/lit/ - Literature

Julian is hilarious. I recommend Ibsen's Emperor and Galilean

Perhaps Jesus had to be fully man, incarnated in specific time and place, and those who were “ignored” had to be ignored, so they could accept the choice of free will and opening one’s heart, and maybe as revelation says the fact that Christianity spans the entire globe and now even in space, is testament to it’s truthfulness and the necessity of this historical event for mankind to be saved and maybe this pseud is just saying the same “why do other people believe different things” that Christians have address for millenia now?

>>22820653
You shouldn't take Julian so seriously, he was a tragic doomed figure with a giant heart. His wife cucked him with the memory of his thick necked dead brother and hated him for always smelling of books and having ink stained on his fingers. He worshipped Marcus Aurelius and grew a beard in imitation of him which everyone made fun of him for because he stopped taking showers as some sort of philosophical statement and his beard had bugs in it. He died trying to take over Asia, he was btfo'd by terrorists trying to build the third temple. If only he just married Makrina and lived happy days with his best friends Basil and Gregory

>>22820587
why does man look to associate his own pride, and sense self worth, and desire to maintain his position, status and hierarchy with the Uncreated who left the glory center of eternity to be born in a barn, despised and rejected by men, and bear the judgment for the sins of mankind, as a man.

>>22820587
Julian was also a huge philosemite btw.

>>22820653
That doesn't address Julian's point: why was God so puny that he only spoke to one little tribe and let the entire rest of the world wallow in idolatry for thousands of years. He even
took another 1460 years to reach the Americas (along with some deadly diseases).

Also I'm also not impresses by the rote Christian response that "this was answered ages ago". Just because a Christian wrote a response hundreds of years ago doesn't mean all discussion ends. If the arguments are so final, present them to me so I can be converted immediately.

>>22820587
They were sent Muhammad, a prophet for all the created things.

>>22820671
as all wise leaders naturally are.

God probably sent a prophet but the murderous savages killed him when he told them to stop the mass rape and murder.

>>22820852
Like the mass rape and murder the Hebrew God commanded?

>>22820742
Firstly because divine revelation is not necessary for good acts. Secondly because he would not have listened anyway, as evidenced by the fact that he didn't listen even once he received the divine revelation. Thirdly, God's plan is beyond our comprehension, and to think we could do better if we were in charge is Pride.

>>22820819
False

>>22820587
Strikes me as a modified argumentum ad antiquitatem. "If your God is real, then why didn't my ancestors worship him?" Not a great objection, if you ask me. There are far too many assumptions in that line of reasoning.

>>22820587
Idolatry is worthy of death. Even the Romans knew blasphemy to be worthy of death, and idolatry is the most profound blasphemy. The mystery is not the darkness of Rome, but the survival of Rome. Why did God wait so long to destroy Rome? For the sake of the Church. Julian's empire is gone, and the Church rests upon the ruins. Wicked men build houses for saints to live in.

>>22820742
Romans ignored the profit and kept having gay bathhouse sex and worshipping the ocean and shit

>>22820653
"had to be man" puts limitation upon god. a limitation upon god that god himself set, you might say. both scenarios are ludicrous.

>>22820653
>Christianity spans the entire globe
But you don't believe this as you believe that everyone outside of the Russian Orthodox Church is damned to hell.

>>22821481
>"If your God is real, then why didn't my ancestors worship him?"
But this is a great argument: if Yahweh is the creator of the universe then why did he only reveal himself to one barbarian tribe of ooga boogas? When the Greeks were charting the stars and inventing mathematics the Jews thought that chucking babies into bonfires and shitting in a trench was the height of theology. Compare that to the Platonic theology wherein Zeus and the Olympians absolutely revealed themselves to all races of men. If Yahweh is the ontological ground then all things derive their existence from him, including things like the Iliad and the Odyssey. To say that there's nothing worthwhile in it because the Jews didn't invent it is to deny that it came from Yahweh and thus deny that he is the ontological ground. But if it came from him, how can it be wrong?

The only meaningful counter is Philosemitism which is a laughable position when examined even slightly.

>>22820671
if "antisemitism" means spreading jewish monotheism and jewish theology (and no, cannibalizing pagan philosophy to plug the holes in it doesn't change the fact that it is fundamentally jewish) while destroying indo-european religion and culture, then I don't know what to say.

>>22821713
>ignored the profit

Dare I say, a freudian slip of the jew worshipper?

>>22821941
Only some puritanical sects of Protestantism believe their denomination is the only way to salvation.

>>22821984
The Russian Orthodox Church holds that everyone who isn't a member is damned to hell, so no you are wrong. They also explicitly hold that individuals who are part of excommunicated sects (such as Protestants, the Greek Orthodox, and Catholics) are ESPECIALLY damned to hell.

>>22820587
Jesus came to save everyone, not just Jews, as evidenced in the parable of the Good Samaritan and his healing of the Lebanese woman.

Demanding that God announce himself first and most clearly to his own land rather than another is just egotism.

>>22822002
>Greek Orthodox
But the orthobros tell me that the different Orthodox churches are still technically in 4-dimensional quantum dark matter string theory up-up-down-down-right-right-left-left-B-A communion...

>>22822018
>Jesus came to save everyone
Right, Julian addressed that: gentiles had to wait for Jesus. Why did gentiles have to wait for Jesus? Why couldn't they just have a Covenant with Yahweh from the get go like Jews did?

>>22820587
wasn't judea the center of the old world? seeing as how rome and greece never conquered china or sub-saharan africa, jesus's message wouldn't have been spread as far without that.

>>22822065
>wasn't judea the center of the old world?
if you believe in an abrahamic religion you might think that

>>22822056
The covenant of Abraham didn't objectively give the Israelites that much other than conditional mythologized military support from God, which they squandered enough to get BTFO by the Assyrians and Babylonians anyway and which the Romans obviously didn't need to still become the most powerful force in the world.

>>22822045
>some retard on 4chan said something so it MUST be true

>>22822065
No? Judea was a backwater frontier full of mudhut dwelling primitives before the Greeks showed up. The actual, literal, center of the world in the Greco-Roman world was Delphi (the site where the Earth was created). If you're thinking of the equator, that runs through the Congo. If you're thinking of the 45th parallel that runs through Serbia.

>>22822069
i don't but i can examine maps properly. also i meant that quite literally, not as in 'it was the most important area'. i guess that doesn't explain he didn't come sooner though.

>>22822075
>The covenant of Abraham didn't objectively give the Israelites that much other than conditional mythologized military support from God
Well, that and an afterlife and divine protection and a guaranteed place in heaven just for having been born if Catholic doctrine is viewed as authoritative.

>>22822088
There was no Jewish consensus on the afterlife at the time Jesus showed up. Pharisees believed in the afterlife, Sadducees didn't. After 70 AD when Second Temple Israelite religion got retconned into Rabbinical Judaism they literally threw out previously-accepted scriptures because they talked about an afterlife (and arguably because Christians liked them too much).

>>22822002
You'll find that the Russian Orthodox Church is not a bloc

>>22822148
That just makes the claim about how Christianity rules the world but also Christians are the most oppressed race even more ludicrous.

>>22821422
>God's plan is beyond our comprehension, and to think we could do better if we were in charge is Pride.
This is why there is no point in trying to debate Christians. When they're content with this level of utterly cowardly non-argument, there's no reason to try to honestly engage with them. When your inevitable response to any criticism is
>it's impossible to understand why God does what he does
then you truly are operating on pure blind faith and have forgone any pretense of logic.

>>22821616
This argument gets even more hilariously retarded once you think about how this god only supposedly destroyed Rome once they converted to his religion. Powerful.

>>22820671
In the same way many of you have adopted a performative and fedoraesque Christianity to spite culturally and politically elite liberal atheists, Julian wanted the temple rebuilt to spite imperial Christianity, as one of the arguments used to self-justify Christianity against its orthodox parent religion was that the temple's destruction abrogated the old covenant and its structuring around the offering of sacrifices there. Julian's project was deliberately informed by his anti-Christianity, and he envisioned the promotion of a conservative Judaism to counter it as a means of achieving this. He also wanted to prevent Christians from giving or receiving an education in pagan literature and philosophy which at this point was certainly too little too late as Christianity had already absorbed a great deal of Greek philosophical thought and appealed to pagans on those terms rather than on say, fulfilment of Old Testament prophecies made to Israel. But supposing these policies had worked—Christians would essentially be corralled as Jewish heretics who dishonor their ancestral religion and whose rhetorical toolkit for appealing to pagans would be sharply limited. Julian would have been the St Paul of neopaganism, had he not been so untimely.

>>22822075
>yahweh doesn't do anything too helpful for the tribe
>yeshua gets killed by italian policemen
remind me again why this religion is so based and redpilled?

>>22822184
The body dies so the spirit may live. Rome converted, spread the faith, and when it became an obstacle again, it fell away into its pieces. Those pieces were reborn in the faith, and Rome became the Church, which is still today the largest empire in the world.

>>22820587
It's a retarded point by a larping retard that has no clue how to think about any subject. Things have never been revealed to everyone equally. The structure of the logic is exactly the same as if I denied Newtonian gravity because I'm not English.

>>22822056
>>22821958
There's no understanding God's ways, but even here there's a myriad of ways to address this contention.

For one, Jesus Christ could only incarnate on Earth once to cleanse the world of sin; it would be illogical for Him to conduct the same act before numerous differing peoples, for He can only cleanse the world of sin and reincarnate in one single act of salvation once. There was no need for Him to reveal Himself before several different peoples prior to the Incarnation. If God had revealed Himself to the whole world, then the good word would have still had to spread gradually as it did historically, since choosing to believe in Christ or not is a test of its own.

Furthermore, a world in which all peoples have equal access to God renders stories such as that of Exodus unfeasible, and the skopos of Exodus is granting all believers in the world faith and hope; it reminds them that God sent a saviour for His people once, and He shall do it again. As God sent Moses for Israel, so too shall the Son of God return to guide His flock to the New Israel. The narrative structure of the Pentateuch mirrors Christ's life: Jesus is the New Adam, the New Isaac, the New Joseph and the New Moses. He is the New Adam who recapitulates Adam's life and submits Himself to His Father where Adam was disobedient, founding a new mankind; like Isaac, He is to become a human sacrifice, the Lamb of God, cleansing the world of sin; by becoming the New Adam and the New Isaac, He invites the nations into His Father's Covenant, just as Joseph saved Egypt; and finally, through being the New Joseph, He becomes the New Moses, taking His people back to the promised land. Revealing Himself to a single people allows for a single, unified mythos, a single unified Scripture, that can become universal through the spread of the Gospel.

