Any Abrahamist who says paganism is incompatible with complex metaphysics has never read Plethon
>>18647726Abrahamists usually don't read anything that disagrees with their Semitic programming.Christianity, as a religion, has no native mysticism. It inherited an apocalyptic Jewish messianism, a Pauline crucifixion theology, and a set of ethical teachings about charity and repentance. What it did not inherit from its Palestinian origins was a contemplative metaphysics. It had no doctrine of the soul's ascent through hierarchies of being. It had no analysis of divine names. It had no triadic structure of procession, rest, and return. It had no theurgic theology. It had no apophatic negation as a pathway to union with the Absolute. These doctrines did not exist in the Gospels. They did not exist in Paul. They did not exist in the Synoptic tradition. They did not exist in the rabbinic Judaism that formed Christianity's immediate background. Christianity acquired its mysticism in a single documented act of literary theft, at the beginning of the sixth century of the common era. An anonymous Syrian monk read the works of the pagan Neoplatonist Proclus, head of the Platonic Academy of Athens from 437 to 485 CE, along with the works of Proclus's predecessors Plotinus, Porphyry, and Iamblichus. This monk copied Proclus's system, with substantial portions reproduced verbatim or with minimal paraphrase, replaced the pagan divine names with Christian terminology, attached his forgery to the name of Dionysius the Areopagite (a figure mentioned briefly in Acts 17:34 as an Athenian convert of Paul), and released the resulting corpus into Byzantine circulation. The forgery was accepted as authentic apostolic writing for the next thousand years. It shaped every subsequent Christian mystical tradition, from Maximus the Confessor to Meister Eckhart to John of the Cross. Every Catholic sacramental theology, every Byzantine liturgical commentary, every Western scholastic doctrine of the angelic hierarchies, traces back to this document.
>>18647761The document is a forgery. The author is pagan Proclus in Christian costume. This is not a theory. It is the unanimous conclusion of nineteenth and twentieth century scholarship, confirmed by line-by-line parallel textual analysis that any reader can verify in the critical editions. The Catholic Church itself has admitted the pseudonymity since the late nineteenth century, though it has continued to treat the corpus as theologically authoritative because removing it would dismantle most of the Christian mystical tradition. Proclus Diadochus (c. 412-485 CE) was the most systematic philosophical mind of late antiquity. He served as Diadochos, Successor, of the Platonic Academy in Athens for nearly fifty years. Under his leadership the Academy produced the most sophisticated metaphysical system the ancient world had ever articulated: a fully rigorous account of the procession of all reality from the ineffable One, through the noetic hierarchies, the psychic orders, and finally into embodied material being, with a corresponding doctrine of return through purification, illumination, and union (theurgic and contemplative). The Academy was closed in 529 CE by the Christian Emperor Justinian I, whose legislation prohibited the teaching of pagan philosophy on pain of confiscation of property and loss of civil rights. The remaining philosophers, including Damascius and Simplicius, fled to the Sasanian court of Khosrow I before partially returning under treaty conditions. The thousand-year continuous tradition of Greek philosophical instruction at Athens, begun by Plato in 387 BCE, was extinguished by imperial Christian decree.Within a generation of the Academy's closure, the Dionysian corpus appeared. The timing is not coincidental. The corpus first surface in historical record at a specific, dated moment: the Council of Constantinople held in 532 CE, just three years after Justinian closed the Academy.
>>18647761>>18647780I'm glad you two brought this up. Plethon was a neoplatonist himself influenced by people like Plotinus and Proclus.
Abrahamics are subhuman apes who don’t read.
>>18647780At that council, convened to resolve the Christological dispute between the Chalcedonian and Monophysite parties, the Monophysite bishop Severus of Antioch and his supporters cited the Dionysian corpus as authoritative apostolic writing to support their theological position. The Chalcedonian bishop Hypatius of Ephesus immediately challenged the citation, pointing out that no Church Father before the sixth century had ever quoted these texts. No mention of them exists in Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Athanasius, Basil, Gregory Nazianzen, Gregory of Nyssa, John Chrysostom, Augustine, or Cyril of Alexandria. A corpus supposedly composed by a disciple of Paul, Hypatius noted, should have been known and cited by every subsequent Christian writer. The silence of five hundred years of patristic literature proved the corpus to be a recent fabrication. Hypatius's objection was overruled politically. The corpus was admitted as authentic and rapidly spread throughout Byzantine and then Latin Christendom. The first major Christian commentator to systematize the texts was John of Scythopolis around 540 CE, within a decade of their surfacing; his Scholia, expanded by Maximus the Confessor in the seventh century, became the standard Byzantine framework for reading the corpus. The texts were translated into Latin by John Scotus Eriugena in the ninth century at the court of Charles the Bald, introducing Dionysian theology to the Latin West, where it would become central to Aquinas, Bonaventure, and the late medieval mystical tradition.
