I've been away from this forum a long time. Very busy lately. I've had quite a lot of experiences since coming home for Christmas, and it's got my mind a-reeling, so I think it's time to blurt it all out and see what happens.

I see not much has changed here in Greenspun. Things are quiet and (if I dare say so) a little boring, until some new heretic comes and takes the spotlight, giving fledgling and experienced apologists alike a new pasttime in trying to convert him. Hi, sdqa. It's almost like an election--we never think about politics so much as when two candidates are battling it out, and we never post in Greenspun so much as when there's a firey new infidel around to repeat the hackneyed old challenges to the faith.

In the last two weeks I've been confronted with a lot of such challenges. An old high school buddy tried to convince me that extra-marital sex was "never actually condemned by Jesus"; a sibling is absolutely convinced that the Republican platform against homosexual marriage is nothing more than a transmutation of their prior racism; an old loved one has completely lost his faith in the Divinity of Christ; another finds nothing *morally* wrong with sodomy (except its being physically dangerous, i.e., disease).

More and more and more, people close to me are falling away from the faith, and I'm helpless to change them if the Holy Spirit sees fit to allow them to go their merry erroneous ways. I get extremely upset about it. But it forces me to think.

The essence of heresy is separation. Of course, what first comes to mind is that it is the separation of the heretic from the community of faith. That's true, but I'm actually speaking of something else. The primary difference between the heretic and the believer is that the heretic's world is a disjointed and separated sort of place; for the believer, it is One, or at least, continuous.

There are some obvious objections to this notion, but in this case I think I'm really right.

What about pantheism? Isn't that a sort of thinking everything as being One and Whole? Don't they worship Nature because they believe that nature and God are One?

Not quite. To believe that nature = God, and that there is no God apart from nature, is still thinking in terms of separateness. That is because pantheism is essentially a religion of exclusion: there is NO GOD *other* than nature. God is ONLY immanent; God is NOT transcendent. There is no God that is not nature; there is no nature that is not God.

Pantheism so strongly separates the immanent from the transcendent that it despairs at ever seeing or touching the transcendent. Because of this, it simply ignores transcendence as futile nothing-stuff, and argues that everything worthwhile is immanent.

Only orthodox Catholics, I argue, can truly think the immanent and the transcendent together. They are not the same, but they are not so separate, either. The transcendent glory of God is fundamentally accessible by us as human beings, through the Cross of Christ.

Pantheism denies anything transcendent or "beyond" nature--nature is the ultimate, the final word. But the best counter-argument against pantheism is that human intuition rages against it. Nothing other than nature? Nature is the final word? If that were true, then we could not possibly think of anything being beyond nature. But we can and do indeed think this. And if our minds can transcend nature, then nature is not the last word.

I once wrote here before that all heresies are based in two early heresies: Gnosticism (or Docetism)--"Jesus is not truly human"--and Arianism--"Jesus is not truly God." There is actually a third heresy which is in the middle of these two: Nestorianism--Jesus the Man, and the Son of God, were two different persons.

But now I see that both of these heresies have one more basic feature in common: they separate and divide matter and spirit as irreconcilable. They are all dualistic. They cannot think HUMAN and DIVINE together, as one person, whole and undivided, whose natures are distinct ('unconfounded') but also unseparated.

Catholic orthodoxy always succeeds, where heresy fails, in believing the togetherness of Transcendence and Immanence, the Creator and Created, Spirit and Flesh, Soul and Body, Divine and Human as always One yet importantly NOT simply One. When transcendence and immanence are merely "mixed", they usually become heresies of immanence and, ironically, reject transcendence.

I'll come back to this later. I want to talk about how this feature grounds not only ancient heresies, but also modern relativism, dissent, etc.

-- anon (ymous@god.bless), December 30, 2004

Answers

"An old high school buddy tried to convince me that extra-marital sex was "never actually condemned by Jesus"

this is true

our human mind has it's limitations,we will never get clearly to understand what/who god really is in this life and in this world

gnosticism is good and much better and much more reasonable than traditional christianity

it's about the essential teachings of jesus

totally the opposite of the RCC and the other churches that only focus on the salvation and the details while this world is going to hell and nobody is doing anything to prevent it

how are u so sure that the bible is true?

and that jesus was really the son of god?

jesus was human...

-- sdqa the heretic (sdsa@sdqa.com), December 30, 2004.

