/lit/ - Literature

Good for you

>>13518342
blessed. just finished reading fr. lorenzo scupoli's book today. good book

>>13518353
>fr. lorenzo scupoli's book
Looks good, might give it a read. God bless, brother.

bump

>>13518342
>Didn't include the bowing of the head.
For shame. I bet you hold hands during the Our Father too!

>>13518774
I realized that after I'd posted it. Next time, brother!

Bump before I sleep.

Can you disporve the claim that this world is illusory or fake? Not trying to debate, I'm just asking.

>>13518342
i cant believe and i dont know what is wrong with me

>>13518961
well IDK about OP, but I'm a Gnostic, so I don't need to disprove that because I agree with it.

>>13518970
Im specifically asking nicene christians but anyone is welcome to answer.

>>13518342
blessed post

>>13518970
The point of contention I have with Gnosticism is what you do if you were to reject God. Faith gives us a moral guideline with which to follow. Even among the nonreligious, the common sense of right and wrong in the west is heavily influenced by Christian belief. If you were to reject those moral foundations and simply follow your own path, then you basically live purely by instinct, which can be destructive if not checked to at least some extent by a moral foundation.

How do Gnostics explain this?

>>13518342
How do you know Jesus looked liked that?

>>13519841
He doesn't

People usually tell ne to read augustine and Aquinas

But what are some good christian writers between these two periods? 800 years separate them

>>13518342
What makes God any more believable than aliens or interdimensional lizard men?

And no, your fanfiction holy book doesn't count as proof of shit all.

Embarrassing desu, all Christianity is good for us keeping lumpenproles from cutting their dicks of and even then...

I just started reading the bible. Any tips you can give me?

>>13520086
You're on your way to becoming an atheist. Keep reading.

>>13520073
if thats a serious comparison, your fundamental conception of God is gravely flawed

>>13520073
What makes christian god any more believable than non-christian gods?

>>13520252
Jesus' authority and knowledge, the reliability of the gospels and the lives of the apostles who were sacrificed for Him.

>>13520272
Pagan religions had martyrs as well, dying in the thousands while resisting the attempts at christianization.
How do you know what Jesus said is more valid valid and that gospels are more reliable than the mythology and philosophy of other religions?

>>13520286
First one has to understand the difference between mythology and religion. Most of the mythology back then was merely a folklore, which is different from the initiatic cult mysteries --- which were actual religions. For it to be a religion it's necessary a revealed tradition and initiation rites.

>How do you know what Jesus said is more valid
All religions teach about following certain moral codes in order to transcend. Christ didn't ask us that, He asked us to follow Him. That's the biggest difference between Christ and other religion leaders.
>and that gospels are more reliable
No author could've come with such a brilliant history. It is internally consistent in a way that it can't be a forgery. It all comes down to the belief or not in the ressurection.

Convince me in three sentences or less to become a Christian

>>13520312
If you don't become a Christian, my child, you will burn in hell for eternity. Fit just into two sentences :)

>>13520312
If you don't believe in the gospel you will not comprehend christianity.

>>13520312
You will get to live with God eternally in beautiful paradice.

>>13520312
the possible eternal reward is more worthy than any temporal pleasure.

>>13520286
Pagans didn't have a revelead truth passed down through initiation. They didn't die for their religion since they didn't have one.

B U M P

>>13520081
Worst strawman ever.
>>13520073
>why is an established religion more believable than bullshit I made up 2 seconds ago

Where does one start with christianity?

>inb4 read the bible
did that. now what?

>>13520590
church fathers and doctors of the church

>>13520590
This is a good book to get started. It has Catholic leanings because it was written by the Pope.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Introduction_to_Christianity

>>13520590
gospel of john
biography of jesus by paul johnson

Thanks to my brothers and sisters bumping this thread. Peace be with you. I think it could be profitable to make this thread a regular fixture.