Finally, God revealed His Son at the time of Roman imperial expansion. This is no coincidence, as the rise of Rome was Providential, facilitating the spread of Christianity throughout the Mediterranean and subsequently Europe, and from Europe through the colonial conquests to the rest of the world. Jesus lived at a most fortuitous time when Judaism could be synthesized with Hellenism, facilitating the intellectual efflorescence of Christianity.

>>22822283
>As God sent Moses for Israel, so too shall the Son of God return to guide His flock to the New Israel. The narrative structure of the Pentateuch mirrors Christ's life
This is pretty evasive of you given that you're being asked why a given Christian doctrine is true, arguing that it's true because other canonical literature allegorically rhymes with it does nothing to independently establish the credibility of Christianity

>>22820671
No he wasn't lmfao. Have you even read Contra Galileos? He's constantly shitting on the Jews. Hell, he wanted to put fucking Zeus worshipers in charge of the Temple after it was rebuilt.

>>22822283
>it would be illogical for Him to conduct the same act before numerous differing peoples,
It's illogical for him to do it at all given that Yahweh let the Jews off the hook with the Old Covenant. Hell, the only reason there's sin at all is because Yahweh afflicted Adam and Eve with it. He could have just given the Old Covenant to them, or created a bunch of different Covenants with the various races of the world. Instead he chose to do just what you're saying is illogical: make a covenant, and then a second one.

>a world in which all peoples have equal access to God renders stories such as that of Exodus unfeasible
Yeah because Exodus is a fictional story made up as political propaganda. "It has to be this way otherwise the book is wrong" is a terrible argument btw.

>God revealed His Son at the time of Roman imperial expansion
Oh, you mean like Iconoclasm, Marcionism, Bogomilism, Sethianism, and so on? If he could do that then why not before? Also you already said that this was illogical earlier in your post.

>>22820653
This was good until you used "it's" instead of "its", please learn the difference, it was unreadable at this point.

>>22821616
Enlightened take, have a (you)

>>22820587
relevant literature

>>22821960
Do you know the difference between the words "philo" and "anti"?

>>22822333
I want you to think about what my post is saying again, anon. It's the supposed "anti-semites" who do what I described.

>>22822333
>uhm ACKCHUYUYALLY the dude who hated jews and wanted to return to polytheism secretly loved jews and monotheism
Do you have brainworms?

>>22822283
For one, Jesus Christ could only incarnate on Earth once to cleanse the world of sin; it would be illogical for Him to conduct the same act before numerous differing peoples, for He can only cleanse the world of sin and reincarnate in one single act of salvation once.

Why? Why is God limited to only doing all of these things once, if he's God?

>Furthermore, a world in which all peoples have equal access to God renders stories such as that of Exodus unfeasible, and the skopos of Exodus is granting all believers in the world faith and hope; it reminds them that God sent a saviour for His people once, and He shall do it again.

So he only did it once for one group of people instead of many times for all people because otherwise...we wouldn't have to wait for him to eventually do it for all people later?

>>22822320
>He could have just given the Old Covenant to them, or created a bunch of different Covenants with the various races of the world.
And what would this accomplish that His actual scheme did not?

>Yeah because Exodus is a fictional story made up as political propaganda.
Read Kenneth Kitchen.

>Oh, you mean like Iconoclasm, Marcionism, Bogomilism, Sethianism, and so on?
What the fuck do heresies have to do with the congruence of Roman expansion and the spread of the Gospels?

>If he could do that then why not before?
He did it then so the Gospel would reach white Europeans who could elaborate Christian theology exhaustively utilizing their modified version of Greek philosophy and construct a splendourous civilization through Roman law, Greek learning and Christian wisdom, allowing them to teach the word of the Lord to debased, bestial peoples who would pervert it without the guidance of the white man (ie. Indios and niggers and chinks).

>>22822304
This is would be a salient critique where I not elucidating how and why the ancient Hebrew mythos is still relevant to contemporary Christians. Again: if God revealed Himself to all nations, each would still have its own unique national mythology instead of a unified one that grants clarity to the word of God.

>>22822374
>if God revealed Himself to all nations, each would still have its own unique national mythology
they did, and Christians have always attempted to destroy these to the greatest extent possible, because they are in fact enemies of this ecumenical God and teach the doctrine of a jealous God who fears men and their works, almost as if he were based on some schizo desert authoritarian (interesting to note of course that the Middle East still produces this type of person)

>>22822365
>Why is God limited to only doing all of these things once, if he's God?
Because omnipotence does not entail His being able to perform feats contrary to logic, like make 2 and 2 add up to 5.

>So he only did it once for one group of people instead of many times for all people because otherwise...we wouldn't have to wait for him to eventually do it for all people later?
You seem illiterate. Read what I said again.

>>22822385
>omnipotence does not entail His being able to perform feats contrary to logic, like make 2 and 2 add up to 5
corpses rising from the dead, people walking on water, pillars of fire, multiplication of bread/fish, etc. all offenses against logic; the only reason 2 and 2 do not make 5 is because scripture does not say so, it stops at 3 actually being 1

>>22822343
My apologies, I was wrong. I understand now.

>>22822393
>corpses rising from the dead, people walking on water, pillars of fire, multiplication of bread/fish, etc. all offenses against logic
New Atheist midwit confuses non-necessary laws of nature with immutable logical and mathematical axioms example no. 7279736

Stick to your middle school volcano experiments.

>>22822380
Christianity preserved everything from Greco-Roman antiquity that was actually valuable and discarded the rest. Euhemerism was already destroying the ancient cults btw.

>>22822393
>it stops at 3 actually being 1
Trinitarianism is perfectly coherent. There are three hypostaseis and one ousia; the ousia is a nature, a universal property. A hypostasis is a particular nature or a subsistence, something which is ontologically prior but logically posterior to the bundle of properties that constitute it. The universal is contrary to the speculations of many learned Greeks numerically singular; the property of being a height 175 cm predicated of Paul is identical to the property predicated of Peter, it is not the case that there are instantiations X1 and X2 of the universal X that immanently subsist in the particular subsistences A1 and B2. They are exactly identical, for immanent properties are proper to space but do not exist in space as such, for they cannot subsist on their own when not coinhering coextensively with other properties -- for all existences are but that, collections or bundles of properties. Thus, though there are three divine persons, there is but one numerically singular divine nature, common to all three; the divine persons separated by their idiomatic properties. The Father is unbegotten, the Son is only-begotten, and the Spirit proceeds. Thus, just as Peter, Paul and John are all man yet differentiated from each other by their idiomatic properties, so too are the Father, Son and Spirit all God without being identical to each other.

Now, if you presume that this does not go far enough to secure monotheism, you would be correct. The true securing of the teaching of there being only one God derives from the Divine Monarchy of the Father. As the Son says, the Father is greater than I (John 14:28); by this He means not ontological inferiority, but causal inferiority. As John 1:1 says, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word as with God, and the Word was God.

>>22822400
>non-necessary laws of nature
lol

>>22822393
>>22822410
Note that the Word's Godhood is posterior to His being with God; the Son is God inasmuch He is begotten by God the Father Almighty. All that the Son possesses, He received from the Father. So too the Spirit; the Son and Spirit are mere extensions of God, just as our arms are an extension of ourselves, but to be a mere extension of God is no mere thing, for God is immaterial, timelessly eternal, incomposite, spaceless, adiastemic, all-powerful, all-knowing, endlessly transcendental, ineffably ineffable, blinding incandescence, beyond being itself; to be an extension of God, one must be God Himself. Because God acts through His Son and Spirit, they possess His essence and His power. There are no three arkhai, but only one source, God, Who is called Father through His begetting of the Son. We in piety reserve the name God for Him, to accentuate Him as the Source of the Trinity and lynchpin of its Oneness and Unity; the Son and Spirit are God, but in a predicative sense but only rarely in a nominative sense. This is why St Paul says on 1 Corinthians 8:6 that there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and in whom we live. Paul safeguards monotheism by addressing the Father as God, for He is the source of divinity, whereas the Son as Lord, acknowledging His divinity and possession of the most exalted Divine Name YHWH, for it was He who spoke it to Moses. There is one God the Father, who accomplishes all His wonders through His Son and Spirit, who are eternally subordinated to His will (Not my will, but yours be done, Luke 22:42).

Consequent to the Divine Monarchy of the Father is the doctrine of inseparable operations. Because there is one will, there is but one activity in God. All that the three divine persons do, they do as one.

>>22822393
>>22822410
>>22822415
The Father wills, the Son executes, and the Spirit perfects, for the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does (John 5:19). Their unity of activity is not merely accidental as in men, but essential; men achieve unity of action contingently, but in the Godhead, God does all He does through His Son, and His Son completes and perfects all things through His Spirit, gifted to Him by His Father. It cannot be any other way. It is a metaphysical necessity. This applies equally to the external activities that are but a mere extension of His internal activity as it does to the latter; God generates the Son and Spirit for the purpose of His eternally perpending His own grandeur. God contemplates Himself, and to contemplate Himself, He generates two other divine persons who share in His essence: how or why He does shall remain eternally inaccessible to us, for His activity is identical to His essence, and His essence cannot be grasped. All we know of God we attain through conceptualization and notions we derive of Him through comparison to His Creation: creatures exist in time, so God must be timeless; creatures exist in space, so God must be spaceless; consequently, creatures are composite, so God is necessarily incomposite and perfectly simple; consequently, creatures are subject to alteration, and God cannot change for He transcends the metaphysical preconditions for potentiality, being pure actuality; consequently, creatures are subject to passions, so God must necessarily be impassible; creatures are finite, so He must be qualitatively infinite; consequently, God must necessarily so eminently transcend creatures He is omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenelovent; and so forth. But these conceptualizations do not define God, they but merely delineate Him; His essence we try to circumscribe, but it remains inaccessible to us.

>>22822399
my respect for not coping and just being real anon

>>22822404
>Euhemerism was already destroying the ancient cults
euhemerism default non-schizo opinion of Christianity by educated Westerners btw

>>22822393
>>22822410
>>22822415
>>22822417
It lies behind the eternal qualitative infinity of God, infinitely greater than infinity; our notion of infinity allows us to see its incomprehensibility, to comprehend it, but the essence is so beyond God's infinity that it is incomprehensibly incomprehensible and ineffably ineffable. It is the very essence of mystery. God's attributes are extensions of His essence; they are consequent to and derivative of it. The essence necessarily entails His being omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenelovent, omnipresent, eternal, timeless, spaceless, incomposite, simple, etc.; the attributes we predicate of God are not identical, but mutually entailing, for one cannot be omnipotent without also being omniscient, adiastemic, impassible, and so forth, and vice versa. All we know of God is engendered by the essence, but all we know are the realities which surround God, as the essence itself remains inaccessed and inaccessible. We cannot exist His infinity, yet alone the magnitude beyond the infinity.

