Why Y'all Never Listen To Me

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More importantly to me was that mysticism was suppressed. Which will always be the case when a worldly institution is trying to assume power. Who needs the Pharisees when you can communicate with God directly? My understanding of Christ was that he embodied mysticism. He represented an infusion of Eastern philosophy and spirituality with the Hebrew tradition. I think his message was corrupted by stripping away his emphasis on mysticism, in order to make Christianity palatable to European pagans.

Yes you did. But you contradicted yourself when you said I had plans to form a death cult. I MUST exist for this nefarious plot to happen.

Who says you must exist? God created the world DESPITE non-existence.

1) The creation of the world is the most marvelous achievement imaginable.
2) The merit of an achievement is the product of (a) its intrinsic quality, and (b) the ability of its creator.
3) The greater the disability (or handicap) of the creator, the more impressive the achievement.
4) The most formidable handicap for a creator would be non-existence.
5) Therefore if we suppose that the universe is the product of an existent creator we can conceive a greater being — namely, one who created everything while not existing.
6) Therefore, God does not exist.

Ho ho!! Ha ha!! Now we get to it.

[quote from Whittaker Chambers transmitted through Herself: "man without mysticism is a monster"]

Very true, there is a tension. Constantly elements within the church looking to bring God down to earth, to make Christianity one more branch of rational materialism. A lot of personalities are into that. A lot of the Jesuit movement was rationalist, plus the Dominicans relatrive to the Franciscans. The Calvinists. Straight Fundies relative to Pentecostals. Generally, organization men relative to splinter weirdos.

BUT - the mystical was never weeded out. It was there in the Egyptian desert, present in a lot of strands of Orthodoxy, not a few strands in the Roman church. Ever read Richard Rolle?
[http://www.scrollpublishing.com/store/Rolle.html].

It ties to mind set. And just as the legalist mindset and the scientist mindset cannot be exterminated, but constantly renew, same with the mystical mindset.

The Gnostics will have had their legalists. The catholic orthodox church and later the Catholic and Orthodox churches have had their waves. Islam has dervishes - Sufis - Judaism got the Hassidim. Anybody know of mystic / ecstatic Buddhists? Outside my borders.

So I can form a death cult while not existing? That is a major advantage in me escaping from my enemies.

Well... mysticism pervades Bhuddism. I would go so far as to say it is essential.

Somehow relevant....

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlIrI80og8c[/youtube]

Get a Mac. I'm convinced that the chief priests, scribes, and Levites carried MacBook Pros with them at all times.


Ignoring the language about "most powerful Christians," do you understand from a spiritual perspective why this is necessary? I mean, to limit the scope of teachings? The canon doesn't really secure power for anyone. If that were true, they should have edited out the story about the rich young ruler.

Instead, I think the councils that met in Nicaea were well intentioned and still operated in the spirit of the original church fellowship. It was actually political rulers trying to exert influence over the church that set in motion some of the more objectionable practices. Bishops rejected gnosticism and arianism sometimes risking their own lives in uniting against the introduction of false doctrine. The best evidence still points to the current canon as that which has always been acceptable even in the early church.

I'm not denying that this concentration of power DID happen. I'm just saying it doesn't seem to have happened as early as you imply that it did.


True. Paul's theology was SOLID.


Right. As far as suppressing competing views goes: The danger is that competing views obscure the true message. Gnosticism and arianism are NOT compatible with other acceptable teachings. The thing that is wonderful about the Bible is there are not contradicting viewpoints expressed in the form of truth claims. Including alternative views would have made the Bible internally inconsistent and not very believable.

I don't want to make it sound like I think I'm better somehow than my brothers and sisters in Christ. But there really are so many self-professed believers who do not act Christ-like at all. But on the other hand, it could be "the church" actually needed to experience what it did in order to start trying again to regain "Christhood" (for lack of a better word). I think things are getting closer to where they were before. We just still have a long way to go!

I feel that I should point out that just because someone doesn't act like Christ it doesn't mean they aren't believers. I have acted in ways and said things that I shouldn't have said, but not because I'm not Christian. It's because I'm a work in progress. I see the Church as really the same. So when Christians behave badly, they have to be understood as gradually undergoing the changes Jesus wants for them. No one is already perfect who is on the road to perfection!


