like the Baha'i or Druze- you might call these hybrids or new species or adaptations but they essentially all are fitting 'well enough' to their niches. And new religions that arise (which often are mutations of previous ones) can simply claim one cant show whether they exhibit this property without being tried- maybe these mutations will become the dominant form. The dinosaurs are no better or worse than humans in this sense. We learn nothing of 'truth' that isn't particular to the circumstances (and John makes this point )- your arguement does not necc. extend into 'objective' propositional truth. As much as he argues for the need for power and truth to align- this is more aspirational than historical.
2) coming from the side of judaism that doesn't accept neo-platonism, and that recognizes judaism had a rich Ontology and metaphysics before that complicates my views here - i think you got closer to the right frame- that it provided a useful language. But its arising in judaism was NOT to enable cross-cultural dialogue nor do we see Jews using it as such until more recent times.
Wish Vervaeke would let the other guest talk.
Let’s be honest, Vervaeke is the most interesting of all of us.
Could someone write out for me the Neoplatonist philosopher that Vervaeke mentions? It sounded like “Aerogina”. I’ve Googles and nothing is coming up.
Eriugena
John Scotus Eriugena
Thank you!
I dub this video "A Dialogue of Monologues."
fair point, we can always get better at listening to each other.
In terms of St. Paul using "gnostic" terminology. This is at least for the most part to put the Chicken before the egg. There may well have been "gnostic" currents in the ancient world. But those gnostic sects that lached on to Christian stories and reshaped them for their own anti-material hyper "spiritual" mythologies, took most of those terms from St. Paul and other New Testament Authors, rather than Paul and NT authors taking them from the gnostics. There might have been a little osmosis the opposite way, as we certainly see in St. Paul and John's writings that they already had to deal with and refute such tendencies in their own Churches and one will always borrow some of the terms of those you are arguing with. Still most of these terms is accountable for in terms of the OT and contemporary Jewish background. So for instance the Qumrani Essene literature speaks in pretty dualistic terms not because they found anything wrong with Creation or their bodies, but because they had a strong sense of their election, of the opposition of those outside, of the rule of those outside by powers claiming to be gods, ultimately tied to the devils victory over our first parents and thus holding a certain "cosmic" extent and also of their own sinful tendencies that could for short hand be especially associated with the weaker element of their humanness, "the flesh." St. Paul's terminology resonates especially with these type usages, and contradicts the gnostics anti-Creational usage. But because of its oppositional rhetoric could unfortunately be fairly easily be appropriated for their usages, as indeed it was. To put it shortly, it's not so much that St. Paul used some gnostic terms as that the gnostics used some Pauline terms.
Vervaeke mention "Collective relevance realization" but as usual he doesn't say anything about *how*.
I have actually tried to develop a method for collective action and failed. What need to be done is to dumb down the whole idea so that commoners can understand, but not just that, you also need to give them incitament to believe and participate in whatever it is you want them to do.
To do this we must learn from religions like Christianity and islam, but especially from the wokes. You have to create a mind virus that makes people behave as you want. Trying to have the herd discussing sophisticated ideas about neoplatonism is a theoretical pipe-dream. We need philosophy of action, not academic speculations! We need a shepard not a martyr! We need Paul not Jesus!
Heh, I really worked myself up over this. :)
But in short: You have to start by thinking about what is possible before you start thinking about what would be nice.
To Jordan peterson and Sam Harris defense, last time they really did diálogos.
22:25 Sam, wouldn't your evolutionary argument count as evidence against non-trinitarian versions of Christianity?
that thought has crossed my mind
@@transfigured3673 rekt
53:31 are you saying that neoplatonism can make the claim of the resurrection of Jesus a plausible scientific true as proposition, and, at some point in history, a real flesh and bones human person with an ego really did direct miracles? Or is just that you want to make the history of Jesus a door way to human transformation and leave aside the peoposotinal true? I'm catholic Latino and I feel I need to know this in order to frame you in my world view.
Put Sam on the rack!
‘Principalities” is not a Gnostic word; the Old Testament uses it of various divine figures. Daniel says “Michael your PRINCE” fights the “PRINCE of Persia”; same word in the Greek Septuagint. Long before Gnosticism.
For that matter, Gnosticism didn’t exactly exist at the time Paul was writing. There were proto-gnostic tendencies, such as Docetism, but what we call Gnosticism hadn’t fully been born yet.
I agree. It was a shared vocab between non-gnostic and gnostic christians. Not a sign of gnosticism. I think Vervaeke would agree.
Fantastic conversation and thanks so much! Sam, you get me going with the stuff just like you did with your last conversation with Vervaeke. I am constantly pressed by the question that @Deeptalks asks in his comment. This goes back to my original concerns about Peterson's "Darwinian truth" construct.
