Wednesday, March 23, 2011
A Gerald Smith on the theme of "Great Apostasy" and "Restored Gospel" - answered
A Smith explaining the Mormon view of The Great Apostasy - by Bible quotes, which I here answer:
Then if any man shall say unto you, Lo, here [is] Christ, or there; believe [it] not. For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if [it were] possible, they shall deceive the very elect. (Matthew 24:23-24).
Only, Christ did not say that any and everyone on whom falsely is pointed as Christ is one false Christ by his own deeds or words - there may be some that the real bad guys point to in order to make looking for another Christ look respectable. It is, of course, not.
Amos 8:9-12 seems to refer to Apostasy of the Jewish people. It prophecies the darkening of the sun over Calvary before hinting at nullity of Jewish legalities.
Acts 20:29 - 30 foretells smaller apostasies than the one in 2 Thess 2:1-4. St Irenaeus of Lyons - disciple of St Polycarp of Smyrna who was disciple of St John the Gospeller - tells us about some of those earlier and smaller apostasies: ebionites, gnostics and so on.
2 Timothy 3 and 4 predict both that and later apostasies, including the one raging now among Catholics itching for women priests or for homo-couples admitted to sacraments or so.
The Churches in Asia would seem to be the early Christian Churches in that region, though they typify what can befall any Bishopric or Abbbey or Parish within the Catholic Church, and one of them was facing either a wiping out through persecution or an apostasy (locally) to rank heresy for its sins.
Now look at some Catholic Comments on Chapters 13 of Apocalypse:
Comments:[1] "A beast"... This first beast with seven heads and ten horns, is probably the whole company of infidels, enemies and persecutors of the people of God, from the beginning to the end of the world. The seven heads are seven kings, that is, seven principal kingdoms or empires, which have exercised, or shall exercise, tyrannical power over the people of God; of these, five were then fallen, viz.: the Egyptian, Assyrian, Chaldean, Persian, and Grecian monarchies: one was present, viz., the empire of Rome: and the seventh and chiefest was to come, viz., the great Antichrist and his empire. The ten horns may be understood of ten lesser persecutors.
[3] "One of his heads"... Some understand this of the mortal wound, which the idolatry of the Roman empire (signified by the sixth head) received from Constantine; which was, as it were, healed again by Julian the Apostate.
From Chapter 13 as for Chapter 14:
I cannot imagine how even verse 6 could be a prophesy about the book of Mormon, since obviously it is either "above time" and thus revealed in the beginning of the Catholic Church or after that final persecution, that is not yet come to pass.
Comments[8] "Babylon"... By Babylon may be very probably signified all the wicked world in general, which God will punish, and destroy after the short time of this mortal life: or it may signify every great city wherein enormous sins and abominations are daily committed; and that when the measure of its iniquities is full, the punishments due to its crimes are poured on it. It may also be some city of the description in the text, that will exist, and be destroyed, as here described, towards the end of the world.
[13] "Die in the Lord"... It is understood of the martyrs who die for the Lord.
On the "Reformed Egyptian" of the "Nephites"
I quite agree some criticism is pretty shallow.
(Link:) Here a Mormon has answered.
I quite agree, if there had been a people called Nephites, or if there was any people in the Americas descending from Egyptians, it might well have been referring to its script as reformed Egyptian or altered Egyptian or what not. Demotic is reformed or altered hieroglyphics, and although these are the common names among now living linguists for two types of Egyptian Writing, the Egyptians themselves of course called them neither the one or the other, at least before learning Greek. Because Hieroglyphoi is Greek for "Holy Carvings" and Demotica Grammata is Greek for "Popular Letters". And if you take these phrases in English, neither of them is a linguistic terminus technicus.
As a Catholic, I find it quite possible, though maybe not altogether probable (probability heightened by his appearance of martyrdom for his revelation, lessened by the fact that he did not get months in prison as a persuasion method of making him recant to scatter his followers and maybe did not even get one moment to recant) that he witnessed one apparation in which he saw golden or gold coloured plates, at another time tried to retrieve them but was pushed back by a supernatural force, that he succeeded in translating what was to his knowledge a foreign language and a foreign script which he had not had the opportunity to study in a natural manner.
What do I mean by a natural manner? I mean as when I had to learn alpha beta gamma ... on a table, and rosa, rosae, rosae ... on a table, and oikia, oikias, oikiai ... on yet another table and end up pretty fluent in Latin but less than mediocre in Greek. And the tables were not tablets of gold, though it would not have hurt, they were tables with printed black borders surrounding a collection of writing that is not sentences, writing made to examplify what the writing method or the language written looks like.
But does this mean I believe he had a genuine apparition sent by God? No.
