Any practical metaphysics has to be accessible. That means representable. But representations can deceive...
What's necessary, compatible & none of the above.
If you are new to the Band, this post is an introduction and overview of the point of this blog that needs updating. Older posts are in the archive on the right. Shorter occult posts and reflections on reality and knowledge have menu pages above.
Comments are welcome, but moderated for obvious reasons. If you don't see it right away, don't worry. We check regularly and it will be up there.
Pope John XXII receiving the rejection by the Greek church of his claims to supremacy, The Travels of Sir John Mandeville, 1400–1424, British Library.
This post continues the ongoing look into processes of representation, centralization, and inversion have revealed themselves to be a major source of de-moralization in the West. We've been tracing the arts of the West to figure out how something that appears to be variations on Logos+Techne transformed into the soulless garbage of modernism. What we found were inversive precursors that are much older than the onset of modernity. Older even than the Enlightenment prolog to modernism, where secular transcendence replaced reality as "official" learned culture. And this older process extends well beyond art. This is why we've been spending so much time on centralization and representation.
We have to represent abstractions materially and temporally in order to conceive, communicate, or act on them. But representation goes way beyond semiotic systems to entire networks of socio-cultural complexes like art... or religion.
Pinturicchio, Homage to Pope Eugenius IV in the Name of Emperor Frederick III, fresco, Piccolomini Library, Duomo, Siena
Click for the posts leading up to this one if interested. They can sort of stand alone, but they trace this theme from the historical appearance of art theory in the Renaissance through patterns of centralization, representation, and inversion.
To sum up - the Renaissance as defined in materialist beast History! is when we see the first glimmerings of secular transcendence. That's our term for the false presumption that fallen, subjective, temporally contingent limited human minds can grasp the the fullness of absolute abstract transcendence. It's ontologically impossible, but pretending it isn't is empowering to the vain [click for a summary post if interested]. The inherent retardation is covered over by the gradualness of the shift. Renaissance "thinkers" don't outright reject Logos - that comes later. The camel's nose enters the tent by adding fake man-made authorities to ontological necessity.
Conrad Laib, St. Primus and Hermes Trismegistus, around 1449, tempera on wood, Salzburg Museum
The fakeness of the extra-Biblical sources of "truth" is only the superficial problem. Structurally, it is total ontological inversion to proclaim old dudes - whether really extant or not - arbiters of metaphysical reality.
The foundation of Creation - of all that can and can't "exist" - is ultimate reality. It it not temporal - temporality is posterior - and so can't be known directly through time-sequences representation. It is ultimately beyond us. This means we can only know it by faith.
This means that there is no way to meaningfully change understanding of ultimate reality without changing what one knows by faith. That is, create a new belief system. The problem is that the onlological hierarchy is connected. A legitimate account of ultimate reality is consistent with abstract reasoning and empirical existence - it extends them. Just as abstract reasoning can extend understanding beyond things perceived directly.
The ontological hierarchy with the three pillars of the West fitted in.
This is one of the Band's most important insights. Click for a summary post that is more or less right, though some refinements have become needed.
Representation is necessary because we are so ontologically limited. We have to construct material systems out of necessity to accommodate things that don't materially exist. Representations can't be "the same" as their referents, but they have to be accurate accommodations within the limits of material signification. They have to be truthful representations. The problem is that because representations are not referents, they can lie. They can claim to represent something while actually referencing something completely different. This is where the centralization comes in. When a representational complex comes under centralized control, there is nothing to stop the controllers from malevolently changing the message to whatever pleases them.
Then the switch - somehow the representation has replaced what it was supposed to represent. And the fraud changeling is treated as if it's new message is the original referent.
Just pausing for a refreshing break with a degenerate idol.
It's hard to find a representation that points further from it's supposed referent than "Pope Francis". Appropriate, since the idol isn't art.
In art, this happens when frauds declare ontologically-binding rules in place of material representations of logos. "Art" as representational material complex becomes a make-believe thing in itself controlled by sociopaths called Art! At which point moral entropy takes over. Renaissance art needs the fake, man-made, sociopathic "rules" to expand the meaning - in the case of the arts of the West, that's express logos in material form [there are a lot of posts on this]. By the time we get to modernity the logos is long gone. Leaving only the fake, sociopathic inversion of a carcass. Which is why there can be no "restoring art" within the beast institutions. There's no art there to restore.
Erik Koeppel The Catskill Creek, 2016, oil on panel, private
The good news is that "art" appears whenever logos is expressed with techne. The representative structures can deviate as much as they want - they just don't represent art anymore.
It is the Band's opinion that the structures are too degraded to recover. That means restoration comes from outside the beast. Like a contemporary painter inspired by the Hudson River School. His pieces are very small - a consequence of operating independently with saleable work. Big-scale achievement like the arts of the West need a degree of elite-level resource support.
Looking at the beginnings of the representation-reality reversal problem in Renaissance art drew attention to the Church that was sponsoring it. What we saw looked like a similar process - where a material representation of abstract truth was centralized and then corrupted the referent. The incorporation of hermetic and neoplatonic authorities into Christian metaphysics is obscene in Christian terms.
Several occult posts first turned this up for us - there's a lot on Hermeticism, Prometheus, obelisks, and other occultic nonsense in the Renaissance.
Sandro Botticelli, St. Augustine in his Study, 1480, fresco, Church of Ognissanti, Florence
We are not referring to neoplatonic structures in theological explanations. Thinking about relations between levels of reality is on Platonic ground. Take Augustine - his Earthly and Heavenly Cities were analogous in a somewhat Platonic way to metaphysical states. But he was describing a connection predicated on Christ as the enabling conduit. This is completely different from replacing the radical separation of heaven and earth wrought by the Fall with intrinsic ontological continuity.
And like art, once the integrity of the abstract truth is compromised, there is nothing to stop the accumulation of human whims. Until you reach obscenities like toe-sucking fakes in costumes claim to Jesus was wrong when he declared himself the only path to salvation. Christianity is known representationally, but the representations represent something. Christ's message of salvation known on faith through the early sources. One can't arbitrarily change key pillars without declaring faith in something different. At which point the representation ceases to be Christian.
The Band is uninterested in "denominational" disputes within Christianity - the nature of the darkling glass is that differences in material interpretation are inevitable. Like "Pope Francis" and his statue of Martin Luther. The Band would classify his representation here as "not-Catholic", but not overtly "not-Christian". Jesus simply asks for belief and to keep the commandments - how best to do that is at least partly dependent on the believer's circumstances.
