Francis Berger's Blog, page 65

All Salvation is "Not Alone, But With the Holy Spirit"

Commenter Lao'c left the following on yesterday's post about "going it alone", which included the following excellent thought by Wm Jas Tychonievich - "The ultimate spiritual authority is the Holy Ghost speaking to each believer's mind and heart, and all other authorities are downstream from that."

The comment: 

you make it sound too simple to 'walk with the Holy spirit'.

The problem is that is it very easy to make up some un-truth and then claim/believe it came 'into your mind and heart' from the Holy spirit.

As an example, the famous Dr.Charlton believes that Joseph Smith, founder of Mormonism, was a true prophet. Supposedly 'Holy spirit' told him that.

However, my own connection with Holy spirit tells me that Joseph Smith was a false prophet, with all that follows from this regarding Mormonism.

So necessarily, at least one of us' 'Holy spirit' is broken in a bad way. Clearly both cannot be true at the same time. And this is not a trivial matter, it is a matter of accepting or rejecting Mormonism.

So how are we going to find out which 'Holy spirit' is true in the style of 'Romantic Christianity'? Pistols at dawn?

-

The core of what I am saying is that most people are not ready to walk with the Holy spirit alone. They are still too attached to their own favourite un-truths and will thus attribute these lies they believe to Holy spirit, which is sacrilegous and will lead them astray.

Listening properly to Holy spirit needs the person to be quite advanced on a spiritual path. That means that what you call 'Romantic Christianity' is a path for precious few people. It not a path for masses and it certainly is not a path for those who so much love it.

Good points. Got me thinking. I responded with the following: 

I may be wrong, but your question seems of the devil’s advocate variety to me. Anyway, short and simple answer, as I understand things – Jesus provided us with the Holy Spirit to hear his call and freely accept his gift of Heaven and eternal life. The Holy Spirit is primarily available to guide us toward our individual salvation -- and at the end of the day, all salvation is individual – all salvation *just is* “not alone, but with the Holy Spirit” -- yes, and this also applies to salvation within church frameworks. Whether people accept it or not, they are and have always been walking alone with the Holy Spirit when it comes to matters of salvation, even when they choose to delegate some of the responsibility to an external spiritual authority. On top of that, they have always had to assume personal responsibility for their salvation, either within or outwith church frameworks. Having said that, I believe Jesus makes it easy to walk alone with the Holy Spirit, and it is we that complicate matters with our untruths (as you point out).


Longer answer to address your other points: Traditional Christian frameworks are supposed to help guide individuals toward salvation. Historically, they have done this. And to some extent, they still do this today. Traditional Christian frameworks provide added assistance for people to “go it alone” with the Holy Spirit, but at the end of the day, each individual is still going it alone, regardless of whether they believe that to be true or not.
The problem today is that many traditional Christian frameworks have been infiltrated and subverted; thus, the "safer" path to salvation is not as safe as it may have been in the past. This is a major problem facing conventional Christians (though I suspect very few are actually fully aware of the problem).

With this in mind, I don't think any individual can have an untruth connection with the Holy Spirit. I believe the Holy Spirit only connects with truth and does not connect with untruth. A person may attribute untruths to the Holy Spirit, but when they do, they are not speaking from their divine selves but rather some false self or other.
Since each of us is unique, we will inevitably have widely varying paths toward salvation. Believers will hear the call, but they will ultimately approach it in different ways.

The knowledge and guidance the Holy Spirit provides us individually -- assuming our questions and motivations are of the right kind -- will help align our individual “truths” with the Truth, based on "personality", personal circumstances, experiences, consciousness, choices, etc.

Our discernment to follow a certain set of doctrines or traditions or "go-it-alone" help to shape rather than determine the "success" of our salvation.

After we have made the choice to follow Jesus, the Holy Spirit will provide the guidance needed to attain salvation within the chosen framework. If the framework doesn't work, we could make another choice, and the Holy Spirit will respond accordingly -- as long as our motivation to follow Jesus to Heaven and life everlasting remains sincere and earnest!

With this in mind, I don't believe the Holy Spirit communicates much when it comes to denominational, sectarian, doctrinal matters. I believe this is more a matter of personal discernment. An individual who declares that his connection to the Holy Spirit is the *only* one is probably not communicating with the Holy Ghost but rather drawing on some aspect of doctrine or dogma. This approach reveals a "mass production" attitude toward salvation, when salvation is really more about the individual and the Holy Spirit custom-creating something tailor-made for the individual. And this applies to church-based frameworks as well. Note, I said the individual and the Holy Spirit, not the individual alone.

