classes ::: subject,
children :::
branches ::: Christianity

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object:Christianity
class:subject

CONCEPTS
  repentance ::: for low quality or evil movements
  sin
  attonement
  Jesus
  The Trinity
  evil
  humility
  kenosis ::: In Christian theology, kenosis (Greek: , knsis, lit. [the act of emptying]) is the 'self-emptying' of Jesus' own will and becoming entirely receptive to God's divine will.

PRACTICES
  confession
  communion

AUTHORS


   Charles Haddon Spurgeon
C. S. Lewis
Dante Alighieri
   Desiderius Erasmus
Dion Fortune
   Franois de La Rochefoucauld
   George Herbert
   George Macdonald
   Gospel of Thomas
   Hildegard of Bingen
Meister Eckhart
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Plotinus
   Pope Leo XIII
   Robert Burton
Saint Augustine of Hippo
   Saint Basil the Great
Saint Benedict of Nursia
Saint Bernard of Clairvaux
   Saint Bruno
   Saint Charles Borrowmeo
   Saint Ephrem of Syria
Saint Francis of Assisi
   Saint Germain
   Saint Gianna Beretta Mola
   Saint Hildegard
   Saint Jerome
   Saint John Bosco
Saint John of the Cross
   Saint Josemaria Escriva
   Saint Padre Pio
Saint Paul
   Saint Porphyrios
Saint Teresa of Avila
Saint Thomas Aquinas
   Saint Vincent de Paul
   Samuel Johnson
Soren Kierkegaard
Thomas A Kempis
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Keating
Thomas Merton
Voltaire
   Venerable Bede



see also :::

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now begins generated list of local instances, definitions, quotes, instances in chapters, wordnet info if available and instances among weblinks


OBJECT INSTANCES [7] - TOPICS - AUTHORS - BOOKS - CHAPTERS - CLASSES - SEE ALSO - SIMILAR TITLES

TOPICS
confession
demon
Evil
Saint
Saint
Sin_(quotes)
temptation
the_Sacrament
SEE ALSO


AUTH
C._S._Lewis
Dante_Alighieri
Meister_Eckhart
Pierre_Teilhard_de_Chardin
Plotinus
Saint_Ambrose_of_Milan
Saint_Athanasius_of_Alexandria
Saint_Augustine_of_Hippo
Saint_Basil
Saint_Benedict_of_Nursia
Saint_Bernard_of_Clairvaux
Saint_Catherine_of_Siena
Saint_Dionysius_the_Areopagite
Saint_Francis_of_Assisi
Saint_Ignatus_of_Loyola
Saint_Isaac_of_Nineveh
Saint_Jerome
Saint_Joan_of_Arc
Saint_John_Bosco
Saint_John_of_the_Cross
Saint_Padre_Pio
Saint_Patrick
Saint_Paul
Saint_Stephen
Saint_Teresa_of_Avila
Saint_Teresia_Benedicta_a_Cruce
Saint_Thomas_Aquinas
Soren_Kierkegaard
Thomas_A_Kempis
Thomas_Keating

BOOKS
City_of_God
Dark_Night_of_the_Soul
Enchiridion_text
Full_Circle
Heart_of_Matter
Holy_Bible__King_James_Version
Holy_Bible__New_International_Version
Hymn_of_the_Universe
Infinite_Library
Let_Me_Explain
Letters_On_Yoga
Letters_On_Yoga_II
Mere_Christianity
Modern_Man_in_Search_of_a_Soul
My_Burning_Heart
On_Prayer
On_the_Free_Choice_of_the_Will
Orthodoxy
Plotinus_-_Complete_Works_Vol_01
Plotinus_-_Complete_Works_Vol_02
Plotinus_-_Complete_Works_Vol_03
Plotinus_-_Complete_Works_Vol_04
Secrets_of_Heaven
Surprised_by_Joy__The_Shape_of_My_Early_Life
The_Abolition_of_Man
The_Bible
The_Cloud_of_Unknowing_and_Other_Works
The_Confessions_of_Saint_Augustine
The_Divine_Comedy
The_Divine_Milieu
The_Four_Loves
The_Future_of_Man
The_Interior_Castle_or_The_Mansions
The_Journals_of_Kierkegaard
The_Ladder_of_Divine_Ascent
The_Phenomenon_of_Man
The_Sickness_Unto_Death
The_Use_and_Abuse_of_History
The_Way_of_Perfection
The_Wit_and_Wisdom_of_Alfred_North_Whitehead
Toward_the_Future
Twilight_of_the_Idols

IN CHAPTERS TITLE
3.2.10_-_Christianity_and_Theosophy

IN CHAPTERS CLASSNAME
0.01f_-_FOREWARD
1.01_-_A_NOTE_ON_PROGRESS
1.01_-_Seeing
1.01_-_The_Offering
1.01_-_THE_STUFF_OF_THE_UNIVERSE
1.02_-_Fire_over_the_Earth
1.02_-_SOCIAL_HEREDITY_AND_PROGRESS
1.02_-_The_Vision_of_the_Past
1.02_-_THE_WITHIN_OF_THINGS
1.03_-_Fire_in_the_Earth
1.03_-_THE_EARTH_IN_ITS_EARLY_STAGES
1.03_-_THE_GRAND_OPTION
1.03_-_The_Phenomenon_of_Man
1.04_-_Communion
1.04_-_SOME_REFLECTIONS_ON_PROGRESS
1.04_-_The_Future_of_Man
1.05_-_Prayer
1.05_-_The_Activation_of_Human_Energy
1.05_-_THE_NEW_SPIRIT
1.06_-_A_Summary_of_my_Phenomenological_View_of_the_World
1.06_-_LIFE_AND_THE_PLANETS
1.07_-_THE_GREAT_EVENT_FORESHADOWED_-_THE_PLANETIZATION_OF_MANKIND
1.08_-_SOME_REFLECTIONS_ON_THE_SPIRITUAL_REPERCUSSIONS_OF_THE_ATOM_BOMB
1.09_-_FAITH_IN_PEACE
1.10_-_THE_FORMATION_OF_THE_NOOSPHERE
1.11_-_FAITH_IN_MAN
1.12_-_SOME_REFLECTIONS_ON_THE_RIGHTS_OF_MAN
1.13_-_THE_HUMAN_REBOUND_OF_EVOLUTION_AND_ITS_CONSEQUENCES
1.14_-_TURMOIL_OR_GENESIS?
1.15_-_THE_DIRECTIONS_AND_CONDITIONS_OF_THE_FUTURE
1.16_-_THE_ESSENCE_OF_THE_DEMOCRATIC_IDEA
1.17_-_DOES_MANKIND_MOVE_BIOLOGICALLY_UPON_ITSELF?
1.18_-_THE_HEART_OF_THE_PROBLEM
1.19_-_ON_THE_PROBABLE_EXISTENCE_AHEAD_OF_US_OF_AN_ULTRA-HUMAN
1.20_-_HOW_MAY_WE_CONCEIVE_AND_HOPE_THAT_HUMAN_UNANIMIZATION_WILL_BE_REALIZED_ON_EARTH?
1.21_-_FROM_THE_PRE-HUMAN_TO_THE_ULTRA-HUMAN,_THE_PHASES_OF_A_LIVING_PLANET
1.22_-_THE_END_OF_THE_SPECIES
2.01_-_THE_ADVENT_OF_LIFE
2.01_-_The_Attributes_of_Omega_Point_-_a_Transcendent_God
2.01_-_The_Picture
2.02_-_Evolutionary_Creation_and_the_Expectation_of_a_Revelation
2.02_-_THE_EXPANSION_OF_LIFE
2.02_-_The_Monstrance
2.03_-_DEMETER
2.03_-_The_Christian_Phenomenon_and_Faith_in_the_Incarnation
2.03_-_The_Pyx
2.04_-_The_Living_Church_and_Christ-Omega
2.05_-_The_Religion_of_Tomorrow
2.06_-_Revelation_and_the_Christian_Phenomenon
3.01_-_Hymn_to_Matter
3.01_-_Natural_Morality
3.01_-_THE_BIRTH_OF_THOUGHT
3.02_-_Mysticism
3.02_-_THE_DEPLOYMENT_OF_THE_NOOSPHERE
3.03_-_The_Consummation_of_Mysticism
3.03_-_THE_MODERN_EARTH
4.01_-_Conclusion_-_My_intellectual_position
4.01_-_THE_COLLECTIVE_ISSUE
4.01_-_The_Presence_of_God_in_the_World
4.02_-_Autobiographical_Evidence
4.02_-_BEYOND_THE_COLLECTIVE_-_THE_HYPER-PERSONAL
4.02_-_Humanity_in_Progress
4.03_-_Prayer_to_the_Ever-greater_Christ
4.03_-_The_Meaning_of_Human_Endeavor
4.03_-_THE_ULTIMATE_EARTH
4.04_-_In_the_Total_Christ
5.01_-_EPILOGUE
BOOK_I._-_Augustine_censures_the_pagans,_who_attributed_the_calamities_of_the_world,_and_especially_the_sack_of_Rome_by_the_Goths,_to_the_Christian_religion_and_its_prohibition_of_the_worship_of_the_gods
BOOK_II._-_A_review_of_the_calamities_suffered_by_the_Romans_before_the_time_of_Christ,_showing_that_their_gods_had_plunged_them_into_corruption_and_vice
BOOK_III._-_The_external_calamities_of_Rome
BOOK_IV._-_That_empire_was_given_to_Rome_not_by_the_gods,_but_by_the_One_True_God
BOOK_IX._-_Of_those_who_allege_a_distinction_among_demons,_some_being_good_and_others_evil
Book_of_Exodus
Book_of_Genesis
