Subj : Bible
To   : RALPH ZETTER
From : Frank Masingill
Date : Wed Nov 01 2000 05:44 am

 CJ> As any professional philosopher well knows, it doesn't take
 CJ> much slippage in clarity to introduce confusion.

 FM> Quite true; that is the reason I attempt to be very careful to
 FM> read "professional" philosophers just as I read and listen

 RZ> to all >  FM> other thinkers - with as much criticism as I can
 RZ> bring to bear.  As >

 RZ> > As you probably know, the analytic school of philosophy was
 RZ> > much concerned with this very issue.  It makes for rather
 RZ> > dry

 RZ> reading, > but it is important work for the philosophical
 RZ> entreprise. One should > always be aware, of course, that what
 RZ> a particular term means to one

 RZ> > philosopher may be quite different from what it means to
 RZ> > another. "God" is but one notorious example.

 FM> you well know, my first introduction and still my guide in the

 RZ> world >  FM> of critical thought is Eric Voegelin who was not
 RZ> a "professional" >  FM> philosopher but a "professional"
 RZ> political scientist.  The myriad of >  FM> his students (a
 RZ> growing body) are thankful that he was not impressed >  FM> by
 RZ> academic titles - even his own!

 RZ> > His peculiar usage of "gnostic" is another example--but
 RZ> > we've already been through that, haven't we?

 RZ> Didn't the gnostics believe that we were pieces of God that
 RZ> become trapped in the world, and that through their teachings
 RZ> we could regain our divinity?

        Close enough and it was the assumption of a plan of
salvation that if scrupulously and carefully followed, could bring
this poor alienated soul OUT of a wicked world created, often, by an
evil creator God into a "perfection" lying with the "good God" far
beyond the world.

        Voegelin saw this pattern being followed not only in the
thought of a Joachim of Flora forecasting a perfect, final, Third
Age of the Spirit but even by such thoroughgoing "incarnation of the
spirit" philosophers as Hegel and Marx and by the Comte who quite
consciously attempted to ORIGINATE a new and final religion of
science with himself as high priest and all of the holidays for
Christian saints renamed for men of science.  True scientific
openness is DESTROYED in such schemes.  The ideologues like Hitler
and Stalin were merely carrying out the doctrine prescribed by these
gnostic thought systems.  But, as I pointed out to Curtis,
gnosticism was not the only pattern.  Hitler used magic extremism
and whatever else would help sign a program for the attainment of
perfection hauled into THIS world.  Lenin was a little less vulgar
and Stalin was not his first choice as a follower but the end result
was mass murder in the interest of promoting perfection on earth
just the same.  Such programs have failure written into them but the
attractiveness of "this worldly perfection" and a giddy happiness
for the "alienated soul" unable to cope with the reality in
authentic faith.  

Frank

--- PPoint 2.07
 * Origin: Maybe in 5000 years (1:396/45.12)

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