>>18647783Neoplatonism is based as hell.>>18647785The real Dionysius the Areopagite was a minor figure. Acts 17:34 mentions him in a single verse: "But some men joined him and believed, among whom also were Dionysius the Areopagite and a woman named Damaris and others with them." This is his only appearance in the New Testament. Later tradition identified him with a first-century bishop of Athens. No writings of any kind were attributed to him before the sixth century. A first-century Athenian convert of Paul could not possibly have written texts that quote Proclus, whose works were composed four hundred years later. The pseudonymous author chose this name deliberately. A supposed disciple of Paul, converted at Athens (the heart of pagan philosophy), gives the forgery an impeccable apostolic pedigree and a specific cultural authority: a Christian convert who retains the philosophical depth of Athens. The name was chosen to neutralize the otherwise obvious objection that the theology of the corpus is Athenian Neoplatonism. By making the author a converted Athenian disciple of Paul, the forger pre-empts the accusation. The depth is Athenian, the frame is apostolic, and the reader is expected not to ask questions. For nine hundred years the Dionysian corpus was read as genuine apostolic writing
>>18647787This forgery was nearly as influential as Scripture itself in the Latin West. Thomas Aquinas cites "Dionysius" 1,702 times in the Summa Theologiae, treating him as a primary authority on divine names, angelic hierarchies, and the nature of mystical union. The entire medieval doctrine of the nine choirs of angels (Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones, Dominions, Virtues, Powers, Principalities, Archangels, Angels) comes directly from the Celestial Hierarchy. The Scholastic doctrine of analogical predication of divine names rests on the Divine Names. The mystical theology of darkness, unknowing, and apophatic ascent in Meister Eckhart, the Cloud of Unknowing, and John of the Cross descends from the Mystical Theology.In 1457 Lorenzo Valla, the Italian humanist who had exposed the Donation of Constantine as a medieval forgery, first raised philological doubts about the Dionysian corpus on grounds of style and historical anachronism. Erasmus expanded these doubts in his 1504 edition. But the decisive work came four hundred years later, in a single annus mirabilis of scholarship: 1895.In that year two German scholars, working independently, published studies that established the dependence of the Dionysian corpus on Proclus beyond reasonable doubt. Hugo Koch published Der pseudepigraphische Charakter der Dionysischen Schriften and Josef Stiglmayr published Der Neuplatoniker Proclus als Vorlage des sogenannten Dionysius Areopagita in der Lehre vom Übel. Both showed, with hundreds of passage-by-passage parallels, that the Dionysian treatises were not merely influenced by Proclus but in many sections transcribed from him with only minimal verbal adjustment to make the pagan terminology acceptable in Christian usage.
Sameflag talking to himself
>>18647726Metaphysics is made up nonsense.
>>18647871It wouldn't fit all in 1 post, obviously. Where's your contribution to the topic?
lol the idiot doesn't even try to hide. the posts from other "anons" agreeing with him; were strangely posted with literal seconds difference between each post lol
>>18647881Is anyone else noticing a very strange smell coming from these posts?
>>18647761>Every Catholic sacramental theology, every Byzantine liturgical commentary,surely it's not actually the case that the traditional sacraments and liturgies themseles come from some forged neoplatonic crypro-pagan writings, right? Proof?
