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lundi 1 janvier 2007

The Popes

Par dianitsa le lundi 1 janvier 2007, 07:51

THE POPES

PONTIFEX MAXIMUS Aristote d’Aquin Platon

Pope John Paul II declared in a memorandum that « faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth.^[1] » Lev Shestov had a quite different stance on the subject. Indeed, considering the ancient narrative of Genesis, the Russian philosopher was thus speaking, « For reason is the fiery sword by means of which the Angel placed by God at the gates of Paradise drives men away.^[2] » He was referring to the heavenly beings evoked in the biblical text, « and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life. » (gen 324)

Who are we to believe? The theology of the prestigious Supreme Pontiff who ruled Vatican for nearly thirty years, or a barely known philosopher who went into exile to Paris where he died? For one, Reason raises man, for the other, Reason deprives man of the greatest good. The Pope takes off with Reason in order to meet divine truth whereas Shestov sees in Reason an unbendable enemy constantly threatening him. How then, from the same biblical text, could such an abyss form between those men? Do we see mankind dividing itself up equally between its two sides? Niet! All men have long agreed with the popes’ views – or rather, it is Rome who long ago joined intelligent and reasonable men!

In the same encyclical, John Paul II gets into deeper water as he eventually adds, « philosophical thought is often the only ground for understanding and dialogue with those who do not share our faith ». Let it be reminded that the Roman Bishop bears a title inherited from Latin Antiquity, a title which used to indicate the highest priest of pagan Rome: the Pontifex Maximus, that is, the Great Bridge Builder. John Paul II, in the tradition of his multiple predecessors, is building in this instance a philosophical bridge in order to unite the Church with the rest of reasonable mankind. This way, Christian men will see in Reason one of the Spirit’s wings that allows men to rise and fly from progress to progress. It then belongs to each of us to decide what suits them best as second wing: Science, goes the Atheist, Theology, popes will say, pretending it is the « Science of Faith ». This is how the fire of Reason has burned Faith and then turned it into a divine science. The popes took the spirit’s liberty and transformed it into a fiery and vindictive sword; they tore up its wings. They do not fly, they walk on earth, burning everything that does not obey their reason – like that Failed-man, the sinner.

Shestov, however, had undertaken the task « not to reconcile science and philosophy but to sunder them ». He added, « the deeper and more bitter the enmity between philosophy and science, the more humanity will win by it^[3] ». As for himself, he smashed the bridge built by the popes. He remained there, exiled from the other side of the abyss, joining with the small remnant of men for whom that knowledge possessed by the Angel with the fiery sword is but magic for the intelligent. What sort of philosophy free from the logical workings of Reason did Shestov elaborate this side of the chasm? The one, he declared, that « proposes not to accept but to overcome the self-evidences and which introduces into our thought a new dimension - faith. »

And so the popes threw out faith to Reason, that fascinates them, and, turning it into a Science of God, they built up cathedrals of rules and doctrines to which one only needs to bow down and to obey in order to reach the divine. But one does not buy Faith with the lights of Reason and its wise moral. And not only does Faith disobey Reason, but furthermore, it wants to subject it to Freedom because it knows how Reason goes crazy when in a ruling position. Faith in God feeds on a liberty that no logic can catch hold of. Therefore, whoever builds a bridge in order to tie them one to another is actually performing a transplant, on the same body, of feathers of divine Freedom next to the leaden wing of reasonable truths. In so doing, they are preparing the world to collapse into the bottomless abyss that precisely separates God from our Sciences of the truth.

The kingdom of God, where faith leads to, is a place where truths no longer accuse the soul with their fiery swords. There, the angelic fire of their power has lost the authority their self-evident truths still wield down here. In divine reality, truths live and die at the discretion of the sons of man’s will. There, their contradictions do not trouble neither beings nor nature. This is why, in the present world, a man of faith will be tense with all of his strength in the resistance against the popes of wisdom. For he refuses, lest he associate with them, to burn the budding wings his God forms him to go meet Him one day. It happened during those painful wanderings that Shestov came upon the following consolation – he remembered « the battle against self-evident truths » that Christ also waged when He was tempted in the wilderness:

« When Athens proclaims urbi et orbi, for the city and for the world : If you wish to subject everything to yourself, subject yourself to reason,^[4] Jerusalem hears through these words : All these things will I give thee if thou wilt fall down and worship me ; and answers : Get thee hence, Satan ! For it is written : Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God and Him only shalt thou serve. »^[5]

Ivsan Otets

[1] John Paul II, Fides et Ratio · Encyclical, 14 September 1998.
[2] Lev Shestov, Potestas Clavium – « On the Roots of Things. »
[3] Lev Shestov, In Job’s Balances – « On the Philosophy of History. »
[4] Seneca, Letters to Lucilius, letter 37-4 (Latin in original – Si vis tibi omnia subjicere, te subjice rationi).
[5] Lev Shestov, Athens and Jerusalem – « On the Philosophy of the Middles Ages. »

This text is available in print with 11 other Ivsan Otets writings.

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On Billy Graham

Par dianitsa le lundi 1 janvier 2007, 07:31

A Quick Word
on Billy Graham

TO EVANGELICALS

There is some form of Protestantism, in Europe and on other continents, utterly addicted to and spellbound by the American evangelical preaching. This is a seriously worrying attitude. It is strangely reminiscent of the propaganda used to describe WWII historical facts. Indeed, we are taught from childhood that America, like a saviour, has rid Europe of Nazism. We know however that just like France, Italy or Great-Britain, the total American casualties came to about half a million men. Next to those, Russia lost more than 20 millions of her people, thousands of kilometers away from the much-hyped Normandy landing that History focusses on. Whereas millions of Slavic men and women were being sacrificed in a kind of incognito, not to say of contempt on the part of the average European for whom victory could only be celebrated on an American tune, Russian people were nevertheless taking down Hitler on their own, thus paving the way for his permanent defeat in Europe.

But propaganda worked splendidly. Awestruck Europe turned to the west and praised America the hero. Since then Europe has been opening up to the American way of life, her mouth wide open in bliss, feeding on all America’s messages and welcoming her messengers on the red carpet. Nowadays the same blindness is working on the mindset of some form of Christianity, like a shadow. Christians turn to the west as if over there exclusively Christianity possessed the secrets of evangelical victory. As if God had endowed the made in US ecclesias with a spiritual power capable of defeating humankind’s enemies. Christianity from across the Atlantic is considered a model of excellence, naively and almost with idolatry. Is it not the first one to reach the ultimate goal of that messianism we pretend to be perfectly faithful to Christ? Meaning Christendom must reign politically!

In his documentary With God on our Side, David Van Taylor tells us about the Richard Nixon election. The freshly elected President is standing before the excited audience and the usual clique of journalists. By his side on the podium, a smile topped with falcon’s eyes, is standing Billy Graham. The religious preacher is given the microphone and immediately delivers in Old Testament tones, « O God, we consecrate Richard Milhous Nixon to the Presidency of these United States […] We pray this humbly in the name of the Prince of Peace who shed His blood on the Cross that men might have eternal life. Amen. » At that moment, Nixon was experiencing an ecstasy unlike any other. Just imagine! he was no less than being directly enthroned by God Himself through the mouth of one his most prestigious evangelists. At that moment in time, both were convinced to be on a divine mission — they would lead the most powerful Nation in the world to once again save it from a devouring invader.