We are talking about frauds proclaiming things that contradict the foundational representations of Christianity. That is, knowledge of Jesus' message known through faith. "Pope Francis" does that too, but that's a different story.
This post will lay out the onto-epistemological issues around the Band's reflection on representation and how it pertains to the accessibility of Truth. The next will wrap up with the historical centralization, degeneration, and inversion in the church.
Even the most lightly historically educated can't miss that the institutional structure that develops over the Middle Ages has little in common with the lives of Jesus or the Apostles. Plus it's constantly changing. New ritual developments, rules, dogmas - all added by historical people, at historically identifiable times, for historically identifiable reasons.
Spinello Aretino, Frederick Barbarossa submits to the authority of Pope Alexander III, late 14th century, fresco, Palazzo Pubblico, Siena
The Band is aware of the dogma that theology unfolds or flowers over time. The details are a matter of faith, but the premise isn't inherently flawed. There does have to be material accommodation of Christ's message that is that is relatable to the people of that time - that's just hermeneutic reality. So there is nothing that necessarily precludes a particular hierarchical formation - so long as it truthfully expresses the truth of salvation. The problem is when the not-precluded gets presented as the necessary.
Depiction of the medieval papacy in Lambertus de Sancto Audomaro, Liber Floridus, 1250-1275, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Latin 8865 f.99r
The drive for imperial power in the medieval papacy is almost a point-by-point contradiction of the Sermon on the Mount. Consider threatening political enemies with "excommunication" - itself a "power" claimed in direct contravention of the universal applicability of salvation vouchsafed by Christ.
You can twist scriptural passages into inverted allegories. But when the ethos changes, so does the message.
Pope Leo III, crowning Charlemagne from Chroniques de France ou de Saint Denis, vol. 1, second quarter of 14th century.
The Imperial papacy is applied inversion. Here's a simple historical overview. But well before that, we see popes try and claim secular authority that Christ himself rejected. This scene took place in the yoar 800. Render unto Caesar or become him?
The hive of luxury and paganism presided over by Alexander VI obviously doesn’t remotely resemble Apostolic faith. But what is interesting is that it doesn’t remotely resemble the early Christian centuries in Rome either. Or the sudden "theology" of papal emperor-making in the 9th century. It is neither Biblical, nor an organic expression of collective Christian communal spirit. It's an inverted pagan-huffing wannabe tyranny in the historic heart of Christendom.
Pinturicchio, Osiris teaches fruticulture, 1493, fresco, Vatican Palace
Remember Alexander? He gave us Osiris in the reverse of Jesus' traditional colors on the ceiling of the papal apartment. It is an inversion, but the idea is to draw a connection. Osiris as prefiguration or "type" of Christ.
Plugging pagan demons into Christian theology while "nephew" Cesare attempts to conquer an empire with Uncle's blessing...
When taking up the inversion in the medieval Church it is important to be clear what we are not doing. We are not taking up theological debates between factions of faithful Christians. Alexander is pre-Reformation, and it's not like any of the main "denominations" nowadays are hewing to a strict Biblical line. As usual, we are interested in historical processes of inversion and what can be seen of the reality that they hide. Churches haven't stopped being representational necessities. But neither has the necessity that they represent Christ's message. Otherwise they aren't churches. Regardless of the words on the sign out front.
What we are doing is considering ontological priority and the representation/reality confusion problem in human affairs. Here's the sequence from the last post. Note that we make no claims about the truth of the representations or the ontological nature of the referents - the things represented. It is simply a reminder that a representation can't replace the thing it was created to represent.
This becomes a problem when a domain becomes so centralized that the representations are controlled by an unanswerable authority. This means they can change the representation, claim it's "the same" and there is no avenue to assess or dispute the claim. When this happens, the entire representational domain is corrupted.'
Here's the process in a different graphic form.
1, Material representations are created to express certain immaterial truths that can't be seen directly.
This can be simple as a word or shape or complex as olf socio-political constructs. Anything that materially represents immaterial things.
2. Material representations gradually transform into representations of completely different things than the original referent.
In complex cases, this happens gradually. Early art theory really did try and systemize Logos + Techne before degenerating into Art!
3. The new, different, inverted message claims to be "the same" because it kept an old name.
Like art, democracy, or Christianity.
4. The referent doesn't change. The representation just doesn't represent it any more.
You're just mislabeling something. Like a square. Or a church.
The last post considered the representation/reality confusion problem more broadly. Instead of limiting “representation” to semiotic systems like letters or symbols, we thought about the process. Process meaning how any entity or group of entities comes to stand in for something that isn’t itself. Represents something that isn’t itself. And this brought us to entire networks of institutions, players, ideologies, theories, social practices, etc. that developed to service, curate, disseminate, and protect abstract realities that don’t materially exist.
Specifically the mechanisms by which metaphysics are experienced physically.
This presents the distinction as cleaner than it is since everything we think and know is processed representationally. So on this level, the entire spread of the ontological hierarchy is just representation. We conceptualize “God”, “suspicion” and “a sandwich” through the same webs of words and mental pictures. Which is why liars find it easy to sow confusion.
In material reality - the only lived human experience we can know directly - our relationship to reality is brokered through sign systems.
We went through this in detail in some how things mean posts. Click for links to How Words Mean and How Pictures Mean. We mashed up Kant's account of ontology and Peirce's semiotics then connected the results to the ontological hierarchy.
Replace Kant's formation with the ontological hierarchy - a superior representation of reality - and generalize Peirce's semiotics.
That was the take-away. Visualize ontology as "vertical" and representation becomes horizontal. Both are necessary, but we relate to them differently. One is the res that we are born in medias. The other is the mechanism by which we know. You can see how all the desire over reality delusionists - occultists, postmodernists, civnats, modernists, etc. - operate. Because representations don't have to be truthful, they alter the representation and claim it means the same thing. If you believe them, you react as if it were true, so it might as well be. But the mis-labled reality on the other side of the representational veil still exists. And if your fake representation deviates too far, the gap becomes impossible to wish away.
But truthful or not, the representation can’t be the thing it represents.
Whether a word or something as extensive as the full socio-cultural apparatus behind Art!.
From the last post. representation has a two-sided connection to its referent - the thing it represents.
Representation is referentially connected to the referent and is subject to judgments of truth.
Representation is existentially different from the referent and can be dishonest
Where this becomes a major inversion is when that referent is immaterial. Because it isn't something easily checked - like a weather forecast.
