Jesus as a 'sacrifice' for the 'propitiation' of our sins and the apparent incompatibility with 'God is love'

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First Letter of John: 

2: My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous: ² and he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world...

4: ⁷ Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. ⁸ He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love. ⁹ In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. ¹⁰ Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. ¹¹ Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another.

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There is an apparent incompatibility between the Gospel message that God is love - especially prominent in John's Gospel and the first Epistle; and the idea that God is the kind of deity who requires propitiatory sacrifice.  

A propitiation is an act done to appease or win favour from a god - and therefore to regard the death of Jesus as a propitiation seemingly flies in the face of the understanding of the true nature of God as revealed by the teaching and life of Jesus. 

The Christian response to this surface paradox has been various - but one response has been to make the propitiatory sacrifice of Christ into something resembling the focal point of the whole religion - so that the most-emphasized teaching becomes the assertion that God needed propitiation by an ultimate sacrifice of His own perfect Son - and that after that had been done, the decks were cleared for Him to be a God of Love. 

The key question about Christ as propitiation was whether propitiation was something demanded by God, or something demanded by Men. 

Is the need for propitiation a divine characteristic, or a sub-divine (human) characteristic? 

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The answer comes from contrasting the core of Christianity being love, with the (occasional) use of a language of sacrifice and propitiation as an explanation. 

It seems clear to me that the concept of a necessity for propitiation is a pre-Christian (anti-Christian) one - the use of propitiation to (try to) manipulate divinity is apparently something natural and spontaneous in Men, but it is multiply-contradicted and explicitly-superseded by the teachings and revelations of Christ. 

My understanding is that the language of sacrifice and propitiation was being used about Jesus (and quantitatively, it was not used this way very much in the New Testament, and even less in the Gospels) purely as a concession to the imperfect state of Men's understanding and motivation. 

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In effect, the intended message was along the lines of:

If you insist upon regarding me as the kind of God who demands propitiation by sacrifices; then please assume that the death of Jesus was sufficient sacrifice and that I have now been propitiated once-for-all. 

So, please forget about that stuff, if you can; and please stop organizing your religion around the need for propitiation!

The things I want you to focus-upon is that I am your perfectly-loving Father. To understand what I want from you, and how I want you to behave; all you need to do is imagine yourself a perfectly loving parent, and consider what you most hope for from your children in terms of attitudes, motivations, behaviours... 

Then you may gradually come to realize the absurdity, the gross misunderstanding, of supposing that I would ever want to be, or allow myself to be, mollified and manipulated by sacrifices; whether personal, animal, human or divine. 

Of course I understand and forgive that you may fall-into such behaviours, even from the best of intentions; but please, please, please do not suppose that I demand or respond-to a religion based-upon propitiation, or that propitiation is what I most want from you. 

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Children do not feel a need to propitiate their loving parents - real Christians ought Not to regard God as needing propitiation

I have often written of the un-Christian, indeed anti-Christian, idea that God want, needs and demands propitiation. 

I have also often written about my conviction that the spontaneous and natural "spiritual knowledge" of young children was built-into us by God, for our guidance, and as the basis of that adult knowledge we develop from properly-interpreted experiences and (usually) increasing capacity. 

I was considering my own childhood compulsion to pray (I was aged about 5-6 years), and how such prayers were almost entirely propitiatory in nature: I would beg my god (who was, I think, conceptualized as Thor) for the safety and survival of those I loved; and these prayers "needed" to be specific for each person, were desperate, and were repeated over and over again to the limit of my endurance.

These prayers were a ritual (before sleep) needed to avoid the punishment of harm being visited on those I loved. 

And, although the ritual was done to avert harm, I was very unsure of its effectiveness. Partly this was because of a sense that if I said or did anything wrong, then this would at least negate the prayer; and it might even evoke a punishment for my mistake - such that just what I prayed against, would be inflicted as the punishment.

(This seems to have been a common view of religious ritual through much of history, e.g. in the European Middle Ages - i.e. that it must be done exactly correctly or else it would do more harm than good.)

My first thought was to wonder whether this childhood experience of spontaneous propitiatory prayer was a guide to the real nature of God. I wondered if the fact I prayed in this style and spirit without being told, might be evidence that this was the real nature of God and his relationship with us. 

But then it suddenly struck me that I never felt the same way about my own mother or father. 

I never felt that my parents wanted, needed or demanded "propitiation". Indeed, the idea never even crossed my mind. 

The reason was obvious: I knew that my parents loved me. 

And I knew this - it was my solid faith. 

Therefore, because my parents really loved me and I knew it; propitiation was utterly alien and inappropriate - and indeed would be hurtful to loving parents. 

The God of whom Jesus speaks is spoken of as his Father and our Father, as the ideal and perfect loving Father.

Of Course a loving Father does not want propitiation - certainly He does not demand propitiation, nor does God our loving Father punish his children for failing to perform sufficient or correct propitiations...  

Jesus is saying pretty plainly that the real God, the Creator, is our loving Father*; and asking us to have the same "faith" in God's love that a child may have in the love of good parents - as I had in the love of my parents. 

By talking of and to his loving Father; Jesus is saying that a God who is regarded as wanting, needing, demanding propitiation is a false God; because the real God (the "Christian" God, the true creator) is of an absolutely different kind - God is Jesus's actual loving-Father, and our actual loving-Father; and we should have absolute confidence that He loves us as the ideal and perfect Father. 

Many, most - perhaps all? - other religions conceptualize their God or gods in ways that make propitiation of such God/s natural and needful...

And there are plenty of Beings - including human-beings, as well as various spirit-beings, including demonic - that do demand propitiation...

But these are not who Jesus meant by God.

(It very often seems to me that many self-identified Christians {and especially those who profess ultra-orthodox or traditionalist convictions} are actually - albeit implicitly - worshipping the God of Judaism, and/ or of Islam, rather than the Father of Jesus Christ.)  

What this means is that self-identified Christians who believe that their God requires propitiation are making a very serious error. 

(There are many, many, such Christians - often among the most "devout" - and always have been.) 

And if they persist in this error of worshipping a propitiation-demanding God; and if they (for instance) build their core theology, their articles of faith, around the necessity for propitiation; then the God that such people are advocating is Not the same God whom Jesus was addressing. 

In a nutshell: The Christian God is a loving Father, and Jesus asks us to have the same kind of faith in God's love that a good child has in the love of his parents. 

Genuine parental love - by Man of Men, or God of His children - has nothing to do with propitiation. 

   

*Note: I should clarify that ultimately I personally regard God as a dyad of Heavenly Father and Mother for metaphysical (and intuitive) reasons explained elsewhere; but my argument applies the same both to God understood as Father only, and to God as Heavenly Parents. So, I have presented the above argument in traditional language.   

The god of fear, who demands sacrifice, propitiation, worship, obedience - actually Implies a Good and Loving Creator God

There is that within human beings which believes-in a god of fear - a god who, in some sense "rules" the human world, and who demands sacrifice, propitiation, worship and absolute obedience... 

I mean that god who is a characteristic underpinning and default of much monotheism, including that of many Christians (of many kinds) throughout history. 

Because this is indeed a god of fear; people are afraid to give up their habitual attitude of sacrifice, propitiation, worship, obedience. 

Such fear as The ruling passion is very evident when interacting with many Christians - whatever lip-service they pay to God being our loving Father. 

Such Christians do not really trust God, because they are afraid of God; and they are afraid of God because their mental image of God - their understanding of God - is of an all powerful, all-knowing, yet incomprehensible and ultimately alien entity.  

As I said, this image of a god of fear seems natural and instinctive to humans - but, despite nearly 2000 years of confusion and conflation - this image is not the Christian Creator God as revealed by Jesus Christ. 

The God revealed by Jesus does Not demand sacrifice, propitiation, worship, or obedience; but instead "love" - or rather, Christ's God does not "demand" love, but is the God for those who recognize His love, and who love Him, and Fellow Men.

Such is the revelation - yet we need not depend on revelation to know the Good and Loving Christian God - because this loving creator God is implied by reality. 

For there to be creation, there must be love. (If you really think about it...!) Only a loving God would create. 

And we (you and me, as individuals) could only know this, if that loving God loved us (you and me, as individuals). 

To put it the other way around - the god of fear is a real god - which is why he is universally recognized and responded to. But he is not the creator God; he is not the primary god. 

The primary god (call him "God") must be the creator, and the creator must be loving, else he would not create - and must love us as individuals, else we could not know anything. 

