You are ignoring the request for the one thing.

The burst into the dining room with all the food is Trumpier than Trump himself. Desperate hunger portrayed as barbarity.

Derrida.

It may actually be interesting. I always lapse into a coma before I can find out.

We are getting footage confirming the carnage:

I don't think Marcion was involved in the vivid imagination of different agents of creation as drawn out by many Gnostics. Both, however, have an inheritance from Greek tradition. Hesiod's Theogony is a genealogy of the gods. The world changes as a result of their generation. Timaeus tells a story about the Demiurge. Scholarship points in many directions as to how this Builder could be seen as demonic. The emphasis on self-knowledge is woven from many sources beyond the instruction given at Delphi. Adding an -ism to the term makes it more unitary than evidence permits.

In terms of the contrast I am making in my post, both of these points of views are pushed to the side in Mark 12:29:

And one of the scholars approached when he heard them arguing, and because he saw how skillfully Jesus answered them, he asked: of all the Commandments, which is the most important?"

Jesus answered: "The first is, 'Hear, Israel, the Lord your God is one Lord, and you are to love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind and with all your energy.' The second is this: 'You are to love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no other commandment greater than these." — The Complete Gospels, edited by Robert Miller

Maybe the better term for the purposes of studying early text is 'supersessionism'. Documents like the Epistle to the Hebrews emphasize that the new message has gone beyond the old. That has stirred a lot of controversy over whether that means the covenant has changed from one "people" to another. That became a set doctrine later but it is difficult to confine the full purpose of the initial writing to that interpretation because the views being objected to by the writer were not held by all observant followers of the Torah. The original arguments between different witnesses (before the death) seem to have carried on after the death of Jesus in different ways. The more I find out about that side of it makes me more curious and less certain of what went down.

When the 'Christians' began to talk about themselves as a "people", that is when others could become others. Not a process unique to any time, as far as I can reckon.

I share your view of negativity. There is a measure of his message in the anti-Semitic fury of Martin Luther.

The path of Marcion is murky and mostly told by his enemies. The narrative of Jesus being condemned by other Jews is one of the themes strongly developed by the Church Fathers and development of the Gospels. I wish that more light could be thrown on the first groups. The Fathers clearly had something to do with that darkness and the impending reign of intolerance.

The matter of whether and to what degree the Jewish world was Hellenized before Jesus does not bear upon the different expectations of what the arrival of the Kingdom of Heaven would bring about. The centrality of Zion expressed in Isaiah, the purification of the temple emphasized by the Essenes, point to an end of oppression and a punishment of sinners. The following language expresses the change:

Enoch 45:1 Parable the second, respecting these who deny the name of the habitation of the holy ones, and of the Lord of spirits.

Enoch 45:2 Heaven they shall not ascend, nor shall they come on the earth. This shall be the portion of sinners, who deny the name of the Lord of spirits, and who are thus reserved for the day of punishment and of affliction.

Enoch 45:3 In that day shall the Elect One sit upon a throne of glory; and shall choose their conditions and countless habitations, while their spirits within them shall be strengthened, when they behold my Elect One, for those who have fled for protection to my holy and glorious name.

Enoch 45:4 In that day I will cause my Elect One to dwell in the midst of them; will change the face of heaven; will bless it and illuminate it forever.

Enoch 45:5 I will also change the face of the earth, will bless it; and cause those whom I have elected to dwell upon it. But those who have committed sin and iniquity shall not inhabit it, for I have marked their proceedings. My righteous ones will I satisfy with peace, placing them before me; but the condemnation of sinners shall draw near, that I may destroy them from the face of the earth. — Book of Enoch, translated by Laurence

Whatever status Jesus might have as a divinity, his death did not bring about the expectations of many. How to respond to this obviously led different groups to think about the tradition in different ways. Some of Paul's writing speak of the imminent arrival of the new world. He also gives an explanation of how the tradition needed to be replaced by the new life.

It is in that context that I am interested in Marcion who wanted to separate the creator of tradition from the gentle lord of the Savior. It can be noted that Maricon was clearly more 'Hellenized' than the followers of the Torah in Jerusalem. One does not have to purge all traces of 'Greekness' from those followers for the difference to be significant.

