Saturday, February 19, 2011

Sects, Historical Critical Method, Post-Confessional Christianity

Cardinal Lubomyr Husar was consecreated by Cardinal Slipiy who was no doubt an orthodoxly Catholic Martyr Bishop. That was some while ago.

Now he heads Ukrainean Greek Catholic Church, I have seen some texts from Ukrainean Orthodox Greek Catholic Church, of whom bishop Elias is now known for speaking up against Assisi III plans and plans for Canonising or Beatifying John Paul II, and he calls them a Sect, they say he promotes Apostasy by Historical Critical Method and by Post-Confessional Christianity and that by calling them a Sect, he spreads hatred against them.



"Sect"

Does it mean people who kidnap, poison, brainwash and reprogram people? Then Illuminati, as portraied by Conspiracy Theorists are a Sect. KGB and psychiatry in many countries at least are sects, so is the Mafia. Back when régimes spoke out against Free Masons, they were a Sect like that.

Or is it Continental European for Cult? Some describe Conspiracy Theorists as being such then. In France you may be called sectarian by the fact of refusing to believe Evolution or of refusing to believe Heliocentrism with Einstein. You may be called sectarian for opposing psychiatry, as do Scientologists, who are described as a sect, or for using medicine which the faculty of Medicine of nearest or most highly rated University opposes. You may be called a sect if you live together in a village without electricity or where electricity is reserved for the dentist, and if you refuse to watch television and listen to the radio, as do the Amish in US and a certain group in Russia. Whether you also cut yourself off from Internet or Internet is a main source of information to you, in France boycotting the established media makes you prone to be called sectarian.

Here as there the word is used to promote an atmosphere of suspicion and of "ok, be nice to them, but don't hang around with them too much". I suspect that in an ex-Communist country where Christianity was persecuted as sectarian the word carries a harsher connotation than here. It has happened now and then in France too, but not so recently and harshly as in Russia. In 1905 Catholics were killed for refusing to hand over Church property, Holy Things, to the police of a secularist state.

Of course, the word sect has another meaning too: something that contains followers. The early Christians were called a sect and they were called dangerous by Pagans, but not on the same ground. A Sect - well Plato, Aristotle, Zenon, Epicurus all had their sects. Dangerous, that was quite another accusation. And to Roman Ecclesiastic language both Free Masons and Amish are sects in so far that both profess teachings foreign to the Church of God or a discipline foreign to the Church as Christ instituted it. Or, in these two cases both. That also is a heavy accusation, but not quite the same as being a Mob of Mafiosi or of Templars treading on the Cross for initiation. Still, one accusation to recuse if one can.

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"Historical Critical Method of Bible Studies"

It has been promoted by John Paul II. It has been promoted within limits already by Pope Pius XII in Divino Afflante Spiritu, 1943. And I think John Paul II or some Pope between Pius XII and himself abolished the limits or some of them set in that encyclical.

I have used it myself, for a particular purpose: how is the word Jew used in synoptics and in Gospel of St John, and why? In the synoptics when Christ adresses his enemies, it is often "Christ said: 'Woe ye, ye Pharisees and Sadducees, for ...' et c" but in St John it is more often "Christ said to the Jews: 'Woe ye, for ...' et c". And when Christ uses the ethnonym himself, he uses it in another way.

To me this fact proves that the Gospel of St John was written after the enemies of Christ usurped the word Jews for themselves at Jamnia, but by a man who remembered how the word had been used by Jesus, by the Christ, way back before Jamnia. It also is probable proof that all three synoptics were written much earlier, before Jamnia, when one could not yet use the word Jew to name the enemies of Our Lord, when it still mattered which of the different anti-Christian factions in what was still or still had been till recently his nation he was talking to.

Similarily, why do St Matthew and St Mark but not the two other Gospels name the episode when Our Lord cited the beginning of Psalm 22, though not as the Jews now write it? My guess by this method is that Saint Matthew wrote for Jews to convert them, they knew what it meant, St Mark wrote partly for gentiles who needed more of an explanation, St Luke and St John wrote when conversions from the beginnings of Judaism were getting rare.

Other persons have made other uses of this method. I do not know why a Christian, as opposed to an Atheist or a Jew, would want to make the Gospels appear late, the synoptics as late as traditionnally the Fourth Gospel, but some who claim to be Christians and claim to be using this Historical Critical Method do claim this is their conclusion. Much spectacular use of this so-called method does indeed claim that this or that Bible book was written too late to be accurate.

Synoptics around Jamnia? Well, Our Lord did prophesy the fall of Jerusalem in them, there are some who are either infidels or blockheads who take that as proof they were written late enough to put a prophesy after the event in the mouth of Our Lord.

Torah from Babylonic Captivity? Just takes an over-estimation of importance of literacy among the people, such as the criticism of clergy and faithful relation in Western Europe of the Middle Ages - IV Council of Lateran gave a right to the poor to study to be clerks, not at all any duty for everyone to study even if they wanted to be cobblers - or Russias up to Revolution and afterwards. Up to Babylonic Captivity, literacy was not all that common among Jews. They knew The Law not from reading it, but from listening to the priests who read it each seven years. Between Babylonic Captivity and shortly before the destruction of Jerusalem, it was still optional for Jews, and Pharisees looked down on Galileans for neglecting it. If you claim out of prejudice that a people knowing its holy scriptures only through its clergy will be fooled about their content, if you add a belief that Adam and Eve, Noah and the Ark all never existed, you end up using the Historic Critical Method to "prove" that Genesis must have been written originally or changed very much in Babylon, since "incorporating Babylonic Mythology". But that does not follow from the Historiocal Critical Method, it follows from your prejudice about the necessity of popular literacy for accurate transmission, it follows from un-belief in a recent Creation and a special Creation for mankind, recently having occurred, and from your unbelief in a Universal Flood, and from your refusal to take Babylonic, Greek, Northern, several other Pagan Myths as independent though garbled confirmation of the facts rather than as widespread literary invention. But neither Genesis, nor Enuma Elish, nor Deukalion and Pyrrha pose as a purely literary phenomenon read for entertainment without any serious puropose of instruction.

So, a Torah dating from Babylonic Captivity or Gospels dating all after or maybe just St Mark very shortly before the destructions wrought by Titus in Palestine, both ideas are not the essence but a by-product of Historical-Critical Method. Got at by people who were not believing rightly but headstrongly believing wrongly on these matters even before using this method.

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"Post-Confessional Christianity"

Which confessions are included in its making? What is left out of each confession? What kind of Eastern Orthodox Theologoumena are included, is it St Nikolas Kabasilas or moderate proponents of Romanides? They are not the same and should not be thought of as the same.

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Hans-Georg Lundahl
Mouffetard/Paris V
Day of St Gabinus and other saints (19-II)
Y o o L 2011

3 comments:

Hans Georg Lundahl said...

- is there a english translation?

- No. They don’t have this in English.

Every day people lock sisters’ monastery gates with chains , not allowing them to come out . They are locking them up, or forcefully keeping them from entering the monastery as well .

This time Krishnaists attacked with mob who performed different hateful actions .

Sisters are forbidden to see the authorities, and the police, which is standing there, does nothing.
They took sisters to the government office for 2 days, and then presented an official document that they (sisters)provoke the nation, and should be abolished as a monastery.

(My Ukrainian is not fluent, but 80%)

Hans Georg Lundahl said...

Conversation on wall of a FB friend.

http://www.gloria.tv/?media=116495

Hans Georg Lundahl said...

Jamnia - essay about information new to me.