>>18649017>surely it's not actually the case that the traditional sacraments and liturgies themseles come from some forged neoplatonic crypro-pagan writings, right? Proof?You have to understand what was stolen first, and the time period when the theft happened for context. Proclus's major works include the Elements of Theology (Stoicheiosis Theologike), 211 rigorously demonstrated metaphysical propositions in the Euclidean manner; the Platonic Theology (Peri tes kata Platona theologias), six books on the divine orders drawn from the Platonic dialogues; the Commentary on the Parmenides, the most sustained ancient analysis of the first hypothesis of that dialogue; the Commentary on the Timaeus, a three-thousand-page cosmological exposition; and shorter works including On Providence, On the Existence of Evils, and the hymns to the Gods. His teacher was Syrianus; his successors included Marinus (who wrote Proclus's biography, the Vita Procli) and eventually Damascius, the last Scholarch before the Academy's closure. Justinian I closed down that academy, and it wasn't until after that happened did you see these pagan-authored metaphysics begin appearing in Christianity. There is no trace of their influence before that time period; "Dionysius the Areopagite" is a pseudonymous name, manufactured by Christians with a political agenda to cover up their theft of Neoplatonist philosophy. The "Dionysian Corpus" is obviously a forgery, proven by the fact that not a single mention of it or quote every appeared before the 6th century in the church. Hypatius of Ephesus, a Chalcedonian Bishop pointed this out at the Council of Constantinople held in 532 CE, and was told to STFU by the rest of the councilmen and to drop it. They wanted narrative control more than anything, to take credit for something they had stolen, and to silence anybody who didn't support their agenda moving forward.
The neoplatonist pagans plagiarized the Christians, who were and still are the true heir to the Jewish Alexandrian traditions.Plotinus et al. were reactionaries trying to preserve the wicked system of paganism at all costs. Yet this was also the reason for their failure, as they could only copy imperfectly the perfect revelation of Jesus Christ. Climaxing in Julian Apostate, who vainly tried to establish this humanist pagan system as state religion only to end his life of sin saying:THOU HAST WON, GALILEAN
>>18649049Neoplatonism existed for centuries before the Semitic New Testament, and continued to develop its own philosophy for centuries after the spread of that Semitic dogshit too. >The neoplatonist pagans plagiarized the ChristiansThat's funny. Greek philosophy is a lot older than Christianity, everybody except the most psychologically-programmed people understand that fact.
>>18649049This is a myth, his last words weren’t actually “thou hast conquered, Galilean” as his contemporaries make no mention of it. The oldest source claiming those were his last words was written a century later by a Christian named Theodoret of Cyrrhus who also claimed an angel descended to kill him and whose account is full of divine interventions that obviously never happened. Ammianus Marcellinus, who was actually there when it happened, recorded that Julian spent his final hours engaged in a philosophical discussion about the nobility of the soul with his advisors and fellow philosophers Maximus and Priscus. He never admitted defeat to Christianity.
>>18649049>THOU HAST WON, GALILEANoh please
>>18649049Pagan Stoics invented the concept that all humans are equal, not Christians. The idea that all men are spiritually equal is a Stoic concept that predates Christianity by 300 years, and the Stoics were pagans who identified the Logos with Zeus and defended traditional religious practices. Humanism would still emerge in a pagan Europe without the Christian idea of Imago Dei and if anything would be far more humanist without the belief that mankind is in a fallen and sinful state .Christianity is not a “complete revelation” or “perfect.” It is just either gibberish or plagiarized from far more sophisticated systems. Plato predates Jesus by centuries and he affirmed Zeus as the god of gods, not Yahweh
>>18649049Julian was the apex of pagan envy of Christ.>Stupid Christchuds, don't you know that Roman Paganism is the *real* universal religion? You guys are just a little ethnic cult, heh.Small wonder e-pagans today have completely disavowed this line of argument.
>>18649142>pagan envy of Christ.Yeah, about that.
>>18649049>>18649142Oops there goes your narrative. Better luck next time!
>>18649057>Greek philosophy is a lot older than ChristianityThe Greeks didn't even know how to read their own ancient writings [see Plutarch on Agesilaus II] Why should they be regarded as at all ancient? And Plato, who the Neoplatonists practically worshiped, said in his final work [Laws] that they didn't even know how to interpret the most ancient writings they possessed concerning the nature of their gods. Greek philosophy, rooted in its confusion, was nowhere near as ancient as the doctrines of the Hebrews, who were at least as ancient as the pharaohs. What was ancient to the Greeks and Romans was nothing compared to the Hebrews or even other groups such as the Egyptians, hence why the Egyptian priest compared the Greeks to children. Christianity is the succession and fulfillment of these Hebrew traditions, and it is from these traditions that its essence derives from. Any similarity with Greek philosophy is due to the same language which was employed by both Gentiles and Jews in Alexandria, which paved the way for Christ in whom all mankind is to be unified:>There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.
