Hello - I just wanted to say that I was moved by your video and I hope that you return to our Lord in due time. You seem like a very intelligent person and I know this won’t be the first time you’ve heard this, but I sincerely pray that you ultimately find rest in our Lord Jesus as you continue on your journey. God bless you, friend.
Man, that's heavy. I can't see myself ever dismissing the resurrection of Christ, but I want to hear what you say next. It seems to me that the direct connection we can have with God comes from the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. So while the incarnation of Christ was necessary, it doesn't necessarily follow that participation in His life is bound to linear time -- or geography, for that matter. What are your thoughts on the problem of evil? Liturgy and sacraments and dogmas serve an important role (not least) for reinforcing good behavior, since most people can't be bothered with inner prayer.
Hello, Joachim The concept you have expressed here is one that I fell back on for a few years, and was relatively comfortable with until I contemplated it deeper and just couldn’t reconcile it anymore. I took the view that there were mystics around the world who knew Christ without realizing it, that they were saved by the incarnation without knowing it and would recognize the glorified Christ after death. What you are describing is something Jay expressed awhile back to me upon his first learning that I was going in another direction. The problem unfortunately is that it just moves the problem back another step. By arguing that Christ’s work was retroactively applied to the descendants of Adam and communicated the grace that enabled the saints to mystically unite their souls to God is still to say that salvation is forensic, which relegates the science of union with God to an afterthought. It was upon realizing that the choice I faced was a binary one (either mystical union with God or an exoteric salvation accomplished for me by another) that I ultimately had to go by my experience. I will be adding more on this theme in future videos, not just by way of philosophical argument, but using history to show that the mysticism we were taught in Orthodoxy was actually injected into the Church by Neoplatonists and appropriated, that the Greeks received it from an earlier source, which received it from a far older source. It is just a hard fact (one I initially had a hard time admitting) that the science of the soul is not articulated clearly or elaborated upon at all in the Bible. There are vague hints here and there, but no well articulated science of the mysticism. You literally have to go outside of Christianity to find it. This naturally raises a lot of issues and questions about Scripture. Where did Abrahamism go wrong? How do we understand what occurred and when with the Old Testament and New Testament, etc. I will also address some of these things. It is impossible to go back now and reconstruct everything in detail, but I have a pretty good idea now about what happened. Please be patient with me. I know this is very unsettling.
I think I follow what you mean about forensic salvation -- something perpetually mediated and rationalized, rather than something which demonstrably occurs to the one being saved (?) If that's what forensic salvation is, I agree it's not correct. If we are to be reconciled with God, how can there be a mediator between us and God? Accomplished reconciliation means having unmediated communion with God. God does, of course, mediate Himself to us through all of creation, and especially through the prayers of the angels and saints. But these reflect His generosity in the process of reconciliation, not reconciliation itself. For me the problem of mediation is solved by the incarnation. Christ is our mediator by condescension, but He is also the one to whom we are reconciled. That is, God "mediates" Himself to us. So in the end, there is no mediation, only reconciliation. You mentioned Christ's work being "retroactively applied" but that's not quite how I see it. At the level of the purpose for creation (that is, to be a temple for God) nothing is before Christ, not even time. Even the things which occurred historically before the incarnation -- they aren't really previous at all. It's hard to explain the difference, but my intuition is that we can only understand history as ripples forward and backward from the incarnation. He is the real beginning, not the march of material time. Thanks for reading my comments, and allowing me to think aloud here. I figure you've already thought of the things I'm saying, but it's still nice to have someone to talk to about such a taboo subject. My introduction to Orthodoxy began with a theology class from James Cutsinger. It fascinated me that he could be an open perennialist in ROCOR. (I have been told he renounced it before the end, but I can't verify that.) Anyway, I had the resurrection of Christ lodged firmly enough in my worldview that perennialism proper never seemed convincing but the questions it raises are fascinating in the extreme. For me the answer has always been Christ, so the questions have never threatened my faith in the least.
