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>>40992615
Previous thread >>40918860

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Meister Eckhart's diagram

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>>40992615
>"Martinello, come out!".

Please pray for me to get a wife soon.

>>40992646
That's Let's Talk Religion guy should really learn more about Christianity
The Diagram is mostly correct but Eckhart also participates in the greater Christian tradition and sees himself as Orthodox, so the Trinity is part of the Ground, the inner boiling is God's first creation of the Forms (his Being, Goodness, etc...) and then yeah after that creation, and it will then return to God
>>40992776
I will pray for you, these are difficult times

>>40992615
Videos on Gnosis, its various types (SPG, UPG & VPG) and Gnosticism:

https://youtu.be/0F7knBtLsNs
https://youtu.be/260L-DEZVQ0
https://youtu.be/diHf_Tup6tE

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https://www.cbc.ca/radio/tapestry/not-doing-religion-by-the-book-1.4547318/jesus-christ-is-my-chief-druid-meet-the-anglican-priest-who-is-also-a-pagan-1.4549100
https://humansandnature.org/whether-a-christian-animism/
https://www.christiananimism.com/resources/books-and-more/
https://sacramentalwhine.libsyn.com/christian-animism-and-bridge-building-with-shawn-sanford-beck
https://kentuckwitch.tumblr.com/post/173351874154/pentacostal-animismglosollalia-falling-out-in
https://lausanne.org/global-analysis/why-pentecostalism-has-succeeded-among-animists

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghHseZfuuz4

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>>40993286
hmm

Please keep making these threads even if it's just a couple of people using them

>>40993087
Thank you very much Anon.
I'm American but I might look for a wife in Eastern Europe or Russia. But I'll need to make lots of money for that to be practical

redpill me on that thing about bees

>>40993302
Honestly there's nothing to synctetize, Christianity already has subsumed most if not all forms of european paganism, what was good stayed, what wasn't was discarded
And Pentecostalism is just the white version of those Caribbean Afro-Catholic religions, Christianity mixed with superstition
>>40993311
Ah yes metaphysics mike, what a lad, I hope he reads the Church Fathers someday and realizes that Divine multiplicity in early Christianity was even more extreme, in the end Unitarianism is just the Islamization of Christianity
>>40993335
Sure
>>40993381
Romanticization of the past isn't about the past in itself, it's a symbol for the desire to return to the Pre-Fall state, that was the Medieval Age of Chivalry, it was always something set in the past, never the present, with that in mind we can say that Adam was the first Knight and Eve the first Lady
>>40993552
Don't believe those people who say eastern europe is more authentic, they spend decades under hard secularization during the communism, today they're all mostly pessimistic and only care about money, like those guys who marry old western women to get visas to live and work in the west just for more cash, whereas on the other hand you can find Americans who are happy and joyful and positive, believe in God and act on it, speaking from personal experiences with both sides of "the west"

>>40995404
>Christianity already has subsumed most if not all forms of european paganism
Animism is infinitely more profound and accurate than Nerdoplatonism. Mixing Christian revelation with Greek Theology leaves us with a distorted and syncretized conception of God.

>reads Church Fathers
>realizes that Divine multiplicity in early Christianity was even more extreme
Exactly. That's what the linked video is about.

>>40995443
>Mixing Christian revelation with Greek Theology leaves us with a distorted and syncretized conception of God.
Why?
Also Animisim is just a made up category from the 1800s, what's it supposed to be? The believe that nature is alive? That's the most normal Christian prosition, plants are alive, they're just on the bottom rung of lifeforms.
If it's supposed to be that there are spirits in everything? Again that's already Christian, Jakob Böhme says everything has an angel behind it
>Exactly. That's what the linked video is about.
I know that he's going to talk about the Trinity and how originally it was subordinationist before Nicaea, but I don't mean that, I also mean the Church and the Seven Spirits of God as part of God, how Christian and the Cross are one, etc...
He does have some good critiques but those are problems only if you see Orthodoxy as some rigid system that has to be written in stone in the first Century, Christianity was a persecuted minority religion, it's a miracle how we even have the material we have from the 1st-3rd centuries, in the beginning Christians used Angelomorphic Christology and Pneumatology, with time and through competition with Neoplatonism and inner Critique, the Trinity was developed, that's it, Ousia, Hypostatis, Person, Substance, etc... are just the limited terms we have to use to explain it

