Chaitanya Jyothi Museum Opening, 2000
RAMANAM
In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen.
Countrymen,
ORBIS NON SUFFICIT
SOLUS DEUS SUFFICIT
The self-absorbed preen themselves on, among other things, speaking truth to power. They mean taunting certain among those who wield the penal authority of government. That is, ultimately, shooters. Their perceived allies who wield such power they taunt not. Only their perceived enemies receive the business. Of course, it is dangerous to taunt a shooter. But also a cheap thrill, and sound showboating, at least for a while.
So they are not really speaking truth to power, so to speak, they are merely doing battle on behalf of their perceived allies against their perceived enemies. Impartial truth speakers, much less sincere truth seekers, they are not.
Moreover, these partisan fanatics eventually, if not immediately, call Jesus the Christ and His actions to justify them and theirs. Treading lightly over the fact that partisans of any stripe believe they need justification from Jesus the Christ as much as sharks believe they need justification from elephants, let us note that the record of the earthly career of Jesus the Christ shows His attacking only one element of society. He attacks that element continuously, dramatically, and solely. And right from the start (Luke 4:16-28). No other element of society receives His opprobrium. Just one does.
And that is? The certified, entrenched, savage, degenerate, soi disant élite. The guardians and executors of the cultus, collegium, and iuris: clergy, scholars, lawyers. Themselves.
Not once in the record does Jesus the Christ attack those who wield the penal authority of government. Not once, not at all! Nor do any Apostles or Evangelists. In fact, Jesus the Christ is on record protecting and enlightening government functionaries. Forgiving and granting them salvation even.
Let this point of fact seep in, rattle and squish around a bit, and then saturate the consciousness.
Yet, who receives the opprobrium of modern clergy, scholars, and lawyers? In buckets full? Why, certain of those who wield the penal authority of government. Those to whom Jesus the Christ expressed not one word of opprobrium nor evinced one tittle of interest in doing so.
Let this point of fact seep in, rattle and squish around a bit, and then saturate the consciousness.
Modern clergy, scholars, and lawyers are partisan in their attacks, not impartial. They attack wielders of the penal authority of government who believe that authority belongs to the generality of citizens and they pass on wielders of the penal authority of government who believe that authority belongs to the government. In other words, modern clergy, scholars, and lawyers believe in and agitate for rule, not governance, oligarchy, not representative democracy. They are hysterical fanatics, not speakers of truth to power. Partisan, not impartial. Vipers, not visitors.
So, modern clergy, scholars, and lawyers appear to be as were those faced by Jesus the Christ. They also, the older version, attacked certain of those wielding the penal authority of government. They stirred their nominal co-religionists to mutiny against Rome . . . and, interestingly, that they did while their quasi-King, Herod, executed near Empire-wide proselytizing for Talmudism, which, in the event, met with success that succeeded Judaism when the Army of Titus destroyed the Second Temple in 70 AD, ending Judaism forever, as pronounced by Jesus the Christ.
Clergy, scholars, and lawyers in those days designed rhetorical subterfuges to trap Jesus the Christ into speaking what Romans would consider sedition. As they do now. This also is a commonality between then and now: corrupt élite essay to trap one enemy in snares laid out by another.
The skunks then and the skunks now are the soi disant élite element of society called clergy, scholars, and lawyers. They call themselves élite and in fact they are that. No one else wants to be around them. POTUS Lincoln observed regarding a skunk: What kills a skunk is the publicity it gives itself.
Comes Jesus the Christ, in the fulness of Whose Career God brings forth a great anti-religion religion: Christianity. With its providential secular component, The Army of Titus. Remember Who is running the show and dramatizing the realities, or, what some good but less keen minds are pleased to take as lessons to be learned.
I am far from the first to observe this phenomenon. Christianity is an attack against religion in its three facets: cultus, collegium, iuris. Christianity attacks religion per se. It is a kind of scouring brush or purifying detergent permanently vigilant against weakness, against perverse emotions. Christianity has no interest whatsoever in governance, much less in attacking figures or institutions of government. Neither Jesus the Christ, The Bible as a whole, nor the entire tradition of Christian Orthodox Theology can be summoned to support attacks on government or its functionaries.
Nor, incidentally and most importantly in today’s swirling atmosphere of intellectual poisons, do any or all of those three authorities require, much less have authority to demand, government policies to any end, of any sort whatsoever. Christianity and government — like Christianity and science — never conflict, never cross paths, much less swords, and can place no demands upon one another because they labor in separate, unique dimensions of human affairs.
The dimensions of human affairs in which the three leadership authorities of cultus, collegium, and iuris operate do not intersect. If they did, history would be more chaotic than a primeval caldron. Efforts to make those authorities intersect — really, to assert primacy of one over another — do cause primeval violence.
