A trinitarian stated the following:
>[We do] teach that the Son is subject to the Father!<
Paul's statement that the Father is over all includes his being over the Son! We don't see in Ephesians 4:5, 6 anything about merely a functional subordination as opposed to essential (ontological) subordination for the Son, which should have been a critical distinction for the Scriptures to make at Ephesians 4:5, 6 for the Son's subordination were it so that a reader of Ephesians 4:5, 6 should not think that the Son's subordination is like that of all other persons with the Son in the set ‘All persons subordinate to the Father.’ In fact, we don't see anywhere in the Scriptures anything that should lead us away from the conclusion ‘The Son's subordination is essential, ontological.’ Yes, the Word is God's only-begotten Son; moreover, John 1:18 says that the Word is the only-begotten QEOS (god). This means that the Son's godship is derivative, whereas nowhere do we read that such is true for the Father's godship. The Father alone owns unoriginate (unbegotten, uncreated) godship.
The same trinitarian stated the following:
>That [subjection of the Son to the Father] has nothing to do with the fact that that they are equal in nature! The Son is begotten of the Father and is God by nature.<
We know from the Scriptures that the Son is by nature a divine being. He has a fullness of all the properties essential to godship (compare Colossians 1:19; 2: 9), but that does not mean that he has as many attributes in his being as has the Father (e.g., the Father does not live because of anyone else, but the Son lives because of the Father--John 6:57; compare Micah 5:2; the Son makes no procession of holy spirit, but the Father does; only the Father has necessary to his being that by which it is impossible for him to be other than loyal to the absolute, infinite holiness of his character--see Revelation 15:3, 4), nor does it mean that the Son’s godship properties are to the same degree as the Father's. Moreover, Paul's statement at Colossians 1:19 (“ . . . because [God] saw good for all fullness to dwell in [Christ]”) shows us that the Son's godship is not one unbestowed, that is to say, it is not an instance of godship that, by necessity, has existed from all past eternity. If it were so, then Paul should not have said the Son's fullness was because of the Father's good pleasure, His will, His decision. The Son, however, owns what was kindly given him by his Father (see also Philippians 2: 9).
The phrase “the only-begotten son of God” means ‘a uniquely generated son of God,’ or ‘a son uniquely generated by God.’ It does not mean that God does not have other sons besides the only-begotten son of God, but it does mean that their having been brought into existence by God the Creator is not like the way God brought into existence the firstborn of all creation, God’s only-begotten Son. (God directly created the firstborn of all creation.) And yet it is not how God brought into existence any of his sons—whether directly or through his privileging another person to serve as an intermediate agent in the creation of all persons besides the Creator and His intermediate agent--that necessarily makes any comment as respects the nature they have. What necessarily speaks to something in their nature as endowment that is necessarily present in their nature (in order that they should enjoy communion with God)? The phrase “son of God” speaks to that matter. The predicate in ‘One who is a son of God’ does not necessarily denote for the subject divinity, godship. (We need only to recall that Adam came into existence as a son of God, yet we know he was not a divine being.) The phrase “son of God” tells us that Adam was brought into existence as a rational and moral image of his Creator so that he could commune naturally with his Creator. Every actual son of God, i.e., one who is a son of God in the essence of his being, has received and retains endowment from God whereby he is naturally able to commune freely and acceptably with God, this regardless of whether we refer to the nature of earthly persons (e.g., the pre-fall Adam and Eve, and those to whom the apostle referred in Romans 8:21), or we refer to the nature of spirit persons so long as they, too, are in actual fact sons of God and not fallen angels (i.e., demons, those spirits cut off from spiritual fellowship with God).
Suppose for sake of argument that God’s firstborn of all (rational) creation had been Adam. Such an Adam would have been, at least for a while, God’s only-begotten son, which phrase can have for its referent the only person that God directly creates. Until such time as God might directly create Eve for her to be Adam’s wife, then such an Adam would have been for a while God’s only-begotten son. With direct creation of another person (Eve), however, such an Adam would lose his only-begottenness status, that is to say, such an Adam would no longer be the only one that God had directly brought into existence. Now, such an Adam as we postulate here merely for sake of argument would lose his status as God’s only-begotten son, but not because of any change in his nature; rather, he would lose it because of God’s having directly created another person.
Of course, such a scenario as we have imagined in the immediately preceding paragraph is not historical, but serves only to illustrate what we mean by the adjective “only-begotten.” Our imaginary scenario illustrates that it is logically possible that the phrase "only-begotten son of God" might have applied—at least for a while had there never been created any spirit sons of God prior to Adam's creation—to an earthly son of God (Adam), and yet no one argues that even if there had ever been such an only-begotten and earthly son of God, in the person of Adam, that it should mean that such an Adam was “God from God,” or even that such an Adam was a divine being lesser than Jehovah.
Blue Petals Afloat
Logic informs us the corollas are not afloat
Sunday, July 11, 2010
How Did Early Christians View Military Service?
I have had in my library for about twenty years now a book (second edition) by Jean-Michel Hornus (translated by Alan Kreider and Oliver Coburn), IT IS NOT LAWFUL FOR ME TO FIGHT. Early Christian Attitudes Towards War, Violence, and the State (Herald Press: Scottdale, PA / Kitchener, Ontario, 1980) 370 pages. It puts into perspective the fact that there were (some--very few) soldiers who found themselves in an especially dangerous position because, now that they had accepted the Gospel, they were finding themselves increasingly conflicted and subject to execution should they follow the dictates of their conscience in refusing to act out entirely the role expected of soldiers in the emperor's service. However, there were other nominal Christians serving as soldiers who had the name of being Christian before ever they found themselves in the emperor's military. Hornus puts all this in perspective:
"But we can say confidently that the Christians then in the army ["a result of Roman recruiting methods of compulsory service whereby a as certain category of persons would be impressed all over the empire at a time when Christianity, as an unrecognized religion, could not provide grounds for exemption"] had not enlisted voluntarily after they had become Christians. Their presence in it, which initially was a result of the persecution, soon ran the risk of eliciting further persecution, as uncompromising Christians began to bring out, for all to see, the latent opposition between their faith and the empire. The more cautious believers [i.e., the ones more fainthearted and willing to make compromise of their faith] were therefore enraged and terrified to hear [, for example,] of the soldier's daring exploit in Tertullian's De Corona [, "which concerns a soldier who suddenly refused to wear a laurel wreath which was given him, in accordance with custom, at the time of donativum. Many Christians were critical of his refusal; but Tertullian defended it by moving progressively from a discussion of the nature and significance of garlands to a clear and categorical denunciation of military service. Two things are especially noteworthy here: until his sudden gesture this Christian had been a soldier; and Tertullian tells us that there were other Christian soldiers who did not have the courage to follow his example."]--pp. 123-24.
Hornus helps us to appreciate that some nominal Christians were in the military and were soldiers before they heard the Gospel. After hearing the Gospel, some became increasingly conflicted until they made open acknowledgment of their newfound faith-- and paid the price for it. Other nominal Christians who were in the military after they had become Christians were in the military because they were impressed under persecution so that they compromised their faith when becoming soldiers for the emperor. Some of these later found courage of their convictions--and they, too, paid the price for it. Many others remained cowered by Roman persecution.
