Only the erotic gaze can disclose the reality of God

 

I'm all for skepticism, in fact, one reason I finally opened up to Christianity was because after examining my own assumed beliefs I found how flimsy they were.

Most skeptics are scarcely skeptical of their own beliefs, truly, it's as if they never even questioned them. 

This is because we usually believe what we desire to believe, and what we desire is dependent upon how we live. If you wish to desire to believe or know a thing, you must live a certain way.

Indeed, the liturgy is to form us into the types of people who desire to know God, and then are capable of receiving His spirit.

Rituals do not express belief, they shape how we know. It is impossible to understand religion without FIRST being formed in worship, HERE Peter Leithart remarks :


"....we do not find Israelites in the Hebrew Bible described as thinkers who then act. Rather, the prophets’ expect Israel to practicea nexus of ethically-induced rituals aimed at intellectual formation.

Israel’s rituals—are meant to form knowers and not merely express what is already believed or known..

False worship blinds Israel so that she can no longer discern YHWH’s actions from her false gods’ actions we will come to understand our world through our ethical behavior and our rituals. Whether they are prescribed by our culture or the prophets.

The question centers on whether we will know foolishly or wisely, and whether or not we will bring a life trued to God’s instruction to the rituals of the church.”

One truly only knows what one loves, this is true even of mathematical propositions. 

This is why truth always must begin with beauty, to evoke desire, one must want to know a truth, and for this one must perceive it somehow as beautiful, or else one's consciousness will never intend toward the horizon of that truth to begin with.

As Plotinus discovered, love is necessary first, before beauty can be seen, for love is that essential "mood" that intends the world as beauty and can so receive it.

Only once the senses are “rendered rational” by ascetic education is the "ontologically erotic" gaze, which loves and desires being, able to receive creation as gift within the vision of love.

This is true, and also why knowledge of God must, *begin with desire, and beauty, neither of which is contained within dialectical reason, it requires a subjective *intention on the knowers part.

Hence the most fully “adequate” discourse of truth is worship, prayer, and rejoicing.

I’ve written how reality itself must be trusted to be known HERE

Esther Lightcap Meek in his “A Little Manual for Knowing” explains how we can adopt a posture that will bring us into contact with God:

“We love in order to know. Love, not bare information amassing, should characterize the way we relate to the world.

The goal is no longer comprehensive, mystery-eliminating, reality-denuding information. The goal is communion—the communion of knower and known. Communion is the fulfillment of love. The goal is ongoing friendship. Friendship requires our ongoing pledge.”

We pledge to give ourselves to the yet-to-be-known, and to consent to its being. We pledge to take the risk to follow something that may prove not to be there, something that may prove to be way different from what we imagine. ”

We pledge also to open ourselves to the transformation and to the new reality that the yet-to-be-known will bring us. We must be willing to have it change us, without specifying or holding at arm’s length the change we will undergo. ”

The goal of knowing is not complete information; it is communion.”

She says elsewhere,

“…philosophical arguments aren’t the natural foundation of religious belief, so ‘God exists’ gains its meaning not from philosophical arguments but from how people experience human life.

….people don’t normally acquire religious beliefs by argument or testing evidence. Instead, they come to an understanding of the world that is expressed in values and a way of living. When someone converts to a religion, what changes isn’t so much intellectual beliefs, but their will, what they value, how they choose to live”

Some things can only be known in this way, from within a commitment to them, a commitment which may be called ‘faith.’

                                   

When first I entered the Faith, I did not believe in the physical resurrection of Christ. God does not require that, he condescends to us.

To have a relationship with God, as with anyone, one needs to offer small tokens of trust.

"God is not exterior evidence, but the secret call within us.”

- Olivier Clement

Walk with God and you'll come to know Him, the person of Christ is embedded within the rhythms of the liturgical calendar.

The resurrection may have happened 2,000 yrs ago. I think it did. It would explain a lot, like how entire civilizations bloomed alive over the breaking of bread to some dead backwater peasant.

But, it's happening today. You can actually do this. Marry the rhythms of your deadened life onto the life-giving movement of God’s, tuning your soul to the music of paradise.

You can practice the resurrection, perform theology, live with God.

Discursive knowledge, in every realm, will never be certain, but, cleanse the nous, and direct perception of Gods beauty can be apprehended.

Of course, you have to educate your senses to receive God, generally, people know what they desire to know, desire intends consciousness

Yes, as if yearning itself was not a religious experience, and although we cannot grasp God, our desire exceeds what's possible for conceptual knowledge, erotically beckoning us to leap into the Divine unknown…

Participative knowing requires personal transformation, and living the virtues can disclose more of reality.

The virtue of humility is central to this unbounded receptivity so as to be filled with more.

Reminds me of Larry Hurtado's insight, the first Christian's sang God, it's only when we try and speak of Him, utilizing not our hearts and desire, but our intellect, that the trouble begins.

Met Hilarion Alfeyev once said, 

"The theological authority of liturgical texts is, in my opinion, higher than that of the works of the Fathers of the Church,

"...The lex credendi grows out of the lex orandi, and dogmas are considered divinely revealed because they are born in the life of prayer and revealed to the Church through its divine services.”

And Francis Martin says,

"For the religious, knowledge depends not only upon rationality and clarity but also upon ethical living, participation in prayer and liturgy, practices of fidelity, and openness to the Spirit. This is chiefly because in knowing God, we seek to know a person and persons must reveal themselves through cultivated relationships."

David Bentley Hart puts the problem well :

"In reality, subjective certitude cannot be secured, not because the world is nothing but the aleatory play of opaque signifiers, but because subjective certitude is an irreparably defective model of knowledge; it cannot correspond to or “adequate” a world that is gratuity rather than ground, poetry rather than necessity, rhetoric rather than dialectic.