The separate but equal status of these three leadership authorities — when legitimately ( = through approval by representatives of the generality of citizens) held and discharged — adumbrates the three-fold structure of the US federal government. The Executive Branch correlates with the cultus. The Legislative Branch correlates with the collegium. The Judicial Branch correlates with the iuris. Still, the authority of all branches of government is derivative and none exceeds the ur-authorities of the cultus, collegium, and iuris in and of themselves as, in effect, aseities. Similarly, the authorities of functionaries of the cultus, collegium, and iuris are derivative and none exceeds the ur-authorities of the cultus, collegium, and iuris themselves as, in effect, aseities.
This is not to say Christians have no interest in governance. They most surely do have that interest and because God does. But Christianity per se has no interest in governance and certainly none in attacking governments or their functionaries. Attacking a government or a government functionary is a secular act, not a religious one.
So how can one be an anti-religion religious? Is this not an impossibility, even an absurdity? Well, it is a paradox.
We contribute to our destiny, but we do not control it. A teacher should have no more students than they can support, fully support. The only decent school is a self-supporting monastery, an hermitage.
Who wields power recognizes authority, the precursor of power, when they see it. Government cannot grow culture. Cultus only, the religious liturgy, can do that. Government is derivative. Cultus is originating. Government regulates, pacifies. Cultus restores, vivifies. For this reason, where righteousness flourishes, government functionaries fear clergy, scholars, and lawyers. And where corruption flourishes, clergy, scholars, and lawyers fear government functionaries. And when clergy, scholars, and lawyers themselves go venal and corrupt, everybody fears everybody.
Such times are these today and were the Roman province of Judea’s at the time Jesus the Christ came into this breathing world. Everyone fears everyone because the originators of culture are sunk in envy and their cups and bongs. Cultus is stripped of mystery and drama, collegium is stripped of gravity and honor, iuris is stripped of impartiality and compassion. A chasing after sex, money, and name. That’s what done it. A she camel in heat, running everywhere, nose in the air, sniffing for a mate. So the Prophet Jeremiah describes the phenomenon (Jeremiah 2:23). Jesus describes it as white-washed tombs, a First Century euphemism for sodomists (Matthew 23:27).
The Great Ones and Avathars arrive on earth to protect the righteous and punish the wicked. Those missions are demanded when the all-important originators of culture — cultus, collegium, iuris — go south, so to speak, taken there by their own functionaries. And those missions are accomplished by lethal attack against said functionaries, conversion of some, restoration of any dispossessed, and creation of a new, clean, temperate, and learned batch.
Contradictory or inconsistent it is not that whereas Jesus the Christ cleaned out the Temple of Jerusalem in the Province of Judaea, St. Paul the Apostle built the Temple of God in the Hearts of Believers. Christianity is not tied to a plot of ground, much less a building, nor to a line of genetic descent, much less a matrilineal one, nor to a tribe of functionaries no matter their pretensions, much less their infirmities. Those are all bodies of death.
St. Jerome seconded the effort by establishing the Canon in the Greco-Roman world’s vernacular so all could read or at least understand it. Luther, Calvin, and Wycliffe did the same once vernaculars in regions of the Latin Church differentiated into national languages.
In other words, the entire purpose of religious reformation is to make religion clean again and to cultivate — through dramatic and mysterious cultus, grave and honorable collegium, impartial and compassionate iuris — the will and means lethally to attack corruption of religion — of cultus, collegium, iuris — when next it elevates its members.
Christianity is religion designed and commissioned to attack and annihilate anti-religion. Of any kind, any name, any place. It has no interest in de-corrupting government. Christians in their roles as seculars, citizens, do that as natural proceeding from their anti-religion religion. This is why nearly everyone wants to live in a country cultivated by Christians, especially those cultivated by Christians of the Latin Church.
Where there are Christians there are flowers and freedom, beauty and benediction. Christianity is the very model of a modern major self-correcting system.
I have doodled on this subject before.
Βασιλεία του Θεού
Kingdom of God
Update 1: To quieten the MENA and to stop the Moslem world-colonizing program, kill the mullahs, imams, ayatollahs, and scholars. That is how one decapitates that particular Hydra. Those personalities are its heads. The target is easy to find and relatively easy to get at. First squeeze their finances. Then squeeze their communications. Then squeeze their food. Then their families. Then their schools and students. Then their freedom of movement. Then their breath, right straight out of them. And then tear down their mosques and madrassahs to build actual houses of prayer, legal houses of commerce, or domiciles for domesticity over them.
Let that program visit a few of their hotter heads and bigger mouths and observe developments. This is an application of theological geography.
Related: Seb Gorka on the plan by POTUS Trump and MBS to reform Islam.
Update 2: Tillich often describes Christianity as religion beyond religion and religion transcending religion. Occasionally he uses the phrases anti-religion religion and, if I recall correctly, anti-religious religion. In each ease he has reference to what he calls The Spirit of Hebrew Prophetism, or, The Prophetic Spirit, and to The Protestant Principle. These phrases are synonymous as Tillich uses them, and I use them that way as well.