The old Roman Pope of Old Europe was then being floored, together with his urbi et orbi, his « to the city and to the world ». As for Pope of Protestantism Billy Graham, there he was, raising the urbi et orbi up to the level of divine hopes. It is true that the anointing has changed hands. Nevertheless, Billy Graham was the worthy son of the Bishop of Rome for, much the same as him, Graham’s aim was to reign politically and he spoke with bombast to the city and to the world. However the American preacher, a much more pragmatic man, easily outdid his father. Leaving the old liturgical outfit, he dressed in a suit cut by the best tailors, studied modern economy and the workings of Mammon, to eventually make his way into the very exclusive circle of political dark powers. He then shook hands on a regular basis with exousia, with « powers » — there, at the top step of their glories. What about Christ? He did the exact opposite as he disowned all authorities and publicly mocked them (cf. col. 215). Christ threw their crowns to the ground, shouting to the world and to the city, « My kingdom is not of this world […], now is my kingdom not from hence » (cf. jn. 1836). Without doubt, Christ was not on the platform with Billy Graham and Richard Nixon, he was absent from such a place. One day, the American preacher will need to account for the way he took possession of the name of the son of God in order to build his human fantasies and, on top of this, for having led into them so many gullible crowds that listened to him.

In the face of such a corruption of the Gospel, the word of Chesterton springs to my mind, « The modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad ». The political domination of Christianity is merely the tragic and pathetic mix of Judaism and the Gospel. It is Peter stammering in awe at the transfiguration and talking nonsense, « let us make three tabernacles ; one for you, and one for Moses, and one for Elias » (mark 5). It is that old fearful move of an immature Christianity that wants to sew Faith and Law together. That is to say to make God a tangible reality, to blend the Christ with a theocracy coming from the Law, to force him, as did the pharisees and the crowd, to accept a political enthronement. Happily enough, the Nazarene preferred the cross and the incognito of resurrection. Christ does not want to rule over men! He wants to change their nature so deeply, so thoroughly that every-One rule over their own reality, that they be king or queen of their own kingdom — that they be neither with God nor Master. Christ offers himself as Father, and he is himself the Father who is self-sacrificing for his sons, but never is his final goal to give himself as an Almighty God to sons who could only get near him on their knees. He has in view their full freedom. He wants to take them from the position of creatures subjected to their Creator to that of the dignity of sons wearing their Father’s nature. This is a radically different thing. It is an authentic break from the Torah theology with its social morality. It is a divorce without return from that fervour the Old Testament has to be politically interpreted and to rule over men.

But has not Billy Graham preached the Gospel? some might ask. Has he not led numerous persons to Christ? Let us not be so positive. It is an easy thing to generate intellectual or moral conversions, which are typical of political conversions after all. You use the power of suggestion on someone to form convictions in his mind with the captivating lever of a talented speaker and his campaign manager, an expert in propaganda. You want to learn manipulate these or those values and mechanisms that work on the human psyche, so that you acquire on that someone enough power to make him take the ballot paper you want to see him use. This is how the sp can exert such an authority on our neighbour and make them believe they chose it freely. In fact, there is no choice on neither sides. Here only lies a moral and intellectual manipulation that is in no possible way spiritual!

As a matter of fact, it is easy to see a conversion of the conscience to a given pattern of Good & Evil thought and confuse it with spiritual birth, which is precisely outside all good & evil patterns. Indeed, the Spirit works altogether differently. It literally comes and tears down the person, it drives him mad. It precisely makes it impossible for the moral or intellectual quibble to stand any longer so that it no longer offers a way out for that person, who cannot have but one hope: the hope of a completely free, miraculous and unreasonable intervention of God. All this occurring in an intimate and personal one-on-one meeting between man and heaven. The Spirit’s intervention is beyond good and beyond evil. Beyond any reason, any logics, any theology and any justice. The Spirit has to do with the Justice of the Kingdom of heavens which no eye has seen, no intelligence has grasped, no feeling has experienced. This counter-Torah justice which makes a man be born of God cannot be comprehended in any human way. We need an all-gracious action on the part of Christ so that suddenly would open for man this brand-new he had never imagined before, this brand-new he now can only embrace and make his through Faith alone.

But what do preachers with their Billy Graham principles do? They equip themselves with some human charisma that they crown with some wise men morality, then they shape the humanist personality within the excellence of a well-suited theological training. Finally they wrap it in a carefully elaborated esthetic universe. In the end, the whole thing is neatly inserted in a show for the crowds where the media effect surrounding people works to convince them they are living an extraordinary moment. Proud of their work, these preachers thus suppose they can reach the same goals than those of the Spirit even though the Spirit is absent! The imitation of the Spirit is so well done that it is enough to exalt an audience member. Alas, an audience member is often very easily exalted. He believes in it. And from there on he embarks in a conversion that he thinks is a spiritual one, when it is only intellectual or sensual, and unfortunately largely human.

Such is the religious process, such its power, such its seduction. Catholicism’s archaic liturgy and the old Protestant rigorism have cleverly transformed into evangelical Masses. Since then, people say that these modern religious theatres from the west are carrying off the spiritual victory of the Gospel. But nothing could be further from the truth. The real victory is taking place behind that story, in real History. It is taking place in another land and thousands of spiritual kilometers away from that media hype of the divine. Victory is gained by those inspired individuals whose faith weighs one thousand times more in heaven’s eyes, but who are nonetheless being sacrificed under the media pressure of the « triumphant » ecclesia, far from podiums, platforms and applause. In that precise place where the Spirit dwells, far from gatherings and street audiences. In the simplicity of a meeting with one’s neighbour, in the intimacy that a man or a woman may have with God in the secret of their room. In the incognito, as Kierkegaard liked to say, « As soon as a crowd forms, God becomes invisible. And this all-powerful crowd may go and hammer at his door, it will not go any further, because God only exists for the individual. That is His sovereignty. »

Billy Graham, “Pastor to the mighty”: a very full life.

In his book Hope in Time of Abandonment, Jacques Ellul talks about abandonment. Abandonment is God’s silence, it is His absence. « It is my belief, Ellul explains, that we have entered upon the age of abandonment, that God has turned away from us and is leaving us to our fate. Of course I am convinced that he has not turned away from all, or rather, I think that he may be present in the life of an individual person. He still may be the one who speaks in man’s heart. But it is from our history, our societies, our cultures, our sciences, our politics that God is absent. He is keeping quiet and has shut himself up in his silence and his night. » (71). Then he further adds about religion, « It is collectively that we experience God’s silence and his absence: it is the body of Christians, the churches, people in the aggregate who find themselves abandoned. And the personal experience of a few ones does not change anything about it. » (125).

In the third part of the second chapter entitled « Signs of Abandonment in the Church », Ellul writes more precisely about what he calls « dryness ». Dryness, for him, is « the lack of outreach in witnessing, the lack of transmission of the Christian message » (139). The principles of evangelisation of Billy Graham and the like take root in that dryness. Little by little, Jacques Ellul comes to the specific example of the American evangelist.

