Commenter, Store In a Cool Dry Place (one of the best internet monikers ever) said this on the thread of the last post:

“Can you please have an article or 2 for Dummies 101, Dummies 201 and 301 regarding Calvinism, neocalvinism, epistemology etc. that I can make reference to. Perhaps more clarity instead of just rants. I love the rants and colourful adjectives.”

Here is my response:

SCDP,

I like to think of my articles as philosophical treatises in rant form. 🙂 Because really, the ranting is just the tone of the argument (for damn good reason), but the points are beyond mere outrage and frustration.  I believe that I  challenge the root assumptions which undergird Reformation theology/neoCalvinism, as well as other Platonist schools of thought.

Epistemology is simple: it is the study of how we, that is, human beings, know what we know. It is rooted inexorably in metaphysics, which studies the nature of human existence; from a philosophical perspective, it looks at the question (and the pursuant inquiries which it naturally begs) “What is man?”. If the answer to that question is a shrug or a mystery, man cannot logically claim an efficacious epistemology; it is impossible.  If man has no relevant meaning, then he cannot be certain of ANYTHING at all, even his own existence, because irrelevancy cannot by definition breed truth…what is irrelevant has no efficacious objective, and such an objective is required for truth to exist.

Epistemology is a DIRECT function of man’s metaphysic.  Therefore, if man is nothing, lacking any relevant definition (as seen in the Reformed Christian hermeneutic, for example, particularly in the doctrines of Total Depravity and Original Sin), then he, by definition, must know nothing, as knowledge is a direct extension of man’s existential, essential SELF.  If man cannot answer the question “What is man?”, then he by logical extension cannot answer the question “What does man know?”.   This should be obvious, and I think it is for most of us.  Put simply, if man isn’t man, then man cannot know anything, because there is no one to know anything in the first place.

This basic contradiction (that man is NOT, and yet is somehow aware) is a big problem for many schools of thought, not just Christianity and other religious credos.

For example, science, and especially physics, claims that the material universe is a product of laws of nature which “govern” the existence of everything, and which manifest themselves in mathematical theorems, fondly thought of by many scientists as the “language of the universe/the heavens/the cosmos/God”…this last one being a particularly egregious presumption.  If God speaks in Math, then who do you think his priests are?

Notice the pattern?  Those of you familiar with the tyrannical machinations of Reformed theology (Protestantism) will recognize it almost instantly.  The language of the Cosmos (translated “God” by the scientific determinist, or as I call them “fake atheists”) is that which only a few very gifted people (divinely called and revealed upon proxies), usually haunting the stuffy rooms of trendy universities, are privy to.  Thus, they are the ones who get to stand in “God’s” stead and command the power and nature of truth, which is reality, for everyone else.

Anyone who thinks science is somehow absolved by its”objective” and “observable” and “testable” methodologies from flawed and irrational philosophical assumptions is sorely mistaken.  No one gets to claim ownership of man’s body and mind by appealing to some kind of divine revelation or external-to-man causal power, ever, no matter how many numbers they can add in their head, ivy league institutions bearing their class rosters, articles and theorems boasting their names, and no matter how many supercolliders they have helped construct.  And if they attempt to do this, you can be sure that any argument they make for their epistemological claims–their claim to “know what they know is true”–is going to be rooted in a false metaphysic, which makes the claim patently false and rendering an explanation of it entirely superfluous.  And further, history bears out the fact that the assumption that “God/the cosmos/the language of the heavens” reveals (as opposed to teaching) knowledge to a specific group of men for the purposes of leading the unwashed and blind masses into right thinking and behavior always leads to despotism in the end if it is allowed to run its logical course by the support and succor of a complicit government which wields the authority of force (violence).

When science claims that man’s body and mind–which are singular in their existence; there is no distinction between man’s material SELF and his consciousness…both are the IS of man–is a function of outside-man’s-existence laws of nature, it falls prey to the same contradiction in terms which spawns every other despotic world view.  Making it, like them, nothing more than mysticism materializing into, as John Immel so perfectly puts it, a cult of death. If man is a direct function of a law of nature which exists outside his material SELF (his body and mind), then man has no rational claim to himself.  That is, he has no definition for SELF except:  that which is NOT him; that is, the laws of nature which govern (determine) his very material being.

You see, the laws of nature do not merely organize the material universe into its coherent (observable) components. If indeed they are causal in their power and their purpose then they must be directly responsible for the very existence of the material itself, which makes the material universe’s existence a direct extension of the laws which govern, with no rational distinction to be found between the two entities.  Which means that the material universe IS the laws of nature, according to Argo’s Universal Truth Number One:  Anything which is a direct function of an absolute is the absolute.  If we say that the laws of nature merely organize the material universe into its various components, then the natural implication is that the very existence (existential being) of the material itself is not dependent upon any law of nature which governs it.  This means then that the supreme ROOT of why everything forms the way it forms and does the things it does and interacts the way it interacts and causes and effects what it causes and effects is NOT the laws of nature but the very root BEING of the material, which does not exist because of a law but because, and only because, and for no other reason, than it is what it is.  Period.