There's a problem in the ontological interface between the Logos and it's material representations. Consider.
Abstract realities cannot be empirically discerned directly. And ultimate reality cannot even be conceived qua itself. Material realities can be, but they're antithetical to abstract constancy. There is literally no Truth here.
The capital-T truth is on the other side of what we can see. We are required to assess the representation since it has no inherent truth-value qua itself. And that's where the ability to distort comes in.
When representing unchanging things in material terms, we create the illusion that material terms apply to the unchanging things. Because they apply to the representation. And the the whole representation-reality problem is based on pretending they're the same.
Consider Science! The original Scientific Method was a triple weave of observation, induction, and deduction that remained endlessly open-ended and self-correcting. In theory.
Then a huge representational apparatus developed to perform and oversee the Scientific Method. Then that started pumping out beast propaganda that contradicted observation or induction for narrative service. A formula for systematic fact-finding became a giant, bloated loudspeaker of beast lies.
Hence the beast system. It's a logical extension of what we call the onto-epistemological Flatland of post-Enlightenment self-idolatry. Where ontological distinctions are simultaneously claimed not to exist, but incoherent inversions of faith and reason are applied to whatever lie the beast-huffers happen to be pushing. In Flatland, representation and referent are interchangeable. And since there are no ontological distinctions, abstractions and ultimate reality are whatever I represent them as.
The ultimate authorities are will and desire, not truth and falsehood. When desires clash, material power is the arbitrator. Reality remains indifferent.
It’s why modernity is fundamentally satanic. Do what thou wilt, then death, then oblivion.
But representation-reality confusion is only one Flatland building block – centralization is the one we were considering more recently. There is no beast system without centralized nodes of control and the ZAXSmassive, asymmetric, resource concentrations that come with it. The seemingly endless money is how the integrated beast system corrupts and controls most everything. The last post looked at Art! and Democracy! as instances of the representation-reality switch. We just mentioned Science! They’re different kinds of material-abstract interface apparatuses but follow the same inversion pattern. Money! has become another. Likewise Law! and Justice!
This post will follow up the last one and continue with the inversion of the medieval Church. How something created organically to disseminate and promote Jesus’ message became a self-proclaimed authority with the power to alter or invert it. Consider the fruits, not hollow words.
Titian, The Descent of the Holy Ghost, around 1545, oil on canvas, Santa Maria della Salute
Three steps...
1. Take something intended to accommodate the abstract and metaphysical in a fallen, entropic, changing material world.
2. Reject the premise that representation represents something external to it for making the representation the end it itself.
3. Gradually introduce man-made arbitrary whims - for specific, identifiable historical reasons - as "necessary" addenda to the Incarnation.
Necessary is the key word here. The question is whether the material representation truthfully reflects abstract Truth. Are its dogmas explicitly necessitated? Or do they change with the fashions? That is the measure of it's representational fitness. Material superficialities - what Aristotle would call accidents - that don't contradict the core message are metaphysically irrelevant material distinctions like national traditions. They matter to the people as peoples, not to God. They are to be judged by their fruits.
This raises a distinction of fundamental importance for understanding material expressions of abstract things.
Necessity vs. compatibility
Things which are required by the referent of a representational system
vs.
Things that are external to it, but don’t contradict its terms.
Clarify. All representations are open to variations in precise meaning because comprehension involves translating to and from symbolic registers. But the degree of variation is not open-ended or communication fails. Words have ranges of meaning, and connotative variance != randomness. The more complicated the message the more room for interpretation, but this is a characteristic of representation, not failure.
Keep it simple. And note how even that requires assumptions.
“Never go through that gate” contains no avenue for debate - assuming the references are understood. The only way to blur or “misunderstand” is to change the references or add conditionals that clearly aren’t part of the statement as stated. And changing references and adding conditionals - changing or adding anything, really - isn’t a variant meaning. They're literally different symbolic communication from the original. The simplicity makes it clear - there is no room for exceptions to the stated meaning. Never go through that gate is absolutely not the same as Never go through that gate unless... They aren't the same string of symbols and don't represent the same meaning.
So, necessity vs. compatibility. Necessary means required by the terms of the representation. That is, what must be done or not done in order to follow the message conveyed.
Failing to do what is necessitated violates or disobeys what the representation plainly states. If you want to go north on 75, you must choose the right turn. You don't have to, but then you won't be going north on 75.
In our example - what the representation necessitates is to never pass through the gate. And since the statement includes no places or opening for clauses or conditionals, that necessary meaning is fixed. No matter how many additional words are piled on, entering through the gate rejects what the representation represents. Like not turning right for 75 north. If you make up exceptions, you create a new representation that represents something different.
Now suppose there was a reason for the original necessity.
Consequences - something like entering the gate will strike you dead. Some new representation of something totally different that you made up isn't going to save you.
Compatibility refers to something external to the representational content - not included in the representation - that doesn’t violate its necessities. Staying with the example, never go through that gate only necessitates not going through the gate. It doesn't say anything about anything else - so long as it doesn't wind up with going through the gate. Pitching a camp right outside the threshold, holding court in your camp, slowly turning it into a settlement – none of these have anything to do with the original representation. They aren’t necessitated positively or negatively. But doing them doesn’t contradict the necessity either.
You can choose to do them while still conforming to the represented necessity. And if the encampment on the threshold makes it easier to stop others from entering, it actually serves the necessity.
You could consider it helpful, even positive. Compatible things can be net goods. But they aren’t necessary.
Now Scripture – or "The Church" and the messages they represent - are a bit more complex than a simple statement about a gate. But this doesn’t change the fact that it uses a representational system that includes plainly-stated necessities. Early Christians already understood that clear Biblical denotative language was more direct in meaning than allegorical readings. It has to be, or else it collapses into meaninglessness. Of course, applying super-simple models to complex situations without accounting for the differences is a common liar’s tell. And the Church is exceptionally complex. We simply needed to clarify the necessary-compatible distinction before getting into the weeds.
This is especially important here because Christianity as a human practice is ongoing and temporal while Jesus' message is fixed. This means Christians are continually adapting something long ago and far away to their current situation. What is necessary, and what are compatible and incompatible become essential.
Jean Colombe, Pope Urban II preaching at the Council of Clermont, from Passages d'outremer de Sébastien Mamerot, 1474, Bibliothèque nationale de France
Like representing the 11th century Council as taking place in a late Gothic interior.