Thus, if following Mormonism helps an individual find a way to believe on Jesus and follow Him to eternal life and Heaven, then it is true for that individual, and I am glad for him. If following Catholicism or any other denomination helps an individual find a way to believe on Jesus and follow Him to eternal life and Heaven, then it is also true, and I am glad for him. If "going it alone" helps an individual believe on Jesus and accept everlasting life and Heaven, then this is also true, and I am glad for him.

Concerning "the advanced spiritual path", the Holy Spirit may provide individuals on such a path with knowledge and guidance concerning theosis, but once again, only if the individual's motivations are sincere and earnest.

I could have said much more on the subject, but it's probably best to leave the matter there for now. 

Not Alone, But With the Holy Spirit

Romantic Christianity is often denigrated for its apparent "go-it-alone" approach. This raises many red flags with mainstream Christians concerned about matters of spiritual authority.

William James Tychonievich succinctly tackles this "spiritual authority" concern by pointing out that -- contrary to appearances -- Romantic Christians are not really "going it alone" at all: 

"The ultimate spiritual authority is the Holy Ghost speaking to each believer's mind and heart, and all other authorities are downstream from that."

Man, I wish I had written that. 

On Being Branded an Enemy of Christianity

A little over a week ago I wrote a post in which I challenged the altar-civilization model promulgated by some of the writers at the Orthosphere. At the end of that post, I stated that the content was not meant as a "swipe" but rather as a call to "encourage the expansion of exploratory thinking beyond the altar-civilization model to which so many Christians seem indivisibly wed".     
 
I had not written the post to spark a debate between the Orthosphereans and Romantic Christians and was somewhat surprised when it did. The initial Orthosphere responses hinted that there was much room for agreement concerning salvation and personal spiritual discernment, but when I brought up the birdemic church closures, the overall tone of the discussion took an icy turn.

I finally disengaged after Kristor Lawson published his self-described “splash of hellfire: of hard hot adamantine opaque and impenetrable truth”, which he employed to brand all Romantic Christians as “enemies of the Church of Christ” and by logical extension, enemies of Christ and Christianity.

I suppose I could write a formal rebuttal – compose my own little splash of hellfire, but I won’t.

I am now thoroughly convinced that most Orthosphereans/Orthosphere readers are indeed indivisibly wed to the altar-civilization model. I also know that the very idea of exploratory thinking beyond the altar-civilization model repulses them. And that’s enough for me. I won’t suggest these sorts of things to them anymore.

I don’t believe Kristor, the other Orthosphereans, or their trad/mainstream readers are enemies of Christ, and it’s not my place to brand them as such. Having said that, I must confess that the deep respect I once held for some of the Orthosphereans is now quite shallow.

But I don’t want to harp on about that sort of thing. What I’ll do instead is close with two recent comments taken from Romantic Christian blogs. My aim here is to provide some insight into how “the enemies of the Church of Christ” think:

The first is from David, who runs the excellent New World Island site. The comment appeared on Bruce Charlton’s blog today:

“When I was first introduced to Mormonism (and Christianity, again as an adult, beautifully clarified by the missionaries) I was also asked to seek personal revelation. After some time I did believe it to be true, but I had no desire to become a Mormon or join the Church. I did however become a Christian.

It did not seem necessary to me that a loving God, who is primarily concerned with my salvation, would require my allegiance to a particular church or denomination, but would rather prefer a personal ongoing and unlimited relationship that was Jesus-centered and unhindered by any outside or second-hand influence.

I follow this path knowing that there is no earthly authority (no man, no government, no church) that supersedes my inner awareness of Christ who dwells within all men as "the light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world."

This is quite freeing. And therefore regardless of what happens with any church or church system in the future, I am confident this will have no effect on my faith or trust in God.”

The second is from Luke, who added the following thought to one of my posts:

“There are those who are aware of their own freedom and bear upon themselves the responsibility for their own souls, and there are those who wish to renounce their own will and flee their sense of responsibility. For a little while longer the latter may be possible, but I do not think the future will belong to them.”

Definitely Not a Lifeboat Christian

For many Christians, Christianity amounts to little more than the sort of thing Mihály Zichy (1826 -1906) depicts in the painting below.

Though understandable, this view does not reflect my primary Christian beliefs.

Simply put -- I'm not a "lifeboat" Christian, and I have no desire to be one.  Lifeboat - Mihály Zichy - 1827-1906

The First Eggs!

The ladies have begun producing eggs a few weeks earlier than expected --  I found these two little treasures neatly deposited into one of the nesting boxes earlier today. Definitely the start of something good! 