The god of fear is a secondary god; one who hates creation, who uses creation for self-gratification instead of love, who inverts creation against itself.  

Therefore the reality of that god of fear implies the god of love as primary creator. 

But this argument that the god of fear implies that the God of Love is creator is not a logical entailment; it is an argument about persons. 

To accept my argument entails that we already, personally, value love above all. If we do not already value love as primary, as our highest aspiration; then we can just as easily accept the inversions of the god of fear. 

So, you can see how much of being a Christian hinges upon the fact that god is Not incomprehensible*. 

Knowing about God is not the same as knowing God - just as knowing-about some human being is not the same as knowing-him. 

Or, properly expressed, how vital it is to being-Christian that we each know God! - and know God as we might know other people such as close family or a deep friend - experiential knowing of an individual. 

Unless we know God we cannot love God; and this means we must be capable of such love. 

And if we do know God: when we are-knowing God, we know His love for us, and ours for Him - and then we will Not fear Him.  

(Although; in this mortal life we cannot always be in this state of knowing, nor even most of the time - and then we must be faithful to our memory of knowing. Thus the need for faith.) 

*Note added: To clarify. If God is allowed (by metaphysical assumption) to be incomprehensible, and if it is allowed for us to assume that God had no personal motivation for creation (because God is assumed to be an entity "without passions" an entity that therefore cannot be motivated); then the reality of a god of fear doesn't imply a primary loving creator God. In other words, if the creator god is assumed to be incomprehensible in His motivations, then we cannot exclude that the god of fear is the primary god. This is why those Christians whose faith is shaped by a core belief in god's incomprehensibility, posit a god whose characteristics seem to be essentially the same as those of god as understood and described by the pure monotheisms.  

The anti-Christian effects of superstition, propitiation, sacrifice

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I feel in myself a deep, existential worry which is superstitious, and relates to the idea of propitiating - ultimately by sacrifice.

So, I resist expressing happiness, confidence, hope, optimism - I resist allowing myself to feel confidence in the future - I am to some extent constrained in being honestly positive about such matters, for fear that it will trigger resentment, revenge, reaction from others.

It feels like there is something which regards my feeling happiness, confidence, hope and optimism as being arrogant or 'cocky'; and needing to be taken-down-a-peg  and taught-a-lesson. 

I therefore feel negatively-compelled to think things, and to avoid thinking things, from a fear that someone or some-thing will be offended, prickly, insulted, jealous; it is a fundamentally superstitious attitude of living life among rules - mostly unknown - which prescribe and prohibit and are zealously enforced; and the main business of life as being rule-following and avoidance of rule-breaking - and the servile serving-out of punishments for our inevitable breaches.

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This constraint motivated by fear of reprisal may be realistic in human society - given the endemic nature of spitefulness, and the 'dog in the manger' attitude of so many people who delight in the misery of others and whose main concern is that nobody else should have more or be more than themselves.

(This is, indeed, the case for such high-flown garb as 'equality', egalitarianism, sexual liberation, democracy and so on.) 

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But there is more to it than this. The constraint is also (and perhaps primarily) inner - it is present even in the privacy of my mind, of my stream of conscious thought.

This is not surprising since belief in gods, spirits, ghosts, malicious ancestors at large - belief in 'the supernatural' in general - is spontaneous and natural to humans - we believe that our inner thoughts are to some extent accessible and shared and communicated, and that among those who share them are powerful and malicious entities (something like the Christian concept of demons).

This is a powerful constraint - and I suspect it is a very general factor in human affairs (although I can only observe it indirectly in other people - I and sure it is there). However, although general, spontaneous, natural - I suspect it is anti-Christian in a developed sense of Christianity - for the simple reason that it implies God (who knows our thoughts) is not fully loving, but is prone to the same kind of resentment and revenge as other people - indeed the worst kind of people - in this world.

Yet at the same time (because it is general, natural, spontaneous to humans) this tendency to assume that God really does have a resentful and vengeful attitude is a constant tendency to which individuals and organizations and society tend to recur (for motivations which may be 'good' - e.g. encouraging or enforcing good behaviour - as well as wicked).

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This can be seen even among our own young children, who sometimes act towards us in a way that shows they are afraid that we do not really love them, that we need propitiating.

Sometimes the children are right - because parents are not perfect; but they are fundamentally wrong in that loving parents really are not motivated by resentment and really do not need to be propitiated - indeed a loving parent is appalled and deeply sorrowful to perceive this attitude in his children - an attitude based on fear. 

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So, the situation seems to be that it is (at least to some significant extent) natural for humans to treat God as if he were a demon; and demons (I think) really do want to be treated with superstitious concern, propitiated and sacrificed-to.

Demons (presumably) want us never to be free of the constraining fear to express (or even to feel) an attitude that is positive care-free, hope-full. They want humans to cringe, to be eaten up with anxiety about deflecting bad luck, evil influences, they want us to be hog-ridden by superstitious observations, they want us to be always and repeatedly destroying good things as 'sacrifices' - and to regard this destruction of good things as necessary to deflect divine 'wrath'.

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Unsurprisingly, because humans are error prone and yield to sin, this attitude of constraining fear has been (to varying extents, but sometimes very fully) incorporated into Christianity - the attitude that God watching out for us to trip up, get angry, punish us - unless this is deflected by propitiation and sacrifice - by a general human attitude of pessimism, expressions of misery... an attitude which is in fact and to some significant extent a dishonestly negative expression of our state of mind.

People come to fear - even inside their heads - a full and honest expression of positive and happy states of mind; asif this would trigger the jealous resentment of God! This I feel in myself, and I believe I perceive it in people all around me.

But I believe it is anti-Christian - a flaw, an error, a sin - a consequence of insufficient Christian faith and not a sign of Christian faith: this anxious, superstitious focus on propitiation and sacrifice is itself an insult to God rather than respect for God; deeply saddening to God, rather than what he wants from us.

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Indeed, when we treat God as if He were a demon, it is analogous to someone who falsely accuses her loving parents of 'abusing' her. It is to treat our loving Father in Heaven as if He were an abuser.

That is a measure of how serious an error we are making; how serious a sin it is to feel constrained against expressing - even to ourselves - our happiness, hope, confidence.
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Note: On this view, Christ as a propitiation and sacrifice is a matter of getting all that stuff out-of-the-way; of telling us not to worry about it any more because Christ has utterly and permanently taken care of it.

Church faith, or church superstition

If once a person becomes convinced that a church (i.e. his church) is ultimately not an institution but also a divine entity; then there is a faith in the church which, in principle, cannot be refuted by any possible experience or action.

With faith; the divine nature of a church is irrefutable. 

And if such a faith is lacking, then there can be nothing that could happen that would ever prove a church to be divine. 

In other words; the judgment is contained in the assumptions.

Yet the above two faith-focused alternatives do not exhaust the possibilities; because a church may instead be, or become, the object of superstition.

Superstition is an interesting and seldom remarked phenomenon, because it does not make sense either to real spirituality or to materialism - yet it is almost universal. 

A person can be, and innumerable people actually are, highly superstitious, yet in their theoretical understanding of the nature of the world, they reject any possible explanation for having their superstitions.

Superstition survives and thrives in this "age of science", just as it did in the preceding "age of faith" - but although powerful superstition is also... uncomfortable. 

So we can be confident that superstition is not the same phenomenon as religion, nor necessarily a part of religion; also that it is a spontaneous and innate aspect of being human. These by the fact that superstition as a phenomenon has been nigh-universally rejected: it was (sometimes) rejected as evil by religion -- and currently is (usually) now rejected as non-valid by mainstream leftist-materialism.  

Superstition is therefore disreputable, furtive, and we sense that it probably "does us no good" even as we feel it personally necessary to yield to its insistent claims. 

The sceptical materialist explains superstition as a phenomenon of psychology; indeed psychopathology - an irrational symptom of some dysfunctional mental condition. 

Yet this does not coherently explain why this aspect of psychology survives (and thrives) without the oxygen of societal approval, and in face of ridicule; when so much of human instinct (eg in the sexual realm) has been inverted. 

Superstition is instead perhaps best understood by a follower of Jesus Christ as part of a constellation of extremely durable ideas to do with luck and propitiation. 

Luck and propitiation are, in turn, bound up with implicit assumptions concerning the incomprehensibility and hostility of supernatural and divine entities. 