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For Christian thought, then, delight is the premise of any sound epistemology: it is delight that constitutes creation, and so only delight can comprehend it, see it aright, understand its grammar. Only in loving creation’s beauty – only in seeing that creation truly is beauty – does one apprehend what creation is.

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Thus, for Christian thought, to know the world truly is achieved not through a positivistic reconstruction of its “sufficient reason”, but through an openness before glory, a willingness to orient one’s will toward the light of being, and to receive the world as gift, in response to which the most fully “adequate” discourse of truth is worship, prayer, and rejoicing. "

Paul Tyson has written on how, for the ancients, philosophy wasn’t about thinking, which can bring no truth :

“….right action and right feeling in an actual lived life are clearly a more significant measure of philosophical validity to Plato than smart thinking.

Merely intellectually “believing” in the transcendent existence of the form of “The Table” does not make you either a philosopher or a Platonist.

Plato refuses to put his philosophy in clear propositions before us for the very specific reason that he mistrusts written statements as being “dead” propositional substitutes for the communal and individual spiritual practices of the truly philosophical life.

Other than as an active, affective, aesthetic, and embodied existential stance…such spiritual formation cannot be imposed by mere argumentative force and cannot be “obtained” with a mere proof.

Thus receptive prayer, quiet attention, and right worship are keys to truth and success in the active pursuit of meaningful knowledge.”

So Faith is a means of perception that requires a change in the agent of perception.

By participating in the rhythms of religious ritual we order our modes of perception to receive the world as sacrament.

These things are not anti-reason, they complete reason itself.

Who Is Israel ?

The early Church fathers did not see themselves as a “New Israel”, but as Israel itself.

In fact, not all ethnic Jews at the time of Christ were considered part of Israel either.

The great Jewish Rabbinic scholar Daniel Boyarin argues that within Judaism itself, there was a distinction as to who and what constituted Israel :

“the Mishna strongly supports this analysis, even suggesting the conclusion that "Sadducees" were not considered "Israel," although in this instance on grounds of ritual difference, not doctrine…

….for rabbinic discourse there are Jews who are outside of "Israel," and that these Jews are called variously minim and Sadducees…..there are historical and genealogical Israelites who are not "Israel."

….the Rabbis are in these texts appropriating the name "Israel" for those who hold their creed and follow the ways that they identify as the "ways of Israel," and the "Sadducees" are heretics who are beyond the pale and outside the name Israel.”

As Boyarin further explains,

"Jewish sectarianism as a form of decentralized pluralism by default had been replaced by the binary of Jewish orthodox and Jewish heretics: the latter comprising those who are Jews and say the wrong things and may therefore no longer be called “Israel”.'

Read his paper HERE.

Shaye Cohen states that, “this rabbinic ideology is reflected in Justin’s discussion of the Jewish sects: there are Jews, i.e., the “orthodox” and there are sects, among them the Pharisees, who scarcely deserve the name Jew”.

Cohen notes that, “All of the persistent sectarians” of “‘Pharisees,’ ‘Sadducees,’ and ‘Christians’ ... were cursed in the birkhat haminim”.

Recall Paul’s instruction to the church of Rome that, “they are not all Israel, which are of Israel” (Rom 9.6)

Indeed, in the earliest moments of the Gospel nar- rative, John the Baptist makes the Abrahamic claim to those gathered at the Jordan River that, “God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham” (Mt. 3.9).

Peter Richardson in Israel in the Apostolic Church suggests that John’s cleansing of sins in the Jordan was a “proselyte baptism which has for its presupposition that all Jews have forfeited their right to be Israelites, have become as Gentiles, and there- fore have to be readmitted”. 

In his letter to the Magnesians, St Ignatius writes, “For if even unto this day we live after the manner of Judaism, we avow that we have not received grace: for the divine prophets lived after Christ Jesus”. (Ign. Magn. 8:2).

In the same epistle, the bishop of Antioch puts it another way: “For Christianity did not believe in Judaism, but Judaism in Christianity, wherein every tongue believed and was gathered together unto God” (Ign. Magn. 10:3).

For Ignatius, it was the contemporaneous expression of Judaism that was out of step with the Israelite faith of the prophets, not Christians who represented the fulfillment and realization of their prophecies.

Indeed, contrast to modern Rabbinic Jewish notions, one never needed to be ethnically Jewish, HERE Stephen de Young writes,

“Importantly, when this people left Egypt, it included an ethnically mixed group of Egyptians and other Semitic migrants (Ex 12:38). This group is not mentioned again in the Torah as a distinct class because these families are integrated into the nation and people of Israel and become some of its founding members.

Of all of the generation which came out of Egypt, only two men, Joshua and Caleb, entered into and took possession of the promised land (Numbers 13:26-14:24).

All the rest, including Moses himself, died in the wilderness as a result of Caleb is, however, the son of Jephunneh, and Jephunneh is repeatedly identified as being a Kenizzite (Num 32:12; Josh 14:6, 14).

The Kenizzites were a Canaanite people who already lived in Canaan at the time that Abraham had arrived there (Gen 15:19).

Caleb and his family were among the many Semitic migrants to Egypt during this period, and yet through his faithfulness to Yahweh and his participation in the events from Passover to Pentecost, he became a part of the tribe of Judah, even one of its chief men, and an inheritor of the promises to Abraham (Josh 14:13-14; 21:43-45).

These Gentiles are not naturalized citizens or converts to the religion of Judaism, rather they, like Caleb, are part of one of the tribes of Israel, children of Abraham, and inheritors of all of those promises.

The phrases “the church replaces Israel” or “the church is a new Israel” are therefore nonsensical once the terms in which the scriptures speak is understood. The church is Israel. Specifically, the church is the assembly of Israel, God’s people, to offer worship, praise, and sacrifice to their God. It is not that God’s people are no longer an ethnic or national entity, it is rather that God’s people and inheritance were never an ethnic entity, and only ever so briefly a national one.