We cannot have our metaphysical cake and eat it too.  We cannot claim a rational existence which is a direct function of some external law or laws of nature and then declare that we are not, in utter existential and material actuality, those very same laws of nature, and absolutely so.  There can be no rational interaction of these two  absolutes: laws which govern, and material which is.  For absolutes, being infinite, cannot co-exist, by definition.  If the law(s) absolutely govern, which science indeed argues it/they do/does, then it must govern the material universe’s very existence, which means that the universe has no SELF to its material essence; has no actual root IT to itself.  It then literally is nothing more than the law itself, period.  Full stop.

Likewise, using the same logic, if the material itself exists because it is what it is…meaning that its existence and being are a reality because IT is ITSELF, absolutely, then there is no way to logically attach a law of nature outside of it, to it, in order to claim that its existence is governed by this law.  Existence of the material itself is absolute, which precludes any causal relationship with any law to govern it; there is no actual thing, object, entity, agent, or whatever else which can be the source of its existence, because its very existence is absolute in its SELF.  It needs no law to govern its interactions; it merely needs an observer to make abstract conceptualizations which describe how these material objects interact in order that the observer can define these conceptualizations as TRUTH, using himself as the singular frame of reference for their practical and efficacious application (applied to promote the existence of him SELF) and thus, by logical extension, declare himSELF as the only rational standard of what is TRUE.

And so this is really what science’s “laws of nature” are; they are nothing more than part of a cognitive conceptual framework which is  expressed in theoretical mathematical proofs.  Man creates these proofs in order to articulate the relative movement of objects he observes; a sort of sheet music for the universe.  They aren’t the universe itself, but they allow human beings to create (organize) an environment to serve an efficacious purpose (the human SELF), without having to re-invent the wheel every time we turn around.  The same way a musician can take a piece of sheet music and play a song, a scientist can take a series of mathematical proofs and construct something out of his material environment.  But these proofs are not what CREATE the material environment any more than sheet music is what creates the movement of air particles which strike your eardrums in a specific pattern.  They are not causal.  The air particles, and the substantive objects from which science creates tools or technology or buildings or guns or telescopes already existed before the music was ever written down or the mathematical proofs ever developed.  Thus, material, actual objects (which includes man) are not there because of laws of nature; they are there because they ARE.  Which means that the singular source and root of everything they do, and how they interact with man and other objects IS their very existence; and this is from themselves.  They exist because they have the inherent ability to do so.  Period.  Not because of some outside, invisible “law” or “language” of the cosmos.

Now, the hypocrisy then of scientists (fake atheists) who demand that the universe is a product of abstract laws which somehow cause its actual existence can be seen in how this exact same thinking applies to Christianity.

For the same reason science has no rational answer to the question “What is man?” because it concedes that man is nothing more than an extension of the laws of nature which govern, making man a direct function of what is NOT man, Christianity has no superior alternative metaphysic.  Indeed, the difference in the core philosophy between science and Christianity is purely semantic.  It is literally nothing more than a few different words .

By declaring man totally depraved at the root of his existence (which is why they deny man’s volition, even though some are liars and some are ignorant and deny this) what they, the modern day “orthodox” apologists, are really doing is making a metaphysical argument, and not, as they assume, an epistemological one.

Let me explain:

Almost every Christian denomination declares in their Statement of Faith than man is totally depraved.  This is known in Calvinism/neo-Calvinism as the Doctrine of Total Depravity.  They declare that man is blind to the truth of God because he refuses to believe…where “refuses” is a euphemism for “can’t”.  In other words, people believe the wrong things instead of the right things.  But it is not the belief in the wrong things which is the cause of their depravity (which then would not make it TOTAL), but precisely the opposite. They argue that it is man’s total depravity which causes him to believe the wrong things.  You see, wrong belief is a symptom of depravity, it is not the cause of it, which is precisely why those who accept this doctrine must deny man’s free will.  Wrong belief does not cause actions…wrong belief comes AFTER depravity in the causal chain of events.  It is in man’s nature to believe the wrong things (nature, meaning metaphysic) and thus do the wrong things.  It isn’t the belief that drives man’s choices and actions…which are then sinful.  No, no, no…for that would make man at his existential, material root innocent, and his sin thus a function of what he chooses to believe and thus chooses to do as a manifestation of that belief.  This is something no self-respecting Calvinist (contradiction in terms; Calvinists deny SELF) will EVER concede.  It is man’s depravity–his “sin nature”–which determines absolutely his beliefs which then determine his actions.  Remember, in the Augustinian/Lutheran/Calvinist construct, which is 99% of all Christianity (basically every Christian who has not yet realized that they’ve been exploited and lied to for most of their spiritual lives), there is no room for any choice at all, except as an obfuscation of the doctrine; and this for purely manipulative reasons…or out of ignorance.   You believe what you believe and do what you do because you ARE totally depraved, which is the same thing as saying you ARE total depravity itself, as if total depravity is an actual, material essence, which presents itself to the world as MAN…as YOU.  The simple meaning then of this entirely false doctrine is this:  YOU…your very material self is absolutely defined by your depravity. Therefore, there is no essence of you, no root material YOU, flesh and blood, at any level, which is not governed by your depravity.  Making your flesh and blood literally a direct extension of the concept of depravity; again, as though depravity IS an actual, tangible, material thing.