Thus, we can provide explanations for the Trinity, but it eternally remains a mystery. The Trinity is a product of the Father's omniscience, for in eternally contemplating Himself, the Father generates a second person in whose reflection He perceives His own visage, coming to know Himself more perfectly, and in the Spirit truly most perfectly; the Trinity is a reflection of God as Love, for He generates a person whom He can love, and a third one through Him that He grants as a gift so that their love may be perfected as a truly unselfish love; the Trinity is engendered by God perpending His omnipotence, for He is so powerful that He generates another as great and ineffable as He, whose own omnipotence is vindicated by His eternally manifesting and sustaining the Spirit, who Itself is vindicated as God by anointing the Son Who sustains and manifests Him eternally as God. Yet we can never truly and fully understand.

>>22822393
>>22822410
>>22822415
>>22822417
>>22822424
Hence how we know that God is One: for our knowledge of God is corrupted by our defining Him in relation to creation, as we by negation delineate Him in opposition to ourselves, either by privation or through eminence. We say there are three hypostaseis and one ousia, but this is a product of our considering God as though He were a creature: because God is simple, in Him there is identity of activity and attributes. The essence is a property and an activity; the property is actualized through the activity, and the activity fully and exhaustively communicates the property. God is pure act: He is Thought Thinking of Itself. He is pure, supreme contemplation. Because we are limited creatures, we distinguish logically between the activity and the property it communicates, for our being limited creatures, our powers lie dormant and idle quite often, and we do not manifest the activities that communicate our essence. There is a temporal disjunction.

The distinction between three hypostaseis and one ousia is solely the product of our considering the essence as a property; but this mirage dissipates if we consider the universal as an activity. Because God is perfectly simple, the universal and the subsistence it inheres in are perfectly identical. Ousia and hypostasis are one and the same. The essence of God is equal to God, namely the Father; the Son and Spirit fully and exhaustively possess the essence as a property, but they are not equal to it as an activity, for the eternal contemplation of God entails His generating His Son and Spirit. The hypostasis of the Father necessarily and inevitably eternally generates the hypostaseis of the Son and Holy Spirit.

This is mystery of God.

>>22822410
not reading all your monastic vomit marrying philosophical ideas to biblical allegory

>>22822385
>There's no understanding God's ways
>omnipotence does not entail His being able to perform feats contrary to logic, like make 2 and 2 add up to 5.

God's ways are beyond our logic, but you know for a fact that God can't perform feats contrary to our logic?

That side, why is it contrary to logic that he could be born and die more than once, when he's "three persons" in one God and is constantly incarnating in pieces of bread and cups of wine around the world and being eaten, only to return as bread and wine again? Yet you're saying it's beyond logic for him to be born and die more than once? That does not seem to be any more internally incoherent than anything else your religion alleges.

And even if you're right about that, which I don't grant, why would he choose to rid the world of sin in this specific fashion (born human and getting executed), if, according to you, it necessarily curtails him from spreading the word in a more efficient way? You say God, while omnipotent, is curtailed by the logical (though you previously said the opposite, but we'll forget that for now), but God has free-will, doesn't he? Why couldn't he have chosen to appear in a way that didn't logically curtail him from doing so more logically?

>Furthermore, a world in which all peoples have equal access to God renders stories such as that of Exodus unfeasible, and the skopos of Exodus is granting all believers in the world faith and hope; it reminds them that God sent a saviour for His people once, and He shall do it again.

You're saying that if God had appeared to everyone instead of just one small group in a specific time, then everyone he didn't appear to wouldn't have his second coming to look forward to? If not, what are you saying?

You know it's quite strange how little attention Greek/Roman paganism gets despite so much more of its practice/dogma has survived to our time. We know vastly more about their religion than that of the Norse, the Celts, or the Slavs. For some reason they just haven't gotten any traction, though.

>>22822417
> God does all He does through His Son, and His Son completes and perfects all things through His Spirit, gifted to Him by His Father. It cannot be any other way. It is a metaphysical necessity.
>God contemplates Himself, and to contemplate Himself, He generates two other divine persons who share in His essence:
>how or why He does shall remain eternally inaccessible to us, for His activity is identical to His essence, and His essence cannot be grasped.

Why write so many words if all it boils down to in the end is "I don't know how or why, and can never know how or why"? Why not stop wasting everyone else's time, and lead with that?

>>22820587
The only critique that actually makes Christians seethe is Nietzsche's. Paul was a resentful Jew who subverted the Buddhist Yeshua's crusade against Western religion for his own political fame, and we can read between the contradictory and politically defamatory lines of the Bible and see this to be the case.

>>22822410
>Trinitarianism is perfectly coherent. There are three hypostaseis and one ousia; the ousia is a nature, a universal property. A hypostasis is a particular nature or a subsistence, something which is ontologically prior but logically posterior to the bundle of properties that constitute it. The universal is contrary to the speculations of many learned Greeks numerically singular; the property of being a height 175 cm predicated of Paul is identical to the property predicated of Peter, it is not the case that there are instantiations X1 and X2 of the universal X that immanently subsist in the particular subsistences A1 and B2. They are exactly identical, for immanent properties are proper to space but do not exist in space as such, for they cannot subsist on their own when not coinhering coextensively with other properties -- for all existences are but that, collections or bundles of properties. Thus, though there are three divine persons, there is but one numerically singular divine nature, common to all three; the divine persons separated by their idiomatic properties. The Father is unbegotten, the Son is only-begotten, and the Spirit proceeds. Thus, just as Peter, Paul and John are all man yet differentiated from each other by their idiomatic properties, so too are the Father, Son and Spirit all God without being identical to each other.

Bro you're really going out of your way not to just write "more than one thing can have the same attribute," because you know that if you did no one would be intimidated by your wall of text, actually finish reading it, and realize that nothing you wrote is an actual argument for the trinity is true.

>>22822467
>For some reason they just haven't gotten any traction, though.
That's because you're on an English speaking imageboard. In Greece, Italy, France, and Ukraine (lol) there's plenty of Classical polytheists (Relative to population size). A better question for critics of polytheism would be: if there's no truth to these religions and only Judaism is valid, why is it that the only successful polytheistic revivals are the ones that follow their ancestral traditions?

>>22822504
Everything I said is absolutely correct, you subhuman nigger. Try addressing a single point. Perhaps if you were at least somewhat familiar with the problem of universal predication, you wouldn't be shocked at a lengthy exposition of a person's stance on it in the context of a metaphysical analysis.

>>22822478
Why don't (You) stop wasting everyone's time and just admit you're too much of conceited retarded faggot to meaningfully address complex metaphysical questions? "Muh apophaticism makey headey hurtie!" Whiny fucking faggot.

>>22822427
t. 80 IQ spiritual shitskin

>>22822374
>And what would this accomplish that His actual scheme did not?
It would far more efficiently deal with the problem of sin.

>Read Kenneth Kitchen.
I accept your concession.

>What the fuck do heresies have to do with the congruence of Roman expansion and the spread of the Gospels?
Oh so it's only "revealing his son" when it's what YOU agree with, it's not actually about spreading the teachings of Jesus around. In that case, why do you pretend to care about Rome, or Europe, or Jesus, at all? You're only pretending to believe in this crap so you can cheerlead for an egregore.

>He did it then so the Gospel would reach white Europeans
Why wait 4,000 years to do that when he could have done it from the start?

>each would still have its own unique national mythology instead of a unified one that grants clarity to the word of God.
First, so? Second, are you saying that Yahweh can't make people adhere to the same religion?

>>22822567
Yeah this is DEFINITELY how Jesus wanted the Apostles to act when spreading his teachings lmfao

>>22822567
your religion is predominately BIPOC, you dumb christer
now go kiss senegambian feet

>>22822579
My religion is primarily divine, as in concerned with actual transcendental realities, instead of worshipping oneself and corrupt dirt, like you are, maggot.

>>22822627
racism has no place in god's kangdom

>>22822627
>one race, the human race :)

>>22822571
>I accept your concession.
Goes on /lit/, does not accept book recommendation. Lovely.

>It would far more efficiently deal with the problem of sin.
How?

>Oh so it's only "revealing his son" when it's what YOU agree with
Only when it's the one true teaching, yes. Imagine shilling for vile gnostic sects like a libtard.

>In that case, why do you pretend to care about Rome, or Europe, or Jesus, at all?
What a retarded non sequitur. I care because man's telos is seeking to contemplate God as God does Himself, which requires living imbricated in a community of men who eternally strive to imitate the unity of will and perfection of the Trinity engendered by God the Father. My duty to my folk and race supercede that to my duty to all mankind, and by preserving the collective tradition, customs and intellectual achievements of my civilization, I imitate the eternal life that the Lord shall grant to us all in the next life, in this life.

>Why wait 4,000 years to do that when he could have done it from the start?
Time was not ripe.

>Second, are you saying that Yahweh can't make people adhere to the same religion?
He cannot infringe upon people's free will, no; it is contrary to His Love and Goodness.

>>22822655
What's your issue with Platonism and Stoicism?

>>22822567
You're writing has become a little less attic, which is a good start, but much more hormonal.

>Try addressing a single point.
You wrote an extremely long prolix proof for why one thing can have multiple attributes, your analogy being that more than one person can be a man, so more than one person can be a God. I don't think a God is like a man, because according to your religion, there can be more than one man, but not more than one God. Furthermore, even if this were a valid proof that the trinity can contain multiple persons, you have not given a why. I could use the same argument to say there could've been thousands of Christs, instead of one, but it doesn't explain why I think that. I've become familiar enough with your argumentation now that I know you'll probably seethe about "God's logic is not our logic," even though you previously said that God's was bound by our logic.

>>22822423
The default "non-schizo" position is also importing nigger and loving trannies btw

>>22822699
No matter how much you hate being a surplus male in an egalitarian society it will not make Christianity real.

>>22822699
Yep, normal transit of people and acceptance of people with weird genitals

>>22822698
>You wrote an extremely long prolix proof for why one thing can have multiple attributes, your analogy being that more than one person can be a man, so more than one person can be a God.
So you didn't read past the first post. Lovely.