Book_of_Proverbs
Book_of_Psalms
BOOK_VIII._-_Some_account_of_the_Socratic_and_Platonic_philosophy,_and_a_refutation_of_the_doctrine_of_Apuleius_that_the_demons_should_be_worshipped_as_mediators_between_gods_and_men
BOOK_VII._-_Of_the_select_gods_of_the_civil_theology,_and_that_eternal_life_is_not_obtained_by_worshipping_them
BOOK_VI._-_Of_Varros_threefold_division_of_theology,_and_of_the_inability_of_the_gods_to_contri_bute_anything_to_the_happiness_of_the_future_life
BOOK_V._-_Of_fate,_freewill,_and_God's_prescience,_and_of_the_source_of_the_virtues_of_the_ancient_Romans
BOOK_XI._-_Augustine_passes_to_the_second_part_of_the_work,_in_which_the_origin,_progress,_and_destinies_of_the_earthly_and_heavenly_cities_are_discussed.Speculations_regarding_the_creation_of_the_world
BOOK_XIII._-_That_death_is_penal,_and_had_its_origin_in_Adam's_sin
BOOK_XII._-_Of_the_creation_of_angels_and_men,_and_of_the_origin_of_evil
BOOK_XIV._-_Of_the_punishment_and_results_of_mans_first_sin,_and_of_the_propagation_of_man_without_lust
BOOK_XIX._-_A_review_of_the_philosophical_opinions_regarding_the_Supreme_Good,_and_a_comparison_of_these_opinions_with_the_Christian_belief_regarding_happiness
BOOK_X._-_Porphyrys_doctrine_of_redemption
BOOK_XVIII._-_A_parallel_history_of_the_earthly_and_heavenly_cities_from_the_time_of_Abraham_to_the_end_of_the_world
BOOK_XVII._-_The_history_of_the_city_of_God_from_the_times_of_the_prophets_to_Christ
BOOK_XVI._-_The_history_of_the_city_of_God_from_Noah_to_the_time_of_the_kings_of_Israel
BOOK_XV._-_The_progress_of_the_earthly_and_heavenly_cities_traced_by_the_sacred_history
BOOK_XXII._-_Of_the_eternal_happiness_of_the_saints,_the_resurrection_of_the_body,_and_the_miracles_of_the_early_Church
BOOK_XXI._-_Of_the_eternal_punishment_of_the_wicked_in_hell,_and_of_the_various_objections_urged_against_it
BOOK_XX._-_Of_the_last_judgment,_and_the_declarations_regarding_it_in_the_Old_and_New_Testaments
COSA_-_BOOK_II
COSA_-_BOOK_III
COSA_-_BOOK_IV
COSA_-_BOOK_IX
COSA_-_BOOK_V
COSA_-_BOOK_VI
COSA_-_BOOK_VII
COSA_-_BOOK_VIII
COSA_-_BOOK_X
COSA_-_BOOK_XI
COSA_-_BOOK_XII
COSA_-_BOOK_XIII
ENNEAD_01.01_-_The_Organism_and_the_Self.
ENNEAD_01.02_-_Concerning_Virtue.
ENNEAD_01.02_-_Of_Virtues.
ENNEAD_01.03_-_Of_Dialectic,_or_the_Means_of_Raising_the_Soul_to_the_Intelligible_World.
ENNEAD_01.04_-_Whether_Animals_May_Be_Termed_Happy.
ENNEAD_01.05_-_Does_Happiness_Increase_With_Time?
ENNEAD_01.06_-_Of_Beauty.
ENNEAD_01.07_-_Of_the_First_Good,_and_of_the_Other_Goods.
ENNEAD_01.08_-_Of_the_Nature_and_Origin_of_Evils.
ENNEAD_01.09a_-_Of_Suicide.
ENNEAD_01.09b_-_Of_Suicide.
ENNEAD_02.01_-_Of_the_Heaven.
ENNEAD_02.02_-_About_the_Movement_of_the_Heavens.
ENNEAD_02.03_-_Whether_Astrology_is_of_any_Value.
ENNEAD_02.04a_-_Of_Matter.
ENNEAD_02.04b_-_Of_Matter.
ENNEAD_02.05_-_Of_the_Aristotelian_Distinction_Between_Actuality_and_Potentiality.
ENNEAD_02.06_-_Of_Essence_and_Being.
ENNEAD_02.07_-_About_Mixture_to_the_Point_of_Total_Penetration.
ENNEAD_02.08_-_Of_Sight,_or_of_Why_Distant_Objects_Seem_Small.
ENNEAD_02.09_-_Against_the_Gnostics;_or,_That_the_Creator_and_the_World_are_Not_Evil.
ENNEAD_03.01_-_Concerning_Fate.
ENNEAD_03.02_-_Of_Providence.
ENNEAD_03.03_-_Continuation_of_That_on_Providence.
ENNEAD_03.04_-_Of_Our_Individual_Guardian.
ENNEAD_03.05_-_Of_Love,_or_Eros.
ENNEAD_03.06_-_Of_the_Impassibility_of_Incorporeal_Entities_(Soul_and_and_Matter).
ENNEAD_03.06_-_Of_the_Impassibility_of_Incorporeal_Things.
ENNEAD_03.07_-_Of_Time_and_Eternity.
ENNEAD_03.08a_-_Of_Nature,_Contemplation,_and_of_the_One.
ENNEAD_03.08b_-_Of_Nature,_Contemplation_and_Unity.
ENNEAD_03.09_-_Fragments_About_the_Soul,_the_Intelligence,_and_the_Good.
ENNEAD_04.01_-_Of_the_Being_of_the_Soul.
ENNEAD_04.02_-_How_the_Soul_Mediates_Between_Indivisible_and_Divisible_Essence.
ENNEAD_04.02_-_Of_the_Nature_of_the_Soul.
ENNEAD_04.03_-_Problems_About_the_Soul.
ENNEAD_04.03_-_Psychological_Questions.
ENNEAD_04.04_-_Questions_About_the_Soul.
ENNEAD_04.05_-_Psychological_Questions_III._-_About_the_Process_of_Vision_and_Hearing.
ENNEAD_04.06a_-_Of_Sensation_and_Memory.
ENNEAD_04.06b_-_Of_Sensation_and_Memory.
ENNEAD_04.07_-_Of_the_Immortality_of_the_Soul:_Polemic_Against_Materialism.
ENNEAD_04.08_-_Of_the_Descent_of_the_Soul_Into_the_Body.
ENNEAD_04.09_-_Whether_All_Souls_Form_a_Single_One?
ENNEAD_05.01_-_The_Three_Principal_Hypostases,_or_Forms_of_Existence.
ENNEAD_05.02_-_Of_Generation_and_of_the_Order_of_Things_that_Follow_the_First.
ENNEAD_05.02_-_Of_Generation,_and_of_the_Order_of_things_that_Rank_Next_After_the_First.
ENNEAD_05.03_-_Of_the_Hypostases_that_Mediate_Knowledge,_and_of_the_Superior_Principle.
ENNEAD_05.03_-_The_Self-Consciousnesses,_and_What_is_Above_Them.
ENNEAD_05.04_-_How_What_is_After_the_First_Proceeds_Therefrom;_of_the_One.
ENNEAD_05.05_-_That_Intelligible_Entities_Are_Not_External_to_the_Intelligence_of_the_Good.
ENNEAD_05.06_-_The_Superessential_Principle_Does_Not_Think_-_Which_is_the_First_Thinking_Principle,_and_Which_is_the_Second?
ENNEAD_05.07_-_Do_Ideas_of_Individuals_Exist?
ENNEAD_05.08_-_Concerning_Intelligible_Beauty.
ENNEAD_05.09_-_Of_Intelligence,_Ideas_and_Essence.
ENNEAD_06.01_-_Of_the_Ten_Aristotelian_and_Four_Stoic_Categories.
ENNEAD_06.02_-_The_Categories_of_Plotinos.
ENNEAD_06.03_-_Plotinos_Own_Sense-Categories.
ENNEAD_06.04_-_The_One_and_Identical_Being_Is_Everywhere_Present_As_a_Whole.
ENNEAD_06.04_-_The_One_Identical_Essence_is_Everywhere_Entirely_Present.
ENNEAD_06.05_-_The_One_and_Identical_Being_is_Everywhere_Present_In_Its_Entirety.345
ENNEAD_06.05_-_The_One_Identical_Essence_is_Everywhere_Entirely_Present.
ENNEAD_06.06_-_Of_Numbers.
ENNEAD_06.07_-_How_Ideas_Multiplied,_and_the_Good.
ENNEAD_06.08_-_Of_the_Will_of_the_One.
ENNEAD_06.09_-_Of_the_Good_and_the_One.
Epistle_to_the_Romans
First_Epistle_of_Paul_to_the_Thessalonians
The_Book_of_Job
The_Book_of_Joshua
The_Book_of_the_Prophet_Isaiah
The_Book_of_the_Prophet_Micah
The_Book_of_Wisdom
The_Epistle_of_James
The_Epistle_of_Paul_to_the_Ephesians
The_Epistle_of_Paul_to_the_Philippians
The_First_Epistle_of_Paul_to_the_Corinthians
The_First_Epistle_of_Paul_to_Timothy
The_First_Epistle_of_Peter
The_First_Letter_of_John
The_Gospel_According_to_John
The_Gospel_According_to_Luke
The_Gospel_According_to_Mark
The_Gospel_According_to_Matthew
The_Gospel_of_Thomas
The_Letter_to_the_Hebrews
The_Revelation_of_Jesus_Christ_or_the_Apocalypse
The_Second_Epistle_of_John
The_Second_Epistle_of_Paul_to_Timothy
The_Second_Epistle_of_Peter
The_Third_Letter_of_John