This is the fulfillment of the prophecy of Hosea, after Yahweh had declared Israel to be ‘not my people’ that Israel would be restored when a people which did not yet exist would be called his people while at the same time those who had been rejected were declared to be his people once again (Hos 1:10; 2:23; Rom 9:25-26).

God created a people for himself and called it Israel. This group was not a nation or an ethnicity. It was a group formed by participation in the Passover and the giving of the covenant (Pentecost). God knew that most of this group would be unfaithful, but he bore with them for a time and then scattered the unfaithful among the nations. Then when he regathered and reconstitutes Israel, he did it from the nations into which those tribes had been dispersed.

So Israel and God’s people are synonymous terms. This means that the assembly (church) today is identical to the assembly of Israel in the Old Testament. We are all, in the church, Israelites, though we are not all Judeans (Jews). But Judah/Judea was never all of Israel. It was the part from which the king (I.e. Messiah) came.”

                                                         

Many Christians think Paul expects a restoration of Jews in the distant future, and some have seen the modern state of Israel as a fulfillment of Romans 9–11.

This is wrong.

As Peter Leithart, a protestant scholar, says : “The prophets of the Hebrew Bible testified that a time would come when judgment would come upon Israel after their return from exile. At this point, much of Israel would be cut off, but a remnant would be purified and preserved by the fire of judgment.

This remnant would become the basis for a new Israel, into which the nations would stream.

It is St. Paul’s understanding in the uncontroversially Pauline Epistle to the Romans that this had taken place in the coming of Christ (Rom. 11:1–24), an understanding also found in St. John’s Gospel. The Church is a new people of God, a renewed Israel, made up of the faithful remnant of Israel of the Old Covenant into which Gentiles who have come to Christ have been grafted. Those returning from the nations replace the tribes scattered to the nations so that in the end all Israel will be saved."

It’s odd to see modern evangelicals disagree with Paul and the Bible :

"There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ. And if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's offspring, *heirs according to the promise*.”

Romans 9:6, 7 confirm this: "Not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel, and not all are children of Abraham just because they are descendants."

In John 8:39 the Jews defend themselves against Jesus' criticisms by saying, "'Abraham is our father.' Jesus said to them, 'If you were Abraham's children, you would do what Abraham did.'"

Jesus shows us that they are not Abraham's children, even though they are Jews.

Finally, we must ask how the modern state of Israel is related to Abraham or the Israelite religion. Is Israel a nation given by God, and for God ? No, Israel is one of the least religious nations on earth. Only 30% of Israelis say they are religious, THIS survey finds

If it’s all about genetics, then the Palestinians are just as likely to be related to the ancient Israelites as modern Jews, and in some cases, more so, as has been acknowledged by Jewish historians, including two of the founders of the modern state of Israel, David Ben-Gurion and Itzhak Ben-Zvi. “Jews and Arabs are all really children of Abraham," says Harry Ostrer, M.D., Director of the Human Genetics Program at New York University School of Medicine HERE, and he’s right.

Did the Apocalypse already happen ?

"All these things shall be fulfilled in your own time.”

"This generation shall not pass away before all of these things have been fulfilled."

- Jesus Christ

(For a quick summery with Bible references go to the end of the article)

Now, although many Christians today believe the various sayings of Jesus - about false Messiah’s, earthquakes, famines, persecutions, and such, point only to some future apocalyptic event, there’s evidence Christians at this time saw them as being fulfilled at the time they lived.

Think what happened at that time. In 66 AD the Jews rebelled against the Romans. In 70 AD the Temple that was the center of all Jewish religious AND economic life was destroyed, as Jesus predicted, effectively ending the Israelite religion, in that form anyway.

Most don’t realize how essential the Temple was, it’s cosmic significance, we read of the Temple as the dwelling-place of God; the Temple as a microcosm of heaven and earth; the Temple as the sole place of sacrifice; and the Temple as the place of the sacrificial priesthood, the Mishnah states by the Temples the entire Cosmos is sustained.

And it ended. Desecrated. In flames. In blood.

The Romans slaughtered thousands. Of those sparred from death: thousands more were enslaved and sent to toil in the mines of Egypt, others were dispersed to arenas throughout the Empire to be butchered for the amusement of the public. The Temple's sacred relics were taken to Rome where they were displayed in celebration of the victory.

More than 1,100,000 Jews perished and nearly 100,000 were taken captive.

“Tell us, when will these things take place, and what will be the sign preceding all these things” [that will warn us that the destruction of the temple is about to take place]?”

This was the “abomination of desolation”, a reference to Daniel 9:27, “He will confirm a covenant with many for one ’seven.' In the middle of the ’seven' he will put an end to sacrifice and offering. And on a wing [of the temple] he will set up an abomination that causes desolation, until the end that is decreed is poured out on him.”

In 167 B.C. a Greek ruler by the name of Antiochus Epiphanies ended the sacrifices in the Temple by ransacking it, entering the Holy of Holies, and desecrating it setting up an altar to Zeus . This event is known as the abomination of desolation. It happened again in 70 ad.


                                                      

Josephus describesthe horrific scenes of the Temple being desecrated, razed to the ground, and engulfed on flames :

“Most of the slain were peaceful citizens, weak and unarmed, and they were butchered where they were caught. The heap of corpses mounted higher and higher about the altar; a stream of blood flowed down the Temple's steps, and the bodies of those slain at the top slipped to the bottom.

While the Temple was ablaze, the attackers plundered it, and countless people who were caught by them were slaughtered. There was no pity for age and no regard was accorded rank; children and old men, laymen and priests, alike were butchered; every class was pursued and crushed in the grip of war, whether they cried out for mercy or offered resistance.

Through the roar of the flames streaming far and wide, the groans of the falling victims were heard; such was the height of the hill and the magnitude of the blazing pile that the entire city seemed to be ablaze; and the noise - nothing more deafening and frightening could be imagined.