Yes, sir. I understand exactly where you’re coming from. This was the kind of reasoning I tried following for awhile. The problem is that, in insisting on the need for the Incarnation of a member of the Trinity to reconcile creation (nature) back to God, it assumes a variation on total depravity. I know the Orthodox would deny that by insisting man still has free will, but ultimately the will of man is completely dead apart from the incarnation. If nature and the human will were not so, then the soul would continue to have unrestricted, unmediated access to God the Father apart from the need for blood atonement. There is a fundamental disconnect here in the minds of mystics (such as hesychasts) coming from an Abrahamic point of reference. How did the soul “fall”? Did it happen by falling under a curse due to disobeying a command, such that the Son had to come and fulfill divine law perfectly as a prerequisite for reconciling us to the Father, or do we experience separation from communion with God when we disconnect from him and make the world the ultimate object of our desire (as hesychasts often explain it)? I would argue the latter. When the soul disconnects from God (the universal) and makes particulars its ultimate reference point, this signifies the movement of the nous away from God. Once you experience this for yourself, or at least have a good understanding of how the movement of the soul works, just by being able to articulate the nature of the process it starts becoming clearer how one does not need a mediator to reconnect with God. You simply pick up the practice again, disconnect from the world and stay attached to God. This is possible to do whether you are waking, sleeping, working, etc. You don’t need to have the ability to navel gaze like an ascetic for hours at a time. It’s an inward orientation, though it’s always nice to have more time for meditation. The unity of all particulars is found in God. When the soul searches for ultimate reference in the particulars themselves, the nous loses its bearings and descends into a lower material plane of existence. This is how I now understand it. I do believe in an incarnation, but not as the Orthodox see it. I believe that God has a masculine and feminine polarity. He possesses a spiritual body corresponding to the feminine polarity. It takes on manifested existence in the cosmic realm. This is God’s kenosis so to speak - his self emptying. His consort (Shakti or Sophia, or whichever name one might prefer depending on the culture or tradition) is His energy or power which manifests in the material world. All of creation and all souls are eternally with God. The particulars of creation are his unmanifested archetypes which take embodiment when manifested. When He incarnates, he voluntarily divides himself indivisibly and grants souls a locus of consciousness. Souls are by nature divine and eternal but do not receive the divine qualities of God to an infinite degree and are responsible for their choices. There is more I could say obviously, for for now I need to be going. Thanks again.
I also need to add here that Paul uses the word “mesites” for mediator, which linguistically literally refers to a middle man or third party. Palamas, on the other hand, makes the point that reconciliation with God IS mysticism, but he’s a bit ambiguous, which he necessarily has to be since his tradition requires that he uphold a forensic understanding of justification as having a certain degree of priority over mysticism.
Hi, Joachim Just wanted to make a statement about your brief reference to the resurrection of Jesus. There are actually a good many mystics/Dharmis within Sanatana Dharma who recognize Jesus either as a liberated, master guru (avatar), or as the incarnation of one of Brahman’s forms, such as Krishna. They believe he was a true Dharmi who had achieved moksha or self-realization (liberation from karma and reincarnation) by uniting himself to God, and that he was sent to raise the spiritual consciousness of the Jews. They recognize his teachings in the Sermon on the Mount and his miracles as being clearly Dharmic in nature; they believe he was really crucified by the religious authorities, and (some) believe he even rose from the dead and showed himself to his followers to demonstrate the power of the mystical teachings he taught. This is where I heavily lean. It makes the most sense of how there are billions of Christians today, and of how Christianity grew so fast so early on. It is also commensurate with the views of some of Jesus’ earliest Jewish followers - the Ebionites - who rejected the Virgin Birth (they had their own version of Matthew’s gospel which did not contain an account of a virgin birth), while commemorating (some of them anyway) Sunday as the day of his resurrection. I belief that the notion Christ either came to reform Judaism or to start a new religion (“Christianity”) is false and that he came to reveal perennial truths to a people steeped in the exoteric dogmas of Abrahamism.
That book is full of bogus polemics and caricatures, which is characteristic of the Patristic yet erroneous view regarding Non Abrahamic traditions. It doesn't give any robust metaphysical or philosophical refutation of Hinduism.
I have read it multiple times. It’s a very superficial caricature of Far Eastern thought, just like Seraphim Rose’s Orthodoxy and the Religion of the Future.
Former Trad Roman-Catholic here. I think that Christianity lost the esoteric dimension and is fully on the exoteric path now. That’s why the Church is in trouble now. People who could in the former centuries be fed with the literal sense of scripture, dogma and liturgy don’t want to obey these literal „fairytales“ (so does modern man recognise them) and don’t understand that these „stories“ are vessels to transport a deeper meaning through the ages. My observation is that through a study and comparison with Hindu and Buddhist doctrine we are able to reconstruct a lot and even acknowledged Christian mystics rom the Middle Ages which are not really understandable before this operation make a lot of sense after. Imho, a lot of the tensions you are mentioned in this video comes from this situation.