This dryness, he explains, is a combination of the religious spirit and « the great effort on the part of Christian intellectuals to make the message audible, comprehensible and acceptable on a purely natural level » (140). Jacques Ellul then condemns the exegesis of progressive annihilation and of dissection of the texts. « The more we dissect a text, the less will it be accessible to a fundamental understanding. The more one improves his formal knowledge of the text, the more its basic significance vanishes. » (142-143). He goes on explaining, « It is true that, with God absent, the only thing left for us to do in our real spiritual poverty, is to keep peeling the layers from the textual envelope. We can rest assured, however, that that will lead nowhere. Its only effect will be to confirm our sterility and to make it more obvious. It is not a matter of jumping to the opposite conclusion and saying: “Let us not perform any more exegesis. Let us regress to a naïve and fundamentalist reading” […] it becomes harmful when we pretend to get out of the impasse by means of exegesis, and to do without the Holy Spirit while going after the same result. The hermeneutic enterprise probes tirelessly and ever more deeply into the mystery of the possible communication and recovery of meaning.  » (142; 144)

He then further analyses the work of the hermeneutic enterprise: « It makes one’s head spin. It is the exact equivalent, in reverse, of ancient metaphysics. Strictly, it is a matter of putting oneself in the place of God’s decision. It is a matter of making Scripture alive and meaningful without God’s making it alive and meaningful. It is a matter of effecting the transition from Scripture to word, or of making language into the word, by putting together highly sophisticated human means in order to economize on the use of the Holy Spirit. Hermeneutics is the business of interpreting revelation without revelation. […] Consequently, God is forbidden to speak. God does not need to speak in this matter, it’s up to ourselves to make him speak. We need to substitute our hermeneutics of the word for his word. » (144)

As he eventually refers to the specific case, Ellul declares the following, « Billy Graham’s propaganda methods are the exact equivalent, at his level, of the hermeneutic philosophy in that they use every last means to obtain results which the Holy Spirit is no longer giving. One can obtain conversions by propaganda thereby economizing on the action of God, just as hermeneutics can obtain a meaning. » [without it being God’s meaning]. (146)

The first edition of Hope in Time of Abandonment dates back from 1972! Jacques Ellul, the man from Bordeaux, published nearly 60 works whose content reflects the best wine in the world that is to be found in his home place. However, Christendom will prefer to quench their thirst with sweet drinks served by preachers from across the Atlantic. Let no one wonder today. The Church has sacrificed an inspired man who was standing at her gates. She carries within herself intellectual, emotional and moral converts, the result of those sham preachers motivated by Billy Graham style propagandas. That is to say the Church is overflowing with men and women whose spiritual birth, if it ever happened, now reveals individuals suffering with every sort of spiritual psychiatric ailments. Must we cry over her? For the time being, let her drink from divine abandonment, from God’s silence and his absence. In that place, Ellul said, « there is a huge thrust towards faith, for it is that misery of a man crying out to an empty heaven which can call God to life. » (191)

ivsan otets

Jacques Ellul quotes are drawn from the C. Edward Hopkin translation of Hope in Time of Abandonment (1973). Page numbers in brackets refer to the Wipf and Stock Publishers 2012 edition.

This text is available in print with 11 other Ivsan Otets writings.

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On the Anglo-American Religion

Par dianitsa le lundi 1 janvier 2007, 07:00

On the Anglo-American Religion
TO WINNERS Frans Hals Regents Hospice

« You cannot judge men by the things they do when they take off their pants. For their really filthy tricks, they get dressed. » Those are the words of Minna, a waitress and a prostitute in The Roots of Heaven by Romain Gary. The same opposition goes for Catholicism and Protestantism. The first revelled in his blatant «  filthy tricks » to the point that his activities are brought out in the open today with the paedophile scandals. As for the latter, he cleverly knew how to learn his lesson from his brother, so he pulled up his pants and gave himself up to wrongdoings far more outrageous in the end.

Famous sociologist Max Weber, on that matter, explains in precise detail the Protestant mindset in his work The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism : « it is a fact that the Protestants […] both as ruling classes and as ruled, both as majority and as minority, have shown a special tendency to develop economic rationalism which cannot be observed to the same extent among Catholics either in the one situation or in the other. Thus the principal explanation of this difference must be sought in the permanent intrinsic character of their religious beliefs, and not only in their temporary external historico-political situations. »

The Reformation, Weber explains, «  meant not the elimination of the Church’s control over everyday life, but rather the substitution of a new form of control for the previous one. It meant the repudiation of a control which was very lax, at that time scarcely perceptible in practice, and hardly more than formal, in favour of a regulation of the whole of conduct which, penetrating to all departments of private and public life, was infinitely burdensome and earnestly enforced. The rule of the Catholic Church, ‘punishing the heretic, but indulgent to the sinner’ as it was in the past even more than today, is now tolerated by peoples of thoroughly modern economic character, and was borne by the richest and economically most advanced peoples on earth at about the turn of the fifteenth century. The rule of Calvinism, on the other hand, as it was enforced in the sixteenth century in Geneva and in Scotland, at the turn of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in large parts of the Netherlands, in the seventeenth in New England, and for a time in England itself, would be for us the most absolutely unbearable form of ecclesiastical control of the individual which could possibly exist. That was exactly what large numbers of the old commercial aristocracy of those times, in Geneva as well as in Holland and England, felt about it. And what the reformers complained of in those areas of high economic development was not too much supervision of life on the part of the Church, but too little. »

The sociologist’s analysis is harsh and yet very accurate for anybody having practical experience of Catholicism and Protestantism. But Weber goes even deeper in discernment. That new religious practice served, according to him, as a lever for the establishment and the domination of the capitalist spirit in Europe. Quoting a peer, he says that « the Calvinistic diaspora was like the seedbed of capitalistic economy ».
Among numerous examples in his detailed work, he takes that of Benjamin Franklin, a founding father of the United States. Born in Boston, Franklin was the son of an English immigrant and was bred in the Puritan tradition. «  His strict Calvinistic father drummed into him again and again in his youth : “Seest thou a man diligent in his business ? He shall stand before kings.”  » (Prov. 2229) Franklin, who later became at a denominational level a «  colorless deist  », according to Weber, left an autobiography from which he extracted the following lines in order to support his study on the Protestant ethics:

Remember, that time is money. […] Remember, that credit is money. If a man lets his money lie in my hands after it is due, he gives me interest, or so much as I can make of it during that time. This amounts to a considerable sum where a man has good and large credit, and makes good use of it. Remember, that money is of the prolific, generating nature. Money can beget money, and its offspring can beget more, and so on. Remember this saying, The good paymaster is lord of another man’s purse. He that is known to pay punctually and exactly to the time he promises, may at any time, and on any occasion, raise all the money his friends can spare. This is sometimes of great use. After industry and frugality, nothing contributes more to the raising of a young man in the world than punctuality and justice in all his dealings; therefore never keep borrowed money an hour beyond the time you promised, lest a disappointment shut up your friend’s purse for ever.

« Truly what is here preached is not simply a means of making one’s way in the world, but a peculiar ethic », Max Weber comments. He adds, «  the infraction of its rules is treated not as foolishness but as forgetfulness of duty. » Then he goes on describing a telling aspect of this mentality: « Now, all Franklin’s moral attitudes are colored with utilitarianism. Honesty is useful, because it assures credit; so are punctuality, industry, frugality, and that is the reason they are virtues. A logical deduction from this would be that where, for instance, the appearance of honesty serves the same purpose, that would suffice, and an unnecessary surplus of this virtue would evidently appear to Franklin’s eyes an unproductive waste. And as a matter of fact, the story in his autobiography of his “conversion” to those virtues, or the discussion of the value of a strict maintenance of the appearance of modesty, the assiduous belittlement of one’s own deserts in order to gain general recognition later, confirms this impression. According to Franklin, those virtues, like all others, are only in so far virtues as they are actually useful to the individual, and the surrogate of mere appearance always sufficient when it accomplishes the end view. It is a conclusion which is inevitable for strict utilitarianism. »

But Weber does not stop with this criticism which, alone, would leave Franklin in the typical attitude of the hypocrite. «  But in fact the matter is not by any means so simple. Benjamin Franklin’s own character, as it appears in the really unusual candidness of his autobiography, belies that suspicion. The circumstance that he ascribes his recognition of the “utility” of virtue to a divine revelation which was intended to lead him in the path of righteousness, shows that something more than mere garnishing for purely egocentric motives is involved.  » For, he adds, concerning the Protestant mindset at large: «  A lack of care in the handling of money means to him that one so to speak murders capital embryos, and hence it is an ethical defect. »