There were the war cries of the Roman legions as they swept onwards en masse, the yells of the rebels encircled by fire and sword, the panic of the people who, cut off above, fled into the arms of the enemy, and their shrieks as they met their fate. The cries on the hill blended with those of the multitudes in the city below; and now many people who were exhausted and tongue-tied as a result of hunger, when they beheld the Temple on fire, found strength once more to lament and wail. Peraea and the surrounding hills, added their echoes to the deafening din. But more horrifying than the din were the sufferings.

The Temple Mount, everywhere enveloped in flames, seemed to be boiling over from its base; yet the blood seemed more abundant than the flames and the numbers of the slain greater than those of the slayers. The soldiers climbed over heaps of bodies as they chased the fugitives."

                                                           

Then only nine years later in a truly apocalyptic catastrophe
Pompeii was utterly destroyed in proper Biblical fashion when

Mount Vesuvius erupted, a powerful, ominous sign to the ancient mind. Herod’s nephew, visiting the area, was even killed at the blast.

Luke 21:20-21 "But when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies..."

Then in 132 Bar Kokhba, claiming to be the Messiah, led a disastrous revolt against Rome, which ended in a gruesome defeat and Jerusalem itself being wiped off the face of the earth.

Christ’s language was indeed strong and apocalyptic, but people don’t realize how utterly horrific that war was. Even the battle weary Josephus was shocked at the violence.

Starving, the Jews resorted to cannibalism, even devouring their own infants ! At the siege of Masada, rather than being taken by the Romans to be tortured, the Jews committed mass suicide, obviously prohibited by the Torah and an abomination to God.

Thousands of Jews that tried to flee, entire families, even children, were gutted open by bandits on the roads, in case they had swallowed any gold or treasure trying to hide it. And eventually the Romans breached the walls by building a ramp out of rocks and actual Jewish corpses !

                                         

“Be Ye Also Ready”

"When you see this, leave Judah, people should flee, they should go to the mountains. Don't even go back in your house, then everything will come to an end."

- Mathew 24

Is this what the Christians thought was happening ? Christ’s prophecies fulfilled right then and there ? There’s good evidence they did.

The early Christian scholar Eusebius wrote:

“The whole body, however, of the church at Jerusalem, having been commanded by a divine revelation, given to men of approved piety there before the war, removed from the city, and dwelt at a certain town beyond the Jordan, called Pella.”

Epiphanes also attested to the Christian escape,

“It is very remarkable that not a single Christian perished in the destruction of Jerusalem, though there were many there when Cestius Gallus invested the city; and, had he persevered in the siege, he would soon have rendered himself master of it; but, when he unexpectedly and unaccountably raised the siege, the Christians took that opportunity to escape. …

“[As] Vespasian was approaching with his army, all who believed in Christ left Jerusalem and fled to Pella, and other places beyond the river Jordan; and so they all marvellously escaped the general shipwreck of their country: not one of them perished.”

The Christians survival was literally miraculous, as there was only a brief window of opportunity for Christians to flee Jerusalem between 69 C.E. when Vespasian returned to Rome and before March 70 C.E. when his son Titus laid siege to Jerusalem.

Had they not believed in Christ’s prophecies, and acted, there would be no Christianity today.

Indeed, that was an end of an age, an entire world. The Israelite religion as it existed come to an end. Just as the Prophets had predicted, only a small remnant was left, and indeed the gentiles at that time DID come to worship the God of Israel, and soon after the pagan nations also joined, ruled over by Christ.

Paul does not say Jesus will come back, but rather speaks of his “reappearing”, for Christ is here now, and, for those with eyes purified of sin to see, even now ruling over us in Glory.

“the Son of Man coming in clouds” - ie, in heaven, where Jesus is now, serving our liturgy in His rule, refers figuratively to Yahweh becoming king, rescuing his covenant people from exile, defeating the rule of the pagan gods instantiated by the pagan rulers, and inaugurating a new world order when Jerusalem is sacked by Rome

Now, was that the end ? No, there will be a deepening of those prophecies, a further fulfillment, this pattern of antichrist and destruction will repeat on a larger, global scale, inevitably, just as it did when Babylon destroyed Jerusalem desecrating the Temple, then Rome, so a new antichrist will arise, and a new apocalypse with it.

SUMMERY :

Jesus warned his followers to immediately flee Jerusalem when the signs he predicted occurred. The Christian community carefully watched for the signs and followed the Savior’s warning.

The Lord first identified the situation leading up to destruction: Many would deceive the people by saying that they were prophets or even Christ himself. The disciples would be delivered up and afflicted, hated of all nations.

Betrayal and iniquity would abound, and the love of many would turn cold. (See Matt. 24:10–12; JS—M 1:6–10.)

The Lord then taught of two major signs that would alert believers to flee: “When ye shall see Jerusalem compassed with armies, then know that the desolation thereof is nigh.” (Luke 21:20.)

He also said, “When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place, (whoso readeth, let him understand:)

“Then let them which be in Judaea flee into the mountains:

“Let him which is on the housetop not come down to take any thing out of his house:

“Neither let him which is in the field return back to take his clothes.” (Matt. 24:15–18.)

Of the abomination of desolation to which Jesus referred, Daniel wrote, “They shall pollute the sanctuary of strength, and shall take away the daily sacrifice, and they shall place the abomination that maketh desolate.” (Dan. 11:31.)

What does it mean for God to create ?

As modern people we think that something is created when it is materially constituted. Being is opposed to non-being. But the Ancients didn't think that way. Rather something exists when it has a function, a meaning or telos - when it is ordered out of chaos.

John Walton gives a good example of the beginning of a restaurant. When does a restaurant begin to exist? Does it begin to exist when the building is constructed? Well, not necessarily. Maybe it was a warehouse which was later renovated into a restaurant so that the restaurant begins to exist when it has a license and opens and begins to function as a restaurant. So the restaurant began to exist when it began to function as a restaurant. But that's not when the building began to exist. The creation or the beginning of the restaurant didn't represent the material origin of the building.

