I have just looked at the thread this evening, and I think that beliefs are complicated. Some go back to claims of authority, especially the Bible, whereas others are based on intuition. It is a complex matter, and I wish to look at these elements of thought as critically as possible.

I am sure that the Bible has some role in this aspect of thinking, but I don't wish to exaggerate this. I think that views about the Bible are important, but in the context of other ideas. No idea stands in isolation. Saying that, it is late at night, so I will look at the thread tomorrow, with a view to what can be carried forward, in thinking about the Bible, ideas, and the development of our own thinking.I could write off the debate about the Bible, but I am not convinced that this aspect of philosophy is settled permanently, so I am willing to pursue it further with other people.

— The Westminster Dictionary of Christian Ethics — jorndoe

Lol I'm afraid that is not a Christian source.

This is more like it:

"Christian ethics derives its metaphysical core from the Bible, seeing God as the ultimate source of all power ... Christian ethicists use reason, philosophy, natural law, the social sciences, and the Bible to formulate modern interpretations of those principles; Christian ethics applies to all areas of personal and societal ethics ..."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_ethics

I will look at it tomorrow, as I am hoping that this thread is not finished immediately, because I do believe that it involves important questions about the history of Christianity and the way people think in our times, which may be regarded as a secular age.

not a Christian source — Apollodorus

The Westminster thing is better, though.
Seems like political correctness is ethics, or moral philosophy, oughts, pre/proscriptive.

Religion should inform ethics? No. Divine command theory, theological voluntarism, ...? No. Accountability to an imaginary friend rather than your fellow humans? No.

(..., 2013, 2016, 2019, 2020, ...)

Well, every religious or philosophical system, indeed, every person has their own conception of ethics. There is not much we can do about it.

And, no, accountability would not be to "an imaginary friend". If you do anything that has an impact on the community you live in, then in the first instance you are accountable to the community. First you get judged by fellow men in this life and then by God in the hereafter as the case may be.

For anyone who is still interested after I drove the bus into the wilderness yesterday, I just wish to mention the ideas about the 'Book of Revelation' by one writer, Robin Robertson, who is writing from a Jungian perspective. He suggests,
'The Book of Revelation has been all things to all people, a cornucopia of delight for scholars, theologians, crackpots, and madmen. It has never lost its magic power to arouse strong emotions; though we can read contradictory meanings into its words, the words continue to fascinate.'

I have read 'The Book of Revelation' more than any other book in the Bible, with a mixture of fear and fascination, and I am sure that many have done so as well. It is an extremely difficult book to understand. Robertson offers the following thought about it,
'Revelation is the last book in the New Testament of the Bible. It stands as a bridge between the record of the Bible and the unknown times ahead. It is a vision rather than a history, because it records a stage of consciousness which cannot yet be actualized in reality.'

Many people have tried to work out direct ways of thinking about John's vision, in imagining an apocalyptic scenario, but I think that the symbolic approach is an extremely helpful way for looking at it.

It seems to me that this thread is being too disorganized: there's a risk of touching a lot of topics without any real reflection about it, so that, at the end, it would have been just a waste of time. Since the OP was about philosophy and the Bible, we might discuss what philosophy is or should be from the perspectives of the Bible and viceversa, including our own perspectives on both.

It is a vision rather than a history, because it records a stage of consciousness which cannot yet be actualized in reality.' — Jack Cummins

That statement might be the beam of light to take us out of the wilderness and bring us (back) to the right path.

I agree with @Angelo that better organization, if not on paper at least in our mind, might help. As long as you organize it yourself and don't let others organize it for you, because otherwise you can't tell where you end up.

But in any case, as long as you don't lose sight of the NT compass, you should be just fine.

Any religious text worth its salt can be used for some kind of psychological exploration.
And really all philosophical explorations are really psychological explorations and expressions.

'The Book of Revelation' — Jack Cummins

I illustrated it once for a lark. Those with '666' on their foreheads can't be killed right away, for they have to be tortured for six months or so. Typical made-up human notions of a mean 'God'.

A recurring Biblical theme is of 'God' trying to repair or cull the very nature that He Himself perfectly put into Angels and humans in the first place as intended.

I did art based on the 'Book of Revelation' when I was on an art therapy course. I am better at drawing devils than angels really, and Blake said that Milton was 'in the devil's party without knowing it' because he was better at describing the demonic rather than angelic.

But, the idea of 666 and the idea of the antichrist has been drawn upon so much within heavy metal symbolism. I read Marilyn Manson's autobiography and he said that he went through a stage in which he really thought that he was the Biblical antichrist. However, Manson also read Jung's writings and came to the conclusion that the idea of the antichrist was symbolic. But, I find a lot of Marilyn Manson's music a bit too much to listen to. I prefer a track by The Inspiral Carpets, 'The Beast Inside', which states that, 'A man is no man if he has no beast inside.'