Clement addresses a situation where some soldiers become believers. Hornus helps us to appreciate the real meaning of what Clement advised. Hornus quotes Clement, and afterwards makes comments on Clement's words. (I have added in brackets words that are not a quotation taken from Hornus' book, but are words that present the meaning that Hornus argues was in Clement's words.) So, in Hornus' book we read:
""Till the ground, we say, if you are a husbandman,
but recognize God in your husbandry. Sail the
sea, you who are seafaring; but ever call on the
heavenly pilot. Were you a soldier on campaign
when the knowledge of God laid hold on you?
Then listen [as any good soldier would listen
to his commander, but only now you should be
determined to listen instead to the only
worthwhile commander,] to the commander
who signals righteousness.... "
"This text is not to be interpreted as an approbation of [Roman] military service; rather it must almost certainly be understood as an invitation to leave the army.... From these various passages [where Clement touches on soldiering] we may conclude that military life was a reality which Clement observed in the world; but it was not a course of action which he endorsed for the Christian."--pp. 124-25
I find Hornus especially insightful in what he writes on page 67:
"Once one admitted that Constantine was God's elect, one was compelled to falsify the historical truth where necessary to make his personality correspond to [traditional Christian] expectations [of how a spiritual brother ought to treat another brother] . . . Thus, while Constantine and Licinius were still fighting as allies against Maxentius and Daia, the first editions of Eusebius and Lactantius depicted both men--Licinius as well as Constantine--as acting in God's name and with his help. But later, after Constantine had
quarreled with Licinius and then deposed him, the two Christian writers had to make hurried and clumsy emendations in their work.
Now they vilified Licinius and attempted to demonstrate retrospectively that in reality the light of God's grace had all along shown on Constantine alone. The most egregious Soviet historians of the Stalinist period could scarcely have done better--or worse."
I may post more excerpts from Hornus. But I recommend that you visit a library in order to read all of Hornus' work. He helps put the lie to some revisionist historiography, namely, that which seeks to distort the record of early Christianity as respects how early
Christians before the fourth century were opposed to the idea that they (loyal Christians) may serve in any earthly army.
"But we can say confidently that the Christians then in the army ["a result of Roman recruiting methods of compulsory service whereby a as certain category of persons would be impressed all over the empire at a time when Christianity, as an unrecognized religion, could not provide grounds for exemption"] had not enlisted voluntarily after they had become Christians. Their presence in it, which initially was a result of the persecution, soon ran the risk of eliciting further persecution, as uncompromising Christians began to bring out, for all to see, the latent opposition between their faith and the empire. The more cautious believers [i.e., the ones more fainthearted and willing to make compromise of their faith] were therefore enraged and terrified to hear [, for example,] of the soldier's daring exploit in Tertullian's De Corona [, "which concerns a soldier who suddenly refused to wear a laurel wreath which was given him, in accordance with custom, at the time of donativum. Many Christians were critical of his refusal; but Tertullian defended it by moving progressively from a discussion of the nature and significance of garlands to a clear and categorical denunciation of military service. Two things are especially noteworthy here: until his sudden gesture this Christian had been a soldier; and Tertullian tells us that there were other Christian soldiers who did not have the courage to follow his example."]--pp. 123-24.
Hornus helps us to appreciate that some nominal Christians were in the military and were soldiers before they heard the Gospel. After hearing the Gospel, some became increasingly conflicted until they made open acknowledgment of their newfound faith-- and paid the price for it. Other nominal Christians who were in the military after they had become Christians were in the military because they were impressed under persecution so that they compromised their faith when becoming soldiers for the emperor. Some of these later found courage of their convictions--and they, too, paid the price for it. Many others remained cowered by Roman persecution.
Clement addresses a situation where some soldiers become believers. Hornus helps us to appreciate the real meaning of what Clement advised. Hornus quotes Clement, and afterwards makes comments on Clement's words. (I have added in brackets words that are not a quotation taken from Hornus' book, but are words that present the meaning that Hornus argues was in Clement's words.) So, in Hornus' book we read:
""Till the ground, we say, if you are a husbandman,
but recognize God in your husbandry. Sail the
sea, you who are seafaring; but ever call on the
heavenly pilot. Were you a soldier on campaign
when the knowledge of God laid hold on you?
Then listen [as any good soldier would listen
to his commander, but only now you should be
determined to listen instead to the only
worthwhile commander,] to the commander
who signals righteousness.... "
"This text is not to be interpreted as an approbation of [Roman] military service; rather it must almost certainly be understood as an invitation to leave the army.... From these various passages [where Clement touches on soldiering] we may conclude that military life was a reality which Clement observed in the world; but it was not a course of action which he endorsed for the Christian."--pp. 124-25
I find Hornus especially insightful in what he writes on page 67:
"Once one admitted that Constantine was God's elect, one was compelled to falsify the historical truth where necessary to make his personality correspond to [traditional Christian] expectations [of how a spiritual brother ought to treat another brother] . . . Thus, while Constantine and Licinius were still fighting as allies against Maxentius and Daia, the first editions of Eusebius and Lactantius depicted both men--Licinius as well as Constantine--as acting in God's name and with his help. But later, after Constantine had
quarreled with Licinius and then deposed him, the two Christian writers had to make hurried and clumsy emendations in their work.
Now they vilified Licinius and attempted to demonstrate retrospectively that in reality the light of God's grace had all along shown on Constantine alone. The most egregious Soviet historians of the Stalinist period could scarcely have done better--or worse."
I may post more excerpts from Hornus. But I recommend that you visit a library in order to read all of Hornus' work. He helps put the lie to some revisionist historiography, namely, that which seeks to distort the record of early Christianity as respects how early
Christians before the fourth century were opposed to the idea that they (loyal Christians) may serve in any earthly army.
Sunday, May 9, 2010
Incoherence in Trinitarians' Concept of God
If Trinity were true, then it would be absurd to hold that the collection of Trinity’s three God-persons (or God in three persons) is itself a person. If “God” were used in the Scriptures for reference to the collection of all (= three) God-persons—ergo, the Trinity—, then “God” could have no reference to what is uniquely true of any particular God-person, but rather should have reference to what is true of all the putative God-persons (the Trinity). Moreover, per trinitarianism’s lights, God’s beingness is ‘All properties essential to God's identity as God’; however, the totality of the collection ‘All God’s properties’ is not a person--not an ontological reality. Still, that totality is supposedly and somehow the ground of existence for differentiation of three persons. (Per class theory, the totality of the collection ‘All God’s properties’ is not a class.) Happily, then, we do not have in the Scriptures any use of “God” that should require an incoherent Trinity for its referent.