>>18649193Judaism and by-extension Christianity and Islam are complete nonsense. There is no evidence of a complete Torah existing prior to the 5th century AUC (after of the founding of the city [of Rome]).The Exodus myth was written as a polemic against Manetho, not the other way around (again, no complete Torah prior to the 5th century AUC).Manetho was citing earlier sources and he has been proven correct by history. He was writing about the Shasu and his ONLY mistake was confusing them with the Hyksos. The Shasu were a group of nomads from the southern Levant who worshipped Yahweh and would later contribute to the ethnogenesis of the Jews. They were considered a nuance due to their tendency to raid the Egyptian borders and at some point in the late Bronze Age, they nearly succeeded in plundering Egypt but got their asses kicked and expelled. Manetho wrote this in his Aegyptiaca and the Jews, being mad that people remember this, wrote the myth of Exodus in response.Only those with a mental illness and leprosy would deny any of this. Also, Egypt didn’t even have the type of chattel slavery depicted in Exodus.
>>18649193>Christ in whom all mankind is to be unifiedSemitic cult psychology. A detriment to any process of interrogating truth; critical-thinking. >nowhere near as ancient as the doctrines of the HebrewsLol. Lmao even>What was ancient to the Greeks and Romans was nothing compared to the HebrewsDeep throating Semitic propaganda I see. Gross. .
>>18649193>Christianity is the succession and fulfillment of these Hebrew traditionsYou sure you want to openly brag about that?
>>18649142isn't the entire reason Christianity exists in the first place the fact the Romans tried to convert the Jews and the Jews didn't like that so there was high demand for a messiah
>>18649118>Pagan Stoics invented the concept that all humans are equal, not Christians>still had slaveslol
>>18647726>>18647761>SAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAR
>>18647726No Christian, Muslim or Jew says that if they want to be taken seriously.
>>18649204>re: shasu/hyksoshttps://www.scribd.com/document/867667566/WELCOME-TO-REAL-Gs-LEARNING-CENTER-Manetho-on-the-Hyksos
>>18647871>>18647881Let him cook subhumans.
>>18650977Ayy thanks, if someone is enjoying then I'll continue today. The most decisive single proof is Stiglmayr's demonstration that chapter four of On the Divine Names is, in substantial portions, a direct paraphrase of Proclus's treatise On the Existence of Evils (De Malorum Subsistentia). Proclus's treatise had a peculiar textual history: the Greek original was lost, and the text survived only in a Latin translation made by William of Moerbeke in the thirteenth century, until fragments of the Greek were recovered in the twentieth century through Byzantine anthologies. Stiglmayr showed that Dionysius's discussion of evil in De Divinis Nominibus IV.18-35 follows Proclus's treatise section by section, reproduces its doctrines in the same order, uses the same examples, employs the same technical terminology, and in several passages reproduces Proclus's sentences with minimal alteration.Proclus's central thesis in this treatise is that evil has no substantial existence; it exists only as a parhypostasis, a parasitic by-product of the good, having no independent nature. This is not a trivial doctrine. It is a specific Neoplatonic innovation, developed against the Gnostic and Manichaean dualisms that treated evil as a substantial principle. The doctrine, the argument, the vocabulary, and the sequence of topics all appear in Dionysius in transparent dependence on Proclus.>Original: "Evil has only a parasitic existence; it exists therefore in none of the things that exist per se.">Pseudo-Dionysius, De Divinis Nominibus: "Evil is neither a being nor in the things that exist... evil therefore has no existence per se, but has only parasitic existence."The technical term parhypostasis (παρυπόστασις) is a Proclan coinage. It is not found in the Septuagint, the New Testament, or any pre-Proclan Christian source.
The structural backbone of Proclus's entire system is the triadic rhythm of monē, proodos, epistrophē: abiding, procession, return. Every level of reality abides in its cause, proceeds from it, and returns to it. This triad is established in Proclus's Elements of Theology, Propositions 25 through 39, and it governs the architecture of his Platonic Theology. The triad is not a trivial formula. It is the load-bearing structure of Neoplatonic metaphysics.>"Everything that proceeds from something returns toward that from which it proceeds." - Proclus, Elements of TheologyThe Dionysian corpus adopts this triad as the architectural principle of its entire system. It is the engine of Divine Names, which treats how all things proceed from God and return to God by participation in the divine names. It is the engine of the Celestial Hierarchy and Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, both of which describe the return of lower beings through hierarchical mediation. The Christian vocabulary of the return to God (epistrophē) as a technical metaphysical term is not found in the Gospels or in Paul. It appears in Christian theology because Dionysius imported it from Proclus.>"For the same circle is from her and through her and unto her... in which all things abide fixedly and immovably, and return according to their ever-moving procession." - Pseudo-Dionysius,De Divinis NominibusThe passage is a transparent paraphrase of the Proclan triad. The Christian context (the "circle" is here attributed to Divine Love) does not conceal the metaphysical machinery, which is purely Neoplatonic. A first-century disciple of Paul writing in Athens could not have used this vocabulary. The vocabulary did not exist until Plotinus, Porphyry, and Proclus developed it across four centuries of post-Plotinian philosophical work.
