Thomas Paine on the fanatical character of Paul

 

 The character of the person called Paul, according to the accounts given of him, has in it a great deal of violence and fanaticism; he had persecuted with as much heat as he preached afterwards; the stroke he had received had changed his thinking, without altering his constitution; and either as a Jew or a Christian he was the same zealot. Such men are never good moral evidences of any doctrine they preach. They are always in extremes, as well of action as of belief.

-- Thomas Paine, Age of Reason

The Old Testament gives fanaticism God's own imprimatur

This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein: for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success.

-- Joshua 1:8

Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful. But his delight is in the law of the LORD; and in his law doth he meditate day and night. 

-- Psalm 1:1f.  

Paul's private experience of resurrection faith lead him to an excess of presumption and of despair

 

And if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins. Then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished. If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable.

-- I Corinthians 15:17ff.

Are they servants of Christ? I am a better one--I am talking like a madman--with far greater labors, far more imprisonments, with countless beatings, and often near death.

-- II Corinthians 11:23

 

Are not all or most evangelical virtues and graces in danger of extremes? As there is, God knows, too often a defect on the one side, so there may be an excess on the other: may not hope in God, or godly sorrow, be perverted into presumption or despair?

-- Thomas Sprat (1635-1713) 

The Fourth Gospel is conveniently self-authenticating and self-insulating about the reliability of the church's recollection of the teaching of Jesus

 But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.

 

-- John 14:26

 

I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now.  Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will shew you things to come. 

 

-- John 16:12f. 

 

This reflects the essential "my truth" enthusiasm at the heart of early Christianity without which there would be no St. Paul with his Christ mysticism.

 

This is the true origin of individualism and subjectivism in the West. It is ultimately self-defeating because it leads logically to relativism.

The climate apocalypse predicted by high school dropout Greta Thunberg has failed, just like the religious apocalypse predicted by the Gospels

She has deleted this

 

 For his part Jesus at least stuck to his guns to the bitter end, though even he kept adjusting the timeline incrementally forward. It was his followers who did most of the covering up for him. In deleting her tweet prediction back in March of this year, Greta resembles them.

The deletion of the prediction, and of ~54 other such predictions, is the subject of some well-deserved derision here and here.

The merriment aside, it is safe to say that faith in the ever-coming, ever-delayed climate apocalypse will continue despite all being lost, now that we have reached the five-year-point of no return.

More and more the climate hysterics look like the already/not yet Kingdom of God enthusiasts among the world's Christians. The latter have their cake and eat it too as their answer to the problem of Jesus' expected in-breaking of the kingdom before the end of the mission of The Twelve in Matthew 10. As no Christian will concede that Jesus was mistaken about this, no climate fanatic will concede that their predictions have been false.

Like Christians in every age since, climate ideologues in academe, in organizations, and in the press routinely conflate instances of extreme weather with climate as signs of the predicted imminent catastrophe. The steady drumbeat of boy crying wolf is meant to whip up expectation and devotion, and above all money, which give the movement coherence and hope as the coming end is delayed again and again and again. You might even say that the Christian apocalyptic delusion, embedded into the very thinking of the West over the long centuries, prepared the way for the victory of the Climate delusion.

It is a useful meditation in how the original "apocalyptic" message of Jesus really wasn't apocalyptic at all, predicting signs and wonders in the heavens above and in the earth below. It only became so in the hands of the Gospel authors after its failure. As Vincent Taylor matter-of-factly pointed out decades ago, the Gospels were primarily composed in response to the delay of the parousia. The Gospels make Jesus predict a second coming, but its delay too was no less of problem than the failure of the first coming.

Jesus' original message was truly, dare we say merely, thorough-goingly eschatological, as Albert Schweitzer had said over 100 years ago. It was not apocalyptic.

Jesus said there would be no sign of the coming of the Son of Man (Mark 8:12). He would come quickly, like a thief in the night, leading the reaper angels who would pluck out from the world everything which offendeth. Two would be in a field, one would be taken and the other left. Two in a bed, one taken, one left. The taken would be bundled up together and burned. The kingdom of God would descend from heaven above. Its heavenly temple would descend and crush its earthly counterpart. The Twelve would rule over the Twelve Tribes of Israel as God made his will done on earth as it is in heaven. Everything in Jesus' generation would continue briefly just as it is, as in the days of Noah, people buying and selling, marrying and giving in marriage, and then . . . Bam!