DAILY READINGS:

First Reading
EXODUS 16:1-5, 9-15
>And they set forward from Elim, and all the multitude of the children of Israel came into the desert of Sin, which is between Elim and Sinai: the fifteenth day of the second month, after they came out of the land of Egypt.
>And all the congregation of the children of Israel murmured against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness.
>And the children of Israel said to them: Would to God we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat over the flesh pots, and ate bread to the full. Why have you brought us into this desert, that you might destroy all the multitude with famine?
>And the Lord said to Moses: Behold I will rain bread from heaven for you: let the people go forth, and gather what is sufficient for every day: that I may prove them whether they will walk in my law, or not.
>But the sixth day let them provide for to bring in: and let it be double to that they were wont to gather every day.
>Moses also said to Aaron: Say to the whole congregation of the children of Israel: Come before the Lord: for he hath heard your murmuring.
>And when Aaron spoke to all the assembly of the children of Israel, they looked towards the wilderness: and behold the glory of the Lord appeared in a cloud.
>And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying:
>I have heard the murmuring of the children of Israel: say to them: In the evening you shall eat flesh, and in the morning you shall have your fill of bread: and you shall know that I am the Lord your God.
>So it came to pass in the evening, that quails coming up, covered the camp: and in the morning, a dew lay round about the camp.
>And when it had covered the face of the earth, it appeared in the wilderness small, and as it were beaten with a pestle, like unto the hoar frost on the ground.
>And when the children of Israel saw it, they said one to another: Manhu! which signifieth: What is this! for they knew not what it was. And Moses said to them: This is the bread, which the Lord hath given you to eat.

Responsorial Psalm
PSALMS 78:18-19, 23-28
They willfully put God to the test by demanding the food they craved.
They spoke against God; they said, “Can God really spread a table in the wilderness?
Yet he gave a command to the skies above and opened the doors of the heavens;
He rained down manna for the people to eat, he gave them the grain of heaven.
Human beings ate the bread of angels; he sent them all the food they could eat.
He let loose the east wind from the heavens and by his power made the south wind blow.
He rained meat down on them like dust, birds like sand on the seashore.
He made them come down inside their camp, all around their tents.

>>13520628
>to make this thread a regular fixture.
Didn't the Catholic general get banned by the mods?

>>13520628
Oops, meant to greentext the psalm.

Gospel
MATTHEW 13:1-9
>The same day Jesus going out of the house, sat by the sea side.
>And great multitudes were gathered unto him, so that he went up into a boat and sat: and all the multitude stood on the shore.
>And he spoke to them many things in parables, saying: Behold the sower went forth to sow.
>And whilst he soweth some fell by the way side, and the birds of the air came and ate them up.
>And other some fell upon stony ground, where they had not much earth: and they sprung up immediately, because they had no deepness of earth.
>And when the sun was up they were scorched: and because they had not root, they withered away.
>And others fell among thorns: and the thorns grew up and choked them.
>And others fell upon good ground: and they brought forth fruit, some an hundredfold, some sixtyfold, and some thirtyfold.
>He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.

>>13520590
St. Thomas Aquinas' Catena Aurea is a very comprehensive commentary on the New Testament, compiled from the commentaries of various Church fathers.
https://www.ecatholic2000.com/catena/untitled-111.shtml
This website also has commentaries on other parts of the Bible (as well as other spiritual writings) under "Classics Library".

>>13520522
So just because the masses believe it, it has to be true?

>>13520639
I wasn't aware that there had been a Catholic general. Christianity-related threads seem to have been tolerated lately, and a lot of discussion of Christianity goes on in other threads, so I hope a dedicated Christian thread will be tolerated.

Maybe we can try to discuss Christian literature a bit more here, especially the Bible.

>>13520590
Gnosticism and the teachings of Simon Magus

If you are a catholic you are a larper, just saying

>>13520673
You don't understand the words you use, anon. Stop repeating what you see here, it makes you look even more retarded.

>>13518342
it's a destruction cult OP

>>13518342
>who proceeds from the Father and the Son
Ayo hold up.
There's a mistake your creed.

