More on Orthodox Christianity, Western Churches, excerpts from Political Ponerology with two more quotes from the Cs.
In the last post, there was first a quote from the Session about the role of the Flavians and Carolingians, with the Cs saying: "
If there are any villains it would be the Flavians and the Carolingians." This was followed by excerpts from
The Clash between Orthodox Patristic Theology and Franco-Latin Tradition and
The Fundamental Difference Between the "East" and "West" about the historical role of the Carolingians and Franks as seen from an Orthodox perspective. They argued that the
Carolingians played a significant role in what later became a split of the church. The Franks/Carolingians are also mentioned in this article,
The Great Schism, which summarizes some of the main points of difference and their origins that grew over time before they manifested in an actual division in 1054, which was just 12 years before the
Battle of Hastings in 1066, when
William, the Duke of Normandy defeated
Harold Godwinson.
The Wiki about the
Battle of Hastings does not enter into the religious details but does say:
The day after the battle, Harold's body was identified, either by his armour or by marks on his body.
[v] His personal standard was presented to William,[120] and later sent to the papacy.
[103]
And the Wiki about
Pope Alexander II has:
Elected according to the terms of his predecessor's bull,
In nomine Domini, Anselm's was
the first election by the cardinals without the participation of the people and minor clergy of Rome. He also
authorized the Norman Conquest of England in 1066.
What this meant, is described by a convert to Orthodoxy, V. Moss, at the beginning of a long article
The Fall of Orthodox England:
On October 14, 1066, at Hastings in southern England, the last Orthodox king of England, Harold II, died in battle against Duke William of Normandy. William had been blessed to invade England by the Roman Pope Alexander in order to bring the English Church into full communion with the "reformed Papacy"; for since 1052 the English archbishop had been banned and denounced as schismatic by Rome. The result of the Norman Conquest was that the English Church and people were integrated into the heretical "Church" of Western, Papist Christendom, which had just, in 1054, fallen away from communion with the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church, represented by the Eastern Patriarchates of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem. Thus ended the nearly five-hundred-year history of the Anglo-Saxon Orthodox Church, which was followed by the demise of the still older Celtic Orthodox Churches in Wales, Scotland and Ireland.
The above description gives the impression that the splitting influences left on the church by the Franks and Carolingians continued to manifest after they had left the stage of history.
Eastern Orthodox Christianity and the Western Churches
Referring back to the quote in the transcript, and taking into account that the Flavian influence probably reached all the original churches early on, while the Carolingian influence, coming much later mainly influenced the Churches in the West, one could end up with a question similar to the following in:
Session 14 January 2023
Does Eastern Orthodox Christianity represent a more preserved form of Paleochristianity out of all denominations, relatively speaking?
Q: (Ryan) Does Eastern Orthodox Christianity represent a more preserved form of Paleochristianity out of all denominations, relatively speaking?
A: Heavy on the "relatively".
Q: (L) So I guess that's a yes, but with emphasis on the "relatively"?
A: Yes
How to interpret 'Heavy on the "relatively"'? I don't know, but if guessing is allowed, here are some considerations:
If we have a situation where two people argue over who has most of the truth, with both claiming that they have the whole truth, how would you describe the situation as viewed from the sideline, if none of them have all that much of the totality they lay claim to, though there still is a difference between the two?
Translating this idea into numbers, could 'Heavy on the "relatively"' mean something like the difference between a team, A, having 2/10 of the whole and B, having 3/10. None of the values are impressive for parties that claim to have the whole banana, but we have to acknowledge team B for having a bit more than A, in fact 50 % more, while team A has about 66 % of what team B has.
The reason not to assign higher numbers in the example is because we know from modern bible scholarship that there are very clear problems with the text. See for instance the discussion in the thread
Laura's Book "From Paul to Mark" is out!!!! ... And in French too, or the
book.
The discussion of the destructive influences of the Flavians and Carolingians on early Christianity can lead to the topic of Ponerology
Without making it long, in his book,
Political Ponerology, Lobachewski offers comments on the church and Western Civilization.
CHAPTER II
SOME INDISPENSABLE CONCEPTS
Three principal heterogeneous items coincided in order to form our European civilization: Greek philosophy, Roman imperial and legal civilization, and Christianity, consolidated by time and effort of later generations. The culture of cognitive/ spiritual heritage thus born was internally fuzzy wherever the language of concepts, being overly attached to matter and law, turned out to be too stiff to comprehend aspects of psychological and spiritual life.
Such a state of affairs had negative repercussions upon our ability to comprehend reality, especially that reality which concerns humanity and society. Europeans became unwilling to study reality (subordinating intellect to facts), but rather tended to impose upon nature their subjective ideational schemes, which are extrinsic and not completely coherent. Not until modern times, thanks to great developments in the hard sciences, which study facts by their very nature, as well as the apperception of the philosophical heritage of other cultures, could we help clarify our world of concepts and permit its own homogenization.