There ideas have seemingly been integral to past religions - for instance, Roman religion and superstition were so integrated as to be inextricable. 

Superstition is still very much a part of religion as-is in 2025 and The West - in particular, I would say, in terms of people's attitudes to their church. 

There is no strong faith in churches, as was evident by church behaviour in 2020 and the birdemic; but as is evident in almost everything almost all of the time.      

Instead we have superstition about churches. 

The difference between faith and superstition is the difference between positive and negative. 

Faith is positive, superstition negative. 

Faith is expressed by a trust analogous to the young child's trust in his loving parents in a good family. This trust is something like the opposite of superstition. 

The faith of a Christian is an analogous trust in God; because God loves us personally. 

Conversely, superstition is rooted in mistrust; and the need for propitiation. 

The implicit assumptions of superstition is that the world is alive and purposive - which is why materialists cannot explain it - and the world is partly incomprehensible in its motives (hence the attention to "luck"), and partly hostile. 

Superstition focuses on the negative harm that may be done to us, if we anger or offend those entities who have power over us. 

We can't really understand these entities, therefore we sometimes must do things that make no sense to us - yet we fear not to do them, lest this cause offence...

Why must we grovel, kneel, prostrate, avoid eye contact? Who knows? But best to do it, to be on the safe, side, to avoid offence. 

Why must we perform superstitious rituals? Same reason. We don't believe in the validity of these rituals, but we do fear not-to-do them. 

Why must we make ritual obeisance to church authority, why refrain from acknowledging personal discernment, why refuse publicly to acknowledge that we have taken ultimate responsibility for our fundamental convictions? 

Therefore superstition is a double-negation; it seeks to avoid the harm that may result from antagonizing the world, and its entities. 

People neither believe-in nor act-upon positive faith in a church and the goodness of God the creator - yet we double-negatively fear to deny the claims of the church, and its ultimate and eternal authority over us.

(After all; somebody might notice, might be listening - and then who knows what may happen?...) 

It seems to me that the continuing power of churches over Men's minds, especially among Christians, is of this superstitious nature - which is why churches have survived the extreme loss of faith occurring both in church-rulers (priesthoods, ministers leadership) and among church laity/ members. 

Church Christians do not positively and faithfully trust their churches in any strong and durable or primarily-motivating way. 

And churches have almost ceased to be a force for good in the spiritual realm; but instead net-support the agenda of totalitarian evil. 

Yet Church Christians fear to antagonize their churches (even mentally); in a way closely analogous to that by which people fear to go against irrational and meaningless superstitions. 

Church adherence by superstition is thus, like other superstitions, not a product of theory or understanding; but something people do despite their theories, and because of their lack of understanding.

One who faithfully believed and trusted in a creator God who loved us each as His individual children; such an one would have no truck with his own felt-needs to propitiate the divine. 

However motivationally or psychologically powerful, such a desire would be recognized as a sin - because it misrepresents the nature of God and divine creation. 

Superstition is strong and superstition is wrong - but this is no paradox, and quite normal in our lives and this world 

 

A Christian should know and acknowledge that superstition is an evil; even though he cannot stop feeling it, and even when cannot stop yielding to it. 

And even when it applies to his church. 

Superstition should lead to repentance, not to the attempt to justify its necessity.   

Such is the nature of sin and of human beings in this world: we just-are "sinners", and cannot cease from sinning - but we can always repent. 

Therefore, like other superstitions; Church Christianity as-is in 2025, is primarily a consequence of lack of faith in the personal and loving goodness of God the creator.

And the spiritual harm of church superstition is sustained by the refusal to repent.        

Note: The above is a harsh teaching, but I believe that it is true. The only way out and up from where we now are, is first to return to unexamined or denied root assumptions; then to acknowledge and evaluate these assumptions - and that is what I am trying to stimulate here. In other words; far too many Christians actually are assuming that God is incomprehensible and unloving - when the reality is very simply that God the Creator is our Father who loves us as His children, and God's motives are understandable as those of ideal parents are confidently known by their offspring. A child ought not to regard genuinely loving parents in a superstitious manner, and to assume that fear is appropriate and propitiation is necessary is a sad and self-harming misunderstanding - that actually denigrates love. All I am suggesting is that Christians take seriously, and put first, the teachings and example of Jesus concerning his Father - especially as it is revealed in the IV Gospel. This teaching on God as an actual and loving parent of us as His children is what is literal, sure and certain about Christianity, above all else. And all else, all other claims of church, theology, philosophy, doctrine, church history etc.; needs to be judged by this. 

What would convince modern people of the divinity of Christ? What would answer their major fears?

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Divine Accommodation: "God's revelations are always limited to the current capacity of humans to comprehend." - Rodney Stark, Discovering God - 2008, p6.

Stark's idea is that Christ's incarnation was a divine revelation that had the features necessary to convince people of his divinity, in the Jewish and Pagan context of that era. This is why Christ was presented as primarily a sacrifice and a propitiation, because of the then-current focus on sacrifice and propitiation - especially among Pagans, but also Jews. That was why there was a focus on the fulfilment of Jewish prophecy (to convince the Jews), and on miracles of healing (to convince pagans). People understood that death was not the end, but were terrified about what might happen after death.

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I found this idea pregnant when I revisited it recently, I mean the idea that God works in the context of the time; when I considered how relatively ineffective this focus would be (and is?) in the modern context of 2000 years later - because modern culture is not concerned with sacrifice and propitiation, disbelieves or is indifferent to prophecy, and regards healing as a medical-scientific (or perhaps 'psychosomatic') affair.

If Christ had been incarnated into the modern world and needed to prove his divinity (silly idea, I know), or if a modern prophet wanted to proclaim the message of Christ, then it would simply be ineffective to focus on sacrifice, prophecy and healing. People would not be interested - most importantly, people would not be convinced - because these are not modern concerns.

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So, what would be the equivalent focus? What are the concerns of modern people? If Romans around 30 AD were afraid of God/ the gods, then what are we afraid of? 

Well, my understanding of 'the modern predicament' is that it is related to three main deficiencies which are, at root, not so much beliefs as fears: and they relate to purpose, meaning and relationship.

1. Purpose: Moderns have come to fear that life and the world are going nowhere, that there is no destiny or direction.

2. Meaning: Moderns have come to fear that nothing means anything, it is all just cause-and-effect. Stuff happens!

3. Relationship: Moderns fear that each is ultimately alone, that there is nothing real that is binding humans, there is no genuine communication, and that the rest of the world is dead.

So, divine revelations for modernity would tend to accommodate to these current fears and concerns - to explain (presumably in a single and interlinked package) the direction of human life, and to emphasize that each person is not alone in the world - but actually and always embedded in a network of relationships and communications.

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Perhaps this modern predicament or primary concern can all be summarized by the dominance of each person's fear of the insignificance and isolation of his own, specific life.

The message of Christ to modern people would perhaps need to be addressed to this - to accommodate to this; such that every individual could appreciate it as an explanation of the unique necessity and meaning and purpose of my own particular life in relationship to other people's lives, and the world as a whole.

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Christianity and paganism

Over the past couple of hundred years, supposed-'parallels' between Christianity and paganism (or other religions) have often been pointed-out -- usually in an anti-Christian context such as trying to prove Christianity is not true; or not different from other religions (merely a derivative copy), or that Christianity is different but an inferior corruption of earlier patterns.

I mean such aspects (beloved of comparative religionists) as the birth to a virgin of the divine hero, the sacrifice of the divine hero (perhaps by something-like crucifixion), death and rebirth of a god... that kind of thing. In other words; similarities between Gospel accounts of the Jesus story on the one hand; and folklore, myth and other-religions on the other hand - parallels that are sometimes reasonably - but sometimes much less! - plausible. 

Nowadays it strikes me that these alleged parallels and similarities to paganism etc. are always to those aspects of Christianity that I regard as either not being core Christian; or indeed tending to be anti-Christian and contradictory accretions to Christianity. 

In other words, I feel that these may well be pagan survivals into Christianity. More exactly (I strongly suspect) the simple truth of Christianity was paganized from very early by those who 'inserted' the Christian message into a variety pre-existing pagan beliefs (just as an analogous process "Judaized" Christianty). These pagan framings ranged from the abstract and intellectually-complex 'omni-God' of the philosophers, to the 'primitive' and pagan idea of God as a tyrant-king who demands sacrifices as propitiation. (Sacrifice and propitiation were also a part of the Ancient Hebrew idea of God, as depicted in the Old Testament.)  