IN CHAPTERS TEXT
0.00a_-_Introduction
0.00_-_INTRODUCTION
0.00_-_The_Book_of_Lies_Text
0.01f_-_FOREWARD
01.05_-_The_Nietzschean_Antichrist
01.08_-_Walter_Hilton:_The_Scale_of_Perfection
01.09_-_William_Blake:_The_Marriage_of_Heaven_and_Hell
01.11_-_The_Basis_of_Unity
0_1962-12-15
0_1963-07-03
0_1965-05-19
0_1965-10-16
0_1966-11-26
0_1967-01-28
0_1967-07-29
0_1967-08-12
0_1967-08-19
0_1967-09-03
0_1967-09-16
0_1967-10-04
0_1967-10-07
0_1968-01-12
0_1968-03-20
0_1968-04-03
0_1968-05-02
0_1969-03-26
0_1969-04-02
0_1969-08-02
0_1969-09-13
0_1969-12-31
0_1970-07-29
0_1971-12-25
03.01_-_Humanism_and_Humanism
03.04_-_The_Other_Aspect_of_European_Culture
03.06_-_Divine_Humanism
03.09_-_Buddhism_and_Hinduism
04.01_-_The_March_of_Civilisation
05.02_-_Gods_Labour
05.09_-_Varieties_of_Religious_Experience
05.18_-_Man_to_be_Surpassed
1.00a_-_Introduction
1.00_-_Introduction_to_Alchemy_of_Happiness
1.00_-_Preliminary_Remarks
1.01_-_Adam_Kadmon_and_the_Evolution
1.01_-_A_NOTE_ON_PROGRESS
1.01_-_Archetypes_of_the_Collective_Unconscious
1.01_-_Economy
1.01_-_Historical_Survey
1.01_-_MAPS_OF_EXPERIENCE_-_OBJECT_AND_MEANING
1.01_-_On_renunciation_of_the_world
1.01_-_Prayer
1.01_-_Principles_of_Practical_Psycho_therapy
1.01_-_Seeing
1.01_-_Soul_and_God
1.01_-_THAT_ARE_THOU
1.01_-_The_Ideal_of_the_Karmayogin
1.01_-_The_Offering
1.01_-_THE_STUFF_OF_THE_UNIVERSE
1.02_-_Fire_over_the_Earth
1.02_-_MAPS_OF_MEANING_-_THREE_LEVELS_OF_ANALYSIS
1.02_-_On_detachment
1.02_-_On_the_Service_of_the_Soul
1.02_-_SOCIAL_HEREDITY_AND_PROGRESS
1.02_-_The_Concept_of_the_Collective_Unconscious
1.02_-_The_Divine_Teacher
1.02_-_The_Eternal_Law
1.02_-_THE_NATURE_OF_THE_GROUND
1.02_-_THE_PROBLEM_OF_SOCRATES
1.02_-_The_Three_European_Worlds
1.02_-_The_Vision_of_the_Past
1.02_-_THE_WITHIN_OF_THINGS
1.03_-_APPRENTICESHIP_AND_ENCULTURATION_-_ADOPTION_OF_A_SHARED_MAP
1.03_-_Fire_in_the_Earth
1.03_-_On_exile_or_pilgrimage
1.03_-_PERSONALITY,_SANCTITY,_DIVINE_INCARNATION
1.03_-_.REASON._IN_PHILOSOPHY
1.03_-_The_Desert
1.03_-_THE_EARTH_IN_ITS_EARLY_STAGES
1.03_-_THE_GRAND_OPTION
1.03_-_The_Phenomenon_of_Man
1.03_-_The_Syzygy_-_Anima_and_Animus
1.04_-_ADVICE_TO_HOUSEHOLDERS
1.04_-_Communion
1.04_-_Descent_into_Future_Hell
1.04_-_GOD_IN_THE_WORLD
1.04_-_Magic_and_Religion
1.04_-_On_blessed_and_ever-memorable_obedience
1.04_-_SOME_REFLECTIONS_ON_PROGRESS
1.04_-_THE_APPEARANCE_OF_ANOMALY_-_CHALLENGE_TO_THE_SHARED_MAP
1.04_-_The_Discovery_of_the_Nation-Soul
1.04_-_The_First_Circle,_Limbo__Virtuous_Pagans_and_the_Unbaptized._The_Four_Poets,_Homer,_Horace,_Ovid,_and_Lucan._The_Noble_Castle_of_Philosophy.
1.04_-_The_Future_of_Man
1.05_-_2010_and_1956_-_Doomsday?
1.05_-_Christ,_A_Symbol_of_the_Self
1.05_-_MORALITY_AS_THE_ENEMY_OF_NATURE
1.05_-_On_painstaking_and_true_repentance_which_constitute_the_life_of_the_holy_convicts;_and_about_the_prison.
1.05_-_Prayer
1.05_-_Solitude
1.05_-_The_Activation_of_Human_Energy
1.05_-_THE_HOSTILE_BROTHERS_-_ARCHETYPES_OF_RESPONSE_TO_THE_UNKNOWN
1.05_-_THE_MASTER_AND_KESHAB
1.05_-_THE_NEW_SPIRIT
1.06_-_A_Summary_of_my_Phenomenological_View_of_the_World
1.06_-_Being_Human_and_the_Copernican_Principle
1.06_-_LIFE_AND_THE_PLANETS
1.06_-_MORTIFICATION,_NON-ATTACHMENT,_RIGHT_LIVELIHOOD
1.06_-_On_remembrance_of_death.
1.06_-_THE_FOUR_GREAT_ERRORS
1.06_-_The_Sign_of_the_Fishes
1.07_-_Incarnate_Human_Gods
1.07_-_On_mourning_which_causes_joy.
1.07_-_THE_GREAT_EVENT_FORESHADOWED_-_THE_PLANETIZATION_OF_MANKIND
1.07_-_THE_.IMPROVERS._OF_MANKIND
1.07_-_The_Literal_Qabalah_(continued)
1.07_-_The_Prophecies_of_Nostradamus
1.07_-_The_Three_Schools_of_Magick_2
1.07_-_TRUTH
1.08_-_On_freedom_from_anger_and_on_meekness.
1.08_-_Psycho_therapy_Today
1.08_-_RELIGION_AND_TEMPERAMENT
1.08_-_SOME_REFLECTIONS_ON_THE_SPIRITUAL_REPERCUSSIONS_OF_THE_ATOM_BOMB
1.08_-_The_Depths_of_the_Divine
1.08_-_The_Gods_of_the_Veda_-_The_Secret_of_the_Veda
1.08_-_The_Historical_Significance_of_the_Fish
1.08_-_The_Three_Schools_of_Magick_3
1.08_-_THINGS_THE_GERMANS_LACK
1.08_-_Worship_of_Substitutes_and_Images
1.09_-_FAITH_IN_PEACE
1.09_-_On_remembrance_of_wrongs.
1.09_-_SKIRMISHES_IN_A_WAY_WITH_THE_AGE
1.09_-_The_Ambivalence_of_the_Fish_Symbol
1.09_-_The_Worship_of_Trees
1.10_-_Aesthetic_and_Ethical_Culture
1.10_-_On_slander_or_calumny.
1.10_-_THE_FORMATION_OF_THE_NOOSPHERE
1.10_-_Theodicy_-_Nature_Makes_No_Mistakes
1.10_-_THINGS_I_OWE_TO_THE_ANCIENTS
1.11_-_FAITH_IN_MAN
1.11_-_On_talkativeness_and_silence.
1.11_-_The_Kalki_Avatar
1.1.2_-_Commentary
1.12_-_On_lying.
1.12_-_SOME_REFLECTIONS_ON_THE_RIGHTS_OF_MAN
1.12_-_The_Sacred_Marriage
1.12_-_TIME_AND_ETERNITY
1.13_-_Gnostic_Symbols_of_the_Self
1.13_-_On_despondency.
1.13_-_THE_HUMAN_REBOUND_OF_EVOLUTION_AND_ITS_CONSEQUENCES
1.14_-_Bibliography
1.14_-_On_the_clamorous,_yet_wicked_master-the_stomach.
1.14_-_The_Secret
1.14_-_The_Structure_and_Dynamics_of_the_Self
1.14_-_TURMOIL_OR_GENESIS?
1.15_-_Index
1.15_-_On_incorruptible_purity_and_chastity_to_which_the_corruptible_attain_by_toil_and_sweat.
1.15_-_THE_DIRECTIONS_AND_CONDITIONS_OF_THE_FUTURE
1.15_-_Truth
1.16_-_MARTHAS_GARDEN
1.16_-_On_love_of_money_or_avarice.
1.16_-_Religion
1.16_-_THE_ESSENCE_OF_THE_DEMOCRATIC_IDEA
1.17_-_DOES_MANKIND_MOVE_BIOLOGICALLY_UPON_ITSELF?
1.17_-_On_poverty_(that_hastens_heavenwards).
1.17_-_Religion_as_the_Law_of_Life
1.17_-_The_Divine_Birth_and_Divine_Works
1.18_-_M._AT_DAKSHINESWAR
1.18_-_On_insensibility,_that_is,_deadening_of_the_soul_and_the_death_of_the_mind_before_the_death_of_the_body.
1.18_-_THE_HEART_OF_THE_PROBLEM
1.19_-_GOD_IS_NOT_MOCKED
1.19_-_On_sleep,_prayer,_and_psalm-singing_in_chapel.
1.19_-_ON_THE_PROBABLE_EXISTENCE_AHEAD_OF_US_OF_AN_ULTRA-HUMAN
1.2.01_-_The_Call_and_the_Capacity
1.20_-_HOW_MAY_WE_CONCEIVE_AND_HOPE_THAT_HUMAN_UNANIMIZATION_WILL_BE_REALIZED_ON_EARTH?
1.20_-_On_bodily_vigil_and_how_to_use_it_to_attain_spiritual_vigil_and_how_to_practise_it.
1.20_-_TANTUM_RELIGIO_POTUIT_SUADERE_MALORUM
1.21_-_FROM_THE_PRE-HUMAN_TO_THE_ULTRA-HUMAN,_THE_PHASES_OF_A_LIVING_PLANET
1.21_-_On_unmanly_and_puerile_cowardice.
1.22_-_ON_THE_GIFT-GIVING_VIRTUE
1.22_-_On_the_many_forms_of_vainglory.
1.22_-_THE_END_OF_THE_SPECIES
1.23_-_FESTIVAL_AT_SURENDRAS_HOUSE
1.23_-_On_mad_price,_and,_in_the_same_Step,_on_unclean_and_blasphemous_thoughts.
1.24_-_On_meekness,_simplicity,_guilelessness_which_come_not_from_nature_but_from_habit,_and_about_malice.
1.24_-_PUNDIT_SHASHADHAR
1.24_-_RITUAL,_SYMBOL,_SACRAMENT
1.25_-_On_the_destroyer_of_the_passions,_most_sublime_humility,_which_is_rooted_in_spiritual_feeling.
1.26_-_On_discernment_of_thoughts,_passions_and_virtues
1.27_-_CONTEMPLATION,_ACTION_AND_SOCIAL_UTILITY
1.27_-_On_holy_solitude_of_body_and_soul.
1.28_-_On_holy_and_blessed_prayer,_mother_of_virtues,_and_on_the_attitude_of_mind_and_body_in_prayer.
1.29_-_Concerning_heaven_on_earth,_or_godlike_dispassion_and_perfection,_and_the_resurrection_of_the_soul_before_the_general_resurrection.
1.30_-_Concerning_the_linking_together_of_the_supreme_trinity_among_the_virtues.
1.37_-_Oriential_Religions_in_the_West
1.439
1.47_-_Reincarnation
1.50_-_Eating_the_God
1.550_-_1.600_Talks
1.62_-_The_Fire-Festivals_of_Europe
1.65_-_Balder_and_the_Mistletoe
1.69_-_Original_Sin
1929-06-09_-_Nature_of_religion_-_Religion_and_the_spiritual_life_-_Descent_of_Divine_Truth_and_Force_-_To_be_sure_of_your_religion,_country,_family-choose_your_own_-_Religion_and_numbers
1950-12-25_-_Christmas_-_festival_of_Light_-_Energy_and_mental_growth_-_Meditation_and_concentration_-_The_Mother_of_Dreams_-_Playing_a_game_well,_and_energy
1957-04-03_-_Different_religions_and_spirituality
1957-10-02_-_The_Mind_of_Light_-_Statues_of_the_Buddha_-_Burden_of_the_past
1960_07_06
1969_11_16
1970_02_07
1f.lovecraft_-_The_Horror_at_Red_Hook
1.rb_-_Bishop_Blougram's_Apology
1.rb_-_Caliban_upon_Setebos_or,_Natural_Theology_in_the_Island
1.ww_-_The_Excursion-_X-_Book_Ninth-_Discourse_of_the_Wanderer,_and_an_Evening_Visit_to_the_Lake
2.01_-_On_Books
2.01_-_THE_ADVENT_OF_LIFE
2.01_-_The_Attributes_of_Omega_Point_-_a_Transcendent_God
2.01_-_The_Picture
2.01_-_The_Road_of_Trials
2.02_-_Evolutionary_Creation_and_the_Expectation_of_a_Revelation
2.02_-_On_Letters
2.02_-_THE_EXPANSION_OF_LIFE
2.02_-_The_Ishavasyopanishad_with_a_commentary_in_English
2.02_-_The_Monstrance
2.03_-_DEMETER
2.03_-_Karmayogin__A_Commentary_on_the_Isha_Upanishad
2.03_-_The_Christian_Phenomenon_and_Faith_in_the_Incarnation
2.03_-_THE_ENIGMA_OF_BOLOGNA
2.03_-_The_Pyx
2.04_-_Positive_Aspects_of_the_Mother-Complex
2.04_-_The_Living_Church_and_Christ-Omega
2.05_-_Apotheosis
2.05_-_The_Religion_of_Tomorrow
2.06_-_Revelation_and_the_Christian_Phenomenon
2.07_-_On_Congress_and_Politics
2.08_-_ALICE_IN_WONDERLAND
2.08_-_On_Non-Violence
2.0_-_THE_ANTICHRIST
2.12_-_On_Miracles
2.13_-_On_Psychology
2.16_-_The_Magick_Fire
2.1.7.08_-_Comments_on_Specific_Lines_and_Passages_of_the_Poem
2.17_-_December_1938
2.21_-_1940
2.22_-_1941-1943
2.22_-_THE_STILLEST_HOUR
2.25_-_List_of_Topics_in_Each_Talk
2.28_-_The_Divine_Life
3.00.2_-_Introduction
30.04_-_Intuition_and_Inspiration_in_Art
3.01_-_Hymn_to_Matter
3.01_-_INTRODUCTION
3.01_-_Natural_Morality
3.01_-_THE_BIRTH_OF_THOUGHT
3.01_-_The_Principles_of_Ritual
3.02_-_King_and_Queen
3.02_-_Mysticism
3.02_-_SOL
3.02_-_THE_DEPLOYMENT_OF_THE_NOOSPHERE
3.03_-_SULPHUR
3.03_-_The_Consummation_of_Mysticism
3.03_-_THE_MODERN_EARTH
3.04_-_LUNA
3.05_-_SAL