We find trinitarianism's uses of the word “God” to be mercurial as to definition; they are epistemologically and psychologically problematic vis-à-vis suggestion that any of trinitarians' uses of “God” can have reference to a plurality of persons who are, all of them, equicompetent—equicompetent, by trinitarian lights—, because each one of the supposed persons is, according to trinitarianism, an owner of the selfsame, unique collection of properties (infinitudes) necessarily defining a certain identity, the Supreme Being ("God"). Ah, but how could the Supreme Being have the very properties that ground the existence of three separate selves (persons) in that Being and yet that Being (?) is said by trinitarians to be not another Person, but merely a certain collection/group of just three persons? On the other hand, if there were a Supreme Being (an ontological Reality) that could be the ground of existence of three distinctive persons in that Being, then that concrete Being should have to own within Himself the collection of all properties essential to a distinguishable existence for each of three other persons (the Trinity). (And then Trinity is replaced by Quaternity.) Furthermore, it is that alleged basis (namely, equal ownership of the selfsame properties inasmuch as trinitarianism denies divisibility in the essential substance of God) for the alleged equicompetence that makes it absurd for one to hold that such a basis does not rob the putative persons of the Trinity of ability to have interpersonal relationships among themselves—to show themselves forth as each one a person in his own right, distinct from the other persons. Accordingly, we have several reasons for why we cannot believe that there is a plurality of equicompetent persons enjoying interpersonal relationships among themselves who, by definition, are a Trinity (= just three persons alleged to be necessarily supreme Persons, The One Supreme Being, the Trinity). Nor should we find that trinitarians would posit anything other than a contradiction for their definition of God given above as a class (a certain collection) should they allege that “God” has reference to the totality of the collection “All God’s properties,” for that totality cannot even be a class. (See below for a reference to an article for discussion of class theory.)
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Noel Balzer, “What Is A Class?” The Journal of Value Inquiry 21 (Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff Pubishers, 1987) 111-130
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Hos Martys
Join Date: May 2004
Posts: 8
05-29-2004, 07:47 AM
Re: How Do You Define Trinity?
Aseity stated: Though the term Trinity is not found in the Bible, the concept is clearly there.
I do not find the concept there at all, but rather blatant contradiction of the concept.
Aseity stated: Subsistence is a difference within the scope of being, not a separate being or essence. All persons in the Godhead have all the attributes of deity.
But the terms of trinitarianism are self-contradictory. To have a difference that allows for "a difference within the scope of being" means that the being is hierarchically structured, and that could mean a differentiation in the being for three different persons (minds) to be grounded in the fractured mind of that being. (An a priori for the existence of different persons is that each person uniquely has his own will, store of memories/knowledge, and self-awareness.) But trinitarianism denies divisibility in the substance of the Supreme Being. Any talk of real differences in the Substance (the Being) effectually devolves into tritheism--the existence of three co-eval and equal Gods. That is unscriptural, and anti-Scriptural.
And where would reside the interface for inter-relationships of Persons in this Being? It is absurd to hold that it could reside wholly in any one of the Persons of the Trinity. It should have to be extra-Trinity. And then you have Quaternity.
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Hos Martys
Join Date: May 2004
Posts: 8
05-29-2004, 11:25 AM
Re: How Do You Define Trinity?
Pilgrim stated: There really is no problem with the concept of multiple ontology in and of itself. In fact, such a thing occurs in nature already and has been mathematically quantified.
Might you favor us with a real-world example that fits your description of something that has "multiple ontology in and of itself . . . in nature . . . [and that] has been mathematically quantified"?
Hos
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Hos Martys
Join Date: May 2004
Posts: 8
05-29-2004, 07:41 PM
Re: How Do You Define Trinity?
Pilgrim stated: Sure...light. Light is both wave and particle simultaneously. Science can not explain it but it has been mathmatically shown to trave as both things at once. Not one sometime and another at a different, but it is both at the same time.
Afraid not. All you have given us is proof that you are a victim of a popular version for explaining the so-called Copenhagen Paradox. Consider the following quote as correction to what you proffered, and then let us know what you think.
Originally posted by a writer referring to Wallace on the Copenhagen Paradox:
“Wallace spends a good bit of time on the so-called measurement problem – the idea that the measurement somehow determines the nature of reality. As a first example, he uses Richard Feynman’s thought experiment about electrons passing through a barrier with two slits in it. When a beam of electrons passes through the barrier, a detector (such as a piece of photographic paper) will show an alternating band of stripes, known as an interference pattern. Only waves produce interference patterns, so electrons must have wave-like properties. Now let’s change the experiment so that only one electron goes through at a time – amazingly, after many electrons pass through, one at a time, we still get the interference pattern. This can only mean that each electron acts like a wave, passing through both slits, and each electron interferes with itself in a wave-like manner before reaching the detector. This may be surprising, but it doesn’t cause a paradox. Enter Feynman – suppose we put a detector behind one of the two slits. What will we see? It turns out that 50% of the time we’ll see an interaction, and 50% of the time we won’t – doesn’t that mean that each electron is a particle passing through one or the other of the slits? Now we have a paradox. If we don’t stick a detector behind one of the slits, the electrons act like waves, but if we do they act like particles, and the question is, how do they know? Haven’t we just determined reality by the kind of experiment we did?
“NO! says Wallace. All we have done is interacted with the electron and changed its state. After all, what is a measurement? Is it the conscious receipt of information in the human mind, as some Gurus would have us believe? Not at all. It is simply an interaction between various different objects. Perhaps we are bouncing photons off our electrons, or perhaps we’re interposing some kind of atoms between them and the photographic paper, or inserting a magnetic field. In any case, we are interacting with the electron, and it is the interaction that causes the change in behavior. The significance of measurement is that we can only do it by interacting with what we’re trying to measure, and the very act of interaction changes the state of whatever we’re trying to measure.”
Hos
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Hos Martys
Join Date: May 2004
Posts: 8
Yesterday, 07:48 AM
Re: How Do You Define Trinity?
Related reading matter may be obtained in the publication On the Frontiers of Physics, Fernando Goni Arregui (Arregui: Pamplona, Spain; 1989) 45-47. I may post pertinent snippets and a synopsis as inquiries may require and as time may permit.
Hos
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Hos Martys
Join Date: May 2004
Posts: 8
Yesterday, 03:07 PM
Re: How Do You Define Trinity?
Pilgrim stated: How main stream is the above understanding?
Very.
Please read on as respects Philip R. Wallace, author of several works on physics.
http://www.phil-books.com/Paradox_Lost_Images_of_the_Quantum_0387946594.html
“Free your mind from Copenhagen prison
“The human mind has been in a mental prison for about 70 years. People have lost their relation to objective reality and live in a state of intellectual schizophrenia. People who don’t understand a bit of Quantum mechanics are speculating on the nonsense of "role of observer" the "loss of objective reality" etc. Physics-students whose brains are already conditioned by established interpretation (Copenhagen interpretation) don’t realize the contradictions inherent to it and accept the nonsense as the "new way of thinking".
“Some who have not lost their minds try to take refuge in Bohms theory or Everetts/David Deutschs Many world interpretations that are both unfortunately dead ends.
“This book is an important step to free the minds from this mental prison. I agree with almost everything that is written in it. The only reservations I have about the book are about the quantum nonlocality. He is correct that the two photons emitted in EPR type experiment in opposite directions overlap throughout the space because "both" are spherical waves. But this alone doesn’t explain how a change in wave function that occurs in a measurement at some point can influence a change of the wave function at a very far point almost instantaneously as the experimental evidence indicates. Thus I suspect nonlocality is a fact we cannot circumvent. The only possible reconciliation of an EPR event with special relativity may be that there are no superluminal quantum mechanical currents associated with an EPR event. However this is a minor technical disagreement.
