Entropy is Not a part of evil - these are two separate problems

The problem of entropy is one that presses upon us the average mortal life perhaps more strongly than evil. 

By "entropy" I mean the universal tendency for beings to experience cumulative adverse change with time: dysfunction, degeneration, disease - and the ultimate manifestation of entropy is death. 

All of these are unavoidable, are universal. 

Traditional Christian theology usually conflates entropy with evil; indeed entropy/ death is usually subsumed within the concept and causes of evil. 

For example, the traditional interpretation of the Adam and Eve story is that they began as good and immortal beings; free from both evil and death. 

With The Fall they chose evil, and at the same time necessarily became mortal - subject to entropy and death. 

(In traditional theology) with the salvation from Jesus Christ we are allowed to return to the primal situation of Adam and Eve - saved from our self-caused punishment of both entropy and evil. 

After their fall; A & E and their descendants also needed to toil in order to live - in effect toil was needed to overcome entropy. 

Because (in effect) entropy meant that, over time, our minds and bodies and the environment are all against us: we must make efforts every day, we need to toil simply to remain alive and functional, but all such efforts are temporary palliative: will inevitably be overcome and will fail.

(In this sense, entropy is a more pervasive problem than evil.) 

And ultimately all of this bad stuff supposedly happens because of The Fall! 

Everything bad is down to an evil choice of ancestors, and its ramifications. 

This is very difficult to comprehend or believe. There seems a gross disproportion between the events described in Genesis, and thousands of years of billions of people's suffering and toil, disease and dying in fighting - and failing to defeat - entropy.   

Well, be that as it may; traditional theology regards evil as primary, entropy as a part of evil: evil is the ultimate cause of entropy. 

Therefore trad-theol has it that we overcome entropy by overcoming sin, where "sin" is understood to mean the manifestations of evil. 

That is; the repentance of evil/sins, leads also to the escape from entropy: leads to eternally healthy and vigorous - and happy - life in Heaven.

I have described elsewhere my understanding that entropy and evil can and should be distinguished, and that they have different causes. 

Entropy is intrinsic to this creation, the one we inhabit now; to the original or primary Creation by God - this creation that we are born-into. 

Heaven can be conceptualized as the answer to entropy; by a second and opt-into creation (i.e. the creation made possible by Jesus Christ) - with resurrection conceptualized as a voluntary re-making without entropy, as leaving-behind entropy. 

So, while traditional Christian theology regards entropy-death as secondary to evil - and regards Heaven as the answer to entropy-death because, in repenting moral sins and having the effect of sins removed by Jesus, we also and simultaneously eliminate entropy. 

But instead; I regard entropy and evil as ultimately distinct concepts: (in this creation) entropy is unavoidable, while evil is a choice. 

However, the confusion and conflation of entropy and evil among Christians seems to be a consequence of the fact that the answer to both entropy and evil is the same: i.e. resurrection and our "escape"/ progression-into eternal, wholly-good life in Heaven; by following Jesus Christ.

In a nutshell: entropy and evil are different problems with different causes in this-world, but both problems are cured by the same treatment: following Jesus Christ to Heaven.

And otherwise they are not cured. One who does Not follow Jesus to Heaven; has thereby chosen to continue to live with entropy and evil. 

 

Note Added: The difference is that:

Entropy is intrinsic to the nature of God's creation - the First creation. 

Evil is about a specific-Being's attitude towards creation: positive, or negative, affiliative or hostile. 

Yeah - That'll work! Continuous progressive societal- and self-improvement, by Changing Names

It's a great plan! 

Let's spend ever more and yet more time/ energy/ resources on locating the sins of other-people, and then loudly and emphatically stating that these other-people were sinful! 

It will make us all better people, and make this a better world - for sure. 

Especially when these people lived generations ago; and someplace else. 

Let's do loads of research to discover more and novel examples of individuals or groups of sinners...

And then let's write books, make TV programmes and Movies about how they were sinful, very sinful; and then splash these across the media in a kind of saturation process.

Let's Change the Names of everything named for other-people who were sinners, especially from the olden days; while explaining over and again that doing this makes us better people...

But refusing to Change Names means - on the contrary - that we personally approve of all the sins of all the other-people who ever lived! 

Because people who don't want to Change Names of sinners, actually personally desire that everybody nowadays ought to be doing these sins, all the time!

(Bad Kitty!)  

We can be confident that by Changing more and more Names, we shall incrementally - a little bit at a time admittedly, but cumulatively - improve ourselves and human society. 

If only we could sustain and expand such a strategy of world-reform for decade after decade (i.e. for an additional forty-plus years) - it would be certain to reduce, maybe abolish, most of the most important kinds of badness that plague the planet earth. 

We would do what previous generations (who were all sinners) have all failed to do (because They were All sinners): which is to Make This World A Better Place. 

And if the Name has already been Changed - then let's just change it again...

Because after all the changed name celebrates sin, just as much as the original name used-to! 

Christianity is Not, never truly was, about morality - except secondarily

Over the past eight years; my reading-of and brooding-on the Fourth Gospel (called "John") has had many and profound effects on my understanding of the differences between what Jesus said and did, and the Christian churches that came after. 

In particular, that the core of Jesus's work was to provide Men with the possibility of resurrected eternal life in Heaven. 

This means that the primary concern of Jesus was to save mankind from entropy and death - therefore Jesus's primary concern was not to save us from evil. 

To repeat: For Jesus salvation means from death, not from evil. 

However, most of religion before, during and since the time of Jesus is about morality - about the behaviour (and attitudes) of people. 

Such religion is therefore therapeutic - it is "about" minimizing suffering and/or maximizing human happiness in this world and mortal life. 

That is what all those Laws and rules are about, the propitiations offered to divinity, the abasements and obedience - they are trying to make this world a better place, and ourselves to have a better place in it. 

And this is why all religions have considerable overlap in the approved behaviours. 

But this was Not what Jesus was about. 

Jesus came essentially to save us from death, not from moral sin.

Jesus was primarily against death, not evil - but his cure for death was also a cure for evil. 

For Jesus the problem of death (of entropy) was more profound than that of evil; because in this mortal life and world, death is absolutely universal and completely unavoidable; destructive change may be slowed, but is always at work...

Jesus was necessary and unique because he offered a solution to death; not because of his moral teaching, not because of his moral laws and principles, not because people could make a church from the moral laws and principles. 

This was and is very difficult to grasp; because most people (including most early Christians, including those who formed the Christian churches, apparently) - want morality.

Or else they want immortality Now in this world, and without dying first. 

People do not, therefore, usually want what Jesus actually offered... Or, at least, they think they don't want it; or they do not want it as strongly and urgently as they want other things - such as relief from suffering, or happiness now-or-soon.

But relief from suffering and positive happiness in this mortal life are not the core of Jesus's message - because these are promised for post-mortal resurrected life, not for this life. 

The error of making "Christianity" primarily moral distorted it from very early and has led to its current near-destruction. 

Those who made Christianity continuous with Judaism (including the authors of the Matthew and Luke Gospels, and Paul); tried to conflate the primacy of resurrection with their continued primacy of morality...

Leading eventually to the bizarre concoction of Original Sin - in order to pseudo-explain why Jesus was both unique and necessary. 

In other words, they made Jesus primarily "about" morality; and resurrection was made conditional upon the approved morality...

And morality was made to be why Jesus came, and curing morality was made to be what Jesus fundamentally did...

This-world morality was made of core importance to the Christian churches; and morality was made to come first - such that resurrection was relegated to a secondary status as reward for good-morality.  

But morality is about this-world, here-and-now and before death...

Whereas the advent of resurrection was of cosmic and eternal significance - it is a change in the nature of reality. 

Everybody everywhere has their ideas of proper morals; and this is continually contested. And morality does not require resurrection. 

So morality is both regarded as primary by almost-everybody; yet morality is detachable from the reality of Christianity...

And morality has, in fact, already-been detached-from Christianity! - even (or rather, especially) in those lands historically (or nominally still) Christian. 

As of here-and-now; Christianity is just one of many competing this-worldly moral systems; and gets evaluated in terms of its material "success" in producing good behaviour.  

But if we are talking about Jesus Christ, rather than social institutions and traditions; then this is wrong, a mistake, an ancient error. 

Jesus brought the possibility of resurrected eternal life in Heaven - and that fact should come first and foremost, and be kept at the core, of our Christian discussion and teaching. 

Was the Omni-God concept a consequence of the development of human consciousness?

It is interesting to speculate how the incoherent and mass-apostasy-inducing Omni-God concept arose and came to dominate Christian (and some other) theologies and Priesthoods. 