@@xiphos14 I have a sincere question to you. Why even try to resurrect Christianity? Why not go to Pre Christian traditions like Asatru, Hellenism or Druidism through Platonic or Neo Platonic philosophy? Christianity always was an exoteric system designed to sieze socio political power. I think it's best that people who have been able to penetrate the Abrahamic matrix, abandon it and go to Pagan Platonism.
@@st.mephisto8564 The answer is: Christianity is the version of the platonic tradition which shaped Europe and European Culture (that means white culture). In the traditional Catholic (this includes Eastern Orthodoxy) liturgies and rites we have a whole and complete handed down system of ritual magic or theurgy at hand. Christianity is the culmination of the mystery religions of antiquity. From all the religions before the Advent of Christianity we only have fragmented knowledge, so a revival would only be a reconstruction, a non authentic reinterpretation and recreation out of our modern perspective. Christianity is double-sided. An exoteric and an esoteric side. The story of a man, who was the son of god, being killed and resurrected is on the hidden side a story about the real nature of man. Christ is one person, God the son (the second person of the Trinity)with two natures. A human one and a godly one. Man’s sin is that he thinks himself as a self dependent person. That’s his delusion. But his real person is God. That’s the link to Hinduism. Or, regarding Buddhism think about Buddha nature, thathagatagarbha. Christians eat Christ in the Holy Communion, so Christ makes them partaker in himself, where both natures are united. It’s a reawakening of knowledge of a state already there darkened by sin. And the Christians are building with their bodies the body of Christ on Earth. Christology is not just a lofty fairytale about a man two thousand years ago, that’s the exoteric side. It’s anthropology instead, the esoteric dimension, disguised under the mask of a single event in history. The problem with modernity is this delusion of being a self depending person outside of God with God on the opposite side, moving through a world where God is just an option, not the essence of our existence.
It probably has to do with the new man and new creation a creation born of the quality of God's divinity..and proving God is true by His word ( Jesus's ressurection )
I’m very pleased that I found your channel. I just left orthodoxy this year for much the same reasons as you describe. My practice of the Jesus prayer and contemplative life has led me to the same perennial ideas and conclusions that you yourself have come to. I can’t deny the mystical experiences I’ve had through my deepening of the practice of contemplative prayer. Once I started to actually take this seriously many changes started to happen. It’s almost too much to even put into words to be quite honest. Needless to say, my experience is very similar to yours, and it left me having to reconcile a few things with what the church taught and with what I experienced. Ultimately, the mediatory and exotieric teachings of the orthodox Church seem to run completely contrary to the hesychatic tradition of inner watchfulness and the notion that God is the ground of our being. I would even critique the idea of Theosis as something that is quite honestly superfluous. I’ve come to understand that it’s not an ontological growth in union with God that the human soul should be after, but rather a growth in awareness of the truth that we are already in union with Him. Good stuff man. I’m excited to check out more!
@@critiquingchristianity I look forward to chatting and picking your brain on some stuff. I will reach out sometime after next week as the family and I are headed on vacation tomorrow! God bless, man.
I am an historicist, not a mythicist. Which is in keeping with the nearly universal consensus of biblical scholars. So the Jesus of history was a real person. I understand him to be another Jewish claimant to Kingship and the Messiahship who taught a form of mysticism suggesting he belonged to the Therapeutate, and I believe he was ultimately sentenced to death for political reasons, not for theological ones (such as claiming to be God, which I don’t think he actually claimed to be). I believe the Gospel narratives were formed decades after Jesus for the most part and that his core teachings consisted of wisdom sayings and aphorisms, such as what we see in the Sermon on the Mount or even the Gospel of Thomas. I think the Romans feared he was a Zealot or proto-Zealot recruiting followers to activate a rebellion.
The basis for spiritual growth hangs on spiritual experiences in the form of devotion and biblical understanding. You had neither this is why you fell. The holy Spirit is the guide and the person we adapt to to grow in the Christian walk. Implications of Christian stem from poor understanding. Spiritual thinking comes from the bible, everything Christian comes from scripture. This is why the poor man and rich man story Jesus told explains this in detail. The Holy Spirit is everything and the inspiration for everything Christian and aids development.