It is surprising to observe what an autonomous tribe the culture of the ancient Greeks represented. Even in those days, a civilization could hardly develop in isolation, without being affected by older cultures in particular. However, even with that consideration, it seems that Greece was relatively isolated, culturally speaking. This was probably due to the era of decay the archaeologist refer to as the “dark age”, which occurred in those Mediterranean areas between 1200 and 800 B.C., and also to the Achaean tribes’ belligerence.
Among the Greeks, a rich mythological imagination, developed in direct contact with nature and the experiences of life and war, furnished an image of this link with the nature of the country and peoples. These conditions saw the birth of a literary tradition, and later of philosophical reflections searching for generalities, essential contents, and criteria of values. The Greek heritage is fascinating due to its richness and individuality, but above all due to its primeval nature. Our civilization, however, would have been better served if the Greeks had made more ample use of the achievements of other civilizations.
Rome was too vital and practical to reflect profoundly upon the Greek thoughts it had appropriated. In this imperial civilization, administrative needs and juridical developments imposed practical priorities. For the Romans, the role of philosophy was more didactic, useful for helping to develop the thinking process which would later be utilized for the discharge of administrative functions and the exercise of political options. The Greek reflective influence softened Roman customs, which had a salutary effect on the development of the empire.
However, in any imperial civilization, the complex problems of human nature are troublesome factors complicating the legal regulations of public affairs and administrative functions. This begets a tendency to dismiss such matters and develop a concept of human personality simplified enough to serve the purposes of law. Roman citizens could achieve their goals and develop their personal attitudes within the framework set by fate and legal principles, which characterized an individual’s situation based on premises having little to do with actual psychological properties. The spiritual life of people lacking the rights of citizenship was not an appropriate subject of deeper studies. Thus, cognitive psychology remained barren, a condition which always produces moral recession at both the individual and public levels.
Christianity had stronger ties with the ancient cultures of the Asiatic continent, including their philosophical and psychological reflections. This was of course a dynamic factor rendering it more attractive, but it was not the most important one. Observing and understanding the apparent transformations faith caused in human personalities created a psychological school of thought and art on the part of the early believers. This new relationship to another person, i.e. one’s neighbor, characterized by understanding, forgiveness, and love, opened the door to a psychological cognition which, often supported by charismatic phenomena, bore abundant fruit during the first three centuries after Christ.
An observer at the time might have expected Christianity to help develop the art of human understanding to a higher level than the older cultures and religions, and to hope that such knowledge would protect future generations from the dangers of speculative thought divorced from that profound psychological reality which can only be comprehended through sincere respect for another human being.
History, however, has not confirmed such an expectation. The symptoms of decay in sensitivity and psychological comprehension,
as well as the Roman Imperial tendency to impose extrinsic patterns upon human beings, can be observed as early as 350 A.D. During later eras, Christianity passed through all those difficulties which result from insufficient psychological cognition of reality. Exhaustive studies on the historical reasons for suppressing the development of human cognition in our civilization would be an extremely useful endeavor.
First of all, Christianity adapted the Greek heritage of philosophical thought and language to its purposes. This made it possible to develop its own philosophy, but the primeval and materialistic traits of that language imposed certain limits which hampered communication between Christianity and other religious cultures for many centuries.
Christ’s message expanded along the seacoast and beaten paths of the Roman empire’s transportation lines, within the imperial civilization, but only through bloody persecutions and ultimate compromises with Rome’s power and law. Rome finally dealt with the threat by appropriating Christianity to its own purposes and, as a result, the Christian Church appropriated Roman organizational forms and adapted to existing social institutions. As a result of this unavoidable process of adaptation, Christianity inherited Roman habits of legal thinking, including its indifference to human nature and its variety.
Two heterogeneous systems were thus linked together so permanently that later centuries forgot just how strange they actually were to each other. However, time and compromise did not eliminate the internal inconsistencies, and Roman influence divested Christianity of some of its profound primeval psychological knowledge. Christian tribes developing under different cultural conditions created forms so variegated that maintaining unity turned out to be an historical impossibility.
A “Western civilization” thus arose hampered by a serious deficiency in an area which both can and does play a creative role, and which is supposed to protect societies from various kinds of evil. This civilization developed formulations in the area of law, whether national, civil, or finally canon, which were conceived for invented and simplified beings. These formulations gave short shrift to the total contents of the human personality and the great psychological differences between individual members of the species Homo sapiens. For many centuries any understanding of certain psychological anomalies found among some individuals was out of the question, even though these anomalies repeatedly caused disasters.
This civilization was insufficiently resistant to evil, which originates beyond the easily accessible areas of human consciousness and takes advantage of the enormous gap between formal or legal thought and psychological reality. In a civilization deficient in psychological cognition, hyperactive individuals driven by their internal doubts caused by a feelings of being different easily find a ready echo in other people’s insufficiently developed consciousness. Such individuals dream of imposing their power and their different experiential manner upon their environment and their society. Unfortunately, in a psychologically ignorant society, their dreams have a good chance of becoming reality for them and a nightmare for others.
- Source: Chapter II, first edition, pages 46-48.
Before continuing, I should add that I wonder what Lobachewski meant by "Our civilization, however, would have been better served if the Greeks had made more ample use of the achievements of other civilizations." The Greeks had more than one school of thinking, see
Comets and the Horns of Moses, by Laura Knight-Jadczyk, and they interacted with the Persians, the Egyptians, the Celts, and others, but which would have been a healthy influence from the perspective of Lobachewski?