Very unfortunately; mainstream Christianity was never cleansed of these alien and contradictory accretions - quite the opposite! They were often made into mandatory dogmas! 

But the simple truth of Christianity - that those who follow Jesus may be resurrected to eternal life in Heaven - is absolutely unique to Christianity. 

'Rebirth' is not resurrection! To attain eternal life via mortal-death is not the same as never-dying. To be resurrected into embodied form, and with our-selves preserved, is not the same as becoming eternal spirits, nor the same as living in an inert, unthinking and self-less bliss. 

And the timeline of Christianity, with a start and end-point - beginning with Jesus, and achieving its objective with our post-mortal resurrection - is different from the timelessness and unchanging/ undifferentiated nature of abstract paganism; and from the cyclically repeating worlds of other religions. 

And whether Jesus was born to a virgin, or died painfully by crucifixion, are not of the essence...

Maybe the lesson that modern Christians ought to have drawn from the attacks by comparative religionists and "anything but Christianity" neo-pagans, eclectics, and perennialists; should-have-been to set our house in order...

Christians can candidly acknowledged that mainstream Christianity, as well as various unorthodox and 'heretical' versions, have over the centuries included many pagan and Jewish elements, and these elements have, at times, dominated. 

But Christians here-and-now can and should clarify, and expound, and make focal the simple essence of Christianity; and push to the edges (ignore, or make personal and voluntary) inessentials and the contradictory elements...

Because the supposedly-pagan aspects of Christianity are exactly the ones that - whatever the original reasons behind their association with Christianity, and whatever the reasons for their continued presence - don't fundamentally matter to the reality of Christianity: i.e. to what Jesus Christ offers us, personally, now.  

Note added: I regard paganism as the spontaneous spirituality (not necessarily a religion) of ancient people and children. We (probably) all go through a phase of spontaneous paganism in our early life, whether or not that is overwritten by some other religion. But modern Man moves beyond spontaneous paganism; and while he may advocate neo-paganism and identify as a pagan - it cannot be a strong motivator, as evidence by the mainstream, or globalist-totalitarian, or merely self-gratifying, socio-political views of neo-pagans. This happens because the neo-pagan negative rejection of God's creation, is far more powerful than any positive spirituality - so de facto alliance with the dominant, worldwide, value-inverted Satanic leadership is highly likely. 

Reader's question: What is the power of prayer?

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Reader's Question: "What is your understanding of the power of prayer? How does it work? What should we prioritize in prayer? For example, I often pray for others who are effected by natural disasters like the recent Earthquake in Nepal but the prayers can feel feeble/ineffectual because I am so remote to the 'world' of these people and the extent/scale of human tragedy in such events can be difficult to comprehend. In contrast, when I pray for the soul of a friend who has died or a closer loved one the prayers feel more spontaneous because of my natural emotional connection to the people, places or events. Are more sincere prayers more effective spiritually? Or does the effort of extending our hearts to less attainable/difficult ground e.g. praying for those we do not like or whose practices/behaviours we find difficult to tolerate, render the prayers somehow more noble and worthwhile?"

My Answer: Since you asked me, I will give you my personal focus, rather than trying to summarize what is usually (and correctly) emphasized.

My main idea is that prayer is more of a means than an end - it is desired of us that we open and maintain lines of communication with God - as a person, as our Heavenly Father, so that God is central in our lives and that we come habitually to recognise God at work in our lives, in the world, in the universe and for eternity. On that basis, the more things we pray about, the better.

Therefore I try to pray frequently, whenever I remember - which means the prayers tend to be silent (or nearly silent), and brief, and in all sorts of times and situations. Mostly I give thanks, and ask for protection and help for those I love - sometimes for relief from my own, or other people's, pain and misery - and the courage to endure.

I am certain of the value of prayer in the sense that I have experienced several examples of miraculous answers to prayers - although I have not communicated these to other people because I regard them as being 'for' my own faith. Other definite benefits have been personal revelations and answers to questions communicated as a strong impression of the answer - these have created and sustained my faith, and removed stumbling blocks.

But on a specific, instance by instance basis, I do not think we usually know what happens to prayers or as a result of prayers - except that it sometimes emerges that my prayers led to the 'best' result, even when in retrospect it could be seen that I was praying for the wrong thing, the wrong result.

When I was aligned with Eastern Orthodoxy, I tried to pray continuously using the Jesus Prayer or something similar - but I would no regard this as

1. Unbalanced - we are not all of us supposed to pray all the time, because we have other things to do, and other ways of communicating with God, for example meditation (although I do not rule out that some few individuals are supposed, destined, to pray all of the time).

2. Wrongly emphasized - I now believe that it is a fundamental misunderstanding of the fundamental nature of our relation to God, for us continually, or frequently, to be requesting his mercy. We have it; and it must be saddening and perhaps irritating to God that we do not trust him and the goodness of his intentions, but feel constrained to beg him and propitiate him

- God does not need propitiating (in this sense) because all propitiation (in a different sense) was done for us by Christ and (in another sense) it is only wicked tyrants (like the Pagan gods) who demand propitiation.

So my main prayer is what I have heard called 'arrow' prayers - multiple silent, short, thanks and requests; some few memorized (fragments) of Psalms and of prayers from the the Book of Common Prayer. And the rarer more focused and lasting prayers in solitude, when I may be seeking a sense of communion and understanding, relief, strength etc.

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The karma of materialism: "From an academic point of view, it's a tremendous privilege to watch a civilization collapse in super-slow motion high-definition real-time"

The title comes from a recent comment by "Epimetheus" (brother of Prometheus, the word meaning 'afterthought'):

The whole situation is remarkable. For those who are paying attention, and from an academic point of view, it's a tremendous privilege to watch a civilization collapse in super-slow motion high-definition real-time. Not many people in history get to sit in comfy chairs, eating plenty of food, and watch what we are watching.

This captures my own view - at least some of the time.


Anyone interested in history must have wondered what it would be like to participate in the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, the suicidal eco-destruction of Easter Island, or any other of the catastrophic civilizational transitions.

We wonder - could the people not see what was coming - when it seems so obvious to us, in retrospect? Having seen, could they not at least stop actively making matters worse?

Apparently not. And we can now understand that the essence of these matters is that the collapse happens precisely because people can't see.

This kind of collapse is self-inflicted, and occurs as a direct consequence of the axiomatic assumptions of the people. They cannot perceive the collapse, and cannot stop causing collapse, because it is a product of their most cherished motivations.


To borrow and adapt a phrase from Rudolf Steiner: we are witnessing The Karma of Materialism.

In other words, for more that two centuries, and increasingly, the world has been embracing materialism (aka. positivism, abstraction, reductionism or scientism - equivalent to 'leftism' correctly understood, in its many manifestations); such that God is denied, the spiritual dimension is assumed not to exist, and life has become reduced to (ever more short-termist) personal gratifications.

This has built-up to become dominant; has instantiated in bureaucracy - which has interlinked into The System (world and national government and the mass media, plus all other functional systems) - and in the past generation such a way of regarding the world has been willingly, eagerly, assimiliated into the minds of the masses.


Our way of thinking is now materialistic - so that materialism now structures our world-view.

Much of reality is now invisible - by assumption. 

And this crisis and the impending collapse is the destined consequence and revelatory fruit ("karma") of this Modern mindset.


In one sense there has been a top-down coup and takeover of most of the world (all the powerful, wealthy and influential bits, at any rate) by a tiny Global Establishment. But in another equally-important sense; the coup was invited, initiated, encouraged and actively-facilitated by the great mass of people from all over the world; which is why the impending collapse remains invisible.

Where I see the most obvious global totalitarian takeover imaginable; the masses see the world Establishment (at last!) working-together altruistically to defeat a deadly plague. Where I see a deliberate, active, coordinated and stubbornly-resistant policy of destroying civilization; most people see nothing more than a temporary - necessary albeit regrettable - suspension of unneccessary activities, as the alternative to extinction.

The people are getting, by and large, exactly what they want - and so are The Esablishment: so everyone is happy!


Yet, as so often, giving depraved and corrupted people what they want is a short-route to disaster.

This is, it seems to me, God's role in the current crisis. God has simply allowed the mass of people to have what they want, what they have chosen, what they insist-upon despite numerous attempts to teach them better and to provide experiences from which they could have learned better.