You are only saying this because you are committed to Orthodoxy being the exclusive Truth and to truth being essentially exoteric rather than mystical. But that is what you have to prove.
@@kkurrent66 That is something I would be open to in the future. However, until then I need to first lay a foundation and groundwork via my channel that covers various philosophical and textual critiques of Christianity. I also need to clearly articulate the perennial philosophy and mysticism I hold while clarifying that there is a better transcendental argument for God from mysticism. It is one thing to know what you believe, and another to master the content. In some ways, I still catch myself thinking like a Christian and having to self correct. The metaphysical approaches are so different and opposite that they effect almost everything.
@@kkurrent66 ruclips.net/video/0I02YZXspt0/видео.html I will continue addressing this same content in various ways in future videos. This video encapsulates the basic metaphysical flaw in Nicean Trinitarian dogma. It is devastating for them, and most refuse to address it. Jay is good at exposing false dialectics, but he is trapped in his own dialectic. He thinks emanationism is impossible without falling into pantheism and that the only alternative is the Orthodox Essence/Energies distinction. He says this because the Orthodox are beholden to the notion (the implications of which they never address because they are never challenged on it) that to posit that the cosmos or beings are co-eternal with God means that they must also be co-equal with him. This is a false assumption that simultaneously destroys their own worldview. As I discuss in the link above, they say the Son and Holy Spirit are co-equal with the Father by virtue of being co-eternal with him. But in making this argument they also have to posit that the Son and Holy Spirit are eternally CAUSED by the Father. If they stopped at co-equality without positing causation they would have polytheism (tritheism). But in positing causation they are stuck with the inevitable result that the Son and Spirit are subordinate to the Father. There can be no equality. Only the Father is uncaused. Due to this flaw, they have to say the world was caused in a manner that is different from the way the Son and Spirit are caused within the Trinity. In other words, it was created ex nihilo (“out of nothing”) But nothing is nothing you can conceive of as existing outside God. All there is is God. So it is absurd to distinguish between eternal causation and temporal causation. All that God causes is coeternal with him because God is eternal. At the same time, all that God causes is subordinate to (derivative of) Him. There is nothing pantheistic about this. We are divine in that we share in God’s qualities, but we don’t possess them to an infinite degree. Our consciousness must be merged with his via meditation, which is samadhi (union). This philosophy is often called qualified monism or qualified non-dualism, and is summarized extremely well by the Bhagavad Gita. It would be more accurate to call it panentheism. You could also see it as a kind of panpsychism.
Sorry, just now getting to this ... but what gave you the impression that Jesus isn't a prerequisite to even the initial possibility of mystical contemplation?
@@johnjelinek3983 I have done many videos on that critiquing the Trinity and the Incarnation. Nondual philosophy and the Abrahamic faiths are at odds on many things, not the least of which is the doctrine of creation out of nothing. I am not sure why you would think they are compatible. Nondualism is characteristic of Neoplatonism, the Dharmic schools, Kabbalah and Sufism, etc.
@@critiquingchristianity not protesting , name me another God who came incarnate through the virgin mary and became man and died and resurrected from the dead. There's nothing else compares. Lord have mercy on you 🙏
@@ilovechrist914 This channel goes to great lengths to demonstrate why none of these events happened or could have happened by showing how belief in them flows from a mistaken understanding of the nature of God.
![CHILE vs. BRASIL [1-2] | RESUMEN | ELIMINATORIAS SUDAMERICANAS | FECHA 9](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/5ObJt_71AYc/mqdefault.jpg)
Hello - I just wanted to say that I was moved by your video and I hope that you return to our Lord in due time. You seem like a very intelligent person and I know this won’t be the first time you’ve heard this, but I sincerely pray that you ultimately find rest in our Lord Jesus as you continue on your journey. God bless you, friend.
I thank you for the sentiment and for seasoning your words with kindness. It is much appreciated. 🙏
My sheep hear my voice. I pray you’re one of his sheep.
Man, that's heavy. I can't see myself ever dismissing the resurrection of Christ, but I want to hear what you say next. It seems to me that the direct connection we can have with God comes from the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. So while the incarnation of Christ was necessary, it doesn't necessarily follow that participation in His life is bound to linear time -- or geography, for that matter.
What are your thoughts on the problem of evil? Liturgy and sacraments and dogmas serve an important role (not least) for reinforcing good behavior, since most people can't be bothered with inner prayer.