“I recommend the book strongly to anyone who is interested in quantum mechanics and especially
to professionals working in the field of physics.”
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http://www.rbookshop.com/science/q/...of_the_Quantum_0387946594.htm
Book Description:
""Medical scientists use the word 'iatrogenic' to refer to disabilities that are the consequence of medical treatment. We believe that some such word might be coined to refer to philosophical difficulties for which philosophers themselves are responsible." --- Sir Peter Medawar.
"Arguing that quantum theory as it stands is perhaps the most comprehensive, well-verified, and successful theory in the history of science, the author clears away the impression shared by physicists and laymen alike that it is incomplete, philosophically flawed, or self-contradictory. In simple terms accessible to anyone with a little prior knowledge of science, Wallace examines many of the "paradoxes" and "difficulties" claimed for quantum mechanics and shows that they are due to excesses of interpretation that have been imposed on the theory."
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Now, I should like to add something further as respects Wallace's spherical- waveform theory of light. It is commensurate with material in the publication I referred to in an earlier post, namely, a work by Fernando Goni Arregui, On the Frontiers of Physics; published in Pamplona, Spain, 1989; translated by M. Dean Johnson. Wallace writes:
"There is nothing "Zen like" about debunking the Copenhagen Paradox. Arregui states the following: "[The Heisenberg uncertainty principle] is inherent in the very observation of the phenomena. That is, the means used in observation produce a modification of the phenomena being observed.... In a bundle of corpuscles [particles!] travelling with a discontinuous motion, the probability of finding those particles in certain places . . . can be perfectly described with a function for waves propagated at a given group speed, which, for a single corpuscle, can be the phase speed of its associated wave." " (pages 45-46)
Hos
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Hos Martys
Join Date: May 2004
Posts: 8
Today, 09:15 AM
Re: How Do You Define Trinity?
Jude3b stated: As for me and my house, we will trust the Lord and believe His Word! Amen
Which are precisely the first reasons why I came to reject the Trinity.
Hos
Friday, April 2, 2010
Do Angels Accept Obeisance or Relative Worship Since Christ's Exaltation?
Volume 2 of the Insight publication, in the article entry "Obeisance," has the following:
Now, "the doing of obeisance" is quite a different act than "the rendering of worship" when "worship" is used in that phrase with the sense of "sacred service." Still, if John had in mind "obeisance" (i.e., something less than what the word "worship" normally conveys in modern-times theological discussions), then the angels were yet having none of it from John because they knew that a change of relationship between themselves and God's servants was now upon them so that any acceptable act of obeisance rendered by a servant of God must now be performed to Jesus Christ or to his Father, but no longer to any other persons. So, even if the angels to whom John was prostrating himself were perceptive of something more than "obeisance" in John's prostration of himself before them, then even that perception would not have been the critical, deciding factor as to why they disallowed John's prostration to themselves. It was quite simply enough for them to know that whereas before Jesus' exaltation a few of them had acted in the role of a proxy for Jehovah when it was evident to them that Jehovah's devotees were not compromising exclusive devotion to Jehovah by some activity on their part (see Acts 7:30, 38, 53) -- this so so that they might allow prostration before them on such occasions -- to God's glory, yet all of that had now changed/ceased with exception to what the archangel Michael (Jesus Christ) could allow for himself to God's glory (see Php. 2:9-11; Revelation 5:8). Jesus is God's one and only proxy now, and even he does not perform that role any more by materialisations in a fleshly body. But were it possible for him to do so, then, Yes, we would prostrate ourselves before him in an act of relative worship to the Father's glory.
While earlier prophets and also angels had accepted obeisance, Peter stopped Cornelius from rendering such to him, and the angel or angels of John's vision twice stopped John from doing so, referring to himself as "a fellow slave," and concluding with the exhortation to "worship God . . ." (Ac 10:25, 26; Re 19:10; 22:8, 9) Evidently Christ's coming had brought in new relationships affecting standards of conduct toward others of God's servants. He taught his disciples that "one is your teacher, whereas all you are brothers . . . your Leader is one, the Christ" (Mt 23:8-12), for it was in him that the prophetic figures and types found their fulfillment, even as the angel told John that "the bearing witness to Jesus is what inspires prophesying." (Re 19:10) Jesus was David's Lord, the greater than Solomon, the prophet greater than Moses. (Lu 20:41-43; Mt 12:42; Ac 3:19-24) The obeisance rendered those men prefigured that due Christ. Peter therefore rightly refused to let Cornelius make too much of him.
So, too, John, by virtue of having been declared righteous or justified by God as an anointed Christian, called to be a heavenly son of God and a member of the Kingdom, was in a different relationship to the angel(s) of Revelation than were the Israelites to the angels that had earlier appeared to them. The angel(s) evidently recognized this change of relationship when rejecting John's obeisance." Compare 1Co 6:3; see DECLARE RIGHTEOUS.
Now, "the doing of obeisance" is quite a different act than "the rendering of worship" when "worship" is used in that phrase with the sense of "sacred service." Still, if John had in mind "obeisance" (i.e., something less than what the word "worship" normally conveys in modern-times theological discussions), then the angels were yet having none of it from John because they knew that a change of relationship between themselves and God's servants was now upon them so that any acceptable act of obeisance rendered by a servant of God must now be performed to Jesus Christ or to his Father, but no longer to any other persons. So, even if the angels to whom John was prostrating himself were perceptive of something more than "obeisance" in John's prostration of himself before them, then even that perception would not have been the critical, deciding factor as to why they disallowed John's prostration to themselves. It was quite simply enough for them to know that whereas before Jesus' exaltation a few of them had acted in the role of a proxy for Jehovah when it was evident to them that Jehovah's devotees were not compromising exclusive devotion to Jehovah by some activity on their part (see Acts 7:30, 38, 53) -- this so so that they might allow prostration before them on such occasions -- to God's glory, yet all of that had now changed/ceased with exception to what the archangel Michael (Jesus Christ) could allow for himself to God's glory (see Php. 2:9-11; Revelation 5:8). Jesus is God's one and only proxy now, and even he does not perform that role any more by materialisations in a fleshly body. But were it possible for him to do so, then, Yes, we would prostrate ourselves before him in an act of relative worship to the Father's glory.
Thursday, February 11, 2010
The Meanings of "Fleshly" and the Meanings of "Soulical"
Adjectival Uses of “Fleshly” and “Spiritual”
“The Law is spiritual [PNEUMATIKOS], but I am fleshly [SARKINOS]” (Romans 7:14). “Fleshly,” then, may describe a person (human soul, person of flesh and blood) with focus on his inheritance of a sinful nature. But there may be adjectival use of “fleshly” without explicit reference to the sinful nature of human flesh, (human) souls; for example, we see in Romans 15:27 that Paul says that it is only right that those who have been helped spiritually (i.e., helped with things spiritual) be willing themselves to help their benefactors with fleshly things (i.e., be willing to help their benefactors physically; thus, the Corinthian Christians would be recognizing their indebtedness to Jewish Christians by giving them things for their fleshly bodies). So, Paul, at Romans 15:27, uses “fleshly” without a pejorative sense; he does not mean that Corinthian Christians owe sinful things to Jewish Christians.