We always face the task of discerning the good in the face of how the world manifests itself. I asked this question of Paul Vanderklay in our first conversation. See czcams.com/video/N030yZGvDbg/video.html @16:40 through ~ @25:00. One way to press this question is to rephrase your comment substituting either the good or the beautiful for the truth. Are we comfortable with saying that “The success of an embodied thing is a revelation (of) the Good itself.” ?
For me this is one of the deepest of existential problems and is at the center of the revelation of Christ. When we define success in evolutionary terms we flirt with associating the good with fitness or persistence or survival or competence. If this is our presupposition, we are challenged by a gap between what succeeds and what is good. Like Paul A., I would like to talk to you about this stuff.
Thanks again Sam and John and Paul!
Thanks for watching Dr Jim. I loved with your talk with PVK the other day.
From this conversation I hear the death cry of western Christianity's iconoclasm. When your Christians won't hang icons of Christ/saints on their walls but their favorite sports team is no problem....we have problems.
I often think about the “veneration” of the flag as well in this regard.
Seems like alot of this Neo-Platonism stuff is completely dependent on the "perspective of the Human" being objective, and not subjective. Science is the world without the human, go figure technology is so often a source of temptation.
The organic and inorganic State distinguished upon the just man and unjust man and their respective foundations in the just and unjust State in Plato’s Republic, is equally the just man, already given universal moral singularity in Noah - (and as Socrates was but remembering that immortal biological thread of the Divine while being branded ironically as an atheist, just as Jesus was accused of blasphemy, as the Lord alone telling the truth of God as the moral answerability of all men, linguistically, and thereby conventionally, functionally, culpably, and overall metaphysically unique to our species since our very dawn therein) - over and against the general (and therein even primordial, or beastly and ethnographic) wickedness of the Society at large; and as having become fully corrupt, of itself - (or purely power based, and hence, necessarily cynical and calculating, as with Babylon becoming the cage of every foul and treacherous bird) - in the established class or propertied institutions of religion and politic together; and as then inorganic or dead, and no longer having an organic basis in society at large - (or that is, no longer possessing the vital public Spirit of a living God, as it implies the cellular in a sociological sense, and as what are, or were, always originally, and once and again, wholly gathered and even culturally communistic communities, where, like those of Acts 2 and 1st century Christianity, all were also thereby directly and principally bridled in all public life and voice).
The biologically threaded chain of fertilization, pregnancy, and birth, normally or naturally established by coitus as an issue made direct necessarily among the two genders (or first love scripturally) together, in the cultural guidance (or then first works) of reproduction through the generations, whereby marriage is honorable in all as so wholly integrated consensually and conceptually and overall sociologically thereby, becomes in religion, the culturally remembered bases equally of a death (fertilization, except a corn of wheat die and fall into the ground, Cain as an Old World agricultural aristocracy slaying a once wholly gathering or priestly Abel), burial (or pregnancy in an epical sense of centuries, especially those unique to New Worlds), and finally the bearing of Christ, as prophetically and apostolically in eschatology, such always once and again wholly gathered communities, as said, coming at such finally universal heights of Civilization and Empire, and therein ethnographically in relation to the Hebrews, as this becomes the blood of the Passover in the martyrdom making way for the Exodus out of a propertied Egypt, and into the tribal or ethnic redistribution of lands in Canaan; and as Socrates, of course, argues the proper distribution of gifts in Society establishes its just and harmonious functioning and general prosperity, over and against the brute domination and superstate argued by Thrasymachus insisting each serves his self interest.
What is there new that hath not been already?
John, please consider my idea - see if you can find any use in your thinking.
Trinity...and WE are made in the image of God...both are able to be understood in the concept of trinity.
Body, soul, and spirit.
body we know,
spirit, the spark the breath of life,
and what is left is the HEADship - thought and feelings; mind and heart; God the father...the soul in man.
So a "poor lost soul is messed up thought and messed up feelings. Jesus gave his life to save the poor lost soul. Jesus said, "If you have seem me you have seen the father for the father is in me and I am in the father..
I emphjasize this concept of the soul because there is soo much lack of clarity swimming around the idea of soul and I think this brings perfect clarity.
If you disbelieve in God, this attempt at constructing a salable formula will do all it can do. All is by Gods hand in this sense. It is valuable for a purpose to send many back on the way to God. Unless one gets trapped there in disbelief. Which is the plan for those fighting against God.
Do any of you here believe in God? Are you with the Father yet? Follow the Jesus Formula back to him. God speed.
The contradiction. . . You establish that functionality doesn't imply truth. Then, you assert that living things are "revealed truth". Lol.
53:31 are you saying that neoplatonism can make the claim of the resurrection of Jesus a plausible scientific true as proposition, and, at some point in history, a real flesh and bones human person with an ego really did direct miracles? Or is just that you want to make the history of Jesus a door way to human transformation and leave aside the peoposotinal true? I'm catholic Latino and I feel I need to know this in order to frame you in my world view.