Hello, Joachim
The concept you have expressed here is one that I fell back on for a few years, and was relatively comfortable with until I contemplated it deeper and just couldn’t reconcile it anymore. I took the view that there were mystics around the world who knew Christ without realizing it, that they were saved by the incarnation without knowing it and would recognize the glorified Christ after death.
What you are describing is something Jay expressed awhile back to me upon his first learning that I was going in another direction. The problem unfortunately is that it just moves the problem back another step. By arguing that Christ’s work was retroactively applied to the descendants of Adam and communicated the grace that enabled the saints to mystically unite their souls to God is still to say that salvation is forensic, which relegates the science of union with God to an afterthought.
It was upon realizing that the choice I faced was a binary one (either mystical union with God or an exoteric salvation accomplished for me by another) that I ultimately had to go by my experience.
I will be adding more on this theme in future videos, not just by way of philosophical argument, but using history to show that the mysticism we were taught in Orthodoxy was actually injected into the Church by Neoplatonists and appropriated, that the Greeks received it from an earlier source, which received it from a far older source.
It is just a hard fact (one I initially had a hard time admitting) that the science of the soul is not articulated clearly or elaborated upon at all in the Bible. There are vague hints here and there, but no well articulated science of the mysticism. You literally have to go outside of Christianity to find it.
This naturally raises a lot of issues and questions about Scripture. Where did Abrahamism go wrong? How do we understand what occurred and when with the Old Testament and New Testament, etc. I will also address some of these things. It is impossible to go back now and reconstruct everything in detail, but I have a pretty good idea now about what happened.
Please be patient with me. I know this is very unsettling.
I think I follow what you mean about forensic salvation -- something perpetually mediated and rationalized, rather than something which demonstrably occurs to the one being saved (?) If that's what forensic salvation is, I agree it's not correct.
If we are to be reconciled with God, how can there be a mediator between us and God? Accomplished reconciliation means having unmediated communion with God. God does, of course, mediate Himself to us through all of creation, and especially through the prayers of the angels and saints. But these reflect His generosity in the process of reconciliation, not reconciliation itself.
For me the problem of mediation is solved by the incarnation. Christ is our mediator by condescension, but He is also the one to whom we are reconciled. That is, God "mediates" Himself to us. So in the end, there is no mediation, only reconciliation.
You mentioned Christ's work being "retroactively applied" but that's not quite how I see it. At the level of the purpose for creation (that is, to be a temple for God) nothing is before Christ, not even time. Even the things which occurred historically before the incarnation -- they aren't really previous at all.
It's hard to explain the difference, but my intuition is that we can only understand history as ripples forward and backward from the incarnation. He is the real beginning, not the march of material time.
Thanks for reading my comments, and allowing me to think aloud here. I figure you've already thought of the things I'm saying, but it's still nice to have someone to talk to about such a taboo subject.
My introduction to Orthodoxy began with a theology class from James Cutsinger. It fascinated me that he could be an open perennialist in ROCOR. (I have been told he renounced it before the end, but I can't verify that.)
Anyway, I had the resurrection of Christ lodged firmly enough in my worldview that perennialism proper never seemed convincing but the questions it raises are fascinating in the extreme. For me the answer has always been Christ, so the questions have never threatened my faith in the least.
Yes, sir. I understand exactly where you’re coming from. This was the kind of reasoning I tried following for awhile. The problem is that, in insisting on the need for the Incarnation of a member of the Trinity to reconcile creation (nature) back to God, it assumes a variation on total depravity. I know the Orthodox would deny that by insisting man still has free will, but ultimately the will of man is completely dead apart from the incarnation. If nature and the human will were not so, then the soul would continue to have unrestricted, unmediated access to God the Father apart from the need for blood atonement.
There is a fundamental disconnect here in the minds of mystics (such as hesychasts) coming from an Abrahamic point of reference. How did the soul “fall”? Did it happen by falling under a curse due to disobeying a command, such that the Son had to come and fulfill divine law perfectly as a prerequisite for reconciling us to the Father, or do we experience separation from communion with God when we disconnect from him and make the world the ultimate object of our desire (as hesychasts often explain it)? I would argue the latter. When the soul disconnects from God (the universal) and makes particulars its ultimate reference point, this signifies the movement of the nous away from God. Once you experience this for yourself, or at least have a good understanding of how the movement of the soul works, just by being able to articulate the nature of the process it starts becoming clearer how one does not need a mediator to reconnect with God. You simply pick up the practice again, disconnect from the world and stay attached to God. This is possible to do whether you are waking, sleeping, working, etc. You don’t need to have the ability to navel gaze like an ascetic for hours at a time. It’s an inward orientation, though it’s always nice to have more time for meditation.