To be clear, it's the metaphysical claims of the medieval Church that we are taking at face value. Any practical critique is a wipe-out. Few popes’ fruits live up to the kindest reading of the Sermon on the Mount, let alone Vicar of Christ. the men who made up the medieval Church included an extraordinary number of venal, self-idolizing sinners. Nothing mystical there, so look past them to the institution. An ordering that was formed to represent - but somehow came to displace - the mystical communion of faithful Christians.
A claim to instantiate the abstract in the material can only be made on faith. Like the existence of the immortal soul or the divinity of Christ. It requires something higher than either to cojoin incompatible states. That means ultimate reality - God.
Hence faith as a the only epistemological access.
The complexity of the Church as a representation comes from being built of layers of transmission and development through time. Jesus’ message, the codification of the Gospels, the emergence of Christian communities and leadership structures, the development of doctrine through councils, the imperialized corruption of Christian authority…
It is also ontologically inevitable for painfully obvious reasons. How does one hear the Word if they weren’t around in Jesus’ time? Start with the basics.
Readers may find it jarring to see Biblical references juxtaposed with Band terms like the ontological hierarchy. They shouldn’t.
Part of understanding how representation works is grasping that the sign or the representation isn’t what is important. Fetishizing signs over what they point to is the inverted retardation behind occultism and postmodernism. Like saying “I read the instructions… why isn’t the shelf self-assembling?” Band readers are WAY smarter than that.
Granting the Bible divinely-inspired truthfulness that other representations lack only comments on the value of the representation. It doesn’t make the represention into whatever it represents. And if it is a truthful representation, then it will accurately represent its ontological subject. And if it does that, it will align with other accurate representations. Even ones that aren’t divinely inspired, but happen to be correct anyhow.
Move past the different representational forms, and the ontological hierarchy is shockingly compatible with the metaphysical implications of the Bible.
The Fallen material world is objectively entropic and temporal. Change is constant and everything dies. We are born into pre-existing structures and perception and logic have clear limits. There is no capacity for timeless truths – timeless anythings – qua themselves in this context.
Man and Logos. In the Bible, Jesus has material human form and can address people in human terms. But he clearly articulates the ontological dead end of worldly fixation. Worldly ties in general.
His message is one of utterly radical rejection of material reality for the kingdom of God or Heaven.
And note how he frames it.
In ontological hierarchy terms, the Law is a timeless abstract absolute. It is literally handed down from ultimate reality in material representational form. But fallen, entropic, temporal creatures are categorically unable to live up to its unvarying standards.
So the Logos provides a real metaphysical conduit that isn’t just representation. That real pathway lets us achieve what our own efforts can’t. Choice becomes possible.
Note how the epistemologies work. Ultimate reality is trans-temporal. It precedes and exists outside of time. Since human thought is dependent on time-sequenced representational patterns, it is literally outside comprehension. Outside the capacity for comprehension. Anything pertaining to the nature of Ultimate reality – other than the logical necessity of its “existence” - can only be known by faith. Hence the source of the Logos and the message-conduit it provides is also only knowable by faith.
The fallen, entropic, ephemeral nature of the material world is more obvious.
We see it and live it every day.
And applying one to the other requires abstract moral reasoning.
Obviously the internal structure and narrative mechanics of the Bible are unique. In the Band’s experience, there is no other text that reads like it. And it's totally different in appearance from the ontological hierarchy. The ontological hierarchy can’t tell you how it works or what you have to do. It’s simply observation and logical necessity. A representation of relationships. But relationships that are consistent with the world described in the Bible. The real world.
The Bible does tell you what to do. It offers faith-based knowledge about ultimate reality and our relation to it. Because if it is to represents the universal ontological bridging activity of the Logos - Jesus' message - it has to have a higher-than-material truth value. And it needs to convey the same message content that Jesus did. Admittedly not as potent a delivery mechanism, but it also tells us that observers were deaf to Jesus himself. The truth of the message – and human self-absorption – are external to the form of transmission.
Matthew 10:17-11:5 page in the Codex Sinaiticus (The Sinai Bible), 330-360 AD, Saint Catherine’s Monastery in the Sinai Peninsula
And as a representation - whether truthful or not - the Bible is made at a fixed point in time. The precise details of the Gospel originals is unclear, but we can speak of a time before the Bible was written and after. Those after have access to a representation that those before did not.
The Biblical message - the referent of the representation - is abstract and timeless, but the depiction is not. We can speak of a time before the Bible was written, speculate how it came together, and ascribe authors. Like any representation, it is ontologically posterior to the message it represents. Temporally speaking.
The graphic from the last post captures the ontological and temporal priority order in representation.
A thing exists in some condition, someone perceives and wants to share it, and a representation is made. None of this should require reiteration except that representation-reality confusion is so weirdly powerful. We assume it's a combination of fallen solipsism and the conditioning of generations of endemic cultural inversion and lies. The list of red bold things that aren't what they represent from above. But whatever the reason, even smart people are often bamboozled by representations masquerading as referents.
The Bible doesn't create the metaphysical conditions for salvation through ontological ascent. The sacrifice and message of Christ represented by the Bible does.
Faith as a form of knowledge doesn’t mean believing whatever you want. Beast-huffers think so, but embracing obvious falsehoods isn't knowledge. Knowledge implies knowing something, and willful belief in falsehood isn't that. The Band identifies two types of “faith”. One is typical of the beast system and involves believing things that are logically and empirically false. A benefit of the integrated ontological hierarchy is that it smokes out these groundless claims by placing faith on an epistemological continuum with observation and logic.
The other - call it honest faith - is consistent with and extends logic and observation. Christian metaphysics are known by faith but align with observable entropy, human nature, and limits of discernment as well as the logical necessity of causal origins. Legitimate faith imposes the same sort of responsibility on the knower as any legitimate epistemology. Namely, it applies to knowledge that logic or observation do not. That's the other thing about the ontological hierarchy - it avoids epistemological category error. And applying faith to things that are logically or observationally known is just that.
Merry-Joseph Blondel, The Fall of Icarus, 1819, oil on canvas, Louvre Museum
Just making up whatever is as dishonest in faith as it is observationally. And calling desire for the material or logically impossible "faith" is mindless solipsism, retardary, and/or beast huffing.
Fra Bartolomeo, Christ with the Four Evangelists, 1516, oil on canvas, Pitti Palace, Florence
The structure of the Bible itself reflects that honest faith is an extension of and not subject to verification by reason and observation. The four Gospels tell the same story with slight variations as one would expect from multiple witness testimonies. We see as through a glass darkly, and abstract Truths have to be accommodated to our limits of discernment.