One God who is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent and created everything from nothing - i.e. the officially mandatory nature of God according to mainstream Christianity; is an idea literally inconceivable to simple people and children. 

And inconceivable to people of the past, and up to the life of Jesus; because I see nothing explicit to suggest that the authors of Old Testament, the Gospels, or Epistles conceptualized God in this way. 

The Omni idea seems to have emerged - off the record - in the generations after the ascension of Jesus and deaths of the Apostles; until we see it behind the Christology schisms and disputes, concerning the divine and/or human nature of Christ; that tore-apart the nascent church in its early centuries. 

Such disputes were (and are) inevitable when Jesus was assumed to have been incarnated into the creation of an Omni-God, since the Omni definition of God excludes the possibility of Jesus being a second creator-deity; and indeed removes any possible reason or purpose for a further manifestation of deity. 

(If God is supposed to be able to do everything, know everything, be everywhere etc - then there is no necessity for Jesus Christ to be incarnated, live, die, be resurrected, ascend to Heaven etc. The Omni-God can - by definition - do everything that is doable, so Jesus is superfluous.) 

Yet if Jesus Christ is not a truly divine creator God; then Jesus is "just" a teacher, prophet etc - and we either assume Jesus was a false teacher and revert to Judaism; or assume Jesus was a valid teacher as with Islam. 

But if Jesus is not divine, he is not unique; and there is no reason to build a religion around following him. 

So how and why did such a strange and destructive idea emerge? 

My best guess of how, is that the Omni-God was synthesized from the ancient Hebrew idea of a single dominating personal God to whom all other Gods were inferior and subservient; and to whom all worship and obedience was due. 

This "monotheism" was combined with Greek philosophical ideas - and religious ideas - probably from  elite and initiatory mystery religions; such as Neo-Platonists and Gnostics); of a universal but impersonal abstract-deity that was everything (pantheism), was the ultimate cause of everything, was perfect hence time-less etc.

(Much like some Hindu and Buddhist philosophical concepts of deity.) 

 

But why did the Omni idea happen at all? 

My understanding is that this was part of the development of human consciousness; and the increasing inner sense of separation of the individual from the group. 

Before the Omni-God concept; human consciousness was naturally, spontaneously, and largely un-consciously very much immersed in the group consciousness - and this group consciousness included the realms of spirits and the divine. 

Because people experienced relationships with so many other Beings (such as animals, trees, landscape, the dead, angels, demons, and gods); there was no subjective "problem" of creation as being incoherent.

There was no need to "explain" how it was that the universe held-together and had purpose - because this coherence was simply a matter of experience. Men knew that things cohered. 

This was, and still is, how young children experience reality even nowadays; and perhaps some tribal peoples as well. 

In other words, in ancient times there was no felt-problem of incoherence that the Omni concept was needed to solve. 

There was no need or reason to explain why all the different aspects of reality held-together and had an overall purpose. 

And no reason to explain why there were real values - a real and universal morality... Since such things were obvious.  

It was when Man's consciousness began (and continued) to become ever more self-aware and separated from the group consciousness; and from awareness of the dead, spirits of many kinds, and the divine - that Men sought an explicit explanation of the "unity" of all things...

That intellectuals came-up with the Omni-God explanation. 

This does not explain why the early Christian church seized upon the Omni-God concept and made it mandatory, despite all the problems it has caused ever since. 

But I think that ultimately such reasons are social rather than philosophical: to do with the church as an institution, rather than Christianity as a theoretical construct.  

The Omni-God concept is popular in all the major monotheisms, I think because it is interpreted to make the specific religion both universal and mandatory; it is used to insert the religion and its church into the ultimate creation and operation of absolutely every-thing. 

Omni-God removes choice from religion; and religion becomes a matter of acknowledging one truth for everything...

Or else the act of rejecting that church and religion gets conceptualized as rejecting... absolutely everything, and all possibility of anything.

So, with Omni-God; not be be a member of the church and religion is therefore conceptualized as a wholly irrational and incoherent act - an embrace of absolute nothingness.  

If it is broadly correct that the Omni-God emerged after Jesus and in the early centuries AD; driven from-within by changes in Mens' consciousness; then we can also see that a genuine, living, motivating belief in Omni-God has become impossible in the modern era.

Shoals of people have left the Christian church, and/or had their faith reduced to the feebleness of a lifestyle-choice, by the insistence of Christian theology on the Omni-God combined with the gross incoherence of the concept - which incoherence has now become spontaneously obvious even to those of low intelligence. 

(The two obvious problems about a Christianity rooted in the Omni-God concept and a Good God; are an inability to explain genuine evil and extreme and undeserved suffering and death; and also an inability to explain human agency or "freedom".)  

In replying to a basic question of "who was Jesus?": mystery-word-spells about Jesus being simultaneously wholly-Man and wholly-God seem like meaningless or devious abstractions; when materialism is built-into the modern perspective. 

In replying to what did Jesus do?": kick-the-can pseudo-explanations about Jesus being necessary to save Mankind from the blame attached to an "original sin" leading to a "fall" that occurred in prehistory; make no sense (and seem grossly unjust)...

When Man's consciousness has become so spontaneously separated from the group/ spirit/ divine that the choices and events of putative ancient ancestors is experienced as utterly irrelevant to me-here-now.

If the Omni-God was not original to Christianity but instead the contingent artefact of a particular stage in Man's historical consciousness and the rhetorical requirements of the ancient church...

And since the O-G concept currently stands in the path of any possibility of explaining (clearly and simply) the nature of Jesus and what he did...

Then Christians really need to go back and re-examine and reject this Omni-God dogma... 

And then we need to replace the obsolete and harmful Omni-God with a conceptualization of God that makes explanatory-sense to us each, here, and now; and which clearly and simply explains the necessity of Jesus Christ for those who desire salvation.  

Mercy versus Justice, and Mary the Mother of Jesus

I am still reading Geoffrey Ashe's The Virgin - his dense, fascinating, and very stimulating book about the historical development and meaning of the Catholic veneration of Mary, Mother of Jesus. 

(Ashe was himself a Roman Catholic, and deeply involved with Marian societies - especially the Carmelite Friars' shrine to Mary at Aylesford in Kent.)  

This passage was one I found very striking. Ashe is describing the theology of Saint Germanus, who was Patriarch of Constantinople in the early 700s. 

Mary, Germanus maintains, does not simply put requests to the Deity on matters they could agree about; she actively and successfully opposes him. "You turn away the just threat and the sentence of damnation, because you love the Christians... Therefore the Christian people trustfully turn to you, refuge of sinners." 

The universe is split at the summit. God stands for Justice, and since we are all sinners more or less, most of us have little to hope for at his hands. 

Mary stands for Mercy, and it is only because of her influence at court, not because of love or goodwill on God's part, that Heaven is within reach for more than a handful of human beings...

The Byzantine Virgin seems the only friend close to the throne and the only rescuer from utter awestruck despair...

The Greek church agreed that Mary was indispensable to salvation. An edict issued from Constantinople in 724 condemns anyone who withholds worship from her... 

She is no longer the gentle Lady to whom Christians may turn for help. She is the unique being... to whom they must turn or be in peril of losing their souls forever.    

[From before 1233] the norm of Marian miracles in hardening. The people concerned are apt to be commonplace and sometimes repellent. 

The sole redeeming feature they have in common, "redeeming" quite literally, is their love for the Virgin. This protects them against the consequences of wrongdoing. Her devotees seem able to get away with anything....

It is unfair to treat this mythology as a license to sin; by saving misguided mortals the Virgin enables them to repent. 

But the moral is not always conspicuous... 

The medieval popular Virgin represented the all-too-human, the irregular, the exceptional. She was superior to the system and could break through every rule. Humanity had her on its side in its perpetual protest against divine law and human ordinance. 

For her, every case was a special case. She could draw "her" sinner up out of hell itself, giving him another chance.

Such considerations stimulated various thoughts. One is that - however theologically alien and contradictory the role of Mary in Catholic devotion; the effect of Marian devotion has often been exemplary from what I regard as a strictly Christian perspective (as well as this-worldly-expedient - in terms of sustaining and strengthening the churches). 

I understand the above descriptions to represent a spiritual correction to the not-Christian (i.e. not Jesus-derived) emphasis on Justice that has so often overtaken Christian churches of almost every kind. 

When Jesus is made into a divine ruler of the universe, he has often been attributed with the characteristics of an idealized human ruler in some particular society - hence the de facto primacy of justice, defined legalistically - despite this being multiply-contradicted in the Gospels. 

Furthermore, the tortured theology of Original Sin (which was only required because early theologians made it mandatory to conceptualize and define God as Omni) - led to the weird double-negative explanation of Jesus's work; as having been accomplished by a vicarious sacrifice (torture and death) demanded by Divine Justice to compensate for sin. 