The Christian "Dionysian Celestial Hierarchy" organizes the angelic world into nine orders grouped in three triads:>First Triad: Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones>Second Triad: Dominions, Virtues, Powers>Third Triad: Principalities, Archangels, AngelsThis structure has no foundation in the Hebrew Bible or the New Testament. The Bible mentions Seraphim (Isaiah 6), Cherubim (Ezekiel 1, 10), and various other celestial beings scattered across different books, but it never organizes them into a triadic nine-fold hierarchy. No biblical text teaches the nine choirs. No pre-Dionysian Christian text teaches them either. The system is a direct adaptation of Proclus's threefold noetic hierarchy and the Iamblichean and Proclan elaboration of intermediate divine orders. Iamblichus, in his De Mysteriis, had already elaborated a hierarchical descent from gods through archangels, angels, daemons, heroes, archons, and souls. The Dionysian hierarchy compresses, renames, and baptizes this Iamblichean structure. The system is so visibly Iamblichean and Proclan that Western scholars of the Neoplatonic tradition since at least the nineteenth century have treated the Dionysian hierarchies as one of the primary means by which Iamblichean and Proclan theurgic metaphysics entered Christianity.
>"Proclus's theology organizes the intelligible realm into successive triads: the three henads, the three noetic triads, the three noetic-noeric triads, and the three purely noeric triads. This triadic architecture of intermediate divine orders is the structural source for the Dionysian angelic hierarchy, which reproduces the same nine-fold triadic structure under Christian names.">R.T. Wallis, Neoplatonism, Duckworth, 1972; reprinted Hackett, 1995, pp. 146-155; cf. Stephen Gersh, From Iamblichus to Eriugena, Brill, 1978The Dionysian 'Mystical Theology' is the foundational text of Christian apophatic or negative theology. Its doctrine: 'God is beyond all names, beyond all being, beyond all affirmation, and can be approached only through the systematic negation of all concepts and all language'. This teaching culminates in a famous passage describing the ascent into "the divine darkness" (theios gnophos), an ascent beyond even the negations themselves, into direct union with the Unknown.This doctrine is nowhere in the New Testament. Paul's "God who dwells in unapproachable light" (1 Timothy 6:16) comes closest, but it contains nothing of the developed negative metaphysics. The source is Proclus's Commentary on the Parmenides and his Platonic Theology, which develop the doctrine of the One as hyperousios (beyond being), knowable only through systematic negation, approached through the first hypothesis of the Platonic Parmenides. Plotinus, Porphyry, and especially Proclus developed this negative theology to describe the ineffable First Principle of the Neoplatonic system.>Plato, Parmenides: "The One is neither like nor unlike, neither same nor other... therefore the One is not.">Pseudo-Dionysius, De Mystica Theologia: "Neither word of it, nor name, nor knowledge, neither darkness nor light, neither error nor truth, nor is there any assertion of it at all."