Faith != making stuff up imposes limits and consistencies on the precepts. Consider - we turn to the epistemology of faith when empirical and abstract modes are insufficient for the domain. This means the domain is not knowable - or even accessible - by observation or reasoning. How, then, could we use either of those to modify something that can only be reached by faith? If we could, the domain is subject to logic or observation and isn't epistemologically subject to faith in the first place. Accepting something on faith means it isn't knowable in any other way. When someone attempts to qualify a point of faith with other forms of knowledge, they are intrinsically wrong. Likely either ontologically gelded or a liar,.
What this means for Christianity is simple. If you accept that the Bible conveys a divinely-vouched true representation, then you have to accept all of it. The source – ultimate reality – is logically and empirically beyond us. There is no mechanism by which we can assess the relative value of individual parts. Any picking and choosing is necessarily projected desire onto something that can’t be assessed directly. A claim to have ontologically prior knowledge of ultimate reality to that of the Logos.
Peter Paul Rubens, The Fall of the Damned, 1620, oil on canvas, Alte Pinakothek, Munich
Alternatively, one can believe that the integrity of the Biblical message is subject to momentary human whim. But then it can't be divine truth known by faith. Jesus himself is quite clear on whether the message is discretionary. Take Matthew 7:21-23...
Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.
And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.
Divine revelation and human observation and reasoning are inherently, definitionally, existentially mutually exclusive. Observation and reasoning can follow from the revelation. But the revelation is ontologically prior. So accept the whole package on faith in divine authority or do what thou wilt. We’re still waiting for anyone to provide the third alternative.
If we do accept the truth of the Bible on faith, then we have to understand, accommodate, and implement the entire message in our individual material lives.
And this brings us to the Church.
A church - or The Church - consists of interlocking complexes of material entities that together represent the immaterial truth of Christ’s message. Theoretically, it provides Christian leadership and guidance and sociability. Fellowship and activities. Remember - effective metaphysics have to be accessible. The church material human entity that makes Christ's message accessible and livable to the general public in a given time and place. That is, a representation.
The church ideally represents same immaterial referent represented as the Bible - only in a different form. Interlocking complexes that you take part in rather than a book you reflect on. So one could make a claim on faith that it – like the Bible – is divinely inspired truth.
At which point the faith claim is subject to the same test of ontological consistency as the Bible. The Band will go out on a limb and propose that the message Jesus delivered as Incarnate Logos to the people of the Holy Land didn't include the terms of salvation being alterable at will 2000 years later. Nor is a human claim to control ultimate reality an extension of the ontological uniqueness of Jesus.
The church is different from the Bible because it's a composite of people, writings, places. ideas, etc., not a fixed book. This is inevitable, since the church exists to express - to represent - abstract Truth in material, accessible terms. This means that elements of the representation is constantly changing – as all continuities do. Even the strictest, because the people keep changing. The task of the church is to maintain message consistency despite the flow of history. Remember the recent change vs. meaningful change post. The material world is constantly changing. What the church has to do is to be sure that those changes aren't meaningful ones.
And that means that the initial truth of the representation is not sufficient. Apostolic foundation means that an institution started as truthful representation. But that has no bearing on what people claiming that name are doing centuries later. The Bible is set in a way the church can't be. We have to assess its ongoing nature.
Claudio de Arciniega, and others, Mexico City Metropolitan Cathedral, 1573-1813
Colonial cathedrals.
The message conveyed by this one...
Rafael Moneo, Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, completed 2002, Los Angeles, California
...is not the same as this one. You might even call it... an inversion. Given that beauty is a sensible attribute of Logos, the message expressed by this architectural bit of church is different from the Mexico City one.
Remember - the last post walked through how representations can gradually change in a way that looks like continuity but becomes inversion.
Anything made up of and by people is always changing because it exists in temporal material reality. The question is whether the representation continues to represent the same thing in the new terms.
The term "church" as used by Jesus refers to Christian assembly - ekklesia - either in one place or all Christians universally. Much of the New Testament after the Gospels is made up of writings from the Apostles to nascent Christian communities. Historically, Christianity became more organized and structured as it grew and spread. The Good News traveled by preaching and other word of mouth while the Scriptures were codified. Material necessity demands some means of message consistency, especially as the faith moves further from its original context.
The issue is what happens when the material accommodations of the church change so they no longer accord with the Bible?
Annibale Carracci. Domine, quo vadis? 1601–02, oil on panel, National Gallery, London
Further - like to Rome.
From a site looking at the 2nd-century church: movement towards standardization in Christian leadership and ritual practice is evident from around the second century. Rituals themselves - like fasting, baptism, communion - were developing in the first century. There are still inconsistencies in leadership structure by the end of the second. Persecutions remained a problem in the third.
The historical development is organic. Contextual agents evolving positions in light of current events. As the number of Christians spread and grew, some sort of leadership was necessary. There are very early references to "bishops" and "deacons". Dispute between elected and charismatic leadership. But centralization was inevitable - especially as the time from Jesus lengthened and external pressures came to bear.
The Bible and the Church are both representational forms, but with critical differences. Both emerge in the first century to express Christ's message of salvation, but once the Bible is written - even beast huffers date the 27 books of the New Testament to the late 1st century - that account is pretty much fixed. The events are historical, but the metaphysical meaning remains constant, even as daily reality in a fallen, entropic world changes. Hence the need for accommodation.
Samson Routing the Philistines, 4th century AD, Cubicle of Samson, Catacombs of the Via Latina, Rome
Samson didn't dress like a Roman patrician. It's unlikely that the temples of the Philistines resembled the hybrid Greek-Etruscan temples of the Romans either.
Baal, right arm raised, 14th-12th centuries BC, bronze, Louvre; Seated goddess, 14th–13th century BC, Metropolitan Museum of Art
Samson lived ~1200-1000 BC. The ancient Hebrews didn't make statues, but this is what contemporary Canaanite art looked like. Note that the Roman catacomb painter shows zero interest in "historical accuracy". The goal is to make the story - and the meaning - accessible & relatable. That way it can deliver the message. That is, the referent, or the thing the representation was made to convey.
These two pictures capture the difference between Bible and church as representational types. The story of Samson doesn't really change. But how material, temporal, constantly changing people picture it does. And the church has to maintain Christ's message consistently in those constantly shifting and changing human conditions. To say it's generally failed is beyond obvious.