I think John Walton is in error however when he opposes something existing materially as opposed to functionally. They were inseparable for the Ancients. To exist is to have a meaning in the cosmos.

A cold meaningless universe is merely a superstitious notion, the "disenchanted" universe is merely an unreal projection of an unreal humanity.

Paul Tyson in Return to Reality writes that :

“In ancient terms one might think of nature as space, time, and matter and of grace as order, value, purpose, and meaning. In those terms nature is the medium for the partial expression of grace.

But notice, within this outlook there is no way in which it is possible to conceive of nature as other than fundamentally graced.

How could you have matter without form, how could you have facts without meaning, how could you have objectivity without value, how could you have time without eternity, how could you have thinking without reason?”

Fr Stephen de Young in his book The Religion of the Apostles notes that for the Ancient Israelites :

“….being was opposed not to nonexistence or fiction, nor the state of becoming. Rather, being was opposed to chaos. To exist is to dwell within a web of relationships that create meaning and purpose. It is to be ordered and structured. When a tower collapses into rubble, the constituent material of the tower is still there in the form of the rubble. The tower, however, no longer exists. Likewise, when an animal dies, its body dissolves into the earth, returning to its component elements, but the animal no longer exists.

In Genesis 1, the Creation of the world is described as being from nothing, but that nothing is primordial chaos rather than a timeless, spaceless void, if such a thing can even be conceived by human persons. In the beginning, the earth was formless and empty—but it was something in a material sense (Gen. 1:2). This state of formlessness is further described as a darkness above and the watery abyss below. Over the ensuing sequence of days, God gave structure to the primal elements.

In the Platonic understanding, the things that “are” are superior to the things that are becoming because the latter are not yet the thing they are becoming. They can be recognized or understood only to the degree that they are like the thing they are turning into. This makes stasis, for Platonism, one of the highest virtues.

When this concept was integrated into Christianity, it produced an understanding of being not as an either/or phenomenon, but rather as a chain or spectrum. The simple, immutable God stood at the top, and the raw materials of creation lay at the bottom. All things, then, partake in being along a continuum.

Aristotle, a student of Plato, made a variation on this understanding that reveals the ancient view that had preceded it. Rather than being and becoming, he taught of potentiality and actuality. On one end of the chain was potential or “prime matter,” which can be formed into anything but is not yet anything, just as a lump of clay can be shaped to form any recognizable figure, but until it is sculpted is not yet any of them.

On the other end was pure actuality, a being who is unable to change, which is how Thomas Aquinas understood the Christian God as the “prime mover.” Once again, all created things and their Creator are connected by being itself and are therefore related to one another analogously.

This ordering of the world forms the scriptural understanding of justice and expresses itself in the Torah in the form of commandments, through the keeping of which human life will bring that structure to the world as a whole. Sin as a force is opposed to this order and seeks to destroy it, reducing human life to chaos and death. It is only through these structures, however, that life can have meaning and purpose.

Judgment, in Hebrew and Aramaic the same word as “justice,” is the establishment or reestablishment of this order on earth. Justification is the setting of things or persons back into the proper order of things and the correct set of relationships with their Creator and the rest of the creation. It represents a new creative act.

Therefore, what it means to “live” or even to “exist” is to participate in these correctly ordered relationships with other human persons, the rest of the creation, and preeminently with God, the Holy Trinity.

Conceptually, order and meaning are inseparable. Therefore, the breaking of these relationships through sin, the disintegration of good order, or exile, constitutes death and nonexistence.”

The Physics of Salvation

An extremely strong case can be made that what we call physical spacetime actually emerges from entangled information and that entangled information is, in fact, consciousness.

As Max Plank said, the universe arises from Mind.

Specifically, from a collective inner mental space described by quantum cognition which could be equated with Hilbert space “beneath” space-time.

Our thoughts are actually quantum states in Hilbert space, and are only matched to our brains by patterns of entanglement.

According to Conscious Realism when two conscious agents interact in a system, the system itself comprises a third separate conscious agent constituting the both of them, but distinct from either of them.

These quantum states have an innately mental kind of existence, and this is the space people associate with “supernatural” phenomena, from angels to demons.

This can make sense off such doctrines as heaven and hell.

Our own consciousness becomes entangled with the Archetype we most contemplate, allotting our place in the afterlife.

A man whose life takes the form of Christ’s, who contemplates Him, invokes His name in prayer, enacts His life in rituals, while become entangled in Christ’s consciousness, raised with Him after death.

Likewise a man who thinks on demonic things, imbibes demonic images, and whose life takes on that shape, entangles his mind with such demonic archetypes, and will be enmeshed with such a demonic mind in the afterlife.

Rabbinic unitarian monotheism, not the Trinity, was the innovation : the multi bodied God of Israel, resources.

The idea of one God existing in multiple hypostases, in this case, three eternally existent hypostases, was not a new idea for Christianity.

It is the unitarian monotheism of Rabbinic Judaism that is the innovation in the centuries after Christ, not the doctrine of the Holy Trinity.

So says the pious Jewish scholar Benjamin D. Sommer, 

“For all the trouble that Jewish and Muslim philosophers have had with this notion, the trinity emerges as a fairly typical example of the fragmentation of a single deity into seemingly distinct manifestations that do not quite undermine that deity’s coherence”

“Classic language of trinitarian theology, such as…one nature, three persons or one substance, three manifestations, applies perfectly well to examples of YHWH’s fluidity in the Hebrew Bible and to the fluidity traditions in Canaan and Mesopotamia”

“Some Jews regard Christianity’s claim to be a monotheistic religion with grave suspicion, both because of the doctrine of the trinity (how can three equal one?) and because of Christianity’s core belief that God took bodily form. . . .