All would be calm and normal before the great and terrible day of the Lord.

This message is still embedded in the Gospel data, but its timeline and details were all recast in specifically apocalyptic terms of a second coming, the delay of which the Gospels are meant to address as a cope. Apocalyptic and eschatology have been hopelessly conflated ever since, with Christians forever preoccupied with the signs of the times.

People who marvel at how Christianity ever achieved its status as a universal religion which has endured through the ages and commanded the assent of billions over two millennia despite the on-going delay of the parousia rarely reflect on the power fanaticism has to delude thoroughly, and on a grand scale.

They have the climate hysteria now before their very eyes. They are actually living it. And yet they cannot see it.

The climate delusion has reached astounding proportions since its laughable prophet Al Gore, divinity school dropout (what a coincidence, right?), first began his climate ministry in 1993. The whole world is feeling its grip, banking on so-called green electricity when its capacity to generate enough of it to replace fossil fuel and nuclear sources is nothing but a pipe-dream.

And to think America almost made him president.

Nothing good has come out of Carthage, Tennessee.

The flighty life of the enthusiast

 He is drawn, by a sort of ignis fatuus, into bogs and mire almost every day of his life.

-- Isaac Watts

Rod Dreher dines out on many enthusiasms, the latest of which is Hungarian nationalism

 It's gotten so bad he literally had to go on a diet recently to lose some of his many accumulated pounds, but he's not letting that stop him from luxuriating abroad this spring.

Make sure to buy his next book to support his sumptuous Christian lifestyle.

 

 

LOL, Presbyterian David French is completely unfamiliar with the far-right road show in revolutionary America which repeatedly called the people to arms from Protestant pulpits

He's shocked, I tell you, shocked:

 If you think it’s remotely unusual that a truly extremist event (which included more than one person who’d called for hanging his political opponents) was held at a church, then you’re not familiar with far-right road shows that are stoking extremism in church after church at event after event. ... We know that fanatical religious subcultures can do an immense amount of damage to the body politic. ... what we face is an Christian subculture that is full of terrible religious purpose. The seeds of renewed political violence are being sown in churches across our land.

 More.

In 1776 the David French of 2022 would almost certainly have been a Loyalist, and the sworn enemy of the Presbyterian Rebellion condemned by George III.

Unlike today's fire-breathing right-wing lunatics, French is a proud proponent of "elite Evangelicalism" and "elite American culture" for whom "Christian nationalism" is an oxymoron. Those crazy Pentecostal patriots supporting Donald Trump come from the other side of the tracks, in case you needed reminding. David French is above all that, and stands for everything good, proper, and reasonable, you see. Like the Pharisees did. He is not like other men.

But his idea that a "new insurrection is being organized, in a sanctuary near you" is just as crazy as his idea that January 6th actually was one.

How a now de-Christianized America is suddenly going to embrace a bunch of religious fanatics with their hair on fire is not explained, but the "apocalyptic message" of "national doom" comes for us all, including for David French.

Is there a public Christian today who is more out of touch with the deeply political nature of the history of Protestant experience in America than he?

John Locke, no New Testament scholar, correctly understood 350 years ago that St. Paul's religion was entirely a matter of private interpretation

Saint Paul was miraculously called to the ministry of the gospel, and had the whole doctrine of the gospel from God by immediate revelation; and was appointed the apostle of the Gentiles for propagating it in the heathen world.

-- John Locke

That he accepted this enthusiasm as a miracle is beside the point, making him but a child of his time and therefore not the radical he is sometimes made out to be.

When the Presbyterians were the fanaticks

 

The presbyterians, and other fanaticks that dangle after them, are well inclined to pull down the present establishment.

-- Jonathan Swift

Canada churches set ablaze by hysterical anti-Christian fanatics and racists

US media shamefully justified a string of Canadian church burnings:

Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission concluded in 2015 that at least 3,200 students died, later revising that figure to 4,100. The No. 1 cause of death was tuberculosis; influenza hit hard, too. Far from home, children were often buried on site, their graves marked with wooden crosses, most of which deteriorated and disappeared.