Agape Feast. Catacomb of Saints Marcellinus and Peter, Via Labicana, Rome, 4th century
The forerunner of the Eucharist, depicted in an early Christian catacomb. Agape feasts date back to the first century. They aren't the same as a 14th-century Mass. Does that mean one group is damned? Or are representational details unimportant to the fate of the soul?
Both can't be true.
Daily changes in a fallen, entropic, temporal world simply aren't relevant to the abstract referent. Biblical people wore robes, togas, loincloths, and other first-century garb. The Band wears shirts & pants that came from stores. Neither is the least bit relevant to recognizing Logos, confessing Jesus lord and savior, or keeping the commandments.
We don't even use the same gestures to represent prayer...
Orant, Catacomb of Priscilla, between 200-400 AD, Rome; Francisco De Zurbarán, St. Francis in Meditation, 1635-39, oil on canvas. National Gallery, London; Roberto Ferruzzi, Praying Girl, late 19th century, M. Kroshitsky Art Museum, Sevastopol
The referent - Christ's message - is unchanging. Material reality is constantly changing. The Bible is a relatively fixed representation of the former that needs moral reasoning to apply in the latter. The church is of the constantly changing material world, but is charged to maintain moral message consistency. The Bible is part of church formation, but not the same as it. It's the referent that must be the same.
The point is that we routinely face scenarios that aren't clearly spelled out Biblically but contain moral peril. Christian leadership has to apply one to the other. And thinking about the organic formation of Christian leadership brings us back to the necessity-compatibility distinction. Because some sort of Christian leadership may be necessitated, but no particular form is spelled out.
Time now for "what words mean".
The necessary is what you are required to do. The not ruled out is compatible - not specified one way or the other, so not relevant to the larger message. Keep it simple. Consider deciding to plant radishes in the garden. The Bible doesn't mention radishes, meaning a more abstract application is needed. Examples and allegories with growing and agriculture are all over the book, so it's safe to assume gardening itself is morally unproblematic. And since radishes aren't explicitly referred to or unclean or unhealthy categorically, it's safe to go ahead and plant them. Note the key point -
The Bible doesn't tell you to plant radishes. It just doesn't preclude them. It's a metaphysically-insignificant material choice that is up to you.
If you steal the seeds or greedily horde them there are problems. But those are violations of other moral proscriptions independent of choice of crop. So not necessary, but not incompatible either. Not required, but not ruled out.
Now take "bishops". The Bible doesn't specifically mandate the juridical and administrative ecclesiastic structural hierarchy favored by the medieval Church. There are no cardinals, abbots, or monastic foundations there either. Nor are there soothsayers, archmandrites, firekeepers, or ministers. Neither the cut nor color of costume, or the requirement to wear any costume at all, are specified. Ditto hats.
Doesn't rule them out, but doesn't require them either. If the Bible accurately represents Christ's message, these worldly geegaws are on no consequence at all. Conversely, if the Bible doesn't truthfully represent Christ's message, then there is no reason to pay attention to it at all.
Jehan Georges Vibert, The Preening Peacock, 19th century, oil on canvas, private
A particular historical formation might not contradict scripture, but isn't mandated either. It's a representation of an absent abstract. Other configurations are imaginable that represent the ideals of collective prayer - even a special role for Peter - better.
Since a legalistic sacerdotal bureaucracy isn't even mentioned, it's a metaphysically-insignificant material choice. Like eating vs. planting radishes. And as an arbitrary material representation, all thar matters is whether or not it fulfils or violates those things that are specifically called for. Compatible or incompatible.
By the fruits.
The medieval form of the church may be compatible and non-contradictory. But it is not necessitated in any particular material format or configuration in any early Christian source. Scripture or other early Christian activity. And clearly ritual can change. Were first century Christians damned without the formal Eucharist? Were 14th-century Christians damned without an agape feast? Considering that Jesus' message included neither explicitly, the answer has to be no.
So the only metaphysically-relevant question is whether or not it's complementary to Christ's message. If its form and operations are material expressions of the timeless Truth or not. Does it make it more accessible or less?
Excommunication of Emperor Frederick II by Pope Innocent IV, Bodleian Library MS. Laud Misc. 632, f.45r
Structure and organization were inevitable. But nothing said or done to Peter suggests it was God's manifest will 1200 years later that salvation be used to blackmail opponents into accepting papal political power.
The question is how many are even aware of the political history of the medieval Church? If you are, the inversion of the message of Christ and the Apostles is staggering. It has to be - Jesus commanded us to judge religious leaders by their fruits. Hewing to this would have ruled out the Imperial Papacy and led to very different institutional ethos.
The history of the development Church is a sequence of retroactive post-facto justifications. Something is temporally desirable to a self-policing hierarchy of men, so a Biblical "argument" justifying it is constructed. At worst it's Pharisitical nonsense or outright heresy. At best it's a material construct that is compatible with the message Christ Incarnated to deliver. This is why the "not ruled out" is so critical to material representation - it governs the changing historical incidentals that weren't on the 1st-century radar.
There is nothing in the scriptural connotation of ἐκκλησίᾳ [ekklēsia] or the formation of the early church that mandates the imperial papacy of the Middle Ages. It is a noun derived from ek and kaleo - a "calling out" with specific reference to a religious gathering. There is nothing even to mandate any complex hierarchy, let alone one specific model. Or building type. Or costume. Or the name for magic incantations that were written centuries after the Ascension.
Raphael, St. Paul Preaching in Athens, 1515, tempera on paper, mounted on canvas, Victoria and Albert Museum, London
Consider Paul's words before the Areopagus in Athens as recorded in the Book of Acts.
There is nothing here to necessitate the subsequent development of "Holy Ground" or institutional gate keepers. Quite the opposite - Paul speaks to a common human mandate to seek the Creator outside constraints of man-made things. He doesn't say that an organization or gathering place is forbidden. Just not that any one particular configuration possesses the power to compel God's grace.
Likewise, there is nothing in the ways Peter is singled out among the Apostles by Jesus that necessitates the caesaropapist policies of the medieval popes. Their details are superfluous to the necessity of the Christ's message because they're social and material. Specific procedural formulations like Gelasian political theory and Petrine succession aren't explicitly precluded by Christ's charge to Peter because they hadn't yet been formed. But they aren't necessitated by it either. They develop historically, through readable sources in knowable conditions. Organic representations that claim to accommodate Jesus' message in understandable, contextually-determined terms. Any further assumptions rely on unverifiable faith.