The sheer volume and intensity of actively-chosen and insisted-upon corruption in the world had been building-up for so many decades, and it is now so great - and all the signs are that it would-have increased further - that God has decided (for the good of our eternal souls; for the sake of those of his children who may thereby choose Heavenly resurrected life everlasting) to bring things to an end, by this means of allowing people what they demand.

(Or maybe the pressure of evil became so strong that stopping or reversing it was not possible, without massively and coercively encroaching on human free agency.) 


But politics is a very simple and crude matter - it is never susceptible to fine-tuning: especially not at a global scale. Most things are (over the long term) all or nothing. And what the Establishment want, and was the masses of people want, is impossible.

Materialism has us in its grip. We deny the ultimate purpose and meaning of life; and the consequence is that our lives lack purpose and meaning; and people are reduced to fear and despair - and the pathetic attempts at propitiation (but of what?) by repetition of official mantras, observances of official rituals, displays of prescribed symbolism...

These constitute the shell of a pseudo-religion that nobody really believes. In actuality it represents the lineaments of the materialistic demonic cult of a selfish, cowardly hedonism that people are too dishonest even to acknowledge to themselves.


So what we want (as a civilization) will bring everything down on our heads; and this is what those who live long enough will be 'privileged' to observe: and it is a privilege (or could be).

We each need to take proper advantage of this privilege; derive proper benefit from it.

May it be that we will learn from the experience, rather than becoming consumed by the generalised fear and despair. The most important thing we can do is to maintain faith, hope and love - and to understand. Understand consciously and explicitly. To think clearly and honestly.

Whatever we can or cannot do; we can always think: and know that thinking is reality, with permanent objective consequences.

 

What is Morris Dancing? - a 1976 definition

As an example of Morris Dance in the raw; this is Newcastle University's King's men rapper sword dancers - the dance was from the mining villages, designed to be performed inside pubs, in cramped spaces. The energy of the dance, and its dangers, is quite extraordinary.

(Originally, and still sometimes, this 'rapper' - or short, flexible, two-handed 'sword' - dance was performed by coal miners; and Morris dancing is associated with miners and quarrymen in many parts of Britain - leading to the speculation that originally the dance was a propitiation for man's extractions from the earth.)

I played my accordeon a couple of times for this troupe many moons ago, in rehearsal; but found the multiple repetition of the same tunes rather too boring - plus I could not keep up with the boozing.

Notice that as well as dancers there are 'comedy' elements - a dictatorial Master of Ceremonies and a Moll - macho man unconvincingly dressed as a voluptuous woman carrying something to hit people (e.g. bladder, balloon, here a feather duster).

Further discussion of the Morris Dance at Albion Awakening...

Fear is a sin - I mean existential fear

Fear is a sin, and indeed one of the very worst of sins - a sin that is capable of singlehandedly wrecking the whole of a human life.

I don't mean fear as an emotion - that is just a matter of an evolutionary adaptation to threats... I mean existential fear: that is, fear as a mind-set, fear as a basic stance towards life.

For Christians, to live in a mind-set of fear is to deny the basics - to deny that God the creator is our loving Father. Fear is, indeed, a variant of despair - which is the assumption that God has placed us in a hope-less situation - which would mean that God did not love us or was not the creator of this world.

Fear is so basic, so pervasive, that it is a primary motivator for many people much of the time - whole religions, whole civilisations are built primarily on fear: fear of the gods or God, fear of Life, fear of reality...

Christians have often - and still do - deliberately create fear - and I mean existential fear, the worst kind, the worst kind of sin - as a way of supposedly enforcing faith. This is crazy if it is sincere... certainly it is wicked and counter-productive. When this happens, something has gone terribly wrong - sin has overcome the Christian message, the Gospel has been perverted.

Our lives can become absolutely dominated by fear; and this can even feel like a moral imperative. Morality gets mixed up with fear of hubris, superstitious fear that if we do NOT fear, then the fates will be revenged upon us...

Life, by this account, ought to be a continual submission, a continual propitiation, a continual attempt not to offend the tyrannical and jealous and vengeful forces that are assumed to control things... If we do NOT fear then we will be crushed, to teach us not to presume, teach us not be pride-full... The idea arises that continual and expected and mandatory fear is the core way of avoiding pride. Fear becomes a duty.

The fear-full are prone to inculcate this same existential dread in others - perhaps on the excuse that people need to be afraid or else they will not avoid sin... But this is an appalling thing to do to others - fear can rapidly and permanently get out of control, grow like a cancer in a person or a community - and kill it. Eternally kill it.

Systematically to inculcate existential fear is a double sin - because, unlike personal sins, it is deliberate and avoidable - and this requires repentance even more than fear in oneself. 

Existential fear is NOT Christian, it is a failure of faith...

If we do fear then it must be repented; and I mean must - not because we will be punished by God if we don't repent our fear, but that by fearing we have already rejected God implicitly... we have already rejected the God of love and rejected our relationship with him... We have specifically rejected the fact that he is our loving Father and we are instead insisting that God is a tyrant who requires that we live in continual and systematic terror. 

So fear is a sin, and a terrible sin which can destroy everything: it must be repented. We need to want to be free of fear, we need to aspire to a sublime confidence about life: that is what God wants from us.

How is the suffering of animals compatible with a loving God?

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Readers Question: Is a belief in a loving God in conflict with the experience of an enduringly hostile natural world? [See below^ for full question]

My Answer: It is unwise and unconvincing to try and explain the reason behind every cause of suffering. But the framework for explanations can be given. 

First, we need to recognize that earth is not Heaven, is not meant to be Heaven - earth is not a failed Heaven.

In other words, if we consider why we are present on earth, for a finite time during a mortal incarnate life - I think we will see that:

1. Part of it is to experience and learn from bad things (or else we would simply have been created into Heaven/ stayed in Heaven).

Past societies did not find suffering such a challenge - partly because they did not regard mortal life on earth as perfectible - while modern man has grown-up with the idea that any imperfection, of any size, in the whole known world, can be and should be corrected; and if it has not them somebody is to blame!

2. Different individual people have different individual 'destinies' - I mean we are here for different reasons, to experience and learn different things: to make different choices.

In other words, while our lives are neither dictated nor controlled - we are not born randomly with respect to place, time and parents; there must be a reason for it.

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So, what are we called upon to explain? Everything, or just some things? The destiny of Men; or of animals; or all living things; or everything there is? In general or in detail?

How much of life is supposed to be spent asking questions - and waiting for answers?

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^Full Question: I say this not in relation to things like natural disasters like earthquakes and tsunamis, etc. which you have already covered extensively but more in response to observations of the natural world that 'jar' unpleasantly with the notion of a primarily loving creator e.g. parasites that burrow into the eye balls of young children, lions tearing apart and eviscerating pray (and humans historically always living in conflict with wild animals as hunter gatherer's) on the plains of Africa, 'innocent' animals starving, perishing in agony in their natural habitats, etc. I enjoy wildlife programs enormously but they often make very uncomfortable viewing and invite the question 'would a loving God create a natural world that is so ruthless, stark and violent?' Presumably not? And so are the animals fallen too? Or are there still lions in heaven somewhere dragging down a weak infant elephant that has strayed from the group? (If lions would have a place in paradise at all would it not require a very different creature?) Does God enjoy hunting? I expect many a Victorian and modern alike might see a certain virtue in the 'sport' of the kill but I can't see this somehow as an attribute of loving heavenly father? As a Christian again I now tend to assume their must be an explanation for all of this and accept I am just ignorant about such matters but I know I'm not alone in having made these observations and responding with revulsion towards the natural world when I approach it from a position of love. I can empathise with naturalists like David Attenborough whom I have heard make similar observations in their case for agnosticism. It certainly seems like ancient humans especially had a great deal of experience that would counter a belief in a single loving God and instead draw them to a spontaneous animism comprised of multiple oppositional intelligences with vastly different intentions towards humans and more often than not demanding propitiation and devotion to prevent a natural world of bad things damaging or denying human interests or intentions.

Why does God smile or frown, when we turn to him?

I look at IT, and then IT looks at me with 'that' smile... It seems to be able to smile on everything, whatever it is. How can it do that unless everything, whatever it is, is something to be glad about?... 'I only smile like this because I know that everything that is happening is in place of nothing happening. I want you to smile on Me as I smile on you'. From William Arkle

We sometime turn from our worldly living, and turn to God - what then do we 'see'? Does God smile upon us with joy, or does he frown ? Well, that depends...