So this year’s “discoveries” are better called “confirmations.” As Assembly of First Nations national chief Perry Bellegarde declared, “While it is not new to find graves at former residential schools in Canada, it’s always crushing to have that chapter’s wounds exposed.”

Yet the US press treated the news as if Canada had been hiding genocidal death camps. ...

Those headlines were false — according to all three chiefs who made the discoveries. “This is not a mass grave site, this is just unmarked graves,” Cowessess First Nation chief Cadmus Delorme said of the biggest site. Indeed, the remains aren’t even believed to be all of children. A band leader said the site was a community cemetery, including graves of nonindigenous people — unmarked because wooden markers had decomposed.

Church critics used that framing to justify, and even encourage, the rash of arsons. “Burn it all down,” tweeted the head of the BC Civil Liberties Association and the chair of the Newfoundland Canadian Bar Association Branch. “It’s very dangerous to conflate the string of church fires with violence against mosques,” activist Nora Loreto said, insisting they weren’t “hate crimes” — in other words, the Catholic Church had it coming. ...

Natives don’t believe the arsonists are their fellow indigenous. The attackers “must have no feelings or respect for elders or ancestors” who built the churches, said 90-year-old Carrie Allison.

One fire destroyed six stained-glass windows created to show indigenous culture can coexist with Catholicism. For mainstream media, though, the “genocide” story was too good to check: They could attack the Roman church and whites in one fell swoop. Yet it’s Canada’s natives who are being traumatized yet again.

A psychology of the children of light . . .

. . . or why you became a religious fanatic, a band groupie, the Chicago Cubs' Number One Fan, a fill-in-the-blank junkie/obsessive-compulsive, a political radical, an activist, a racist, or maybe a workaholic, drug addict or alcoholic, got a tattoo or covered yourself in them, cut your ears, and maybe your tongue, nose, nipples or genitals, replete with jewelry, questioned your sexuality or gender, added or subtracted breasts, got a chopadickoffofme or an addadicktome, keep changing your hair color, or are otherwise consumed by your "identity".

Because you ain't heavy.

 

 

 

 

 

 Are Twitter trolls mentally ill? :

"diagnoses of the various kinds of personality disorder are very fuzzy — often people are in several categories, or don’t fit neatly into any of them." ...

"neurotypical people ... are heavy, it takes a lot to move you. So when something quite nice happens to a neurotypical person, it makes them slightly happier: the wind only moves them a little bit. When something quite unpleasant happens, it makes them slightly sadder. ... if you are cognitively light, then the same events will move you much further. ... think of it as someone being light, rather than heavy: being blown on the wind of events. [Light] people ... feel emotions much more strongly. But they also have difficulty forming a strong self-image, and often take on very visible identities, such as being a Goth or a fan of a particular band, dyeing their hair or getting tattoos, in order to give themselves something solid to cling to." ...

"we all grow more emotionally stable over the course of our lives (as children, we are very emotionally volatile, and settle down with age) and by middle age, most people ... are leading healthy and happy lives. One study followed up patients 27 years after diagnosis and found that 92% of them no longer met the diagnostic criteria." /end

The easy malleability of the human personality, its "light" nature, its instability, particularly of the child, is both a feature and a bug according to the New Testament.

Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child shall in no wise enter therein.

-- Luke 18:17

The wind blows where it wills, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know whence it comes or whither it goes; so it is with every one who is born of the Spirit.

-- John 3:8

While ye have light, believe in the light, that ye may be the children of light.

-- John 12:36

Ye are all the children of light, and the children of the day: we are not of the night, nor of darkness. ... But let us, who are of the day, be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love; and for an helmet, the hope of salvation.  

-- I Thessalonians 5:5,8

That we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive; 

-- Ephesians 4:14

For ye were sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord: walk as children of light:

-- Ephesians 5:8

It's so typical of Christian enthusiasts to focus on John and accept it at the expense of the Synoptics

This writer is clearly an enthusiast who gets messages from God, and is especially enthusiastic for the "eternal life" idea as found in John 3: 

'... in the New Testament, eternal life is THE dominant concept and central to the “earthly” ministry and divinity of Jesus Christ'.

