A thoughts on Aquinas; towards the end of his life he apparently had a mystical experience so intense he basically junked writing and called his work “grass”.
Also, paradoxically, he would agree with some of your criticisms even before this experience. I know because he wrote it down. That’s more of a side point.
My personal theory which I can’t prove is that the mystical experience happened not in spite of his previous work but because of it. He really really wanted the truth. The same way, I think, some Muslims meet Jesus in their dreams and convert; they really, really wanted God and so He gave them the desires of their heart. I think he was a man who emphatically didn’t want to just play word and logic games; his work came from a real thirst to know what was true.
This is why Charity (which I was taught and believe means the active sense of love) gets the ranking position it does. Even back in proverbs it says to commit your works unto the Lord and your thoughts will be established. The intent of the heart characterizes everything that comes after it. That’s the order, it seems, commit first, then your thoughts.
That being said I think it’s biblically clear you need both the intuitive and analytical sides, one can’t sub out for the other (Pascal makes this point I think in the beginning of the Pensees). Jesus doesn’t hesitate to appeal to scripture or reason when indicated. We’re explicitly told to test things. False Christs and false angels of light are real problems.
Contrary to the author's article, our modern day problems stem from too little scholasticism, rather than too much. The Scholastics had two great virtues that Moderns lack:
1. They were careful and disciplined in their argumentation. Knowledge therefore progressed slowly but steadily. Moderns are no longer careful, and do not examine things from first principles, and this is where all sorts of evil modern ideologies and errors come from.
2. They used both faith and reason. Moderns don't use faith, which leaves them unmoored (and also contributes to their using reason incorrectly). The author agrees with the Moderns that Faith and Reason can't be combined. This is wrong for all sorts of reasons, one of which is that reason though comes from God. But I would ask the author why should we even debate whether he's right or wrong, if the point is ultimately theological and to debate it would be to engage in Scholasticism. I'm of course down to debate it - but is he?
Notice too the consequences of the author's position - he denies even that the divinity of Christ can be infallibly known from Revelation - "The divinity of Christ, the dual nature, transubstantiation, original sin—none of them appear as bullet points in the Bible. They appear as deductions from the Bible. And like all deductions, they depend on fragile strings of reasoning."
Actually, deductive reason is infallible - see Logic 101. Of course, perhaps your premises are wrong, which the author points to in his article, but that doesn't make everything a fragile string of reasoning - if that's all faith is, on what basis does the author think it's so important then?
Some of what you're saying is good and needs to be said. But some is pure historical illiteracy. The Deity of Christ and the Trinity were crystalized into dogma long before the scholastics and Aquinas. Papal infallibility, transubstantiation, etc. weren't. But the Deity of Christ and the Trinity certainly were. So when you use those as examples you destroy all your credibility.
Furthermore the idea that praying a lot is a virtue is the schema of the woman who is cheating on her husband and of the charlatan guru. Jesus himself diminished the importance of prayer by banning how prayer was practiced in his day. If you can't use much speaking thinking the more you say the more God will hear you (Jesus says not to) nor vain repetitions as the heathen do (Jesus says not to) then prayer becomes less frequent and not the focus. That prayer equals holiness is contrary to Christ's own teachings. The Pharisees went and held long prayers all day on the street corner and he speaks against it. So your premises are pretty screwy. You haven't dethought Christianity so much as brought back premises that Jesus demolished. Your conception also requires thinking but it begins with a return to pre-christian premises.
A fair diagnosis, but friend, did you think, feel it easy to escape the trap?
Remember.
The Devil is ever fond of digging two pits, one to front for the one left behind.
Yet, indeed, the successors of great seekers, those who followed the thread not to solve, but because they loved, feared and wished to know more of Him, have gotten lost in the sauce.
Lost, after all, is the first state of the man who thinks too much and he who thinks too little.
There's heresy to be had in "a gospel for these times" but...
Man of this age has been solely burdened by tyranny of worship of mind. Exaltation of intelligence.
If there is something he desperately needs in this age, it is the terror of God.
A comforting fear.
The mystery of a horrifying love beyond what we can encompass.
For, the dissolute inheritors of the thinkers of the past have forgotten, many of them admitted it.
That they do not know, that the glass is dark and murky.
That only shining drop of blood glimpsed can save.
It is comforting horror that man's understanding, the best of doctrine cannot save him.
Remember though, that the adversary ever seeks for our ill, as much in our going and coming.
This. This is why we need to de-think Christianity.
You could have just said, "Easier said than done".