>I've become familiar enough with your argumentation now that I know you'll probably seethe about "God's logic is not our logic," even though you previously said that God's was bound by our logic.
You seem to lack the requisite intellectual capacity to comprehend the reality that human beings have rational faculties that are circumscribed and limited, and thereby incapable of grasping God. It's like a cat trying to comprehend the complex mental processes of human beings.

>>22822002
The Russians and Greeks are still in communion with one another, they are just in schism over an authority dispute
Retards like you dont know the difference, though.

>>22822729
>it is impossible to know about God so just trust what I tell you about God
this didn't even work on ancient peasants, who needed carrot-and-stick treatment to give up their folk beliefs, so why would it work on a modern person?

>>22822732
ROC (Moscow Patriarchate) unilaterally severed full communion with Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople on 15 October 2018 when autocephaly was restored for the Orthodox Church of Ukraine.

>>22822729
>You seem to lack the requisite intellectual capacity to comprehend the reality that human beings have rational faculties that are circumscribed and limited, and thereby incapable of grasping God. It's like a cat trying to comprehend the complex mental processes of human beings.

And yet you yourself claim to be able to comprehend the limits of God's omnipotence with your own limited human facility for logic:

>omnipotence does not entail His being able to perform feats contrary to logic, like make 2 and 2 add up to 5

You assert that God can't bend immutable a priori necessary logical truths etc. etc., but also that his nature is ultimately beyond our logical understanding, even though you yourself have presupposed an understanding of the very limits of his omnipotence, in asserting that he is circumscribed by a logic that is understandable to you.

All that aside, if your answer to every question about your religion boils down to "it's impossible to know," what convinced you that Christianity was true in the first place, if it is ultimately impossible to know why it is true?

>>22822661
pagan philosophies you cannibalized for legitimacy

>>22822812
*took and improved upon in every single way

>>22822820
>dude what instead of using the shared religious patromony of the Hellenistic, Latin, Egyptian, Babylonian worlds as allegory for our philosophical doctrines we locked ourselves into a book about a volcano demon and a book about a volcano demon's wife's son, and made everything in book one an allegory for something in book two, and then made book two a further allegory for whatever sounds impressive enough, but then took parts of book one literally to justify persecuting people who don't use either book, use only one of them, or use both but then added more

>>22822842
>>dude what instead of using the shared religious patromony of the Hellenistic, Latin, Egyptian, Babylonian worlds to suck dick like a faggot
Clearly you're just a retarded atheist who doesn't actually care about attaining metaphysical truths, a degenerate modern deracinated by the decadence and dissipation of post-Christian society desperately trying to find an anchor in the world, in your case that being a disordered obsession with race that has no meaningful metaphysical and consequent ethical basis.

>>22822812
Just as God commanded the Israelites to loot the treasures of Egypt, so has the Church looted the nations of their best riches and achievements, baptizing them for the glory of God. A crucified Jew BTFO all of paganism

>>22822820
you did nothing but mish mash them with jewish theology, dumbing them down in the process

>>22822873
>i have achieved gnosis through pretending to be thomist (I have purchased the relevant accoutrements and tomes from the noted bookseller Jeffrey Bezos), you on the other hand are a racist and a degenerate who lives in a society

>>22822880
>evil can't create, only corrupt
>the church loots doctrines from smarter people
hmmm

>>22822873
>a degenerate modern deracinated by the decadence and dissipation of post-Christian society desperately trying
At least this guy has a way with alliteration. Isn't this the same poster who was calling everyone laughing at his Jay Dyer regurgitant shitskins?

>>22822906
LMAO

>>22822842
Thinking about you angrily typing this over the course of 5-10 minutes is making me crack up

>>22822882
>>22822906
Why is it that all the pagan faggots desperately trying to justify their homosexuality are all obviously morons who clearly cannot intellectually comprehend the intellectual heritage they seek to defend only because of some pathetic resentment of Christianity?

>>22822924
i literally wrote that on the toilet, glad you liked it

>>22822926
>gets BTFO
>NOOOOO YOU'RE HOMOSEXUALS PROJECTING YOU CAN'T COMPREHEND THE GREAT AQUINAS AND AUGISTINE NOOOOO

>>22822926
>ur gay and dumb for not agreeing with me
yeah i always get my hot takes on theology from 11 year-olds

>>22822933
>>gets BTFO
Where?

>>22822906
All truth belongs to Jesus Christ

>>22822806
>And yet you yourself claim to be able to comprehend the limits of God's omnipotence with your own limited human facility for logic
No you illiterate midwit, we as human beings can comprehend what omnipotence entails, but cannot exhaustively attain or possess the content of all said omnipotence; we can construct a mental model or conceptualization of what omnipotence is, but we only perfunctorily adumbrate it. That is what I mean by comprehensibly incomprehensible. Logic is not a limit on God as such, because that which is illogical cannot per se exist, and thus cannot circumscribe God.

>All that aside, if your answer to every question about your religion boils down to "it's impossible to know,"
Go back and peruse my essays again, because it's clear that despite continually picking fights, you don't actually comprehend a said sentence of what I wrote.

>what convinced you that Christianity was true in the first place
The resurrection of Jesus, the beauty of the narrative of the Gospels, the breathtaking intellectual profundity of the Church Fathers.

>>22822976
>we as human beings can comprehend what omnipotence entails, but cannot exhaustively attain or possess the content of all said omnipotence; we can construct a mental model or conceptualization of what omnipotence is
so god is just a useful model? you are an atheist in denial

>>22822987
You figured it out, anon. Plato, Xenocrates, Alcinous, Apuleius, Antiochus of Ascalon, Numenius of Apamea, Plotinus, Porphyry, Iamblichus, Proclus, they were all atheists. Good job.

>>22822997
>using a whole list of pagan philosophers to argue against paganism

>>22822997
yes, as a number of christer apologists argued in this thread, the pagan religion had died and euhemerism took root... I am not convinced that this should not apply to you and your dead hero Yeshua, and given the flagrantly obscuratist bloviating these same apologists have embalmed their god's corpse with, it would seem their answer is to lie to us about their beliefs

>>22822156
Non-Christian here, I actually think that kind of logic is good for some things insofar as the point is to reinforce that God is necessarily an authority above men and that men cannot grasp everything God could. But I agree it's dumb when they use that logic to get out of having to try. Remember that humility is the primary virtue of Christianity and it's what gives it it's entire value system and subsequent logic.

Isn’t Julian dead?

>>22823022
in neopaganism's hour of greatest need, at the climax of World War 4, Julian will return to Rome and defeat the Afro-Korean Army of Christ the Redeemer with a legion of Mycenaean bullfighters

>>22823009
Anon, you claimed that my apophatic statements made me an atheist. Logically the same must apply to your """favourite""" pagan philosophers (whom you haven't read). But please, if you're such a learned and studied man, a truly sophisticated and erudite scholar, do explain how ancient metaphysics and ethics are superior to those of patristic Christianity. You may begin by refuting the following:
>>22822410
>>22822415
>>22822417
>>22822424
>>22822425

>>22823015
>I am not convinced that this should not apply to you and your dead hero Yeshua
All liberal anti-Christian attempts to disprove His miracles are intellectually bankrupt and deficient, so indeed not only should it not, but it cannot.

>>22823042
you're talking to the wrong guy faggot

>>22823020
Not quite right. Humility is called the root of all virtue or the mother of all virtue. But Charity is the greatest virtue, and there is no true virtue outside of Charity. Knowing this, if you really want to challenge Christianity, you should probably go against its best, not its worst. If you think someone is not behaving as a Christian should, it would be reasonable to conclude that they don’t know Christianity very well. It’s those who practice Christianity best who know it best. Therefore, try to argue against the saints, not anonymous hypocrites online.

>>22823042
>you're just a dirty liberal i don't have to listen to you
i can't believe it—zoomers larping as facebook boomers on a tlingit fishing forum

>>22823059
Man you can't read can you

>>22823064
you called me a liberal anti-Christian for suggesting your verbosity was insincere... nobody was talking about the Great American Culture War but I suppose it's to be expected that somebody larping as a thomist resents liberals, atheists, etc.

>>22822976
>No you illiterate midwit, we as human beings can comprehend what omnipotence entails, but cannot exhaustively attain or possess the content of all said omnipotence; we can construct a mental model or conceptualization of what omnipotence is, but we only perfunctorily adumbrate it. That is what I mean by comprehensibly incomprehensible. Logic is not a limit on God as such, because that which is illogical cannot per se exist, and thus cannot circumscribe God.

That's a good answer. So it's possible to know everything God cannot do, but not to understand anything he does do?

I don't think you've explained this position:
>For one, Jesus Christ could only incarnate on Earth once to cleanse the world of sin; it would be illogical for Him to conduct the same act before numerous differing peoples, for He can only cleanse the world of sin and reincarnate in one single act of salvation once.

I don't see why God could only necessarily incarnate and die and be resurrected in one place once, when he's transubstantiating in bread all the time. I don't see how incarnation happening more than once breaks "immutable logical and mathematical axioms", when it seems to me that it only breaks "non-necessary laws of nature", like the bread.

And even so, why would he choose to rid the world of sin by being born human and getting executed, if, according to you, it necessarily curtails him from evangelizing in a more efficient way? God has free-will, doesn't he? Why couldn't he have chosen to appear in a way that didn't logically curtail him from evangelizing more efficiently?

>>22820587
The Disciples of Jesus never existed
Paul was the antichrist
Church is a subsidiary of the synogogue in disguise

Heretical asians instinctively sense so

>>22823075
>you called me a liberal anti-Christian
No retard, I said that the modern day equivalent of ancient Euhemerism, namely liberal anti-Christian scholarship trying to desperately disprove the historicity of Scripture, is intellectually bankrupt.

>I suppose it's to be expected that somebody larping as a thomist
I produced an entire lucubration from an Eastern Orthodox perspective. How fucking illiterate, both literally and philosophically, can you be?

>>22823112
>liberal anti-Christian scholarship trying to desperately disprove the historicity of Scripture, is intellectually bankrupt
what could be more intellectually bankrupt than testimonials of ancient death cultists?

>>22821937
The virgin mary was once a virgin wolf mom
You cannot disprove my claim
You dont speak wolf

>>22823112
You are replying to a resident schizo who always types in lowercase and only ever uses bullshit circular non-arguments to try and tear down Christianity, which he refers to as "christers" for some bizarre reason. Every time you see him it is better to just not engage.

He WILL get mad at this post, just watch.