The Answer to the Grand Inquisitor's Rebuke of Jesus

In yesterday's post, I briefly explored the grand inquisitor's chastisement of Jesus for expecting too much from "weak and dishonorable" humanity and asked about the validity of the grand inquisitor's argument. 

Dr. Charlton provided a nail-head answer to that question in a comment today (bold and underlining added): 

The deepest truth is that Jesus made things extraordinarily *simple* - "My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me:

And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand" John 10: 27-8; and "believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name" (John 20: 31) - indeed, that simplicity is the problem.

So simple is Jesus's work and message, that people can't believe it, and insist upon something extremely complex.

They ask for some specific answer, argument and rule for every possible (and imaginary) question and eventuality. They ask for a cure to the world's ills, and demand a 'system' that will 'make' all Men into Christians.

Perhaps the special nature of *these* times is such that we may be able to shake free for centuries of obfuscation (as well as expedient or dishonest misrepresentation) and (re-) discover that simplicity - each for himself.

Of course, 'simple' does not mean 'easy' - but it does imply a straightforward, albeit tough, choice; which when made correctly will be followed by more such straightforward-tough choices.

To which I responded (some editing and additional words added): 

That's the answer.

People can't bring themselves to believe in the simplicity and straightforwardness of Jesus's message. They demand the Grand Inquisitor's coercive miracle, mystery, and authority model instead.

The further development of Christian consciousness hinges upon the (re)discovery of Jesus's simple, straightforward message and the straightforward, "tough" choices that follow.

Did Jesus Expect Too Much From People?

Look around you and judge, now that fifteen centuries have passed, take a glance at them: which of them have you borne up to yourself?

Upon my word, man is created weaker and more base than you supposed! Can he, can he perform the deeds of which you are capable?

In respecting him so much you acted as though you had ceased to have compassion for him, because you demanded too much of him—and yet who was this?

The very one you had loved more than yourself! Had you respected him less you would have demanded of him less, and that would have been closer to love, for his burden would have been lighter.

The lines above are from Dostoevsky's Legend of the Grand Inquisitor in The Brothers Karamazov. In them, the grand inquisitor rebukes Jesus for valuing humanity too highly and expecting too much from fundamentally "weak and dishonorable" men. 

And what constitutes the "too much" Jesus expects from mankind? In two words, freedom and love:

Thou didst desire man's free love, that he should follow Thee freely, enticed and taken captive by Thee. In place of the rigid ancient law, man must hereafter with free heart decide for himself what is good and what is evil, having only Thy image before him as his guide.  

The essence of the kind of faith Jesus expects from his followers is that it be:directly knownfreely chosenkeenly discernedinternal / internally-validatedpersonalexperientialheart-centered / love-centeredcreative
The totality of these aspects combine to form the unconquerable conviction that whole value of man is intrinsically connected to his freely chosen, creative participation in Creation -- in his participation in divine life and heaven. 

When you stop to think about it, Jesus's high expectations don't seem that high at all, but they do entail relying on the internal rather than the external and taking personal responsibility for one's choices and faith. 

Nevertheless, the grand inquisitor is quick to point out that that only a few "chosen ones" are capable of such things; the vast majority of humanity inevitably falls by the wayside:

"In what way is the weak soul to blame for not having the strength to accommodate such terrible gifts? And indeed, did you really only come to the chosen ones and for the chosen ones?

But if that is so, then there is a mystery there and it is not for us to comprehend it. And if there is a mystery, then we were within our rights to propagate that mystery and teach them that it was not the free decision of their hearts and not love that mattered, but the mystery, which they must obey blindly, even in opposition to their consciences." 

Unlike Jesus, the grand inquisitor expects little from the "weak souls" but vows to correct Jesus's overestimation of humanity by providing a purpose for those unable to follow Jesus freely:

And that was what we did. We corrected your great deed and founded it upon miracle, mystery and authority.

And people were glad that they had once been brought together into a flock and that at last from their hearts had been removed such a terrible gift, which had brought them so much torment.

Were we right, to teach and act thus, would you say?

Did we not love mankind, when we so humbly admitted his helplessness, lightening his burden with love and allowing his feeble nature even sin, but with our permission? 

The grand inquisitor presents himself and his institution as loving and merciful and Jesus's expectations as unrealistic, even cruel.

Is the grand inquisitor correct? Does Jesus expect too much from people?   

Sunset Amid Storm Clouds

Hungarian painter László Paál (1846-1879) is best known for his forest paintings, but he was also an adept landscape painter, particularly when it came to evoking mood.

​His Sunset Amid Storm Clouds provides a good example of his skill at "mood creation." Despite its mostly unimpressive technical aspects, the painting effectively conjures a striking "aura". 