In John, eternal life is a matter of belief in Jesus (John 3:15f.).

In the Synoptics, however, about which the writer says nothing, eternal life is a matter of keeping the commandments, divestiture of possessions with distribution to the poor, and following Jesus (Matthew 19:16ff; Mark 10:17ff; Luke 18:18ff; also Luke 10:25ff. where showing mercy to a mugged foreigner is showcased. Luke is, after all, a gospel in transition from Jewish gospel to universal gospel).

Obviously the Synoptic teaching presupposes discipleship in the eschatological setting of the historical Jesus with all its urgency, which by the time of John has all but disappeared. It attracted few, because it was so hard.

The way of belief was easier, and came to attract many.

Which version is "central to the 'earthly' ministry"?

I think that's obvious, but not to an enthusiast. 

Near-religious fervor among climate activists recalls troubling traits of extreme religious cults

Yes indeedy, but the balance of this op-ed in The Wall Street Journal goes much too easy on the fanatics, and is much too accepting of the current climate orthodoxy, paying no attention whatsoever to the outright fraud being committed by politically-motivated anti-capitalists in the scientific community.

St. Greta Spreads the Climate Gospel:

A movement that believes in sin, penance and salvation doesn’t sound very scientific

It’s been noted before that the cause of addressing climate change has become something like the modern world’s version of a secular religion. In much of Europe especially, but in sections of American society too, a kind of climate theology has replaced traditional Christianity as the ultimate source of authority over human behavior, comprising both an all-embracing teleology of our existence and a prescriptive moral code. 

The High Church of Environmentalism has acquired many of the characteristics of its ecclesiastical predecessor. An apocalyptic eschatology warns that we will all be consumed by fire if we don’t follow the ordained rules. The notion that it is our sinful nature that has brought us to mortal peril—from the Original Sin of a carbon-unleashing industrial revolution to daily transgressions with plastic bottles and long-haul flights—is as central to its message as it was to the Catholic Church’s. But repentance is near. A gospel of redemption emphasizes that salvation lies in reducing our carbon footprint, with reusable shopping bags and bike-sharing. The secular authorities preach the virtues of abstinence. Meatless Fridays are no longer just for Lenten observance. ...

[T]here is something about this near-religious fervor among the climate change activists—a growing fanaticism—that recalls some of the more troubling traits of extreme religious cults.

This is priceless coming from an evangelical Christian, seeing that the foundation of evangelicalism requires buying into Pauline enthusiasm

“I Did Not Die. I Did Not Go to Heaven.”:

“The idea that someone could go to heaven and come back with visions and dreams and we should take that seriously is as far from historic evangelicalism as it’s possible to get,” Phil Johnson, the executive director of the ministry headed by MacArthur, the California pastor and author whose ministry Beth reached out to in 2012. “To me, one of the real signifiers that modern evangelical Christianity is badly astray and in serious jeopardy of even existing 50 years from now is the ease with which evangelicals buy into stories like this.”

It is not expedient for me doubtless to glory. I will come to visions and revelations of the Lord.  I knew a man in Christ above fourteen years ago, (whether in the body, I cannot tell; or whether out of the body, I cannot tell: God knoweth;) such an one caught up to the third heaven. And I knew such a man, (whether in the body, or out of the body, I cannot tell: God knoweth;) How that he was caught up into paradise, and heard unspeakable words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter. Of such an one will I glory: yet of myself I will not glory, but in mine infirmities.

-- II Corinthians 12:1ff.

Christopher Caldwell thinks Christmas' excess is German-Americans' last stand

Why are Americans so unhinged about Christmas?:

The most obnoxious advert on American television this Christmas season features a thirtyish man telling his wife he ‘got us a little something’ at a holiday sale. ...

[W]e are talking about $135,000 worth of truck and — even if you get it on sale — about a man giving a Christmas gift to himself that is worth more than the annual income of the median American family. ... 

Today there are articles in women’s magazines and on gossipy websites with titles like ‘How Not to Go Bankrupt This Christmas’. ...