Is any of this sounding familiar?  We just talked about it a few paragraphs ago.

YOU are governed by your depravity.  THAT is the doctrine of Total Depravity, and why this doctrine is the salient and destructive seed of Calvinism’s utterly evil and anti-Christian theological assertion.  There is no YOU in the existential equation.  You ARE depravity, period.  The control in which “law of depravity” wields over your material SELF (mind and body) is absolute, and infinite, and thus, there can be no distinction between you and depravity.  There is NO place where depravity ends and you begin, or vice versa.

See the theme here? It is exactly the same root philosophy of the mighty physicist. You can’t be YOU because the very notion of an actual YOU which exists independently and autonomously implies that there is something which is not in fact governed by the law of depravity.  And if that is true, then depravity is not absolute…is not total.  If you are you, then you are not governed by depravity.  You are you, and that, not depravity, is the root and causal source of you.  Yourself is not of depravity but of your SELF.  Which means that the SELF is what is absolute, which means that depravity does not govern because it cannot actually exist.  It, like the laws of nature, is purely conceptual; a product of man’s mind.  For if YOU are absolute, then there can be no causal entity or agent or force which controls you.  For only one absolute cause of something can exist, and absolutes cannot be reconciled, by definition.  What is infinite cannot be bounded to or caused upon (in the non-conceptual sense) by something which it is NOT.

Now, unfortunately this is a hard fact for most Christians to swallow.  Even those who deny Total Depravity will not accept it because, though they might not like the idea that man cannot actually choose to sin but instead must sin, they still feel the need to believe that man is not inherently capable of being a direct function of himself…that is, his own cause (you can thank science, in part, for this).  So, instead of Total Depravity they appeal to “God’s Sovereignty” as the metaphysical substitution.  Man can choose, but only because God let’s him.

Whatever the fuck that means.

You see, even though you aren’t totally depraved, you are still utterly bound and restrained in your will and very being by God’s “Will”, and by this they mean that everything that happens and exists is manifest as a direct function of God’s choosing…God’s choice, never man’s.

This is nothing more than a regurgitation, with the requisite semantic differences and euphemisms, of the exact same philosophy of scientific determinism found in the declaration of laws of nature which govern, and spiritual determinism found in the despicable doctrine of Total Depravity.  Perhaps it is a kinder and gentler form of the same idea, but it is no less destructive.  And is only kinder and gentler in ostensible demeanor, perhaps, but not in force and not in violent outcome when the rubber meets the road.

No need to reiterate all the points; I’m sure you can make the connection by now.  If all is controlled by God, then there is no component of YOU which ever gets to be YOU apart from God’s absolute control.  God’s control is absolute, thus there can be no distinction between your SELF and God’s control, which means that YOU don’t really exist, but are a mere extension of God’s absolute Will; because there is NO place where God’s absolute Will ends and YOU, not controlled by God, begins.  Such a place doesn’t exist, which means that all of YOU is nothing more that God’s Will, period.

Do you understand how this metaphysic–you as a direct function of NOT you–destroys epistemology?  The easy logical connection is:  if you are not really you then you cannot make any claim to know anything.  It really is nothing more complicated than that.  If man isn’t himself, because he is a direct extension of some other absolute causal force, then everything man claims to know is a lie.  An illusion. There is no “How does man know what he knows?” in the absence of man defined by way of rational metaphysic.  And NOT MAN-as-man is NOT a rational metaphysic.