>>13520590
The desert fathers

>>13518342
>who proceeds from the Father
FTFY

The real redpill is Christian Anarchism. convince me otherwise that this is not the best belief system

>>13520949
Any lit on Christian Anarchism? I like the sound of it.

>>13520949
Like all other antitraditional philosophies, all it accomplishes is paving the ground for the proliferation of capitalism, liberalism, and degeneracy

>>13521006
The Kingdom of God Lies Within You by Tolstoy is a good start

Bump

>>13520312
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfxgGg9awsM

>>13520312
https://youtu.be/XA6aIhHzXkw?t=1145

>>13521846
What was his best "episode"?

Bump.

>>13521846
Love a bit of Archbishop Sheen.

how do you find christian women?
people say church but is it not awkward to trying to find a wife in a place of worship?
are those stories of mothers or grandmothers setting up their daughters true?

>>13518342
>and the Son,
*triggered*

>>13522442
Setting up yes; if you're Roman Catholic it's easy to pretty much talk to anyone after Mass in your parish and to make connections with your fellow very quickly. Ultimately it's up to you to start a conversation with someone, and I hope the best for you anon.

>>13520064
San Buenaventura.
Peter Aberlard.

>>13519841
shroud

Are ethnic Jews still bound to the laws of the Old Covenant? It seems that the Jews of the Apostolic Age still obeyed them.

>>13522442
What are people's experiences with Christian women anyway? I hear mixed stories about them, so I'm never quite sure what they're like. And yeah, going to church specifically to hit on women really misses the point of what church is for in the first place.

Is Diarmaid MacCulloch worth reading?

The Prayers of St Paul - William Griffith Thomas
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yfqgg4TmUM

>Griffith Thomas was born in Oswestry, Shropshire, England, to a Welsh family. According to the General Register Office marriage record for his parents, his mother (Anne Nightingale Griffith) was the daughter of William Griffith, a surgeon of Oswestry. She married William Thomas on August 30, 1860. William Thomas was a draper and the son of Thomas Thomas, a farmer. By the 1861 census, Mrs. Thomas was widowed and living in Oswestry with her parents and infant son. She married secondly, in 1864, Joseph Charles. In the 1871 census, the family was living in Shrewsbury, Shropshire. By the 1881 census, Griffith Thomas was living in London. Then 20 years old, he worked for his stepfather's younger brother, William Charles, who was a watch dial maker. From 1882-85 he was a student at King's College London where he took an Associateship of King's College, before proceeding to Christ Church, Oxford.

>In addition to several pastorates, he taught for several years as Principal of Wycliffe Hall, Oxford (1905--1910)[1] and then at Wycliffe College in Toronto, Canada (1910--1919).[2] He was a co-founder with Lewis Sperry Chafer of Dallas Theological Seminary. He authored several books including The Principles of Theology, a systematic theology text based on the 39 Articles of the Anglican Communion. Theologically conservative, Griffith Thomas was an Anglican and an early dispensationalist.

>Gaining the reputation of a popular author and speaker in dispensationalism and victorious Christian life, he spent the last five years of his life writing and speaking at conservative gatherings. Partially funded by the Milton Stewartauthor Fund, Thomas traveled with Charles G. Trumbull to Japan and China in the summer of 1920. In 1920 after returning to the United States from China, he made a sweeping accusation of the modernist tendency among China missionaries in the famous speech, "Modernism in China." The speech was delivered to the Presbyterian Social Union in Philadelphia in January 1921 and caused a great deal of debate among the churches and mission boards in North America. Thomas was accused of being directly responsible for the founding of the Bible Union of China. His reply was that "I had nothing to do with the formation of the Bible Union, except in so far as my address seems to have been the immediate occasion for it." There is certainly no evidence that Thomas personally initiated the Bible Union in China, but his speeches in China during summer missionaries retreat had the effect of significantly intensifying the conservatives' negative sentiment toward modernism in the field and prompting them to take public action.