A thing similar to uses of the adjective “fleshly” is seen also as respects uses of the adjective “soulical.” “Soulical” may describe a kind of wisdom that is not heavenly but is “wisdom” opposed to that which is heavenly/spiritual (godly). It is due to that opposition to things spiritual (i.e., opposition to things manifesting godly wisdom) that justifies one’s referring to men displaying that opposition as men who are, morally speaking, animalistic (“soulical,” see Jude 19). If, however, the focus is on bodies and not on the moral and spiritual character of any persons, then bodies themselves may be described as bodies that are either “soulical” (physical) or “spiritual,” ”heavenly” (1 Cor. 15:48; cf. description in 1 Cor. 15:47 of the second Adam’s resurrection body as one “out of heaven,” as one who is “heavenly”) because references are made to two different substances that respectively comprise the different sorts of (living) bodies for their form (figure, shape). That substance may be dust for physical bodies; see 1 Cor. 15:47a, 48a; or else it be an immaterial/non-physical substance for bodies suitable to 'non-dusty' life (i.e., suitable for non-earthly life, suitable for life in heaven; see 1 Cor 15:47b, 48b).
“The Law is spiritual [PNEUMATIKOS], but I am fleshly [SARKINOS]” (Romans 7:14). “Fleshly,” then, may describe a person (human soul, person of flesh and blood) with focus on his inheritance of a sinful nature. But there may be adjectival use of “fleshly” without explicit reference to the sinful nature of human flesh, (human) souls; for example, we see in Romans 15:27 that Paul says that it is only right that those who have been helped spiritually (i.e., helped with things spiritual) be willing themselves to help their benefactors with fleshly things (i.e., be willing to help their benefactors physically; thus, the Corinthian Christians would be recognizing their indebtedness to Jewish Christians by giving them things for their fleshly bodies). So, Paul, at Romans 15:27, uses “fleshly” without a pejorative sense; he does not mean that Corinthian Christians owe sinful things to Jewish Christians.
A thing similar to uses of the adjective “fleshly” is seen also as respects uses of the adjective “soulical.” “Soulical” may describe a kind of wisdom that is not heavenly but is “wisdom” opposed to that which is heavenly/spiritual (godly). It is due to that opposition to things spiritual (i.e., opposition to things manifesting godly wisdom) that justifies one’s referring to men displaying that opposition as men who are, morally speaking, animalistic (“soulical,” see Jude 19). If, however, the focus is on bodies and not on the moral and spiritual character of any persons, then bodies themselves may be described as bodies that are either “soulical” (physical) or “spiritual,” ”heavenly” (1 Cor. 15:48; cf. description in 1 Cor. 15:47 of the second Adam’s resurrection body as one “out of heaven,” as one who is “heavenly”) because references are made to two different substances that respectively comprise the different sorts of (living) bodies for their form (figure, shape). That substance may be dust for physical bodies; see 1 Cor. 15:47a, 48a; or else it be an immaterial/non-physical substance for bodies suitable to 'non-dusty' life (i.e., suitable for non-earthly life, suitable for life in heaven; see 1 Cor 15:47b, 48b).
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
THAT HEAVEN'S ANGELS ARE DIVINE BEINGS (GODS)
Gerald Cooke, "The Sons of the God(s)," Zeitschrift fur die
Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 76.Band Heft 1 (Berlin: Verlag von Alfred Topelmann, 1964) pp. 23, 26, 41, 44, 46 strikes down Exaggerated Monotheism (EM) with the following:
[T]he main question is whether the phrase
M`T M'LHYM in v. 5 is to be read "a little less
than God" or "a little less than gods." The
latter has strong support in the Versions. The
translators of LXX, Syriac and Targum (cf.
Hebrews 2:7) apparently understood the text in
this way when they translated M'LHYM [as]
"angels." .... That the terms "holy ones," "sons
of God(s)," "assembly," and "council" designate
beings of a divine order is beyond question.
Throughout the Old Testament we find many
representations of Yahweh in relation to
subordinate divine beings.... God was spirit;
and the "'Sons of God' were conceived as sharing
in the 'spiritual' nature of God (Gen 6:1ff.)"^82
[Footnote 82: Johnson, The Cultic Prophet in
Ancient Israel (Cardiff, 1944)] p. 170.] ....
[Isaiah's denial of the existence of gods other
than Yahweh] is to be explained in terms of a
distinction [between Yahweh-loving gods and
Yahweh-opposing gods, a distinction allowing for
the existence of gods lesser than Yahweh and
loyal to him] within the heavenly company as a
living reality of Israelite faith, for the poet-
prophet condemns and denies existence to the
gods of Babylon . . . The gods of a foreign
people . . . are denied [meaningful] existence
. . . None deserves the worship which is due
Yahweh alone; none can perform the role which
belongs to Yahweh alone, for there is none like
Yahweh. The denial applies not to the entire
heavenly company, but to the [morally,
spiritually corrupting] gods of a foreign
people, gods that claim the worship due Yahweh
alone.... [W]orship of any of the heavenly
court besides the supreme Judge, Yahweh, is
never countenanced by prophetic Yahwism.
His authority as supreme Judge and King is
never threatened by members of the heavenly
company.
We may add that in this way must we understand Isaiah's writings for emphasis upon monotheism such that we do not come away from the Bible with the thought that there is a contradiction between, for example, Isaiah 44:24 and Job 38:5-7.
EM is a sophistry invented by trinitarians in an effort to create a crisis in theology, this in order that men should see in trinitarianism (sc. the assertion that 'there exist God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, but not that there exist three Gods inasmuch as they are mysteriously constituting one divine life') a rescue for their EM statement, which is as follows: 'The Bible categorically condemns the concept that there can be a plural number of divine beings.' The Bible, however, nowhere states that there is not more than one divine being (divine person).
It rather condemns the concept that there can be more than one Jehovah (De 6:4). It also condemns the concept that there can be more than one real God in the contest between Jehovah and the Gods championed by pagan nations, for there is but one God of universal sovereignty. Accordingly, it condemns the concept that there can be any person--whether he is immaterial, invisible and superhumanly powerful (i.e., whether he is divine, a god by nature) or whether he is a human--who owns enough power in his rulership so that he may remain unaffected by Jehovah's will to bring him, in due course of time, before Jehovah's throne of judgment so that he should be made to answer for any abuse of his power, this regardless of whether that abuse of power was in his usurping it or whether that abuse was in his bringing harm to others so that he was beginning thereby to ruin his theretofore good exercise of a subordinate authority he had received earlier by Jehovah's ordination of him.
Jehovah's attributes are not merely of superhuman magnitude, but they are of umatched magnitude; therefore, these unmatched properties mean that Jehovah is the Supreme Being and cannot be a creature. No, but they rather define Him to be the Creator, the Almighty God--the only true God of Universal Sovereignty.