Update 3: Humanity is blessed with a second anti-religion religion besides Christianity. Its name is Sanathana Dharma, or, modernly, Hinduism. Christianity descends from the Saivite facet of Sanathana Dharma.
Update 4: Hysterical, hysterics, hysteric, hysteria . . . and of the same root: hysterectomy. Literal meaning: of the womb. Symbolic meaning: chaotic experience and events caused by over-presence of female fear and anger. Every bit of dis-ease we observe today is about abortion. Every single bit of it.
Men, get your women in line. Take care of them. Make them happy by making them safe. Make them love your children. Give them goals, general orders, missions, not micromanagement. They are not weak. Deploy their strengths. You are failing at your job, men. All this upset is laid at your lane, boys. Zip it up and do your job. Protect your women. And do not think you have none to protect. If she still wants to go crazy, let her. Walk away. But not before you have discharged your responsibility for her.
Update 5: Memo To Activists (a KGB term off art): Speak truth to your professors.
Update 6: Sundance: Another Example: “Criminal prosecution of the Special Agent was declined” – Now, What’s for Lunch? and even more bitterly here, and also in Cold Anger, a worth emotion.
I commented, effectively on both posts (with edits here):
With respect, I beg leave to offer a view of this matter through a different facet of the overall situation. I will try to be brief and cogent.
When he was President of Washington College (now Washington and Lee University), after the war, Lee would call a misbehaving lad into his office, read the particulars, and say to the young man, “Mr. (…), you would not want me to think badly of your mother, would you?” Usually, that was sufficient to turn the student towards a law-abiding and studious disposition.
“The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world,” the adage had it, and I think accurately.
When institutions, in the hands of their functionaries, go corrupt, I blame the functionaries’ mothers. Their fathers too, but first and foremost their mothers. Strzok and the lot have weak mothers. They were not well-brought-up.
Check the New Testament. Where does Jesus heap opprobrium on a government, a government institution or a government functionary? Where does he heap opprobrium? On a religious institution comprising clergy, scholars, and lawyers (Priests, Scribes, and Pharisees).
Check the Old Testament. Where do the Prophets heap opprobrium? Yes, on kings, but for unfaithfulness to God, which produces bad governance, not for bad governance per se.
Go up the chain of causation. Legal rot descends from moral rot, which descends from spiritual rot, which descends from unfaithfulness to God (violation of the First Commandment).
Jesus and the Hebrew Prophets — and also the Apostles and Evangelists — waste no time condemning legal or even moral rot. Doing that is, as we say, chasing about in the weeds. Their focus is the spiritual rot consequent upon unfaithfulness to God.
So their target for attack is religious authorities, not secular authorities. Opprobrium they heap on functionaries in cultus, collegium, and iuris.
Want to speak truth to power? Heap opprobrium on your priest or pastor, your professor, and your legal practitioner. That is the Christian way. Forget government and its functionaries. They are far down the chain of causation, almost the bottom link. Weak.
Update 7: Abortion at the Core of Both Left and Right
Update 8: In 1965 Life Magazine Showed That Life Begins At Conception
Update 9: Fletch Daniels: The Democratic Cold War on Christianity Heating Up
Update 10: Thomas D. Williams: Hungary’s Orbán: Christian Persecution Is ‘Organized Attack on an Entire Culture’
Update 11:
kevinstroup
Not believing in religion is not the same as not believing in God. You can be spiritual without being religious.
David R. Graham to kevinstroup
Well, Tillich is famous for saying that Christianity is the world’s great anti-religion religion. I add Hinduism to that description, but that will be a bridge too far for many at this time.
Dragblacker to David R. Graham
I’m not sure I follow. Does it mean that Christianity and Hinduism have elements in them that lead some people to eschew religion entirely?
David R. Graham to Dragblacker
Yes, that is what it means. It also is in Hebrew Prophetism. Religion is a means, not an end, much less the end. Like all means, it is fraught with danger because it can lead either Godward or Godaway because there are right ways to be religious and wrong ways. In fact, far more wrong ways than right ways. Far, far more. Religion is very dangerous in the absence of experienced and skilled guidance. Religion (Latin re + ligare) means binding up that which has become unbound. Once a body is repaired, its ligaments (ligare) grown or tied back together, it has no need for the doctor who or the procedures which repaired it.
Lawman45 to David R. Graham
Tillich is correct. Christianity, shorn of the Elmer Gantrys of the world, is a great handbook to living in a large society. Just remember that the substance is correct but all the rest is B.S. And, as I learned at Notre Dame, the “Priests”, the “Rabbis”, and the “Ministers” are just ordinary folk who live life free off of the insecurities of others.
Update 12: Jacob Nordangard: The Elite Technocrats Behind The Global ‘Great Reset’
AUM NAMAH SHIVAYA
Thank you for this wonderful blog.
You are most welcome. And thank you for visiting and commenting!