Italian disciple of The Limits to Growth and peak oil completely unaware of a Roman citizen who envisioned the collapse of the Empire

 Ugo Bardi, professor of physical chemistry at the University of Florence, here, in September 2009:

 I think it is enough to say that the Romans did not really understand what was happening to their Empire, except in terms of military setbacks that they always saw as temporary. ... it gives us an idea of what it is like living a collapse “from the inside”. Most people just don’t see it happening ... we can’t rule out that at some moment at the time of the Roman Empire there was something like a “Roman ASPO”, maybe “ASPE,” the “association for the study of peak empire”. If it ever existed, it left no trace.

Ugo Bardi admits he's no historian, but one would like to think that a contemporary Italian would remember with pride the most famous Roman citizen of Italy's Christian past.

Now these things happened to them as a warning, but they were written down for our instruction, upon whom the end of the ages has come.  

-- I Corinthians 10:11

Even so we, when we were children, were in bondage under the elements of the world:  But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, To redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons. 

-- Galatians 4:3ff.

For he has made known to us in all wisdom and insight the mystery of his will, according to his purpose which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fulness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth. 

-- Ephesians 1:9f.

Imagine how unreliable "eyewitness" accounts from antiquity must be when normal vision not requiring correction is such a rarity anyway

 

 

 

Reported here: 

In 2016, approximately 76 percent of adults in the U.S. stated they wore some form of vision correction.  

Widespread use of eyeglasses is an outgrowth of their late invention, during the Italian Renaissance, with ubiquitous production with plastic lenses dating only from the 1980s. Before that, things looked, well, kind of grim for an overwhelming majority of people.

St. Paul, who probably had very bad eyes from birth, yet boasted that he had seen the Lord.

Am I not an apostle? am I not free? have I not seen Jesus Christ our Lord? are not ye my work in the Lord? 

-- 1 Corinthians 9:1

Paul's conversion, however, bespeaks a probably lifelong preoccupation with his poor eyesight. It specifically involves being blinded, and then scales falling from his eyes when he recovers his sight well enough to be considered normal again, and this again miraculously (Acts 9:8f., 18, 27).

But evidently this was not a full restoration of his sight.

According to Acts 23:1ff. Paul still could not spot the high priest in a crowd of people he was addressing. He says the Galatians would have given him their own eyes if they could have (Galatians 4:15), admitting that he is infirm (Galatians 4:13), and that he must write to them using "large letters" (Galatians 6:11). The Galatians knew the man and the truth about the man.

By the time he is dictating Romans, he is now older and his eyes have grown so bad that he requires an assistant to write the epistle. This person even makes an appearance at the end of it in order to explain why the penmanship doesn't match Paul's (I Tertius, the writer of this letter, greet you in the Lord. -- Romans 16:22).

We are to believe Paul was granted a miracle of an appearance of Jesus, but not a complete healing.

Like so much else outside the miracles recounted in the Synoptic tradition performed by the historical Jesus, one cannot help but feel let down by these details involving the achievements of the risen Saviour.

And a post-conversion St. Paul who could not see well enough to recognize the high priest may reasonably be doubted to have been able to recognize Jesus pre-conversion, risen or otherwise.

Isn't that obvious from Paul's own testimony?

Who art thou, Lord? -- Acts 9:5

Who art thou, Lord? -- Acts 22:8

Who art thou, Lord? -- Acts 26:15

Pope Francis decrees universal feast for Mary, "Mother of the Church", about which St. Paul knew NOTHING

You will search in vain in the New Testament for the sure basis for this Roman Catholic obsession with Mary the mother of Jesus.

Had St. Paul, for example, the slightest knowledge of this notion of contemporary Marianism, one might have expected him to have alluded to it in the straightforward way the Mary mystics do, especially whenever he discussed the related topics of virginity, fatherhood and motherhood, and the church.

It never happens.

Paul esteems virginity, for example, at considerable length in 1 Corinthians 7 (while acquiescing to marriage), however not on the grounds of Mary's supposed perpetual virginity, which he does not know. To Paul virginity was preferable not because of the example of Mary but only because of the pressures of the eschatological moment.

What's more, in Paul's theological imagination the father of us all is Abraham, and for two reasons: because of circumcision to which Abraham submitted as the first Jew; but also because of Abraham's faith in respect of Isaac, the child of the promise, through which same faith the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ now incorporates the Gentiles who similarly believe into the people of God, of whom the Jews were the first. Paul makes these arguments about the "father" at considerable length in Galatians and Romans, but there is hardly a word about the "mother". 

The only time it occurs to Paul to speak of spiritual motherhood at all, it is not to Mary to whom he refers, but to the source of faith, the heavenly Jerusalem:

 

But Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us all.