Against this historical backdrop of systemic misrepresentation of the fundamental nature of Jesus Christ's work and the paths to salvation by love of Jesus; Mary seems to have emerged, with the consequence of  re-creating the truth of Jesus's salvation by personal love.

With the difference that the necessary love is displaced from Jesus, to his mother (but his mother having been re-conceptualized to possess the salvific attributes of Jesus). 

But I don't doubt that this displaced or indirect love was none the less effective in attaining salvation for Marian adherents ; so long as the motives were true. 

The simple heart of Christianity - i.e. resurrected eternal heavenly life to those who follow Jesus - has always been open to the kind of "license to sin" misrepresentation Ashe describes in the second excerpt above. 

This is a kind of parody of Christianity, along the lines of: I can do what I like, be as selfish and gratification-seeking as I like... yet Mary will save me if I love her... 

Such is the exactly the same type of criticism made of Jesus's teaching during his life, by those whose real concern was social order and sustaining the power of their church...

Popular with those who do not really believe that All Men are sinners including themselves; and that no Man good enough for Heaven without first passing through death and resurrection*.

(Or who may regard following Jesus as less a matter of love than of following rules.)

 

The parody is untrue, because it ignores that motivation is primary, and that the love really must come first. 

Salvation is not attained by using love as an excuse to enable the primary motivation of doing evil. That is to put this-worldly gratification first. 

But, on the other hand, salvation really is - not for those who successfully past some test of following some laws; but salvation is for all those who love and desire to follow Jesus more than anything else.

Or, in this instance... love and desire to follow Mary more than anything else - so long as Mary is conceptualized in the way she has been by some ancient (and some modern) Catholic Christians, as described in Ashe's book. 

*I suppose I should state that I regard it as theologically incoherent from a Christian perspective to claim that Mary was conceived and existed without sin, and was assumed into Heaven without going through death and resurrection. The necessity and work of Jesus - and the requirement that we are all  incarnated into mortal life - only makes sense when it is understood that death and resurrection was and is the only way to "fit us for Heaven". Nonetheless (fortunately for all of us!) theological coherence is not a requisite for salvation! 

Just how important is Free Will (Agency)?

William James Tychonievich has written a blog post about a fictional book that (as part of its story) attempts (albeit from a Jewish rather than Christian perspective - it was written by a Rabbi) to provide an intellectual model that combines the attributed omniscience and omnipotence of God, with human Agency, or Free Will.  

But, as William argues (endorsed by comments from myself and Francis Berger) the model actually, by its assumptions and implications, sacrifices human agency in order to sustain the Omni-God assumption. 

In this respect, and in common with nearly-all Christian theology (including mainstream Roman and Eastern Catholic and Protestant theology); it is evident that the omni-nature of God is primary - and an understanding of human agency and freedom is something that is, in practice, sacrificed to the need to ascribe omni attributes to God. 

This is confirmed when the Rabbi author (Shaul Behr) responds to the post with a couple of comments; finishing with:

Like those who came before me, I am content, as you say, to leave it as an unresolved "mystery of God".

The Rabbi's response is therefore essentially identical with that of most Christian theologians over the past couple of millennia; and I translate it as follows:

We are sure and certain that God is omnipotent and omniscient. We also recognize that Men must be free agents in order that each Man's choices have meaning. But, although we can provide confusing, complex abstract pseudo-explanations of how this might be possible - none of these explanations really make sense. And we cannot provide a clear, simple, coherent account of how free agency is possible with an Omni-God. So we call the situation of Man's freedom in the context of Omni-God "a mystery".

The question I ask is: is this good enough? 

And I answer: No it is not good enough. 

It is, in practice, treating the matter of coherently understanding human agency as trivial - and not something that needs to be understood. 

It is commonly asserted that all Christians (and, apparently, all Jews) must believe in the Omni-God, or else they are not Christians (or Jews) - because Omni-God Just Is God - because supposedly nothing else makes any sense... 

Man's freedom, in stark contrast, becomes something that must be taken on faith, as a form of words; by the asserted necessity for each of us to trust in the validity of theological authority. 

Apparently; Omni-God is mandatory; while by contrast free agency is something that needs to be asserted but does not need to be understood - and, because of Omni-God, freedom cannot be understood. 

Unsurprisingly, in practice, traditional Christian theology has always tended to assert God's omni-nature as interpreted by "the church" (whichever church prevailed); while human agency was considered to be a problem.  

Indeed, human agency is blamed for the evils of this world. 

It seems that the only proper role of human freedom - in traditional theology - is to make the right choices from among those presented by God.

Unsurprisingly, since there is only one right answer among choices, and all possible answers are God-given; it has seemed to many Christians that it might be better if humans had simply been pre-programmed to make these right choices. 

It has thus seemed that the only significant role of human agency is negative: freedom is seen as the freedom to do wrong. 

Which fits with the pointlessness of human life when God is Omni... Since such a God is everything, then human beings can add nothing to creation; which implies that creation of humans was futile - because (from this perspective, at the bottom line) the best a human can do in life, is to follow a pre-determined path of correct choices. 

Apparently; freedom has no positive role. 

Thus, by such accounts; the problem of Omni-God and human freedom has been "solved" by reducing human freedom to an expression of negative resistance to God's reality.

Freedom becomes regarded like a disease; something wrong with Men... Hence the centrality of "original sin". 

However, if the logic is followed - we get the bizarre assertion that this supposedly Omni God, for some "mysterious" reason, created flawed human beings who can only mess-up.       

The things is: our freedom, our agency as human beings, is experiential; something we know innately and directly. 

Whereas the Omni-nature of God is something inferred as a consequence of non-intuitive abstract assumptions; and via logical procedures that many or most people cannot follow, or regard as flawed. 

And that is a problem! 

It is a problem that will not go away: Christians know we are free, and yet we are told that this knowledge of agency is subordinate to the assertion of Omni-God.

Officially - we are told that the ultimate answer is that common sense cannot comprehend this situation - tha tthe situation is necessary and unavoidable - therefore "it is a Mystery".  

And yet this mystery is made to be foundational to being-a-Christian (and also perhaps a Jew)!

Well, in the end, the only responsible way to address this situation is for each of us to plumb the depths of our primary assumptions concerning the ultimate nature of reality - to establish what we really suppose to be known, and sure, and foundational. 

Is it what we have been told, or what we experience?  

Upon this hinges a great deal. 

"Will power" characterized the spirituality of the religious elite during the era of Medieval consciousness

Religions, as we know them, emerged in the era of Medieval consciousness  - which was a millennia-long transition between the immersive passive un-consciousness of Original Participation and the current alienated Modern consciousness. 

There were (perhaps) two main forms of religion - one for the masses, the other for elite religious specialists. 

The Medieval mass consciousness was based on obedience to the religious institutions; and spiritual participation was made possible by intermediary phenomena; such as symbol, ritual, scripture, song - or social dynamics. 

The Medieval elite consciousness was based upon control of the whole person by "will power"; that is by human will aligned with divine will. 

The basic idea of Medieval era elite consciousness; was that a human being might discover the divine will; and then organized his life around the process of getting his own will into accord with the divine - and the totality of his behaviour into accord with his own divine-aligned will. 

So, the religious life was about prolonged discipline and training (e.g. varieties of initiation); aiming towards conscious goals. 

If successfully, the will was directed at the divine, and mastered all aspects of behaviour; to produce a transformed person (the higher type being described in various terms - holy, enlightened, an adept etc).  

Since the religious elites led the masses - and the obedience of the masses was directed at the religious elites - it was vital that there was sufficient alignment between elite and divine will. 

Usually - in most places, most of the time - there was not sufficient human-divine alignment. 

But sometimes and in some places there was; so it remained a valid ideal; especially in a world where individual consciousness was not much developed in most people. 

This idea of subordinating the whole of life to an elite will (purportedly aligned with the divine will) was "a good thing" insofar as the human will really was aligned with the divine will. 

And also insofar as the Medieval mode of consciousness infused this process of deployment of human will with "the spirit"... 

Because otherwise the whole thing was merely legalism - with all the ambiguities and imprecision intrinsic to the interpretation of language

It is this second aspect of the spirit infusing the human will, that has changed so much in the modern era - such that now the religious elites seldom even claim seriously to to be highly-aligned with divine will. 

Indeed, elite religious authority is usually based upon the same modes as the secular - that is to say institutional legitimacy, laws, rules, guidance understood as normal language (and in practice interpreted in the secular ways that such language is interpreted - e.g. legalistically, by historical and linguistic analysis, quasi-scientifically etc).  