But... You didn't. Instead, you gave me this wall of text.
And you couldn't just write like a normal person, right?
Instead, you wrapped it up in spiritual-sounding language - peppered with words such as 'indeed' and 'For' to feel as though you were saying something profound.
You are not the only person who does it. And this writing style, when taken up by the hordes of morons, becomes embarrassing and repels the listener. When they employ it in their rhetoric, the result is a malformed argument, incompetent in its conveyance.
This teller could have said "easier said than done"
He gave you the wall, because the mask is his, he does this on hot chocolate and marshmallows as much as matters of metaphysical importance.
This is mystery, this is ritual. It's the base mode of operation for Snowyteller.
Above all else, this is fun.
There's definitely an epidemic of midwits in any field one cares to mention, but no way there's a epidemic of people speaking with more flowery language than a meadow fairy tea-party.
Academic poison for sure.
But a flood of storybook speech?
People use because.
For they often know not even that you can use 'for'.
I can pick out the midwit commenters easily. They write the typical LWOT, tell you why you're wrong, and totally miss the point of what you're saying. They can't help the condescension in their writing style. It's a tell they're outraged others can clearly see.
I thought this essay was a revelation. You've captured a small part of all the "back to basics" Christianity that has characterized every denominational split from the Great Schism to the Emergent Church movement. What began to help my thinking in these matters was realizing the Bible was written to Hebrews, not Greeks. I have a couple of books on my shelf that led me to see these differences. I'm surprised you didn't mention that logic flowed from the Greek mindset. The Hebrew mind sees things completely differently and it doesn't show up well in the mongrel language we call English. The Hebrew conception of time, prophecy, poetry, and law differ greatly from the Greek conception of these things.
My family and I have been on this search for truth for years now. And I came to essentially the same conclusion as you did in this article: The search for knowledge is the original sin. More knowledge doesn't lead to more faith. This is the big lie of the godless Enlightenment, which infected Christianity more than many want to believe.
I could say so much more, but it's a compelling conversation to have next to a fire in a pub. How I wish we still had those spaces.
A thoughts on Aquinas; towards the end of his life he apparently had a mystical experience so intense he basically junked writing and called his work “grass”.
Also, paradoxically, he would agree with some of your criticisms even before this experience. I know because he wrote it down. That’s more of a side point.
My personal theory which I can’t prove is that the mystical experience happened not in spite of his previous work but because of it. He really really wanted the truth. The same way, I think, some Muslims meet Jesus in their dreams and convert; they really, really wanted God and so He gave them the desires of their heart. I think he was a man who emphatically didn’t want to just play word and logic games; his work came from a real thirst to know what was true.
This is why Charity (which I was taught and believe means the active sense of love) gets the ranking position it does. Even back in proverbs it says to commit your works unto the Lord and your thoughts will be established. The intent of the heart characterizes everything that comes after it. That’s the order, it seems, commit first, then your thoughts.
That being said I think it’s biblically clear you need both the intuitive and analytical sides, one can’t sub out for the other (Pascal makes this point I think in the beginning of the Pensees). Jesus doesn’t hesitate to appeal to scripture or reason when indicated. We’re explicitly told to test things. False Christs and false angels of light are real problems.
I agree with your thesis.
One can make an argument for anything, true Christianity is a lifestyle of acquiring the Holy Spirit.
Contrary to the author's article, our modern day problems stem from too little scholasticism, rather than too much. The Scholastics had two great virtues that Moderns lack:
1. They were careful and disciplined in their argumentation. Knowledge therefore progressed slowly but steadily. Moderns are no longer careful, and do not examine things from first principles, and this is where all sorts of evil modern ideologies and errors come from.
2. They used both faith and reason. Moderns don't use faith, which leaves them unmoored (and also contributes to their using reason incorrectly). The author agrees with the Moderns that Faith and Reason can't be combined. This is wrong for all sorts of reasons, one of which is that reason though comes from God. But I would ask the author why should we even debate whether he's right or wrong, if the point is ultimately theological and to debate it would be to engage in Scholasticism. I'm of course down to debate it - but is he?
Notice too the consequences of the author's position - he denies even that the divinity of Christ can be infallibly known from Revelation - "The divinity of Christ, the dual nature, transubstantiation, original sin—none of them appear as bullet points in the Bible. They appear as deductions from the Bible. And like all deductions, they depend on fragile strings of reasoning."