The unity of all particulars is found in God. When the soul searches for ultimate reference in the particulars themselves, the nous loses its bearings and descends into a lower material plane of existence. This is how I now understand it.
I do believe in an incarnation, but not as the Orthodox see it. I believe that God has a masculine and feminine polarity. He possesses a spiritual body corresponding to the feminine polarity. It takes on manifested existence in the cosmic realm. This is God’s kenosis so to speak - his self emptying. His consort (Shakti or Sophia, or whichever name one might prefer depending on the culture or tradition) is His energy or power which manifests in the material world. All of creation and all souls are eternally with God. The particulars of creation are his unmanifested archetypes which take embodiment when manifested.
When He incarnates, he voluntarily divides himself indivisibly and grants souls a locus of consciousness. Souls are by nature divine and eternal but do not receive the divine qualities of God to an infinite degree and are responsible for their choices.
There is more I could say obviously, for for now I need to be going. Thanks again.
I also need to add here that Paul uses the word “mesites” for mediator, which linguistically literally refers to a middle man or third party.
Palamas, on the other hand, makes the point that reconciliation with God IS mysticism, but he’s a bit ambiguous, which he necessarily has to be since his tradition requires that he uphold a forensic understanding of justification as having a certain degree of priority over mysticism.
Hi, Joachim
Just wanted to make a statement about your brief reference to the resurrection of Jesus.
There are actually a good many mystics/Dharmis within Sanatana Dharma who recognize Jesus either as a liberated, master guru (avatar), or as the incarnation of one of Brahman’s forms, such as Krishna.
They believe he was a true Dharmi who had achieved moksha or self-realization (liberation from karma and reincarnation) by uniting himself to God, and that he was sent to raise the spiritual consciousness of the Jews.
They recognize his teachings in the Sermon on the Mount and his miracles as being clearly Dharmic in nature; they believe he was really crucified by the religious authorities, and (some) believe he even rose from the dead and showed himself to his followers to demonstrate the power of the mystical teachings he taught.
This is where I heavily lean. It makes the most sense of how there are billions of Christians today, and of how Christianity grew so fast so early on. It is also commensurate with the views of some of Jesus’ earliest Jewish followers - the Ebionites - who rejected the Virgin Birth (they had their own version of Matthew’s gospel which did not contain an account of a virgin birth), while commemorating (some of them anyway) Sunday as the day of his resurrection.
I belief that the notion Christ either came to reform Judaism or to start a new religion (“Christianity”) is false and that he came to reveal perennial truths to a people steeped in the exoteric dogmas of Abrahamism.
Sad. "...essentially the same..."? Hardly. He should go read the book, The Gurus the Young Man and Elder Paisios
That book is full of bogus polemics and caricatures, which is characteristic of the Patristic yet erroneous view regarding Non Abrahamic traditions.
It doesn't give any robust metaphysical or philosophical refutation of Hinduism.
I have read it multiple times. It’s a very superficial caricature of Far Eastern thought, just like Seraphim Rose’s Orthodoxy and the Religion of the Future.
If you leave Orthodoxy, you never been Orthodox! God help you!
@@boldcut5163
It is irrelevant whether you are correct or not, as it doesn’t address the substance of my objections to Orthodoxy.
Former Trad Roman-Catholic here. I think that Christianity lost the esoteric dimension and is fully on the exoteric path now. That’s why the Church is in trouble now. People who could in the former centuries be fed with the literal sense of scripture, dogma and liturgy don’t want to obey these literal „fairytales“ (so does modern man recognise them) and don’t understand that these „stories“ are vessels to transport a deeper meaning through the ages. My observation is that through a study and comparison with Hindu and Buddhist doctrine we are able to reconstruct a lot and even acknowledged Christian mystics rom the Middle Ages which are not really understandable before this operation make a lot of sense after. Imho, a lot of the tensions you are mentioned in this video comes from this situation.
Thank you for your thoughts. These are very good observations. I think you’re right.