A similar condition applies to the earliest gnostic materials. Some are drawn from Greek ideas, some from other sources. There still is a tension between traditional life and visions of apocalypse. The desire to change a world of brutal power such as the Romans deployed remained a goal for Gnostics centuries later.

When asking you my question, I was focusing upon the conflicts amongst Jesus followers about what had or had not happened. What we can establish through surviving texts is, as you have noted yourself, limited. The reference made to one of the founders of textual analysis was not meant tot authorize him as a theological spokesperson.

I need to ponder the matter before addressing the theology expressed there to speak to the issues that concern you.

The pedicure of Ozymandias cracks alone in desert sand.

Indeed, Protestant scholars tried to make exactly this sort of argument as they struggled to dislodge Greek thought from their form of Christianity (which is quite difficult given its influence is all over the NT and clearly in some OT books, such as the Wisdom of Solomon). — Count Timothy von Icarus

Can you provide some examples of that?

Martin Luther emphasized a direct witnessing of the words of scripture in place of the middlemen of Orthodoxy. That began a tradition of questioning the history of the text which led to scholars in Germany looking into the denouncement of heresies by the earliest voices of 'established canon' as not being the last word on the matter. In the 18nth century, Johann Salomo Semler is an important figure in that field of textual study. His work began the attempt to understand Marcion in the context of the Hellenistic matrix of his time. Church Fathers, such as Tertullian, wanted to appropriate the narrative of Judaism where Marcion wanted to separate the 'cruelty of the older testimony' from the 'purely good' message of the new. This meme has been repeated since then without need of a specific canon.

I don't want to pit my generalization against yours. This topic is a ground of sharp contention amongst scholars today. I put my request forward to understand what you have in mind when speaking of dislodging 'Greek thought from their form of Christianity."

Section 1, Beauty, Fashion, and Happiness. Third paragraph.

Here is a link:
Baudelaire, Le Peintre de la Vie Moderne

I can agree with Karr while entertaining Baudelaire:

I have to say that, for some years now, the world has shown itself somewhat improved in this respect. The value that amateur collectors attach these days to the pleasant coloured engravings of the last century proves that a much-needed reaction in public taste has occurred; Debucourt, the brothers Saint-Aubin, and many others have been entered in the dictionary of artists worthy of study. Yet they represent the past; it is to the painting of modern manners that I wish to address myself today. The past is interesting not only for the beauty extracted from it by those artists for whom it was their present, but also, being past, for its historical value. It is the same with the present. The pleasure we derive from the representation of the present is due not merely to the beauty with which it can be invested but also to its essential quality of being present.

I have before my eyes a series of fashion plates, commencing with the Revolution and ending, more or less, with the Consulate. Those modes of dress which appear ridiculous to unreflective people, serious people without true seriousness, have a dual charm, both artistic and historical. They are often very fine, and executed with spirit, but what to me is every bit as important, and what I am pleased to find in all or almost of them, is the morality and aesthetic of their age. The idea of beauty Humanity creates for itself, imprints itself on all its attire, rumples or stiffens its clothing, rounds out or aligns its gestures, and even, in the end, penetrates, subtly, its facial features. Humanity ends by resembling that which it aspires to be. Those engraved forms can be viewed as works of beauty or ugliness, of ugliness as caricatures, of beauty as ancient statues. — Baudelaire, Le Peintre de la Vie Moderne

Not exactly nostalgia.

Like holding an ice cream cone up to a fan in Mobile.

Poetically drastic. How 'together' can the human race be? — Amity

Guilty, as charged and point taken. As another poet said, "the more that things change, the more they stay the same."

The culture "war" happening here is happening everywhere.

We solve it together or fall under the same sword.

Negative feedback has made me less stupid about what is happening. I do not know enough about this life to weigh that against the nurturing that has benefited me and others. Soft power is less visible than the hard kind. We remember the hard better. I celebrate the better acts, but it is mostly what I regret which follows me into dreams.