>>22823238
what is schizo about asking you to clarify your circular non-arguments about the nature of a rabbit's horns without resort to turgid scholasticism? did i make you cry or something? maybe you should come up with less stupid opinions

>>22822417
>God does all He does through His Son, and His Son completes and perfects all things through His Spirit, gifted to Him by His Father. It cannot be any other way. It is a metaphysical necessity
i mean really, what am i supposed to give you as a response to this, am i supposed to start playing your game here and trying to decipher what you mean by Father and Son? it's obvious you aren't using these words in any sense that isn't pregnant with christer copium, or we'd be able to agree that a father can do things without going through his son, without giving his son a "spirit", etc.; this just an obnoxious long-form restatement of doctrine by some monastic or clerical writer with infinite free time and contains no argument except on terms being debated within Christianity, and is hardly relevant to a non-Christian opponent

>>22822417
>God does all He does through His Son, and His Son completes and perfects all things through His Spirit, gifted to Him by His Father. It cannot be any other way. It is a metaphysical necessity

Why is this a metaphysical necessity? How did you come to this conclusion?

>>22823274
>i mean really, what am i supposed to give you as a response to this
Oh, what should you do, oh great and most wise philosopher! Surely a most learned and sophisticated intellectual such as yourself could provide truly enlightening and analysis of the metaphysics of universals, causal superiority, activity and the unity thereof, the nature of predication of God, His attibutes, etc. Are you not a studious follower of the pagan philosophers? Surely matters such as these should be trivial to one so thoroughly steeped in the old teachings, so refined and purportedly superior to Christian thought as they are? Surely you could provide a most incisive internal critique here?

Or perhaps you're just an utter mediocrity and subhuman filth that shall burn in hell for all eternity.

>am i supposed to start playing your game here and trying to decipher what you mean by Father and Son?
Truly what an esoteric allusion no-one can grasp. I do have wonder why you are so certain of your superiority when you seem to not know basic trivia about Christianity.

>this just an obnoxious long-form restatement of doctrine by some monastic or clerical writer
The greatest men to have ever lived, with your having not even an infinitesimal of their learnedness, intelligence, virtue and dignity. For they are the exalted of the Lord, while you are a vile maggot.

Once again, the pagan idols capitulate to the true light of Christ.

>>22823384
By reading Scripture, retard.

>>22820587
A pagan critique of Christianity is as useless to a Christian as a caveman's critique of quantum physics would be to a Niels Bohr.

>>22822926
I partially agree with you but you’re a Jewish faggot and all Christians should be deported to Africa. The problem with a lot of modern neopagans is that they define themselves solely in opposition to something that isn’t worth holding resentment over, that being christgolemism, a form of noahidic control and mental poison. We should spill our curses towards it and move on from it.

>>22824049
>By reading Scripture, retard.
Can you reproduce any of these arguments that you learned from scripture, or is it only accessible through reading scripture?

Gal. 4:4
But when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under law,

>>22820742
Even if the answers are given to you, you won't be converted. You're not really open to being proven wrong and having a spiritual experience. You just want to argue for funsies. Apologetics and philosophy debates are not evangelism.

>>22822156
Case in point. You called a perfectly valid argument a non-argument and had a smug little chub from it. The exercise is in vain because the whole subject is just an exercise in vanity for you

>>22822374
>>He could have just given the Old Covenant to them, or created a bunch of different Covenants with the various races of the world.
>And what would this accomplish that His actual scheme did not?
It would have created less heathens. There would be more faithful. The world would be more Christian. More would go to heaven.

>>22822417
>God does all He does through His Son, and His Son completes and perfects all things through His Spirit, gifted to Him by His Father. It cannot be any other way. It is a metaphysical necessity.
Why is this this a necessary truth, while my typing this comment is not?

>>22822424
>adiastemic
I'm having trouble finding a definition for this word. Could you explain it to me?

>>22822424
>one cannot be omnipotent without also being omniscient, adiastemic, impassible, and so forth, and vice versa.
Why can one not be omniscient without being omnipotent? You're saying that to know everything would necessarily entail being all powerful?

>>22824718
Diastema means space in Greek; in philosophy, it is usually utilized to mean sequence. So diastemic means sequential or subject to sequential alteration; temporality entails our undergoing change or motion, therefore we exist in a diastemic plane. God's being beyond time entails His being perfectly actual and subject to no alteration. Therefore, we call Him adiastemic, since we can allegorically say He perceives everything in a single instance as it were (the sole manner in which we can comprehend what eternity entails).

>>22824725
Here you go anon. This book addresses just about every contemporary atheist argument about God. It addresses your question specifically. Have a read of it.

>>22824692
>Case in point. You called a perfectly valid argument ( "God's plan is beyond our comprehension") a non-argument and had a smug little chub from it. The exercise is in vain because the whole subject is just an exercise in vanity for you
God planned for me to have a smug little chub and exercise my vanity. Do not question his ways. God's plan is beyond our comprehension. My smug little chub is a metaphysical necessity. It could be no other way. Do not ask why. God's plan is beyond our comprehension. Do you have even a basic grasp of apophaticism?

>>22824747
Thanks. Can you answer that specific question though?

>>22824741
Thank you.

>>22824752
Yeah I am inclined towards predestination and your statement is consistent with occasionalism. Maybe God really did intend you to be a smug little ass hole.

>>22824756
I'm a different anon from the one youve been talking to. I havent done apologetics in a few years. I look over it again later and if the thread is still up I'll try to summarize it

>>22824725
Indeed. To know everything, one must necessarily be outside of time and space, ie. eternal, adiastemic, immutable; all these things necessarily imply omnipotence, since possessing all said aforementioned attributes entails being qualitatively infinite (ie. the inability to be further perfected in any way), of which omnipotence is derivative and consequent to. Omnipotence entails omniscience, since one cannot do everything without knowing everything. God's qualitatively infinite attributes entail each other by virtue of being qualitatively infinite.

>>22824712
Because it discusses the necessary being that is God in His essence, whereas the universe is a contingent reality God could have chosen not to create.

>>22824676
If you were at all familiar with the Gospel of John, you'd know that Christ says that He and the Father are one (John 10:30), that He can do only what He sees His Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does (John 5:19 -- this one I literally adduced in the essay above, moron), that everyone who has heard the Father and learned from Him comes to Christ and no-one has seen the Father except the one who is from God (John 6:45-56), that no-one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made Him know (John 1:18), that through Him all things were made and without Him nothing was made that has been made (John 1:3), that He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize Him (John 1:10); Paul calls Christ the Power and Wisdom of God (1 Corinthians 1:24), referencing the figure of God's Wisdom from the Old Testament (Proverbs 8:22-31), which is described as the breath of the power of God (Wisdom 7:25) and as the figure that protected Adam, saved Noah, helped Abraham, led Lot to safety, aided Jacob, gave Joseph strength and guided the Hebrews out of Egypt, smiting their enemies in the process (Wisdom 10). Paul as with John affirms that the Son of God was the one through Whom God crafted the world (1 Corinthians 8:6); John calls Him the Word of God Who was in the beginning, was with God and was God (John 1:1), making an allusion to Psalm 33:6, which speaks of how the heavens were made by the word of the Lord and given life by His Spirit (or breath). It is quite clear from the New Testament that all of the Old Testament theophanies are Christophanies, the Son and Word of God acting on behalf of God. The fact that the Son insufflates His disciples with the Spirit affirms His perfecting role in the operation.

>>22821941
I’m not Russian Orthodox and that’s not what Russian Orthodox believe anyway.

>>22820742
It does address Julian’s point and you simply refuse to see that.

Truth is not a what but a who.

>>22821937
God doesn’t need things to be a way. You do.

>>22822322
> what is a typo

>>22824676
>>22824834
There's also John 14:9, which says that anyone who has seen Christ has seen the Father. And Matthew 11:27, which says that all things have been committed to Christ by His Father and no-one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him.

>>22824834
>>22824854
I personally like Hebrews 1
>Heb. 1:2
>Has at the last of these days spoken to us in the Son, whom He appointed Heir of all things, through whom also He made the universe;
>Heb. 1:3
>Who, being the effulgence of His glory and the impress of His substance and upholding and bearing all things by the word of His power, having made purification of sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high;

>>22822087
It's close to the fertile crescent and the birthplace of early civilizations, and the Middle East is mostly equidistant to Europe, Asia and Africa, so in a sense it does have a central position.

>>22824764
Thank you.

>>22824776
Thank you.

>>22824834
>Because it discusses the necessary being that is God in His essence, whereas the universe is a contingent reality God could have chosen not to create.
Why couldn't God have chosen not to be three persons? How is that logically impossible? Why couldn't he have chosen not to incarnate as the Son?

>If you were at all familiar with the Gospel of John blah blah blah blah
You claim that the trinity is an a priori necessary truth, yet you have not a single a priori argument, only posteriori arguments that always seem to be assertions, appealing to the authority of various prophets, and not the capacity for logic which you claim God gave you. Your arguments all presuppose a belief in the Old Testament, and seem designed to persuade only Unitarians and Jews, not heathens.

If you can't provide any a priori arguments for the metaphysical necessity of the trinity, then what, at least, are the practical implications of the trinity being true? In what way is it a necessary precondition of all logic? Not one of the sources addresses this.

>no one has ever seen God
Didn't Jacob?

>>22824761
>Yeah I am inclined towards predestination and your statement is consistent with occasionalism. Maybe God really did intend you to be a smug little ass hole.
During this discussion about the incomprehensibility of God's plan and occasionalism, I noticed that my girlfriend was crocheting a picture of a toilet that read "Lick the Bowl." She noted that from behind, it looked like nonsense. It reminded me of a sermon given at a funeral of a friend of mine, where the Lutheran pastor described how the Bayeaux Tapestry, while beautiful if looked at from the front, is a monstrosity from behind, just as God's plan looked like a monstrosity to my friend when he overdosed on fentanyl, but will make sense to him now, in Heaven.

Is this synchronicity evidence of God's hand in all things? If so, why does he reveal things in this way? What would God be trying to tell me, and what's the point of him telling me anything, or making me feel anything, if I'm just a machine, who experiences the world without ever having an effect on it, already saved or damned from the day I was born?

Christianization in the longue durée was a larger disaster for european culture than WW1, the reformation, the enlightenment or secularization.