God is creating reality, and God is our Father. He looks upon us with love, because we are his children. Knowing this; when we turn to God, we see him smile.

We may suppose that God is smiling with that loving joy of a father who is always watching his young children playing; and then one of the children turns to look for his Daddy - and of course his Daddy is smiling!

When God's children are cringing with fear of a wrathful God, when they believe the creator to be a hypersensitive tyrant that demands incessant servile submission... Well, when such a child turns towards such a God, he does not see a smiling father; but the frowning countenance of a cruel, oppressive despot.

Imagine being our God, and perceiving that so many of his children regard him as a despot, a slave-master! A loving father does not want his children to be turning towards him in terror, submission, propitiation; cringing with gratitude at being spared the lash.

We need to be clear: is our God to be the loving Father, who hopes for our love in return? Or is God essentially a ruler who wants obedience; whose love is conditional on devoted service? 

A child who trusts in his divine father's love will turn and see his father smiling; the child who is convinced that God is primarily a King or Dictator will surely see him frowning.

Making sense of Jesus - what for and how?

The New Testament is trying to make sense of Jesus, and all would-be Christians need to do the same.

First, they need to understand why God the prime creator could not do what Jesus did -- why Jesus was necessary.

But immediately this raises the question of what Jesus did. What aspect of Jesus is central?

This took me a good while to settle to my satisfaction, indeed it is only in the past year or so that I have, from reading the Fourth Gospel 'in isolation '.

This clarified that the main thing Jesus did was to be resurrected to eternal life in Heaven. Jesus was necessary because God the creator could not do this.

And because Jesus was divine before he did this,we can, if we love and trust him, follow Jesus through our own deaths into resurrected eternal life.

There are many other different, and indeed contradicting, theories of what Jesus did and why he was necessary, in other parts of the Gospels and Epistles, and in different past and present denominations; but I regard the Fourth Gospel as the real and true explanation.

Yet it seems by far the least known, least considered of canonical Biblical explanations; which I can only regard as a major historical tragedy.


Note. This was brought to mind by CS Lewis discussing Jesus in terms of the myth of a dying god, a sacrificed god. But that is Not the myth. Jesus was not a sacrifice, nor did he stay dead. Jesus was not a propitiation, because the creator does not want to be propitiated, nor need it. Jesus's life was a positive gift to all the children of God - his brothers and sisters; an offer of Heavenly eternal life which we may accept or reject.

God must be partial (for Christians)

People through history have wanted God to be everything, to encompass every-thing; but that cannot be so for Christians. 

For Christians God must be partial, because creation has a direction. 

(God is also 'partial' by another meaning of the word; in that the Christian God has preferences.) 

If God is everything, and includes everything, there can be no direction to creation - and thus not point to creation. It Just Is. 

And therefore there can be no values, no morality - neither good nor evil, no truth or lies - things merely are what they are; always such and going nowhere else, because there is nowhere else to go (because God is always, always has been, everywhere possible). 

The Christian God, however, is going somewhere: creation is for reasons, for purposes; and embodies values. Creation has purpose - therefore is not complete, is partial. 

The question is why, then, do so many Christians through history (from very early) try to insist that God is time-lessly everything, complete, self sufficient etc? 

Why do they - by this insistence - paint themselves into a corner of contradictions from which they can only mistake by asserting bizarre paradoxes about Time and such? 

Potentially there are many reasons, no doubt; but two I would highlight are that - from one side - early Christian theologians from the Greek and Roman (pagan) traditions already brought with them a ruling abstract concept of deity defined in terms of properties, which they then applied to the personal Christian God. Such a deity was an eternal unity - and philosophical attention was primarily directed at explaining (apparent) change within this whole (e.g. explaining illusion within truth, movement within stasis, form within 'chaos' etc). 

And from the other - Hebrew - side of Christian history; there was imposed-on Christianity an idea of God as an incomprehensible absolutist monarch; who would not tolerate dissent or questioning, and who demanded propitiation. 

This God required, above all, obedience: service, worship, submission to His will. 

For 'mere' Men to assert that (or even discuss whether) this God was limited in any way (such as that God was partial, incomplete, had desires, of restricted power/ knowledge/ foresight) was felt as a terrible disrespect, a blasphemy - a terrifying act of (futile) defiance, inviting retribution.  

For such reasons; Christianity saddled itself with an unsustainable yet dogmatic concept of God as complete. But God is not complete, is partial - and only when God is understood thus does Christianity make human sense...

And human sense is what Christianity must make. 

That is the point of what Jesus said, and did! 

Note added: The above can also be understood in terms of the development of human consciousness; which occurs through each person's lifespan and also through history. In particular the relationship between the offspring (Man) and parent (God) as it changes through infancy, childhood, adolescence, and into mature adulthood. The idea of God as complete, and its implications for attitudes and behaviours, is analogous to the way a young child regards his parents - all powerful, all knowing etc. This attitude of primary-obedience to absolute authority is absolutely appropriate at that phase of development; and also of Men in ancient history in relation to God - indeed nothing else is possible is goodness is to prevail. But such an attitude to parents is neither appropriate nor good for the mature adult; who archetypally needs to move towards become something more like a loving and committed 'friend' of his mother and father - ideally living, working, raising a family alongside, and with, his parents; adults among adults. Likewise is such an attitude inappropriate and wrong for modern Christians in relation to deity. As for offspring and parents, so for Men and God - best possibilities and good relationships change with development; as Men become more conscious, more separated from the group, more potentially autonomous and free. 

Further note: It may not be clear why I am saying this stuff. The reason is that I believe that false, incoherent, metaphysics has been a major cause of the massive loss of Christian faith all over the West and for a long time. When the foundations are incoherent, the superstructure cannot be strong - even when people are not aware of the nature of the problem. The contradictions of ancient and traditional Christian theology and doctrines are, by now, mainstream and unavoidable. Christians typically either ignore them; or use complex, abstract, false, and (all too often) at-root anti-Christian arguments to dispose of them. These arguments are not convincing anybody; least of all those who deploy them, who reveal by their attitude, opinions, behaviours - that they do not believe what they assert sufficiently to be strongly motivated. All the major churches have become net anti-Christian. 

The genie of doubt, despair and nihilism is out of the bottle, and cannot be shoved back: the status quo ante (the previous state of affairs) cannot be restored because Men have changed irrevocably, just as an adolescent is irrevocably different from the child he once was. The only way out of painful and conflicted adolescence is forward into adulthood. Likewise, the only way out from cultural nihilism is through doubt and despair - and out the other side.  

Christianity in relation to paganism and monotheism

We can analyse paganism, monotheism and Christianity from the perspective of the implied relationship between Man and the divine (and an understanding of the nature of divine). 

Paganism is hugely varied, each tribe and locality having its own version, and most are fluid and loosely defined - with no real attempt to hold it constant. The gods (the many little 'g'-gods) are more powerful than, but not qualitatively different from, Men. The gods are subject to the same virtues and sins as Men; have the same kind of strengths and weaknesses - therefore the religion is one of divination and propitiation - of Men discerning the will of the gods, and attempting to influence the gods by flattery, sacrifice etc
 
Monotheistic religions (such as Judaism and Islam) have a creator deity - a capital-G God; and the practice is underpinned by obedience to that God (obedience to laws/ rules/ rituals as revealed by prophets who are merely mouthpieces of the divine). The relationship between Man and God is one of the infinitely-lesser submitting to the incomprehensibly-greater - and how people feel about this is pretty irrelevant. The religion is therefore one of practice, not belief; and the ethic one of strict adherence to the rules of practice.

(There is no divination or sacrifice in monotheism, as such - since God is so infinitely removed and great; that it would be impossible to understand, predict or influence such a God.)

What of Christianity? Well, although self-identified Christianity is often corrupted by Monotheistic or Pagan elements - the intrinsic nature of Christianity is different from either.

Christianity focuses on Jesus - and on the one hand Jesus was not 'a god' (as he might be in paganism - e.g. a god in human form) - because, for Christians, Jesus lived in a reality where there was a unified creator deity - a prime God who was not Jesus.

But Jesus was divine, and brought the teaching that all Men could (by following him) also become divine (via death and resurrection).

In what sense was Jesus, the Man, also divine? Because by some means - such as the divine spirit impregnating Jesus's Mother, or the divine spirit descending upon Jesus at baptism - Jesus the Man was made god. But not just made-into 'a' god; but made a god-creator who could, and does, work-with God the prime creator.