What the modern era is left-with; is therefore the forms of Medieval consciousness, but minus the spontaneous spiritual infusion that used to accompany these forms. 

This, I think, is a reason why the Medieval forms are so badly-disenchanted; and exhibit such a dry, monochrome, dull, "school dinners" atmosphere...

Lacking spiritual infusion, their motivate only feebly, sometimes imperceptibly feebly; and consequently the elite religious specialists become assimilated into mainstream elite social mores: which are currently those of bureaucratic totalitarianism; hence evil; hence anti-Christian. 

(This can explain why the church leaders are the primary conduit for this-worldly and socio-politically-expedient corruption in the major Christian churches.)

And this, in turn, is why so many of the religious elite have turned away from them to immerse in the psychological gratifications - e.g. political spectacle-excitement, media entertainment, self-gratifying pseudo-moralism, therapies and palliatives - of mainstream secular culture. 

"Successful" churches are nowadays enterprises; providing meeting places and organizing holidays, staging events, serving as cafes and theatres, hosting social and health services - and so forth. 

This, then, is our situation. The aim, I presume; if our Christian life is to be strongly-enough motivated to transcend the pervasive pressure of secular society - is for each of us is to seek "enchantment" - i.e. infusion by divine spirit. 

...That same spiritual infusion that Mankind enjoyed in the past - but accepting that this is not possible either by passive immersion or by mediating phenomena. In sum: We need to seek the spirit actively and consciously - or else it will not happen. 

And we need to seek to integrate our-selves not by will power - which is now alienated from the divine. Nor by integration with the unconscious - from which we are detached, and which is anyway not Christian. 

But instead by seeking re-connection with our own partially-divine, eternal, original selves that are currently cut-off and alienated -- both by modern culture; and cut-off also by the forms of Medieval religion without the spirit. 

Because it is our eternal self that is in direct contact with the divine; and which therefore knows when it is aligned with God - and when it is (usually) more or less in a state of disharmony with creation - i.e. sin.  

For us; will power, and the disciplined seeking of conscious goals that characterized elite religious life in the Medieval era of consciousness; needs to be secondary to seeking divine-motivation, and divine-guidance and correction, by this inner-directed seeking consciously to establish direct-contact with our eternal selves.  

This is something new and unprecedented; and therefore difficult - but not so difficult as it may seem. The first step is to recognize what is wanted; then to recognize when it happens...

And the third step is not to expect too much! 

What is needed is sufficient Christian motivation to be able to navigate a Christian life in a hostile world - the ability to discern and the commitment to choose the divine and reject the demonic. 

We do not need, and shall not achieve, permanent and pervasive personal transformation for-the-better! 

We will neither become holy nor enlightened persons (unless we already are these things). 

But what is attainable; is a steady and robust desire to follow Jesus to resurrected eternal life in Heaven.  

Groups of people (e.g. a particular sex, religion, empire, nation, ethnicity, or social class) are never the root of The Problem

A good deal of human discourse is - and maybe always has been - ranged around arguments over which group of people are most at fault for the state of things? 

That group-at-fault may be very large - one of the sexes, for instance; or may be variously small - a particular religion, empire, nation, ethnicity, or social class. 

The thing is, there are so many candidate groups; and loads of evidence for all of them as being a problem, or even a Big problem - so there is constant and unresolvable dispute about which particular group is the worst.

What this amounts to is a search for the source of the major problems of the world; that special group which is the origin of the problems caused by most or all the other groups across the spread of history.

The point of this search for the origin, is the hope that when the source is known, then a solution will become possible... If the Big Problem can be located, then maybe it can be isolated, and its threat eliminated? 

So alluring is this prospect, that the project to discover the root-evil group continues; despite many generations of futility and failure - and no solid example of successful positive transformation consequent upon elimination of a particular group. 

Some of these problem groups are nonsensical projections, others are identifying a real and serious problem - by which I mean a real spiritual problem. It is a major aspect of the extremity of spiritual evil in these times that large groups have been (and are being) made evil by the sin of resentment. 

Many groups have been corrupted by resentment, to the point that resentment becomes the primary (or even sole) cause of their group-cohesion and motivation. 

Indeed, there may be nothing in common between the group members, except for the shared focus of their resentment. That is indeed the nature of The Left as of 2025: leftism has become nothing-but a collection of shared resentments. 

And, once a resentment-based group has been created, then there is the further spiritual problem that it leads not just to counter-measures, but to counter-resentment; such that a resentment-fuelled groups leads to the development of another group who "resent the resenters"*. 

And thus the problem compounds, and the search for an original group source of The Problem, and a remedy; instead spirals into a maelstrom of increasing mutual resentment.  

Why does this happen, and why does it happen so much here-and-now? 

It happens because ultimately humans are being manipulated by demons - because a world of humans that cohere by resentment is one that spiritually benefits only the Satanic strategy of human damnation - no matter what the (temporary) material outcome of inter-group conflict might be. 

And humans are more easily manipulated by demons here-and-now because we have (as a civilization) excluded the spiritual perspective from public discourse; including having denied the reality of the demonic - so that only human causes are regarded as permissible explanations for human problems.

(Spiritual explanations are regarded as necessarily false, because impossible.) 

The situation is strongly encouraged by the dominant Western ideology that regards "correctly-directed" resentment (e.g. anti-nationalist-globalism, socialism, feminism, antiracism, anti-antisemitism) as a virtue, not a sin; and which encourages resentment as a core human motivation by all means possible (state propaganda, media propaganda, laws and regulations etc).

Resentment is therefore a besetting sin of this era and place - because it is a sin that has been culturally-inverted into a virtue. 

Christians absolutely need to break out of this demonic cycle of group-resentment, on the basis that it is spiritual poison. 

As I've often said before: the reasons Christians are commanded to forgive in all situation is a spiritual (not practical) imperative; rooted in the fact that the opposite of forgiveness is the sin of resentment. 

Forgiveness is not about the evils of other person, or the other group, no matter how very evil these may be; it is instead about an evil in ourselves: We forgive sins in order that we ourselves do not fall into resentment. 

+++

* Examples of this abound on the "Secular Right" i.e. the group of anti-mainstream-Left political activists and commenters; which group includes plenty of self-identified Christians whose deepest and most compulsive interest is this-worldly, hedonic, and material. So we get those whose obsessive focus of discussion and argument is ("manosphere") anti-feminism, anti-antiracism, anti-(anti-antisemitism), and so forth. As with the mainstream Left, this broad grouping of "Alt-right"/ "Neoractionaries" etc has no net-positive spiritual motivation, and is united only by their resentments**.

**Further note: If you shake free of the past few weeks of gleeful euphoria of the Secular Right at the stated-intentions/?actions of the new US President's administration - you will observe a great surge of increased resentment (gleeful spite, Schadenfreude...), and nothing at all in the way of a positive spiritual programme. This may be "natural" for people to behave like this, but it sure ain't Christian thus gratuitously and publicly to celebrate one's own sin! 

In some ways, I'm amazed that anyone ever converts to the theology of church Christianity

Sometimes I find myself in a frame of mind in which I experience evangelical rhetoric as an outsider to Christianity - and then it strikes me, with greater and greater force each time, how extremely complicated, implausible, and indeed contradictory it all seems. It doesn't convince, and it just doesn't appeal. 

The classic service pre-Christmas of nine lessons and carols is probably the main way in which most non-Christians are exposed to the Christian message; but If one actually tries to make sense of the readings and put-them-together... Well, if they make any converting appeal to the alienated atheist in search of meaning and purpose - it is not clear to me. 

(I accept that the nine lessons services are not meant to convert atheists; but nonetheless, they are probably the only scripture and sermon to which most atheists get exposed in the course of a year.)  

And when Christianity is summarized briefly but in terms of its primary concepts; the philosophical explanation of what it's all about, seems to require all kinds of assumptions that aren't at all natural or obvious - or even good! 

Not obviously right, confusing and incoherent stuff, from my perspective, is:

That God (and then Jesus) are in practice mainly interested in judging us for our sins, and will inevitably find us deserving of punishment - probably horrible and everlasting punishment... 

Yet Jesus, as saviour, seems to be saving us from a situation that (by definition) has been entirely set-up by God. 

But God and Jesus are essentially the same - yet "the Jesus aspect of God" was somehow necessary for the work of salvation to happen. Apparently; God needed to become Man (while remaining God) in order to save us from a God-created situation...  

But that the fact this world is full of sinful people is not God's fault, despite that he created absolutely everything that exists - instead the universality of sin the fault of some combination of inherited original sin (hence the Genesis reading in the nine lessons) plus our own freely-chosen individual sins. 