Jesus says to judge by the fruits. What do they do? The contrast between external forms and internal faith in religious leadership is a recurring theme in all the Gospels. His constant condemnation of the scribes and Pharisees - religious leadership in his era - is hypocrisy. That they observe forms while willfully violating the meaning. It's pure representation-reality problem, just Biblically represented. So start with the purpose.
Jacob Jordaens, Christ among the Pharisees, 1600s, oil on canvas, private
Christianity as a set of developed practices is intended as an expression of God's will for us. That's what differentiates it from ontologically-confused occultisms or secular transcendence.
It's done by the individual, but it's not about the individual. It's about accepting a place in external reality and the Providential order that entails. That's only known internally. The emphasis on the heart reinforces the essential nature of inner belief. Faith.
The purpose of Christianity is to preserve the integrity of the message and create a holistic representation that makes it broadly accessible. Bringing people into alignment with external realities instead of pretending magic talismans and incantations grant power over them. Ways of integrating universal dictates like the Beatitudes and allegories of the Sermon on the Mount into contemporary living. Whenever that contemporary happens to be.
Gustave Dore, The Sermon on the Mount, 19th century, oil on canvas
So where does a man claiming the power to block the redemptive power of Christ's death and resurrection over a political dispute fit into this? To ask is to answer.
Either organzed Christianity is a fluid, temporally contingent manifestion of abstract truth or it's just another hollow human social organization. If the former, they’re judged according to how well they accommodate that standard. Consider it a test of the cognitive floor needed to grasp secular transcendence and the epistemological consequences of ontology. If historical creation that appears in identifiable points in time with centuries after Christ are necessary addenda to salvation, there are only two possibilities. Either those prior to the "discovery" of the new "necessity" were all damned, or Jesus' instructions can be overridden by human whim and magic words.
Look closer and be attentive.
Cornelis Springer, View of the Little Church in Zalt Bommel, 19th century, oil on canvas, private
The reality is religion - like any social order - is a material expression of organic community or arbitrary external hegemony. The modern notion of denominational plurality within one community is the opposite.
How can agreement on the metaphysical nature of reality be less important to social cohesion than system of government? It can't be. It's the foundation of morality and other foundational aspects of culture.
Consider these much later representations of the Council of Nicea - where the first serious attempt at a consensus Christian creed was formulated in 325. Of course that same creed was substantially changed at the Council of Constantinople before the end of the century. Meaning the precise wording is irrelevant to the efficacy of the representation, over 50 years of Christians are damned, or Christ's message of salvation is alterable by subsequent Fallen humans. That logic is obvious. But pay attention to how the gathering is depicted.
Cesare Nebbia, Opening of the Council of Nicaea (325) by Emperor Constantine I, around 1585-1589, fresco, Vatican Library; The First Ecumenical Council, 1700, mural, St. Sophia of Kyiv
Some structure or organization was necessary to codify and disseminate the message. It becomes an article of faith that the Nicaean Creed is a truthful semiotic representation of God's will. Likewise the Ecumenical Council where it was formulated.
Material-level difference. The Roman painting shows the pope presiding in modern attire and the emperor opening in period costume. The Orthodox one shows a decidedly Christ-like emperor presiding with prelates arranged like a heavenly host. This is irrelevant to the truth of the Creed.
Constantine called the Council in an imperial appropriation of Christian authority. Jesus makes it clear that worldly power is incompatible with the Kingdom of God - Constantine's actions are pure inversion of the message. The counter would be that he merely called the council to preserve socio-political peace. In which case one might wonder why he is given pride of place - and a halo - among actual Christian leaders?
If one were looking for an inversive moment in church centralization, the deification of the Roman Emperor would be a fine start. Consider that it was the paganisms of Alexander VI and "Pope Francis" that got us thinking about centralization and inversion. Rendering God's to Caesar and Christianizing the Imperial cult of the emperor because reasons second-rate Neoplatonism is likely the inflection point. The actual inversion will take another post.
First Council of Constantinople (AD 381), from the Homilies of St. Gregory of Nazianzus (Paris Gregory), between 879 and 883, BnF Grec 510 f.355r.
9th-century Byzantine manuscript illustration of the council where the first Nicene Creed was rewritten by a group of people. Note that the Gospel Book is given the place of honor, but the emperor is the only figure worthy of a halo. The artist may well have been Christian. The idea of a divine emperor is an ancient Middle Eastern pagan inversion that predates the Persian Empire.
We have render unto God and Caesar. Turns out Jesus should have added "render unto Babylon"...
First Ecumenical Council of Nikea 325 AD, undated icon from the Mégalo Metéoron Monastery in Greece, with the condemned Arius in the bottom of the icon.
Doesn't take long. An emperor LARPing as an image of Jesus is a blasphemous inversion of Jesus' message. Sort of like "never go through that gate". It doesn't matter who stated the alternative if it overtly contradicts what the original representation necessitated.
It seems straightforward enough. An organic culture will have a consensus perspective on the metaphysical. Just as it will have common language and customs. The West is complicated by its composite structure - multiple distinct nationalities within a common Christian framework developing over time. It stands to reason that there would be local expressions of that faith as well.
The issue is what material variance is ancillary and what corrupts the message. Whether it is meaningful. The costume a pastor wears is ancillary. An emperor interposing himself between you and Logos is not.
Our 6th-century Justinian propaganda from the last post. Bishop Maximian is the bald man with his name included to the right of the emperor in the lower panel. That he wears a dress but no hat is irrelevant to the quality of his pastoral effectiveness.
Pretending that a material order made by men centuries after Christ that claims the fallen material world is perfectly commensurate to ultimate reality is manifestly, objectively, utterly impossible unless you deliberately alter Christ's message. That is, represent something other than the Kingdom of God.
Change vs. meaningful change. By the fruits.
Of course blasphemous skidmarks lying about God for lust and greed isn't limited to late Roman emperors. Like this bloated greasy turd shown here with the whore that replaced the wife he murdered. His "church" is as inverted as he is.
Christianity is explicit about it's ontological intermediacy. The notion of being in the world but not of it. In the West, the church developed into a regionalized late-imperial Roman organization that gradually extended throughout Europe and elsewhere. This meant for the most part, the spread of Christianity and the evolution of the church as a man-made set of institutional choices moved together. Note that there is nothing inherently wrong with ordering material Christian life after socio-cultural patterns. That's how we order everything. And the Bible doesn't specify through what representational venue communal prayer happens - just that privileging this world over the next will keep you out of the Kingdom. But it's especially easy historically to conflate the representation and the referent.