« And in truth, the German sociologist insists, this peculiar idea […] of one’s duty in a calling […] It is an obligation which the individual is supposed to feel and does feel towards the content of his “professional” activity, […] is what is most characteristic of the “social ethic” of capitalistic culture, and is in a sense the fundamental basis of it. […] The ability of mental concentration, as well as the absolutely essential feeling of obligation to one’s job, […] This provides the most favorable foundation for the conception of labor as an end in itself, as a [spiritual] calling which is necessary to capitalism. »

We could conclude these series of quotes, lengthy but essential to get an idea of Max Weber’s discourse, with this last word by the economist : « the characteristic Protestant conception of the proof of one’s own salvation, the certitudo salutis in a calling, provided the psychological sanctions which this religious belief put behind the industria. But that Catholicism could not supply, because its means to salvation were different.  »

For almost five centuries, this Religion has been completely permeating the Anglo-American, Dutch, Swiss and, for a large part, German mentality and spirit. All these peoples are insidiously led by that asceticism in work, by that financial prosperity brandished like a divine seal, like the evidence that some exceptional moral justice will reward the individual person : it works as a stamp which validates a so-called « divine election ». That spirit is to be found absolutely everywhere in the activities of the Protestant populations. As for « artists » or for those who boast about being on the margins of religion, all those who, in the midst of Protestant societies, flatter themselves to be in direct opposition with their religious background, those who state loud and clear to have freed themselves from it, the truth is they just cannot get rid of it. Indeed, this sort of hero worship, the worship of the virtuous man or of the romantic conqueror, actually has its source in the Protestant religious background they pretend, yet, to have overcome. The Protestant ethic has weaved its precepts in the shadow of their souls and it is still brought out in their lifestyles and their social reflexes without their realising it. The fervent atheism promoter just like the « rebellious » music artist, the avant-garde writer or the « wonderful » world of movies, etc.: all actually partake in it. Every TV series, every novel is filled with the smell, more or less strong, of that Protestant thought which introduced these peoples into the modern age before any other. These civilisations are circumcised to the ethics of financial success as a reward and the American system so much overindulged in it that it reached to an ultimate frenzy when it engraved the motto on its banknotes, « In God we trust » !

But the realm in which this painless poison reaches its shiniest modernity, the moment when it stands out in majesty, is when it seizes the Bible ! There, to quote Minna, men and women « pull up their pants and adjust their skirts », dress modestly, put perfume on and wear their best polite smile, then they go and commit the «  filthiest tricks  »: the evangelical teaching! Today, love of money, the capitalist spirit, and security in the name of God are brought to new heights. A certain sophisticated trick, that strikes the right balance and that is all dialectics and rhetorics, has Christ say he is a friend of Mammon. If Peter is the apostle of Catholicism and Paul that of Reformation Protestantism, then Judas is the apostle of modern Protestantism. This is only normal, for Judas was an accountant. One still wonders why countries such as France, with so many thinkers of value and so much ability for critical thinking, are constantly at the feet of these gold and glitz lovers. From now on, the churches of Europe seem to share in that same love, that same gold, that same fever for happiness and comfort which the bible yet denies its anointed. European Protestantism also – as it went on listening to those false prophets, as it went on being bitten by their « Gospels » in which the rewards of the god-Good are made of money, of well-being whereas, they declare, the punishments of Evil bring poverty and insecurity – that Protestantism is now but the legitimate son of some pagan Christianity. The time and the circumstances are getting near. The day is coming when Christ will hand them the bread he handed Judas in order to reveal his deepest intentions. I doubt that before that day French Protestantism will wake up and kick the asses of all these Anglo-Saxon missionaries and authors. It will probably share, with all these Mammon-god saints of the useful and the successful, in the same tree where Judas hanged his greed. The Protestant’s shame will come after the Catholic’s. The younger brother who thought he was more cunning than the elder eventually defeated the theatre of the antique episcopalian masses: he knew how to make the ropes invisible by conforming more intimately to the world.

ivsan otets

This text is available in print with 11 other Ivsan Otets writings.

Book presentation page : Sons of Man [↗︎]

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On Hymns

Par dianitsa le lundi 1 janvier 2007, 06:55

On Hymns

TO THE HAPPY

Novalis & Barnum

In his work The language of the Third Reich, Victor Klemperer explained how Nazi propaganda would daily modify German language so as to spread its ideology. He notably said that totalitarian mental oppression was made of « mosquito bites, not big blows on the head ». It is a mixture, he went on, of « Novalis and Barnum ». Novalis referring to the Romantic poet and Barnum to the American show business entrepreneur who created the Barnum circus in 1871.

Psychologist Paul Meehl coined the phrase « Barnum effect » from there. He was alluding to the manipulative skills of the circus man who declared that « a good circus must have something for everyone ». The Barnum effect designates a suggestion, a subjectivity. Through those, a person is led to accept the fact that a brief description or a fleeting impression apply exactly to his personality. The Barnum effect is to indulge in wishful thinking. It is the disturbing trend of giving a meaning to all our experiences. From there, bitter hopes arise. These suggestions work on the intelligent and the stupid alike. Astrology, cartomancy, numerology and other kinds of spiritualities make an excessive use of it. Via theses practices, customers are convinced that they are assessing their life and their personality in some sort of meeting with « truths » that are uttered and felt. They enter some belief which is suggested to them as being unquestionable and certified. Any challenging of their practices or experiences would be from then on deemed « blasphemous ».

That mixture of suggestion (barnum) and romanticism (novalis) is typical of churches. And it has been so for centuries. Paganism, with its spiritual shows, produced the very first movie screenings. It also used to manipulate its inevitable « climaxes ». That moment, thus called by movie professionals, is when cinematographic tension and emotion reach a paroxysm. This is when the action resolves in a response also called crux of the plot. Aristotle was talking of catharsis, (from katharein, meaning « to purify, to purge »). The term was first used during religious expulsion rituals practiced in Antiquity. For Socrates, Plato or the Stoics, catharsis and philosophy are linked. It meant to isolate the soul from the body, to kill the particular being and dissolve it into the general idea. Closer to home, however, apart from the term used in psychology, catharsis refers to the spectator’s fundamental pleasure. During climax, a sort of emotional purge is taking place, a therapeutic release. It is the scenario’s conflict resolution: David kills Goliath. Screen writers and communication professionals are perfectly familiar with the mechanisms of catharsis. The spectator is made to think that he is that hero triumphing in his fight against evil.

This is how any religious performance works. Catholicism started with its Latin recitations in spectacular buildings, among its own actors wearing special clothes for the occasion. The created suggestion, with its liturgical romanticism, combined with the purification of the participant’s conscience — all of this yielded huge takings the world over. But Catholicism is moribund. Protestantism skillfully managed to modernize the show, to transform it so as it would stick closer to our reality.

And this is why music and hymns, more than prophecies, sentimentalism or miracles, are such crucial elements today. A successful church is one that sings the best and that uses best the modern technologies of sound and light. Just like the Old Testament, which is full of hymns and liturgies, notably in the glorious age of the Kings, churches are coming forward to conquer souls. Trumpets in hands, they suggest to their people that they are the breed of the saints come to make the world a happier place and to make its feelings blossom.