>>18651015(have to expand on this post a bit directly)The Dionysian passage is a paraphrase of the second half of Plato's Parmenides through Proclus's commentary. The sequence of negations (nor word, nor name, nor knowledge, nor darkness, nor light) follows the Platonic series. The terminological structure (hyperousios, beyond being) is Proclan. The culmination in union with the Unknown beyond affirmation and negation is the standard Neoplatonic account of henosis, unity with the One. Nothing in this doctrine comes from Christian sources. Everything in it comes from the pagan philosophical tradition that Justinian had just shut down.The forger's method was systematic. He took the Neoplatonic system as developed by Proclus, preserved the metaphysical architecture intact, and substituted Christian names for the pagan technical terms. The substitution is visible throughout the corpus and follows a consistent pattern:>The One (τὸ Ἕν) becomes God or the Godhead (he thearchia).>The Good (τὸ Ἀγαθόν), Proclan first name of the One, becomes God as Good, opening chapter of Divine Names.>The gods (οἱ θεοί) and the henads (αἱ ἑνάδες), the Proclan intermediaries between the One and being, become the divine names by which God is known.>The Nous (ὁ Νοῦς) and its triadic orders become the ranks of celestial beings (Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones, etc.).>The daemons, archangels, angels, heroes, and souls of the Iamblichean hierarchy become the nine Christian angelic choirs.>Theurgy (θεουργία), the ritual technology of ascent developed by Iamblichus, becomes the sacramental hierarchy, the hierourgia, expounded in the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy.>Henosis (ἕνωσις), union with the One, becomes theosis, union with God, a term Proclus himself had used for the soul's deification.
The forger added a thin decorative overlay of Christian elements: references to Jesus Christ, occasional mentions of the sacraments, a few scriptural citations, and allusions to the bishop as the culminating figure of the earthly hierarchy. These additions are not integrated into the metaphysics. They are bolted on. The philosophical machinery runs perfectly well without them and frequently contradicts the expected Christian teaching.For example, the doctrine that evil has no substantial existence, imported directly from Proclus, undermines any strong Christian doctrine of the devil as a real adversarial personal being. The doctrine of the return of all things to God through hierarchical mediation has no room for the exclusive mediation of Christ. The mystical union described in the Mystical Theology is accomplished through negation and silence, not through faith in the crucifixion. The Christian decorative elements are precisely that: decorative. They paint a Christian surface over a structurally pagan Neoplatonic interior.Modern Christian scholars who have worked carefully with the corpus concede this point openly. The theology is not Christian in any substantive sense; it is a Neoplatonic metaphysics lightly draped in Christian terminology. The acceptance of the corpus in Byzantine and Latin Christianity required ignoring this fundamental mismatch. The theft did not stop at Proclus. Proclus himself was the culmination of a philosophical tradition that extended back through Iamblichus, Porphyry, Plotinus, and ultimately to Plato and Aristotle. Every layer of this tradition contributed to the Dionysian corpus, which means that when Christianity stole from Proclus, it simultaneously stole from every predecessor Proclus had synthesized.
Maximus the Confessor (c. 580-662 CE) elevated the Dionysian corpus to near-scriptural authority in the Byzantine East. His Ambigua and Questions to Thalassius provide extensive commentary on Dionysius, integrating the pseudonymous texts into the theological mainstream. Maximus genuinely believed Dionysius was the Athenian disciple of Paul. He did not know he was systematizing the thought of a pagan he had never heard of.John Scotus Eriugena (c. 815-877 CE) translated the Dionysian corpus into Latin at the request of Charles the Bald (lmao at the name). His own massive theological work, Periphyseon (On the Division of Nature), is so saturated with Dionysian metaphysics that large portions are essentially Proclan philosophy at two removes: Proclus through Dionysius through Eriugena. Eriugena's doctrine of the procession of all things from and return to God, his apophatic theology, and his hierarchical ontology are all Proclan in structure.The Dominican master Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) cites "Dionysius" 1,702 times in the Summa Theologiae, ranking him immediately after Augustine as the most-cited authority after Scripture. The entire Thomistic doctrine of divine names, analogical predication, the angelic hierarchies, and the sacramental economy rests on Dionysian foundations. Aquinas believed he was engaging with a disciple of Paul. He was engaging with Proclus. Every Catholic seminarian since the thirteenth century has been trained in a metaphysical system whose structural backbone is the work of a pagan philosopher whose school the Catholic Church had worked three centuries to destroy. The irony is total.