Therefore Jesus became 'fully divine'; that is, he eventually joined-with the divine creator in the work of creation, while remaining a Man; and Jesus made it possible for other Men to do the same.

So, Christianity takes the understanding of God as the single, original prime creator from monotheism; and takes the continuity between gods and Man (the possibility of a man becoming a god) from paganism, and made a new category of god-creator - the two being brought-together in and by the centrality of Jesus Christ.

(Of course, I am assuming here that Christianity is Obviously Not a type of monotheism; which many theologians have always asserted it is - fudging the issue by Trinitarian incoherence. Evidence for the wrongness of the idea of Christian monotheism is that when Christianity has been so regarded, it takes on the qualities of monotheism - becomes essentially like Judaism and/ or Islam; that is a religion of obedience, law, ritual, submission - as contrasted with being distinctively 'Christian', as Jesus was and taught.)

JC Powys gets to the bottom of Nietzsche

I've been listening to my penfriend Keri Ford's reading (in his inimitable, fascinating New Zealand dialect!) of John Cowper Powys's early (1915) essay collection Visions and Revisions on the Librivox site:

https://librivox.org/visions-and-revisions-by-john-cowper-powys/

Despite being so early in his oeuvre, this book is full of Powys's typically original and surprising insights (and his craziness, of course); and I have been especially bowled-over by his psychological understanding of Nietzsche - which makes sense of this strange yet compelling philosopher whom I have been reading (off and on, albeit mostly off) for some 35 years.

In a nutshell, Powys sees Nietzche as abnormally sensitive to suffering, and his project as a need to know the worst possible about Life, and to accept it.

So N. put forward and developed a series of ideas that he personally found to be the most horrible and horrifying aspects of his experience. He stated these as truths, explored their implications; then (in effect) Nietzsche challenged himself to accept, and indeed embrace, these distinctively personal horrors as positive Goods.

So, for example, the idea of eternal recurrence - by which every life, every specific event, is (supposedly) recycled and relived again-and-again forever; meant that everything that most horrified Nietzsche could never be coped-with, would become utterly intolerable; unless he was able to embrace it as not merely necessary but positively Good, indeed the best possible.

Ultimately Life as is, Just Is; and we must choose to Love it.

This strikes me as a similar end-point as was reached by Charles Williams in his essay The Cross; although CW reached his view from a 'Platonic' perspective that all time is present at all times, so that the worst that any human has ever suffered is always happening everywhere (e.g. Christ Is Being crucified as you read This; and again Now).

Nietzsche, as well as being a very strange and strangely-driven person; was an extremely rigorous thinker; who took a sadistic delight in following ideas through to unpleasant conclusions. But the sadism was ultimately self-directed - and led to insanity and silence (abetted by syphilis).

The reason N. was and is highly regarded as a philosopher, is that something very much of this kind was a genuine consequence of mainstream classical philosophy and theology; Nietzsche saw, and experienced, this unwelcome truth with absolute lucidity; which in turn (thanks to his unexcelled quality of prose) carries conviction.

The Answer to Nietzsche, as I understand it, is to regard the mainstream as erroneous; and to embrace instead some kind of developmental pluralism (as I have done over the past five plus years).

And this was, indeed, what JC Powys attempted to do, explicitly; although Powys failed to achieve it, and instead got stuck in a failed attempt at reverting to Original Participation*, ultimately because of his rejection of the reality of God as a loving Father and creator; which rejection stemmed from an awareness that this was what he most deeply wanted and knew must be true if his totally-despairing conclusion was to be avoided.

For Nietzsche; the fact that a properly understood Christianity was The Only Possible Answer, was sufficient reason to reject it - since this meant that it was too good to be true+.


*Note: Many Romantics over the past 200 years have attempted to 'revert' to an early childhood/ hunter gatherer state of unconscious, passive, immersive participation in The World - but it is impossible. Or, insofar as it is possible, it cannot be remembered, nor advocated - precisely because it is un-conscious and passive; it entails the obliteration of conscious thinking. People can only get back as far as totemism; which is the earliest and simplest phase of ordinary religion. Totemism (as of Australian Aborigines, or Pacific Northwest Amerindians) is a communal religious practice, that deploys symbols (the totems) and a fixed body of stories about-them; preserved in a ritual oral tradition. Powys describes his personal subjective totemism in considerable detail in his Autobiography. It involved daily observances (eg tapping his forehead against a specific stone, and praying to one of his deities) and extensive propitiation ceremonies (e.g. transferring fish from small drying puddles to larger volumes of water). 'Paradoxically' these imply the early stages of exactly the kind of mainstream, conventional church religion that Powys deplored; those temple religions based on ritual sacrifices designed to placate essentially-malign deities. Similar types of totemism were written about by DH Lawrence. It seems to me that to refuse objective external church Christianity, but advocate subjective individualistic internally-validated totemism, is to jump from the frying pan into the fire. This 'move' fails to solve the main problems of religion and instead exacerbates them, by privatising doctrine and practice.

+ This, in turn, implies that Nietzsche was saved, that he chose Heaven not Hell. Because when, after death, Nietzsche learned that Christianity was really true, not TGTBT, he would certainly have embraced that truth; and done so with a joy and gratitude that we can scarcely imagine.      

We all were born with an innate "archetype" of the real nature of God the Creator

Because God is the Creator, and our loving parents, God has ensured that we innately have everything we need in terms of understanding God and our proper relationship with God. 

(If this was not innate, then it could not be depended-upon; and obviously God wants to Make Sure that every one of their children will come into this world equipped with everything required for attaining salvation and theosis.) 

Therefore; we have innately the true "archetype" of God; and that archetype is "good parents". 

We already-know (and not from experience, but from-within, because it is built-in) what is the ideal of Good Parents - and that this is the nature of God.

This naturally and spontaneously leads to a relationship with God that is based upon Love and Trust. 

But many children develop and mature and will choose their beliefs about God (or that God is not real) and the relationship with God. And many children grow in social situations that actively encourage (and incentivize) children and adolescents to change, and often invert, their innate knowledge. 

Thus our innate understanding of the Creator God as Good Parents is usurped by one, or several, other archetype/s: Such as God the King, God the Judge, God the Totalitarian Tyrant, and/or God the Deity of philosophical abstractions. 

These other kinds of not-parental God do not lead to a relationship of Love and Trust; but to very different attitudes. If God is King then we feel like subjects. If God is Judge we feel like defendants. If God is a Totalitarian Tyrant our attitude is one of superstitious and fear-based propitiation. 

And if God is an abstract deity known philosophically; then God Just Is, Creation Just Is, and our life Just Is, and the attitude is one of fatalism. 

When we move away from our innate and archetypal understanding, we lose the ability to experience a relationship with God. 

The non-parental Gods are not personally, individually, knowable nor understandable; therefore they all open a path for human exploitation; for instance by individuals or groups claiming special expertise to know what God demands from each us. 

Furthermore, in moving away from what is spontaneous and intuitive, the alternatives feel arbitrary and incoherent; therefore belief often becomes a mixture of mutual contradictions - as when people strive to combined God and Judge or King with God as Heavenly Father; or when they strive to comprehend how God the Totalitarian Tyrant can also "love" us. 

Such contradictions lead to abstract solutions that conceal their own incoherence behind incomprehension. 

So that the proper way to "love" an incomprehensible God; necessarily becomes a special, abstract and incomprehensible kind of "love" - that is then stated to be superior to the interpersonal love of parents that we all innately do understand.   

We are born into this world with an understanding of the nature of God the Creator, and our properly loving and trusting relationship with Heavenly Parents. 

We find ourselves very far away from this reality - far away in several possible directions, and perhaps confusingly alternating between them. 

Our task is - by conscious choice - to return to that original knowledge. 

  

*Why* worship God? (And is 'worship' the best word?)

*

We might worship God (one God) because of His power, greater far than the power of any other entity - greater far than any 'other god' (as it gets phrased in the Old Testament); indeed, so much greater as to be immeasurably and greater.

This worship may be based upon fear of such power, and the hope that worship will be understood as a submission and a propitiation.

This sees the primary reality as legalistic - in other words, the universe is structured by relationships - and the relevant type of relationships are those which pertain in a 'state' - the relationships between a monarch and his subjects, and the relationships between subjects (of various ranks and roles).

To disbelieve in this concept of God is an act of rebellion against the legitimate monarch; and an anti-social act. 