>>22824978
To preface this you should read through 1 Corinthians 16 to 31.
I've been looking a little into the relationship of reason and faith lately. So far as I can tell a major point of Christianity is the relationship that bears between eternity and temporality or the infinite and the finite. As finite beings with finite minds, stuck in time, separated from God by the gulf of eternity, us being only a part of the whole, it is a real struggle to know the fullness of God and his divine plan that stretches beyond time. But it is said that God gave us a mind to know him.
>1:20 For the invisible things of Him, both His eternal power and divine characteristics, have been clearly seen since the creation of the world, being perceived by the things made, so that they would be without excuse;
Before the Fall, Adam could know God in fullness not by the exercise of his own mind but by being connected to God's life directly in the Tree of Life. When Adam removed himself from absolute relation to God by taking the autonomy of knowledge unto his self, he lost access to the infinite and so could only catch a glimpse at most. This is why the Father sent the Son into time. So He could bring the Eternal back to man. Through this act we could reconnect with God and therefore through faith can our reason enter into God and catch a greater vision than is ever possible by its own effort. Because we are still going through a process of spiritual transformation, our knowledge is still finite, but can grow. So God reveals to us pieces and parts of the grand tapestry in time, as we need it and as we can receive it. Your understanding of the tapestry is proportionate to your place in it.
I've been reading this neat little encyclical by John Paul II called Faith and Reason. While an overview of the proper relationship between philosophy and revelation, it's actually very existential as it addresses the purpose for our knowing. I'm not even catholic and I enjoy it. You should check it out

>>22825088
If Adam could know God in fullness, and hence know all that being separated from him would entail, why did he still separate himself from God? I'm not even asking yet why God allowed him do it.

>>22825127
>and hence know all that being separated from him would entail,
Scripture never presents it like this. I think that would assume Adam was omniscient which I don't think he was nor do I think being in communion with God implies that. Usually it's said that Adam was deceieved or stumbled. This would mean that Adam had a weakness of faith, faith being the major theme of Christianity, Old Testament and New Testament. I think it's worth reading The Epistle to the Romans. Paul talks a lot about the nature of Original Sin and the Fall, such as a limitation of will even in full knowledge and the meaning of redemption through our whole being. Thats a tough subject desu and I'm not qualified to elaborate on it too much. I think you could gain by looking into Augistine and how he elaborated on Orignal Sin. Other than that, I cant give you much else as an answer.

>>22824942
>You claim that the trinity is an a priori necessary truth, yet you have not a single a priori argument
The empty speculation of flesh and blood men are inferior to the direct Revelation from the Lord. There are no such thing as a priori arguments; everything we know is based on empirical observation. Natural revelation, ie. observation of the world as created by God, allows us insight into God, but none of it gives us any insight into the workings of the essence itself, that which no man can access; and since the Trinity's being engendered by God the Father is entailed by the essential activity, we can never exhaustively comprehend it. I already discussed this. As I pointed out in the essay, the Trinity is reflective of God's love, omnipotence and omniscience: He generates the Son and Spirit in order so that in their reflection He may most perfectly comprehend Himself, for all of us attain knowledge of ourselves in relation to other people; He proves His omnipotence by generating One alike Him, as omnipotent as He, whose omnipotence He vindicates by generating a Spirit He can sustain, the Son's sustaining the Spirit and facilitating His eternal energetic manifestation's being identical with the Spirit's anointing the Son eternally as God, for only God can sustain and empower God, and only God can anoint divinity, thus vindicating the divinity and omnipotence of both; and finally, God generates the Son so that He may actualize His Love, and subsequently spirates the Spirit as a gift to the Son, so that their love may be a perfect, unselfish one. But this only speaks of the propria, the necessary but non-essential properties of God, ones necessarily consequent to His essence and entailed by it, but not identical to it; it reveals not the essence itself.

If you have an argument against Christianity's revelatory empirical epistemology, you're free to articulate. For further inquiries, you may consult:
>>22813692
>>22813884
>>22814020
>>22814050
>>22817395

>Didn't Jacob?
No. He interacted with God through His Son, and He did not even see the Son directly, for that would require observing the essence, which no man can do (Exodus 33:20); he merely interacted with the activities through which God revealed Himself.

>>22822657
>Goes on /lit/, does not accept book recommendation. Lovely.
I accept your concession.

>How?
Well it would save him dying on the cross.

>Only when it's the one true teaching, yes.
I accept your concession.

>I care because man's telos is seeking to contemplate God
Then you shouldn't be Christian, you're not going to reach the divine by worshiping Jews.

>Time was not ripe.
Why does an omnipotent being care about whether not the time is "ripe"? He makes the time.

>He cannot infringe upon people's free will
So he's not omnipotent then.

>>22825127
>>22825199
I consider St Irenaeus superior to Augustine on this matter: Adam was neither fallen nor deified. He was not subject to the influence of sin, but neither was he raised to the status of son of God and a god of sorts himself; he was in an intermediary state between our own decrepit one and the one that shall be accorded to us by Christ in the Spirit, through Christ accessing the Father. Adam and Eve were alike children, slowly being guided by God towards a maturation to be consummated with their accessing the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil when the time was ripe; their sin of pride was one of haste, yearning for the exalted state too soon and proceeding with the conceit they can achieve it on their own without God, thus failing the test God had subjected them to, seeing if they would subordinate themselves to Him in humility and wisdom.

>>22825260
I did have a hint of a thought that since God's redemption of fallen man is a voluntary choice by man that a second fall would be impossible and that sets apart man who receive life through Christ from Adam who was given of the Tree of Life to start. But I was aware that's exactly the heresy Augustine argued against. I just don't know. That's a piece of the puzzle that hasn't been revealed to me yet so i can be comfortable that I don't need to know it now.

>>22825243
>I accept your concession.
Yawn. Boring routine, plus no argument.

>Well it would save him dying on the cross.
No it wouldn't. Christ died for our sins in our stead; He endured the punishment we could not. In doing so, He fulfilled God's Love and Justice at the same time; He fulfilled the punishment due to us, yet still spared us. His mercy and His wrath were fulfilled in one event.

>[le gay nigger retard epic clapback like a sassy black woman gif]
Yawn. Boring routine, plus no argument.

>Then you shouldn't be Christian, you're not going to reach the divine by worshiping Jews.
Good thing I worship God the Father Almighty, Who made all things and for Whom we live, eternally perpending His incredible, infinite glory; and His Son, Lord Jesus Christ, the Word, Power and Wisdom of God, through Whom all things were made and in Whom we live, God from God, Lord from Lord, King from King, Love from Love, Power from Power, eternally begotten by His Father, Who was at the beginning with God and was God, and who in the last of days was Incarnated as a man, being in the very nature of the Lord did not consider equality with Him something for His own advantage but emptied Himself and took the very nature of a servant, for our sake making Himself sin and curse and dying on the cross for our sins, so that He may bring us to God, His Father, and Who shall reincarnate at the end of days to bring about an eternal kingdom; and the Holy Spirit, Who shall dwell within us at the end of days, and through the Son and Father as well, and Who much like the Son is an extension of the one true God, making them God as well.

>Why does an omnipotent being care about whether not the time is "ripe"?
Perhaps you wouldn't be asking these retarded questions were you an actual Neoplatonist instead of a materialistic retard reifying lower realities into a higher metaphysical principle, thereby sullying the divine and rendering you incapable of grasping the mundane, giving due honour to neither.

>So he's not omnipotent then.
A strong man is not made stronger for crushing an infant's head; he is but rendered vile. God does not infringe upon our wills out of goodness, for there is only meaning and beauty if we choose to and are not compelled to do the Good; it is inferior creatures' willing to perpend God as He does Himself and exalt Him that vindicates God, for although said creatures cannot hope to exhaustively imbibe His Being, they nonetheless love and adore and praise Him, producing a most sublime and supreme cosmic symphony dedicated to God, eternally circling around His realities to grasp Him in ever moving repose, an ecstatic tranquility, an ode to power and beneficence. There would be no meaning in a world where God plays with flesh puppets with neither will nor consciousness; our acquiscence is the essential component.

>>22824049
my favorite thing about the latest wave of christlarpers is that they are a find-and-replace of yesteryear's fedoras.... are you euphoric in this moment, not because of some phony reasoning, but because christ is kang? christology is not a real science (you aren't even able to explain yourself to us in layman's terms) and you are not learned simply because you copy and paste walltexts from the desert jobbers in response to obvious observations regarding the nonsense positions scripture requires you to agree with; you would insist 2 and 2 made 5 if it were "revealed" by Israel

>>22820587
>>22820742
Shittest to see if these dunebillies could distinguish the One from their patron tribal God. Clearly failed spectacularly, requiring a certain Essene's appearance to put them to continually unremitting typlological and historical shame.

>>22825402
>are you euphoric in this moment, not because of some phony reasoning, but because christ is kang?
It's properly said Christ is Lord.

>christology is not a real science
Superstitious divination dice casting certainly is though.

>you aren't even able to explain yourself to us in layman's terms
I'm sorry, I thought you were a genius scholar who had thoroughly imbibed and masticated upon the teachings of the ancients!? I thought I was about to have a Socratic dialogue with a man of Porphyry and Proclus' intellectual calibre! How could this possibly be? Thanks for conceding, and thanks for proving that Hellenistic philosophy was much like the ancient Hebrew faith just a stepping stone to Christ that was rendered obsolete by the Incarnation.

>you are not learned simply because you copy and paste walltexts from the desert geniuses
"Ummmm the desert fathers are le bad....... because they just as okay!?!?!?"

>>22825472
behold—the end product of 2000 years of slave morality

>>22825477
Anon, you can't shill for Platonism and then talk about "slave morality." You have already proven yourself to be a spic-like 90 IQ dumbass, let's not bring that down to 80 IQ nigger tier retard.

>>22822331
>Jan Ass-Man
Based

>>22825486
>you can't have plato, because we already bastardized his philosophy for our own needs!

