The Incarnation IS Liberalism
THE INCARNATION IS LIBERALISM
A Sermon on Protestant Christianity and Politics
Text: Galations 2.11-14; 3.2
The dialectic of law and grace, as responses of “God” to human sinfulness, is formulated and dealt with decisively in Paul’s rebuke of Peter for insufficiently separating the new gospel from the Jewish law, represented by circumcision. “If you, being a Jew, live in the manner of Gentiles and not a s Jews, why do you compel Gentiles to live as Jews?” They are bound to “obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed among you as crucified.” Paul’s charge that Peter’s vacillation ruptures that bond is conclusive. If he does not compromise his Judaism to join them in Christ, they cannot be called upon to compromise their law to join with him in Christ. As if to drive this point home as essence of the bond in Christ, he demands: “This only I want to learn from you: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?”
The psychosemiotic effect of this definitive splitting is to redefine “sin” in a way that is entirely independent of breaking “God’s law (Jewish)”; as well as redefining “God”, through the Spirit “heard by faith”. In psychosemiotic categories, the word “God” is used in English for the Completing Totality, textually landmarked by The Bible, Greek, Roman, Medieval philosophers and theologians, and the Reformation (splitting of Protestantism from Catholic and Orthodox Christianity). This was a repetition of Paul’s “liberalism”, this time liberating the Gospel message from the Pope’s emissaries (“by grace through faith” (Luther) removes the need for priestly mediation between man and God).
The metaphysical difference between Paul’s theology and that of the Jews is made explicit in the doctrine of the Trinity (1 John 5.7,8). Incarnation theology rejects ‘Monotheism’ as false text of the God-idea. The conception of a One external totality, even rationalized in Greek Aristotelian philosophy as “Uncreated Creator”, has two principle defects as text for totality completing itself in Incarnation. First, it subjects the religious position of individual consciousness to rational critique – already (by 1800) carried out by Kant, who assigned classical monothisn the status of transcendental illusion. And, second, it takes “faith” conceptually, rather than as a historical (lived) existential-esoteric datum (intrinsic to the functioning of three brain beings), as detailed in Hebrews 11. The conceptualized, philosophical version of faith, as opposed to the lived existential thread, is common to religions not bonding members through the Incarnation. With it (Incarnation) comes transpersonal (Archetypal, Symbolic Token) content, personal appropriation of which requires ‘commitment’, not just intellectual assent to propositions.
By 1800, the principle of grace over law, “for which he died”, had become the shared historical existential base of the America. The language and institutions organized by traditional liberal Protestant politics has been most true to itself when it has ‘liberated” discourse pertaining to equitable rule of law from sectarian, ‘confessional’ sign-use. It has been spared the need to inject and defend its name and trappings in the public political arena.
The philosophical principle of splitting political from religious discourse was sealed, geopolitically, by the 30 years war, bloodiest in European history. The Treaty of Westphalia ruled out references to The Holy See etc. in unified national discourse (as, in fact, the United Nations cannot fly under a particular flag or religious belief, for which reason the Chairmanship revolves through all alike. Westphalia put Roman Catholicism in its psychosemiotic place. The grammar of collective discourse in France and America became tokenized by: Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité – Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.
This was a Spirit of Revolution; of an Age; existentially bridging the great leap of 17th-18th century scientific advances bringing Descartes, John Locke, David Hume, Kant …with the philosophy of Hegel. Georg Frederik Wilhelm Hegel’s follow-up of Kant unresolved dinge an sich metaphysics was Old Testament historical – in style. But Christian in content as the rising energy of the new age, beginning to awaken 1500 years after the Incarnation, was Third Person of the Trinity coming in. The cultural, even biological sweep of human history was culminating, even as he spoke (=>first philosopher to address mass audiences), as a Post-Divine rising of consciously disposable energy. The music of Wagner was soon to follow; then World War I, the Nazis, and WWII—Israel. Hegel’s philosophy of History was like Classical Christianity playing its last card, after the ancient Monotheistic conception was replaced by the Incarnation, and the effects of that event spread on earth. It itself, however, was over-rationalized, provoking the existential reaction of Kierkeggard to once more “liberate” the Christian message from dogma, this time philosophical.
The political system based on identity politics, with made-for-TV garbs, vestures, codes endlessly paraded, commenting on this and that, and on each others comments,
is geared exactly to bring about regression to the older “Monotheistic”, law-based collectivity. The TV generation cultures externalize everything else; now they want to collectively externalize the old pre-Incarnation God idea, hiding the inferiority of their regressive position of consciousness behind the good will of Liberals.