The fact remains that the idea of 666 has been a puzzle for many, with attempts made to equate it with specific individuals, and a lot of superstition around the number. Similarly, there is so much superstition around the idea of the number 13, as Judas was the 13th apostle, and this thread may end on page 13, as symbolically significant. The Book of Revelation has lead to so much speculation, especially with ideas such as the first and second beast.

Speaking of angels, I think they play an important role in Christianity. How would you say they should be interpreted or analyzed philosophically?

And what about the role of prayer and the activities of the apostles and saints?

I found this paper on Philosophical Analysis of Petitionary Prayer quite interesting.

I think that the ideas of angels and demons is extremely interesting indeed. I may end up being accused of going off topic, or even 'tripping' again, but angels and demons is central to the Bible, especially as messengers from God. They figure strongly in both Testaments. In this way, I do believe that they can be seen as figures from the unconscious.

However, some people, including Emmanuel Swedenborg, have thought of the angelic kingdom as an actual realm of existence, including the fall of the angels. I was taught this idea, which definitely has a basis in Milton's writings, but I am not sure if there is much evidence for it in the Bible. I believe that some people think that the account of Genesis describes a 'fall' which implied that human beings were thrown into a different form of existence. I am familiar with the idea of people being thrown into a state of mortality itself, as opposed to immortality in some descriptions of the Biblical story of the fall, connected with eating from the 'tree of knowledge.'

I just looked at the paper you linked in, or part of it, because the text was so small on my phone. What I thought was interesting in was the idea of the hidden. Many think that the idea of the hidden is philosophically ridiculous. In the paper, the idea is that it is 'the powers of darkness' which obscure and make certain aspects appear hidden, which is an unusual slant for thinking about. It reminds me of William Blake: 'If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.'

It reminds me of William Blake: 'If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.' — Jack Cummins

I think that's exactly it. We may say "doors of perception" or, as Plato does, "instrument or organ of perception":

"It is indeed no trifling task, but very difficult to realize that there is in every soul an organ or instrument of knowledge that is purified and kindled afresh by such studies when it has been destroyed and blinded by our ordinary pursuits, a faculty whose preservation outweighs ten thousand eyes; for by it only is reality beheld (Republic 527d - e).

The way I understand it, the faculty of sight has three basic aspects:

1. Everyday visual perception through the physical organ of sight, i.e. the eye.

2. The inner eye of the mind through which we see things internally as in imagination, dreams, and in particular, lucid dreaming.

3. The eye of the soul, whereby we perceive metaphysical realities.

In reality, it is one and the same organ or faculty operating on different levels of perception.

So, the "door" or "organ" of metaphysical perception, a.k.a. the Platonic "eye of the soul" or "eye of the heart" mentioned in Ephesians 1:18, etc. and of which Augustine and other Church Fathers speak, seems to be what philosophy together with the prayer you have just mentioned aim to cleanse, awaken, train and fortify in order to enable the soul to perceive metaphysical realities.

And chief among these metaphysical realities apart from Ultimate Reality itself, would be the various heavens or realms of spiritual existence together with their inhabitants, viz., the various classes of celestial beings such as the angels.

In 2 Cor 12:2 Paul appears to be referring to a "third heaven" which is the location of what goes by the name of "paradise". And, since presumably, paradise is something that all Christians, including philosophers aim to experience or attain, I think it wouldn't be entirely out of place to look into it and see how it may be understood, analyzed, or explained in philosophical terms. And maybe also look at parallels with Platonic descriptions in the Phaedo and other texts.

This is why all philosophical systems, both in the West and the East, have turned to mystical experience when philosophizing about ultimate reality couldn't take them any further. It was one of the reasons why Greek philosophers embraced Christianity. Where reason no longer helps, faith and devotion might just push you that bit further and help you achieve your philosophical goal which is not to know truth intellectually, but to actually experience it. — Apollodorus

(Thanks A, for the other parts of your post) and considering the foregoing quote, what are your thoughts about how the Gnostics were influential in Spiritualism and/or Mysticism? I hate to keep dropping his name, but Davies' posits that thought in the last chapter of his book The Mind of God.… . Meaning, he advances a theory that suggests having revelations in science have something to do with the mystical experience.

Of course, we can analogize to musical genius, and even Einstein's revelations about things that were completely novel at that time...