No Jew sensitive to Judaism’s own classical sources, however, can fault the theological model Christianity employs when it avows belief in a God who has an earthly body as well as a Holy Spirit and a heavenly manifestation, for that model, we have seen, is a perfectly Jewish one. A religion whose scripture contains the fluidity traditions [referring to God appearing in bodily form in the Tanakh], whose teachings emphasize the multiplicity of the shekhinah, and whose thinkers speak of the sephirot does not differ in its theological essentials from a religion that adores the triune God.”

That is why Daniel Boyarin - another dominant mainstream Jewish Scholar - can say,

“the idea of Jesus being essentially divine and human, the divine-human Messiah and Son of his Father in heaven—is deeply engrained in the Jewish tradition that preceded the New Testament. "

And

“The ideas of Trinity and incarnation, or certainly the germs of those ideas, were already present among Jewish believers well before Jesus came on the scene to incarnate in himself, as it were, those theological notions and take up his messianic calling.”

So, to the question, WHY in the world would Jewish people that fanatically followed a monotheistic God, who would rather die than change even their dietary laws, abandon their faith and face persecution to worship a divine man and a bizarre Trinitarian deity? We can answer - because doing so was thoroughly Jewish.

 In the few centuries before Christ, the Jews had regular views of a fluid God with multiple selves, a God with bodies, even a threefold body, and a conception of not one but two powers in heaven - the invisible Yahweh and the visible Angel of Yehweh, or lesser Yahweh, who shared the throne onfheaven with the most high, the Son of Man, described in Daniel. This Angel, who had the “name” and “word” of Yahweh inside of it, was the Angel that appeared, alongside Yahweh, to Moses in the burning Bush, who led the Israelites out of Egypt. Christians eventually came to identify it with Christ.

The Jews were well aware of this second power and there’s much literature trying to identify it, some texts suggesting a deified Jacob, or Adam, Abraham, Enoch, or Melchizadeck, made an angel and seated in heaven at God’s side. Today many Jews identify this figure with the Archangel Micheal.
Most of those books didn’t make it into the Jewish Bible, nor the Christian Old Testament, but they were around, widely known and discussed, and taken seriously.

So there was much speculation, and although a minority tradition, this two powers view was not considered a heresy until the 2nd C ad.

So when Christ came along, it made sense.

We forget today’s Judaism is in many ways radically different from the Ancient Israelite religion. Although Judaism, like most religions, is always reforming and changing, there were two main developments. First, the destruction of the temple in 70 ad. This ended the ritual sacrifices demanded of the law. Secondly in the middle ages the great Jewish philosopher Maimonides and his radical idea of a pure, abstract, transcendental, strictly unitarian notion of God. It was controversial in his day, and when eventually the community allowed his work to be published, it was always done so with Jewish Rabbi’s prefacing the work with commentary.

Ok, just two quick OT passages where we see Yahweh and the Word/Spirit/Angel of Yahweh mixed together and both receiving worship, from

Dr. Daniel O. McClellan :

Moses and the Burning Bush

Moses’s encounter at the burning bush begins when the messenger of YHWH appears to him מִתּוֹךְ הַסְּנֶה, “from the midst of the bush”:

שׁמות ג:ב וַיֵּרָא מַלְאַךְ יְ־הוָֹה אֵלָיו בְּלַבַּת אֵשׁ מִתּוֹךְ הַסְּנֶה וַיַּרְא וְהִנֵּה הַסְּנֶה בֹּעֵר בָּאֵשׁ וְהַסְּנֶה אֵינֶנּוּ אֻכָּל. 

Exod 3:2 And the messenger of YHWH appeared to him in a flame of fire from the midst of the bush. And he saw—and look!—the bush burned with fire, but the bush was not consumed.

Yet when Moses stops to investigate, the narrator precisely places God in the same location as the messenger:

‏שׁמות ג:ד ...וַיִּקְרָא אֵלָיו אֱלֹהִים מִתּוֹךְ הַסְּנֶה וַיֹּאמֶר מֹשֶׁה מֹשֶׁה וַיֹּאמֶר הִנֵּנִי. 

Exod 3:4 …And God called to him from the midst of the bush, and said, “Moses! Moses!” And he said, “I’m here.”

Moses also averts his eyes to avoid looking upon God:

‏שׁמות ג:ו וַיֹּאמֶר אָנֹכִי אֱלֹהֵי אָבִיךָ אֱלֹהֵי אַבְרָהָם אֱלֹהֵי יִצְחָק וֵאלֹהֵי יַעֲקֹב וַיַּסְתֵּר מֹשֶׁה פָּנָיו כִּי יָרֵא מֵהַבִּיט אֶל הָאֱלֹהִים. 

Exod 3:6 And he said, “I am the God of your father—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” Then Moses turned his face away, because he was afraid to look upon God.

The Akedah

After Abraham binds Isaac on the altar, the messenger of YHWH calls out to Abraham from heaven to stop him from sacrificing his son:

בראשׁית כב:יא וַיִּקְרָא אֵלָיו מַלְאַךְ יְ־הוָהמִן הַשָּׁמַיִם וַיֹּאמֶר אַבְרָהָם אַבְרָהָם וַיֹּאמֶר הִנֵּנִי. 

Gen 22:11 Then the messenger of YHWH called to him from heaven: “Abraham! Abraham!” And he answered, “Here I am.”

When Abraham answers, however, the speaker replies in the first person as the deity:

‏בראשׁית כב:יב וַיֹּאמֶר אַל תִּשְׁלַח יָדְךָ אֶל הַנַּעַר וְאַל תַּעַשׂ לוֹ מְא

וּמָּה כִּי עַתָּה יָדַעְתִּי כִּי יְרֵא אֱלֹהִים אַתָּה וְלֹא חָשַׂכְתָּ אֶת בִּנְךָ אֶת יְחִידְךָ מִמֶּנִּי. 