Morrissey on Experiencing the Crushing Burdens of Late Twentieth-Century Society

This post includes a short video featuring the English singer-songwriter Steven Patrick Morrissey -- known professionally simply as Morrissey -- recollecting his childhood and youth in Manchester. 

I don't know much about Morrissey, and I'm not particularly motivated to know much about Morrissey, but I found his poignant remembrances of childhood and his incisive discernment of the crushing burdens of the 1960s and 1970s quite intriguing. So the key here is to focus on what the man says rather than focus on the man himself. 

In the video, Morrissey explains why the place he grew up no longer exists and how this has left him feeling as if a part of his childhood had been torn away from him. He describes the the tightly community his family and extended relations had established in a place called Queens Park, and how all of this came to end in one fell swoop when the place was demolished to make room for garish socialist-like apartment buildings in the 1960s, heralding the end of community and the beginning of anonymous society. Morrissey also touches upon his education and recalls the barbarism he experienced  in high school.

I found the short video interesting for a number of reasons. For starters, it mirrors my own experience growing up in Canada in the 1980s. More importantly, it addresses many of the problems our modern societies created or exacerbated in the late twentieth century -- alienation, faceless bureaucracy, lack of community, government schools, soul-destroying jobs and careers, etc.

From a spiritual perspective (my own, not Morrissey's), the video reminded me that the world is inherently entropic and that some degree of alienation is practically inevitable even if we manage to avoid some of the experiences Morrissey recounts.

Morrissey's recollections also highlight how extremely effective and efficient late twentieth-century society -- with its emphasis on the bureaucratic implementation utility and altruism -- was at intensifying entropy and alienation for the purpose of soul destruction.  

Note added: It's also interesting to note how Morrissey escaped the crushing burdens of the modern world through creativity and the feeling that he what he had to say was "terribly important". As far as I know, Morrissey is a lapsed Catholic, not a practicing Christian, and I suspect that in many ways he is deeply anti-Christian, at least deeply anti-organized Christianity (re: his song, I Have Forgiven Jesus), but his embrace of creativity can be considered instructive if we are willing to compare apples and oranges, so to speak.  

The Altar-Civilization Model is Over

If you visit The Orthosphere fairly regularly, as I do, then you have surely noticed the "Wherever an altar is found, there civilization exists" quote beneath the site's title.

The quote comes from Joseph de Maistre, the Savoyard philosopher who railed against the French Revolution and its rationalist rejection of Christianity in favor of the traditional social and religious hierarchies the Revolution sought to replace. Simply put, Joseph de Maistre was a reactionary; when it came to matters of civilization, he argued for the tried and true model of a civilization ordered around Christian supremacy and its contingent external institutions and hierarchies.

The placement of de Maistre's "wherever an altar is found" quote on The Orthosphere site serves as somewhat of a declaration of the perspectives, attitudes, and viewpoints of the site's writers, most of whom identify as reactionaries of some stripe or other.

Like de Maistre, Orthosphere writers heavily emphasize the social, cultural, and political aspects of Christianity and, quite rightly argue that society, culture, and politics in the West all tend to go to hell once Christianity is taken out of the equation.

Remove the altar and you remove civilization. In this sense, sites like The Orthosphere continue the de Maistre reactionary impetus to steer civilization back toward a model based on God and Creation, and in this impetus, they have my complete sympathy for the simple reason that any civilization not based on religion will inevitably collapse and cease to exist. At the same time, I do not believe that our civilization can be saved. Moreover, I increasingly sense that our civilization will probably have to collapse for Christianity to flourish once again.
 
Though I respect and support the utter necessity of basing civilization on religion, I am wary of the motivation behind the restoration of the traditional Christian civilizational model lauded by reactionaries like de Maistre. To begin with, I do not believe such a restoration is even possible today. The time chasm and gaping cultural abyss separating contemporary reactionaries from their eighteenth-century role models are far too great to bridge.

The traditional altar-civilization infrastructure still existed in some cohesive form – both externally in the world and internally in the minds and hearts of men – when de Maistre and his contemporaries worked to restore it, but the same cannot be said of today.

Our modern world marks the terminus of the traditional altar-civilization model. Civilization abandoned the altar, and the altar eventually abandoned civilization. In our time and place, altar and civilization are merged into an anti-civilizational force that is explicitly opposed to God and Creation. Thus, de Maistre’s dictum regarding altars and civilizations no longer rings true, at least not in the conventional sense.

Having said that, I continue to have the deepest respect for sites like The Orthosphere for one simple reason – they understand that civilization – in the proper sense of the term – can only exist if it is based on and motivated by religion.