What matters metaphysically is if whatever configuration is chosen hews to the meaning of the message and is effective in ministering to the people. In other words, not looking good for Constantine. Or Henry.
Consider the material forms of early Christianity.
Another Agape feast, late 3rd century, Catacombs of Ss. Pietro e Marcellino, Rome
Why catacombs? That's where early Christians could meet and bury their dead without interference from hostile authorities.
Giovanni Bellini, St. Jerome in the Desert, 1505, oil on canvas, National Gallery of Art, Washington
Why desert eremites? That's what the wilderness looked like.
And why does the desert look like Italy here? That's what wilderness looked like to Bellini. The setting is irrelevant to Jerome's value as model of logos.
St. Paul's Outside the Walls, Rome
Constantinian basilica expanded by Theodosius and completed in the mid 5th century that burned in 1823 and was rebuilt to the Theodosian specs over the 19th century. It's the most accurate representation of an early Christian imperial basilica that we have.
Why imperial basilicas? Because the Roman Emperor attempted to tie his office to the Church
Cima da Conegliano, St. Peter Enthroned with St. John the Baptist and St. Paul, 1515-1516, oil on panel, Pinacoteca Brera, Milan
Why the Imperial Papacy? Because the Bishop of Rome liked the analogy.
Depicting the Apostle Peter as a late-medieval potentiate 1500 years after his death puts him in accessible contemporary terms. But this has little to do with the historical Peter. Read scripture, then use reason to ascertain whether he seems the sort to be into thrones...
These representational aspects of the early and medieval churches - there is enough change to differentiate their man-made forms - may be compatible with scripture or the the first Christian century. But their historical forms are not necessary. So it should be a simple matter - at least in theory - to measure man-made alterations in church rules against scripture. Except for one problem. They're both representations - not the message itself. And Christian organization began to form before the Bible was written.
Nicolas Bernard Lépicié, Conversion of St. Paul, 1767, oil on canvas
If we work from conventional dating, the missions of the Apostles launch well before the Gospels are written. Assuming Paul and Peter are martyred during the Neronian persecutions of ~66 AD, their work is done before any of the Gospels are finalized.
This means that if "the church" refers to material Christian ordering as anaccessible representation of Christ's message, it can't be based only on the Bible. The Bible wasn't available when the representational ordering started!
This is the basis of the magisterium of the church. It sounds like majestic in English, but actually translates to teaching. This refers to the chain of knowledge from Jesus to the Apostles to their chosen successor bishops, etc. There is biblical corroboration in the instances where Jesus is referenced telling the Apostles things that aren't included in the text. Correct interpretations and so forth. And it's never really been disputed going back to the earliest writings.
Jean II Restout, Pentecost, 1732, oil on canvas, Louvre Museum
The exact same knowledge by faith applies to the truth-value of the early organizational formation of the church as it does do the Bible. That metaphysical truth - the united mystical body of all Christians mentioned in the Bible with Christ at the head - is accurately reflected in the material representation. Whether changes are non-meaningful and compatible and if the necessities are observed.
If we extend the representational priority sequence to the formation of the church, it looks like this.
The material ordering of the church coalesces over a couple of centuries, starting with exposure to Jesus directly and the first wave of Christians. The "early Christians" - say up to the 4th century - gradually turn these inputs into the religion with all its components. This then floats through time, maintaining the necessary truths of the message as the appearance of life changes around it. On this level, the ritual order of things or choice of music doesn't matter. Whatever best delivers the message without meaningfully changing it.
The ontological problem is that representations don't have to be truthful. Obtain material power over the signs and one can claim to make substantive changes. How else can formal notions of Purgatory, indulgences, etc. be "discovered" then written up with a juridical precision that Christ himself doesn't claim?
Stigmatization of Saint Francis, 1297-1300, fresco, 270 x 230 cm, Church of St. Francis, Assisi
The obvious answer if we take church claims at face value is visionary prophetic revelation of some sort. Visionary knowledge is interesting. It is empirical and objective to the recipient, but everyone else has to accept it on faith. This is the most ontologically direct form of Christian truth, but the least practical for maintaining a consistent representational church.
Once again, onto-epistemological responsibility clarifies things. The magisterium - whatever one's belief regarding it - is abstract. The offices of the church - regardless of "denomination" - are material. One is timeless and unchanging. One is a representation and subject to evaluation. By the fruits.
The Bible tells us we see truth as through a glass darkly, not with precise legalistic clarity. It is necessary to maintain consistent order - hence "canon law" - but literally can't be metaphysical. It is a subsequent addendum to Christ's message. It must be consistent with the message as initially presented, and effective at maintaining consistency. That's the best fallen, entropic, material reality can offer.
Symbols of the Four Evangelists, Book of Kells, 800, Dublin, Trinity College Library, MS A. I
Consider - All Four Gospels are different. John especially, but the synoptic ones aren't exactly carbon copies.
The Apostles and other early Christians assembling the first-century Gospel books rejected claims to absolute clarity in spiritual matters. It will take human frauds to introduce magic words and sigils centuries later. Jesus asks who you think he is and passes on declaring a "greatest" Apostle. There's no ontological path from here to pretenses of worldly authority.
That left the medievals with no alternative to donning weird headgear and using coercive force.
What this means should be reassuring to Christians in an era where institutional churches have corrupted away from truthful representation. It means that the metaphysical church is beyond harm from beast-huffers because it is abstract and unchanging. Degenerating material churches simply changes the representation to a reference to something else. It's a major problem for anyone hoping to benefit from the saving power of Christ's message because that message isn't getting through. Restore the truthfulness and the representation functions again.
The Band's take on denominations it that they are all man-made accommodations of an originary Truth to be judged by the fruits. Jesus is explicit about how to be saved. We have no way of knowing this for certain, but we suspect individuals who follow his message are and those who don't aren't, regardless of denomination. It is a narrow gate, after all.
Is the accommodation effective and do the followers obey his teaching? The rest is human tribalism. Or so it seems to us.
The problem with the medieval church was that by the Renaissance, the papacy had become too heretical and corrupt to maintain the illusion of spiritual leadership. The Church had grown too worldly to generate another Francis. So it ruptured.
The next post will wrap this inquiry by looking at the historical process of centralization and inversion that runs from divine emperors through Osiris and beyond.
Jean-Paul Laurens, detail of Pope Formosus and Stephen VI - The Cadaver Synod of 897, 1870, oil on canvas, Nantes Museum of Arts
No comments:
Post a Comment