The common and altogether despotic political fallout (politics being another key tenet of philosophy…how man interacts with other men based on his metaphysical and epistemological assumptions) is manifest usually in an oppressive collective (like the theo-marxist neo-Calvinist church), and this occurs when these aforementioned faulty and irrational metaphysical and epistemological notions give rise to the necessary assumption that:  TRUTH and GOOD is not learned but is revealed (we discussed this a little previously in this article).  Revealed by what?  Why, the Primary Consciousness which is said to be the absolute source of everything (in Calvinism’s case, “God”), but which only a few priests, having received their “special revelation” of truth, have been “called” to represent, as Its proxy to the rest of us, of course.  And when you present with the audacity to utter criticism of their authority, your disagreement is declared proof that you have not been called to have the “wisdom” and “knowledge” (the gnosis…for this IS Gnosticism) that your rulers-in-the-stead-by-way-of-divine-revelation are privy to.

And so what to do with such a rascal?

Well, what is the easiest way to deal with people who can offer no logical claim nor rational argument for the presence and efficacy of their own physical existence as legitimate, autonomous SELVES?

Why, you FORCE them, of course.  And if they still refuse compliance, you murder them in service to the “absolute truth” which is, after all, outside of them, and yet utterly IS them.

And without an answer to the question, “What is man?”, who is really getting hurt anyway?

*

PS: As far as the roots of neo-Calvinism and Calvinism…have you checked out Paul Dohse’s blog paulspassingthoughts.com? He is all about that. He is the expert, and no article of mine could compare to the volumes Paul has written on the subject.

Continuing where we left off in the last article on this subject, ‘The Eight ‘Christian Steps to Psychological Recovery…’, here we will take a brief look at step three of this metaphysical atrocity:

3.  Consciously choose to commit all my life and will to Christ’s care and control.  “Happy are the meek” Matthew 5:5

Okay, let’s play a game…a variation of something I, and you, probably, played in the car as a child on the long drive to grandmother’s house.  The game was called “I spy”.

In this case, we will play “I spy the contradiction”.

Ready?

Go.

Too slow.  I’ve already got it. But of course you are at a distinct disadvantage.  I have in front of me all eight of Rick Warren’s disastrous steps to “recovery”, and, alas, all I have given you in this article is one.  No matter…I still will concede that your epistemology is far more relevant and efficacious than Rick Warren does, I’ll bet.

So after reading this point my  mind immediately protested.  I’m looking at step number one, which reads, in part:  “I admit that I am powerless to control my tendency to do the wrong thing.”  Now, juxtapose that thought, which I criticized in detail in my last post on this subject, with point number three, again:  “Consciously choose to commit all my life and will to Christ’s control…” 

Now, here’s the problem.  If man is, by his very sinful nature (his categorical existential failure) unable to control his “tendency” (a bullshit term…again, if humanity cannot control a tendency then it isn’t a tendency it is an innate characteristic), then man has no appreciable “will”to commit to Christ.

Rick’s first point makes clear that it is impossible for you or me to commit our will to Christ because it explicitly describes humanity as utterly unable to act in service to the right/good thing, which naturally must include committing our lives and will to Christ.  That’s the whole fucking point of step one, right? You have no will of your own.  All your will is subjugated to your “tendency” to do the wrong thing.

You cannot control your tendency to do the wrong thing, therefore in every choice you make, you always choose evil, which again makes “tendency” a deceptive euphemism for never doing ANYTHING good at all, ever.  Thus, you cannot commit your life and will to Christ because this presupposes that you are able to choose freely (and adding the word “free” to either “will” or “choice” is a proper redundancy…for there is no such thing as will or choice which is not free) to do the right thing on your own, which point one clearly explains you are not.  Thus, how on earth can you choose to do the right thing and commit your life and will to Christ when choice is precluded by your infinitely sinful nature, which completely holds captive any “will” to do anything good at all, to the point where the “will” of man is an utterly irrational notion in the first place?  Man has no will to do good, which means he has no will at all, but is a slave to the absolute determining force of his metaphysical essence of depravity…yes, THAT is the whole motherfucking point.  Man’s “will” is always in service to sin.

This means that choice is an illusion…and if choice is an illusion then so is volition. For the volition of man cannot exist if it is bound to a metaphysical absolute of:  EVIL.  Man IS evil is the underlying assumption of all eight points of this list and likely of Rick Warren’s entire theology.  Since man is evil, everything man does or what he thinks, no matter what it may look like to us or how we may define it, IS evil.  Which makes the idea of man possessing an ability to choose between a good action, like committing one’s life to Christ, and an evil action, like rejecting Christ, completely false.

Thus, the poor victims of this kind of “counseling” are left to wallow in the metaphysical and epistemological wasteland, hemmed in on all sides by Rick Warren’s commands and counsel, and yet they are utterly unable to capitulate.  They understand that since they are the root of all evil, being evil itself incarnate, they can no more hope to employ Rick’s counseling tips than they can hope to cook their own head and then eat it for dinner.