I'd rather not go into Gnosticism as I hear I am already on the mods' black list and I'm sure some think that this thread isn't something that should have happened in the first place .... :smile:

However, if we take a realistic and pragmatic look at the facts, one thing becomes immediately apparent, namely, that neither philosophy nor science knows what ultimate reality is, and neither of them seems to be making much progress in the direction of finding a definitive answer. The only system that claims to have some idea is mysticism.

Now, if we take the three together, we notice another important fact, which is that in all of them consciousness is of paramount importance.

If you look at something by means of, say, an electronic microscope or some other scientific instrument, you may be able to observe something that may ultimately be reduced to particles or fields of energy as constituents of matter.

Even that observation ultimately depends on a conscious subject in order to be observed. Matter itself ceases to be something solid and strangely transforms itself into something rather immaterial, hard to grasp, pin down or describe. Very much like consciousness itself.

This being the case, it seems reasonable to direct our attention to consciousness, to that on which all experience ultimately depends and, in particular, see if consciousness is able to examine itself and to tell us something about how experience such as perception, comes about. At what point does consciousness make the transition from indeterminate to determinate cognition and how?

I believe that this was what ancient philosophers like Plato aimed to achieve. If consciousness is able to observe and analyze physical and intellectual perception in increasing degrees of subtlety or abstractness, then ultimately, it must be able to observe itself. This is the logical conclusion of the philosophers' dictum "Know thyself".

It is at this point that self-contemplation, i.e., contemplation of consciousness by itself, or "mysticism", comes into the picture and takes over from both science and philosophy. Of course, we still need some science and philosophy, or reason, as an anchor and standard of reference to ensure that the new reality we are experiencing isn't something that takes us where we would rather not go or from where there would be no return.

Poetry, music, dancing, and other creative activities that tend to dislodge consciousness from the strictures of everyday experience seem to take us in the same direction of "rapture" or "ecstasy" which is nothing else than a state of being "outside" ourselves, i.e., outside our normal selves, which logically is the only condition in which consciousness or our innermost self can experience itself instead of other things such as mind, body, and the rest.

But whilst such activities may take us outside ourselves and closer to our goal, it seems that contemplation and meditation are best suited for the purpose of turning our attention inward, and for enabling consciousness to experience itself in direct, self-reflective perception. In meditation the mind ceases to be like a distracting spectacle and becomes like a mirror in which consciousness can see itself and from there progresses to an enlightening act of supreme self-recognition or knowing and being itself in itself.

And this is why Christian mystics have developed contemplation and meditation techniques to enable us to obtain a glimpse of the inner realities of consciousness, such as hesychasm.

Hesychasm - Wikipedia

HESYCHASM: THE PHILOSOPHICAL RATIONALIZATION OF TRANSPERSONAL MYSTIC EXPERIENCE

I'd rather not go into Gnosticism as I hear I am already on the mods' black list and I'm sure some think that this thread isn't something that should have happened in the first place .... :smile: — Apollodorus

Thank you for that response, as I will be mondering it and will respond accordingly. However, I did want to quickly acknowledge your disappointment in, say, the fanatical nature of some Atheist behavior on this site (I think it's run by several Atheists but am not positive).

Speaking of which, ever wonder why Atheists like to troll Religious threads? The irony seems to be, that which should have no concern or existence, seemingly weighs heavily on one's consciousness :razz:

Are you really on the mods' black list? I have not abandoned the thread, but just having a breathing space. I am also trying to keep the thread on topic, as someone suggested that there was enough material being discussed for about 6 threads. But, I will look at your link on transpersonal experience, and you are definitely a fan of internet research. I have a number of books on transpersonal philosophy and may even create a thread on it at some point, but I am sure that many may oppose such a thread.

At the moment, I am considering possible areas to add to this thread, rather than remain stuck on difficult page 13. I may find something to add to it tomorrow.

'A man is no man if he has no beast inside.' — Jack Cummins

A tale I’ve written, invented, yes, hence
An attempt to unite the Christian pense
With the non-belief, in a middle ground,
Somewhere between mystery and good sense:

With flora mystical and magical,
Eden’s botanical garden was blest,
So Eve, taking more than just the Apple,
Plucked off the loveliest of the best.

Thus it’s to Eve that we must give our thanks,
For Earth’s variety of fruits and plants,
For when she was out of Paradise thrown,
She stole all the flowers we’ve ever known.

Therewith, through sensuous beauty and grace,
Eve with Adam brought forth the human race,
But our world would never have come to be,
Had not God allowed them His mystery.

When they were banished from His bosom,
Eve saw more than just the Apple Blossom,
And took, on her way through Eden’s bowers,
Many wondrous plants and fruitful flowers.