We may point out here that not only is EM unbiblical, but it was not the theology of "intertestamental" Judaism. We know that not all the Dead Sea Scrolls were of sectarian origin. This appears to be the case with the Hodayot materials (4QH and 1QH mss). We have a contradiction of EM in the Hodayot fragments. Eileen Schuller, "A Hymn from a Cave Four Hodayot Manuscript: 4Q427 7 i+ii," Journal of Biblical Literature 112 No. 4 (1993) 613:
ELIM [Hebrew for "gods"] as a term for angels,
cf. 1QH vii 28 (quoting Exod 15:11), x 8,
xxiii 23, 30 ( = frg. 2.3, 10), 4Q491 11 i 14,
18, 4Q471 6.4, six examples in 4QShirShabb.
It is true, however, that Jewish sectarianism abused Biblical revelation about the existence and nature of spirit creatures (angels), and abused the Biblical revelation that there was a principal angel over all others. Some of this abuse in time developed into a worship of angels. Such abuse, however, we may not lay at the feet of Bible writers, nor may we say that the abuse was concomitant with a popular Judaism's understanding that there was a principal angel of Jehovah. Paul A. Rainbow, "Jewish Monotheism as the Matrix for New Testament Christology: A Review Article," Novum Testamentum 33, 1 (1991) 80: "[But this early] Jewish interest in God's chief angel [did not] result in a hypostatic bifurcation between God's glory and his personal being (pace C. Rowland, J. Fossum). This angelic entity . . . remained "essentially distinct from God".... [Apostolic, Jewish Christianity's] major step was to identify Jesus with God's principal helper . . . and must have arisen directly out of experiences of Jesus . . . Hence the Christology of the early church . . . entailed a binitarian mutation in Jewish monotheism."
We should qualify Rainbow's statements here and elsewhere in his article by pointing out that although apostolic Christianity gave high honor to Jesus as a divine being, yet it did not declare Jesus to be coeval in his person with the Father, nor was there ontological equality with his Father, nor did apostolic Christianity make Jesus an object of sacred service. Apostolic, Jewish Christianity put no greater strain on Biblical monotheism than had a truthfully Shema-honoring Judaism because apostolic Christianity never held that the Son of God is independent of (not ontologically subordinate to) the Father: true (apostolic) Christianity has never held that the Son has ever been at any time ontologically equal to the Father, although the glorified Son embodies a certain fullness of godship (Col 2:9) greater than was so for any other angelic being, even greater than the Son himself had owned in his prehuman existence.
Rainbow (p. 84) points out that "[t]he fact that in some Jewish minds Enoch could become "like one of the glorious ones" (2 Enoch 22.6-10) blurs the boundary between [patriarchs and angels]." We should state that it certainly disproves the contention 'A popular, intertestamental Judaism held that angels were not real hypostases but that they were rather vivid word-pictures for intradeical, divine agencies.' Such a (disproved) contention is to say (the unreal thing) that Judaism held that "angels" were merely poetic ways of describing God's interventions in the cosmos. That there may have been some sects (e.g., the Sadducees) which may have been open to such a concept of nonhypostatic angels seems possible (cf. Ac 23:8), but it is entirely irresponsible to hold that the general belief--one surely held by ancient and intertestamental Judaisms--in personal angels had not given an epistemic readiness within those Judaisms' Shema-honoring monotheism for a popular acceptance that God had a subordinate helper, a chief angel and Spokesman (Logos), and that the Scriptures had taught explicitly and by intimation such a heavenly entity's existence in numerous passages (e.g., Ex 4:16; 23:22-39; Pr 8:22-30; Isa 9:6 LXX).
It is not at all incredible that some Jews--especially those (wrongfully) holding to anthropological dualism--held that there was some sort of occult connection between Jehovah's angelic Logos and the human ministry of Israel's long-awaited Messiah (cf. Mic 5:2; Dan 7:13; 12:1). The connection might have been postulated in some circles in accordance with either a paganish, human-taking metempsychosis, or a human-taking adoptionism occurring either (a) at conception/birth or,-- and this for an ordinary-born Judahite male--(b) later in life at a time when he might receive divinization by an infusion of the Logos into him. The thing to keep in mind is that even though we know that such a connection between the Logos-Wisdom and the foretold Messiah is not supported by canonical Scriptures, yet it per se does not postulate a compromise of the Shema confession inasmuch as by neither of the Messianic models was there a declaration that some supernatural person need be thought of as existing in rivalry to Jehovah God--as though such a concept was commensurate with a sort of (apostate) Christology that later would come under a Talmudic rabbinate's condemnation as the postulation of a "two powers in heaven" heresy.
That Philo was an exponent of a Mosaic apotheosis into (finally?) a subsistent in the Logos should strike down an interpretation that his concept of angels was that they were merely intradeical divine agencies, and that the Logos, the principal angel, was but merely a so-called (i.e., unreal) hypostasis. Rainbow (pp. 84-85) puts it this way: "To posit "divine agency" as a bland, general taxon unifying both classes [sc. personifications and actual, personal beings in the heavenly realm] may be more confusing than illuminating. Hutardo needs to demonstrate that ancient Jews themselves knew such an abstraction . . . before he can use it as a single model to explain the emergence of Christology."
Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 76.Band Heft 1 (Berlin: Verlag von Alfred Topelmann, 1964) pp. 23, 26, 41, 44, 46 strikes down Exaggerated Monotheism (EM) with the following:
[T]he main question is whether the phrase
M`T M'LHYM in v. 5 is to be read "a little less
than God" or "a little less than gods." The
latter has strong support in the Versions. The
translators of LXX, Syriac and Targum (cf.
Hebrews 2:7) apparently understood the text in
this way when they translated M'LHYM [as]
"angels." .... That the terms "holy ones," "sons
of God(s)," "assembly," and "council" designate
beings of a divine order is beyond question.
Throughout the Old Testament we find many
representations of Yahweh in relation to
subordinate divine beings.... God was spirit;
and the "'Sons of God' were conceived as sharing
in the 'spiritual' nature of God (Gen 6:1ff.)"^82
[Footnote 82: Johnson, The Cultic Prophet in
Ancient Israel (Cardiff, 1944)] p. 170.] ....
[Isaiah's denial of the existence of gods other
than Yahweh] is to be explained in terms of a
distinction [between Yahweh-loving gods and
Yahweh-opposing gods, a distinction allowing for
the existence of gods lesser than Yahweh and
loyal to him] within the heavenly company as a
living reality of Israelite faith, for the poet-
prophet condemns and denies existence to the
gods of Babylon . . . The gods of a foreign
people . . . are denied [meaningful] existence
. . . None deserves the worship which is due
Yahweh alone; none can perform the role which
belongs to Yahweh alone, for there is none like
Yahweh. The denial applies not to the entire
heavenly company, but to the [morally,
spiritually corrupting] gods of a foreign
people, gods that claim the worship due Yahweh
alone.... [W]orship of any of the heavenly
court besides the supreme Judge, Yahweh, is
never countenanced by prophetic Yahwism.
His authority as supreme Judge and King is
never threatened by members of the heavenly
company.