3.07_-_The_Formula_of_the_Holy_Grail
3.0_-_THE_ETERNAL_RECURRENCE
3.1.04_-_Transformation_in_the_Integral_Yoga
3.10_-_The_New_Birth
31.10_-_East_and_West
3.2.05_-_Our_Ideal
3.2.10_-_Christianity_and_Theosophy
32.11_-_Life_and_Self-Control_(A_Letter)
3.21_-_Of_Black_Magic
3.4.03_-_Materialism
3.5.02_-_Thoughts_and_Glimpses
3-5_Full_Circle
3.6.01_-_Heraclitus
36.07_-_An_Introduction_To_The_Vedas
4.01_-_Conclusion_-_My_intellectual_position
4.01_-_INTRODUCTION
4.01_-_THE_COLLECTIVE_ISSUE
4.01_-_The_Presence_of_God_in_the_World
4.02_-_Autobiographical_Evidence
4.02_-_BEYOND_THE_COLLECTIVE_-_THE_HYPER-PERSONAL
4.02_-_GOLD_AND_SPIRIT
4.02_-_Humanity_in_Progress
4.03_-_Prayer_to_the_Ever-greater_Christ
4.03_-_The_Meaning_of_Human_Endeavor
4.03_-_THE_ULTIMATE_EARTH
4.04_-_In_the_Total_Christ
4.04_-_THE_REGENERATION_OF_THE_KING
4.05_-_THE_DARK_SIDE_OF_THE_KING
4.08_-_THE_RELIGIOUS_PROBLEM_OF_THE_KINGS_RENEWAL
4.1_-_Jnana
4.2_-_Karma
4.3.1.04_-_The_Disappearance_of_the_I_Sense
5.01_-_EPILOGUE
5.08_-_ADAM_AS_TOTALITY
5_-_The_Phenomenology_of_the_Spirit_in_Fairytales
6.01_-_THE_ALCHEMICAL_VIEW_OF_THE_UNION_OF_OPPOSITES
6.05_-_THE_PSYCHOLOGICAL_INTERPRETATION_OF_THE_PROCEDURE
6.08_-_THE_CONTENT_AND_MEANING_OF_THE_FIRST_TWO_STAGES
6.09_-_THE_THIRD_STAGE_-_THE_UNUS_MUNDUS
6.0_-_Conscious,_Unconscious,_and_Individuation
6.10_-_THE_SELF_AND_THE_BOUNDS_OF_KNOWLEDGE
APPENDIX_I_-_Curriculum_of_A._A.
Blazing_P3_-_Explore_the_Stages_of_Postconventional_Consciousness
BOOK_I._-_Augustine_censures_the_pagans,_who_attributed_the_calamities_of_the_world,_and_especially_the_sack_of_Rome_by_the_Goths,_to_the_Christian_religion_and_its_prohibition_of_the_worship_of_the_gods
BOOK_II._-_A_review_of_the_calamities_suffered_by_the_Romans_before_the_time_of_Christ,_showing_that_their_gods_had_plunged_them_into_corruption_and_vice
BOOK_III._-_The_external_calamities_of_Rome
BOOK_II._--_PART_I._ANTHROPOGENESIS.
BOOK_II._--_PART_III._ADDENDA._SCIENCE_AND_THE_SECRET_DOCTRINE_CONTRASTED
BOOK_II._--_PART_II._THE_ARCHAIC_SYMBOLISM_OF_THE_WORLD-RELIGIONS
BOOK_I._--_PART_I._COSMIC_EVOLUTION
BOOK_I._--_PART_III._SCIENCE_AND_THE_SECRET_DOCTRINE_CONTRASTED
BOOK_I._--_PART_II._THE_EVOLUTION_OF_SYMBOLISM_IN_ITS_APPROXIMATE_ORDER
BOOK_IV._-_That_empire_was_given_to_Rome_not_by_the_gods,_but_by_the_One_True_God
BOOK_IX._-_Of_those_who_allege_a_distinction_among_demons,_some_being_good_and_others_evil
Book_of_Exodus
Book_of_Genesis
Book_of_Imaginary_Beings_(text)
Book_of_Proverbs
Book_of_Psalms
BOOK_VIII._-_Some_account_of_the_Socratic_and_Platonic_philosophy,_and_a_refutation_of_the_doctrine_of_Apuleius_that_the_demons_should_be_worshipped_as_mediators_between_gods_and_men
BOOK_VII._-_Of_the_select_gods_of_the_civil_theology,_and_that_eternal_life_is_not_obtained_by_worshipping_them
BOOK_VI._-_Of_Varros_threefold_division_of_theology,_and_of_the_inability_of_the_gods_to_contri_bute_anything_to_the_happiness_of_the_future_life
BOOK_V._-_Of_fate,_freewill,_and_God's_prescience,_and_of_the_source_of_the_virtues_of_the_ancient_Romans
BOOK_XI._-_Augustine_passes_to_the_second_part_of_the_work,_in_which_the_origin,_progress,_and_destinies_of_the_earthly_and_heavenly_cities_are_discussed.Speculations_regarding_the_creation_of_the_world
BOOK_XIII._-_That_death_is_penal,_and_had_its_origin_in_Adam's_sin
BOOK_XII._-_Of_the_creation_of_angels_and_men,_and_of_the_origin_of_evil
BOOK_XIV._-_Of_the_punishment_and_results_of_mans_first_sin,_and_of_the_propagation_of_man_without_lust
BOOK_XIX._-_A_review_of_the_philosophical_opinions_regarding_the_Supreme_Good,_and_a_comparison_of_these_opinions_with_the_Christian_belief_regarding_happiness
BOOK_X._-_Porphyrys_doctrine_of_redemption
BOOK_XVIII._-_A_parallel_history_of_the_earthly_and_heavenly_cities_from_the_time_of_Abraham_to_the_end_of_the_world
BOOK_XVII._-_The_history_of_the_city_of_God_from_the_times_of_the_prophets_to_Christ
BOOK_XVI._-_The_history_of_the_city_of_God_from_Noah_to_the_time_of_the_kings_of_Israel
BOOK_XV._-_The_progress_of_the_earthly_and_heavenly_cities_traced_by_the_sacred_history
BOOK_XXII._-_Of_the_eternal_happiness_of_the_saints,_the_resurrection_of_the_body,_and_the_miracles_of_the_early_Church
BOOK_XXI._-_Of_the_eternal_punishment_of_the_wicked_in_hell,_and_of_the_various_objections_urged_against_it
BOOK_XX._-_Of_the_last_judgment,_and_the_declarations_regarding_it_in_the_Old_and_New_Testaments
BS_1_-_Introduction_to_the_Idea_of_God
COSA_-_BOOK_II
COSA_-_BOOK_III
COSA_-_BOOK_IV
COSA_-_BOOK_IX
COSA_-_BOOK_V
COSA_-_BOOK_VI
COSA_-_BOOK_VII
COSA_-_BOOK_VIII
COSA_-_BOOK_X
COSA_-_BOOK_XI
COSA_-_BOOK_XII
COSA_-_BOOK_XIII
Deutsches_Requiem
ENNEAD_01.01_-_The_Organism_and_the_Self.
ENNEAD_01.02_-_Concerning_Virtue.
ENNEAD_01.02_-_Of_Virtues.
ENNEAD_01.03_-_Of_Dialectic,_or_the_Means_of_Raising_the_Soul_to_the_Intelligible_World.
ENNEAD_01.04_-_Whether_Animals_May_Be_Termed_Happy.
ENNEAD_01.05_-_Does_Happiness_Increase_With_Time?
ENNEAD_01.06_-_Of_Beauty.
ENNEAD_01.07_-_Of_the_First_Good,_and_of_the_Other_Goods.
ENNEAD_01.08_-_Of_the_Nature_and_Origin_of_Evils.
ENNEAD_01.09a_-_Of_Suicide.
ENNEAD_01.09b_-_Of_Suicide.
ENNEAD_02.01_-_Of_the_Heaven.
ENNEAD_02.02_-_About_the_Movement_of_the_Heavens.
ENNEAD_02.03_-_Whether_Astrology_is_of_any_Value.
ENNEAD_02.04a_-_Of_Matter.
ENNEAD_02.04b_-_Of_Matter.
ENNEAD_02.05_-_Of_the_Aristotelian_Distinction_Between_Actuality_and_Potentiality.
ENNEAD_02.06_-_Of_Essence_and_Being.
ENNEAD_02.07_-_About_Mixture_to_the_Point_of_Total_Penetration.
ENNEAD_02.08_-_Of_Sight,_or_of_Why_Distant_Objects_Seem_Small.
ENNEAD_02.09_-_Against_the_Gnostics;_or,_That_the_Creator_and_the_World_are_Not_Evil.
ENNEAD_03.01_-_Concerning_Fate.
ENNEAD_03.02_-_Of_Providence.
ENNEAD_03.03_-_Continuation_of_That_on_Providence.
ENNEAD_03.04_-_Of_Our_Individual_Guardian.
ENNEAD_03.05_-_Of_Love,_or_Eros.
ENNEAD_03.06_-_Of_the_Impassibility_of_Incorporeal_Entities_(Soul_and_and_Matter).
ENNEAD_03.06_-_Of_the_Impassibility_of_Incorporeal_Things.
ENNEAD_03.07_-_Of_Time_and_Eternity.
ENNEAD_03.08a_-_Of_Nature,_Contemplation,_and_of_the_One.
ENNEAD_03.08b_-_Of_Nature,_Contemplation_and_Unity.
ENNEAD_03.09_-_Fragments_About_the_Soul,_the_Intelligence,_and_the_Good.
ENNEAD_04.01_-_Of_the_Being_of_the_Soul.
ENNEAD_04.02_-_How_the_Soul_Mediates_Between_Indivisible_and_Divisible_Essence.
ENNEAD_04.02_-_Of_the_Nature_of_the_Soul.
ENNEAD_04.03_-_Problems_About_the_Soul.
ENNEAD_04.03_-_Psychological_Questions.
ENNEAD_04.04_-_Questions_About_the_Soul.
ENNEAD_04.05_-_Psychological_Questions_III._-_About_the_Process_of_Vision_and_Hearing.
ENNEAD_04.06a_-_Of_Sensation_and_Memory.
ENNEAD_04.06b_-_Of_Sensation_and_Memory.
ENNEAD_04.07_-_Of_the_Immortality_of_the_Soul:_Polemic_Against_Materialism.
ENNEAD_04.08_-_Of_the_Descent_of_the_Soul_Into_the_Body.
ENNEAD_04.09_-_Whether_All_Souls_Form_a_Single_One?
ENNEAD_05.01_-_The_Three_Principal_Hypostases,_or_Forms_of_Existence.
ENNEAD_05.02_-_Of_Generation_and_of_the_Order_of_Things_that_Follow_the_First.
ENNEAD_05.02_-_Of_Generation,_and_of_the_Order_of_things_that_Rank_Next_After_the_First.
ENNEAD_05.03_-_Of_the_Hypostases_that_Mediate_Knowledge,_and_of_the_Superior_Principle.
ENNEAD_05.03_-_The_Self-Consciousnesses,_and_What_is_Above_Them.
ENNEAD_05.04_-_How_What_is_After_the_First_Proceeds_Therefrom;_of_the_One.
ENNEAD_05.05_-_That_Intelligible_Entities_Are_Not_External_to_the_Intelligence_of_the_Good.
ENNEAD_05.06_-_The_Superessential_Principle_Does_Not_Think_-_Which_is_the_First_Thinking_Principle,_and_Which_is_the_Second?
ENNEAD_05.07_-_Do_Ideas_of_Individuals_Exist?
ENNEAD_05.08_-_Concerning_Intelligible_Beauty.
ENNEAD_05.09_-_Of_Intelligence,_Ideas_and_Essence.
ENNEAD_06.01_-_Of_the_Ten_Aristotelian_and_Four_Stoic_Categories.
ENNEAD_06.02_-_The_Categories_of_Plotinos.
ENNEAD_06.03_-_Plotinos_Own_Sense-Categories.
ENNEAD_06.04_-_The_One_and_Identical_Being_Is_Everywhere_Present_As_a_Whole.
ENNEAD_06.04_-_The_One_Identical_Essence_is_Everywhere_Entirely_Present.
ENNEAD_06.05_-_The_One_and_Identical_Being_is_Everywhere_Present_In_Its_Entirety.345
ENNEAD_06.05_-_The_One_Identical_Essence_is_Everywhere_Entirely_Present.
ENNEAD_06.06_-_Of_Numbers.
ENNEAD_06.07_-_How_Ideas_Multiplied,_and_the_Good.
ENNEAD_06.08_-_Of_the_Will_of_the_One.
ENNEAD_06.09_-_Of_the_Good_and_the_One.
Epistle_to_the_Romans
First_Epistle_of_Paul_to_the_Thessalonians
I._THE_ATTRACTIVE_POWER_OF_GOD
Liber
Liber_111_-_The_Book_of_Wisdom_-_LIBER_ALEPH_VEL_CXI
Liber_46_-_The_Key_of_the_Mysteries
MoM_References
Phaedo
Sayings_of_Sri_Ramakrishna_(text)
Talks_500-550
Talks_With_Sri_Aurobindo_1
The_Act_of_Creation_text
The_Book_of_Job
The_Book_of_Joshua
The_Book_of_the_Prophet_Isaiah
The_Book_of_the_Prophet_Micah
The_Book_of_Wisdom
The_Coming_Race_Contents
The_Dwellings_of_the_Philosophers
The_Epistle_of_James
The_Epistle_of_Paul_to_the_Ephesians
The_Epistle_of_Paul_to_the_Philippians
the_Eternal_Wisdom
The_First_Epistle_of_Paul_to_the_Corinthians
The_First_Epistle_of_Paul_to_Timothy
The_First_Epistle_of_Peter
The_First_Letter_of_John
The_Gospel_According_to_John
The_Gospel_According_to_Luke
The_Gospel_According_to_Mark
The_Gospel_According_to_Matthew
The_Gospel_of_Thomas
The_Letter_to_the_Hebrews
The_Pilgrims_Progress
The_Revelation_of_Jesus_Christ_or_the_Apocalypse
The_Second_Epistle_of_John
The_Second_Epistle_of_Paul_to_Timothy
The_Second_Epistle_of_Peter
The_Third_Letter_of_John