 

-- Galatians 4:26

Paul's countless opportunities in his works to introduce the mundane conceptions of Marianism characteristically are passed by, doubtlessly because they never occurred to him and he probably did not know them, even from others in the church. Whatever proto-Marianism one might think to find in the infancy narratives of Matthew and Luke is for this reason self-evidently quite late compared with the date of the Pauline corpus.    

The basis for contemporary Marianism is sheer casuistry, which notably raises its ugly head in the story here:

VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis has decreed that Latin-rite Catholics around the world will mark the feast of "the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of the Church" on the Monday after Pentecost each year.

The Gospel reading for the feast, which technically is called a "memorial," is John 19:25-31, which recounts how from the cross Jesus entrusted Mary to his disciples as their mother and entrusted his disciples to Mary as her children. ...

Francis approved the decree after "having attentively considered how greatly the promotion of this devotion might encourage the growth of the maternal sense of the church in the pastors, religious and faithful, as well as a growth of genuine Marian piety," the decree said. /end

Of course John 19 says no such thing about "his disciples", only about the disciple whom Jesus loved,  "who from that hour took her into his own home" because Jesus in his final words on the cross had said to Mary "behold thy son" and to the disciple "behold thy mother", and promptly died.

Jesus had abandoned his mother and sisters and brothers to fend for themselves when he had embarked upon his itinerant career of preaching a similar repentance. Presumably as the carpenter's son and the carpenter, which are both attested in the evidence, Jesus had been apprentice to his father and took over as the breadwinner when Joseph was no longer in the picture. When this ne'er-do-well of a first born son left it all behind it had to hurt, for all sorts of reasons, but not the least of which was pecuniary.

In this light John's account of the final arrangements for Mary from the cross are pathetic in the extreme, Jesus' concession to his mother and friend that it hadn't turned out quite as he had expected.

If anyone had lacked the maternal sense, it had been Mary's own infamous son . . . by design. 

Does your theology have room for people who don't celebrate "Easter"?

One man esteemeth one day above another: another esteemeth every day alike. Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind. He that regardeth the day, regardeth it unto the Lord; and he that regardeth not the day, to the Lord he doth not regard it. He that eateth, eateth to the Lord, for he giveth God thanks; and he that eateth not, to the Lord he eateth not, and giveth God thanks.

-- Romans 14:5f.

But now, after that ye have known God, or rather are known of God, how turn ye again to the weak and beggarly elements, whereunto ye desire again to be in bondage? Ye observe days, and months, and times, and years. I am afraid of you, lest I have bestowed upon you labour in vain.

-- Galatians 4:9ff.

The (First) Council of Nicaea (325) established that the date of Easter would be the first Sunday after the full moon following the vernal equinox.

Hagar Is A Mountain In Arabia

 

 

"Hagar is Mt. Sinai in Arabia." 

-- Galatians 4:25

Paul's Idea Of Sonship Is Not Absolute And Developed Over Time

In Galatians it's a fact meant to distinguish starkly God's elect under the promise:

But when the time had fully come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, "Abba! Father!" So through God you are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son then an heir.

-- Galatians 4:4ff.

But by the time of the composition of Romans the fact of it is no longer susceptible of any unqualified absolute "spiritual" interpretation which flies in the face of reality. Instead sonship finally depends upon the resurrection of the body and apart from that still remains tenuous because of human weakness. Adoption as sons in the final analysis remains contingent upon the advent of the general resurrection from the dead at the last judgment:

We know that the whole creation has been groaning in travail together until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.

-- Romans 8:22f.

A Brief Catechism of the Copula

In which no questions are posed, and no answers required of thee:

Ye are the salt of the earth (Mt. 5:13);

Heaven is God's throne (Mt. 5:34);

Earth is His footstool (Mt. 5:35);

Wide is the gate that leadeth to destruction (Mt. 7:13);

Narrow is the gate which leadeth unto life (Mt. 7:14);

John is Elias (Mt. 11:14);

Whoever shall do the will of my Father is my brother and sister and mother (Mt. 12:50);

The tares are the children of the wicked one (Mt. 13:38);

This (bread) is my body (Mt. 26:26);

This (cup) is my blood (Mt. 26:28);

My meat is to do the will of him that sent me (John 4:34);

John was a burning and a shining light (John 5:35);

For the bread of God is he which cometh down from heaven (John 6:33);

I am the bread of life (John 6:35);

The bread that I will give is my flesh (John 6:51);

My flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed (John 6:55);

The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life (John 6:63);

One of you is a devil (John 6:70);

I am the light of the world (John 8:12);

I am the door of the sheep (John 10:7);

I am the true vine (John 15:1);

Ye are the branches (John 15:5);

Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia (Gal. 4:25);

The church is his body (Eph. 1:22-23).

Now reach up with both hands and touch your ears, and feel that they are the long furry ears of an ass.