@@xiphos14 I have a sincere question to you. Why even try to resurrect Christianity? Why not go to Pre Christian traditions like Asatru, Hellenism or Druidism through Platonic or Neo Platonic philosophy?
Christianity always was an exoteric system designed to sieze socio political power. I think it's best that people who have been able to penetrate the Abrahamic matrix, abandon it and go to Pagan Platonism.
@@st.mephisto8564 The answer is: Christianity is the version of the platonic tradition which shaped Europe and European Culture (that means white culture). In the traditional Catholic (this includes Eastern Orthodoxy) liturgies and rites we have a whole and complete handed down system of ritual magic or theurgy at hand. Christianity is the culmination of the mystery religions of antiquity. From all the religions before the Advent of Christianity we only have fragmented knowledge, so a revival would only be a reconstruction, a non authentic reinterpretation and recreation out of our modern perspective.
Christianity is double-sided. An exoteric and an esoteric side. The story of a man, who was the son of god, being killed and resurrected is on the hidden side a story about the real nature of man. Christ is one person, God the son (the second person of the Trinity)with two natures. A human one and a godly one. Man’s sin is that he thinks himself as a self dependent person. That’s his delusion. But his real person is God. That’s the link to Hinduism. Or, regarding Buddhism think about Buddha nature, thathagatagarbha. Christians eat Christ in the Holy Communion, so Christ makes them partaker in himself, where both natures are united. It’s a reawakening of knowledge of a state already there darkened by sin. And the Christians are building with their bodies the body of Christ on Earth. Christology is not just a lofty fairytale about a man two thousand years ago, that’s the exoteric side. It’s anthropology instead, the esoteric dimension, disguised under the mask of a single event in history.
The problem with modernity is this delusion of being a self depending person outside of God with God on the opposite side, moving through a world where God is just an option, not the essence of our existence.
It probably has to do with the new man and new creation a creation born of the quality of God's divinity..and proving God is true by His word ( Jesus's ressurection )
I’m very pleased that I found your channel. I just left orthodoxy this year for much the same reasons as you describe. My practice of the Jesus prayer and contemplative life has led me to the same perennial ideas and conclusions that you yourself have come to. I can’t deny the mystical experiences I’ve had through my deepening of the practice of contemplative prayer. Once I started to actually take this seriously many changes started to happen. It’s almost too much to even put into words to be quite honest. Needless to say, my experience is very similar to yours, and it left me having to reconcile a few things with what the church taught and with what I experienced. Ultimately, the mediatory and exotieric teachings of the orthodox Church seem to run completely contrary to the hesychatic tradition of inner watchfulness and the notion that God is the ground of our being. I would even critique the idea of Theosis as something that is quite honestly superfluous. I’ve come to understand that it’s not an ontological growth in union with God that the human soul should be after, but rather a growth in awareness of the truth that we are already in union with Him. Good stuff man. I’m excited to check out more!
That was very well said. Exactly. We are the Atman or Self, and He/She is us.
@@critiquingchristianity I look forward to chatting and picking your brain on some stuff. I will reach out sometime after next week as the family and I are headed on vacation tomorrow! God bless, man.
@@IAMFISH92
Sounds great! Very excited to hear from you.
Crucified your mind and you will understand Orthodoxy. I see a lot of PRIDE in you. Lord have mercy on you!
You would see pride in anyone who left the Church because that is how you have been trained to think.
So how do you now see Jesus of Nazareth?
I am an historicist, not a mythicist. Which is in keeping with the nearly universal consensus of biblical scholars. So the Jesus of history was a real person. I understand him to be another Jewish claimant to Kingship and the Messiahship who taught a form of mysticism suggesting he belonged to the Therapeutate, and I believe he was ultimately sentenced to death for political reasons, not for theological ones (such as claiming to be God, which I don’t think he actually claimed to be). I believe the Gospel narratives were formed decades after Jesus for the most part and that his core teachings consisted of wisdom sayings and aphorisms, such as what we see in the Sermon on the Mount or even the Gospel of Thomas. I think the Romans feared he was a Zealot or proto-Zealot recruiting followers to activate a rebellion.
The basis for spiritual growth hangs on spiritual experiences in the form of devotion and biblical understanding. You had neither this is why you fell. The holy Spirit is the guide and the person we adapt to to grow in the Christian walk. Implications of Christian stem from poor understanding. Spiritual thinking comes from the bible, everything Christian comes from scripture. This is why the poor man and rich man story Jesus told explains this in detail. The Holy Spirit is everything and the inspiration for everything Christian and aids development.