PRIMARY CLASS

subject
SIMILAR TITLES
Christianity
God and CHRISTIANITY
Mere Christianity

DEFINITIONS


TERMS STARTING WITH

Christianity ::: A religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ, that emphasizes his role as redeemer and savior for all of humanity and his mediation of the role of divinity in the lives of people.

Christianity II, 150.] In Coptic texts the Virgin

Christianity II, 73.]

Christianity II, p. 52.]

Christianity, in addition to a great many so-called pagan ideas, also inherited and adapted Jewish sacrificial ideas, but the word became limited to the sacrifice of Christ for the sins of the world, and the sacrifice by man of his personal desires to the behests of his divinity. The true origin of the Christian atonement is in the Mysteries, when the hierophant offered his pure and sinless life as a sacrifice for his race to the gods whom he hoped to rejoin (IU 2:42). The general sense in theosophy is that of sacrificing one’s temporal interests to a lofty ideal.

Christianity. New Hyde Park, N.Y.: University Books

Christianity, p. 44.]

Christianity.] Raphael, as regent of the sun; Uriel,

Christianity.

christianity ::: n. --> The religion of Christians; the system of doctrines and precepts taught by Christ.
Practical conformity of one&



TERMS ANYWHERE

1909. Reissued as Origins of Christianity. New Hyde

1. For Comte Altruism meant the discipline and eradication of self-centered desire, and a life devoted to the good of others; more particularly, selfless love and devotion to Society. In brief, it involved the self-abnegating love of Catholic Christianity redirected towards Humanity conceived as an ideal unity. As thus understood, altruism involves a conscious opposition not only to egoism (whether understood as excessive or moderate self-love), but also to the formal or theological pursuit of charity and to the atomic or individualistic social philosophy of 17th-18th century liberalism, of utilitarianism, and of French Ideology.

Abraham ::: Patriarch recognized as the founder of monotheism, Abraham is respected in all three primary monotheistic faiths (Judaism, Christianity and Islam). Presumed to have lived sometime in the period 2000-1700 B.C. E., Abraham was the father of Ishmael (progenitor of Islam) through his wife Hagar, and of Isaac (progenitor of Judaism) by his wife Sarah. (See also Genesis 12-25 [Old Testament]; Galatians 3-4 [New Testament]; and Quran 37. 83-113, 2.124-140).

A contrast has been made between the teachings of Paul and of Peter — respectively often referred to as the Pauline and Petrine theology — as representing pagan and Jewish Christianity respectively; and these two have been the occasion of controversies and attempted reconcilements.

Advent [from Latin ad to, toward + venio to come] Arrival; in Christianity a period of some four weeks preceding Christmas.

Alb ::: A liturgical vestment worn in some sects of Christianity. It is a long white tunic. Other vestments (like the chasuble) are put on over the alb for special occassions by clergy.

Albert, Thomas. Manufacture of Christianity. Philadel¬

Albigenses A sect arising in Southern France in the 11th century and opposed by the Roman Catholic Church, which exterminated it in the 13th century. It had affinity with the Catharists and also more distantly with the Paulicians, derivatives of the Eastern Church. The doctrines and the pedigree of the Albigenses show it to be a distant offshoot of Manichaeism, so long the formidable rival of orthodox Christianity in Europe and Asia. There was the characteristic Manichaean dualism and belief in some form of transmigration and metempsychosis. There was, according to some, the Docetic view of Christ — that his body was a mere appearance, his spirit being the reality. The authority of the Old Testament was not admitted as inspired.

Alexandrian-Roman Period. Fed by Eastern ideas, later Alexandrian-Roman thought was essentially idealistic. In neo-Pythagorean, Neo-Platonic and Alexandrian Christianity, matter was identified with non-being, and placed at the metaphysical antipodes with respect to God or the Absolute. Early Christianity identified itself with the personalistic theism of Israel, Pauline spiritualism, and the neo-Platonism of Alexandria.

Amal: “Along with the word ‘cross’ in the next line, this phrase suggests Jesus Christ who is traditionally called thus. But Sri Aurobindo’s context is wider than Christianity’s—as becomes clear with the slightly later line: ‘I am Prometheus under the vulture’s beak’.”

Ambedkar, Bhimrao Ramji. (1891-1956). Indian reformer and Buddhist convert, who advocated for reform of the caste system and improvements in the social treatment of "untouchables" or the Dalit community during the independence period. The fourteenth child of a Dalit caste family in the Indian state of Maharashtra, Ambedkar was one of the few members of his caste to receive a secondary-school education and went on to study in New York and London, eventually receiving a doctorate from Columbia University. Upon his return to India, he worked both for Indian independence from Britain and for the social and political rights of the untouchables. After independence, he served in Nehru's government, chairing the committee that drafted the constitution. Seeking a religious identity for Dalits that would free them from the caste prejudice of Hinduism, he settled on Buddhism after considering also Islam, Christianity, and Sikhism. Buddhism had been extinct in India for centuries, but Ambedkar's research led him to conclude that the Dalits were descendants of Buddhists who had been persecuted by Hindus for their beliefs. In 1956, six weeks before his death, Ambedkar publicly converted to Buddhism and then led an audience of 380,000 in taking refuge in the three jewels (RATNATRAYA) and in accepting the five precepts (PANCAsĪLA) of lay Buddhists. Eventually, millions of other Indians, mostly from low-caste and outcaste groups, followed his example. In his writings, Ambedkar portrayed the Buddha as a social reformer, whose teachings could provide India with the foundation for a more egalitarian society.

and Christianity. London: Sheldon Press, 1937.

and Early Christianity, p. 43.]

and Early Christianity, p. 43, who claims the name

and Rivals of Christianity II, p. 70.] In the canvases

Angel ::: (Gre. Messenger). Came to be used specifically for a class of extra human ("spiritual") beings, both good (usually) and bad (“demons”) who become involved in human affairs; common to Judaism, Christianity and Islam. A leader or special functionary among the angels is sometimes called an "archangel" (e.g., Michael, Gabriel).

Angel(s) [from Greek angelos messenger, envoy, announcer] In the Old Testament, used to translate the Hebrew mal’ach (messenger); in Christian, Jewish, Moslem, and some other theologies, either a messenger of God or one of various hierarchies of celestial beings, the idea of a guardian angel also being familiar. However, the idea of hosts of formative powers, rectores mundi, or other beings between divinity and man, serving as intermediaries or means of communication between man and high spiritual entities has largely vanished from popular Christianity, though Angels, Principalities, and Powers are mentioned by Paul, and the archangel Michael by Jude; while the influence of the Gnostics, Neoplatonists, and Jews on early Christianity gives a wider meaning to the term.

Angels of the Presence In Christianity, the seven Virtues or personified attributes of God, which were created by him and became the archangels. Equivalent to the seven manus produced by the ten prajapatis created by Brahma. “As it is the Lipika who project into objectivity from the passive Universal Mind the ideal plan of the universe, upon which the ‘Builders’ reconstruct the Kosmos after every Pralaya, it is they who stand parallel to the Seven Angels of the Presence, whom the Christians recognise in the Seven ‘Planetary Spirits’ or the ‘Spirits of the Stars;’ for thus it is they who are the direct amanuenses of the Eternal Ideation” or of Plato’s divine thought (SD 1:104) (SD 2:237, 573).

Anglo-Catholic Philosophy: Anglo-Catholicism is the name frequently used to describe the Church of England and her sister communions, including the Episcopal Church in America. As a religious system, it may be described as the maintenance of the traditional credal, ethical and sacramental position of Catholic Christianity, with insistence on the incorporation into that general position of the new truth of philosophy, science and other fields of study and experience. Historically, the Anglo-Catholic divines (as in Hooker and the Caroline writers) took over the general Platonic-Aristotelian philosophy of the schools; their stress, however, was more on the Platonic than the Aristotelian side: "Platonism", Dr. Inge has said, "is the loving mother-nurse of Anglicanism." Statements of this position, modified by a significant agnosticism concerning areas into which reason (it is said) cannot penetrate, may be found collected in Anglicanism (edited by More and Cross). A certain empiricism has always marked Anglo-Catholic theological and philosophical speculation; this is brought out in recent writing by Taylor (Faith of a Moralist), the writers in Lux Mundi (edited by Gore) and its modern successor Essays Catholic and Critical.

Annunciation Announcing; in Christianity, the foretelling to Mary of Jesus’ birth by the angel Gabriel, celebrated on Lady Day, March 25. The fire and lamps used in this ceremony apparently point back to the marriage of Vulcan with Venus, to the Magi watching over the sacred fire in the East, to the Vestal Virgins in the West, and to the marriage of Father Sun with Mother Nature.

Anthropomorphism ::: (Gre.) Term for the attribution of human behavior or characteristics to inanimate objects, animals, natural phenomena or deity. With regard to deity, anthropomorphism became a point of theological discussion in Judaism, Christianity and Islam.(E.g. "The Lord has made bare his holy arm in the eyes of all the nations; and all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God". [Isaiah 52.10]).

antichristianism ::: n. --> Alt. of Antichristianity

antichristianity ::: n. --> Opposition or contrariety to the Christian religion.

Apocalypse ::: (Gre. Revelation) Usually used to refer to a violent end. In both Christianity and Judaism, the apocalypse is thought to come before the coming of the Messiah.

apologist ::: n. --> One who makes an apology; one who speaks or writes in defense of a faith, a cause, or an institution; especially, one who argues in defense of Christianity.

apology ::: n. --> Something said or written in defense or justification of what appears to others wrong, or of what may be liable to disapprobation; justification; as, Tertullian&

apostasy ::: n. --> An abandonment of what one has voluntarily professed; a total desertion of departure from one&

Aristotle ::: Aristotle was a famous Greek thinker (died in 322 B.C.E.), a student of Plato, whose interpretation of what constitutes reality (metaphysics, ontology) and of how reality is organized was widely influential both in ancient times and in the “medieval” period of Judaism and Christianity, influenced by the “classical” period of Islamic learning. See e.g., scholasticism.

As a free creature, man is responsible for his freely performed actions. Man knows the basic principles of the Divine Law through the natural use of his intellect. Thus known, the Divine Law is called the natural moral law. It is immutable. Suarez' ethics provides a rational justification for most of the accepted moral standards of Christianity. The individual has rights and duties in regard to other creatures and himself; he has duties toward his Creator. The political theory of Suarez is most noted for its opposition to the divine right of kings. He held that a ruler derives his authority immediately from the consent of the people, ultimately from God. Suarez maintained that there are several forms of political organizations in which social justice may be secured.

As with so many cosmic powers and their symbols, these other gods have been relegated in Judaism and Christianity to the position of evil powers hostile to mankind, to be fled from instead of revered, or ruled as obedient helpers when inferior to the human status. The whole idea of the Adversary or Devil is enshrined in the word daemones. But fallen angels, represented as rebels against God, were merely performing their natural duty in evolution by forming the lower worlds. As personification of evil, the word can only be truthfully applied to those beings that man himself, by his evil thoughts and passions, has generated to hover in the lowest strata of the astral light or haunt kama-loka. However, the ancient Greeks and Romans themselves drew a sharp distinction between the daemones of more ethereal type, truly spiritual beings, and the lower earth-haunting daemones who were distinctly denizens of the lower astral and physical realms, and which the ancients dreaded — with reason — far more than modern Christians have ever done. See also AGATHODAEMON

A symbolic crucifixion takes place in every incarnating divinity when it takes up terrestrial life. The myth of crucifixion symbolically has therefore become by custom significant of world saviors in general, as signifying those who lay down the personal life in order to arise a regenerated and impersonal savior. While the crucifixion mythos has become the central emblem of Christianity, the general idea of crucifixion as a symbol of regeneration is connected with many religious systems. Certainly Paul uses the word in the mystic and symbolic sense, as taking place interiorly in the individual, rather than referring to the story of Jesus’ crucifixion. See also CROSS.