At the same time, I find the casual dismissal or downgrading of consciousness development espoused by many of the writers at sites like The Orthosphere troubling. Such writers and thinkers support the view that civilization has taken a step – or several steps – in the wrong direction, and that the only way to right our sinking civilizational ship is to retrace our steps to the spot where we took the wrong step and re-establish ourselves in traditional Christendom, complete with Christian social hierarchies anchored in a strong and unified Christian church that holds sway over all temporal matters.

The problem with this approach is it doesn’t fully consider the reality of consciousness development – that is, the simple fact that modern people are much different from the people who inhabited traditional Christendom. Nor does it offer any satisfactory answers to the question of why people chose to step away from the traditional altar-civilization model of consciousness. It also offers poor explanations as to why the altar eventually chose to follow civilization rather than lead it.

Another problem with the altar-civilization paradigm is it leaves reactionaries and conservatives with very little room in which to maneuver spiritually. If Christianity is primarily a cultural, social, and political force, then what becomes of Christianity if all the cultural, social, and political forces of the world – including the altars – are subverted against Christianity? Moreover, how much should individual Christians invest into “saving” or “restoring” a civilization that has willfully abandoned its altars? What exactly would a Christian be saving or restoring? And would such saving and restoration hinder or fulfill Christianity?

Times like these are a crucial test for those who adhere to the conventional altar-civilization model of Christianity, but they don’t need to be.

On the one hand, the collapse of the altar-civilization model can be viewed as the catastrophe of all catastrophes, a gaping gorge from which it will be extremely difficult if not impossible to emerge. On the other hand, the collapse of the altar-civilization model can also be viewed as the beginning of a heightened form of Christian spirituality and religiosity, one that rises to fulfill Christianity.

​The reactionary model seeks to restore in order to avoid collapse, but the present suggests that the way forward lies not in reaction and restoration, but in resurrection and creation, in something resembling what Nikolai Berdyaev outlines in The Divine and The Human (bold added):  
 
Religious discussion centers upon the possibility of new revelation and a new spiritual epoch. All other questions are secondary. The new revelation is not at all a new religion, distinct from Christianity, but rather the fulfilment and completion of the Christian revelation, bringing it to a true universality. This we do not have as yet. But we cannot simply wait for the revelation of the spirit. It depends upon man's creative activity as well. It is not to be understood as only a new revelation of God to man: it is also the revelation of man to God. This means that it will be a divine-human revelation. In the Spirit, the divisions and contradictions of the divine and the human will be overcome, while the distinction between them will be maintained. This will be the crowning of the mystical dialectic of the divine and the human.
 
The opening of a new epoch of the Spirit, which will include higher achievements of spirituality, presupposes a radical change and a new orientation in human consciousness. This will be a revolution of consciousness which hitherto has been considered as something static. The religion of the Spirit will be the religion of man's maturity, leaving behind him his childhood and adolescence....
 
In the religion of the Spirit, the religion of freedom, everything will appear in a new light: there will be neither authority nor reward: the nightmare of a legalistic conception of Christianity and of eternal punishment will finally disappear. It will be founded, not upon judgment and recompense, but on creative development and transfiguration, on likeness to God.
 
The religion of the Spirit is the expectation that a new human and humane sociality will be revealed, radiating love and charity. It is also the expectation of the revelation of a new relationship between man and the cosmos, of cosmic transfiguration. The process of the decomposition of the cosmos ... is nearing its end. {but} least of all does this mean an optimistic concept of the destiny of history.

The discovery of light does not mean a denial of darkness. On the contrary: before the advent of the epoch of Spirit man will have to pass through deepened shadow, through the epoch of night. We are living through the tragic experience of the de-spiritualization and devastation of nature, as it were, the disappearance of the cosmos (the discoveries of physics), the de-spiritualization and devastation of history (Marx and historical materialism), the de-spiritualization and devastation of the mind (Freud and psycho-analysis).

​The end of the war and revolution has disclosed terrible cruelty: humaneness is vanishing. It is as though the Creator has withdrawn from creation. He is present only incognito (a favorite expression of Kierkegaard). But all this may be understood as a dialectic moment in the revelation of the Spirit, and a new spiritual life. One must die, in order to live again. Man and the world are being crucified. But the final word will belong to the Resurrection.

Note added: This post is not a swipe at The Orthosphere or its bloggers. The gentlemen at the Orthosphere are all highly intelligent, well-meaning Christians. I support their blog and maintain cordial relations with them. As I mention above, I have a deep respect for The Orthosphere, and I believe its bloggers are all on the right side. What am I trying to do here is encourage the expansion of exploratory thinking beyond the altar-civilization model to which so many Christians seem indivisibly wed.