Nothing is ever enough. Radio stations, in the age before the internet, used to play Christmas carols now and then. Some would play carols nonstop after 6 p.m. on Christmas Eve. Today, the streaming wireless network Sirius XM Radio has 16 whole channels dedicated to different sub-genres of holiday-season music, and they run all month long. ...

The country gets more Christmassy even as it gets less Christian. That is probably not an accident. Most of America’s Christmas traditions — with trees, stockings, fires, carols — were imported with the German immigration of the 19th century. Germans remain the largest ethnic group in the United States. After the German language and most of its folkways were driven out of American life during the first world war, Christmas became the main avenue through which German-American culture lived on. Its pleasures, as Americans understand them, are hard to distinguish from those of today’s faddish Teutonic concept, hygge: cosiness, family and making the best of bad weather. Christmas now seems like the opposite of the American way of life, as hygge seems a dangerous kind of anti-Americanism. For as long as the season lasts, Christmas supplies what Americans don’t have enough of in their lives. It is a counterculture.

The great American Christmas songs — ‘I’ll Be Home for Christmas’, ‘White Christmas’, ‘Winter Wonderland’ — are about the warmth of family, the solidity of small-town life, the building of human relations on a bedrock of decency, and above all the love of tradition. If Americans are devoted to Christmas more zealously, fanatically, excessively than ever, it may be because the destruction of familiar traditions has ceased to be an unfortunate side-effect of American culture and started being its raison d’être.

 

Newly-elected Marxist Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez thinks just like a Christian end-of-the-world fanatic

Intolerance and fanaticism are the necessary accompaniments of the religious sentiment, but also of the revolutionary

Gustave Le Bon, here:

A person is not religious solely when he worships a divinity, but when he puts all the resources of his mind, the complete submission of his will, and the whole-souled ardour of fanaticism at the service of a cause or an individual who becomes the goal and guide of his thoughts and actions. Intolerance and fanaticism are the necessary accompaniments of the religious sentiment. They are inevitably displayed by those who believe themselves in the possession of the secret of earthly or eternal happiness. These two characteristics are to be found in all men grouped together when they are inspired by a conviction of any kind. The Jacobins of the Reign of Terror were at bottom as religious as the Catholics of the Inquisition, and their cruel ardour proceeded from the same source.

And of course Samuel Johnson's synonym for enthusiast, fanatick, also perfectly describes Paul of Tarsus

 

"A man mad with wild notions of religion", and "struck with a superstitious frenzy":

It is not expedient for me doubtless to glory. I will come to visions and revelations of the Lord. I knew a man in Christ above fourteen years ago, (whether in the body, I cannot tell; or whether out of the body, I cannot tell: God knoweth;) such an one caught up to the third heaven. And I knew such a man, (whether in the body, or out of the body, I cannot tell: God knoweth;) How that he was caught up into paradise, and heard unspeakable words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter. Of such an one will I glory: yet of myself I will not glory, but in mine infirmities. For though I would desire to glory, I shall not be a fool; for I will say the truth: but now I forbear, lest any man should think of me above that which he seeth me to be, or that he heareth of me. And lest I should be exalted above measure through the abundance of the revelations, there was given to me a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan to buffet me, lest I should be exalted above measure. For this thing I besought the Lord thrice, that it might depart from me.

-- 2 Corinthians 12:1ff.

Samuel Johnson's definition of an enthusiast ably describes Paul of Tarsus

Samuel Johnson defined an enthusiast as "one who vainly imagines a private revelation", and "one who has a vain confidence of his intercourse with God".

 

 

 

 

 

Of course "the out" is in the words "vainly" and "vain". As a Christian Johnson would never have admitted the emptiness of Paul's claims. Nevertheless Paul himself clearly boasted both of his revelation's thoroughly private and divine nature and of his immediacy with God, which means Paul put himself and his message beyond scrutiny. We have all met this type, and there is no arguing with them:

Paul, an apostle, (not of men, neither by man, but by Jesus Christ, and God the Father, who raised him from the dead;)

-- Galatians 1:1

But I certify you, brethren, that the gospel which was preached of me is not after man. For I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ.

-- Galatians 1:11f.

But when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother's womb, and called me by his grace, To reveal his Son in me, that I might preach him among the heathen; immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood:

-- Galatians 1:15f.