Aufklärung: In general, this German word and its English equivalent Enlightenment denote the self-emancipation of man from mere authority, prejudice, convention and tradition, with an insistence on freer thinking about problems uncritically referred to these other agencies. According to Kant's famous definition "Enlightenment is the liberation of man from his self-caused state of minority, which is the incapacity of using one's understanding without the direction of another. This state of minority is caused when its source lies not in the lack of understanding, but in the lack of determination and courage to use it without the assistance of another" (Was ist Aufklärung? 1784). In its historical perspective, the Aufklärung refers to the cultural atmosphere and contrlbutions of the 18th century, especially in Germany, France and England [which affected also American thought with B. Franklin, T. Paine and the leaders of the Revolution]. It crystallized tendencies emphasized by the Renaissance, and quickened by modern scepticism and empiricism, and by the great scientific discoveries of the 17th century. This movement, which was represented by men of varying tendencies, gave an impetus to general learning, a more popular philosophy, empirical science, scriptural criticism, social and political thought. More especially, the word Aufklärung is applied to the German contributions to 18th century culture. In philosophy, its principal representatives are G. E. Lessing (1729-81) who believed in free speech and in a methodical criticism of religion, without being a free-thinker; H. S. Reimarus (1694-1768) who expounded a naturalistic philosophy and denied the supernatural origin of Christianity; Moses Mendelssohn (1729-86) who endeavoured to mitigate prejudices and developed a popular common-sense philosophy; Chr. Wolff (1679-1754), J. A. Eberhard (1739-1809) who followed the Leibnizian rationalism and criticized unsuccessfully Kant and Fichte; and J. G. Herder (1744-1803) who was best as an interpreter of others, but whose intuitional suggestions have borne fruit in the organic correlation of the sciences, and in questions of language in relation to human nature and to national character. The works of Kant and Goethe mark the culmination of the German Enlightenment. Cf. J. G. Hibben, Philosophy of the Enlightenment, 1910. --T.G. Augustinianism: The thought of St. Augustine of Hippo, and of his followers. Born in 354 at Tagaste in N. Africa, A. studied rhetoric in Carthage, taught that subject there and in Rome and Milan. Attracted successively to Manicheanism, Scepticism, and Neo-Platontsm, A. eventually found intellectual and moral peace with his conversion to Christianity in his thirty-fourth year. Returning to Africa, he established numerous monasteries, became a priest in 391, Bishop of Hippo in 395. Augustine wrote much: On Free Choice, Confessions, Literal Commentary on Genesis, On the Trinity, and City of God, are his most noted works. He died in 430.   St. Augustine's characteristic method, an inward empiricism which has little in common with later variants, starts from things without, proceeds within to the self, and moves upwards to God. These three poles of the Augustinian dialectic are polarized by his doctrine of moderate illuminism. An ontological illumination is required to explain the metaphysical structure of things. The truth of judgment demands a noetic illumination. A moral illumination is necessary in the order of willing; and so, too, an lllumination of art in the aesthetic order. Other illuminations which transcend the natural order do not come within the scope of philosophy; they provide the wisdoms of theology and mysticism. Every being is illuminated ontologically by number, form, unity and its derivatives, and order. A thing is what it is, in so far as it is more or less flooded by the light of these ontological constituents.   Sensation is necessary in order to know material substances. There is certainly an action of the external object on the body and a corresponding passion of the body, but, as the soul is superior to the body and can suffer nothing from its inferior, sensation must be an action, not a passion, of the soul. Sensation takes place only when the observing soul, dynamically on guard throughout the body, is vitally attentive to the changes suffered by the body. However, an adequate basis for the knowledge of intellectual truth is not found in sensation alone. In order to know, for example, that a body is multiple, the idea of unity must be present already, otherwise its multiplicity could not be recognized. If numbers are not drawn in by the bodily senses which perceive only the contingent and passing, is the mind the source of the unchanging and necessary truth of numbers? The mind of man is also contingent and mutable, and cannot give what it does not possess. As ideas are not innate, nor remembered from a previous existence of the soul, they can be accounted for only by an immutable source higher than the soul. In so far as man is endowed with an intellect, he is a being naturally illuminated by God, Who may be compared to an intelligible sun. The human intellect does not create the laws of thought; it finds them and submits to them. The immediate intuition of these normative rules does not carry any content, thus any trace of ontologism is avoided.   Things have forms because they have numbers, and they have being in so far as they possess form. The sufficient explanation of all formable, and hence changeable, things is an immutable and eternal form which is unrestricted in time and space. The forms or ideas of all things actually existing in the world are in the things themselves (as rationes seminales) and in the Divine Mind (as rationes aeternae). Nothing could exist without unity, for to be is no other than to be one. There is a unity proper to each level of being, a unity of the material individual and species, of the soul, and of that union of souls in the love of the same good, which union constitutes the city. Order, also, is ontologically imbibed by all beings. To tend to being is to tend to order; order secures being, disorder leads to non-being. Order is the distribution which allots things equal and unequal each to its own place and integrates an ensemble of parts in accordance with an end. Hence, peace is defined as the tranquillity of order. Just as things have their being from their forms, the order of parts, and their numerical relations, so too their beauty is not something superadded, but the shining out of all their intelligible co-ingredients.   S. Aurelii Augustini, Opera Omnia, Migne, PL 32-47; (a critical edition of some works will be found in the Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, Vienna). Gilson, E., Introd. a l'etude de s. Augustin, (Paris, 1931) contains very good bibliography up to 1927, pp. 309-331. Pope, H., St. Augustine of Hippo, (London, 1937). Chapman, E., St. Augustine's Philos. of Beauty, (N. Y., 1939). Figgis, J. N., The Political Aspects of St. Augustine's "City of God", (London, 1921). --E.C. Authenticity: In a general sense, genuineness, truth according to its title. It involves sometimes a direct and personal characteristic (Whitehead speaks of "authentic feelings").   This word also refers to problems of fundamental criticism involving title, tradition, authorship and evidence. These problems are vital in theology, and basic in scholarship with regard to the interpretation of texts and doctrines. --T.G. Authoritarianism: That theory of knowledge which maintains that the truth of any proposition is determined by the fact of its having been asserted by a certain esteemed individual or group of individuals. Cf. H. Newman, Grammar of Assent; C. S. Peirce, "Fixation of Belief," in Chance, Love and Logic, ed. M. R. Cohen. --A.C.B. Autistic thinking: Absorption in fanciful or wishful thinking without proper control by objective or factual material; day dreaming; undisciplined imagination. --A.C.B. Automaton Theory: Theory that a living organism may be considered a mere machine. See Automatism. Automatism: (Gr. automatos, self-moving) (a) In metaphysics: Theory that animal and human organisms are automata, that is to say, are machines governed by the laws of physics and mechanics. Automatism, as propounded by Descartes, considered the lower animals to be pure automata (Letter to Henry More, 1649) and man a machine controlled by a rational soul (Treatise on Man). Pure automatism for man as well as animals is advocated by La Mettrie (Man, a Machine, 1748). During the Nineteenth century, automatism, combined with epiphenomenalism, was advanced by Hodgson, Huxley and Clifford. (Cf. W. James, The Principles of Psychology, Vol. I, ch. V.) Behaviorism, of the extreme sort, is the most recent version of automatism (See Behaviorism).   (b) In psychology: Psychological automatism is the performance of apparently purposeful actions, like automatic writing without the superintendence of the conscious mind. L. C. Rosenfield, From Beast Machine to Man Machine, N. Y., 1941. --L.W. Automatism, Conscious: The automatism of Hodgson, Huxley, and Clifford which considers man a machine to which mind or consciousness is superadded; the mind of man is, however, causally ineffectual. See Automatism; Epiphenomenalism. --L.W. Autonomy: (Gr. autonomia, independence) Freedom consisting in self-determination and independence of all external constraint. See Freedom. Kant defines autonomy of the will as subjection of the will to its own law, the categorical imperative, in contrast to heteronomy, its subjection to a law or end outside the rational will. (Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals, § 2.) --L.W. Autonomy of ethics: A doctrine, usually propounded by intuitionists, that ethics is not a part of, and cannot be derived from, either metaphysics or any of the natural or social sciences. See Intuitionism, Metaphysical ethics, Naturalistic ethics. --W.K.F. Autonomy of the will: (in Kant's ethics) The freedom of the rational will to legislate to itself, which constitutes the basis for the autonomy of the moral law. --P.A.S. Autonymy: In the terminology introduced by Carnap, a word (phrase, symbol, expression) is autonymous if it is used as a name for itself --for the geometric shape, sound, etc. which it exemplifies, or for the word as a historical and grammatical unit. Autonymy is thus the same as the Scholastic suppositio matertalis (q. v.), although the viewpoint is different. --A.C. Autotelic: (from Gr. autos, self, and telos, end) Said of any absorbing activity engaged in for its own sake (cf. German Selbstzweck), such as higher mathematics, chess, etc. In aesthetics, applied to creative art and play which lack any conscious reference to the accomplishment of something useful. In the view of some, it may constitute something beneficent in itself of which the person following his art impulse (q.v.) or playing is unaware, thus approaching a heterotelic (q.v.) conception. --K.F.L. Avenarius, Richard: (1843-1896) German philosopher who expressed his thought in an elaborate and novel terminology in the hope of constructing a symbolic language for philosophy, like that of mathematics --the consequence of his Spinoza studies. As the most influential apostle of pure experience, the posltivistic motive reaches in him an extreme position. Insisting on the biologic and economic function of thought, he thought the true method of science is to cure speculative excesses by a return to pure experience devoid of all assumptions. Philosophy is the scientific effort to exclude from knowledge all ideas not included in the given. Its task is to expel all extraneous elements in the given. His uncritical use of the category of the given and the nominalistic view that logical relations are created rather than discovered by thought, leads him to banish not only animism but also all of the categories, substance, causality, etc., as inventions of the mind. Explaining the evolution and devolution of the problematization and deproblematization of numerous ideas, and aiming to give the natural history of problems, Avenarius sought to show physiologically, psychologically and historically under what conditions they emerge, are challenged and are solved. He hypothesized a System C, a bodily and central nervous system upon which consciousness depends. R-values are the stimuli received from the world of objects. E-values are the statements of experience. The brain changes that continually oscillate about an ideal point of balance are termed Vitalerhaltungsmaximum. The E-values are differentiated into elements, to which the sense-perceptions or the content of experience belong, and characters, to which belongs everything which psychology describes as feelings and attitudes. Avenarius describes in symbolic form a series of states from balance to balance, termed vital series, all describing a series of changes in System C. Inequalities in the vital balance give rise to vital differences. According to his theory there are two vital series. It assumes a series of brain changes because parallel series of conscious states can be observed. The independent vital series are physical, and the dependent vital series are psychological. The two together are practically covariants. In the case of a process as a dependent vital series three stages can be noted: first, the appearance of the problem, expressed as strain, restlessness, desire, fear, doubt, pain, repentance, delusion; the second, the continued effort and struggle to solve the problem; and finally, the appearance of the solution, characterized by abating anxiety, a feeling of triumph and enjoyment.   