It feels like animism acknowledges the relational and personal nature of reality, where everything is inherently alive in its own way. Neoplatonism, by reducing God to something abstract or even impersonal, can make God more of an object or a principle than a living subject. When you think of God as the One, a kind of perfect, unchanging essence, it’s easy to lose sight of God as a living, interacting person who cares for the world in a deeply personal way.

Animism, on the other hand, treats every part of reality as somehow "alive" or "animated" by spirit. There’s a relational quality to the way the world is understood in animistic terms, where even plants and animals are considered to have their own agency, intentions, or spirit. This idea feels more in line with Christianity’s personal God, who is not just a philosophical principle but an active and personal presence in every aspect of creation. It also preserves the notion that creation itself is alive, purposeful, and imbued with divine intent.

Neoplatonism’s abstract, hierarchical view of God might seem to depersonalize the relationship we could have with the divine, reducing God to an idea or an emanating source of being rather than a personal, loving Creator. When you take that out of the equation, it’s like turning the divine into a "force" or "law" of the universe rather than a relational, subject-to-subject interaction.

>>40995555
Quads
Again Neoplatonism is more than just The One, Aristotle wrote about Vegetative and Animal souls, and Thales of Miletus is said to have said that everything is full of Gods
Second, this is ceg not neoplatonism general, what's important is Christianity, it's "sources", Judaism and Pagan Wisdom, are secondary, Christianity overwrites anything those two say

Can someone explain the Gnosticism and Christianity connection?

Is the Demiurge the God of the old abrahamic religions and is Lucifer the story of Sophia, trying to bring light and wisdom to unshackle ourselves from the false God (Demiurge)? Is the One, the Monad, the highest authority that's not accessible to us in this prison planet due to the Demiurge actually NOT the God of abrahamic religions? Is it purposefully twisted in these religions? I have a lot of confusion with this, because Christianity for example immediately went on a war path with Gnosticism and declared it heresy. Why? Why not absorb it and build on it?

Bonus question: Is the advent of AI, the ultimate pinnacle of scientific achievement, the final Warden of this prison and the ultimate goal to sever our divine spark to the Monad?

>>40996040
>Can someone explain the Gnosticism and Christianity connection?
Sure
Gnosticism originated as a Christian heresy from Simon Magus, but what we call Gnosticism today is a misumash of various different Gnostic groups, the OT God being the Demiurge is something that appears in Marcionism, Valentinianism and Sethianism, and in Valentinianism the Demiurge is not a malevolent figure, besides that, Marcionism doesn't even have a Sophia figure or any sort of elaborate cosmology like the Sethians or Valentinians
>I have a lot of confusion with this, because Christianity for example immediately went on a war path with Gnosticism and declared it heresy. Why? Why not absorb it and build on it?
The reason Christianity didn't absorb Gnosticism is because many Gnostic ideas originate from Christianity (and Second Temple Judaism), like there being two Adams, the Seven Angels, Satan being the ruler of this world, the descent of the Messiah through the heavens, Sophia comes from the Old Testament, the Early Church saw themselves as Prophets who had received the Holy Spirit, for Origen God created souls which fell into matter, some became Angels, some demons, with us in-between, so there was nothing worthwhile to "adopt" that wasn't already part of the religion
>Bonus question
AI is a bit overrated to be quite honest

>>40995404
>Christianity already has subsumed most if not all forms of european paganism, what was good stayed, what wasn't was discarded
Can I help you guys out here?
This theory is absolutely incorrect and the nuance is very important to understand. If you're going to do this, you need Perennial Philosophy or Prisca Theologia. Christianity borrowed from exactly the same nexus of ancient ideas that all of those "forms of european paganism" came from.
This incessant need to assign ownership to everything is distracting from you noticing that they all have common themes and the idea isn't to find out their origin necessarily, but to better understand their intersections.
Jesus is Dionysus-Zagreus-Serapis, anon. Jesus is Sol-Re-Apollo, anon. He's Tammuz-Oannes-Quetzalcoatl and he's also Odin-Osiris-Shiva. I really have to stress as much as I possibly can through text that you're not analyzing the origins of each of these subjects, you're just highlighting the logic embedded in the codebase. This is like discovering what language a hidden message is written in but not realizing what the message is. It's good that you can see what the different characters are and how they can fit together, but I need you to also understand the overall idea too.