Mighty God, upon seeing this great theft,
At first was angered, but soon smiled and wept,
For human nature was made in His name—
So He had no one but Himself to blame!

Yet still He made ready His thunderbolt,
As His Old Testament wrath cast its vote
To end this experiment gone so wrong—
But then He felt the joy of life’s new song.

Eve had all the plants that she could carry;
God in His wisdom grew uncontrary.
Out of Eden she waved the flowered wands,
The seeds spilling upon the barren lands.

God held the lightning bolt already lit,
No longer knowing what to do with it,
So He threw it into the heart of Hell,
Forming of it a place where all was well.

Thus the world from molten fire had birth,
As Hell faded and was turned into Earth.
This He gave to Adam and Eve, with love,
For them and theirs to make a Heaven of.

From His bolt grew the Hawthorn and Bluebell,
And He be damned, for Eve stole these as well!
So He laughed and pretended not to see,
Retreating into eternity.

“So be it,” He said, when time was young,
“That such is the life My design has wrung,
For in their souls some part of Me has sprung—
So let them enjoy all the songs I’ve sung.

“Life was much too easy in Paradise,
And lacked therefore of any real meaning,
For without the lows there can be no highs—
All that remains is a dull flat feeling!

“There’s no Devil to blame for their great zest—
This mix of good and bad makes them best!
The human nature that makes them survive,
Also lets them feel very much alive.

“That same beastful soul that makes them glad
Does also make them seem a little bad.
If only I could strip the wrong from right,
But I cannot have the day without the night!”

… (flower lore)

An essential book about angels from a philosophical perspective is The necessary angel by Massimo Cacciari. I remember I read it long time ago and I understood nothing of this book :grin: , I must have been too young to catch certain language and concepts, but I see now that it is really valuable.

Far from a devotee of angelology or the like, Rilke's poetic flights had seized me with shocks of the 'numinous and sublime' many many moons ago ...

Jeder Engel ist schrecklich

– Duino Elegies

Thanks for adding the poem, which adds variety to the thread. Your poem rhymes as well, which is almost unusual these days.

However, if we take a realistic and pragmatic look at the facts, one thing becomes immediately apparent, namely, that neither philosophy nor science knows what ultimate reality is, and neither of them seems to be making much progress in the direction of finding a definitive answer. The only system that claims to have some idea is mysticism. — Apollodorus

:up: :100:

I was reading through the link on Hesychasm, thank you. Quick question, does that relate to speaking in tongues at all?

The bus has been involved in a crash. I think that I saw a motorbike coming along in the mirror. But, I think that there is only a dent, and no one hurt, and just a few people a bit shaken up.

We seem to have reached highway 14 safely. The bus driver is resting for tonight, and hope all the passengers rest safely.

Indeed Jack. Some passengers seem to live in an interminable state of emotional unrest :joke:

I think that we all could do with a glass of wine really. I am not sure how much further the thread will go, but I do wish to keep it as focused as it can possibly get, rather than Armageddon.

I agree, there was some interesting discussion that just started about Gnosticism. I hope it continues. But the current state of emotion ironically enough, only serves to prove the obvious. And that is, we're all talking about something beyond logic :cool:

'Book of Revelation' — Jack Cummins

THE END OF THE EARTH
(Revelation Revised)

The Asphodel sustains the Dis dwellers,
Where they rest beyond that fatal river—
There the wretched shades drink forgetfulness,
And to oblivion sink without distress.

Charon was withered, wan, and skeletal,
Although eternally grateful for his immortal life
And steady job of ferrying the dead across the river Styx,
In their transition from life to death to forgetfulness.

Fireweed grows from Hell’s sulfurous embers,
As does Purple Loosestrife—dead men’s fingers;
But wildflower air revives the dead—and then
Those happy souls can thrive on Earth again.

As Earth was the only planet he’d come across
With such promising higher life forms,
Charon had grown rather fond of its inhabitants,
Even though he only saw but the worst of them;
But even from that he could extrapolate
To the qualities of the best.

Charon did his job well, professionally,
Although it was ever so dreary,
With the endless darkness of wasted lives
And the grim and gloomy skies all around.

The land always had
That same gray and leaden feel.
He ferried on, though,
For his own life was precious to him.

The soon-to-be really really dead never said much,
For what was there to tell after an empty life
That had often turned to deep regret.

Charon, weathered and worn, rowed them on,
Whose forlorn hopes had been long forgotten—
More amused than enlightened by their ploys—
All too soon be erased in this land of no joys.

Charon did not prompt them for information,
For this was not the thing to do
At the time of their passing,

So he was always most
Courteous and kind to them,
Even to the most evil of the darkest,
Doing his task as well as he could.