I dunno. Depends on who you're talking about, here. The Bible is clear on that.

I agree that it does secure power and that this power can and has been abused.



Who's cannon? While most Christians would reject arianism, there are still great divergences within the descendants of the Nicene Council.



I am not sure when dionysian is claiming that the concentration of authority within the Church occurred. All we can say with a sense of historical certainty is that it power was relatively centralized during the time of St. Ignatius of Antioch (who died around the end of the first century); well before Nicaea. This comes from those letters accepted to have been written by him, not those upon which there is doubt. We have by this time, the concept of the universal (big C, as in with ecclesiastical connotations Catholic) church. The concept of the denying the real presence of the Eucharist was considered a heterodox opinion. The idea of a single local Bishop was well established (with Bishops essentially functioning within more or less their present function within the Catholic, Episcopal, Orthodox etc functions). All of these positions are also well supported by the verified writings of St. Clement of Rome (Bishop of Rome died AD 99), namely in his letter to the Church in Corinth which had rejected the authority of the Bishops and was rebuked by him. The role of the Bishop of Rome as an arbiter is also shown in the writings of St. Irenaeus (died. AD 202) and was well established by the time of Pope St. Stephen I. When Steven I died the council of Nicaea was still nearly 70 years away.

There is, thou seest, a wide range in all of these because a wide range of humanity. If we take just two features, and put + / - active on the x axis, and + / - mystical [you will bear with my use of inadequately specified terminology for now] on the y axis, we get [of course the reality involves more factors] the + active - mystical American Fundamentalist, the - active - mystical Baltimore Lutheran, the + active + mystical Pentecostal, and the - active + mystical Desert Father.

Disclaimer - not all going by these titles match the features postulated, and in no case is the example chosen necessarily the most typical choice.

Si, señor, Gautama and the Buddhist styles nearest him is clearly + mystical, and that seems to be a big theme in most branches. What I was querying - admittedly not maximally clear - is are there ecstatic Buddhist varieties after the Shaker / Dervish / Holy Roller model?

I just don't know. My knowledge is lacking in this area.

Ok... So where is it written? I'm not referring to the church's organizational structure. That would secure power within a single church community. It doesn't set up a theocracy.


The descendants on the Nicene Council, yes. The earliest councils were fairly unified in holding to an established doctrine. Everybody else afterwards were dirty apostates!! ! (just kidding, of course, but there are those who do believe that)


He's being somewhat vague, isn't he? I was thinking in terms of a century or two after the schism. Authority is not a bad thing, and the church was not heavy-handed in wielding that power from the beginning.


No doubts here. But it wasn't established as a super-mega-political authority and didn't really have that much control or power over the western world. I don't believe that the Bible inherently gives it that authority. I'll give Constantine the benefit of the doubt and say he probably really did have good intentions. But we generally do not hear about especially egregious acts of the church until centuries later. Constantine, if I remember correctly, was a secular leader who made the mistake of enjoining church and state. The church's belated reprisals on the secular world took time, so I don't see how you can justify an early date in church history for the kind of sword-wielding that critics of the RC church often accuse it of.

You seem to have a better handle on Roman Catholic history than I do. At what point after Constantine did the RC church really became a formidable world power? I'd say it really came into its own after successes in the 1st Crusade.

While we certainly do not have a clear power locus in the universal Church today [not even in the typical congregation!], and arguably have never had a true centralized organization, it follows as the day the night that before the sun set on the day of Pentecost the Organizing classes were starting to form gels a la pectin in my grape jelly.

The tension between the Organizing classes and the Decentralizing is of course constant, and the rivalries between competing centers has ensured that there has not been and will; never be a single accepted chufrch organization any more than there will ever be an accepted world government.

But at the same time it is very true that councils and canons and creeds are de facto the output primarily of the Organizationals.

I think it is to this dionysian refers when he speaks of power - overlooking [if you just look at the mainstream records it is very easy to overlook] the centrifugal counterelements.