We may add that in this way must we understand Isaiah's writings for emphasis upon monotheism such that we do not come away from the Bible with the thought that there is a contradiction between, for example, Isaiah 44:24 and Job 38:5-7.
EM is a sophistry invented by trinitarians in an effort to create a crisis in theology, this in order that men should see in trinitarianism (sc. the assertion that 'there exist God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, but not that there exist three Gods inasmuch as they are mysteriously constituting one divine life') a rescue for their EM statement, which is as follows: 'The Bible categorically condemns the concept that there can be a plural number of divine beings.' The Bible, however, nowhere states that there is not more than one divine being (divine person).
It rather condemns the concept that there can be more than one Jehovah (De 6:4). It also condemns the concept that there can be more than one real God in the contest between Jehovah and the Gods championed by pagan nations, for there is but one God of universal sovereignty. Accordingly, it condemns the concept that there can be any person--whether he is immaterial, invisible and superhumanly powerful (i.e., whether he is divine, a god by nature) or whether he is a human--who owns enough power in his rulership so that he may remain unaffected by Jehovah's will to bring him, in due course of time, before Jehovah's throne of judgment so that he should be made to answer for any abuse of his power, this regardless of whether that abuse of power was in his usurping it or whether that abuse was in his bringing harm to others so that he was beginning thereby to ruin his theretofore good exercise of a subordinate authority he had received earlier by Jehovah's ordination of him.
Jehovah's attributes are not merely of superhuman magnitude, but they are of umatched magnitude; therefore, these unmatched properties mean that Jehovah is the Supreme Being and cannot be a creature. No, but they rather define Him to be the Creator, the Almighty God--the only true God of Universal Sovereignty.
We may point out here that not only is EM unbiblical, but it was not the theology of "intertestamental" Judaism. We know that not all the Dead Sea Scrolls were of sectarian origin. This appears to be the case with the Hodayot materials (4QH and 1QH mss). We have a contradiction of EM in the Hodayot fragments. Eileen Schuller, "A Hymn from a Cave Four Hodayot Manuscript: 4Q427 7 i+ii," Journal of Biblical Literature 112 No. 4 (1993) 613:
ELIM [Hebrew for "gods"] as a term for angels,
cf. 1QH vii 28 (quoting Exod 15:11), x 8,
xxiii 23, 30 ( = frg. 2.3, 10), 4Q491 11 i 14,
18, 4Q471 6.4, six examples in 4QShirShabb.
It is true, however, that Jewish sectarianism abused Biblical revelation about the existence and nature of spirit creatures (angels), and abused the Biblical revelation that there was a principal angel over all others. Some of this abuse in time developed into a worship of angels. Such abuse, however, we may not lay at the feet of Bible writers, nor may we say that the abuse was concomitant with a popular Judaism's understanding that there was a principal angel of Jehovah. Paul A. Rainbow, "Jewish Monotheism as the Matrix for New Testament Christology: A Review Article," Novum Testamentum 33, 1 (1991) 80: "[But this early] Jewish interest in God's chief angel [did not] result in a hypostatic bifurcation between God's glory and his personal being (pace C. Rowland, J. Fossum). This angelic entity . . . remained "essentially distinct from God".... [Apostolic, Jewish Christianity's] major step was to identify Jesus with God's principal helper . . . and must have arisen directly out of experiences of Jesus . . . Hence the Christology of the early church . . . entailed a binitarian mutation in Jewish monotheism."
We should qualify Rainbow's statements here and elsewhere in his article by pointing out that although apostolic Christianity gave high honor to Jesus as a divine being, yet it did not declare Jesus to be coeval in his person with the Father, nor was there ontological equality with his Father, nor did apostolic Christianity make Jesus an object of sacred service. Apostolic, Jewish Christianity put no greater strain on Biblical monotheism than had a truthfully Shema-honoring Judaism because apostolic Christianity never held that the Son of God is independent of (not ontologically subordinate to) the Father: true (apostolic) Christianity has never held that the Son has ever been at any time ontologically equal to the Father, although the glorified Son embodies a certain fullness of godship (Col 2:9) greater than was so for any other angelic being, even greater than the Son himself had owned in his prehuman existence.
Rainbow (p. 84) points out that "[t]he fact that in some Jewish minds Enoch could become "like one of the glorious ones" (2 Enoch 22.6-10) blurs the boundary between [patriarchs and angels]." We should state that it certainly disproves the contention 'A popular, intertestamental Judaism held that angels were not real hypostases but that they were rather vivid word-pictures for intradeical, divine agencies.' Such a (disproved) contention is to say (the unreal thing) that Judaism held that "angels" were merely poetic ways of describing God's interventions in the cosmos. That there may have been some sects (e.g., the Sadducees) which may have been open to such a concept of nonhypostatic angels seems possible (cf. Ac 23:8), but it is entirely irresponsible to hold that the general belief--one surely held by ancient and intertestamental Judaisms--in personal angels had not given an epistemic readiness within those Judaisms' Shema-honoring monotheism for a popular acceptance that God had a subordinate helper, a chief angel and Spokesman (Logos), and that the Scriptures had taught explicitly and by intimation such a heavenly entity's existence in numerous passages (e.g., Ex 4:16; 23:22-39; Pr 8:22-30; Isa 9:6 LXX).
It is not at all incredible that some Jews--especially those (wrongfully) holding to anthropological dualism--held that there was some sort of occult connection between Jehovah's angelic Logos and the human ministry of Israel's long-awaited Messiah (cf. Mic 5:2; Dan 7:13; 12:1). The connection might have been postulated in some circles in accordance with either a paganish, human-taking metempsychosis, or a human-taking adoptionism occurring either (a) at conception/birth or,-- and this for an ordinary-born Judahite male--(b) later in life at a time when he might receive divinization by an infusion of the Logos into him. The thing to keep in mind is that even though we know that such a connection between the Logos-Wisdom and the foretold Messiah is not supported by canonical Scriptures, yet it per se does not postulate a compromise of the Shema confession inasmuch as by neither of the Messianic models was there a declaration that some supernatural person need be thought of as existing in rivalry to Jehovah God--as though such a concept was commensurate with a sort of (apostate) Christology that later would come under a Talmudic rabbinate's condemnation as the postulation of a "two powers in heaven" heresy.
That Philo was an exponent of a Mosaic apotheosis into (finally?) a subsistent in the Logos should strike down an interpretation that his concept of angels was that they were merely intradeical divine agencies, and that the Logos, the principal angel, was but merely a so-called (i.e., unreal) hypostasis. Rainbow (pp. 84-85) puts it this way: "To posit "divine agency" as a bland, general taxon unifying both classes [sc. personifications and actual, personal beings in the heavenly realm] may be more confusing than illuminating. Hutardo needs to demonstrate that ancient Jews themselves knew such an abstraction . . . before he can use it as a single model to explain the emergence of Christology."
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
"Crux-ifixion" -- For Execution and for Post-Mortem Torture of "Departed Souls"
Virgil is quoted by Frederick C. Grant, Ancient Roman Religion (New York: Liberal Arts Press, 1957) 209-10. Virgil wrote:
“Not even when their last day of life is done, and life and light depart, not even then do all the deep evils of body wholly leave them; for it is inevitable that many a long-continued evil should take an amazingly deep root.” What does Virgil say will help such hardened practicers of evil? They should be put on the crux for their own good! Says Virgil, “Hence they are disciplined with punishment, and pay in suffering for their lifelong sins; some are hung stretched out to the empty winds.”