It was not that Charon was afraid that
His undersized master of the underworld,
Pluto, might be watching,

But that he had the extreme clarity
To duly serve the task at hand—
A testament to his character.

Charon had been quite alarmed lately—
What with the numbers of the hellish-souls-to-be
Climbing into the millions in such a short time,

But he had been through this kind of rush before
With the doomed and damned of other planets
That had been consumed by their suns
Or had undergone other such catastrophes.

He just used larger boats,
And patiently took his time,
For he had all of Eternity.

Of course,
Charon could and did feel deep sadness,
But he didn’t show it outwardly,
Even when the numbers from Earth
Increased a thousand-fold again.

A few of the now billions of depressed Earthling souls
Had enough energy left to mumble a few words,
And so he was able to glean from them
The latest happenings on Earth.

In 2022, the predicted exponential surge
Of melting ice from global warming
Had quickly inundated all of the coastal cities,
Many of them large centers
Of population and commerce.

Everyone who could possibly make it
Had to retreat inland,
Creating the largest mass exodus in history.

As the heat rose to unbearable levels,
Many had begun living in their basements,
As the Earth’s infrastructure
Began its eventual collapse.

Millions eventually headed north
Towards Canada and Siberia,
But had to retreat when the ice caps totally melted
And formed the great Ocean of the North;
Most of them did not make it.

No one but the ignored physicist mathematicians
Had predicted that the end
Could come into sight so quickly.

Then came the dreaded polar shift
That made global warming seem but a small note
Compared to this new and darker symphony.

The Earth was thrashed with storms
The likes of which it had never seen;
Electricity went out completely all over the world,
But for a few nuclear powered areas that didn’t last.

No one could drive very far,
Even on their last tank of gas,
For the roads had melted,

Along with the tires of the vehicles,
And if the vehicles stopped
They’d find themselves mired
In the meltdown of the asphalt.

Food would no longer grow very well,
Even in once lush gardens,
In the amounts that were needed,
And, as the heat rose further,
Into the 140s, plant growth ceased altogether,
Although a new but rare
And expensive form of food pill
Extended life for some of the rich,
For a short while.

Charon had of course,
Seen much of this kind of thing before,
From the many other solar systems
And galaxies on which life had formed.

Earthlings seemed to have
A special charm and hope
Above and beyond the other alien races.

So he rowed and ferried
And deposited them on the far shore,
His job and life forever continuing
In a place with no color,
No joy, and no future—
On the shore of the land
On the edge of oblivion.

Charon had depths of compassion,
But many passengers might
Have thought him stoic,
Although they were mostly
Beyond this capability.

A sign on the opposite shore said:

Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here

Billions more arrived
In the gray land all too soon
And Charon learned that
Either madness or desperation on Earth
Had caused a nuclear winter all over the planet,
Bringing on a deep freeze that few could escape.

Perhaps they were trying
To combat the ultimate heat,
Which would have been
But a cool breeze in Hell.

The polar shift had greatly
Added to the deep freeze.

A few of Charon’s still speaking
But chilled customers
Even expressed a longing
For the legendary warmth of Hades.

Charon, stalwart and reliable, rowed on steadily,
Ever steeling himself to the misery.

Finally the masses slowed and dwindled
To a few dribs and drabs over a few years
And then there was no one for several years.

A lone man appeared on the shore near the ferry dock,
And Charon readily approached the man,
Something he had never done before.

They had a long and hearty talk,
For the man was animated
And not at all like any of the other wretched souls.

“How is it,” inquired Charon,
“That you are full of life and seem to be a good man
But have been sent here?”

“I am not a bad person in any way,” the man replied.
“Actually, I just spent some time in Heaven.

“I found out there that my sweetheart
Was sent here to you, for she was a suicide
And so was destined here;
However, I had promised
To be with her forever,
So I chose this place
Over Heaven out of my love for her.”

“Extraordinary,” exclaimed Charon.
“I knew the Earth had
A few good men and women;
I’ve not seen very many clues
Of that elsewhere in the universe.

"Did you colonize space—
Will your species continue and flourish
After your Earth bids farewell?”

“I’m afraid not,” replied the man,
For too many needless wars intervened
And this greatly delayed our space program.”

“A shame,” said Charon,
But is there any hope left on Earth,
I mean, are there any others still about?”

“I am the last,” the man answered slowly.

The first tear of Charon’s long life
Rolled down his cheek;
Nothing had ever made him cry before:
Nothing had ever made him weep.

(Rewritten from Lord Dunsany’s brief sketch)