Gen 22:12 And he said, “Do not raise your hand against the boy, or do anything to him. For now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your favored one, from Me.”

Indeed, Abraham’s name for the site indicates that he believes he has been speaking with YHWH:

‏בראשׁית כב:יד וַיִּקְרָא אַבְרָהָם שֵׁם הַמָּקוֹם הַהוּא יְ־הוָה יִרְאֶה אֲשֶׁר יֵאָמֵר הַיּוֹם בְּהַר יְ־הוָה יֵרָאֶה. 

Gen 22:14 And Abraham named that site YHWH-yireh, whence the present saying, “On the mount of YHWH there is vision.”

Ok, resources. 

Here's a basic overview HERE.

Here’s a good website.

Binitarianism: One God, Two Beings Before the Beginning

https://www.cogwriter.com/binitarian.htm


Micheal Heiser is an easy entree point into all this, and I’d start with him.


Two Powers of the Godhead lecture


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUkhWBKCuXc&t=31s


Jesus Christ and the Old Testament: Holy Trinity

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1sMQa78fY3Y&t=4s

The Jewish Trinity

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lS22MPVFngs&t=21s


Dr. Michael Heiser on Old Testament Binitarianism


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pl3AMS6-BfQ&t=9s

***

Less Scholarly, but still excellent is Douglas Van Dorn’s “The Angel of the LORD: A Biblical, Historical, and Theological Study.”


Benjamin Sommer’s Bodies of God is superb.

His MP3 lectures :

https://biblicalstudiesonline.wordpress.com/2014/03/12/benjamin-d-sommer-on-gods-body/

And Here :

https://www.thinkingaboutreligion.org/s1-e9-benjamin-sommer-on-gods-bodies/

He also has youtube lectures

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtSm-InTLoA


The theopolis institute has a good article on the Angel of Yahweh from a reformed perspective,

https://theopolisinstitute.com/conversations/yahweh-and-his-angel/ 


A bit more scholarly Daniel Boyarin, the great Rabbinical scholar, has his Two Powers in Heaven and Early Jewish Monotheism YouTube Lecture


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1UEeK72KvpU


**

Ok IF you wanna nerd out,


Alan Segal’s book Two Powers in Heaven is the classic text, it’s pretty academic, dry, technical and boring.

Two Gods in Heaven: Jewish Concepts of God in Antiquity

by Peter Schäfer came out recently, he’s a top Rabbinical scholar, a small book, but also dry.

Here’s a video review on it :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xaTgOyoNSkw

****

Ok, if you REALLY wanna nerd out,

Daniel Boyarin, has some great papers on this :


https://www.academia.edu/36254275/Daniel_Boyarin_The_Gospel_of_the_Memra_Jewish_Binitarianism_and_the_Prologue_to_John_Harvard_Theological_Review_vol_94_no_3_July_2001_243_284

https://www.academia.edu/36254597/Daniel_Boyarin_Logos_a_Jewish_Word_John_s_Prologue_as_Midrash_in_Amy_Jill_Levine_and_Marc_Zvi_Brettler_eds_The_Jewish_Annotated_New_Testament_New_York_Oxford_University_Press_2011_546_549


Two Powers’ and Early Jewish and Christian Monotheism

James F. McGrath

https://digitalcommons.butler.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1111&context=facsch_papers

Early Christian Binitarianism: the Father and the Holy Spirit


Michel Rene Barnes

https://www.marquette.edu/maqom/barnes.pdf


Jewish Targums and John’s Logos Theology by John Ronning


https://www.academia.edu/7921022/When_YHWH_Became_Flesh_and_Dwelt_Among_Us_John_1_14_as_Programmatic_for_Johns_Gospel

....Enjoy

Do Angel’s sing the creation into being ?

To be holy, one must learn to sing as the Angels

In Tolkien's Silmarillion , he has an interesting theory on the origin of evil, essentially involving giving the angels the power to create a cosmos through music…. Until it enters into the mind of Melkor, the Satan figure and greatest and most gifted of the Angels, “to interweave matters of his own imagining that were not in accord with the theme of Ilúvatar; for he sought therein to increase the power and glory of the part assigned to himself.” Evil is born. The result is discord, dissonance, cacophony, and noise. The melodies of the Angels are overwhelmed in “a sea of turbulent sound.”

Then God arises yet again and sounds a third and different theme–“soft and sweet, a mere rippling of gentle sounds; but it could not be quenched, and it took to itself power and profundity,” incorporating the satanic disharmony, weaving it into a chorus “deep and wide and beautiful, but slow and blended with an immeasurable sorrow, from which its beauty chiefly came.”

Although a story, there are good biblical reasons to believe there is some truth to this.

The following are some thoughts by the great biblical scholar Margaret Barker, from her book ‘The High Priest’ :

“Wherever the heavens sing or rejoice, we should understand that it was the angels. Psalm 19.1-3 is then a description of the inaudible praise of the angels throughout the creation and Psalm 148 is the praise of the angels linked to the establishing of the fixed order in the creation. The morning stars, the sons of God, made ringing cries as the foundations of the earth were set in place (Job 38.7)

The heavens, the depths of the earth, the mountains and the trees of the forest sing as the LORD , who stretched out the heavens and spread out the earth, declares that Jerusalem and the temple will be rebuilt. This is the great renewal of the Day of Atonement; transgressions and sins have been swept away (Isa. 44.22) and Israel returns.

The great angel Yahwehel/ Iaoel who appeared to Abraham dressed as a high priest, was described as the 'Singer of the Eternal One' (Ap. Ahr. 10.3). This seems to be a description of the Creator.

He maintained the harmony of heaven by teaching the living creatures 'the song of peace which the Eternal One has in himself and Abraham then heard 'the voice of their sanctification like the voice of a single man' (Ap. Abr. 18.11-14).