It seems that, faced with the sinfulness of His Creation; God would - because of justice - condemn every single person to damnation - except that Jesus (who, by some selection or combination of his birth, life, suffering, death, resurrection, and ascension) somehow negated this damnation* - on certain conditions (which conditions vary between different churches and denominations). 

(*Various theories are offered; maybe God punished or sacrificed Jesus instead of us; maybe Jesus experienced the totality of suffering that otherwise would have been experienced by us... there are various theories, none of which fit common sense ideals of good relationships or virtuous behaviour among people.) 

Most of being-a-Christian is about these conditions required for salvation: what we must do (and not do) to satisfy our judge/s, and avoid the punishments of Hell. 

But Jesus (for reasons which aren't clear) did all this is a two-phase process - beginning the work during his life as a Man some 2000 years ago, and ending the process at some future date when Jesus will (in some sense) return and finish the job.  

It is not terribly clear what we (and all humans of the past) are supposed to be doing in the meanwhile...

I can only suppose that all this business is utterly bewildering to most people (insofar as they take the slightest notice of it), and that it does not amount to something that one would obviously endorse as a way of setting-up and running things. 

I also think it is factually wrong in many important respects, and that reality is not really structured thus. 

But you all know what I think already. My main point here is to point out that - quite apart from whether the teachings are true - all this doesn't come across as anything like as self-evidently appealing as some Christians seem to think it is... 

(I know all this can be and is nuanced into other and more positive and appealing stuff by the many and complex abstractions of official theology... But Christians need to ask why it is that they are so utterly unable to explain their religion concisely and lucidly, what it "offers", what is its appeal, how it "works" - even when they have the attention of a captive audience.)

The marvellous originality and profundity of the Mormon theology of eternal marriage

I have given-up on trying to persuade others of the wonders of Mormon theology! Instead, I will here merely vent some of my enthusiasm. 

Even Mormons regard their theology as very-much subordinate to specifics of this world practice in the CJCLDS. 

And hardly anybody else outside the CJCLDS (although, a few!) is sufficiently interested even to engage with the subject - often because of ineradicable ignorant hostile prejudice. 

But for me, I don't know that I have come across any richer source of metaphysical originality and genius across the span of Christendom, as in Mormon theology*. 

One of the greatest insights of Mormon theology was that God (The Creator) is the eternal and loving marriage of Father in Heaven and Mother in Heaven; in other words God is a dyad, not one. 

Properly understood and explored; this can be an astonishingly rich insight into the fundamental nature of reality - transcending centuries, indeed millennia, of false antitheses between monotheism and polytheism. 

The Mormon concept of God can be the basis of a positive metaphysical concept in its own right (not some combination or compromise of pre-existing concepts); as such, it needs to be understood in its own right. 

The Mormon church (the CJCLDS) has confused and distorted matters - in this as in several other ways - by claiming that such eternal "sealed" marriage is possible among mortal men and women, here on earth; and restricted to the administration and approval of the CJCLDS. 

This is understandable, perhaps it is and was inevitable - yet we must distinguish the reality and truth of things, as separable from the compromises and practicalities of organizing and maintaining A Church, in this world. 

But this is not merely something that demonstrably fails in practice (since many sealed marriages have ended in divorce); but is clearly impossible in theory, due to the basic nature of human beings and our life in this entropic and evil world. 

The basic nature of this mortal life cannot be transcended by mortal Men - and the fact of Men organizing into churches. 

Making claims of the church's transcendent power, or that church rules for living are mapped onto post-mortal and heavenly realities, are simply false - because they contradict the nature of this-world; and contradict too the whole rationale of Christianity as entailing death and resurrection. 

We cannot make Heaven on earth - else there would be no need for Heaven.

(And Jesus Christ insisted that there was need for Heaven, and by his work showed why and how.) 

We cannot replicate the eternal realities of Heaven with our mortal minds and bodies - and claiming that we can, acts against the core realities of what Jesus did and why. 

Churches - and their rules and rituals - do not control our access to Heaven; and indeed, the behaviours of church members (since 2020, especially) demonstrates that nobody really believes that they do. 

(They are merely too concerned at the implications of acknowledging they don't believe - which double-negative is not the same as - and much weaker than - positive belief. )

So, to understand the profound truth of the Mormon theology of God, requires that Mormons (as well as other Christians) set-aside the confusions related to how such spiritual realities are crystallized into material and mortal terms here in our lives on earth. 

Yet, our aspirations can and should be heavenly and spiritual - even as we acknowledge that their practice is mortal and corruptible (not just corruptible, but actually inevitably corrupt-ed - to some degree, sooner or later - by entropy and death - even when not by evil). 

(Thus the desire and aspiration towards eternal marriage in the Mormon sense is a new (as of 1830) beautiful and life-enhancing one - and a vital corrective to the destructive (indeed nihilistic) "mainstream" Christian doctrine that marriage is necessarily a temporary expedient that is dissolved by death, combined with the assertion that "there is no marrying in Heaven".) 

This aspiration is true and good; although eternal marriage cannot be actually attained until after we are resurrected and have become wholly and eternally committed to live by love. 

It requires resurrection to be able to make eternal commitments; for the reason that resurrection is itself the foundational eternal commitment - i.e. to live wholly by live (and leave-behind sin). 

Earthly marriage, and the innate desires and motivations we have in relation to it - even when we may be unable to find it during this mortal existence, provide the basis for understanding the reality of Heavenly marriage; and of the original, originative, creative nature of God (originating, that is, in love - with creation, including but not restricted to procreation, understood as a manifestation of love.)

When Joseph Smith had his vision of the dyadic nature of God, he was both a prophet and a philosopher of genius; but when he tried to make this vision a concrete reality among the members of the new Mormon church, he was merely a gifted and able leader, a kind of "king and judge" perhaps. 

Furthermore, the nature of God as from a Heavenly marriage need not be, and I think is not, a template for every man and woman - past, present and future. 

Christianity is for individual persons, and entails that each individual person affiliates to divine creation; I don't see that this entails that everybody ultimately wants the same thing - indeed that would seem vanishingly unlikely. Since each is unique - surely there will "always" be genuine exceptions? 

(As well as those making excuses to justify special treatment!) 

And what we be the point of a creation consisting of everybody doing the same thing! Multiplicity would then have no function or reason!

Another of Joseph Smith's great prophetic insights was that Heaven was A Family, in a literal as well as metaphorical sense. And a loving family - even here on earth - can and often does incorporate many kinds of life-motivations and self-chosen roles, among its loving members. 

Resurrected and eternal individual men and women will develop what is distinctive in their original and innate nature - and this may or may not lead them into eternal marriage of a kind analogous to that of God, our Heavenly Parents and the Primary Creators, and thence to procreating spiritual children - in the way that Joseph Smith seemed to regard as the proper goal of all people. 

I include this, not because I am necessarily correct in contradicting this particular aspect of Joseph Smith's revelations - but as example fo how we ought to engage with them, as realities.

Realities we may know-about now, and experience temporarily and partially in mortal life; but realities that are only do-able in resurrected post-mortal life    

 

*For all its essential insights (at least, they have been essential for me) there are significant deficiencies in Mormon theology. Two of the most important are an incoherent and double-negative understanding of Jesus's real vital importance and the true nature of his work, which error was (apparently) inherited from mainstream Protestant theology. Another mistake - I believe - is also inherited; which is to regard the Holy Ghost as a separate personage from Jesus Christ - which (as with mainstream Christianity) makes the HG into a nebulous abstract entity with no clear provenance or role. 

Man's creative freedom is part-of God's "plan of creation" - not an impediment

If we consider God's Plan of Creation; the usual descriptions are extremely "top-down" - and have the form of a plan of God's, with each Individual Man's proper role being to choose-to-follow that plan.

This kind of description implies a negative view of Man's free agency, or at most an ultra-restricted understanding; because (at root) there is only one predetermined answer to the question of "what should I do?" to fulfill God's hopes; and therefore Man's freedom becomes little more than the ability to choose wrongly! 

Thus if we take a top-down view of God's creation; with Goodness and truth coming from above; Man is assumed to have an essentially negative potential. Men can fail to do what is needed, what they ought to do; but Men cannot succeed creatively. 

(Because God is omnipotent and created everything-from-nothing; Men can add nothing that could could not otherwise be provided by God.) 

Therefore, by traditional Christian theology; Men are not supposed to have the potential to participate positively in creation. 

Furthermore - because of the idea of Original Sin - Men will have at least a very strong tendency to do evil; which understanding points either towards each Man's withdrawal and contemplation; or else points towards an attitude of self-negation and obedience. 

Obedience to... well, whatever is generally supposed to constitute religious authority (e.g. church leadership, scripture, tradition etc). 