>>40995404
>Don't believe those people who say eastern europe is more authentic, they spend decades under hard secularization during the communism, today they're all mostly pessimistic and only care about money, like those guys who marry old western women to get visas to live and work in the west just for more cash, whereas on the other hand you can find Americans who are happy and joyful and positive, believe in God and act on it, speaking from personal experiences with both sides of "the west"

Thank you for the advice

>>40992615
Why is Jesus shown as a pregnant man? Trans Jesus?

>>40996225
Sorry but I prefer my viewpoint where Christianity is primary and everything else is below it

>>40996460
What I'm explaining doesn't undermine this idea, but enhances it, for what it's worth.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-l5-yEt1fY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Msp8u01jipc

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LMAO I just realized it was JOHN MILBANK that made this viral post

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

>>40998274
This marks the rise in popularity of Christian Esotericism to the masses
-
-
-
Jean-Marc Vivenza is a French musician and esotericist interested in Buddhism, Guenonian Traditionalism and the french theosophical tradition, so Böhme as a foundation with Saint-Martin, De Maistre and Willermoz, and since he wrote about De Maistre and seems to be interested in Evola, he's probably far right as well, though I am not a fan of that term, Third-Positionism is better but then no one will know what you're talking about

>>40998773
Oops, forgot the links
https://fr.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Marc_Vivenza
And his books
https://www.amazon.fr/Martinisme-Enseignement-ma%C3%AEtres-Jean-Marc-Vivenza/dp/2913826709
Sadly nothing in english it seems, but the more i look into this the more I believe the "Christian Revival" will begin in Central Europe, anywhere from France to Poland

>>40998781
Thank you for the links!

Aleister Crowley and Gerald Gardner were pompous sexual predators who should burn in Hell, and I deeply regret dedicated so much time and energy to Thelema and other bullshit oc-cults of personality, however I do believe magic is real and I want to use these powers for the pursuit of wisdom and goodness, otherwise it was all for nothing ;( What do you recommend? Breadpill me on Christ-ian magic

And please please PLEASE don't recommend me Howlings From The Pit and other larpy nonsense, I don't want to larp as a medieval wizard threatening demons with divine punishments, that's the exact opposite of my vibe

>>41000078
If you're intent on being a Christian mage then uh... maybe Dion Fortune?

Tauler was enlightened by God, yet you don’t read his writings? Weird.

>>41000078
The truth about magic is that everyone thinks it's the path when it's actually the result of the path, and the real path is contemplation
https://www.academia.edu/1170523/Better_than_Magic_Cornelius_Agrippa_and_Lazzarellian_Hermetism_2009_
https://www.academia.edu/12529750/Heinrich_Cornelius_Agrippa_2015_
Please read these two articles
>>41000508
We do

>>41000712
Yet you don't love God like he did. Is that it?

>>41000786
I love God as much as i can
Also your questions are loaded, i can do the same
You still sell drugs and beat homeless people on the street, right?

>>41000922
What does it mean for a question to be loaded? That it's biased? I let Tauler illuminate my soul, so no, I don't sell drugs or beat homeless people.

>>41000960
Loaded questions are questions that presuppose something, true or not, you can use that to scandalize someone, or to miss interpreted their stance, build a strawman that way

>>41001038
Are you enlightened?

>>41001245
I don't claim anything of that kind

>>41000712
>Shitty clickbait site that requires registration

Lol no go farm data somewhere else please

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

>>41001320
But do you know how to get there by any chance? I would be interested.