We find that Virgil is inconsistent, for elsewhere he states his belief that those who do not receive burial are, for that lack, miserable souls in the nether world; therefore, he has forgot his crux-redeeming theory, which had it that it was for discipline and improvement in the nether world that an executed criminal’s crux-displayed corpse receives no burial. Here is how Virgil puts on the lips of one whom he makes to offer commentary on the departed souls of those who die but receive no burial. One such soul was that of the noble and virtuous Paulinurus, a helmsman lost overboard. Virgil says that Paulinurus’ soul was addressed by someone sympathetic to his plight, and he said to Paulinurus:
“Son of Anchises, true offspring of the gods, you see the deep pools of Cocytus and the Stygian marsh, by whose power the gods fear to swear falsely. This crowd which you see are all helpless and unburied; Charon is the ferryman; those whom the waves bear across have found a tomb. Nor is it permitted to cross these awful banks and hoarse-throated streams until their bones have found a resting place. Whence comes, O Paulinurus, this fierce longing of yours? Are you, without burial, to behold the Stygian waters and the awful river of the Furies, and draw near the bank unbidden? Cease to hope that heaven’s decrees may be turned aside by prayer! But keep my words in your memory, for comfort in your hard lot. Far and wide the neighboring cities will be driven by celestial portents to appease your dust; they shall build for you a tomb” (Grant, 210).
Virgil glibly excuses the cruelty of executions upon a crux (the crux simplex, a stake) and would try to hide the real motive behind executioners’ exposing or keeping exposed a corpse on a crux so that animals might have their way with it, for the real motive in bringing about ghastly spectacles of criminals executed upon a stake and their being left there upon the crux was because of a cruelty in the executioners who could not be done with the criminal through their merely having executed him. They must ensure his torment of mind, so they thought, even in the nether world, which should occur, they thought, if they made sure that the one dying upon the crux was kept there so that he might not have a burial.
Richard Broxton Onians, The Origins of European Thought (Cambridge University Press, 1951), 272 has this to say about the way ancient and classical Greeks looked upon the matter of buried bones being properly treated so that the soul might be aided after departing the body.
“The dead were above all ‘the dry ones.’ Alike the bones and the YUCH {soul} (still associated with them and the grave) were dry. Their great need, therefore, was liquid − preferably actual life-liquid of animal or plant or just the elemental liquid, water − what would help them to the state of the ‘living’ otherwise known as ‘wet’ (DIEROS). The characteristic offerings to the dead were in fact ‘pourings’ (COAI) . . . the habit still existing in Greece of breaking vessels filled with water on the tombs of departed friends . . . In classical times, also, water was poured for the dead. It was received, drunk, by the YUCH; to the bones it was a ‘bath’ (LOUTRON) . . . conferring life-liquid.”
Now, the philosophers prided themselves that they were not deceived by superstitions about what happens to the souls of those who have died. But of course they were still deceived, some by materialistic atheism and others by doctrine of the immortality of the human soul.
Next, I would like to address briefly here the question of the origin of Christendom's cross. Does the construction of a cross or tau-shaped device (i.e., an image constructed of -- or a depiction written as -- a certain combination of two elements; see what next follows) -- represent the shape of the instrument of execution upon which our Lord Jesus Christ was affixed, namely, (1) a vertical or upright member combined with (2) a transverse or crosswise member (where the transverse element is significantly lowered)? Neither the Bible, in an accurate translation from its original languages, nor secular history supports an affirmative answer to that question. The historiography appertaining this subject is voluminous and, as written and catalogued, is scattered across several languages (viz., Latin, Hebrew, Greek, French, German, English, Spanish, etc.). It is indeed a pleasant surprise when a student of the subject happens to find a site on the internet that accurately presents what things that reader's own years of research have revealed, and presents it in a highly readable fashion, concisely and succinctly, for a popular audience, but still giving an accurate distillation of the pertinent, historical data. For example, there is mention of a symbol that the New King James Version (NKJV) translation committee used as their Bible's logo:
I have seen a discussion of this symbol; it is the Celtics' "Triquetra" emblem. Yes, it signifies Trinity to the Irish Catholic Church, but what meaning did the symbol have in a pre-Christian Celtic culture? So, the site has an interesting presentation, and it shows us how the Catholics consciously borrowed from pagan Celtic culture, reinterpreting it so that new converts from Celtic paganism might hold on to their sacred, comforting devices if they would but confess them as imbued with a reinterpreted, "Christian" meaning. Constantine had done this very thing for the bishops of the "Christianity" of his day in the 4th century. So, now for a few of such particulars. That site's URL and some excerpts from it are given below, too.
*******************************************
http://www.whats-your-sign.com/celtic-symbol-for-trinity.html
Celtic Trinity Symbol and Triquetra Meaning
The Celtic symbol for trinity has a myriad of symbolic meaning.
We see the trinity motif in Celtic knots, as well as in symbol-form like the triquetra and triskelion (a.k.a. triskele or fylfot)
To the ancient Celtic mind, it may also signify the lunar or solar phases. This conclusion is made as we see the trinity/triquetra motif alongside other solar and lunar symbols in ancient remants [sic] and archeological digs.
Validating this theory, we know the Celts honored the Great Mother, a lunar goddess who was actually three personifications in one (three lunar phases and faces of the goddess)....
The Celtic symbol for trinity may also pertain to the three Bridgits [sic. Elsewhere the name of the goddess has her name translated into English as "Bridgid."] Bridgit [sic] is one powerful goddess (aspect of Danu), who embodies three aspects which are:
Art
Healing
Metal smithing
*******************************************
http://www.celtarts.com/celtic.htm
The Cross did not become a common symbol of Christianity until the 4th century. Images of the cross were in fact quite rare before the Golden Legend became popular and the "discovery" of the "True Cross" promoted fragments of the "True Cross" as powerful relics....
There are in Britain stone monuments that may be the ancestor of the Celtic Cross. The Chi-Rho symbol, the monogram of Christ was a commonly used symbol of Christianity in the 4th century Roman Empire. The Emperor Constantine who made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire used as his emblem the Chi-Rho in a laurel wreath. Thus combined were a pagan Imperial symbol of Rome with a symbol of the new faith. The diagonal cross members of the Chi were eventually conventionalized to a single horizontal cross member that made its cross with the vertical stem of the Rho and the wreath was conventionalized into a simple circle. There are examples of this where the loop of the Rho is also conventionalized into a shepherd’s crook. One can easily see how the curved crook of the staff could disappear to leave just a cross in a circle as is common in many Welsh crosses of the early Celtic Christian period which followed the Roman withdrawal from Britain....
Constantine used the Chi-Rho as a military insignia and victory symbol as well. The cross symbolizes Christ's victory. Military use of the cross as a favorite element of heraldry descends from the shields and standards of the Roman Empire.
(Now I end my making what I trust has been fair use of excerpts from the two sites referenced above.)
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