Inventing a script, whether from scratch or by altering some Egyptian way of writing is not only in God's but also in man's and in angels' and in the devils' power. The last-named are quite able to invent a script themselves and then pretend it was used by a people long ago. Even some men - as is apparent from people believing accusations against Joseph Smith, and putting him in that category - are able to do that.
Tolkien invented Tengwar and said they were invented long ago by an elf in Tir nan Og (an Elda in Eldalie in his Quenya) but to him that was art, not factual truth, a kind of elaborate joke or poem (indeed he wrote more than one poem in tengwar characters in the Quenya language) as a kind of nostalgia. Joseph Smith need not have been one worse than Tolkien in saying this for founding a false religion, he may have been simply more naive than Tolkien (who would not have believed that angel, even after translating the gold tablets) about what men and angels, demons and possibly elves can do.
Now, although Tolkien could invent Tengwar, and a Quenya language to go along with them, he could not make one learn them at the kind of speed Joseph Smith learned the Reformed Egyptian Characters or the language of the Nephites.
God could do that - He has proven a very fast language teacher (and unteacher) at Babel, and also in connexions a bit like Pentecost (where he was rather simultaneous translator) - but angels also can do that, both the good and the bad ones.
So, Joseph Smith being honest does not in the least prove the revelation he witnessed came from God. As it contradicts Matthew XXVIII, last three verses (scroll down in link!) it apparently does not.
Wonders if a Japanese facing the Tsunami recited Marcirya, and remembered Tolkien was a Catholic, and tried to make his peace with "the God of the Catholics" as soon as he could before drowning? Because, Tolkien too was religious, he wrote Akallabêth with a feeling some of his readers would be facing days like before the Deluge of Noah or (if an other one) the Deluge of Atlantis. And some people who like him also like Japan and presumably prayed for Japan and for Japanese facing death. What I heard about Kobe and about the granny and grandson who survived nine days under débris by eating yoghurt, I think God does so too.
Hans-Georg Lundahl
Mouffetard, Paris V
23-III-2011, Wednesday
after II Sunday of Lent
(Link:) Here a Mormon has answered.
I quite agree, if there had been a people called Nephites, or if there was any people in the Americas descending from Egyptians, it might well have been referring to its script as reformed Egyptian or altered Egyptian or what not. Demotic is reformed or altered hieroglyphics, and although these are the common names among now living linguists for two types of Egyptian Writing, the Egyptians themselves of course called them neither the one or the other, at least before learning Greek. Because Hieroglyphoi is Greek for "Holy Carvings" and Demotica Grammata is Greek for "Popular Letters". And if you take these phrases in English, neither of them is a linguistic terminus technicus.
As a Catholic, I find it quite possible, though maybe not altogether probable (probability heightened by his appearance of martyrdom for his revelation, lessened by the fact that he did not get months in prison as a persuasion method of making him recant to scatter his followers and maybe did not even get one moment to recant) that he witnessed one apparation in which he saw golden or gold coloured plates, at another time tried to retrieve them but was pushed back by a supernatural force, that he succeeded in translating what was to his knowledge a foreign language and a foreign script which he had not had the opportunity to study in a natural manner.
What do I mean by a natural manner? I mean as when I had to learn alpha beta gamma ... on a table, and rosa, rosae, rosae ... on a table, and oikia, oikias, oikiai ... on yet another table and end up pretty fluent in Latin but less than mediocre in Greek. And the tables were not tablets of gold, though it would not have hurt, they were tables with printed black borders surrounding a collection of writing that is not sentences, writing made to examplify what the writing method or the language written looks like.
But does this mean I believe he had a genuine apparition sent by God? No.
Inventing a script, whether from scratch or by altering some Egyptian way of writing is not only in God's but also in man's and in angels' and in the devils' power. The last-named are quite able to invent a script themselves and then pretend it was used by a people long ago. Even some men - as is apparent from people believing accusations against Joseph Smith, and putting him in that category - are able to do that.
Tolkien invented Tengwar and said they were invented long ago by an elf in Tir nan Og (an Elda in Eldalie in his Quenya) but to him that was art, not factual truth, a kind of elaborate joke or poem (indeed he wrote more than one poem in tengwar characters in the Quenya language) as a kind of nostalgia. Joseph Smith need not have been one worse than Tolkien in saying this for founding a false religion, he may have been simply more naive than Tolkien (who would not have believed that angel, even after translating the gold tablets) about what men and angels, demons and possibly elves can do.
Now, although Tolkien could invent Tengwar, and a Quenya language to go along with them, he could not make one learn them at the kind of speed Joseph Smith learned the Reformed Egyptian Characters or the language of the Nephites.
