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Religion See other Religion Articles Title: Aristotle versus the Big Jew in the Sky Aristotle’s Prime Mover evokes motion, not some big Jew in the sky. The commonly accepted model of the beginning of our universe, often referred to as the “Big Bang,” suggests that it began between 15 and 18 billion years ago in an infinitely compact and singular state, enclosing a space even smaller than an atomic particle. If Aristotle were alive today, he would say the Prime Mover caused the Big Bang, not the tribal war god of ancient Israel. According to Aristotle the Prime Mover is the Prefect First Cause responsible for moving objects, which, in turn, move other objects: The Prime Mover is always at absolute rest, beyond time and space, motionless and changeless in perfection, omniscient and eternal, everywhere and nowhere. Aristotle perceived God through motion. To my knowledge, he never claimed he understood or spoke to God. He was no different than the rest of humanity, pathetic creatures trapped in time and space, really, having only intuitive awareness of the Unknowable. The conquests of Alexander, Aristotle’s pupil, brought Jews on the world stage. They brought with them, in contrast to the Prime Mover, Yahweh, the fiendish god of Jews, a kind of divine superiority soothing to their macerated egos because he chose them as his very own and set them above their betters, and they also brought with them their cunning in peddling their superstitions to cheat the unwary. In the centuries between Aristotle and Constantine, the horrible Jewish god was to "make folly of the wisdom of this world," thus negating all learning, all culture, and repudiating reason itself. Yahweh and the radicals of an initially obscure Jewish sect promised to envy and malice that the rich and powerful would be tortured in Hell forever and forever, if they did not empty their pockets to the profit of ranting priests. To the dregs of the Empire that was Roman only in name, Christianity was what liquor is to alcoholics. With Irenaeus the persecution of Gnostics and fierce, ecclesiastical intolerance to any other personal religious beliefs became the driving force of Christianity. Though Marcion (140 ce) sought to dump the Old Testament from Christianity because he felt Yahweh was incompatible with the Loving Father proclaimed by Jesus, he still attributed to Yahweh the status of a lesser, creative god, so there was some credence to Irenaeus’s charge of dualism. If Marcion were alive today, I suspect he’d call Yahweh a gruesome Jewish fairytale and be done with it, thus avoiding Irenaeus’s complaints. Valentinus, on the other hand speaks of a God who is: “(Root) of the All, the (Ineffable One who) dwells in the Monad (He dwells alone) in silence . . .since, after all (he was) a Monad, and no one was before him. . .” A Valentinian Exposition ww.19-23, in NHL 436 Elaine Pagels writes in The Gnostic Gospels that according to a third Valentinian text, the Interpretation of Knowledge, Christ taught that “Your Father, who is in heaven, is one. No dualism in Valentinus. His concept of God was much like Aristotle’s Prime Mover, i.e., a Prefect God who does not play favorites. If Constantine had not had his vision at Malvian Bridge (312 ce), Mithraism, not Christianity, might well have become the official religion of the Roman Empire. Based on the Iranian god of the sun, justice, contract and war, Mithraism was more popular than Christianity at the time. But Christianity prevailed, and it’s no coincidence that the brand of Christianity that the Fathers put over was one which lugged with it the "Old Testament" and identified Yahweh, the big Jew up in the sky, as the Christian god, or that the first concern of the fathers, as soon as they got their hands on governmental power, was to exterminate the Marconists, the Manichaeans, and all the other Christian sects that refused to accept as their god the fiend of the "Old Testament.” The slaughter went on well into the Middle Ages. In 1209 Pope Innocence III sicced an army of some thirty thousand knights and foot soldiers on the Languedoc—the mountainous northeastern foothills of the Pyrenees in what is now southern France. These Christian soldiers put a whole population to the sword in what became known as Albigensian Crusade. The extermination was so vast and terrible that it may well constitute the first case of “genocide” in modern Europeans history. What awful crime had these peaceful Cathars committed? The heresy of dualism: they believed in a good god of love, and an evil one of the material world. By the time of the Reformation, Gnostics were either exterminated or driven into hiding. The Protestant Churches, however, proved to be just as intolerant as the Catholic when it came to blind faith as opposed to inner revelation. An increasing number of "Fundamental Christians" have recently felt the need to defend Christianity by trashing anyone who speaks out in any way against the Bible. What it all boils down to, folks, is not exclusively religious or political augments but who’s in charge, and it’s the same old crowd. You can see them every Sunday morning on one-eyed Jew, screaming “God of Israel!” again and again, till they’re blue in the face. -Z-
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#8. To: Zoroaster (#0)
I certainly cannot argue that much evil has been done in the name of God and Christianity.. throughout history. But as its been said many times, what people does not necessarily align with what they say they believe.. You say "What it all boils down to, folks, is not exclusively religious or political augments but who’s in charge, and it’s the same old crowd. You can see them every Sunday morning on one-eyed Jew, screaming “God of Israel!” again and again, till they’re blue in the face.".. This belief is not orthodox by any means.. and is in direct opposition the historical and orthodox view of scripture... to understand why and how these unorthodox beliefs became so prevelant one must research Cyrus Scofield whose beliefs were influenced heavily by John Nelson Darby (1800-1892), who gathered them from Lacunza (1731-1801) and Edward Irving (1792-1834). The Scofield Study bible has had more influence on Christianity in the 20th century than anything else as most Baptist preachers and Baptists seminaries use Scofield's bible w/notes than any other published bible and they believe that the Scofield bible w/notes are legitimate study aids.. which in fact they are not and most who use the Scofield bible are not aware that the notes have been changed not due to new revelations or new discoveries of old text but rather changed w/news events. Scofield swept away nearly 2,000 years of developed church doctrine and created a new religion.. a Christianity that was nearly unrecognizable to it's former self.
Christian orthodoxy -- since Constantine corrupted the church by marrying it to Rome and her emperor -- has been blood-soaked in anti-Semetic hatred. As such, rejecting such orthodoxy is not a bad thing. It might even get one closer to the spirit of the original church and out of Rome, her arch-nemesis. Scofield has his flaws and didn't get it all right, certainly, but his restoration of the Jewish people their rightful and eternal place in God's great plan and his recognition that God's gifts, covenants, and promises to her were everlasting, as the OT says and Paul affirms, was definitely a step in the right direction -- away from the hateful errors of Constantine back towards the loving truth, grace, and spirit of Christ.
The Scofield notes has more than flaws.. and Scofield, the person, was a fraud.
The scriptures do not rely on Scofield for their proper interpretation. They speak for themselves. Paul in Romans 11:28-29 could not have been more clear or emphatic about the place of Israel, even in unbelief, in God's great plan. That Scofield, fraud or no, recognized this redounds to his credit, regardless of his other shortcomings.
Well on this we do disagree.. The prophets did not promise a restored national Israel...rather, they spoke of the coming Church ... establishing Christ's world-wide kingdom — the foundation of the Church is the redemptive work of Christ.
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