Actually, deductive reason is infallible - see Logic 101. Of course, perhaps your premises are wrong, which the author points to in his article, but that doesn't make everything a fragile string of reasoning - if that's all faith is, on what basis does the author think it's so important then?
Some of what you're saying is good and needs to be said. But some is pure historical illiteracy. The Deity of Christ and the Trinity were crystalized into dogma long before the scholastics and Aquinas. Papal infallibility, transubstantiation, etc. weren't. But the Deity of Christ and the Trinity certainly were. So when you use those as examples you destroy all your credibility.
Furthermore the idea that praying a lot is a virtue is the schema of the woman who is cheating on her husband and of the charlatan guru. Jesus himself diminished the importance of prayer by banning how prayer was practiced in his day. If you can't use much speaking thinking the more you say the more God will hear you (Jesus says not to) nor vain repetitions as the heathen do (Jesus says not to) then prayer becomes less frequent and not the focus. That prayer equals holiness is contrary to Christ's own teachings. The Pharisees went and held long prayers all day on the street corner and he speaks against it. So your premises are pretty screwy. You haven't dethought Christianity so much as brought back premises that Jesus demolished. Your conception also requires thinking but it begins with a return to pre-christian premises.
You didn’t understand what you were reading.
A fair diagnosis, but friend, did you think, feel it easy to escape the trap?
Remember.
The Devil is ever fond of digging two pits, one to front for the one left behind.
Yet, indeed, the successors of great seekers, those who followed the thread not to solve, but because they loved, feared and wished to know more of Him, have gotten lost in the sauce.
Lost, after all, is the first state of the man who thinks too much and he who thinks too little.
There's heresy to be had in "a gospel for these times" but...
Man of this age has been solely burdened by tyranny of worship of mind. Exaltation of intelligence.
If there is something he desperately needs in this age, it is the terror of God.
A comforting fear.
The mystery of a horrifying love beyond what we can encompass.
For, the dissolute inheritors of the thinkers of the past have forgotten, many of them admitted it.
That they do not know, that the glass is dark and murky.
That only shining drop of blood glimpsed can save.
It is comforting horror that man's understanding, the best of doctrine cannot save him.
Remember though, that the adversary ever seeks for our ill, as much in our going and coming.
This. This is why we need to de-think Christianity.
You could have just said, "Easier said than done".
But... You didn't. Instead, you gave me this wall of text.
And you couldn't just write like a normal person, right?
Instead, you wrapped it up in spiritual-sounding language - peppered with words such as 'indeed' and 'For' to feel as though you were saying something profound.
You are not the only person who does it. And this writing style, when taken up by the hordes of morons, becomes embarrassing and repels the listener. When they employ it in their rhetoric, the result is a malformed argument, incompetent in its conveyance.
The writing style is not logic, not reason.
It is the performing mask, the self beyond self.
This teller could have said "easier said than done"
He gave you the wall, because the mask is his, he does this on hot chocolate and marshmallows as much as matters of metaphysical importance.
This is mystery, this is ritual. It's the base mode of operation for Snowyteller.
Above all else, this is fun.
There's definitely an epidemic of midwits in any field one cares to mention, but no way there's a epidemic of people speaking with more flowery language than a meadow fairy tea-party.
Academic poison for sure.
But a flood of storybook speech?
People use because.
For they often know not even that you can use 'for'.
Total modern false dichotomy between intellect and will. Theres also no difference between “de-thinking” and anti-intellectualism
I can pick out the midwit commenters easily. They write the typical LWOT, tell you why you're wrong, and totally miss the point of what you're saying. They can't help the condescension in their writing style. It's a tell they're outraged others can clearly see.
I thought this essay was a revelation. You've captured a small part of all the "back to basics" Christianity that has characterized every denominational split from the Great Schism to the Emergent Church movement. What began to help my thinking in these matters was realizing the Bible was written to Hebrews, not Greeks. I have a couple of books on my shelf that led me to see these differences. I'm surprised you didn't mention that logic flowed from the Greek mindset. The Hebrew mind sees things completely differently and it doesn't show up well in the mongrel language we call English. The Hebrew conception of time, prophecy, poetry, and law differ greatly from the Greek conception of these things.
My family and I have been on this search for truth for years now. And I came to essentially the same conclusion as you did in this article: The search for knowledge is the original sin. More knowledge doesn't lead to more faith. This is the big lie of the godless Enlightenment, which infected Christianity more than many want to believe.
I could say so much more, but it's a compelling conversation to have next to a fire in a pub. How I wish we still had those spaces.
"Shut up and lift" for the soul