Thus, the metaphysical and epistemological assumptions which are at the heart of this evil theology create in man a passive acceptance of the totality of his own utter moral AND existential failure.  Or better said:  creates in man an acceptance of the totality of his own utter moral failure because there is no distinction between his moral failure and his metaphysical (existential) failure.

Man’s only hope is for God’s mercy…for there is literally nothing he  can do to assuage his torment.  It is as a result of his root existence, and thus, he is helpless against the tide of destructive consequences which God and the universe afflict upon him as punishment for his very birth.  And since, again, it is God who is sovereign and thus God who is “justly” punishing him for his own immoral existence, how much mercy can the defunct currency of his hope buy him?

The answer is:  probably none at all.

Which is why teaching Christians that there is no such thing as anyone committing any injustice against them, no matter how seriously or completely they are physically and/or psychologically abused, tortured and exploited, because they are so evil and thus whatever suffering and abuse they endure is par for their existential course as well as the well-deserved punishment for having the motherfucking audacity to be born at all, is the most popular means of curtailing any resistance amongst the laity in today’s Christian church, and of building a following of completely complicit and self-surrendering financiers and laborers.

What the church almost without exception STILL teaches today is that man’s only hope of any kind of remediation for the abomination of his own individual existence is through integration into the mystic body collective, which derives all its value and worth from the proxies of the Divine, the ecclesiastical leadership, who represent God in all His relevant forms to the unwashed and unenlightened masses whom God has given these pastors and priests, who are “standing in God’s stead”, to “shepherd”.  And their reward for obeying God’s calling is all the fucking mutton they can eat.

And thus we arrive at the most ironical of terms found in Rick’s stupid list:  “consciously”.  “Consciously choose” he counsels us…and likely without the slightest awareness of just what a colossal boob he sounds like.  And probably nary a blush of shame at his irrational imperative.  Since man is unable to control his sin, because “sinful” is the moral absolute which defines ALL of man’s thoughts and actions (what Rick cutely calls the “tendency” to do the wrong thing), thus creating the absolute objective of man’s life:  to be evil, there is no such thing as choice, as I explained.

Aaaaaand the logical extension of this idea is that there can be no such thing as consciousness.  Man’s consciousness is rooted in his awareness of himSELF, as a distinct object from the rest of his material universe.  Thus, the fact that man can refer to himself as SELF, implies that man is able to make such a distinction in the first place, and the ability to make this distinction in TRUTH…that is, as a direct observation of his tangible, material, actual existence, is a function of that efficacious (right, proper, truthful) observation.

But for man’s observations to be efficacious requires man’s rational epistemology…that is, he must be able to truthfully know what he IS from what he IS NOT.  This is rooted in the ability to make an observable distinction in objects, including himself, which are a function of material reality, not “moral” reality, which isn’t “reality” at all, it is purely conceptual…a direct function of man’s cognition.  For material reality is morally neutral, which makes “good and evil” thus a conceptual duality which proceeds from man’s ability to see what he materially is, and to declare it actual and efficacious and truthful and relevant, and then cognitively generate a  moral paradigm designed to promote himself (his life) as an actual object which is rooted observable material existence.  This ability is the root of man’s consciousness.

Man’s consciousness thus is founded upon and is a direct function of  his morally innocent material SELF.  But the notion that man’s material reality is a slave and utterly subservient to his moral proclivity (his “evil nature”) means that man’s ability to perceive himself as a material actuality (a SELF) is compromised by his abstract, conceptual moral failure.  Therefore, what man observes is no longer a function of a material context (flesh and blood life) but is a function instead of moral insufficiency.  That is to say, of the conceptual abstraction:  evil.

And if man cannot observe himself as a material SELF, but instead he observes himself from a place of absolute evil…then what we are arguing is that the moral paradigm (somehow, and irrationally) precedes the material SELF of man.  The absolute of evil is the place from which the material man, himSELF, is derived. Which makes, by definition, the idea of an actual, material SELF a total lie, being nothing but a direct function of man’s absolute evil nature, which therefore taints his entire epistemology.  His epistemology can never lead him to a place where he is able to recognize himself as an agent/object distinct from “others” because his epistemology is utterly bound in the moral concept of EVIL.  And if man’s entire concept of SELF is nothing more than a direct function of his absolute evil existential essence, then he can possess no efficacious (practical or functional or relevant) consciousness.  Consciousness itself is not a function of “man” as a flesh and blood agent, but is a direct function of his absolute evil; his moral failure, which again must precede material existence.  Thus, no matter what man thinks or believes, it is always and automatically evil.  Which means that man’s “consciousness” lacks any rational definition.  Consciousness itself is merely a direct function of man’s evil essence.  Consciousness, like body, and spirit, and mind and heart and choice and desire and belief etc., etc. is simply:  evil.  Period.