A Serbian theologian,
Justin Popovic, (1894-1979) who would have been living at the same time that the research was done by Lobachewski and his correspondents, describes using other words what Lobachewski explains as
Rome finally dealt with the threat by appropriating Christianity to its own purposes and, as a result, the Christian Church appropriated Roman organizational forms and adapted to existing social institutions.
Here is Popovic:
In Western Europe, Christianity gradually metamorphosed, into humanism. Over a long period of time and with perseverance, the Divine-Human has steadily been diminishing. He has been changed, He has been narrowed down and finally reduced to a mere man: to the “infallible” man in Rome and the equally "infallible" men in London and Berlin.
This is how the Papacy came into being, by stripping Christ of everything, just as Protestantism similarly did, by asking little of Christ, and quite often, nothing at all. In the Papacy and in Protestantism, man has replaced the Divine-Human Christ, both as the highest value and the highest criterion. Painstaking and deplorable changes to the Divine-Human's work and teachings have been accomplished. The Papacy has steadily and persistently been striving to substitute the Divine Man with a mortal man, until finally, in its dogma defining the infallibility of (a mere mortal) the pope, the Divine-Human Christ was once and for all substituted by an ephemeral, "infallible" man; because thanks to this dogma, the pope was decisively and clearly pronounced as being something superior – not only to all men, but even to the holy Apostles, the holy Fathers, and the holy Ecumenical Councils. With this kind of deviation from the Divine-Human Christ, from the ecumenical Church which is the Divine-Human’s organism, the Papacy outdid even Luther, the founder of Protestantism.
Therefore, the first radical protest that was voiced in the name of humanism but against the Divine-Human Christ and his Divine-Human organism—the Church—should be sought in the Papacy, not in Lutheranism. The Papacy is in fact the first and the oldest form of Protestantism. --Saint Justin (Popovic)
The above was from the
Orthodox Outlet for Dogmatic Enquiries on the topic of the
Papacy. (As a note, I suspect some of their writers are strict adherents of Orthodoxy, not advocates of
Ecumenism.)
It is possible Lobachewski himself was leaning more toward Orthodox groups. Not only are there a few
Orthodox Christians in Poland, he writes on page 99, (first edition) about the origin of the word Ponerology:
Nevertheless, based on the work of myself and others in that past tragic time, a new discipline arose that became our beacon;
two Greek philologists - monks baptized it “PONEROLOGY” from the Greek poneros = evil. The process of the genesis of
evil was called, correspondingly, “ponerogenesis”. I hope that these modest beginnings will grow so as to enable us to overcome
evil through an understanding of its nature, causes, and development.
Both Popovic and Lobachewski name Rome, which leads the thoughts to a particular interpretation of the Christian faith, but were their other influences? In the blog post,
The Talmud and Western Civilization, various influences down through history as seen from a Jewish point of view are listed, including:
Western Civilization is based on Judeo-Christian values that can be traced back to the Talmud and set the stage for Western Civilization from law to the family structure to the way we conduct Judicial review and
stare decisis [Wiki link inserted to stare decisis which means "precedent".]
The agendas of the Flavians, the Carolingians, and the ponerogenic influences from various quarters have in the grand scheme of things served a purpose:
Session 18 May 2019
How do you propose that they could make it possible to destroy Christianity? - It was the plan all along
Q: (L) If people could get back to the original Paleochristianity then the world would be a different place. But you're certainly not going to get there by materialistic Darwinism.
(Pierre) But when you look at history with a lot of distance, the feeling I get is that the most fundamental dynamic is that: the destruction of Christianity. And all we see today is...
A: How do you propose that they could make it possible to destroy Christianity?
Q: (L) Well, exactly what they're doing. Set up an opposition and then defend the opponent as a downtrodden minority.
(Joe) The point is that... I mean, you have in your head that there's going to be some kind of clash of civilizations, but that doesn't seem to be the point. If you look at social media today, they've gotten to the point where Christians are denounced as basically atavistic racist backward nutjobs. When they...
(Artemis) I think they want to speak...
A: It was the plan all along. Beware! It is coming to fruition and only those who stay awake and aware can navigate. The STS forces are determined to quash awareness and the possibility of seeding a new reality.
Q: (L) So you're saying that - and I guess you've said it before - that the importance of tuning the antennae of a group of people, the importance of staying awake and aware, is because you then become a receiver for creative energies?
A: Yes yes yes!!!
Q: (Joe) Is it that people who have a certain awareness which is equivalent to information or ideas or conception of the world in their mind, that this contributes building blocks for a new reality?
A: It is not that those who endure to the end will be saved, but that those who endure to the end shall save others. It is your choice to be among those who choose to be a part of the vanguard of the new reality!!!
Goodbye.
(L) So that is basically being addressed to anybody who reads this session.
(Andromeda) It's not just surviving or enduring that's the point.
(L) It's to survive and serve others!
END OF SESSION
There is much work ahead.