>>41001877
Just scroll down to read the stuff
>>41001951
Prayer

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8AWsCFPks4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cyw89HeeRE

>>41002004
I like how Michael is turning far-right
>>41002165
Good thoughts, sadly too short
New Atheists have a simplistic idea of religion, partly derived from fundamentalists, and partly from wanting to have an easy target, like when they say the Bible has a talking snake in it to discredit, as if we needed the industrial revolution to notice that snakes in real life don't talk, it's weird how they never have these critiques for the vision of Ezekiel, if they were to criticize the angels with animal faces, people would notice that maybe there's a message behind the symbolism and that it's not to be taken literally, they just criticize Genesis because it's an easy target, take the part of the Bible full of mysteries which developed into Maaseh Bereshit, take that out of context and critique it compared to modern cosmology, as if in medieval times they didn't develop alternative cosmologies as well, but instead respecting Revelation instead of critiquing it

Looks like there are four simultaneous Christian-themed threads on /x/ at the moment. Far out.

Judaism and Christianity are fatally flawed.

>>40996326
congrats you're either retarded or jewish or both.

>>41002647
Soon we will dominate /x/ and then we will spread to /lit/ and /his/

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>>41003119
Don't forget /pol/.

>>40992615
https://archive.org/details/seatofwisdomessa0000bouy/page/n8/mode/1up
Book on Catholic Sophiology, Louis Bouyer was a French Priest and he was influenced by Sergei Bulgakov, they met ij Paris

>>41003359
Cool!

>>40995555
You're speaking out of complete ignorance.

>>40996225
Worry less about names and classifications and more about salvation through the Christ in your heart.

>>40998773
Anyone mired in "political philosophy" is ngmi. Turn away from the manifold and toward the One.

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>>41004234

>>40995597
You're right that Neoplatonism is more than just the concept of the One and you're also right that there are strands within classical philosophy, like Aristotle or even Thales, that touch on soul and spirit in nuanced ways. That said, Aristotle isn’t Neoplatonic.

The main issue with Neoplatonism is its impersonal conception of God. However sophisticated its metaphysics may be, reducing the divine to an abstract principle or emanating source distances it from the relational and personal nature of God as revealed in Christianity.

>>40995543
>Again that's already Christian, Jakob Böhme says everything has an angel behind it
I agree that Christianity recognizes life in nature, and Jakob Böhme’s idea that everything has an angel behind it resonates closely with animistic thought. In that sense, his view could be seen as a Christian form of animism.

That said, my point about mixing Christian revelation with Greek theology is about how blending these frameworks can sometimes dilute the personal, relational nature of God in Christianity, shaping our understanding in ways that aren’t always faithful to the biblical portrayal.

>>40995543
>He does have some good critiques but those are problems only if you see Orthodoxy as some rigid system
Regarding Metaphysics Mike’s video, his main point highlights how throughout Christian history, terms like ousia and hypostasis were used interchangeably, not with the rigid technical distinctions that modern Trinitarian orthodoxy demands. The doctrine of one ousia in three hypostases is a later theological construction that lacks explicit biblical support and does not reflect how early Christians understood these concepts.

I reject the current orthodox understanding of the trinity as a distortion of the original faith. While I believe in divine multiplicity and recognize that the Greeks intuited something profound, I do not believe this corresponds to the orthodox trinity. Rather, I see Christ as "god" only in the sense that Moses, the Davidic kings, or judges were called "gods", that is, as divinely appointed representatives or agents, not as ontologically equal to the Father.

The concept of Hebrew complex monotheism may hold an important piece of the puzzle. Reading the Bible through a trinitarian lens often obscures its meaning and requires a lot of mental backflips compared to other early Christian views, such as dynamic monarchianism, which seem much closer to the scriptural witness.

>>41004264
You say "turn away from the manifold and toward the One," which reminds me of the line from the Chandogya Upanishad 6.2.3: tad ekam asyat bahu syam, "That One became many." When I think of that line, I think about God seeing the world and seeing that it was good. The one became many. It’s a done deal, and the One became many for a reason.

From a Christian perspective, God is One but also relational and personal. The manifold is not a distraction or a failure but a meaningful unfolding of divine life and love. The richness of creation and the plurality within unity reflect God's creative purpose, not something to turn away from.