"An old high school buddy tried to convince me that extra-marital sex was "never actually condemned by Jesus"

A: What people mean when they say this sort of thing is, of course, that Jesus is not specifically quoted in the Bible as condemning it. Obviously Jesus condemned it however, or the early followers of Jesus would not have condemned it. Paul condemned it in the strongest possible terms. Where do you suppose He got his teachings? Did he make them up as he went along? Or did He faithfully teach what the early Church had received from the Apostles, who had received it directly from the lips of Jesus Christ?

"Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither FORNICATORS, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God." (1 Corinthians 6:9-10)

"Marriage is to be held in honor among all, and the marriage bed is to be undefiled; for FORNICATORS and adulterers God will judge." (Hebrews 13:4)

-- Paul M. (PaulCyp@cox.net), December 30, 2004.

"An old high school buddy tried to convince me that extra-marital sex was "never actually condemned by Jesus"

this is true

{nO ITS NOT... HE EVEN CONDMENED THE ACT OF ADULTERY... The woman at the well episode ocoems to mind...}-Zarove

our human mind has it's limitations,we will never get clearly to understand what/who god really is in this life and in this world

{I undertsnad who an what God is. I cant undetnasd all hat God does or encompasses, btu do fully undertsand what God is...}-Zarove

gnosticism is good and much better and much more reasonable than traditional christianity

{Gnostism is a blanket term. Its only " Better and mroe reaosnable" because yu think it csounds cool and think it advoctaes premarital sex as OK and it agree siwht you.

However, most Gnostic circles condened sex, at all, even if marired, as this wudl trap you in your body, which is evil, and prevent yo form returnin tot he realm of true spirit. Rencarnaiton was also beelived by most Gnostics. see, they thoguht the evil demiurge created the Physical world, and it was as eivl as he was, and Jesus came to enlighten us.

many Gnostic sects, including the Cathars, advocated suicide.

Yeah a lot mor reaosnable. everyhign in the world is evil and you shidl beve have sex as it trapsp souls int he evi mateial world...}- Zarove

it's about the essential teachings of jesus

{No, itsbaout merging Judaic conceps with Jesuses teahcigns and Pagan doctorines foudn in neo-Platonain philosophy, and origionate din the second century.}-Zarove

totally the opposite of the RCC and the other churches that only focus on the salvation and the details while this world is going to hell and nobody is doing anything to prevent it

{Uhm,. thr RCC runs saint Judes, right? Not to mention many, many other charity orginisaitons. The RCC also adviates and runs several orginisaitosn design dot give peoel jobs, ahelp them eat, rear choldren, learn, and buold stng charecter.

The salvaiton Army is well known for its charitable effots ad well.

Inded, most tigns we have that are good, form universities to Hopspitals, had hcirsian origins.

Check european hisotry formt he middle ages and see hwo was writign al the knoweldge down so it was not forgotten.

In contrast to these hard workign dedcated christains who give ther itme, moeny,a nd effort to save peopel from starvaiton, disease, and poverty, we have peooel liek you who claim Christaisn do nothign and spentd all your time comlainign, yet not really dougn anyhtign abut anyones suffering.

Ogh and adivcatign premarital sex ihich wil in the lign run desotyr them.

Yeah I feel so ashamed now...}-Zarove

how are u so sure that the bible is true?

{The Philoosphical aspects I knwo form the school of Hard Knox. Been there, done that, seen te consequnces. The theolog makes the most snece. Hisotriclaly its been cnfirmed as far as the historical claim are ocncenred... what to doubt?}-Zarove

and that jesus was really the son of god?

{That is one thing we take on faith alone, but at the same time, he di seem fairly good as a candidate, woudl you not think?}-Zarove

jesus was human...

{Yes, as thr RCC and all other HCurhces teach. But he wa also od incarnate.}-Zarove

-- ZAROVE (ZAROFF3@JUNO.COM), December 30, 2004.

Paul M, what about when Jesus said, 'One who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery in his heart'?

-- anon (ymous@god.bless), December 30, 2004.

In any case, sdqa is merely a troll who doesn't have any academic background in Christianity at all; he isn't qualified to pass credible judgement on the tradition--just another modernist relativist hedonist blibbity blah, who is not to be taken seriously.

Nothing I write here is for sdqa; I am not giving what is holy to dogs or throwing pearls before swine. This is intended for the faithful here. I can't stop sdqa from reading it, but he will not understand it, and it will not benefit him in any way whatsoever.

Reflecting on what I wrote this morning, I would like to make a couple of things more concrete.