If God is regarded as analogous to an absolute monarch, with a complex and detailed "blueprint" for our betterment, we are at-best God's servants - and each Man's job is to choose to obey God's comprehensive instructions, follow the plan in all respects (even though we do not and cannot comprehend it) - and then (so the theory goes) things will work-out in accordance with divine intentions. 

Such views may have been normal in the past, and were very-probably correct for Mankind, as Mankind was constituted in the past - when individuals regarded themselves as only semi-differentiated from their social group: their clan, people, nation etc. 

Yet ultimately, and now that we primarily self-experience as individuals; I would say that this traditional understanding has become a profoundly anti-Christian understanding. 

(That is: What was right and inevitable then, has become wrong and avoidable now.)

Indeed; a religion based-on obedience and the self-image of a servant (in its effect) leaves-out the work of Jesus Christ; consequently it seems much closer to a purely-monotheistic (e.g. Jewish or Islamic) understanding of Man's role and destiny. 

(To me, that is almost-exactly what A Lot of "modern but trad." Christians seem to be yearning for: I mean, their religion is a version of ancient Judaism, or Islam, in deep essentials - with a superficial top-dressing of Christianized language, and a Jesus that does nothing essential.) 

A Christian understanding should instead (surely?) take into account that this is a universe where Jesus is also divine, and Men are each - like Jesus - sons or daughters of God; and therefore one in which Men can follow Jesus to divine status. 

My understanding of God's creation is much more participatory - a "joint-project" of God and Men - and has a necessary and positive creative role for all Men who are capable of conceptualizing it. Here's how I see things: 

Creation relies-upon Man's freedom for its success. Our creative contributions are vital elements to The Plan; although none are indispensable. 

The set-up is such that we are intended to participate and add-to creation; and every-thing we do in that line is a plus. 

(Despite that the plan continues even if we do nothing to help it.) 

This is because the Plan of Creation is not really a "plan" as such, it is not like a blueprint aiming at a fixed and specific outcome; but creation is instead something that God sets-up and sustains; and this creation is inhabited by Beings (such as Men) each with agency. 

Not by accident do Men have agency!

Ongoing creation is continually being re-shaped - taking into account the creative activates of Beings. 

God's creative intentions are quite simple in their general direction: God desires as many as possible Men (an other beings) to choose salvation - that is, to choose resurrection into Heaven after death. That means, ultimately, to choose and commit to live By Love - wholly and eternally.  

And also, as a consequence of this attitude, during this mortal life; God desires that as many Men (and other Beings) as possible, should join-with the work of creation, participate in creation, whenever possible - which is done by thinking and acting from our deepest, real, potentially-eternal "selves" in harmony with divine creation.

If it is to be genuinely creative, then all thinking and acting from our eternal selves will be in harmony with divine creation - if it is not in harmony with God's creation then real-self-thinking is something that is either without effect, happening only "inside" us; or it acts against divine creation - is evil. 

That possibility is, presumably, where the fear of creativity, and the mistaken attempt to avoid it, comes-from. But avoiding creativity is not a "safe option": there are no safe options. 

Here-and-now, with Man as He is; we must be creative and participatory with divine creation, if we are to avoid assimilation to the world-dominating Agenda of Evil.  

In this mortal life; such creative participation is something we can only do relatively-briefly, and in a modest fashion; but it is-happening whenever we are living from our True Selves (not our superficial personalities) in a state of conscious commitment to Love of God and Fellow Men. 

(i.e. The two Great Commandments.) 

Every time this happens, creation is enriched (and permanently); and we also learn from such experiences what it is to live in Heaven - which experience can be a strong (perhaps decisive) encouragement to choose salvation: Because; only to those who follow Jesus Christ to resurrection can such loving, creative participation become full and everlasting. 

Un-resurrected Men are not perfectible and there can be no Heaven on this earth (Jesus Christ is the only Way to eternal love)

I have often come across variations on the theme that this world and the Men, animals and plants who dwell here are perfectible: that this mortal life can be transformed into Heaven. 

The transformation has been variously expressed; one idea is that the gross materiality of bodies will be transformed into light; or that matter becomes spirit; or (in New Age type thinking) that the vibrational-state or frequency of the planet and everything on it will be raised. 

The underlying idea seems to be that this world as-it-is is "entropically" subject to death, decay, disease, and sin; but that the corruptible "stuff" of mortality and imperfection can be transformed and replaced by in-corruptible stuff... Thus Earth is changed into Heaven.

I regard this metaphysical belief as an early manifestation of Mankind's alienation, of our diminishing participation, of the loss of primal "animism" by which we knew that this reality is constituted by Beings - loving, conscious, purposive beings - and these are the bottom-line explanation. 

Because reality is Beings - therefore restatements of ultimate reality in such terms as vibrations or frequencies, of matter-spirit distinctions, or of light or any other physical property - are all abstractions. (All "physicsy").

That is these ways of understanding reality are all distanced, symbolic, representative - but not reality itself; and only a secondary form of understanding.

If, instead, we embrace the original and spontaneous human understanding of reality in terms of Beings, then we can recognize that what prevents Heaven on Earth is not a matter of matter, not about the "substance" of this world (as if it could be separated from the spirit). But instead that death, sin, insufficiency, "entropy" are a consequence on the inharmoniousness of relationships between Beings. 

In a nutshell: it is the lack of complete and eternal love that prevents our eternal lives and Heaven. 

We must rectify relationships and enable eternal Love to have Heaven. 

Heaven can arise only by Loving God first - that is, recognizing and committing ourselves to God's creation and creative methods and purposes. 

And second: by loving our neighbours/ fellow-Men - in other words Loving All Other Beings - forever.

These are the two Great Commandments articulated by Jesus Christ; and can be seen as shorthand for the eternal and irrevocable commitment to live by Love; in harmony with God's creative will. 

When beings live by Love, this is eternal - because there is nothing in Heaven (thus conceived) to disrupt or destroy divine creation.  

Since Love is what is needed, and since Love is a choice - we need to recognize that Love is the free act of a Being with agency as an essential attribute. 

Therefore (because Love cannot be imposed, top-down, from-externally); everlasting life and Heaven cannot be imposed, but must instead be chosen: indeed there must be a commitment to live eternally by Love. 

To make our lives eternal and dwell in Heaven is therefore a matter of relationship, and that relationship is voluntary (again, Love cannot be imposed)... 

Thus Heaven cannot be imposed on Earth by any means - what must instead happen is that all the beings of Earth (including the being of Earth itself) must choose to live by Love.   

I cannot see any way that such a lot of choices would be simultaneous, and Heaven cannot be partial; which would seem to mean that either Heaven must be delayed until every Being has chosen it -- which delay seems contradicted by Jesus's teachings (esepcially in the Fourth Gospel - of "John"). Or Heaven is elsewhere. 

(And also there is the fact of at least some apparently eternally-self-damned demons; which would prevent Heaven ever from happening - if indeed all must repent before eternal life can ensue.) 

Heaven surely cannot be partial; because the dwelling in Heaven of selfish or cruel Beings would not be Heaven! It would lead to destruction of that Loving creation which enables both perfection and eternity - and is itself the state of Heaven.

So, it seems to me that Heaven, and our eternal resurrected life therein, must be elsewhere than this earth; and segregated from this world of sin/ death - such that those Beings who have not committed to Love, do-not and cannot affect Heaven. 

My understanding is therefore that this-world cannot be other than it is; which is a consequence of God's Loving creation in a context of primal chaos, creation in the context of Beings that all have some tendency to death, to selfishness, to sin (and some Beings apparently incapable of Love). 

This world is temporary, and creation here is like the rule of a wise and wholly-Good parent imposed on children (i.e. Beings) who vary in their innate degrees of Goodness, and obedience. 

But for eternal life and Heaven to exist, these Beings (us, you and me, included) must be released from obedience in order to choose freely whether or not we want Heaven. 

So, this world is mixed: and has in it both evil (primal chaos, entropy, selfishness...), and also Good - vast and renewing manifestations of God's creative Love. 

Therefore; every Being or entity in this world has direct and personal experience of evil and Good. 

Every Being in this world is in a position to make the eternal commitment to live wholly by Love in a wholly Good "other place" that is Heaven - a Heaven that already exists, and to which we each can go by following Jesus Christ through resurrection, after death.

In other words; we can, will, and must choose either Heaven; or else "more of the same, mixed, kind of thing".  

But this world is not staying the same. 

This world apparently accumulates evil through time, because evil just-is cumulative, and Beings that choose evil become more evil..

(Unless the Beings repent; which means precisely making a commitment to follow Jesus to Heaven.) 

Also; Beings that commit to Good are incrementally being removed from this-world and segregated in Heaven. 