God could do that - He has proven a very fast language teacher (and unteacher) at Babel, and also in connexions a bit like Pentecost (where he was rather simultaneous translator) - but angels also can do that, both the good and the bad ones.
So, Joseph Smith being honest does not in the least prove the revelation he witnessed came from God. As it contradicts Matthew XXVIII, last three verses (scroll down in link!) it apparently does not.
Wonders if a Japanese facing the Tsunami recited Marcirya, and remembered Tolkien was a Catholic, and tried to make his peace with "the God of the Catholics" as soon as he could before drowning? Because, Tolkien too was religious, he wrote Akallabêth with a feeling some of his readers would be facing days like before the Deluge of Noah or (if an other one) the Deluge of Atlantis. And some people who like him also like Japan and presumably prayed for Japan and for Japanese facing death. What I heard about Kobe and about the granny and grandson who survived nine days under débris by eating yoghurt, I think God does so too.
Hans-Georg Lundahl
Mouffetard, Paris V
23-III-2011, Wednesday
after II Sunday of Lent
Saturday, March 12, 2011
Masons are NOT Geocentric, which is to the point
"while others pretend that Masonic science 'existed before the creation of this globe, diffused amidst the numerous systems with which the grand empyreum of universal space is furnished' ..."
Catholic Encyclopedia, p. 772 of Volume IX
Citing Oliver, Dictionary of Symbolic Freemasonry, London 1853, I, 20, sq
In other words, the works of art which have accustomed this generation to believe in a cosmos where every star is a sun and most or many suns have planets like earth around them, Star Wars, Star Trek, and my long standing favourite, Valérian by Mezières and Christin, are drenched in a certain Masonic-esoteric tradition.
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
St Augustine was a Geocentric ... in face of what, Mr. Sungenis?
Mr. Olar’s appeal to Augustine and Aquinas might have some bite, that is, until we realize that both these saints were dyed-in-the-wool geocentrists, and who chose this cosmological stance in the face of the Greeks of the former’s day who were touting heliocentrism and the Indians of the latter’s day who were touting the same. Here’s a few quotes from Augustine to prove the point: “the whole earth is suspended on nothing. For perhaps the world keeps its central place by the same law that attracts to its center all heavy bodies” (City of God, Bk XIII, Ch 18). “Who else save Joshua the son of Nun divided the stream of the Jordan for the people to pass over, and by the utterance of a prayer to God bridled and stopped the revolving sun? (Tractates, XCI, Ch XV, 24-25, 2). “…the day is finished by the motion of the sun, and by his circuit from east to east….as the sun is accustomed to accomplish his whole course in from morning to morning….because, when at the prayer of one the sun stood still in order that he might achieve his victorious battle, the sun stood still, but time went on (Confessions, Bk XI, Ch XXIII, 30). (source, scroll down to p. 6)
My emphasis.
I really see no reason to say that the Greeks of St Augustine's day were touting heliocentrism. Aristotle was as Geocentric as Augustine. The Pythagorean and Epicurean authors who were not were long since dead and by St Augustine's time had few followers.
As for Indian's of St Thomas Aquinas' time touting Heliocentrism - have I understood him right?
Which Indians? What did St Thomas Aquinas know about them? What did he care about them? Was he saying Hindoos were different from other Pagans because of this Heliocentrism "they were touting"? One thing is sure, the quote from Summa, Part I Q 68 Article 4 was not written in polemics against supposedly heliocentric Hindoos but against people saying there was only one heaven, look at it, I trust Sungenis got the quote right:
“The Earth stands in relation to the heaven as the center of a circle to its circumference. But as one center may have many circumferences, so, though there is but one Earth, there may be many heavens”
What is the context? It is labelled Answer to Objection 1. Read a little higher on then and get Objection 1:
It would seem that there is only one heaven. For the heaven is contrasted with the earth, in the words, "In the beginning God created heaven and earth."But there is only one earth. Therefore there is only one heaven. (source)
St Thomas Aquinas was dealing with a literalist - real or strawamn, does not matter, St Thomas enjoyd answering anyway and the objections given come from too diverse sources (when real) to make libel on any other school of thought, maybe it was some very young theology student - and one who knew not Hebrew. I do not know much either, but I do know that Heaven in Hebrew is Ha-Shamayim, and that that is a plural. Whether St Thomas knew that or not, I am not sure. What is sure is that he did not answer a purely linguistic argument (Ha-Shamayim is translated Caelum, which is singular in the Vulgate), but an argument from parallel: as the earth is one, so the Heaven must be one too.