Counter to this racket, the New testament is as stingy with hymns as the Old is generous. Apart from three paltry references in the Pauline letters (among which Ephesians and Colossians, precisely suspected to be pseudepigrapha), we have nothing! Revelation, which is about the world to come, needs to be considered separately of course. By contrast, in the one and only occurrence where the Gospels refer to hymns in Christ’s presence, what is then being said is utterly meaningful. Indeed, after the text reads, « And when they had sung an hymn, they went out into the mount of Olives », Jesus himself speaks and announces;: « All ye shall be offended because of me this night » (Mat 2630-31).

Bang! The inevitable happened. The disciples fell asleep during prayer while Christ was sweating blood. Then they all left him! Finally Peter denied him and the cock crowed. All this occurred in the hours following the singing of hymns. The true New Testament Hymn is the cockcrow! That is the message of the text. Great author Gogol was writing about the cock, whose shrill crow always heralds weather change. Isn’t the New Testament heralding the changing of time? Is it not announcing that man’s nature will be revealed? That man, singing at the top of his dunghill, needs to learn who he is so he can reach what he is not.

Looking at Masses and all the evangelical « circuses », such a man has come to wonder what could God be possibly thinking about it. Now, can he not see what Victor Klemperer could see? That is, « the mosquito bites » of religious propaganda through which it is suggested to one, in a sickly romantic environment, that their sanctification is the purgative experiment of worship services and Masses. There is more truth in Peter’s bitter tears than in the hymns he was chanting the moment before. Let Christians do the same, let them cry bitterly. For, today, their hymns and their prophetic jumble are tolling their reprobation. They are themselves the prophecy that they cannot hear for screaming so loud. The prophecy of the cockcrow, that is soon coming for them.

Ivsan Otets

This text is available in print with 11 other Ivsan Otets writings.

Book presentation page : Sons of Man [↗︎]

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The Umbilical Cord

Par dianitsa le lundi 1 janvier 2007, 05:57

The Umbilical Cord

TO CHRISTIANS

Birth is an unparalleled experience, all emphatically declare, as it is the very moment when life achieves autonomy at last. For the first time, an infant’s mouth will open, air will fill up his lungs, and his navel will close up when the midwife cuts the umbilical cord. However, and we are well aware of it, this experience is not unique in one’s life, quite the contrary. Natural birth is indeed like a prophetic scene telling the child, « From now on life will shape you through that same gesture », meaning, to the rhythm of constant cuttings of the umbilical cord. To exist means « to be in the process of becoming », doesn’t it? It does very certainly. And the process of becoming does not imply returning into the mother’s womb but leaving it so as to become completely free from it!

The newborn baby will have to fight all his life in order to be born into his independence and assert the particular individual he is called to become. Time and again he will have to tear himself away from his biological parents, to gain his autonomy, away from all nests, and to break every fetter. And at each one of his « births » he will feel the air of his newly gained freedom fill up, expand and burn his lungs as he suddenly utters a victory cry. Life here below is a long birth. The biological birth that sets this process going is like a whip lash carrying all the symbols of this life race. It teaches us, moreover, that every birth presupposes a death, and that « the mother’s womb is actually a tomb » because the baby who is being born is also simultaneously dying to the embryo he was.

This constant process of becoming in which life pushes us, this obsession it has of making us an independent being, a Man – that also is a death process life skillfully handles. Life puts to death and condemns, it destroys our dens in which our fears lock us up as change and novelty scare us. Life tears our cords apart then proudly leaves a mark for its gesture in the form of a beautiful scar. In short, life knows from the start that our nourishing cords will eventually wind around us and then – choke us!

The same goes for the spiritual birth evoked in the New Testament, which is a constant uprooting of the being. Here also, it is all about cutting the umbilical cords that tie men to various addictions and determinisms. However, while the usual existential process of becoming is about untying an individual from his various ties (his begetters, culture, nation, this or that doctrine or inherited lifestyle, etc.), the spiritual birth that Christ means is in fact an altogether different one. Breaking the umbilical cord in this case means a separation from Nature itself — a complete separation! Therefore, the metaphor of the « mother’s womb being a tomb » now refers to mother Nature! In the New Testament, cutting the umbilical cord refers only in a lesser and indirect way to what we commonly call « flesh and blood », by which we mean family, religion, society, or some ideology and its dogmas, ethics and moral codes, etc. Christ means to reach to the very source. He wants to liberate us from our very Nature, from the human being as we know it and which we personally and individually are. Such a future is out of any common sense and rationality, be it scientific or religious. It is sheer madness. For, in the same way the infant’s cord is snipped and then he dies to his embryo existence, this birth process is about tearing man away, not only from his present life, but furthermore from the death towards which that same present life leads him!

The matter at hand is resurrection, that is to say a birth out of man, an exit of the homo-sapiens. We are here considering a future, a « becoming » that is infinitely more than one of those transformations human evolution is able to trigger. That future is excessive to man. It is a road that has got nothing to do anymore with the traditional existential progress into which any human wisdom can lead men. It is, from now on, about having man being newly born, awaken to an identity which is impossible to conceive reasonably, an identity the evocation of which is a nightmare to reason, considering that reason’s eternal truths will one day have to bow down before this new man. Christ abundantly talked about this being to come, using for that matter the term Son of man. By so doing he shed light on a phrase that was already used in the Old Testament. Furthermore, he pretended to be himself the perfect incarnation of a Son of man! And to add to the scandal, he declared that this identity was simply the very nature of God, thereby making himself God’s equal!

This is a far cry from the way the wise and the religious portray those who stand beside their divinity in the after life. Those ones are usually portrayed as angel-looking creatures whose obedience is perfect, that is to say, they are pure consciences, they no longer have personal desires and consequently know no future — they will never become. Between those Sons of angels and the Son of man, the homo sapiens’ verdict will of course be as rational as it will be radical: « It is in the logical course of things to be born a Son of angel, says he, but to be born a Son of man is contrary to reason ». It does not matter that the Sons of angels are beings whose nature is actually totally inhuman, what matters is that they are just exactly what the evolutionary and sanctifying process of reason produces whenever a human being surrenders to its mechanisms.

Reason shapes a Creature that is refined from every passion and from any proper liberty, a Creature moulded into perfect obedience so as to be turned into a pure conscience. All this, happening in the midst of a world of peace where everything stands in the absolute and final stability of the divine law that sets it.

Let the reader have a clear understanding of the key matter at hand. Which is, that the Sons of angels have no need whatsoever to cut mother Nature’s umbilical cord because what they become in the after life is only the normal process of their first and only birth, it is its mathematical process. This is why they do not need to be born spiritually. Nature, who is their nature, slowly leads them into the Unity of her perfect Law, into the immutability of the divine and into its immateriality, thus, into her logic of disembodiment. This, here, is not being born again, it is rather the successful end of the first birth and of the priorities it pursues. The gods that govern this birth lead everything towards what Reason calls eternal beatitude, and what man calls death. In opposition, the Sons of man are really being born a second time since they are clothed with another body, indeed, since they are resurrected! This is why their lifestyle is to cut the umbilical cord of mother Nature, to get out of her origin and to reach their Father’s horizon which is the kingdom of heaven. Whereas the Sons of angels’ lifestyle is to be in communion with their umbilical cord, to follow its way so as to return to their mother’s original womb that they see as heaven or as the nirvana.

Oddly enough, it seems that up to today the various strands of Christianity basically agree with this stance on resurrection, with the idea of the new body it promises and of the break from the first one it implies, here below. The Church generally approves of this fact and pretends to firmly believe in it, at least in a theological manner, on paper. So it may be that I am actually only sharing truisms and ideas that other theologians and thinkers have asserted a thousand times, here and there, in the course of Christian history.