*

We might worship God because he created everything - including the other gods - which is perhaps an extension of worshipping God because of His power.

However, if we were to worship God because he created everything out of nothing, this potentially induces a different flavour to worship. Worship may then be akin to a recognition of fact. The recognition that everything is from-God, part-of God, sustained-by-God.

This is perhaps analogous to recognising and acknowledging that we are inside God. 
So 'worship' may get a more scientific ('physics'-like) flavour - of stating, swearing-to and living-by quasi-scientific propositions that represent this reality.

To disbelieve in this physics-like concept of God is seen as a factual or logical error, due to ignorance or insanity or a lie: a denial of what actually IS. Its harm comes from its dysfunctionality.

*

The idea of God as Love is qualitatively different from the above - because it implies that we should love God because He loves us. But why love Him, and why Him above others and as God? What makes love of God different from love of a specific Man?

The answer comes from Him being our Father and us His children,and the value attributed to this primary fact - so, by this 'argument', family relationships take on and replace the 'structural' role which used-to come from God's creation of everything from nothing, or the relationships of monarch and subjects in a state.

To disbelieve in such a God - God as Loving father - is therefore primarily to exclude oneself from God's family - an act of self-exile - a decision to 'go it alone'.

*

Whereas a God who is creator of everything from nothing 'ought' to be worshipped as an acknowledgement of the reality that everything depends on Him and everything is inside of Him; and God as legal monarch 'ought' to be worshipped as a matter of good order and proper deference; God as loving Father 'ought' to be worshipped as an acknowledgement of the reality that derives from relationships.

In other words, when God is (primarily) Love; the universe is conceptualized as structured by family relationships. These family relationships become the primary reality and the reason for doing things.

For Christians who regard God as Loving Father, it is relationships which provide the 'ought' that used to be provided by power or status.

*

All metaphysical reasoning involves a decision or choice, whether that decision recognized and explicit or unconscious and implicit. the choice is to put some assumption at the root of things: and that fundamental assumption cannot be analyzed or critiqued exactly because it is the primary assumption, and everything else is secondary to it.

When it comes to understanding and conceptualizing God, we are in the realms of metaphysics; and the advent of the Christian revelations of God as Love led to a metaphysical revolution - with the transformation of God as Power, or God as Monarch into God as Father.

And the ultimate rules of this new Christian universe were not physics-like structures, nor were they like laws - but they were like the relationships in a family. 

*

So, the primary, bottom line understanding of the structure of reality for a Christian is now family-relational, rather than quasi-scientific or national-legal. 

And the 'worship' of God naturally takes on a different primary flavour - because the proper attitude to God who is primarily understood as our loving Father, is different from the proper attitude to a monarch, or to an infinite power.

*

William Arkle's introduction to The Great Gift (1977)

Introduction

The book is designed to present the paintings in such a way that the reader can look at these as pictures without becoming involved with the message which they carry. But, in order to supply an answer to the questions which arise from the pictures, explanations are offered to correspond with the quantity of the concepts involved. Some of these are long and others brief. In among the pictures are a number of poems which are intended to help with the overall attitude of the book which is trying to push communication beyond the usual limits.

In order to amplify the message which the pictures are trying to convey the book also includes a number of essays on philosophical and psychological subjects of a spiritual nature. These are in the main edited versions of recordings made in the course of conversation, or sent to my friends in reply to questions.

Finally the book includes an essay called 'Letter from a Father', which is written in such a way that it suggests how the Creator may feel in His attitude towards the purpose of creation. This letter is written as though from our Divine Father to us, one of his children. Thus it gives a view of reality which is 'from the top down' instead of from the position we are used to which is 'from the bottom looking up'.

To many these pictures will seem very strange. They are going out into a world in which the idea of a God, who is a Divine Person, will feel incongruous beside the materialistic and scientific culture of our times.

Our civilisation is trying to do without God and without Divine Aspiration, and I believe this will diminish the value of life and destroy our spirit. My own hope is that this is only a clearing phase which will loosen the old and somewhat rigid attitudes towards life's purpose and give way to a more beautiful understanding of our God than we have ever had before. It is impossible to love an unlovable God, and I would like to think that this book will go some way towards redressing that situation by enabling us to consider the possibility that we are being given a more deeply beautiful gift by that God than we have prepared ourselves to expect.

I am afraid that the commentaries will seem to be at times rather arbitrary or even dogmatic, such as the mention of God the Son-Daughter as the third part of the Holy Trinity in the painting of the Divine Family. A more complete description of these and other matters will be found in my book 'A Geography of Consciousness', also published by Neville Spearman, which Colin Wilson kindly wrote an introduction to, and in which he also refers to my music which is another part of the overall expression I am trying to communicate.

The theme of the book is approached again and again in the paintings and the writings, and the reader who understands what I am pointing towards may well find this tiresome. But it is my experience that many people are glad to have the main issues repeated and thoroughly aired. On the whole, the book is designed to help those who feel a need for what it is endeavouring to supply, and it may well seem inappropriate to those who do not have this need.


I regard William Arkle as one of my primary mentors of Romantic Christianity - right up there with Blake, Coleridge, Steiner, Barfield - and perhaps even more inspiring to me personally. At any rate, over the past five years I have studied Arkle's work with the most detailed intensity.

At first glance his writing appears either extremely abstract and symbolic (e.g. when he is using analogies from physics or engineering to 'explain' the spiritual structure of reality) or else the opposite: over-simple and naively optimistic.

These aspects long put me off engagement (and by 'long' I mean for more than 30 years, when I knew of his work but skimmed it merely). Nowadays I realise that the toughness is worth slogging through, and the simplicity reflects the fact that Arkle succeeded spiritually to an extent attained by extremely few other people of whom I know.

Anyway, I will often take a short passage such as the above, and brood on it in an almost sentence by sentence way.

The key passage for me is this, italicised; my comments are interspersed:

Our civilisation is trying to do without God and without Divine Aspiration, and I believe this will diminish the value of life and destroy our spirit. 

A fact and a prediction (written more than 40 years ago) - both correct.

My own hope is that this is only a clearing phase which will loosen the old and somewhat rigid attitudes towards life's purpose and give way to a more beautiful understanding of our God than we have ever had before.

This is my hope too. There is a sense in which this 'clearing' is made necessary by the failure of 'the West' but England specifically, to embrace Romantic Christianity in the early 1800s. So there are a couple of centuries of accumulated wrongness, especially the attitudes and assumptions. And these wrong attitudes and assumptions are on both the Christian and secular (political and ideological) sides - because the two have diverged so much.

We have a dominant secular culture that is trying to do without God and the spiritual - and a small minority Christian side that has a wrong and confused idea of God, and is failing to address the most deeply felt problem: the destruction of spirit ('alienation'). Arkle then moves onto the Christian problem... 

It is impossible to love an unlovable God, and I would like to think that this book will go some way towards redressing that situation by enabling us to consider the possibility that we are being given a more deeply beautiful gift by that God than we have prepared ourselves to expect. 

This is gently expressed, but a very sharp and unyielding criticism of the way that - through its history, and continuing, Christians have treated God as unloveable, by assuming God has all kinds of un-loveable attributes (such as wanting to be worshipped, demanding obedience above all and in all circumstances, demanding sacrifice and propitiation, refusing to recognise individuality etc).

They say God is love - but have made a God who is less loving the the best humans; and excuse this with saying God is incomprehensible to men... Thereby stripping all meaning from the attribution of love; and assuming that God the creator of all, somehow could not make matters such that we would understand the essentials.

Arkle asks - how can Men be expected to love a God which is not loveable? And answers that God has been made unloveable, by 'Christians': firstly from the many unloveable motivations they attribute to God; and secondly God has been made into a deity unloveable, due to regarding God as inhuman, abstract, and mystically incomprehensible.

And further, Christians have not taken seriously their assumptions that a loving God created and sustained this world; because if we did we would regard this world as a 'deeply beautiful gift' - designed for our benefit - each and all of us.

I mean, by our assumptions (that is created, by a loving God, who is each of our parents) this world Must Be 'Fit for purpose', and for each person - yet Christians recurrently regard creation as a botch-job!

This is a terrible error, and negates much that is good about Christianity, and somewhat explains its many historical failures - even (sometimes especially) when the religion was being sincerely believed and diligently implemented.

Here, as so often, Arkle's mildness of manner conceals a sinewy, spiritual strength; his simplicity conceals great depth of experience and thought!