True wisdom isn't found in escaping the complexity of the manifold but in recognizing how the One manifests in and through it.

>>40948327
It’s crucial to distinguish genuine revelation from human attempts to approximate the divine through Greek religious ideas. Yes, Clement of Alexandria and Justin Martyr engaged Greek theological concepts to highlight aspects of truth. But they never elevated these ideas to the level of Scripture. Calling Greek religious dogmas a "Second Old Testament" is poetic rhetoric, not doctrinal foundation.

Greek religious ideas can serve as a bridge, but they are never the source or authority. Equating the Platonic One with the Christian God erases the personal nature of God revealed in Scripture.

Your reliance on Dionysius the Areopagite’s synthesis is exactly the problem. It conflates Christian revelation with Neoplatonic metaphysics in ways the early Church did not universally accept. Dionysius’s writings are speculative, not apostolic teaching.

Transcendence and immanence are revealed truths about God's nature. He is both beyond creation and intimately present within it because He freely chooses to be, not because these concepts fit Platonic categories.

Christian faith demands fidelity to God's self-disclosure in Scripture above all else. When speculative ideas conflict with that revelation, speculation must give way. Otherwise, doctrine becomes shifting sand, no longer anchored in the living God who speaks, acts, and redeems.

>>41004253
No need to issue thought termination rhetoric. Your religion does not have to unravel just because some aspects of it are in question. You're perfectly welcome to practice Spirituality in any way that you please despite what any annoying faggot begs you to stop doing or saying.
>>41004610
>Aristotle isn’t Neoplatonic
I'd venture to suggest that Neoplatonism began with Plotinus.
>personal nature of God
Neoplatonism doesn't not service it though. Plato's big thing is the derivation of our subjective experience being a direct experience of the Divine manifest through human form - a foundational concept that informed practically all Metaphysics from thereon. Just because Neoplatonism offered a fundamental explanation doesn't mean those it inspired didn't create what you're describing due to the initial writers in the genre.
>>41004659
Some Protestants still retain a sense of Animism today. Although they try to antagonize said "spirits", they often deem supposedly "evil" objects or locations as "demonic" or "spirited". The Amish frequently do this, for example.
Animism is actually very popular. It seems to be some sort of foundational principal many different systems have adopted over the millennia. It makes you wonder where it really came from.

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Reminder to seek out your nearest exorcist, should you experience any supernatural activity or demonic manifestation.

I believe there's a connection between (psuedo)-intellectualism and lust. It was revealed to me that a lot of my vain intellectual pursuits were, among other things, veiling my lust. However, below the abstinence from watching porn and masturbation, I still have the desire to. And according to Saint Aquinas, it's actually worse to have these desires than it is to fornicate because they're more unnatural. Please pray for me.

>>41004610
>The main issue with Neoplatonism is its impersonal conception of God.
Divinity has both personal and impersonal aspects. The ground of being is ineffable, and there is no point in pretending otherwise. Jesus Christ is the fathomable, personal, human manifestation of the loving and salvific energy that flows forth from this unfathomable source of all being. This is precisely what the Good News is.

>>41004820
>The manifold is not a distraction or a failure but a meaningful unfolding of divine life and love.
Yes, but the meaning comes from the One, not the Many. The purpose of the Many is to individuate new perspectives. A little goes a long way. The mistake is in continuing to dig after reaching bedrock. At some point the raw individuative work is finished and it's time to turn back to the One who sublates the life-art to heavenly wholeness and completion.

>>41007770
What you're describing isn't Christian revelation; it's a repackaging of Neoplatonic metaphysics with Christian language layered on top. In that framework, the divine begins as impersonal and only becomes personal at some lower level. That’s the exact move Christianity rejects.

In Christian theology, God is personal not as an afterthought or emanation, but at the very core. Whether one holds a Unitarian or Trinitarian view, God's will, love, and self-disclosure are not downstream from an ineffable essence. They are fundamental.

The Good News is not that the impersonal becomes relatable. It is that the personal God initiates, speaks, covenants, and redeems, not as a symbolic face of something more real, but as the real itself.

