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Re: Not getting especially deep today--got too many things on my practical
Ciel, thanks for your comment. Now, I don't want to get into gnosticism, but the answer as to why it ultimately failed is fairly simple. When Christianity became the official Roman religion, the Roman church benefitted more or less naturally from the Roman talent for efficient organization. And efficient organization beats possibly creative, but haphazard and often fractious 'flying by the seat of your pants' any day. In that environment, gnosticism was bound to fail...
And I do not necessarily agree with your characterization of Dems as comparable to gnostics, and Reps as the 'big' church. Mind you, I probably don't know enough about either party. But I can tell you as the genuine conservative that I am, there is far less ideology in true conservatism than there is in the often rather rigid demagoguery of the left...
posted by
Nautikos
on February 13, 2008 at 4:26 PM
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TAPS
Thanks for the personal reminiscences! Fun and interesting! And that church? In due course it may well become a mosque. It has happened here in Toronto...
posted by
Nautikos
on February 13, 2008 at 4:06 PM
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Not getting especially deep today--got too many things on my practical
plate, to indulge--but I would be most interested in your thoughts about gnostic Christianity, which, without Constantine's influence, might have come out on top in the debates between the Roman church and the various gnostic persuasions.
Of course--and I have used this example before--the gnostic groups were like Democrats today: deeply enmeshed in their own truths, complacently or perhaps with a superior cast of conscience, turning their backs on the Roman Christians. The Romans, in their attitude of the very catholic nature of their own interpretations of Christian truths, were unified--relatively speaking--and made their Church itself The Most Important Thing. Like Republicans of a certain type. They built brick upon brick, constructing doctrine and dogma into an edifice, cemented with the mortar of righteousness and paranoia.
posted by
Ciel
on February 13, 2008 at 10:40 AM
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Nautikos
Little interesting personal note here. We lived for many years across from a big old stone Catholic Church with a bell tower. Below the bell tower at ground level was the cornorstone and on it was engraved, "In hoc signo vinces". I never paid much attention to it until my sons became old enough to read and asked what that meant. So we looked up the history of the battle at the Milvian Bridge and how Constantine had a vision of the Christian Cross superimposed on the sun. Supposedly he saw the words "In This Sign, Conquer". Of course, the name of the church was, and still is "Holy Cross". The thing that I find interesting is, that whole end of town was Italian Catholics then and is now practically all Muslim with their prayer places, meeting places, people dressed in unusual attire, the unusual writing that no catholic can read. Funny how things change.
posted by
TAPS.
on February 12, 2008 at 8:18 PM
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Re:
Thanks, sam. Well, there won't be too much more...
posted by
Nautikos
on February 12, 2008 at 4:57 AM
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Great start, I look forward to the continuation. sam
posted by
sam444
on February 11, 2008 at 9:32 AM
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