Meister Eckhart (c. 1260-1328) built his German mystical theology on Dionysian apophatic foundations. His doctrine of the Godhead (Gottheit) beyond God, his description of the soul's spark (Seelenfünklein) that is identical with God, his negative theology of divine darkness, are all Dionysian and therefore Proclan. Eckhart was condemned by papal bull in 1329 for teachings that were, in their structural logic, more faithful to the Neoplatonic source than to orthodox Catholic theology. The Rhineland mystical tradition (Eckhart, Tauler, Suso) and later the anonymous author of the Theologia Germanica continued this Dionysian legacy, which is to say, they continued to work out the logical implications of a pagan Neoplatonic system that had been smuggled into Christianity under a false apostolic name.The anonymous fourteenth-century English mystical treatise The Cloud of Unknowing is a direct popularization of the Dionysian Mystical Theology, as its author explicitly acknowledges by referring to Dionysius throughout. Its central teaching, that God is approached through an active unknowing, a "cloud" of divine darkness into which the intellect must enter through the abandonment of all concepts, is Proclus transmitted through Dionysius in English spiritual costume.John of the Cross (1542-1591), the Spanish Carmelite mystic, developed the doctrine of the dark night of the soul from the Dionysian theios gnophos. His Ascent of Mount Carmel and Dark Night of the Soul apply the Dionysian apophatic framework to the concrete stages of the contemplative life. The Carmelite mystical tradition, which forms the backbone of later Catholic spirituality, is Dionysian and therefore Proclan. The most celebrated Christian mystic of the early modern period is working with a metaphysical framework stolen from a pagan philosopher fifteen hundred years earlier.
By the late nineteenth century, the weight of philological evidence had become impossible for the Catholic Church to deny. The work of Koch and Stiglmayr in 1895 was followed by further studies throughout the twentieth century, all of which confirmed the pseudonymity of the corpus and its direct dependence on Proclus. The Catholic Church's response was characteristic: it quietly conceded the pseudonymity while continuing to treat the corpus as theologically authoritative. The Catholic Encyclopedia of 1909 already acknowledged the forgery; the New Catholic Encyclopedia of 1967 reaffirmed it; every modern Catholic reference work classifies the author as "Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite" or "Ps.-Dionysius.">"The writings which have come down to us under the name of Dionysius the Areopagite are now universally admitted to be the work of an unknown author of the late fifth or early sixth century, heavily dependent on the Neoplatonic school of Proclus. The traditional attribution to the disciple of Paul is without historical foundation." - The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd ed., edited by F.L. Cross and E.A. Livingstone, Oxford University Press, 1997, p. 484The admission is made in reference works. It is not preached from pulpits. The average Christian believer, in any of the three major branches (Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant), does not know that the mystical theology of his tradition was authored by an anonymous forger pretending to be an apostolic disciple. He does not know that the angelic hierarchy he was taught as a child was designed by a pagan philosopher. He does not know that the sacramental theology that underlies his tradition's ritual life is Iamblichean theurgy (pagan) in disguise.
>>18647726What's an Abrahamist? I'm a Christian.
>>18651459You are Abrahamist if you believe in Abrahamic scripture. Christian, Catholic, Muslim, Jew etc.
>>18649057>Neoplatonism existed for centuries before the Semitic New Testament, This is in no way true. Neoplatonism postdates the gospels by a hundred years at minimum. Middle Platonism existed, neo-Pythagorianism existed (and it gave rise to Jesus' pagan parallel Apollonius of Tyana), and I think there were a few other schools around. But Neoplatonism is from the third century.
>>18651769Meant Platonism, not Neoplatonism. Sorry mistyped>Middle Platonism existed, neo-Pythagorianism existed (and it gave rise to Jesus' pagan parallel Apollonius of Tyana), and I think there were a few other schools around. But Neoplatonism is from the third centuryYes, carrying on the philosophy of Plato, who started it all in 5th and 4th century BCE. There were also schools of Cynicism, Atomism, and that's also the time period when people were first learning the art of Sophistry
>>18651459Term the street shitting Jeet uses when it wants to seethe about Christianity or Islam (not Judaism, though. PHUL SAPORT, SAAAAAR).
>>18651793Because Judaism actually makes sense and isn't totally bugman unlike the latter religions?
>>18651795>Judaism makes senseRabbis arguing with God and winning really convinced you?
>>18651793>The Frenchman who coined the term Abrahamic in the 1800s and every single scholar today are all ackshually le Indians
>invent deity in your own writing>put it on scrolls>spread the scrolls around>uneducated idiots are convinced to believe in what's written on the scrolls>the authors "verified" that it's all true
>>18651793Judaism is Abrahamic you retard
>>18651810>I have zero reading comprehension, saarWe know, Sukhdeep
>>18651812I denounce Vishnu, now denounce Yahweg to prove you aren’t jewed
Is this the new Abrahamic cope? To pretend like anybody who notices their Semitic ugliness is a Indian?
https://templeofzeus.org/ChristianMysticismProclusTheft.phpI see