>>41007800
If meaning comes only from the One and not the Many, then creation itself becomes meaningless. But in Christian thought, creation is not just a temporary individuation experiment. It is very good and charged with lasting significance.

The idea that "a little goes a long way" may work for certain speculative systems, but it is alien to the biblical narrative. God doesn't create the world just to have it undone, and He doesn't call human life a side quest that must be transcended once we've dug to bedrock.

In Christianity, the goal isn't to dissolve into the One but to be transformed in communion. Not erased, but fulfilled. The manifold isn't an illusion or a mistake. It is the stage on which divine love plays out in time, history, and relationship. That doesn't get sublated. That gets redeemed.

>>41004610
Yeah that's why we are Christians and not Platonists
>>41004659
Well the Church Fathers thought it was faithful
>>41004756
Yes the trinity, as in the theological concept which uses those exact terms to be described, is from the Post-Nicene period, before that the terminology was more fluid
As for your Adoptionist Christology, can you go more in depth in what you believe?
>>41004915
It's not rhetoric, the Logos manifested himself before the first Century AD to mankind, what is true in Philosophy is true, and as converted Pagans, we use our traditions to read the Prophets
>>41005145
Neoplatonism is a scholarly term, it never really existed, they saw themselves as Platonists and usually Ammonius Saccas is considered the first as he was the teacher if Plotinus
Animism is also a made up term, and every culture ever believed in the presence of spirits in things, besides modern man, folk Christianity is full of it

>>41007868
The Logos is foundational to Christian faith, yet recognizing its significance does not mean equating Christian revelation with Greek theological speculation or uncritically adopting its frameworks.

Christian teaching affirms that God uses human cultures and languages to communicate truth, but the authority of Scripture and apostolic witness stands above any human tradition, including Greek theological concepts.

While early Christians engaged Greek theological ideas to articulate their faith, these ideas serve as interpretive tools, not as sources equal to divine revelation.

Employing concepts from converted Greek theological traditions to understand the Prophets can be helpful, but it must never override the primacy of Scripture or obscure the personal, relational nature of God revealed in the Bible.

Truth found in Greek theology may sometimes align with revelation, but it is not automatically authoritative. Christian faith requires discernment, embracing what accords with Scripture and setting aside what contradicts it.

>>41007900
What do you believe about the Logos, the Holy Spirit and the Wisdom of God?
And what are the 7 Spirits of God that are the 7 Eyes of the Lamb in Revelation?

>>41007868
You’re right that the formal terminology of the Trinity developed and was refined in the Post-Nicene period, reflecting the Church’s effort to clarify doctrine in response to various theological challenges. Before that, language and conceptual frameworks were indeed more fluid as the early Christians wrestled with how best to articulate the reality of God’s nature.

>can you go more in depth in what you believe?
I see Jesus as uniquely called and empowered by God, fully human and fully dedicated to God’s will, whose life and mission reveal God’s purposes for humanity. I believe that his relationship with God is deeply personal and central to salvation, though I interpret this relationship in a way that emphasizes his humanity and divine appointment rather than co-equality as expressed in Trinitarian doctrine.

>>41007828
>>41007838
Stop using AI as a generator of pilpul and polemic and respond in your own words.

Idolizing the human construct of "Christian theology" with all its imputed dogmas and doctrinal distinctions from other spiritual understandings does not lead to salvation. The great Christian mystics, like their counterparts, point to the wholeness of Spirit and the futility of names, labels, and human concepts in the knowing of God. God is not wedded to any particular human cultural tradition but is Lord of all.

https://neoplatonicphysicist.medium.com/thoughts-on-the-theology-of-margaret-barkers-the-book-of-revelation-da34b939d6bd

>>41007973
Margaret Barker’s work powerfully challenges the Deuteronomist portrayal of God as formless and utterly transcendent. In The Great Angel, she shows that early Israelite religion, especially in the First Temple period, included vivid depictions of God (El Elyon) as having form and presence, often enthroned in the divine council. This older theology also featured a "Second God" figure, sometimes called the Son of God or the Great Angel, who was a visible manifestation of the divine.