In other words; this mixed world already contains Hell in part and in places; but is becoming more Hell-ish with time. 

In conclusion; Beings such as our-selves can choose Heaven or Hell - both of which we all have experienced in this mixed world. This is the choice between eternally living only by Love; and not making this commitment. 

We can choose Heaven, or we can choose to reject Heaven. 

We can also choose to "delay" our choice -- but this is, in its actual effect, a here-and-now rejection of Heaven, and embrace of this mixed-world, which is tending towards Hell. 

We can go-back on this rejection of Heaven at any time: repentance is always open to every Being. 

But, in this mixed but evil-accumulating world, and given that un-repented evil will become more evil; delaying the choice of Heaven does make salvation more and more difficult. 

Repentance is never impossible, but always gets more difficult with delay. 

Is death an unjustifiable violation?

JRR Tolkien quoting - with agreement - Simone de Beauvoir:

[De Beauvoir]: "There is no such thing as a natural death: nothing that happens to a man is ever natural, since his presence calls the whole world into question. All men must die: but for every man his death is an accident and, even if he knows it and consents to it, an unjustifiable violation." 

[JRR Tolkien]: Well, you may agree with the words or not, but those are the key spring of The Lord of the Rings.

On the one hand, death is universal and thus, apparently, natural; on the other hand, death is also experienced as profoundly un-natural, accidental, a violation. 

Traditional Christian theology has attempted to deal with this using the concept of Original Sin; but I find this unsatisfactory - both for having been (I would have thought obviously) inserted post-Jesus and therefore not genuinely Christian; and also because Original Sin theory fails to do what it claims, which is to explain the prevalence of evil among Men without implicating God. 

Instead; my understanding of death is that it is experienced as both natural and unnatural because of our situation in mortal incarnation - which I regard as (for Christians) situated between a potentially deathless pre-mortal spirit existence; and the post-mortal incarnated state of resurrection. 

This mortal life of ours is temporary, a phase not an end-state - but our basic expectations deriving from pre-mortal spirit life are that we 'ought to be' eternal and deathless. Furthermore, since the life and work of Jesus Christ, Christians have hope of an eternal and deathless state to follow this mortal life. 

Yet, the actuality of this mortal life and its inevitable termination - is unnatural. It is also not under our control; since other factors (primarily God, but also Men and other Beings and happening) influence how and when we die. 

We cannot, therefore, take death for granted. Death comes, and will be a time of transformation. It is a severing of soul from body, as the body dies - and (because we are incarnate Beings) the body's death changes us, removing part of our-selves - and what remains after death is naturally-speaking incomplete. 

In other words; the spirit after death - which has been variously conceptualized throughout history - is significantly like a different person, and (it has been believed) is often severely diminished in its coherence, identity, agency etc. 

I think we sense exactly this (mostly implicitly), when we consider death. It probably lies behind the yearnings for 'peace' after mortal-death, which are so often the wish of non-Christians (including many self-identified Christians who do not want the resurrection that Christ actually offered). 

...Anyone who felt sure that death will certainly annihilation would not be concerned to ask for peace; anyone who was confident that death was naturally a peaceful state would not feel compelled to pray for peace.  

There is a fear (clearly expressed by Hamlet in his famous "To be, or not to be" soliloquy) that after our death we will experience a state of inescapable nightmare; and that this may be the 'default' condition - unless... something else happens, or we take some particular actions or make choices.  

Thus, from our perspective here-and-now in mortal life; death is indeed the threat of a violation that seems unjustifiable; unless made-sense-of by resurrection - or some other desired outcome. And that death seems to be non-optional makes matters worse. 

Original sin was and is an attempt to make sense of this, but since it does not work then we need something else - and the explanation ought to be a clear and graspable kind of truth (as indeed it surely would be, given the nature of our God).  

  

Why are we, here, now; so much more vulnerable to wrong ideas than Men of the past?

It seem clear to me that Men of the past could believe all kinds of wrong things (and even have massively contrasting religions), without coming to serious harm. 

There was a very broad area of what seemed like common sense that meant almost all people, everywhere, shared broadly the same ideas of The Good.  

But that now wrong ideas, and almost any wrong idea seems to suffice, leads to the grossest evil of value-inversions; such that people nowadays consciously, actively and strategically pursue lies, ugliness and sin (and persecute truth, beauty and virtue) in ways that simply did not happen in the past.  

The best explanation for this difference of which I know, is Owen Barfield's account of Original Participation. 

What this suggests is that originally Men were spontaneously, and mostly un-consciously, immersed-in and controlled-by the divine and spirit world - from birth and through their lives. 

This influence came-through in all kinds of natural instincts; and these instincts shaped all traditional social practices - without awareness or planning. 

These ancient Men were less free, less consciously aware - and they just accepted and followed all kinds of behaviours which - ultimately - derived from the nature of divine creation. Men were mentally part-of divine creation, and therefore what they thought and did was broadly concordant with divine creation.    

However; across the ages and through the centuries this has dwindled. 

Men have become more conscious and autonomous of the natural and created; and in recent generations the immersive and unconscious, instinctive, controlling link between the divine and spiritual, and each Man's thinking, has been all-but severed (except during early childhood). We are cut-off from God and divine creation. 

This phase we currently inhabit is what Barfield calls the Consciousness Soul; and it explains why bad/ wrong/ evil ideas now have such a devastatingly inversional and weird effect on individuals and societies. 

There is still a sense in which we all still already-know (naturally, spontaneously, instinctively) what is Good (i.e. true, beautiful, virtuous, in harmony with God and creation) -- Yet that knowledge lacks the automatic regulatory power it used to possess. Instead, we are often deeply suspicious of this innate kind of knowing. 

At any rate, such knowing is far more easily confused or over-written than ever before in history - often as a prelude to its inversion.   

 

If all this is so - what does it mean and imply? 

It means that, in some sense, we can and should return to living in harmony with God and creation and in connection with the world of spirit. 

But it does not imply that we should recreate the behaviours and societies of the past. Indeed that is strictly impossible; since we are now so utterly, radically, different from the Human Beings that used to inhabit such societies. 

A society based-upon the natural and spontaneous connectedness of people to God, cannot happen when people are - as a matter of fact - Not spontaneously connected to God!

If not, then what? If not the impossible reversion - how instead might we move towards the harmony with God that Christians desire? Well, one helpful step is to identify and correct wrong ideas of our own. 

The fact that these wrong ideas were (pretty much) harmless to Men of the past does not mean that these same ideas will not harm us now. 

Bad ideas now are widely and deeply toxic to our whole alignment with the world of divine creation - therefore we absolutely need to become aware of them, and correct them.  

It's a big job - for a Christian to identify that which used-to-be regarded as harmless, or even as necessary, to his faith - and then reject it as incompatible with the basic aim of Christian life! 

Yet something like that, seems to be the special and vital spiritual task of this time and place. 

The yearning for immersive belonging, and the fear of self-deception

There is, and has been for many generations, deep yearning for a life that is one of immersive belonging. 

It has many individual and cultural manifestations - the yearning for the idyllic aspects of early childhood, for 'primitive' tribal societies, for a future "Age of Aquarius" in which we are all united with everything in a state of cosmic consciousness...

This intense combination of nostalgia and the hope of escape from suffering and angst; goes-with the assumption that this needs to overwhelm us, and that overwhelming is a measure of authenticity, truth, validity. 

In other words, what we want is that we ourselves, and everyone in the world, will be-transformed, will be-made-anew, even against our resistance. 

So; this yearning fantasy is also one in which we desire to be un-free; it is (perhaps covertly) a rejection of our freedom as having caused existential-loneliness, division and misery - it is a hope that this alienating freedom will be dissolved away into a state of blissful connectedness. 

I think that some such mistrust, even hatred, of freedom and active agency underlies the great fear of self-deception that afflicts - and too often paralyses - modern people. I mean, the idea that if we take an active role in attaining knowledge, then that knowledge will be tainted by our own wishful thinking. 

This, then, is the flip-side of the above-described idea that valid and authentic knowledge is - ought to be - overwhelming; that what is true must be irresistible. 

It is also perhaps exactly this feeling or expectation that underlies the self-annihilating spiritual death and chosen-slavery of the majority of modern Men. 

Modern man has a profound mistrust of himself; of his personal capacity and motivation to seek what is true and good - a kind of terror of following any line of thinking that steps out-with the overwhelming and immersive ocean of external influences.

Any other-person who is suspected of doing this, of genuinely working from-himself; may well become an object of fear or ridicule - and perhaps loathing. 

Even worse is when this is incipiently is detected in one-self: a thinking actively from one-self that launches-out beyond immersive external influences...

Stop It At Once! 