You are only saying this because you are committed to Orthodoxy being the exclusive Truth and to truth being essentially exoteric rather than mystical. But that is what you have to prove.
You need to face Jay Dyer in a debate. Would be entertaining and enlightening.
There may come a day…
Oh yes please please, debate Jay Dyer!!
I'm trying to find the truth and have just found your channel !! New subscriber! ☺️
@@critiquingchristianity Yea hit him up it would probably be really helpful for me
@@kkurrent66
That is something I would be open to in the future. However, until then I need to first lay a foundation and groundwork via my channel that covers various philosophical and textual critiques of Christianity. I also need to clearly articulate the perennial philosophy and mysticism I hold while clarifying that there is a better transcendental argument for God from mysticism. It is one thing to know what you believe, and another to master the content. In some ways, I still catch myself thinking like a Christian and having to self correct. The metaphysical approaches are so different and opposite that they effect almost everything.
@@kkurrent66
ruclips.net/video/0I02YZXspt0/видео.html
I will continue addressing this same content in various ways in future videos. This video encapsulates the basic metaphysical flaw in Nicean Trinitarian dogma. It is devastating for them, and most refuse to address it.
Jay is good at exposing false dialectics, but he is trapped in his own dialectic. He thinks emanationism is impossible without falling into pantheism and that the only alternative is the Orthodox Essence/Energies distinction.
He says this because the Orthodox are beholden to the notion (the implications of which they never address because they are never challenged on it) that to posit that the cosmos or beings are co-eternal with God means that they must also be co-equal with him. This is a false assumption that simultaneously destroys their own worldview.
As I discuss in the link above, they say the Son and Holy Spirit are co-equal with the Father by virtue of being co-eternal with him. But in making this argument they also have to posit that the Son and Holy Spirit are eternally CAUSED by the Father. If they stopped at co-equality without positing causation they would have polytheism (tritheism). But in positing causation they are stuck with the inevitable result that the Son and Spirit are subordinate to the Father. There can be no equality. Only the Father is uncaused.
Due to this flaw, they have to say the world was caused in a manner that is different from the way the Son and Spirit are caused within the Trinity. In other words, it was created ex nihilo (“out of nothing”) But nothing is nothing you can conceive of as existing outside God. All there is is God. So it is absurd to distinguish between eternal causation and temporal causation. All that God causes is coeternal with him because God is eternal. At the same time, all that God causes is subordinate to (derivative of) Him.
There is nothing pantheistic about this. We are divine in that we share in God’s qualities, but we don’t possess them to an infinite degree. Our consciousness must be merged with his via meditation, which is samadhi (union). This philosophy is often called qualified monism or qualified non-dualism, and is summarized extremely well by the Bhagavad Gita. It would be more accurate to call it panentheism. You could also see it as a kind of panpsychism.
Sorry, just now getting to this ... but what gave you the impression that Jesus isn't a prerequisite to even the initial possibility of mystical contemplation?
I believe the Incarnation is precluded by the nature of Christendom’s own dualistic philosophy.
@@critiquingchristianity in what way is Orthodox metaphysics incompatible with non-dualism?
@@johnjelinek3983
I have done many videos on that critiquing the Trinity and the Incarnation.
Nondual philosophy and the Abrahamic faiths are at odds on many things, not the least of which is the doctrine of creation out of nothing. I am not sure why you would think they are compatible. Nondualism is characteristic of Neoplatonism, the Dharmic schools, Kabbalah and Sufism, etc.
@@critiquingchristianity IIRC Orthodox accepts middle platonism rather than neoplatonism. Is that not also non-dualistic?
Sad
What is he now just athiest with no purpose now good luck
You think only Christians believe in God?
P.S. Thanks for the Christian love.
@@critiquingchristianity the one true God!!
@@ilovechrist914
Ok, then make an argument. Otherwise it is just pouting and protesting.
@@critiquingchristianity not protesting , name me another God who came incarnate through the virgin mary and became man and died and resurrected from the dead.
There's nothing else compares.
Lord have mercy on you 🙏
@@ilovechrist914
This channel goes to great lengths to demonstrate why none of these events happened or could have happened by showing how belief in them flows from a mistaken understanding of the nature of God.