>>13518342
>tfw slowly losing my faith to some weird spirituality that I'm concocting myself
It's an abstract feel

>>13518351
fpbp

>>13520590
might I suggest "The Age of Reason" by Thomas Paine?

>>13520590
Consolation of Philosophy
Divine Comedy

>>13520590
Augustine’s Confessions for comfy and based reading. This book on the first seven councils is also a good shout.

>>13518970
Know any good secondary lit on the Gospel of Thomas? I want to understand gnostics better, makes for more fruitful discussion and a more fleshed out apologetics.

>>13520086
Get a good commentary. Some are available as pdfs I imagine.

>>13519514
You need a spiritually realised being. Instead of being dictated to from below, by animal instinct, you must make it so that you are dictated to from above.

>>13525553
This is just standard christian doctrine of sanctification (or theosis in orthodox tradition) though, nothing distinctly gnostic. The problem with gnosticism and manicheanism boils down, really, to hardline dualism which is a heresy. After all, the process of sanctification is only made possible through the incarnation.

>>13525637
It is not dualistic metaphysically. At all,

>>13525666
Isn’t that THE basic tenet of gnosticism? Or did my church history professor lie to me?

any orthobros?

>>13518342
About to start reading Calvin's Institutes.

Is 144,000 a literal number or a symbolic number for the saved, who will be uplifted? The John writes, in the book of Revelations, that the 144000 are blameless, virginal, and speak no lies. These beings are perfect.

Am I not to assume this is a literal exposition on the nature of the saved? If so, the vast, vast majority of mankind has been damned to Hell just from being raised in such a world as ours.

>>13526067
yea of course.

>>13526067
God, Jay is such a stubborn moron ain't he.

>>13520590
Chesterton, Dostoyevski are great.

>>13518961
This. I am a dystheistic antinatalist who once was a serious Christian and had UNDENIABLE mystical experience of God. I was in all subjection, gave away my entire bank savings to beggars and I wouldn't even salt my food. I was like this for years even. Then I succumbed to a subtle trick of the devil, my faith was made shipwreck and I was left without recourse. Now I consider the possibility that this is all one gigantic entertainment and many other exotic cosmologies because I have the luxury (if it could be called that) to do so. I don't have much confidence that our God is necessarily the absolute divine principle. On the other hand I'm not a gnostic and I don't believe there is some salvation besides Christ. Even if our God is a lesser God then he only needs to keep us in hell for one infinity, Aleph Null, not the eternity of eternities. I think we're fucked basically. And the Bible says as much.

Does anyone have any book recs on understanding the different denominations of Christianity?

I want to start attending church but I'm not sure which one to go to. I want to join a church where the services are closer to theology lectures than Televangelist, motivational-speaker-style services.

I'm leaning towards Anglican because they seem to put a big emphasis on reason and because my great-grandfather was an Anglican Canon. Also I'm gay and my local Anglican diocese would let me get gay married.

Are these good enough reasons? How do you decide on a denomination?

>>13528047
Anyone?

>>13528947
Symbolic. Obviously. Not sure why a figure of 144,000, twelve by twelve by a thousand, would eber be literal. Especially in a book like it is.
>>13528813
Don't expect theological lectures at the services of any Church, though at least my Catholic one has some seminars for bible study/theology. I'd recommend talking with the pastors and priests from several in your area, both about doctrine and the particular church. At least one catholic or orthodox for the especially philosophical perspective.

>>13518342
>I believe in one God
Judging from your post, you believe in at least three.

>>13529104
>Symbolic. Obviously. Not sure why a figure of 144,000, twelve by twelve by a thousand, would eber be literal. Especially in a book like it is.

What makes you so sure? Symbolic in what sense?

Reading Brother Lawrence's The Practice of the Presence of God. Interesting little short book. It's simple but sometimes simple is best.

Anyone else finding their understanding of God becomming increasingly abstract ?

>>13527531
Imagine taking a guy who drowned his own followers seriously

>>13518342
i miss when you could feed christcucks to lions

>>13529784
Can you separate the artist from the art?