Corresponding to these three stages of the dependent series are three stages of the independent series: the appearance of the vital difference and a departure from balance in the System C, the continuance with an approximate vital difference, and lastly, the reduction of the vital difference to zero, the return to stability. By making room for dependent and independent experiences, he showed that physics regards experience as independent of the experiencing indlvidual, and psychology views experience as dependent upon the individual. He greatly influenced Mach and James (q.v.). See Avenarius, Empirio-criticism, Experience, pure. Main works: Kritik der reinen Erfahrung; Der menschliche Weltbegriff. --H.H. Averroes: (Mohammed ibn Roshd) Known to the Scholastics as The Commentator, and mentioned as the author of il gran commento by Dante (Inf. IV. 68) he was born 1126 at Cordova (Spain), studied theology, law, medicine, mathematics, and philosophy, became after having been judge in Sevilla and Cordova, physician to the khalifah Jaqub Jusuf, and charged with writing a commentary on the works of Aristotle. Al-mansur, Jusuf's successor, deprived him of his place because of accusations of unorthodoxy. He died 1198 in Morocco. Averroes is not so much an original philosopher as the author of a minute commentary on the whole works of Aristotle. His procedure was imitated later by Aquinas. In his interpretation of Aristotelian metaphysics Averroes teaches the coeternity of a universe created ex nihilo. This doctrine formed together with the notion of a numerical unity of the active intellect became one of the controversial points in the discussions between the followers of Albert-Thomas and the Latin Averroists. Averroes assumed that man possesses only a disposition for receiving the intellect coming from without; he identifies this disposition with the possible intellect which thus is not truly intellectual by nature. The notion of one intellect common to all men does away with the doctrine of personal immortality. Another doctrine which probably was emphasized more by the Latin Averroists (and by the adversaries among Averroes' contemporaries) is the famous statement about "two-fold truth", viz. that a proposition may be theologically true and philosophically false and vice versa. Averroes taught that religion expresses the (higher) philosophical truth by means of religious imagery; the "two-truth notion" came apparently into the Latin text through a misinterpretation on the part of the translators. The works of Averroes were one of the main sources of medieval Aristotelianlsm, before and even after the original texts had been translated. The interpretation the Latin Averroists found in their texts of the "Commentator" spread in spite of opposition and condemnation. See Averroism, Latin. Averroes, Opera, Venetiis, 1553. M. Horten, Die Metaphysik des Averroes, 1912. P. Mandonnet, Siger de Brabant et l'Averroisme Latin, 2d ed., Louvain, 1911. --R.A. Averroism, Latin: The commentaries on Aristotle written by Averroes (Ibn Roshd) in the 12th century became known to the Western scholars in translations by Michael Scottus, Hermannus Alemannus, and others at the beginning of the 13th century. Many works of Aristotle were also known first by such translations from Arabian texts, though there existed translations from the Greek originals at the same time (Grabmann). The Averroistic interpretation of Aristotle was held to be the true one by many; but already Albert the Great pointed out several notions which he felt to be incompatible with the principles of Christian philosophy, although he relied for the rest on the "Commentator" and apparently hardly used any other text. Aquinas, basing his studies mostly on a translation from the Greek texts, procured for him by William of Moerbecke, criticized the Averroistic interpretation in many points. But the teachings of the Commentator became the foundation for a whole school of philosophers, represented first by the Faculty of Arts at Paris. The most prominent of these scholars was Siger of Brabant. The philosophy of these men was condemned on March 7th, 1277 by Stephen Tempier, Bishop of Paris, after a first condemnation of Aristotelianism in 1210 had gradually come to be neglected. The 219 theses condemned in 1277, however, contain also some of Aquinas which later were generally recognized an orthodox. The Averroistic propositions which aroused the criticism of the ecclesiastic authorities and which had been opposed with great energy by Albert and Thomas refer mostly to the following points: The co-eternity of the created word; the numerical identity of the intellect in all men, the so-called two-fold-truth theory stating that a proposition may be philosophically true although theologically false. Regarding the first point Thomas argued that there is no philosophical proof, either for the co-eternity or against it; creation is an article of faith. The unity of intellect was rejected as incompatible with the true notion of person and with personal immortality. It is doubtful whether Averroes himself held the two-truths theory; it was, however, taught by the Latin Averroists who, notwithstanding the opposition of the Church and the Thomistic philosophers, gained a great influence and soon dominated many universities, especially in Italy. Thomas and his followers were convinced that they interpreted Aristotle correctly and that the Averroists were wrong; one has, however, to admit that certain passages in Aristotle allow for the Averroistic interpretation, especially in regard to the theory of intellect.   Lit.: P. Mandonnet, Siger de Brabant et l'Averroisme Latin au XIIIe Siecle, 2d. ed. Louvain, 1911; M. Grabmann, Forschungen über die lateinischen Aristotelesübersetzungen des XIII. Jahrhunderts, Münster 1916 (Beitr. z. Gesch. Phil. d. MA. Vol. 17, H. 5-6). --R.A. Avesta: See Zendavesta. Avicehron: (or Avencebrol, Salomon ibn Gabirol) The first Jewish philosopher in Spain, born in Malaga 1020, died about 1070, poet, philosopher, and moralist. His main work, Fons vitae, became influential and was much quoted by the Scholastics. It has been preserved only in the Latin translation by Gundissalinus. His doctrine of a spiritual substance individualizing also the pure spirits or separate forms was opposed by Aquinas already in his first treatise De ente, but found favor with the medieval Augustinians also later in the 13th century. He also teaches the necessity of a mediator between God and the created world; such a mediator he finds in the Divine Will proceeding from God and creating, conserving, and moving the world. His cosmogony shows a definitely Neo-Platonic shade and assumes a series of emanations. Cl. Baeumker, Avencebrolis Fons vitae. Beitr. z. Gesch. d. Philos. d. MA. 1892-1895, Vol. I. Joh. Wittman, Die Stellung des hl. Thomas von Aquino zu Avencebrol, ibid. 1900. Vol. III. --R.A. Avicenna: (Abu Ali al Hosain ibn Abdallah ibn Sina) Born 980 in the country of Bocchara, began to write in young years, left more than 100 works, taught in Ispahan, was physician to several Persian princes, and died at Hamadan in 1037. His fame as physician survived his influence as philosopher in the Occident. His medical works were printed still in the 17th century. His philosophy is contained in 18 vols. of a comprehensive encyclopedia, following the tradition of Al Kindi and Al Farabi. Logic, Physics, Mathematics and Metaphysics form the parts of this work. His philosophy is Aristotelian with noticeable Neo-Platonic influences. His doctrine of the universal existing ante res in God, in rebus as the universal nature of the particulars, and post res in the human mind by way of abstraction became a fundamental thesis of medieval Aristotelianism. He sharply distinguished between the logical and the ontological universal, denying to the latter the true nature of form in the composite. The principle of individuation is matter, eternally existent. Latin translations attributed to Avicenna the notion that existence is an accident to essence (see e.g. Guilelmus Parisiensis, De Universo). The process adopted by Avicenna was one of paraphrasis of the Aristotelian texts with many original thoughts interspersed. His works were translated into Latin by Dominicus Gundissalinus (Gondisalvi) with the assistance of Avendeath ibn Daud. This translation started, when it became more generally known, the "revival of Aristotle" at the end of the 12th and the beginning of the 13th century. Albert the Great and Aquinas professed, notwithstanding their critical attitude, a great admiration for Avicenna whom the Arabs used to call the "third Aristotle". But in the Orient, Avicenna's influence declined soon, overcome by the opposition of the orthodox theologians. Avicenna, Opera, Venetiis, 1495; l508; 1546. M. Horten, Das Buch der Genesung der Seele, eine philosophische Enzyklopaedie Avicenna's; XIII. Teil: Die Metaphysik. Halle a. S. 1907-1909. R. de Vaux, Notes et textes sur l'Avicennisme Latin, Bibl. Thomiste XX, Paris, 1934. --R.A. Avidya: (Skr.) Nescience; ignorance; the state of mind unaware of true reality; an equivalent of maya (q.v.); also a condition of pure awareness prior to the universal process of evolution through gradual differentiation into the elements and factors of knowledge. --K.F.L. Avyakta: (Skr.) "Unmanifest", descriptive of or standing for brahman (q.v.) in one of its or "his" aspects, symbolizing the superabundance of the creative principle, or designating the condition of the universe not yet become phenomenal (aja, unborn). --K.F.L. Awareness: Consciousness considered in its aspect of act; an act of attentive awareness such as the sensing of a color patch or the feeling of pain is distinguished from the content attended to, the sensed color patch, the felt pain. The psychologlcal theory of intentional act was advanced by F. Brentano (Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkte) and received its epistemological development by Meinong, Husserl, Moore, Laird and Broad. See Intentionalism. --L.W. Axiological: (Ger. axiologisch) In Husserl: Of or pertaining to value or theory of value (the latter term understood as including disvalue and value-indifference). --D.C. Axiological ethics: Any ethics which makes the theory of obligation entirely dependent on the theory of value, by making the determination of the rightness of an action wholly dependent on a consideration of the value or goodness of something, e.g. the action itself, its motive, or its consequences, actual or probable. Opposed to deontological ethics. See also teleological ethics. --W.K.F. Axiologic Realism: In metaphysics, theory that value as well as logic, qualities as well as relations, have their being and exist external to the mind and independently of it. Applicable to the philosophy of many though not all realists in the history of philosophy, from Plato to G. E. Moore, A. N. Whitehead, and N, Hartmann. --J.K.F. Axiology: (Gr. axios, of like value, worthy, and logos, account, reason, theory). Modern term for theory of value (the desired, preferred, good), investigation of its nature, criteria, and metaphysical status. Had its rise in Plato's theory of Forms or Ideas (Idea of the Good); was developed in Aristotle's Organon, Ethics, Poetics, and Metaphysics (Book Lambda). Stoics and Epicureans investigated the summum bonum. Christian philosophy (St. Thomas) built on Aristotle's identification of highest value with final cause in God as "a living being, eternal, most good."   In modern thought, apart from scholasticism and the system of Spinoza (Ethica, 1677), in which values are metaphysically grounded, the various values were investigated in separate sciences, until Kant's Critiques, in which the relations of knowledge to moral, aesthetic, and religious values were examined. In Hegel's idealism, morality, art, religion, and philosophy were made the capstone of his dialectic. R. H. Lotze "sought in that which should be the ground of that which is" (Metaphysik, 1879). Nineteenth century evolutionary theory, anthropology, sociology, psychology, and economics subjected value experience to empirical analysis, and stress was again laid on the diversity and relativity of value phenomena rather than on their unity and metaphysical nature. F. Nietzsche's Also Sprach Zarathustra (1883-1885) and Zur Genealogie der Moral (1887) aroused new interest in the nature of value. F. Brentano, Vom Ursprung sittlicher Erkenntnis (1889), identified value with love.   In the twentieth century the term axiology was apparently first applied by Paul Lapie (Logique de la volonte, 1902) and E. von Hartmann (Grundriss der Axiologie, 1908). Stimulated by Ehrenfels (System der Werttheorie, 1897), Meinong (Psychologisch-ethische Untersuchungen zur Werttheorie, 1894-1899), and Simmel (Philosophie des Geldes, 1900). W. M. Urban wrote the first systematic treatment of axiology in English (Valuation, 1909), phenomenological in method under J. M. Baldwin's influence. Meanwhile H. Münsterberg wrote a neo-Fichtean system of values (The Eternal Values, 1909).   Among important recent contributions are: B. Bosanquet, The Principle of Individuality and Value (1912), a free reinterpretation of Hegelianism; W. R. Sorley, Moral Values and the Idea of God (1918, 1921), defending a metaphysical theism; S. Alexander, Space, Time, and Deity (1920), realistic and naturalistic; N. Hartmann, Ethik (1926), detailed analysis of types and laws of value; R. B. Perry's magnum opus, General Theory of Value (1926), "its meaning and basic principles construed in terms of interest"; and J. Laird, The Idea of Value (1929), noteworthy for historical exposition. A naturalistic theory has been developed by J. Dewey (Theory of Valuation, 1939), for which "not only is science itself a value . . . but it is the supreme means of the valid determination of all valuations." A. J. Ayer, Language, Truth and Logic (1936) expounds the view of logical positivism that value is "nonsense." J. Hessen, Wertphilosophie (1937), provides an account of recent German axiology from a neo-scholastic standpoint.   The problems of axiology fall into four main groups, namely, those concerning (1) the nature of value, (2) the types of value, (3) the criterion of value, and (4) the metaphysical status of value.   (1) The nature of value experience. Is valuation fulfillment of desire (voluntarism: Spinoza, Ehrenfels), pleasure (hedonism: Epicurus, Bentham, Meinong), interest (Perry), preference (Martineau), pure rational will (formalism: Stoics, Kant, Royce), apprehension of tertiary qualities (Santayana), synoptic experience of the unity of personality (personalism: T. H. Green, Bowne), any experience that contributes to enhanced life (evolutionism: Nietzsche), or "the relation of things as means to the end or consequence actually reached" (pragmatism, instrumentalism: Dewey).   (2) The types of value. Most axiologists distinguish between intrinsic (consummatory) values (ends), prized for their own sake, and instrumental (contributory) values (means), which are causes (whether as economic goods or as natural events) of intrinsic values. Most intrinsic values are also instrumental to further value experience; some instrumental values are neutral or even disvaluable intrinsically. Commonly recognized as intrinsic values are the (morally) good, the true, the beautiful, and the holy. Values of play, of work, of association, and of bodily well-being are also acknowledged. Some (with Montague) question whether the true is properly to be regarded as a value, since some truth is disvaluable, some neutral; but love of truth, regardless of consequences, seems to establish the value of truth. There is disagreement about whether the holy (religious value) is a unique type (Schleiermacher, Otto), or an attitude toward other values (Kant, Höffding), or a combination of the two (Hocking). There is also disagreement about whether the variety of values is irreducible (pluralism) or whether all values are rationally related in a hierarchy or system (Plato, Hegel, Sorley), in which values interpenetrate or coalesce into a total experience.   (3) The criterion of value. The standard for testing values is influenced by both psychological and logical theory. Hedonists find the standard in the quantity of pleasure derived by the individual (Aristippus) or society (Bentham). Intuitionists appeal to an ultimate insight into preference (Martineau, Brentano). Some idealists recognize an objective system of rational norms or ideals as criterion (Plato, Windelband), while others lay more stress on rational wholeness and coherence (Hegel, Bosanquet, Paton) or inclusiveness (T. H. Green). Naturalists find biological survival or adjustment (Dewey) to be the standard. Despite differences, there is much in common in the results of the application of these criteria.   (4) The metaphysical status of value. What is the relation of values to the facts investigated by natural science (Koehler), of Sein to Sollen (Lotze, Rickert), of human experience of value to reality independent of man (Hegel, Pringle-Pattlson, Spaulding)? There are three main answers:   subjectivism (value is entirely dependent on and relative to human experience of it: so most hedonists, naturalists, positivists);   logical objectivism (values are logical essences or subsistences, independent of their being known, yet with no existential status or action in reality);   metaphysical objectivism (values   --or norms or ideals   --are integral, objective, and active constituents of the metaphysically real: so theists, absolutists, and certain realists and naturalists like S. Alexander and Wieman). --E.S.B. Axiom: See Mathematics. Axiomatic method: That method of constructing a deductive system consisting of deducing by specified rules all statements of the system save a given few from those given few, which are regarded as axioms or postulates of the system. See Mathematics. --C.A.B. Ayam atma brahma: (Skr.) "This self is brahman", famous quotation from Brhadaranyaka Upanishad 2.5.19, one of many alluding to the central theme of the Upanishads, i.e., the identity of the human and divine or cosmic. --K.F.L.