St Thomas' answer does not actually polemise against Heliocentrism at all, it is assuming Geocentrism as commonly acknowledged Common Sense. But it does answer a real straw man in newer Heliocentric Polemics: the guys who say now that Earth being centre equals Earth having a "favoured position" are dealing with a flat idea, where the centre of a field is nobler than the circumference, St Thomas is dealing with a round idea, where Heavens are larger and brighter and faster - all of them synonyms to nobler - precisely because they are Circumference.
Now, where could Sungenis have gotten the idea that in face of Patristic Geocentrism we have Greek Pagan Heliocentrism? Probably from the ignorants he is arguing against. The ones who say, all day long: "hey, the Greeks knew the Earth was round and some were even Heliocentrics, when the Christians came around and backward as they were banned knowledge, were Geocentrics and believed the Earth was flat!" - The guys who made a film like Agora, about Hypatia, or who believe that when watching.
The straight answer to both them and Sungenis is: Greeks and any other Romans of the Fourth Century were either Christian or Pagan. Educated Pagans were either Neoplatonics (the real Hypatia offered a lover her menstruations, adding "this is what you are in love with" - a Neoplatonic antisexual taunt if ever there was one) or Aristotelians, even Stoicism was seen as "not quite right", whereas Epicurus was seen as "quite wrong". Pythagoras was seen as a good specialist, inadequate for over-all theories, but it was one remote disciple of his, not himself who was heliocentric. Platonics were Geocentric as far as they bothered about matter at all. Aristotelians were Geocentric. Christians were Geocentric. Platonics thought the world round as far as they bothered. Aristotelians thought the world round. Christians thought the world round, as far as we know their writings except one Church Father who thought the philosophers wrong on that.
So, if Christians were Geocentric and Round Earthed it was not in face of any opposition, it was not in face of anyone "touting" anything else, as little as when many Christians today are round earthed believe in atoms and think earth circles sun, sun circles centre of Milky Way galaxy, which maybe circles centre of universe. The one Church Father who did believe the earth flat at least showed thereby that accepting whatever the specialists say is not a duty for a Christian.
If I am still Geocentric, if I still think it was Providential of God to make all pre-Tridentine Church Fathers Geocentrics (as far as they spoke about it) and one even flat earthed, though in itself that is wrong, it is not because of what Pagan Greeks were supposedly touting, and Church Fathers supposedly aswering by their Geocentrism, it is because Heliocentrism is bound up with a Cartesian view of the Cosmos I consider mistaken. As I consider the affirmations of Geocentrism in Scripture Providential. Here is Catholic Encyclopedia:
Again, he wholly neglected discoveries far more fundamental than his own, made by his great contemporary Kepler, the value of which he either did not perceive or entirely ignored. Since the first and second of his famous laws were already published by Kepler in 1609 and the third, ten years later, it is truly inconceivable, as Delambre says, that Galileo should not once have made any mention of these discoveries, far more difficult than his own, which finally led Newton to determine the general principle which forms the very soul of the celestial mechanism thus established. It is, moreover, undeniable, that the proofs which Galileo adduced in support of the heliocentric system of Copernicus, as against the geocentric of Ptolemy and the ancients, were far from conclusive, and failed to convince such men as Tycho Brahé (who, however, did not live to see the telescope) and Lord Bacon, who to the end remained an unbeliever. Milton also, who visited Galileo in his old age (1638), appears to have suspended his judgment, for there are passages in his great poem which seem to favour both systems.
From Galileo article of Catholic Encyclopedia. Here again: "which finally led Newton to determine the general principle which forms the very soul of the celestial mechanism thus established." So the Heavens move for Gravity alone, it is even their "soul"? And it is, thus, the soul of a mere "mechanism"? Ah, how well did Pope Urban VIII do after all in condemning the proposition "that the earth is not immobile centre of the universe but moves yearly around the sun and every day around itself".
Hans-Georg Lundahl
Paris/Audoux
2 March 2011
Update. Of course I am with Mr. Sungenis, Ph. D. of Calamus University, on this one:
Apparently, Mr. Olar is of the fallacious opinion that a spacecraft taking time-lapse photography of the earth proves that the earth rotates. No it doesn’t. This is one of the more common elementary mistakes made by people on a geocentric witch hunt who don’t know the physics behind what they are saying. ... As far as Mr. Olar knows, the space in which the craft is set could be rotating around the earth. Taking timelapse photography of the earth would then make it appear as if the earth were rotating.
This does not mean St Augustine or St Thomas were passionate Geocentrics, it was, as said their default option - there was no-one around to be passionate against about it - but it means, again, it was providential that Geocentrism was their default option. I mean it is so stupid in Theology to discount a Biblical or Patristic view merely because "it was the default option back then." God in his Providence chose the when's and the where's for Revelation.
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