Nevertheless, if Christianity so much loves Resurrection why then, for centuries and in its vast majority, has it been so much attached to this world? Why has it been so much absorbed by current events? Why such a determination on its part to serve, to love and to better mother Nature? And why has Christianity taught men that to drink from Nature’s best juices and to avidly suck her breast was a divine reward in response to their virtues? Our « succulent reality » yet is the world’s womb out of which God is determined to take man. What is more, the world is this double fear, this « Egypt » that Scripture talks about: fear of living and fear of dying. In the face of such an existence, God offers enfranchisement and liberation. From then on, why teach men – in God’s name – that the silver cord of our biological and reasonable life is a man’s most precious possession? God’s work is precisely about setting us free from that earthly cord that our fake-life is, and his Spirit wants to teach us not to fear mother Nature’s Torah, which runs the universe. As a consequence, any spirituality that, « in the name of the Divine », teaches men to drink from the world’s breast as a form of spiritual reward — is where precisely lies the diabolical reality. The delicious and appealing diabolical reality has always promised men milk, honey and fat as a reward for their wisdoms. These here are all the spiritualities of the peace prophets, the ones that Scripture repeatedly identifies as « false prophets ».

And yet this is the very spirituality that, in practice, traditional Christianity preaches to its people. Why? Because like all religions, the Church has always wanted to conquer the World and to rule over it. Hence her insistence, her enthusiasm, her ardour to discuss politics, sociology, ethics, justice, the various institutions, culture, public health, and all sorts of policies. Hence her will to discuss the laws that rule our civilisations and her pretence to better them. Hence her intention to develop a discourse, in our technological times, on Ecology! That matter is so much topical that the Church, as opportunist as ever, understands how much the issue can be instrumental in helping restore her image. This is why, these days, we can see a certain strand of Catholicism discoursing on some « divine ecology ». The naive will declare that « the Creation is a temple of flesh and a living house in which God might come to dwell ». In short, Christianity has always been utterly focused on man’s happiness here below, it has always thought to be on a mission to manage things « christianly » here below so as to bring happiness and prosperity to its fellow citizens. From there comes the Church’s acrobatic splits, which always put her in extreme difficulty. On the one hand, she wants to uphold a philosophy that teaches men the « divine techniques » needed to extract the world’s best fruits from its breasts, on the other hand she can see God precisely engaged in the very opposite work! On the one hand, the Church strengthens the cord of rationality through which the « earthy people » are the head of the world and not the tail, and on the other hand she sees God severing that cord and teach His own to abandon rationality, to have no fear of offending the motherly soil and of losing its temporal blessings.

However, from the midst of her unhappy imbalance, the Church is perfectly aware of her situation. How then will she be able to hide it? How is she going, for one thing, to go on preaching the new birth, seeing that her existence is founded on this spiritual fact, and for another thing, how will she be able to never cut the child’s cord! Indeed, she fears the moment when a child reaches maturity and becomes passionate about the resurrection more than he is about the Church. In which case he might cut loose and put the ecclesiastic structure in danger. The Church’s answer to this dilemma, we must admit, was splendid and craftily devised: « Let us make sure, said she, that we infantilise the individual, but this time on the breast of another mother than mother Nature, who anyway must be put aside theologically. Let us then carve the dogma of mother Church. Then, as pagans do with mother Nature, let us say that the Church is sacred and possesses a divine body. Then, every new birth will be consecrated to us and no one will ever dare cut loose from our breast! »

In consequence, Christianity may from this point preach the new birth in a secure manner since its midwives are expressly trained to never cut the umbilical cord. In an altogether different fashion, the cord will even serve as a spiritual diadem. Some will use it as a proof of their spiritual birth, others to boast the special intimacy they have with the divine. As for the oldest, they will see in the cord a sign of their great spirituality and a trophy for their near-sacrificial bond with the Saintly Mother Church, a bond, they think, every Christian is called to possess! We are here in the presence of Christians who have been faithful believers for twenty, thirty or even forty years, but who are still entangled in their umbilical cords. And though they try to deceive their own by turning the disability into a spiritual crown, those Christians are actually spiritual autistic persons, social cases of a sort. They are psychiatric invalids unable to take on the independence Christ came to offer them. If we could see them just for a day through the transparency of pure conscience, they would surprisingly look like children of all ages, and for the less affected, like teenagers.

Still, no one ignores the fact that, one day, the scalpel will work on the skins of us all and the last cord binding us to the living will then be cut for good. On that day Mother Nature will forsake her children to death, and the same will go for all mothers — Science, Nation, Philosophy, Morality, Mysticism, the Church, etc. Or simply for the mother who birthed and raised us. That one, though a human being, is invested with the same powerlessness than the others, and the most heart-wrenching cries of her child being swallowed by death will be to no avail. No mother is strong enough to resurrect her loved ones. Why? Because resurrection is precisely that wedding ceremony the Scripture talks about. It features two persons only, God and the individual, that is, the particular Being each of us is. It is that being, it is him alone (or her) who will enter resurrection, just as the bride enters the « Bedroom » on her own. This is how Scripture reveals it in the parable of the shepherd: « Christ calls his own one by one, each by his name, and He takes them out. » (cp. Jn 103).

He who has received this bonding relationship from God is then happy for he is on his way towards his resurrection. Is he not saved by this particular intimacy he has with God? And what about those who deny such a freedom to Christians? What about that Church for which a person and another are linked together more than every-One is linked with his or her God? That Church who thinks God does not lead his own « one by one and each by his name », but that He is leading a herd through a system of harness and yoke forcing all animals to march along the same furrow. That ecclesiastic body who poetically and proudly thinks itself a mother will know the same end than all mothers. The Church will not save her own because she is wrongly persuading herself for centuries that she is « God’s womb », because she promises to give birth to men’s spiritual life. Moreover, she herself will not be saved, meaning, her concept will have no existence in the resurrection. In the world to-come, the Church professional members will put their hand upon their mouth and be confounded, because the Ekklesia will confirm once more that « in your mothers’ love, life makes you a promise at the dawn of life that it will never keep. »[2]”

ivsan otets

[1] In reference to the Talmud which uses the expression « Bedroom » to evoke the « holy of holies », referring to the O.T. Temple.
[2] Romain Gary, Promise at Dawn.

This text is available in print with 11 other Ivsan Otets writings.

Book presentation page : Sons of Man [↗︎]

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The Four Hearts

Par dianitsa le lundi 1 janvier 2007, 05:56

THE FOUR HEARTS

The Parable of the Sower
or
One man’s Progress

Based on Luke 84-15 and also Mat 131-23 or Mark 41-20

↳  unfold biblical text here

5 A sower went out to sow his seed : and as he sowed, some fell by the way side ; and it was trodden down, and the fowls of the air devoured it. 6 And some fell upon a rock ; and as soon as it was sprung up, it withered away, because it lacked moisture. 7 And some fell among thorns ; and the thorns sprang up with it, and choked it. 8 And other fell on good ground, and sprang up, and bare fruit an hundredfold.

The way, the rocks, the bushes and the humus. Every reader of the parable of the Sower will easily identify the four grounds where the sower’s seed is sowed. Commentators all agree to say that Christ here evokes four types of people, four different categories of listeners. However, I like to see in this story one and one listener only. The four grounds are actually the four hearts of a man — of one and the same man.

1 · The Way: seed is trodden down by passers-by and eaten by birds.