>>22825498
You can't have Plato because his entire philosophical oeuvre is about constructing a robust metaphysical basis to undergird his defence of conventional morality against Sophistic immoralism. You would have know this if you had actually, you know, read Plato. Or read anything about him in general. You do know that Julian expressed much reverence for the desert monks you so scorn right? He also bemoaned the fact that Christians were doing more for the impoverished than pagan temples. This was because, and you might want to sit down when you hear this, a fucking Platonist. You had your chance to articulate in-depth your understanding of Plato, Aristotle, the Middle Platonists and Neoplatonists, and to adumbrate even a perfunctory explication of why you find their systems of thought more compelling and rigourous than Christianity, but it's clear you're but another slave to his passions resentful of his superiors. You can go back to banging rocks like a retard now. Btw, the late Stoics loved refugees. You better welcome Ngubu into your house now, given your sophomoric understanding of ethics.
https://journals.openedition.org/pallas/21904

>>22825517
i'm not here to defend platonism, i disagree with your values completely, and i am well aware of the use christer apologists made of platonism as a conversion tactic and to rectify the lack of intellectual prestige in gospel literature... i am indeed willing to let you have a buggered version of platonism if only because it makes your theology all the more incoherent and forces you to say bizarre things like "looting is okay when i do it because the Israelites looted Egypt" alongside "thou shall not covet" and creates other silly problems like god having chosen a people to reveal truth to in two parts but then gave even less complete truths to others like Plato for shiggles

>>22825552
>i'm not here to defend platonism
>i am indeed willing to let you have a buggered version of platonism
You're quite the cowardly little effeminate bitch who wants to have his cake and eat it too, huh? "Huuuurrrrrr duuuurrrrrrr I don't cuurr about le Playdough but you guys have le buggered version and sheeeeeeeiiiiiit I'm goin to get muh welfare check nigguh sheeeeeeeeeeiiiiiit" You can't actually explain what Platonism entails, have repeatedly shown yourself ignorant of it, lack the IQ requisite for comprehending an assiduous lucubration articulating Christian metaphysics, yet have the audacity to sperg out like the subhuman nigger that you are when your intellectual superiors state the obvious. Jewy little poofter.

>if only because it makes your theology all the more incoherent
You don't understand it in the first place to pass judgement.

>creates other silly problems like god having chosen a people to reveal truth to in two parts but then gave even less complete truths to others like Plato for shiggles
Plato studied in Egypt under mystics who influenced by the Hebrews; there's a reason Hermeticism most closely resembles Christian theology.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/church-history/article/abs/word-homoousios-from-hellenism-to-christianity/A9C901BED414F2B52828E0587F15C6CD

>>22825702
>anti-semitism
who do you worship as master of the universe again?

>>22825737
See: >>22825370
What are your metaphysical and ethical justifications for racial fidelity again?

>>22825737
>>22825791
Also
>doesn't respond to a single point made
I accept your concession.

>>22820653
"Perhaps" and "maybe" are doing a lot of work here.

>>22825791
you are a racist yourself, and are being deeply insincere about your beliefs, and would have put a banana up your ass had you been online a decade earlier

>>22825791
>>22825794
>hates jews
>subscribes completely to a jewish belief system
can't make this shit up

>>22825820
Allow me to explain to you why *my* racialism is intellectually robust and compelling, unlike yours.

There are two aspects to morality: morality as goodness, and morality as law. Pursuing the Good is intrinsically valuable, but without disincentives for eschewing it, creatures who by their composite nature subject to change and thereby contingently as opposed to essentially good, prone to alteration and evil, will be prone to straying away from it; thus, God imposes morality as a law, to ensure the goodness of His creatures.

Now, God is by His simple nature an energeia -- activity. In God, there is scarcely any real distinction between His attributes and His operation, we merely logically distinguish between the two, because we cannot conceptualize of God in His ineffable and incomprehensible essence due to our delineating Him on the basis of our creaturely observations; all our descriptions of God are in some way or another on the basis of negation, whether as privation or eminence: we begin to be, so God must be unbegotten; we are composite, so God is ineffably simple; we exist in time, so God is timeless; we undergo alteration, so God is subject to change due to His transcending time and space; we are finite, so He must be infinite. We never truly define God as His essence is unattainable, we merely delineate the realities around Him in relation to ourselves.

>>22825820
>>22825830
We try to circumscribe Him, but He is uncircumscribable. We differentiate in Him between essence and subsistence -- ousia and hypostasis -- on account of the fact in creatures the hypostasis is ontologically prior but logically posterior to the many ousiai that constitute it, for all existences are but bundles of coexistent attributes, various universal properties predicated of a hypostasis but which cannot subsist outside of it; thus, we say that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are all equally "God" because divinity is a property -- a numerically singular universal -- that subsists in all three hypostaseis, just as the numerically single universal property of humanity subsists in all particular human persons, no different between any of us. Yet when we say so, we conceptualize of the essence as a property as opposed to activity, and of it as ontologically posterior to hypostaseis: but God's essence is identical with Himself, and His Son and His Spirit are not due to the fact that His generating the persons that causally derivative and therefore inferior to Him yet nonetheless ontologically equal on account of the fact that they are mere extensions of His existence -- for to be a mere extension of God is no mere thing, as it requires ontological equality with Him on account of incorporeal, simple, transcendental nature -- is *part* or His essential activity. God is Thought Thinking of Itself, and in the process of His most sublime, supreme contemplation of His grandeur, He generates the Son and through Him the Spirit, for He comes to know Himself most perfectly in the reflection of others: His generating the other two divine persons is indicative of His omnipotence (for He produces minds who equally possess His attributes), His omniscience (for through Them, He most perfectly actualizes Himself by knowing Himself in Their reflection) and His omnibenelovence (for it is the ultimate, most sublime act of Love), but it is undefinable in its essence.

>>22825820
>>22825830
>>22825835
Thus, God is Pure Act. And being simple, He has a single activity: His eternally perpending Himself. Thus, Creation cannot be a second activity, rather it is an operation that is an extension of His essential rumination of His own Self. Ergo, the ultimate purpose of Creation is to serve as a monument to God's glory, and all creatures within it are destined for eternally imitating God, seeking to contemplate Him as He does Himself, but failing to do so; and in doing so, vindicating His ineffable glory, for even finite, imperfect creatures such as ourselves are left stupified by His magnificence despite our inability to fully comprehend it.

The skopos and telos of Existence is epektasis: our eternally circling around God, growing in our knowledge of Him, but never exhausting all that can be said and known of Him. For He is like an infinite well of water from which we seep, yet also infinitely greater than infinity, for His being infinity is merely a notion we have of Him in relation to ourselves -- His infinity is comprehensibly incomprehensible, but His essence is so incomprehensible we cannot even comprehend it, for we can have no direct notion of it.

Everything in Creation exists to facilitate our contemplation of God; God man made in the image of God, and his existing in a community is a most sublime imitation of the loving, perichoretic unity of the Godhead. The community of men is a symbol, an icon, of the Most Holy Trinity. We seek to attain its perfection, but never can, for the Son and the Spirit are extensions of God, His Being and His Doing, eternally subordinate to His will; God is one since in the Godhead there is one source—the Father; one will—that of the Father; one nature and power—that which the Father communicates to His Son and Spirit; one activity—that which the Father completes through His Son and Spirit.

>>22825820
>>22825830
>>22825835
>>22825839
But in man, there are many wills and many activities, which only contingently and not essentially as in God align. We can never be like the Trinity God engenders, but through living imbricated in a community, we can most truly and fully come to know ourselves, for man can only comprehend himself in relation to others; and by comprehending himself as the extension of a community, he can begin to comprehend the community of love, will, nature and activity that God engenders through His Son and Spirit.

By learning humility through existence in a community, where man is compelled to rely on others as an extrinsic good -- extrinsic, inasmuch as he is compelled to rely on others to accord the material conditions prerequisite for the leisure necessary to engage in contemplation of the divine -- and intrinsic good -- intrinsic, inasmuch as his reflection on himself and others allows him to comprehend divine realities -- man learns humility before God; and through humility, reverence for and unity with Him.

That is the source of all morality.

>>22825820
>>22825830
>>22825835
>>22825839
>>22825843
As always, atheists are too idiotic to realize that in a world wherein God does not punish people for behaving immorally and merely allows the good to attain the intrinsic reward for pursuing that which is noble and transcendental, only those who intrinsically pursue the good do good; in a world in which he does, both those who do what is right for its own sake and those who would do good insofar as they wish to avoid being punished will choose to pursue higher ends. To this one might subsequently add that laws and their concomitant punishment have a pedagogical purpose: they induce the bestial and profligate to contemplate the good through habit. Men are insufflated through discipline and punishment with knowledge of that which is good and transcendental; many who are driven solely by fear to do good are instilled through conditioning with a desire to intrinsically pursue the good.

Furthermore, midwitted atheists misapprehend that morality depends on God in two senses: an ontological sense, and a legalistic sense. God, being the most highest and transcendental reality, is the telos and skopos of all that lower realities depend on and find most desirous. All the carnal pleasures of this plane are false desires, mediated desires for the ultimate and most sublime reality that is God; indulgence in the hedonistic passions is fictive, finite, fissiparous, fleeting form of pleasure, tiresome and inpermanent, whereas unity with God in His energies is the most highest form of self-actualization, the most supremely sublime and fulfilling bliss. Without any sort higher supranatural realities, there is little reason to eschew dissipation in the atavistic instincts of this world -- little reason not to succumb to the desire to satiate each vile passion at the expense of others. Since doing good to others is not itself a path to fulfillment, since there is no higher telos beyond the material, morality is a mirage.

>>22825820
>>22825830
>>22825835
>>22825839
>>22825843
>>22825847
It is only subsequently that morality depends on God as a Lawgiver, who punishes those who deviate from their telos in His transcendental being; His being the metaphysical principle that engenders the Good as the Supreme Good and His being the Will imposes norms on our wills is mutually complementary, since His Will is identical to His Intellect; His Laws are a reflection of His most perfect Wisdom and could not be any other way, and His being the ontological basis for the Good induces Him to impose His moral laws upon to guide us to Himself.

>>22825820
>would have put a banana up your ass had you been online a decade earlier
You were doing that a decade ago? Yuck. Pagancucks really just sick and fucked up in the head.

>paragraphs of desperate cope
what a sad sad little man

this is chatgpt at this point right? i accept your concession

>>22825856
you are, spiritually speaking, an amazing atheist

>he had to reply three times
Calm down sodomite, it's just Christian mystic philosophy

>>22825883
i thought your emaciated sorceror came to redeem the sick and sinners, not the righteous

>>22825883
>replies 5 times
lmao
>it's just Christian mystic philosophy
it's just the bastardized monotheist (jewish) hack up on Aristotelianism (a pagan philosophy), hardly mystical at all. Is this REALLY the source of christfaggot pseudointellectual condescension? Is this really where christers get off on considering themselves "topwits"?
And to think it all comes from the monotheist's inability to understand plurals in ancient greek
>the unmoved mover is the jewish god btw

>>22825900
Is this what you tell yourself when you shove bananas up your ass? Or is it when you poor hot oil over your microdick?