Which means that man cannot “consciously choose” to do anything.  Man can only act as a direct function of his absolute and inexorable sin nature, which can observe NOTHING outside itself, because it is absolute, and never mitigated by a rational and efficacious ability to observe any material SELF from NOT SELF, thus making consciousness impossible.

Therefore, point number three of Rick Warren’s steps to “recovery” is nothing more than a self-contradicting, impossible travesty of evil thinking and madness under the guise of compassion and rational consistency.  It is logic being burned at the stake of mystic tyranny.

A while back, a commenter here, Bridget, asked me for an opinion on something said by a commenter over at Paul Dohse’s blog, paulspassingthoughts.com.  This person had taken to task the Apostle Paul for the (apparent) fusing of the two greatest commandments, as proclaimed by Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew:

“Jesus said to him [a Pharisee, who was asking], ‘ ‘You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.  This is the first and greatest commandment.  And the second is like it:  ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’ ‘”

In ostensible contrast to the…er, Doctrine of the Two-Not-Just-One Commandments, I suppose we’ll call it (hey, everything else is a doctrine, why not this?), Paul, in Galatians, is quoted as saying:

“For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even this:  ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.'”

Bridget asked this:

Yes, Argo, wondering about your thoughts on the distinction between the two commandments as well as the commenters opinion that Paul actually changed what Jesus had said. I had never seen that distinction before.

The questions which are the crux of the issue with respect to the comment from the person over at paulspassingthoughts.com  is:  Are there two commandments, or just one?  Is Paul a deceiver?  I liar?  A false prophet because he said that all the law is summed up by only ONE commandment, and Jesus clearly implies that all the law is not best summarized by merely one commandment, but TWO?  And is that really what Jesus is saying, or is He saying something entirely different?

The conclusion upon which this person arrived was that clearly Paul deceived his flock by presumptuously asserting that there was only one great commandment instead of two, as Jesus clearly taught.  Summary?  Paul should be ignored because he is little more than a rank liar.

Okay…couple of problems.

First, I have a problem with the “by golly by gosh oh gee there must, must , must be TWO separate, distinct, mutually exclusive, never-the-two-shall-meet-because-that-would-be-like-crossing-proton-streams, commandments” because, well…really?  Is this where our insane interpretation leading to irrational hatred of Paul has taken us?  Down very narrow roads where whole philosophical concepts and epistemological categories are now organized according to the fucking Dewy decimal system?  Where if the ideas aren’t numbered and dotted and labeled precisely, codified and reconciled to some exacting equation which demands a specific product according to a rigorous abstract mathematical construct then we froth at the mouth and cry heretic and take a scythe to the Pauline epistles and organize a mob to burn the books and drown his proselytes?

Come oooooooon, people.  Why is this even an issue?  Whatever happened to assuming that something must actually make some kind of sense in order to be morally compelling and intellectually honest?

Is this what we think theology is?  Is this why there are entire institutions devoted to parsing the difference between “scroll”, and “loaves” in Greek, Aramaic, and Hebrew?  Is this why there are a thousand different denominations all hating one another and demanding their excommunication from heaven and earth, all the while conceding the exact same philosophical premises which say that reason is the devil’s plaything and that the human mind is the cauldron for the witches brew of apostatized assholery?

Has it really gotten to the point where we are going to pit Paul against Christ because Paul makes one point and Jesus makes the exact same point but uses a different number of abstract ideas to make it; and therefore, it cannot possibly be the same point at all, because the numbers, being numbers, demand that one is infinitely separated by a chasm of absolute value from two; and the numbers, as we all know, get to make the rules about what is and what is not as far as human beings are concerned?

Why, yes.  Yes it has.  This is exactly what it has come to.

Instead of giving Paul the benefit of the doubt and thinking that maybe the peddlers of a false gospel, the Reformers, and their evil spawn, the Calvinists, who manage to fuck up the message and intent of every other single relevant figure in the Bible might actually have fucked up Paul’s as well?  And the one’s they can’t completely fuck up they pretty much ignore all together…like Jesus.

But we live in an age of cynicism, and truly, I am not one to talk…this, I admit.  Still, I think it is worth pointing out that the overestimation of our western Platonist philosophy has made us arrogant, and poor judges of our ability to truly understand perspectives that differ from our own.  Instead of assuming that our initial opinions might possibly be incorrect which might possibly lead us to spend some very helpful time employing our minds in the act of thinking about whether or not we have drawn the right conclusions, we simply assume that we are right, and either accept or deny ideas based upon whether they have found favor with our understanding (which must of course be full on immaculate) and not necessarily upon TRUTH, as rooted in reason.