There is thus a profound mistrust of free and active, independent thinking; which mistrust is only made worse by the fact of its joyousness, and sense of self-validating truth and creative flow.  

For Christians, this self-mistrust may be made worse by some version of the conviction of 'original sin' - which conviction can induce self-loathing and a craving to be-controlled. 

So, in the end, Mankind en masse has willingly submitted to the mind-control of global totalitarianism - as administered by its converged and controlled pseudo-Christian churches...

And all the time The Answer - the path to escape! - lay unused and indeed rejected; located within the mind and capability of every Man. 

The Weight of Entropy

I use the term 'entropy' to describe a very fundamental concept that emerges from an insight - or rather experience - of Mankind emerging as self-awareness begins to develop.

This insight-experience that dates back at least to the Ancient Greeks when (it seems to me) it was that which led to the very first philosophy - which was concerned with change versus stasis, movement v stillness, the temporary v the everlasting, chaos v order, the earthly v the divine, illusion v truth etc... In all these dualities, the first term corresponds with what I am terming entropy. 

To feel the truth of this realization is rather heavy mass that presses down upon all awareness and thinking. This insight can be described as experiencing the Weight of Entropy: in other words the realization that everything we know and know-of in this world will change and be lost; that  - in this world, and for all particular entities - death has the upper hand over life. 

Not everybody seems to have had this experience*, and (it seems) many of those who have had the insight choose to ignore and try not to think about it, or to deny its validity. 

But for those who have felt the Weight of Entropy, it has the ring of a profound intuitive truth. 

It is a metaphysical assumption hence cannot be proved, but it is consistent with everything in our experience - and nothing has been found in this material world (e.g. by 'science') that escapes entropy. 

Yet, the very fact that we can experience and recognize the Weight of Entropy in its fullness implies some kind of contrastive possibility; is a kind of proof that it cannot be the whole story, and is not inevitable in some kind of a cosmic sense. 

My understanding is that we are Beings who experience, think, and know from creation; from our innate experience of being-part-of creation. 

As original Beings, before divine creation; insofar as we had consciousness our awareness would have been of isolation in a universe of chaos (other Beings seeming like aspects of chaos, because they were behaving as such) - except we would not have regarded it as chaos, only as what is.

It is our inclusion in divine creation - and our experience of loving (cooperating with) other Beings, that gives us the basis of something alive and purposive, from which we can experience the workings of entropy dragging-us-down. 

And it is also that inclusion within divine creation that provides the awareness of at least a theoretical possibility of escaping - eternally - from entropy.

In other words; to feel the Weight of Entropy is usually a horrible and chilling experience - and it will remain so if we stop at that point (as so many people have, in the modern West). 

However, if we fully acknowledge the Weight of Entropy - instead of trying (and failing) not to think about it by distraction, intoxication, dishonesty etc; then we 'stay with it' and learn from it; we can go through entropy to the other side: which is awareness of divine creation.   

Note: A similar and related experience of 'weight' is that of sin - the insight that (for all the Good in the world, and that it is what many people, apparently, most desire) there is a sense in which sin is cumulative in a way that Good is not; and that corruption is an insidious influence that requires conscious and recurrent (if not continuous) resistance. But such an insight is perhaps restricted to some but not all cultures; whereas I suspect that the Weight of Entropy may occur to individuals in any kind of society. 

* When I read an ancient, or merely old, writer - I feel that I can sometimes recognize whether or not he has had this experience; when present, it seems like mind calling-to-mind across the ages and between vastly different circumstances. 

Heavenly Parents and the dyadic/ one-creator God - an update

As I have often written, but not recently, I believe that God is dyadic - consisting of a Heavenly Father and Mother, a man and woman who are (in some sense) incarnate and not spirits. 

This is the Mormon understanding, and reading about Mormon theology was where I first came across it. 

I am not trying to persuade other people that I am right; but I shall here consider why I personally believe this, and what it is that I believe. 

In the first place it is due to what might be termed intuition; in the sense that when I first encountered this idea, my heart seemed to jump and warm; as if I was discovering something true, good and with great possibilities of more-good. 

There was an immediate and positive sense... not so much that this was true, but that I wanted this to be true - this came before my conviction that it was true.  

Following this I read more about Mormon theology, and realized that the dyadic, man-woman nature of our Heavenly parents was just part of an entire metaphysical understanding of creation (including procreation - the creation of beings including people) as something dynamic, interactive, developing, evolutionary, open-ended, and expanding. 

In other words, that creation itself was creative (and therefore creation was not, as I had previously assumed, a done-thing, a closed accomplishment, a finished totality - once-and-for-always.) 

I then began to explore the implications of these ideas for myself; using concepts I got from William Arkle (and his reflections on God's motivations for creation); and Owen Barfield, including Barfield's accounts of the 'polar' philosophy of ST Coleridge. 

I was also building on a longer-term fascination with 'animism' - with the (apparently innate and spontaneous) tendency to regard the world (the universe) as consisting primarily of beings - all of whom were alive, purposive, conscious - albeit in different ways, at different scales and timescales etc.

The motivation for creation, and why God should have created this kind of creation, was something I had found difficult to grasp (none of the usual explanations made much sense to me). But when I conceptualized God as the loving dyad of a man and woman, then it seemed obvious why such a combination would have wanted to create - including others who might eventually become like themselves.   

Furthermore, it did not seem possible that creation had arisen from any state of oneness of self-sufficiency, since this would make creation arbitrary; nor could creation arise from a tendency towards differentiation, because that would lead to meaningless-purposeless chaos. 

There must (I felt) have been some kind of original 'polarity' - in abstract and physics-like terminology, there would need to be at-least two different kinds of 'force', the interaction of which would be creation. Coleridge (also Barfield and Arkle) saw this in terms of a 'masculine'-tendency for expansion and differentiation; and a 'feminine'-tendency for one-ness and integration.  

But in terms of my (non-abstract) preferred metaphysics of beings and animistic assumptions; 'masculine' and 'feminine' simplifies to just a primordial man and a primordial woman; this would mean two complementary, unlike-but-of-the-same-kind, beings; the love of whom would lead to a desire for creation.  

(In the same kind of way that - in this mortal life - love of man and woman usually leads to a desire for procreation.)

At some point I validated this understanding by means of meditative prayer; by refining and asking a simple question, feeling that this question had 'got-through', and receiving a clear inner response.  

In summary; the above account is something-like the sequence by which I desired, concluded, became-convinced-by, the metaphysical assumption of God as Heavenly parents; by some such mixture of feelings, reasoning, and 'feedback'. 

All this happened a good while ago (about a decade); since when I have been interpreting things on the basis of this framework, and it seems to 'work', so far.

What the real-life, this world, implications are; include a reinforcement of the idea that the family is (and ought to be) the primary social structure; on earth as it is in Heaven; and a clarification of the nature of creation - starting with the primary creation by Heavenly parents and also including the secondary creation of beings (such as men and women) within primary creation. 

This metaphysics has further helped me understand both why and how love is the primary value of Christianity; i.e. because love made possible creation in the first place, and is the proper basis of 'coordinating' the subcreative activities of all the beings of creation.  

And it helped me understand how creation can be open-ended and expansile, without degenerating into chaos; because it is love that makes the difference.

Also, it helped me to understand the nature of evil; and how evil is related either to the incapacity for love or its rejection. Without love, the innate creativity of individual beings is going to be selfish and hostile to that of other beings: non-loving attitudes, thinking, and actions by beings, will tend to destroy the harmony of creation.  

I don't talk much about this understanding, and I often use the generic term 'God'; because it is difficult to explain briefly and clearly that the dyadic God of our Heavenly parents serves as a single and 'coherently unified' source of creation

But God is two, not one, because only a dyad can create, and creation must-be dyadic. 

And the dyadic just-is the one-ness of God the primal creator.  

Note added: It may be said, correctly, that the above does not depend on the Bible; but then neither does the metaphysics of orthodox-classical theology depend on scripture. We can find resonances and consistencies within the Bible - but assumptions such as: strict monotheism - creation ex nihilo (from nothing) by a God outside of creation and Time, the Athanasian Creed descriptions of the Trinity, God's omnipotence and omniscience, original sin... These are ideas that would not be derived-from a reading of scripture - the most that can be said is that someone who already ideas can find Biblical references that can be interpreted as consistent-with these assumptions. They are (apparently) products of philosophically sophisticated theologians who brought these ideas to Christianity from earlier and mostly pagan (Greek and Roman) sources. Also, these kinds of metaphysical assumption are theistic - to do with a personal god - but not specifically Christian. The salvific work of Jesus Christ (principally: making possible resurrected life everlasting in Heaven) was done within already-existing creation, and Christianity is not therefore an explanation of creation-as-such.