The first ground where the seed falls is, by any human standard, the most spiritual one. It is made of black asphalt, very even, smooth and clean, shiny and pure, consciously elaborated and high-tech. That first soil, boulevard-like, is the position of a man who is perfectly supervised by a most highly moral code of conduct. The asphalt of Laws is poured in that first heart and draws a road on which the homo sapiens does his best to spread out all his glory. This is the heart of the religious man, of the wiseman, where the gods of Torah work together with the gods of atheism and humanism. Those deities, avatars of pure Reason, hover above the earth as they run our reality through their unbendable laws. This is why, when the Gospel is sowed in such a heart, the winged-Beings of scientific and religious Logic immediately come to rob the seed and take it away. « What on earth is this clown who dares challenge our authority? » ask the majestic fowls. So do they remove the seed from that man’s heart, because they are its masters. According to them, the Gospel is a much too silly and archaic discourse to be planted in the eminence of a heart they advanced by injecting high knowledge in it. Any possibility to leave the high road is then taken away from that man. That is, any possibility to step in doubt — to step in Faith.

What the gods aren’t aware of is that the seed of the Gospel is, at the start, a fire thrown into the heart. It is in truth a plough beginning a strange work: it turns a man’s heart over, ploughing through it, inciting it to contest the moral and scientific laws which rule over it. Little by little, the Sower wants to lead the individual man towards Another world. Over there, gods and truths have reverted to their serving position.

2 · The Rocks: seed springs up soon but, lacking soil, withers away the next moment.

In this context will arise a tragedy, a trial, a fall of some sort or another. That stifling heat of doubt, against which the individual man had conscientiously tried to protect himself, is yet occurring. Misfortune affects our man and he is overwhelmed by despair. Now, as he leaves the concrete road of the beginning, he enters his second heart. There, looking for solutions, he strays from the wisemen’s road and dares to reach to the rocky places of a world clearly less conformist and less systematic. It is there, in that new place of enthusiasm that he suddenly sees the evangelical seed crack open in him. It brings him hope in the midst of the turmoil that has just hit him – the hope of an extraordinary way out of trial. On his knees, his hands thrust out to the heavens, crying, singing and praising God, our man here is right in the middle of the second type of ground: he is in the process of opening his second heart.

Now the Gospel has just been growing to an almost technological speed that recalls the construction of the first road our man, however, thinks he has left for good. What kind of Gospel, then, is this? It is the Gospel of the artifice, of the immediacy, the Gospel of the kind of faith that wants to see in order to believe — a faith, therefore, that is not faith. This is the Gospel that bears no hardship. It is precisely for this reason that it was rewritten to become a sort of anti-hardship charm. But of course reality and its trials do not back off before illusions or other amulets, even though these would be given the noble name of the Nazarene! The circumstances’ stifling heat is in no way impressed nor disturbed by a blooming truth which is but a pseudo-revelation. Much the opposite. In the face of disillusion, powerlessness and failed hopes, and as belief evaporates under the heat, the furnace will then be doubly felt by our man. In no time at all, the great enthusiasm for the Extraordinary will burn out. This blissful heart’s spirituality will dry on the spot even faster than it had grown.

3 · The Bushes: seed falls in the middle of thorns choking their germination.

At this stage, what is our man to do? Either he will return onto the asphalt ribbon, secure and comfortable – onto the first land and into his first heart – more or less enriched by the trial and vaguely ashamed of an episode he will see as eccentric. Or he will persevere and reach his third heart, which is also the third type of soil.

Thus ploughs on the plough of the Gospel. After it turned over the tar, the seed found stones, indeed, but it also found a little bit of soil where growth had succeeded in making a small breakthrough. From now on, the sower’s ploughshare is tracing deeper furrows in the heart and it discovers much more loose soil in it where seed may be deposited. Unfortunately, that soil is still too close to the first road, it still is too much influenced and contaminated by the technology of the road workers of Morals, of scientific order, of that monotheism vociferating its laws of good and evil. That ground, that heart still hopes to turn the Sower into a King of this world: the third heart also demands that the sowed word give out immediate results, and give earthly happiness as proof for the All-Might. Unable to see that which the Gospel leads him to, our man therefore remains in deep concern for this world, for his own security and for his own prosperity – in short, for his Ego.

In the course of that third stage, whereas belief seems to find more root and moist to grow and develop, the commonest attitude of man is the following: he will build a church, a synagogue, a mosque, a university… and change the world! Much more. Thorny bushes will be transformed into religious flowers and wreaths to adorn civilisation, as man offers himself to serve Society. That is to say he will be working at embellishing the first ground’s asphalt, he will try to please the first heart, to receive from it and with it the goods that the land of Civilised men can bestow. He will build a Messiah that is commensurate with man, an idol really, a God that can be venerated without travelling over to the land of the impossible, meaning, without having to find a new heart – that of the fourth ground.

Everything, then, has come full circle. The man in the parable is going round and round in circles around his three hearts. This trilogy makes up an optical illusion in which each heart is in the service of the other to simulate an impression of Progress. Through a certain course, at times antagonistic at other times collaborative, it all makes up a coherent and complementary whole, bringing about the well-known process of man’s positive evolution. The first three hearts of the parable of the Sower are one and the same heart, that of the « earthy man », that of the homo-sapiens for whom the fourth heart remains unattainable – this one last ground of the parable where live the men who have broken their hearts of clay — who have smashed the Adam.

4 · The Humus: seed finds a well-prepared and rich soil and harvest is plentiful.

This is the not-yet-here-earth. Here below, that soil is incognito, it’s a land-from-over-there. It is the Other-man and it is a miracle — it is that coming harvest, hidden in Resurrection and hardly perceptible in our reality.

The fourth ground of the parable of the Sower is another identity. It is the nature that proceeds from the Son of man. This is the very nature that has seen the « No » of the Gospel ploughing through all human possibilities. To the man of Faith, that fourth soil is his true heart, whereas the other three are a permanent temptation to turn Christ into a reasonable and logical being, a temptation to turn Him into a co-builder of those eternal truths ruling our reality here below in such an inhumane manner. Thus the man of Faith, from the depth of his fourth heart, is engaged into a merciless fight against the return of everything religious, dogmatic or ecclesiastical, against the three hearts of the « earthy man » that still lie within him. The fruit he bears in that fight is that authentic spirituality wholly given by the Sower. An invisible fruit that no scales can weigh nor ruler can measure. That particular fruit shall be uncovered after death, for it is not about obedience nor good deeds nor virtues, but it is all about the impossible of Resurrection.

German poet R. M. Rilke – though he loathed official christianity – wrote these words somewhere in his letters about his task as a poet. According to him, this task was about “conveying to man the familiarity death has with the deepest joys and splendors of life”. He declared that death was « party to all that which lives. »

Such is the actual meaning of the parable of the Sower — The Sower went out to sow his seed… and all along that incomprehensible work, he confidently, and without scruples, ruins the logical collusion between life and death. What is he aiming at? He is aiming at ploughing through your hearts. What is his goal? His goal is to kill you! For that reason says He also, « I am the Resurrection and the Life », as he came to put man to death and to beget the son of man. Indeed, the fourth ground is that land of Resurrection which, here below, can only be grasped in the incognito. It is this extraordinary identity towards which Christ leads the one who loves him… by opening the red sea before him! That is to say, by allowing him to go beyond both Life and Death, of course… but more importantly, beyond the eternal truths of the great-One, and of reason — those gods who still ordain, with an iron fist and in our world, the two Titans on earth (Life & Death).