This is exactly the kind of thinking that poor Paul, especially in this example, has fallen victim to.  “The numbers don’t lie”, goes the old adage, and yet the salesmen of numbers lie all the time, which is the only salient point.  In fact, since numbers are not actual and thus are not causal, they work for MAN, and not the other way around.  And the fact that they work for man, and yet are generally accepted to categorically “speak truth” (i.e. not lie), has allowed many to be deceived by them; and allowed many despotic governments to rise to power and many false philosophies to rule the crimson day.

Because in the end, numbers and what they say don’t matter.  It is what people believe that truly matters.  And that is a fact I’ll argue for with anyone, anywhere.  Show me a number that needs no human agent to be efficacious and I’ll show you that I’m actually an eight foot tall black man who plays center or the Lakers, has his daddy’s last name, “Jordan”, and is worth millions of dollars and gold bullion (my fantasy life, by the way).  If the government says seven million have signed up for healthcare, then it’s seven million.  A credible source is not required because the numbers, considered to be actual and causal themselves, ARE the source.  And if the earth is going to heat up by a million degrees in ten years, killing us all unless we categorically surrender our right to a free market society, then the earth is going to heat up.  Period.  And if it turns out that it doesn’t happen, it is our senses which are flawed.  It is our  innate human ignorance rooted in our contradictory metaphysics…our “depravity”; our “tendency” to be lazy, stupid, worthless, evil, racist, hateful, careless, arrogant and God-hating which has misled us.  Not the numbers.

The numbers don’t lie.

The numbers are never wrong, and therefore neither are their priests.  If the earth’s temperature doesn’t rise or there are not really seven actual million who sign up then the priests of the abstractions do not confess to error.  They merely re-categorize and re-define the message.  The numbers haven’t lied, and how dare you question them based on what you think you see, as if you are able to see anything at all in your inherent existential failure.  And if seventeen trillion dollars in debt seems high, trust them…the numbers don’t lie, and they are saying that it isn’t really that high at all, because what you think is high is merely what you think is high,and therefore, is of no material relevance.

The numbers don’t lie?

Hmm…perhaps.  But certain men lie all the time.  And these men fancy themselves as the inexorable proxies for the abstractions which they say control us.  This absolves them from their mistakes because it makes us unable to see any mistakes in the first place.

Numbers, like any other conceptual abstraction, can form very strong and, frankly, exasperatingly stubborn beliefs by giving humanity a false sense of intellectual and philosophical security.  And this is why it is so easy for someone, like the person on Paul Dohse’s blog, to reject the Apostle Paul and his message just because it doesn’t happen to agree with his presumed-superior apprehension of the way the universe actually works:  numerically.

But Jesus got it.  Oh yes, Jesus always agrees with the critics of Paul, but never Paul, himself.

So what was the problem again?

Oh, yeah.  Paul said one, and Jesus said two.  Ergo, Paul is a despicable heretic who should be run out of Jerusalem on a fucking rail.

Here’s the thing.  First, let’s start with the obvious.  Jesus did not say that all the law hangs on the two commandments.  He said that there was a greatest commandment, and a second commandment which is like it.  And his use of the word “like” is telling.  It implies a reciprocal relationship; one of equality, not of hierarchy.  But of course, Christianity, and protestantism specifically, is positively obsessed with with “proper roles” and “submission” and “authority”.  Everyone and everything must know their place because all of Christianity is a message of authoritarian “organization”, where life is supposed to be all neat and tidy like; and of course if we have a bunch of individuals running around thinking that they are each just as valuable and as equal and as loved by God as the next Tom, Dick, or Harriet, well obviously the inevitable orgy of sin which follows such wicked, wicked thinking will be enough to engulf the whole world in mass spiritual suicide and send us all careening at breakneck speed straight to hell.  Where YOU belong, by the way, and are almost certainly headed by hook or crook because God fucking hates you…but THEY, you see, as the elect…well, they want to go to heaven, mind you.  And that will only happen if they bust asses and crack skulls and burn some bitches in the name of authority and submission, roles and places, leaders and followers, the called and those who exist to serve them.  So they want things tidy, and they don’t need your assertions of moral and existential equality fucking it all up and disheveling their neat and organized little polity.

So, to them, when Jesus says “greatest” commandment, it must mean that the first commandment has supreme authority over the second command which is merely “like” it.  This means that the greatest commandment subjugates the one that is like it.  Because in our western thinking “second” obviously means inferior.  And inferior implies an authority structure.  Because Jesus used two and not one, He couldn’t possibly have meant that there is a single idea:  love.  And that it is LOVE which is the root of the entire law.  Love for neighbors, which obviously includes God, because God is a person.  And a human being (gasp!) at that, in Christ.

