The Christian virtues of fortitude (courage), justice, temperance and prudence would be impossible were it not for danger, evil, temptation and rashness. That's also true of the theological virtues: faith can be a virtue only when there is doubt; hope can be a virtue only when there is despair. I've always thought that the "problem of suffering" (its incompatibility with an all powerful and all-good God) ignored these obvious and logically necessary truths.Originally Posted by desiresjab
ecurb, your response above is making me think of a paraphrase from viktor frankl---that suffering without meaning creates despair.
How many think the devil is as real as God?
Not me. The devil is a metaphor for how evil has its own momentum.
Previously JonathanB
The more I read, the more I shall covet to read. Robert Burton The Anatomy of Melancholy Partion3, Section 1, Member 1, Subsection 1
Do you believe God is more real than the devil, then?
There are some humans who act devilish, so I would be willing to give the devil his (or her) due.
One of the problems with imagining a devil, let alone a God, is our reductionistic cultural blind spot. We think the universe is reducible to tiny, unconscious stuff that can be explained using determinism or chance. We think the universe is a bottom-up machine. Just switch that perspective to a top-down organism where determinism and chance is replaced with choices. That change in perspective opens things up nicely.
Just to fuel the discussion.
In his Faust, Goethe offers a very curious definition of the devil:
"Faust. The being of such gentlemen as you, indeed,
In general, from your titles one can read.
It shows itself but all too plainly when men dub
You Liar or Destroyer or Beelzebub.
Well now, who are you then?
Mephistopheles. Part of that Power which would
The Evil ever do, and ever does the Good.
Faust. A riddle! Say what it implies!
Mephistopheles. I am the Spirit that denies!
And rightly too; for all that doth begin
Should rightly to destruction run;
'Twere better then that nothing were begun.
Thus everything that you call Sin,
Destruction - in a word, as Evil represent-
That is my own, real element.
Faust. You call yourself a part, yet whole you're standing there.
Mephistopheles. A modest truth do I declare.
A man, the microcosmic fool, down in his soul
Is wont to think himself a whole,
But I'm part of the Part which at the first was all,
Part of the Darkness that gave birth to Light,
The haughty Light that now with Mother Night
Disputes her ancient rank and space withal,
And yet 'twill not succeed, since, strive as strive it may,
Fettered to bodies will Light stay.
It streams from bodies, it makes bodies fair,
A body hinders it upon its way,
And so, I hope, it has not long to stay
And will with bodies their destruction share.
Faust. Now I perceive your worthy occupation!
You can't achieve wholesale annihilation
And now a retail business you've begun."
http://www.levity.com/alchemy/faustidx.html
Last edited by Danik 2016; 05-19-2016 at 03:09 PM.
"I seemed to have sensed also from an early age that some of my experiences as a reader would change me more as a person than would many an event in the world where I sat and read. "
Gerald Murnane, Tamarisk Row
I like that Goethe.
The retail/wholesale annihilation is interesting. I might be reading more into it than is there, but I suspect the retail annihilation is the reduction of subjectivity to unconsciousness which is ultimately unsuccessful implying the impossibility of wholesale annihilation.
For me the unusual aspect of Mephistopheles in the play is that he presents himself as a rather unwilling instrument of Good (and therefore, of God).
As he is a subordinate agent, his power of destruction can be at its most only partial, I think.
It is certainly an irreverent and optimistic conception!
Last edited by Danik 2016; 05-20-2016 at 08:14 AM.
"I seemed to have sensed also from an early age that some of my experiences as a reader would change me more as a person than would many an event in the world where I sat and read. "
Gerald Murnane, Tamarisk Row
Since change occurs something can be viewed as destroying the past so the present can manifest. That destruction could be viewed as evil, but it is only partial. Change doesn't destroy the process of changing.
Well, satan is a priori a weak nothing by himself. The fall of sin was only a quest for
Adam and Eve, but also for this little working class screamer guarding angel, who refused to love god,
because being just the littlest light in the lowest hierachy of the lowest of three angelchorus, he was even more
offended, when he was asked the first time in his decadent worthless existence to work as the guardian angel, he was created for. God saw, what decadence by privileges can cause, so he created the tree of evil out of this deases, we would call today braindead by stupid tv and culture degeneration. God knew, that the little tricster lazy angel will break in Eden, he relaxed and let it happened, because he wanted to see, if his prognosis will be right. The rest is told in the bible. The fall of sin is even today the worst problem ever. Because even saints and prophets are pested with the heritage of sin. It is in their blood and in there dna, like in nearly every blind siner. But there are exeptions. The most noble bloodlines were free from that kind of sin and blindness. That is the meaning of the holy grail. The descendents of Jesus Christ are still alive and on earth. For unchosen stupid blinds they are spooky by their emotional impact, they let them feel out of themselves. The Zen Buddhism calls that waves of energy, or karma, or to see auras like energetic fields around them. The scientists try to
call it synaesthesia by the mutations of some areas of the x chromosom. There more women with that kind of God's grace in them, like my mother, she is comperable to saints, my father is also a synaesthic saint, but not an "angel". He is stupid and mental instabil, because he knows nothing about everything and fears open combats, he has at least a strong intuitive knowing about how he can make people make, what he want and everyone calls him the dearest treasure, but, like me, we, my parents and me hate this world of man, because we know exactly, what nearly every human, even the pope, are. They are evilness a priori, because they are blind, stupid liars and not able to love the real way. I know, my parents and I,
we are perfect, but you all evil bad lovers of the antichrist make this world a lot more horrible than the worst hell can be.
Human souldeads can not live and are dead the day they are born. they are the real walking deads. Being alive never means your beloved heart muscle beats and you can walk. That means nothing. If I the incarneted highest Angel of the 9 hierachies, called Seraphiel, can not feel life in nearly all of you out there, my godfather sees even less life in you. Being a Seraphin incarneted to my two holy parents, means, that I was born the normal biologic way in hospital. My biologic father is my father in this world in terms of my dna. Nobody, even not God himself, is perfect. The word perfect should be again a
synonym for harmonic at the moment and not an aquivalent for I am someone, because everyone says I am perfect every day the same stupid way. Definitions are evil, when they try to catch life in bottles for sell it like worthless monetarian things.
Yes. In particular in the human person of Jesus of Nazareth.
There has been a sense on this thread that Christianity is all about keeping laws, morals or commandments. Paul, particularly in his letters to the Romans and Galatians, is at great pains to say that God accepts us as a free gift (as shown in the person of Jesus crucified and risen) and that keeping the Law is of no account by comparison, indeed positively misleading as it leads to self righteousness.
Previously JonathanB
The more I read, the more I shall covet to read. Robert Burton The Anatomy of Melancholy Partion3, Section 1, Member 1, Subsection 1
So it seems that the only universal sin is sex between parent and child, and maybe between siblings. Everything else varies with context. Is that about right?
I'm totally confused. How can cruelty and selfishness not be unacceptable? Or to give specific examples, murder or rape, lying?
Previously JonathanB
The more I read, the more I shall covet to read. Robert Burton The Anatomy of Melancholy Partion3, Section 1, Member 1, Subsection 1
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