Being less punitive to oneself is not the same exchange of information that being less of an asshole to other persons is. Kafka put it well when describing a door made for us that we are convinced cannot be entered. A peculiar asymmetry. We are stuck with ourselves but have limited agency.

People have different limits of what they are ready to do in sudden events. Some by training, some by instinct. I cannot observe the results like a football game.

I figure our response is something we do not know ourselves.

The rejection of the idea that the Creator is a copy of us or vice versa permeates the Ethics to a degree that is difficult to narrow down to a single proposition. In terms of what is a free choice in the language of this OP, this conversation touches upon some of what Spinoza said directly about it.

I figure Spinoza made short work of this. We deliberate between choices as means to achieve our ends. Whatever is making it possible for this to happen is not a copy of our nature.

If the agency we experience gives us no conception of what is happening, presuming a 'determinism' is not an argument against the reality of deliberation.

But that's a key issue with religion. It's innate subjectivity and relativism. I also grew up in the Protestant tradition. Baptist. We were taught that all religions were a pathway to the divine. We were also taught that the Bible was an allegorical work and not intended to be taken literally. — Tom Storm

The sense of inclusion you refer to varies greatly amongst different denominations. My mother (as a child) was prescribed by a doctor to leave her Southern Baptist church in order to stop the nightmares she was experiencing. It worked. The family moved to a Methodist church. Now that church is more "inclusive" of other faiths but strictly as figurative versions of a person only having access to salvation through Jesus Christ. The distinction between "allegorical" and "literal" means widely different things to different people.

Another element to consider is the emphasis upon the danger of walking the walk versus expressing an opinion. Bonhoeffer's preaching on the difference between cheap and costly grace could not put that danger more sharply.

Less evangelistic but no less focused upon action is Kierkegaard and his equation of freedom with capability. While a person may be commanded in their solitary existence before God, we cannot do that to each other. Thus, Kierkegaard developed the role of indirect communication as a form of life.

Since the conversation has turned to Americans, I will top this off by a reference to Paul Holmer who emphasized that language of faith stands above the language about faith. That is a helpful way to approach the role of creeds and liturgy as a topic of theology even if one has no skin in the game.

The problem with this of course is what to do with the Jesus story. And given the tedium of the Bible as literature (for my taste), why not pick something more engaging as a source of allegory? The Great Gatsby, perhaps? It even ends in sacrifice, execution and redemption. — Tom Storm

Not very apocalyptic, however. One needs the tale twice told to get the tang of Dostoyevsky watching the church execute Jesus again.

I am left-handed. Many of those strengths appeared by what the right hand did better. I write on paper left-handed but many other tasks, like playing piano or cutting with scissors are better done with the other side. It seems to me there is a dynamic where the two sides are using the oppositional quality for a kinesthetic affect.

Have you now reduced a historical question to an exegetical question? The number of ex-Protestants in this thread is not coincidental. — Leontiskos

I am not sure if you include me in that census. You are not in a position to judge what I believe or not. My uncertainty is for me to wrestle with. I am in still within the conversation. I take seriously the invitation to the party. Otherwise, it is of no concern. If I thought a horse was dead, I would not encourage it to perform better.

As I recall that conversation, the passage I emphasized in Gospel of Thomas was Jesus saying that the Kingdom of Heaven had arrived. That is a strong difference from the Pauline expectation of the end of this kosmos and the beginning of the next. The Gospel of Thomas does not rule out the kosmos being transformed through the new order. The emphasis upon personal transformation is clear.

The instruction to follow James the Just after Jesus leaves suggests a possible alignment with the Jerusalem followers, not an association typically considered a 'gnostic' source. I do not detect the tension between law and faith central to Paul's letters. Getting stuffed into a clay jug has made the topic difficult to study.

Yes, the dominance of one view over competitors is prominent in the history of the first two hundred years after Jesus. Attempts at understanding how the 'kingdom of heaven' was visualized before that time is also murky and involves questions only a time machine could solve. What I find interesting is how committed to a single world that will change when X happens that many of these incompatible views have. The collection from the Nag Hammadi is remarkable to me because they do not point to a common ground so much as suspending talk of such a thing. Singularities placed in close proximity to one another. The work upon the Dead Sea scrolls displays a similar insistence upon singularity.