Christianity actually compelled me to stop being racist. I've prayed with blacks, orientals, south asians, arabs, Jews, latinos/hispanics, armenians, and white Europeans. We are all One in Christ. I don't see why someone should put so much effort into developig a transcendental ontology just to use it for zoological poltics

>>22825930
wow the suggestion that you are just a reskinned fedora getting off to his own blogposts really burned you didn't it

>>22825926
>it's just the bastardized monotheist (jewish) hack up on Aristotelianism
Lmao. You skimmed through the essays (niggers aren't known for reading), saw the locution "Thought Thinking of Itself" and immediately educed on the basis of such an exiguous component of the overall lucubration that the primary philosophical influence was Aristotle, and not Middle Platonic? Hahahahahaha. My Lord, you certainly are quite the dunce. Oh anon, surely if you were an actual pagan with appreciation for the intellectual achievements of the ancient Greeks, you would have certainly known that it was common practice for Hellenistic philosophers to heavily syncretize various schools of thought, with a belief in the compatibility of Plato and Aristotle's being incredibly pervasive; the Middle Platonists integrated aspects of Aristotle into their thought to produce their own unique God, a combination of the Timaeus' Demiurge and the Good and Aristotle's Prime Mover all unified into a single figure, a God who perpends the Forms in his mind and subsequently crafts the world through an intermediary. The mysticism I am speaking of is readily apparent from the utilization of apophatic theology; one unique to the Cappadocian Fathers, I might add! The reciprocity of divine attributes thesis of divine simplicity is a unique contribution of theirs, as is the subsequent so-called Palamite understanding of God's activities. Scarcely anyone prior to Origen and St Gregory of Nyssa went so far as to deny the non-existence of matter as well, proclaiming that the recepticle in which all universals inhered in as a bundle of properties that thereby provided each individual existence with subsistence was nothing other than God's energetic will, either. You're clearly too much of a dilettante for this subject so you should scurry off back to your dildos now please. But please remember, prolapse surgeries aren't cheap.

>>22825995
which of the Catamite Fathers said it was christlike to hurl racial slurs at people you were preaching to?

>>22825941
if i didn't know better i'd say the other guy was only pretending to be a schizophrenic rhodesian orthodox cosplayer to make you all look bad

>>22825995
>saw the locution "Thought Thinking of Itself" and immediately educed on the basis of such an exiguous component of the overall lucubration that the primary
>Hahahahahaha. My Lord, you certainly are quite the dunce.
>The mysticism I am speaking of is readily apparent from the utilization of apophatic theology; one unique to the Cappadocian Fathers, I might add!
> You're clearly too much of a dilettante for this subject so you should scurry off
really not helping the fedora image when you speak like this, I hope for your own sake you don't behave or speak in such a manner IRL
>the syncretism of aristotle's prime mover, timaeus' demiurge and the good are the same god from the jewish bible btw

>>22826007
>>the syncretism of aristotle's prime mover, timaeus' demiurge and the good are the same god from the jewish bible btw

>>22826007
>>22826046
I think Justin Martyr made the argument that the Old Testament was contemplating God as Being as such centuries before Plato.

>>22826071
ah yes, justin martyr, the guy whose explanation for the similarities between the myth of dionysis and jesus christ were that the devil read the bible and spread fake stories to heathens hundreds of year's prior to christ's arrival
what a titan of intellect

>>22826079
It's bullshit but I believe it anyway

>>22826079
Well, Justin Martyr had an actual education in Hellenistic philosophy, whereas you have embarrassed yourself on the topic, so you're clearly inferior in that regard, and many others as well.

>>22826112
>ok he was a retard but he was at least had a background in what i'm talking about!!!
lmao

>>22826112
>he was a big edumacated smartie so he was right about his capeshit being real and someone else's being fake
tell me, amazing theist, what do the experts say about resurrection of corpses?

>>22826125
>NOOOOO WHAT HE SAID WAS WRONG BECAUSE... WELL BECAUSE... BECAUSE IT JUST IS OKAY!?!?!

>>22826127
>>he was a big edumacated smartie so he was right about his capeshit being real and someone else's being fake

>>22826046
>>22826161
so much for paragraphs and paragraphs of babble about teleology, when confronted with a question he can't answer
kek

>>22826186
I'm enjoying the retarded slow crawl this argument has turned into. It's like neither of you care enough anymore but are both too spiteful to stop

>>22826210
as a gentile i don't know the correct hebrew encantation needed to deactivate this golem but i can at least slow him down

>>22826210
There's little point in acknowledging his effeminate Jewish projection anymore. "Y-y-you're le New Atheist", he says as he characterizes religious beliefs as "capeshit"; "Le p-p-p-patristics were g-g-g-g-gay", he says as he desperately struggles to defend a culture where sodomy and man-boy degeneracy was rife whose redeeming qualities he's utterly illiterate on. It's clear he's a seething little cuck, a spiritual slave, kike and nigger who has yet to move past a petty resentment for Christians' deservedly calling him a homosexual degenerate and an effeminate soi New Atheist faggot who listens to Hank Green's hit single I Fucking Love Science; his past several posts have really been the mask slipping to reveal the fedora and pimples behind the mask of le heckin epic racist who is gonna OWN all the niggers by jerking off to porn and eating like a corpulent swine all day, thus being a nigger himself. Like the little bitch that he is, he preemptively lobbed the animadversions of "you're gay!" and "you're le heckin fedora!" because it REALLY gets to him when people say that, and he REALLY wants to think he was getting to somebody by flipping the tables on his interlocutors. Just a very, sad pathetic man all around. I will pray for him as I do heathens, but I am afraid it is straight to hell with him.

>>22826375
>"you like a culture that was rife with man-boy love" he says as a christian tradlarper without a hint of irony
i like how the rest of your post is you seething about black people and jews while supposedly being a christian, which is hilarious. Your religion is jewish and soon africans and latin americans will make up the vast majority of followers of your faith.

>>22826444
>i like how the rest of your post is you seething about black people and jews while supposedly being a christian, which is hilarious. Your religion is jewish and soon africans and latin americans will make up the vast majority of followers of your faith.

>>22825941
i never really wanted to be le evil racist hate monger personally, i just didnt want to import 10 billion 3rd worlders a year, and end up seeing a decent godfearing country turn into an alien shithole where we build giant idols to indian demons apparently.

i dont care about hating people and im sincerely kind to everyone i cross paths with, i just oppose an evil phenomena that is being carried out to satiate greed of the rich. its not like these immigrants are desperate poors who need help either, most of them are more well off than my family will ever be

all in all i think God will understand

>>22826669
Yeah I mean, I dont like mass immigration either. But my whole church is immigrants. What am I supposed to say? Hey, my brother in Christ, you are brown and I need you to leave! I just can't do it. I've fully embraced the Church as wholly transcendental. We are beyond human governments and borders. We are in eternity in the Body of Christ. I can't hate my brothers and sisters in Christ over passing things of the world.

>>22826679
>What am I supposed to say?
just be kind to people
>. I can't hate
who said you have to hate? atheist leftists and neonazi junkies? thats nothing but propaganda anon. leftists frame ALL opposition as being hateful to try and destroy that opposition, and neonazis are deranged losers at best and violent junkie gang members and cultists at worst. there is literally no reason why you have to mold your feelings into what they want from you

>>22826506
>you're an NPC because you aren't part of my cult!!!
no you

>>22822410
>Trinitarianism is perfectly coherent.
It's not and this is not even controversial. The official stances of both the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church are that God is beyond our understanding and that human logic is insufficient to truly grasp God's nature.

It's only the Protestants who desperately try to make logical sense of the Trinity, thereby undermining at least one property, thus committing heresy. For instance, modalism results in the reduction of divinity in Jesus. Other attempts result in the separation of the Son from the Father in essence.

To sum it all up, you're basically a cope artist.

>>22826375
saint projectionos of copepopolis, pray for us

>>22827078
>It's only the Protestants who desperately try to make logical sense of the Trinity
Catholics usually like Aquinas though, and he did just that by basically picking neo-platonist ideas of God and modifying to make it say that the One, the Nous and the World Soul are the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost.

>>22827078
>It's not and this is not even controversial.
Go and on debunk what was said moron.

>It's only the Protestants who desperately try to make logical sense of the Trinity
Pffffffftttttttt HAHAHAHAHHAHA

You're some really retarded faggot, you know?

>>22827078
>The official stances of both the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church are that God is beyond our understanding and that human logic is insufficient to truly grasp God's nature.
This is what happens you haven't read any of the Church Fathers or modern histories written around the Trinitarian controversies.

>>22822305
He wanted so much that the kikes worship him and call him ''the philosopher'' lmao

>>22822227
Judaism is close to Paganism by the way because the blood/racial/ethnic/native religion than christianity

>>22820587
God didn't neglect the pagans as they (in the case the civilized ones) are enlightened in the form of knowledge; funny enough ancient christians say the same thing; Julian is already debunked even in ancient times.

>>22822227
>Julian wanted the temple rebuilt to spite imperial Christianity, as one of the arguments used to self-justify Christianity against its orthodox parent religion was that the temple's destruction abrogated the old covenant and its structuring around the offering of sacrifices there.

And how did rebuilding the temple work out?

>>22827078
Modalists still say that Jesus is God

>>22828337
Modalism is heresy. They say that Jesus is a mode of God, which implicity means that Jesus is not God in His complete essence.

>>22820587
God damn christ-kikeles on my internet

Paganism: Each love is a soul.

Go find your own private community instead of getting crucified. Learn for once, god damn

>>22824688
>Sorry Mr Cruise, your Theta levels are so low that it would be utterly meaningless for me to try and explain the breadth of Xenu's plan to you. If you were to pay one of our clinics another visit that would be a different story, but before that there's the matter of your treatment costs...

>>22828859
Religion and spirituality is one of those things debate makes no difference on. Especially for people whose hobby it is to debate religion and spirituality. The only time this discussion can actually convert a person is when that person is sincerely contemplating it and open to it. When someone says "I dare you to try to convert me!" you can be sure that person is very closed off. Especially given that spirituality begins inwardly, not as an intellectual practice, but as a disposition of the heart. Not a single person can be convinced of God or convinced of atheism by philosophy.

>>22828405
Modalism entails the numerical identity of the Father and the Son or, in the case of Marcellus of Ancyra, envisioning the Word not as a conscious entity, but as latent power of God's that is actualized as an activity for the purpose of Creation.

>>22828829
You sound like a subhuman ESL Asiatic. If I had to guess, incel Japanese nationalist or some kind of Southeast Asian shitskin.

>>22829403
I was baptized by a mexican and an east asian.