Of course, this is in fact Paul’s point.  Love is the sum and substance of the law.  Perhaps HOW love is shown to God may differ by metaphysical necessity (God being God,the Creator, who is distinct from man), but the idea of loving God and loving people is utterly identical.  You love them both in the same way:  you affirm their right to exist as individuals, not judging them according to false ideas of conceptually abstract ideas and constructs, not stealing from them or lying to them or burning them alive if they disagree with you, and lauding their merits and accomplishments and successes and power when appropriate, revering them and their positions when they’ve earned it righteously, and being “patient, kind, slow to anger”…etc., etc.

And Paul is absolutely right.  Love is the singular idea.  But not love in a vacuum.  A love which has its meaning rooted in the standard of TRUTH:  the life of the individual.  Which includes God.  So, yes, loving your neighbor as yourself includes God.  God is an individual just as is anyone else.  When you love your neighbors, God is ipso facto included.

Paul said it perfectly.  All the law hangs on this:  “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

But see, the Reformed and the Calvinists just absolutely fucking hate that.   How dare we lump God in with the fleshly creatures who inhabit weak and sickly bodies of sin and disease.  Just who in the hell do you think you are?  God isn’t your neighbor! they shriek.  You blasphemous whore!  You are the fleshly incarnation of everything God despises, and and so is your neighbor!

So, in their minds, there is NO moral or existential equivalency between God and man, which is why their must be an implicit authority structure (a “more worthy” and a “less worthy” commandment) in Jesus’s declaration that there is a greatest and second greatest commandment.  Of course, Jesus’s entire ministry, message, and the fact that He was a fleshly human being who was God utterly undercuts their false theology, which is all predicated upon the categorically evil, God-despising and God-mocking doctrine of Total Depravity.

They categorically reject man as having any good at all, implicit or explicit.  Inherent or acquired.  Their entire theology and philosophy can be rooted in a single thought:  Man’s very existence is the crux of his sin problem.

Because you ARE is why you do evil.  Period.  Thus, the solution to your evil-saturated metaphysic is to be removed from yourself.  And this is the core of every Reformed and neo-Calvinist doctrine:  YOU never get to be you.  The only way to be saved is for you to confess that YOU are not you; were never really you; and that any YOU there was or will be is totally vile, totally ignorant, and totally corrupt.  God has and wants nothing to do with YOU.

That is their message, and once you understand the message it is as easy to spot in their sermons and statements of faith and catechisms and creeds as Freddy Krueger at a birthday party.

So you see, they cannot possibly concede that Paul’s take on the “two greatest commandments”, if you want to call his Galatians commentary that, was, in fact, true. They cannot possibly concede that Jesus was NOT, in fact, intending to imply the lack of any moral equivalency between the two commandments, and was making the statement from a position where moral and existential equivalency are assumed, with this equivalency being rooted in a singular metaphysical TRUTH: that both man and God ARE, and thus are equal in truth and morality, and thus are both deserving of the exact same thing: love, though perhaps in different manners of expression, one of worship and the other of idealization and unfettered affirmation, because to be alive as YOU is infinitely GOOD.

No, their entire theology ultimately understands nothing but FORCE (as John Immel always aptly explains) as a means to compel moral behavior, right thinking and actions, and to gain “followers of Christ”…for their own good, of course.  And that is precisely why their interpretation of the functional distinction between Jesus’s “two greatest commandments” commentary is as follows:

Yes, we shall love our neighbors, but when push comes to shove, we reserve the categorical right and divine mandate to torture and murder those neighbors should they question our “calling”, our interpretive assumptions, or our authority as God’s proxy here on earth.  Loving neighbors is a different kind of love.  It is a love that is utterly conditional on you doing whatever the fuck you we tell you to do, because we are God to you.  The second commandment is inexorably subjugated to the first, and so also is humanity subjugated to the “will of God” as has been divinely and specially revealed to us, and not to you or the rest of the slobbering, brainless, dickless masses at whom God is constantly offended and embarrassed.

And that’s why they assume that not only are there practical and functional distinctions between the two commandments, but philosophical/interpretive ones as well.  Loving your neighbor is NOT the same thing as loving God because your neighbor is of infinitely lesser worth than God.  Your neighbor, saved or not, is a finite, yet infinitely and perpetually depraved mongoloid whom God barely tolerates at best.  While God, on the other hand, is He who has granted to those He has called to rule and lead and “shepherd” a complete ownership of the masses, and is infinitely beyond the scope and worth and goodness and purpose and understanding of any (other) human, who is filth by comparison.

And this kind of thinking will always see false distinctions in absolutes…like love.