I grew up in a Protestant tradition and the insistence upon a single path was heard by me in all of its cacophony. I do take the teaching that 'identity', on that level, is between me and my maker. It is not an explanatory principle for many other things.

I came off more dismissive than I intended. I am still looking for a free version of Murdoch's essays on these topics so I shouldn't criticize what I have not read yet.

There are different ways to frame the differences between psychology and the inquiries underway in Plato. It is difficult to draw general boundaries where one ends and the other begins. For example, the context of reported experience is different for Jung and William James, yet both developed psychological models of what is expressed as 'transcendental' conditions in past literature. Their means of translation are different from approaching the intent of a work through its own terms and the place that had in the conversation of contemporaries. But saying that alone won't help differentiate Jung from James in a meaningful way.

To my thinking, Jung's work as a clinical therapist makes him different from other thinkers who built psychological perspectives into their writing. The language of drives, instincts, and reactions to unconscious processes, that was introduced by On the Psyche, are not cancelled by The Red Book. A big topic I will not boldly barge into.

Regarding the role of 'perfectibility' in Plato, the role of the 'unchanging forms' is often set over against our limited understanding of them. Words without number have been poured into the bowl of the dead Plato over this question. Many beakers full have been poured right here at TPF Whatever one might think about that conversation, there are plenty of examples in Plato pronouncing the less bad being acceptable until the better is known better. The question of whether the philosopher's return to the cave is a futile endeavor or not still throws a shadow over the scene.

I have recently read Hesiod's Theogony and Works and Days again after four decades. I have since smacked my forehead with the realization of how deeply this material is interwoven into the world of Plato, before and after his time. As with Homer, Plato happily quotes Hesiod in some places and rejects him in others. In some places, Hesiod is present by proxy without citation and explained away rather than embraced or spurned. Hesiod is like a set erected behind the background of many acts in a play.

This causes me to wonder if the immortals of Hesiod and Homer are not better examples of the way Jung presents archetypes than Plato's 'virtues in themselves." The immortals personify psychological dynamics present in the mortals. The narrative of Hesiod shows how immortals were closer to mortals in the past and have grown increasingly further apart. There is a hope expressed in a better future but no guarantee of one.

I want to address the engagement of 'Neoplatonists' with 'Gnostics' but am deep into a listening (reading) mode right now that is causing me to question many of my previous opinions. I will try to say more if I learn more.

If we are going to include Jung into the conversation, the differences between philosophical attempts to talk about 'being' and the terrain of 'psychology' needs to be considered.

I will try to read more of Murdoch. So far. she seems to be engaged with very 20nth century problems. As a student of classical Greek literature, this is no advance in understanding the way views of the soul changed over time.

In the Metaphysics, there is a lot of emphasis upon what can be isolated as a specific kind from what can only be only known by means of analogy. The difference between actuality and potentiality is placed firmly in the latter category. And yet that is where Aristotle rolled the dice on his theories.

It may point to questionable areas about ideas as 'forms', beyond the physical. — Jack Cummins

What is meant by the "physical" is something I challenge as a self-evident idea. That is why I quoted Plotinus earlier in your OP. Plotinus speaks as a matter-of-fact what Plato always referred to through myths, legends, and possible stories. In Timaeus and Phaedo, for example, he repeats that he does not know what happens beyond life's end. The metaphor that life is a kind of prison is a feature of Plotinus' cosmos where Plato points to a tragic failure applicable to unknown causes. The gap between life and death is wider for Plato than for Plotinus.

Is there something in the Murdoch text that speaks to that difference?

Playing my role on different nights evoked an interaction that was spooky at times. Eliot is not generally recognized as a genius of theater. I am going to let the mystery be.

I am closer to Auden than Eliot as a life partner. Maybe it is a generational thing. My affection for Auden was strengthened by my relationship with my father-in-law. He often wondered why it appealed to me. For him, Auden was the voice of his generation.