The four grounds of the parable of the Sower are truly a one and only heart. They stand for the advance of a man whose « earthy » hearts the Spirit is working to break, so as to uncover the impossible heart of flesh God wants to give him. And if today you are standing at the far end of all your grounds, it may be that Christ is in the course of ushering you in the impossible of that new life, of that fourth heart, of that new being that in truth you are and that he will resurrect one day, this heart that will be full of living water one day and full of the infinite possibilities [1]… Can you see its horizon yet? Can you breathe its fragrance? If, like me, you take great delight in that air, if you too enjoy to be immersed in the darkness of Faith, hoping heavens will give you to persevere in that momentum until the end… then we probably are brothers, united through that strange existential work of the Spirit. In such a brotherhood, you do understand it, there is no more Church, as it lies among the thorns and on the tarred roads of the sociable and educated people. In such a brotherhood, you do understand it now - all are akklesiastical.

ivsan otets

[1] To quote Kierkegaard.

This text is available in print with 11 other Ivsan Otets writings.

Book presentation page : Sons of Man [↗︎]

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The Akklesiastical Walk

Par dianitsa le lundi 1 janvier 2007, 05:55

« THE SHEPHERD CALLS
ONE BY ONE, BY THEIR NAME
THE SHEEP THAT BELONG TO HIM
AND HE PUSHES THEM OUTSIDE »
John 103
(translated and adapted from a French version by Pirot & Clamer)

A SHORT INTRODUCTION TO THE AKKLESIASTICAL THOUGHT

The akklesia thought we have been articulating for more than fifteen years now originates in a passion for Christ. Naturally, we need to clarify what we mean by « passion for Christ » as Christian history brims over and overflows with all sorts of fevers in the name of this argument.

The ultimate Gospel : Towards Christianity without the Church

time : 1'22

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It begins with a « conversion », as neither of us did receive religion in heritage, or but in a distant manner. A conversion which brought up very quickly the following dilemma: faith OR the Church? Of course, we did try to reconcile both, at first. We did not want to allow that « devil » of dilemma come in our minds. Precisely, was it not that very ecclesia which had so generously preached the Gospel to us? Were we not indebted to the ecclesiastical State, in the same way every child is indebted to their « loving family » or to their Nation for having protected and educated them?

Moreover, we were unable to apprehend the Church in a light that was more, let’s say, economic, and in terms of « soul trade ». Such an approach was not only too guilt-inducing but it was above all too specialised for a child. How would a child in Christ be able to discern that the « holy family » is in fact but a nursery to which he has been entrusted in preparation for his eventual freedom, for his eventual exit? But the nursery, by quickly monopolising spiritual paternity, steals the child and then expects a return on investment for all its work. The ecclesiastical bottle-feeding workers do have a cost and their multi-secular organisation imposes a tax on all of its children! Especially as the Father, apparently away, does not pay the nursery fees. What is more, this « scoundrel » only shows up to take the child once out of his nappies — in order to lead him personally into maturity. On top of that, that same irresponsible Father does not even give one thank-you for the « holy nursery » and its devoted employees! Certainly, the child will be safer among nurses, nannies and other ecclesiastical preceptors who will teach him — a supervised-freedom.

In short: being still too ingenuous, we wholly involved ourselves in the ecclesiastical version of faith. Like obedient and submissive sheep, we tried both faith AND the Church! We sincerely, dutifully and wholeheartedly rolled up our sleeves. Studious and fully convinced, we then repeated the much celebrated corpus christi that is chanted everywhere — at the catholic’s, the protestant’s, the orthodox’s and in the various alternative Christian movements: « No Salvation Outside the Church! »

A wasted effort. Years went by and nothing could stifle the question.

If then, personal Passion and Faith for Christ are cursed by Christ himself when they are experienced outside the Church and when they place themselves above the Ecclesia,
If One-son’s authority, when placed above that of the corpus christi, is blasphemy for the Christ,
If identifying the Church as a political and educational entity (that will be soon exceeded by the existential dimension of the spiritual adult) is, for Christ, a satanic notion…

If such is the condition of the love between Christ and an individual person, we were unfortunately left with one option: to ask God that this Faith and that Passion be withdrawn from us!

Our prayer was not answered.

More than that, we eventually learned to read the Scriptures from the perspective of the Existing-Being and not that of the Moral-Being. This is how Christ speaks when He is defining himself, in the commonly named parable of the shepherd, as « the one who calls, one by one, by their name, his sheep and who pushes them outside the Church ». That was a consolation — as, then, we were once and for all at peace with the Church. Blessed is the one who loves the Church for what she is — in truth — after having stripped her, at last, of the corpus christi with which theological subversion covered her and by which the Church mutilates herself.

This is why the akklesiastical commentary is in no way counter-ecclesiastical. It is a paradox, and paradox is a characteristic of the Spirit, but Akklesia does accept the Church, and so it is « ecclesiastical » too in a way… We do acknowledge the Church in her task as a religious guarantee and a moral guardian — and only that! The Church finds herself at the same place where Judaism was in the first century when facing early Christianity. Meaning we need to get out of her without destroying her, by acknowledging that her earthly part in the Spirit’s process will not pass here below, but that it has already passed over there, in the beyond of Resurrection. There is no Church in the world-to-come! Theologian Karl Barth evokes an « infinite opposition between the Gospel and the Church » as he declares that « the Gospel is the abolition of the Church, in the same way the Church is the abolition of the Gospel ». He concludes his reflection with this remarkable summary: « The Church is judged by the kingdom of God ». It is the same relation at stake between Reason and Freedom: Freedom is an exit out of Reason and surpasses her — but Freedom does not imply the destruction of Reason, as such. Because Freedom uses Reason as a tool. Reason is Freedom’s servant acting as an educational tutorship for those, still in a state of weakness, who see in Freedom a frightening « dizziness », to use Kierkegaard’s term.

This is what the short animation above sums up. The human-stone, in order to become alive, must get out and be broken by the Spirit. But it is not launched against the Church, as if its mission were to abolish it. It is simply leaving a childhood reality. As he breaks the maternal cord, the man is then turning towards a reality to-come, existing after a personal filiation from Father to son that is beyond him and where, precisely, that man will be broken. The individual person is then following Christ personally — in such an existence that is specific to every-One, meaning in an irreligious, adogmatical and exclusively existential way.

We certainly do think that the child needs to believe he has a mission in this world and for the world, but we know that, as he becomes an adult, he needs to understand the only mission God gives him is — himself. If he does not become aware of this, and if he turns his childish desire into a sort of megalomaniac urbi et orbi in Christ’s name, then he is already being an against-the-Christ Christian. That is to say, he is mistaking the Torah’s universal mission for Christ’s individual process! The Church has always wanted to change the world by making man evolve through a certain set of social and moral responsibilities. It is a noble and honourable initiative, but this task belongs to Reason, to Morality, to the Torah, that is, overall, to religion (the salt and the light). Christ does not care about changing the world. His work is infinitely more delicate, it is a work that no religion nor reason are in a position to accomplish. He is aiming at such an impossible transformation of the Being that it consists in stepping over eternity. He is aiming at such a change in the Being that this world cannot receive that man — that man is always to-come. Christ wants to kill man and resurrect him in an-Other nature, such as our eye cannot see.

Thus, Akklesia simply wants to echo Christ by shouting the only thing He really said and for which He came: Resurrection alone. This is our faith, and this is our passion for Christ. Let the world not tremble and not be troubled by our presence. We leave it to its authorities, its hopes and its pipe dreams. We leave the crown to the world. But let the being — let him — tremble, be anxious and lose hope as infinite death patiently awaits him. Then, let him jump for joy, if that is granted to him. For we believe Christ came to usher us, through a birth process, to an extraordinary change which, to be sure, crucifies us but will soon leave our grave empty. He will raise us. Then He will slip eternity, time and space under our feet, as a throne for the Being.

ivsan et dianitsa otets

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