Philo wrote similarly of the Logos who enabled the harmony of the creation and of the inaudible hymns of praise, which were all that the creation could offer to the Creator (On Planting 10, 126,131)

Similarly the enigmatic Wisdom who was beside the LORD as he created, was described as harmozousa, the one who joins together, or the one who tunes a musical instrument (LXX, Prov. 8.30).

The Eternal Holy One approached Abraham 'in the many voices of sanctification' (Ap. Abr. 16.3) and the patriarch had to be taught to sing before he could stand among the angels. 

Enoch heard the angels singing the Name (1 En. 48.5). When he first ascended to stand before the throne, he did not have enough strength to sing the hymn, but after his eyes and heart had been enlightened, he was able to join in the Holy Holy Holy. When he sang, the heavenly beings responded (3 En. 1.10-12).

To hear the heavenly music was dangerous, and anyone unworthy was punished or even destroyed. In the Hekhalot Rabbati, a collection of texts describing mystical ascents, there are warnings about the heavenly music: 'The voice of the first one: One who hears [this] voice will immediately go mad and tumble down. The voice of the second one: everyone who hears it immediately goes astray and does not return', (# 104) and there are four more warnings.

Since Day One was the place of unity, the song of the angels had to be in harmony, and any defect was punished. They had to sing 'with one voice, with one speech, with one knowledge and with one sound.

If the great song was not sung well or at the appointed time, the erring angels were consumed by the flames of their Creator (3 En. 47).

The Testament ofAdam gives a similar picture, with each hour of the day and night having its allotted place in the praise of the creation:

“the first hour of the day is for the heavenly ones, the second for the angels, the third for the birds, the fourth for the beasts and so forth.”

The song of the angels was the harmony of the creation, and there was only one theme —Holy Holy Holy. It was sung in response to the praises of Israel, the worship of the mortal creation being necessary to evoke the song of the angels.

This had been the song of the seraphim in Isaiah's vision, that the holiness of God filled the earth with glory (Isa. 6.3). This is the earliest reference to the cosmic significance of angel song, and evidence that it was known in the first temple. The temple musicians performed in unison, 'with the voice of unity' when their music invoked the Glory of the LORD to fill the temple (2 Chron. 5.13-14).

The biblical texts show that the song of the angels accompanied the establishing of the creation, and so the renewal of the creation in the New Year rituals of Tabernacles was accompanied by, or perhaps enabled by, the song of the angels. A recurring theme is that the song is a 'new song', which should probably be understood to mean a 'renewing song', since the cognate verb hds means to renew. Psalm 33 describes the music of the 'new song', and then how the creation was made by the word of the LORD .

...Psalm 96 exhorts all the earth to sing a 'new song' because the LORD reigns, the earth is established' and the LORD is about to come to judge the world. Psalm 98 is similar; the 'new song' marks the victory of the LORD , the King, and the whole creation rejoices as he comes to judge the world.

Psalm 144 describes the 'new song' for the LORD , wh o brings victory and prosperity. Psalm 149 is a 'new song' which brings victory over enemies. There is a 'new song' as the LORD , Creator of heaven and earth, restores and recreates his people (Isa. 42.10; 44.23; 49.13).

The angels who sing at the Nativity are singing the new creation: Glory to God and peace on earth (Luke 2.14). In the Book of Revelation, there is a new song as the Lamb is enthroned and creates a kingdom of priests to reign on the earth (Rev. 5.9-10), and there is a new song in heaven (Rev. 14.3) as the most terrifying events on earth begin to unfold.

The song of recreation is heard like the sound of many waters, and then the great Day of Atonement begins.

A similar scene is recorded in the Hekhalot Zutarti, where the King on his throne is surrounded by heavenly beings: 'Your servants crown you with crowns and sing a new song to you. They install you as King for ever, and you shall be called One for ever and ever. (418)'  This was the unity at the heart of the creation, Day One, and this was the enthronement of the King in the holy of holies.

The song of the angels appears in its original setting in the Book of Revelation. John sees the living creatures and the elders around the throne, i.e. in heaven/ the holy of holies, and they sing first the song which Isaiah also heard: 'Holy Holy Holy, is the LORD God Almighty, who was and is and is to come' (Rev. 4.8), and then '.. . for thou didst create all things and by thy will they existed and were created' (Rev. 4.11).

The song in the holy of holies, the source of life, is the song which sustains the creation. Thus Simon the great high priest taught: By three things is the world sustained, by the Law, by the temple service and by deeds of loving kindness (m. Aboth 1.2).

After the destruction of the temple, it was said that the 'Holy Holy Holy' maintained the world (b. Sot. 49a).

Gregory of Nyssa's remarkable use of Tabernacles imagery is proof that there was a detailed knowledge in the early Church of the angelic liturgy of the temple. Sin had silenced the praise of the creation, he explained, and the symphony of celebration was no longer heard because earth no longer joined with heaven. At the great Feast of Tabernacles, when both creation and community were restored, all would form one great choral dance together as they had formerly done.

Song was the sign of apotheosis. Thus Maximus the Confessor taught: 'In this light, the soul now equal in dignity with the holy angels ... and having learned to praise in concert with them ... is brought to the adoption of similar likeness by grace' and 'The unceasing and sanctifying doxology by the holy angels in the Trisagion signifies, in general, the equality of the way of life and conduct and the harmony in the divine praising which will take place in the age to come by both heavenly and earthly powers' (The Church's Mystagogy 23, 24)."

Indeed perhaps everything is sinking into disorder because, in fact, we no longer sing praises to God.

The Hekhalot Rabbati, The Greater Book of the Heavenly Palaces, reveals that the heavenly songs of praise were prompted by the praises of the people on earth, implying that the song which kept the creation in harmony was in response to the praises sung on earth :

'And all the ministering angels ... when they hear the sound of the hymns and praises which Israel speaks from below, begin from above with Holy Holy Holy.'