Topic: Religion and Government
The Three Christianities An intriguing insight into the difference between the external stock of tenets and ideas and the inner structure of their content.by Seneca
(conservative libertarian)
Saturday, September 6, 2008
According to Spengler there have been three separate and mutually unrelated christianities, the original 'Magian' one (grand metaphysical symbol: [a self-containing] Cavern), with its formative growth period from the years 0-500 AD, the second one, 'Faustian'/West-European, with its formative growth period from the years 1000-1500AD (grand metaphysical symbol: [an infinite] Landscape) and the third one, which is in its infancy at present, the Christianity of Dostoyevsky (not at 100% of unrelatedness but nearly so in the case of the first and the third) whose grand metaphysical symbol seems to be the perspective's vanishing point where horizon meets the sky, a plain propagating itself in all directions horizontally.
The only common thread between them is the common stock of names and observances (which were imported wholesale from the civilized/higher stage Mankind onto a lower/primitive stage Mankind). Spengler liked the analogy of the Chinese Buddhism, whereby it was not a fixated stock of ideas and concepts that conquered a people, but that a people selectively imported certain foreign religious ideas and adapted them to their own spiritual needs (under whatever outward label) in the process also rejecting completely other ideas, which is why the Chinese and Indian Buddhisms are two separate faiths. One can observe a similar process at work in the gradual assimilation of the Germanic warrior-bands which for centuries ruled the sulking remnant-populations of the fallen Roman Empire in the west.
That is why also the Germanic Christianity of the West has no use for the majority of Christian Orthodox Eastern ideas, and the highly reputable master of Byzantine theology, John Chrysostom (or John the Damascene, the master of the theology of ikons), would have recoiled in horror at the kinds of theological issues discussed by Thomas Aquinas or Ignatio Loyola. It comes down to the incompatibility of metaphysical notions of Substance and Will (in particulars of its specific implications for a given Culture). Catholic theologians seem to still not notice that genius Paul's idea of Resurrection is incompatible with the Faustian-Catholic idea of Resurrection (which has been grotesquely papered-over, because the idea of an immediate ascension to Heaven upon death as a soul is incompatible to the biblical/Pauline idea of death as a mere switch/counterpoise to life from which one can come back at any time through God/Pneuma's unpredictable act). Everyone has the divine in him and thus everyone can be saved from God's counterpoise in Hell. The relation between the Life-substance and the Death-substance in Magian faiths (of which Judaism and Christianity are only important member-faiths, but by no means are they the only ones, in fact the original Christianity was fulfilled in Islam which itself has grown up on the soil of Mesopotamian Christianity peppered with Greek influences). Magian God acts without causes, Faustian God is a powerful Will that is accountable. Magian individualism melts down in groups (which alone are sovereign entities in this faith, the impersonal grand 'We', the consensus of the electi), while the Faustian (European) one arises out of groups and soars above them, its own ultimate confessor in all matters of life and death. It can be said that the first and the third christianities posses an outlook that is horizontal in effect, while the second one possesses an essentially vertical outlook.
It would be really immensely interesting to study the internal reasoning of Arabian suicide attackers in the light of the surviving Magian metaphysical influences.
This fundamentally important topic, the relation between religions and cultures across the Historic Time - has not even remotely been considered necessary for study and exploration by the science of the past 70 years (if it even realized the awaiting challenge). Such is the generally retarded state of intellectual affairs in the History departments (for that matter, America's so-called "History Channel" with its tourist guide-like "Michael Wood approach" to History-telling, is the best proof of how far away from substance the study of History has strayed). Why wonder about it, when History today is merely an exercise in philology leavened with curious archaeological finds when it is not a science of political indoctrination (its main role), which is why the convenient but oxymoronical term "Political Science" has been invented (as if to add insult to injury of History) ? "OBSEQUIUM AMICOS, VERITAS ODIUM PARIT." /Acquiescence makes friends while the truth generates hatred. - Cicero (De Amicitia, 24, 89)
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