At first I thought I would do so by saying instead that the essence of heretical error was dualism--like Descartes's separation of body and soul, for example--but this won't do. That's because although all worldviews which pull apart the soul and body, divine and human, phenomena and noumena are called "dualist", the word fails to communicate the fact that all monisms, i.e. idealism, materialism, Hegelianism, Darwinism (which try to reduce reality to One Thing) are also, in their own way, dualistic.

So it seems we're stuck with what I've already described, in short: All heresy and error is essentially the inability to think of transcendence and immanence together without collapsing into immanence.

Now I've been using words like immanence and transcendence, which are confusing. But the general ideas are not that simple.

Immanence means all the things we experience directly, understand finitely, and can control. It's everything that's "close to us." Science is immanent; so is nature, so are emotions, etc. Our bodies are immanent. All of the known, understood, and understandable world, so to speak, is immanent.

And transcendence is everything else; the stuff which, though it includes understandable parts, is always more, always beyond, always too big, or too deep, or far, or too near, and too much to be understood in a finite way. It is uncontainable, insurpassable ground of all being. It is everything that is infinite, or that breaks apart our convenient categories of thought. It is never absent from anywhere, but neither is it 'trapped' within understandable things.

A common thing for heretics to say is that "We can't know God," but this is equivocal. There's no reason to say we can know nothing about God--only that we cannot know everything about him. We cannot know, for example, to what degree, or in what way, the things we say about God are true. How are they meaningful? We won't know that until the Last Day. But we do know many true things about God, such that he is a 'person' with a 'purpose'. Both of these words are symbolic and provisional; but they are not empty or meaningless. A boat on the ocean will never be big enough to literally cover the whole ocean (like a humongous island); but it allows one to sail within it nevertheless.

Heresy says that one can say nothing true about God; Orthodoxy says that one can never cease to say new true things about God--and we do this in our prayers of praise.

Now, the way I have defined transcendence and immanence here, it is tempting to accuse me of separating them right here and now. This isn't true. For there is transcendence within immanent things--nature, cosmology, the world, society, all every immanent things, will always find ways to transcend our ususal categories of thought.

What about science? Science, in its more gluttonous form, seeks to exhaust all knowledge of the universe. As Chesterton says, science, like the madman, seeks to put the whole sky into its head, when it is much healthier to have one's head in the clouds.

Yet science must always "cut corners" in order to fit nature into its invented categories. It must--methodically and dogmatically--ignore the unexplainable, the philosophical, the metaphysical parts of nature--parts which are perfectly accessible to human thought, though science choses not to speak of them. Think of it this way: of all the frequencies of light we get from the sun, the lower frequencies--'red'--are more 'durable'. Red is always the last color we see when sunlight has been stripped of all the other colors, whether by the Earth's atmosphere in a beautiful sunset, or by the deep ocean.

Science is like the Earth's atmosphere turning the sunlight red. Sunlight contains varying strengths of all frequencies of visible light--it is truly quite white. But the thicker the atmosphere--and the more rigorous the science--the fewer colors show.

Science is a strainer, a filter. Yet the great modern myth is that science filters out falsity and retains only truth; on the contrary--science filters out not falsity, but transcendence.

It is necessary for science to do this; it is a prerequisite for technology. Technology is control, and we can't control the transcendent. The data of exact sciences is the steel out of which technological tools are built. But technology cannot reproduce a living tree, or a furry animal, or even artificial plasma (it can only clone these things, but in doing so it relies on more fundamental, non-technological forces). That is because there is transcendence bursting out of immanent nature.

Consider the old Catholic dictum: "Grace builds upon and perfects nature." This is highly orthodox; that nature and grace are, in a way, interwoven, is something very true, but completely inaccessible to the thick light-blocking atmosphere of science.

I'll come back to this later.

-- anon (ymous@god.bless), December 30, 2004.

Dear SDQA,

You are incorrect. Jesus actually did say that adultery and fornication were evils arising from the human heart. You will find, when you have lived long enough, that your deepest conscience wants to honor women, not merely use them. After all, what do you do if you find a girlfriend is pregnant? Just say, "Goodbye"?

As for Him being the Son of God, I advise you read Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. If you reject them, then you may as well not be talking about the issue at all, for no other ancient source claims to give information about His life as do these Gospels. As for other "gospels" they were written much later; the foolish who believed in them were not strong enough to endure the Roman persecutions of Christians by the emperors. Catholic, Orthodox and Celtic Christianity, as we know them, did, however, survive--and continue to thrive! Followers of the gnostic "gospels" couldn't take the heat and disappeared.

Cordially,

-- Michael (edwardsronning@prodigy.net), December 30, 2004.