Just posting observations, not concluding anything.

and for no reason i can understand, fragments of Murder in the Cathedral. — Vera Mont

Well, that is a bit of synchronicity. I played the Third Tempter in that play while being a very young man. I haven't thought about that for a long time. I do wish I could do some of that again.

Rilke was an excellent poet. I sadly didn't read that much from him. We don't have enough time in this life to read every important author of every country. — javi2541997

Indeed. I wish I had a better facility at languages and much more time left. I try to view translations against original texts. I love Neruda and Baudelaire, but I need the translations in the end. Rilke's German is not something I studied enough to revive. I re-read more than trying new poems because I want to offset my weaker memory with the immediate. That also uncovers perspectives I never had before.

The matter of memory is a keen interest of mine as I experience the shrinking of the field. Unlike many of my family and friends, I do not have a vivid recall of childhood. There are some fixed stones in the river, but I leap from one to the other with little sense of continuity in between. My wife, for instance, has a clear recall of chronology of events where my events are like a well shuffled deck. I rely upon others to keep a coherent timeline. I have not and never would be able to experience the vivacity of a Proust recalling his past.

So, that condition is why I find Rilke's presentation of the need for a guide to reach the past to be a central action in the sonnet. The first verse you present from Gloria Fuertes is similar. The limit to self-sufficiency must also be imagined, not recalled.

I found a Rilke poem that approaches Goethe's pursuit of memory and goes on from there:

Behold the flowers, those true to the earthly,
to whom we lend fate from the edge of fate,--
Yet who can say? If they regret their fading,
it is for us to be their regret.

Everything wants to float. And yet we move about like weights,
attaching ourselves to everything, in thrall to gravity;
O what wearisome teachers we are for things,
while in them eternal childhood prospers.

If someone were to take them into his inmost sleep
and sleep deeply with them--, O how light he'd emerge,
changed, to a changed day, from the mutual depth.

Or perhaps he'd stay; and they'd bloom and praise him,
the convert, become now like one of their own,
all the quiet brothers and sisters in the meadow's wind. — Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus, 2nd part, 14, translated by Edward Snow

The allegory of the cave concerns how we see images and then imagining a direct experience where those productions are not needed.

There was a period, spanning centuries, where the meaning of matter was discussed and seen in silhouette against this allegory. The role of the 'physical' had boyfriends before the Christian thinkers told their story.

The division between the material and what is not material is made by us. We do not pick it up from the ground as a ready-made axe. The divide between being, as what always exists, and the life of that which comes into being and passes away again, is another result that is not simply an acceptance of what is given. The effort to think about our life is closely bound with the emergence of these sorts of divisions.

The need for discrimination is no less important in modern pursuits of biology and psychology. The models for exchange of information in different systems no longer involve whether it will hurt a foot if kicked. The separation of unconscious and conscious processes does not devolve to the opinions of those who introduced the concept. The limits to introspection versus observation is not something that is the hobby horse of any one theory.

Thank you for the readings.
I did not realize he was a National Poet Laureate. I was turned on to him by a fellow New Yorker years ago. The words from city and country spoken as if to us in particular.

How does the reference to the DOJ relate to this discussion?

I did not take the passage as a matter of intention. It was more a reporting of a gap. We do stuff and find out later what it brought about. Maybe.

It is not a football game or a throw of dice against a wall. We do not know what it is.

Yes, there is a lot of ambiguity involved. The presence of the friend who judges him harshly but also lets him have his own way. The details of the event obscure it at the same time bringing it into immediate experience. That makes it different from the examples of lost pleasure and innocence you have referred to. I will think about how Rilke does this sort of thing. His boat is further from the shore than others.

Merwin himself is a contrast to the poem since much of his other work involves memory holding onto particular events and things as a way of treading water in one's 'now'. What is reflecting what?

There is a brutal honesty in this particular poem I am not capable of.

I will think about Sikelianos. Is that different from Yeats thinking about naughty gods?

Thanks for the article. I have long wondered about this connection when thinking back at my experiences with peyote as a young man. The reported experience of relative 'disembodiment' came up a lot amongst fellow travelers.

I hope to avoid entering the sample group of the other side of the study.