A Sermon on Protestant Christianity and Politics
Text: Galations 2.11-14; 3.2
The dialectic of law and grace, as responses of “God” to human sinfulness, is formulated and dealt with decisively in Paul’s rebuke of Peter for insufficiently separating the new gospel from the Jewish law, represented by circumcision. “If you, being a Jew, live in the manner of Gentiles and not a s Jews, why do you compel Gentiles to live as Jews?” They are bound to “obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed among you as crucified.” Paul’s charge that Peter’s vacillation ruptures that bond is conclusive. If he does not compromise his Judaism to join them in Christ, they cannot be called upon to compromise their law to join with him in Christ. As if to drive this point home as essence of the bond in Christ, he demands: “This only I want to learn from you: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?”
The psychosemiotic effect of this definitive splitting is to redefine “sin” in a way that is entirely independent of breaking “God’s law (Jewish)”; as well as redefining “God”, through the Spirit “heard by faith”. In psychosemiotic categories, the word “God” is used in English for the Completing Totality, textually landmarked by The Bible, Greek, Roman, Medieval philosophers and theologians, and the Reformation (splitting of Protestantism from Catholic and Orthodox Christianity). This was a repetition of Paul’s “liberalism”, this time liberating the Gospel message from the Pope’s emissaries (“by grace through faith” (Luther) removes the need for priestly mediation between man and God).
The metaphysical difference between Paul’s theology and that of the Jews is made explicit in the doctrine of the Trinity (1 John 5.7,8). Incarnation theology rejects ‘Monotheism’ as false text of the God-idea. The conception of a One external totality, even rationalized in Greek Aristotelian philosophy as “Uncreated Creator”, has two principle defects as text for totality completing itself in Incarnation. First, it subjects the religious position of individual consciousness to rational critique – already (by 1800) carried out by Kant, who assigned classical monothisn the status of transcendental illusion. And, second, it takes “faith” conceptually, rather than as a historical (lived) existential-esoteric datum (intrinsic to the functioning of three brain beings), as detailed in Hebrews 11. The conceptualized, philosophical version of faith, as opposed to the lived existential thread, is common to religions not bonding members through the Incarnation. With it (Incarnation) comes transpersonal (Archetypal, Symbolic Token) content, personal appropriation of which requires ‘commitment’, not just intellectual assent to propositions.
By 1800, the principle of grace over law, “for which he died”, had become the shared historical existential base of the America. The language and institutions organized by traditional liberal Protestant politics has been most true to itself when it has ‘liberated” discourse pertaining to equitable rule of law from sectarian, ‘confessional’ sign-use. It has been spared the need to inject and defend its name and trappings in the public political arena.
The philosophical principle of splitting political from religious discourse was sealed, geopolitically, by the 30 years war, bloodiest in European history. The Treaty of Westphalia ruled out references to The Holy See etc. in unified national discourse (as, in fact, the United Nations cannot fly under a particular flag or religious belief, for which reason the Chairmanship revolves through all alike. Westphalia put Roman Catholicism in its psychosemiotic place. The grammar of collective discourse in France and America became tokenized by: Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité – Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.
This was a Spirit of Revolution; of an Age; existentially bridging the great leap of 17th-18th century scientific advances bringing Descartes, John Locke, David Hume, Kant …with the philosophy of Hegel. Georg Frederik Wilhelm Hegel’s follow-up of Kant unresolved dinge an sich metaphysics was Old Testament historical – in style. But Christian in content as the rising energy of the new age, beginning to awaken 1500 years after the Incarnation, was Third Person of the Trinity coming in. The cultural, even biological sweep of human history was culminating, even as he spoke (=>first philosopher to address mass audiences), as a Post-Divine rising of consciously disposable energy. The music of Wagner was soon to follow; then World War I, the Nazis, and WWII—Israel. Hegel’s philosophy of History was like Classical Christianity playing its last card, after the ancient Monotheistic conception was replaced by the Incarnation, and the effects of that event spread on earth. It itself, however, was over-rationalized, provoking the existential reaction of Kierkeggard to once more “liberate” the Christian message from dogma, this time philosophical.
The political system based on identity politics, with made-for-TV garbs, vestures, codes endlessly paraded, commenting on this and that, and on each others comments,
is geared exactly to bring about regression to the older “Monotheistic”, law-based collectivity. The TV generation cultures externalize everything else; now they want to collectively externalize the old pre-Incarnation God idea, hiding the inferiority of their regressive position of consciousness behind the good will of Liberals.
posted by Sid Thomas | 10:48 PM
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