The Deuteronomistic reformers, especially during Josiah’s reign, suppressed these traditions, eliminating temple imagery, divine embodiment, and any sense of a divine hierarchy. They emphasized a singular, formless YHWH who could not be seen or imaged (Deut. 4:12). But Barker argues this was a late revision, not the original faith.

In her view, both the Father God and the Son were originally understood to have form and glory, and this vision continued into early Christianity. The New Testament’s language of divine thrones, visions, and glory (e.g., Revelation, Hebrews) reflects continuity with the older Temple theology, not Deuteronomistic abstraction.

>>41008024
The connection between Moses and the Deuteronomists is mainly literary and theological. The Deuteronomists were a group of reformers and scribes around King Josiah’s time (7th century BCE) who wrote and edited the book of Deuteronomy and other historical books. They used Moses as their mouthpiece, presenting their religious reforms as if Moses himself was delivering them.

This gave their agenda ancient authority, especially centralizing worship in Jerusalem, banning idols and high places, and emphasizing a formless, unseen God. The “book of the law” found in the temple during Josiah’s reign (likely an early Deuteronomy) was the foundation for these reforms.

But this version of Moses is very different from earlier traditions where Moses had direct encounters with God’s visible presence and glory. The Deuteronomists removed those mystical elements, rewriting Israel’s theology to promote a strict, centralized, and imageless religion.

Margaret Barker sees this as a theological rewrite, using Moses’ name to promote a reformist agenda that suppressed Israel’s older, temple-based, mystical faith.

>>41008028
Worth noting....Margaret barkers theory holds water in a surprising amount of ways. The most potent of which, is that jesus was part of the same sect of religion as John the Baptist. This religion proposed a dual messianical theory. One messiah as the spiritual leader, one as the political. These are the elcesaites & essenes.
Its likely that John was the spiritual messiah and jesus was the political one.
This would also slot nicely into the dual god position Margaret brings up.

>>41008024
>>41008028
>>41008288
Barker is very interesting but the whole Deuteronomist angle smells like Islam

>>40992615
https://youtu.be/Kf3cYHSVxUE?si=RcpaOmxU0mH8kE5_
Khalil Andani on Jesus in Ismailism

>>41008013
Sounds like those Mahayana hagiographies

Has anybody read Judas and Jesus: Two Faces of a Single Revelation? I was recommended it and only have read a chapter so far. I didn't expect it to be a narrative/prose, so I'm unsure if Inwill finish it.

Most people think of Christ’s Second Coming only as a future event—Jesus returning visibly at the end of history. That’s true and central.

But Scripture also shows another dimension: the unveiling (apocalypse) is already happening.

2 Corinthians 3: the veil is lifted as we behold His glory.

Hebrews 4: God’s Word exposes the heart now.

John 3: the Light is already revealing truth.

So judgment isn’t just later—it’s also the present confrontation with truth. For those who love the light, it’s glory. For those who hate it, it’s exposure. The final coming will be sudden and cosmic, but in a sense, it has already begun.

Full article here:
https://medium.com/@eliasrowanwrites/christs-second-coming-revelation-judgment-and-the-unveiling-of-truth-5a679b634476

>>41012519
Like with the creation account in Genesis, Revelations is in a sense "continuous", since the coming of Christ all of history has been leading up to the end of time and every great war or revolution or destruction is an image of the end
Besides that, Revelations also occurs within the soul

>>41013539

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>>41010903
It’s a bit refreshing to see actual Islamic apologetics that isn’t the stereotypically low IQ Salafism even though I’m not Muslim.

>>41014178
Oh yes, Islam has two billion members and it's as if not more diverse than Protestant Christianity when it comes to sects/denominations, so there's a diversity of opinion present that we aren't really used to seeing
Dr. Khalil Andani and Dr. Seyyed Hossein Nasr are the two smartest muslims i know when it comes to theology today, Andani even convinced me of Shia Islam's primacy, it seems that Sunnism is dependant on Shia tradition similarly to how Latin Christianity is dependant on Greek Christianity

Ismailism is Islam with a neo platonic sauce.