>>13529886
nyet

>>13529886
>separate artist from art
First of all he's no an artist, he preached on thing and did the other. and most of the time, no you cannot separate the art from the artist

>>13520073
*tips fedora*
*vapes*
*watches capeshit*
*thinks gay marriage is OK*

>>13529846
The Christians that got fed to lions were based. Modern Christianity is just feeling better than everyone else without actually being committed to anything life-altering or denying. Another wave of persecutions would make (real) Christians based again

>>13521846
based

bump

>>13518342
Serious question for Christians: If Jesus asked you for sex, would you agree to it? Considering you're both male.

>>13529926
Would it be rape? Could Jesus ever have consensual sex given the power he has over everyone else by default?

are there any gnostics out there that worship with mainline churches? I feel like gnosticism is what i truly believe, and i simply cant continue to eat up doctrines alone for the rest of my life. nevertheless, i love my faith community and don't want to feel alienated.

ANABAPTIST GANG

>>13529943
i'm sorry you fell for that sophomore enticing schtick, try reading the bible again and becoming either fundamentalist or just a pure non-chrisistian metaphysician

>>13529947
do gnostics not read the bible? also is there anything else to fundamentalism other than
>reeee the flood actually happened

>>13529784
I don't really give a fuck, his Bible commentaries are kino.

>>13529508

12 tribes times 12 times (1000), or the perfect symbolic number. get a study bible and read a commentary, literally 100s of fathers have written on the questions youre asking.

>>13529784
Do you apply the same standard to King David and Paul the Apostle?

>>13530050
Paul or david never drowned anyone

>>13530058
They both murdered people.

>>13520322
The gospel? You mean the one that had fan fiction literally inserted into it like the story about the women taken into adultery? Or all the things that jesus did that serious biblical scholars don't think he actually said or did?

>>13530034
If its the perfect symbolic number, wouldn't that be even more reason why it is also an exact number?

>>13528813
>I'm gay and what a church to support my mortal sin
Yaiks stop being fag. You can never get close to God with such a big burden on you. And any church that accepts fags is a joke.
If you want theology go so Bible study or seminars by the church, the liturgy is not there to enable theological discussion but to praise God.

>tfw contacted my local Catholic parish about converting

feels holy man

>>13528813
>I'm gay and my local Anglican diocese would let me get gay married
I'm just going to leave this here https://www.openbible.info/topics/sodomy

>>13530064
yeah thats why i worship OJ

>>13519841
does that matter?

>>13519841

>>13530819
also the book of gomorrah by St Peter damian

>>13530600
>>13530819
>>13531871

Cool, I won't go to church then. Thanks for the info.

Is Hesychasm strictly a monastic thing or can you progress through it being married?

>>13532536
Either stop being a faggot and repent, or become a reprobate.

>>13527531
Calvin is graced and breadpilled, have fun
Read some of his biblical commentaries if you want to take a break from Institutes at some point

>>13532583
Anyone can practise hesychasm, just make sure you consult with a spiritual elder.
When you are married and with kids you not only have to deal with your own salvation, but with your wife's and you kids, monastics don't have this issue and so they have more time for hesychasm.
So yes, you can be a hesychast and be married, it will probably just be a longer pursuit.

>>13518342
Sperg-tastic post. Truly oozing with kisslessness

>>13531694
Though I am generally against Abrahamic religions, this document really fascinates me. I wonder if there will ever be an ultimate consensus on it's nature.

>>13524455
This is what any self-determining individual would do, rather than accept wholesale an ideology thousands of years preceding you. Takes far more effort to follow your (and mine) path as well.

>>13518342
>tfw through reckless self-indulgence and uncontrolled ambition you destroy your own body, the temple of God, and are condemned to live a life of pain with purgation and grace as the only joys.
Don't be like me brothers. Stay in the Church. Live the life He has chosen for you, rather than the one you want for yourself.

>>13526067

>>13534220
Bump

>>13534220
Saved