Baptism ::: In earliest Christianity, the rite of ritual immersion in water that initiated a person into the Christian church. The roots of baptism can be found in the Jewish purification bath (Mikvah). Very soon, pouring or sprinkling with water came into use in some churches, and the practice of baptizing infants. (See also initiation and circumcision).

Barlaam and Josaphat. A Christian saint's tale that contains substantial elements drawn from the life of the Buddha. The story tells the tale of the Christian monk Barlaam's conversion of an Indian prince, Josaphat. (Josaphat is a corrupted transcription of the Sanskrit term BODHISATTVA, referring to GAUTAMA Buddha prior to his enlightenment.) The prince then undertakes the second Christian conversion of India, which, following the initial mission of the apostle Thomas, had reverted to paganism. For their efforts, both Barlaam and Josaphat were eventually listed by the Roman Catholic Church among the roster of saints (their festival day is November 27). There are obvious borrowings from Buddhist materials in the story of Josaphat's life. After the infant Josaphat's birth, for example, astrologers predict he either will become a powerful king or will embrace the Christian religion. To keep his son on the path to royalty, his pagan father has him ensconced in a fabulous palace so that he will not be exposed to Christianity. Josaphat grows dissatisfied with his virtual imprisonment, however, and the king eventually accedes to his son's request to leave the palace, where he comes across a sick man, a blind man, and an old man. He eventually meets the monk Barlaam, who instructs him using parables. Doctrines that exhibit possible parallels between Buddhism and Christianity, such as the emphasis on impermanence and the need to avoid worldly temptations, are a particular focus of Barlaam's teachings, and the account of the way of life followed by Barlaam and his colleagues has certain affinities with that of wandering Indian mendicants (sRAMAnA). By the late nineteenth century, the story of Barlaam and Josaphat was recognized to be a Christianized version of the life of the Buddha. The Greek version of the tale is attributed to "John the Monk," whom the Christian scholastic tradition assumed to be St. John of Damascus (c. 676-749). The tale was, however, first rendered into Greek from Georgian in the eleventh century, perhaps by Euthymius (d. 1028). The Georgian version, called the Balavariani, appears to be based on an Arabic version, KitAb Bilawhar wa BudhAsaf. The source of the Arabic version has not been identified, nor has the precise Buddhist text from which the Buddhist elements were drawn. After the Greek text was translated into Latin, the story was translated into many of the vernaculars of Europe, becoming one of the most popular saint's tales of the Middle Ages.

Barth, Karl: (1886-1968) Swiss theologian, widely influential among current social pessimists. God, he holds, is wholly other than man, not apprehensible by man's reason nor attainable by human endeavor. Christianity is a revealed and supernatural religion. Man must trust God's plan of salvation or be doomed to utter ruin. God is the sole judge and his judgments are beyond man's attainments. The Barthian position is called "crisis theology" (crisis, the Greek word for judgment) and "dialectical theology" (because of the emphasis upon the contradict on between God and this world). For a summary of Barth's position see The Knowledge of God and the Service of God (1939). -- V.F.

basilica ::: n. --> Originally, the place of a king; but afterward, an apartment provided in the houses of persons of importance, where assemblies were held for dispensing justice; and hence, any large hall used for this purpose.
A building used by the Romans as a place of public meeting, with court rooms, etc., attached.
A church building of the earlier centuries of Christianity, the plan of which was taken from the basilica of the


Christianity ::: A religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ, that emphasizes his role as redeemer and savior for all of humanity and his mediation of the role of divinity in the lives of people.

Christianity II, 150.] In Coptic texts the Virgin

Christianity II, 73.]

Christianity II, p. 52.]

Christianity, in addition to a great many so-called pagan ideas, also inherited and adapted Jewish sacrificial ideas, but the word became limited to the sacrifice of Christ for the sins of the world, and the sacrifice by man of his personal desires to the behests of his divinity. The true origin of the Christian atonement is in the Mysteries, when the hierophant offered his pure and sinless life as a sacrifice for his race to the gods whom he hoped to rejoin (IU 2:42). The general sense in theosophy is that of sacrificing one’s temporal interests to a lofty ideal.

Christianity. New Hyde Park, N.Y.: University Books

Christianity, p. 44.]

Christianity.] Raphael, as regent of the sun; Uriel,

Christianity.

(b) Deism is a term referring collectively and somewhat loosely to a group of religious thinkers of the 17th (and 18th) century in England and France who in attempting to justify religion, particularly Christianity, began by establishing the harmony of reason and revelation and developed what, in their time, was regarded as extreme views: assaults upon traditional supernaturalism, external revelation and dogmas implying mysteries, and concluding that revelation is superfluous, that reason is the touchstone to religious validity, that religion and ethics are natural phenomena, that the traditional God need hardly be appealed to since man finds in nature the necessary guides for moral and religious living. Not all deists, so called, went toward the more extreme expressions. Among the more important English deists were Toland, Collins, Tindal, Chubb and Morgan. Voltaire (1694-1778) influenced by English thought is the notable example of deism in France. On the whole the term represents a tendency rather than a school. -- V.F.

Bible ::: (Gre. Book). Designation normally used for Jewish scriptures (TaNaK = Protestant Christian “Old Testament”; plus the Apocrypha in classical Christianity) or Christian scriptures (“Old Testament” plus the Christian “New Testament”). (See also Septuagint).

Bible: The religious, sacred text of Christianity.

(b) In theology: Mediation is an important aspect of the doctrine and practice of many religions; particularly in Judaism and Christianity because of the Transcendency of God and the imperfection of men. Mediation is an important function of Christ; as the God-Man, He is eminently fitted to form the connecting link between God and creatures; His Incarnation is considered as supplying the means (i.e. media) of salvation to man. -- V.J.B.

bodaiji. (菩提寺). In Japanese, literally "BODHI temple"; also known as bodaiin, bodaisho, or DANNADERA. Bodaiji are temples that flourished mainly during the Edo period under the parish system (DANKA SEIDO) established by the Tokugawa shogunate. Parishioners, known as danka or DAN'OTSU, were required to register at these local temples. By establishing the danka and terauke ("temple support") system, the early Tokugawa shogunate hoped to eradicate the threat of Christianity as they had witnessed it in the Christian-led Shimabara Uprising of 1637. During the Edo period, the bodaiji primarily offered funerary and memorial services for the ancestors of its parishioners and in many cases came to function as cemeteries. Festivals for the dead such as bon (see YULANBEN) and higan were also held annually at these temples. Although the danka system was abolished during the Meiji period, the bodaiji continue to function as memorial temples in modern Japan.

brujo ::: Brujo Pronounced broo-hoe,this is Spanish for wizard. In Mexico, it often describes people who use folk magic, but due to the impact of Christianity, it has now developed a negative connotation for many people.

Bruno, Giordano: (1548-1600) A Dominican monk, eventually burned at the stake because of his opinions, he was converted from Christianity to a naturalistic and mystical pantheism by the Renaissance and particularly by the new Copernican astronomy. For him God and the universe were two names for one and the same Reality considered now as the creative essence of all things, now as the manifold of realized possibilities in which that essence manifests itself. As God, natura naturans, the Real is the whole, the one transcendent and ineffable. As the Real is the infinity of worlds and objects and events into which the whole divides itself and in which the one displays the infinite potentialities latent within it. The world-process is an ever-lasting going forth from itself and return into itself of the divine nature. The culmination of the outgoing creative activity is reached in the human mind, whose rational, philosophic search for the one in the many, simplicity in variety, and the changeless and eternal in the changing and temporal, marks also the reverse movement of the divine nature re-entering itself and regaining its primordial unity, homogeneity, and changelessness. The human soul, being as it were a kind of boomerang partaking of the ingrowing as well as the outgrowing process, may hope at death, not to be dissolved with the body, which is borne wholly upon the outgoing stream, but to return to God whence it came and to be reabsorbed in him. Cf. Rand, Modern Classical Philosophers, selection from Bruno's On Cause, The Principle and the One. G. Bruno: De l'infinito, universo e mundo, 1584; Spaccio della bestia trionfante, 1584; La cena delta ceneri, 1584; Deglieroici furori, 1585; De Monade, 1591. Cf. R. Honigswald, Giordano Bruno; G. Gentile, Bruno nella storia della cultura, 1907. -- B.A.G.F. Brunschvicg, Leon: (1869-) Professor of Philosophy at the Ecole Normale in Paris. Dismissed by the Nazis (1941). His philosophy is an idealistic synthesis of Spinoza, Kant and Schelling with special stress on the creative role of thought in cultural history as well as in sciences. Main works: Les etapes de la philosophie mathematique, 1913; L'experience humaine et la causalite physique, 1921; De la connaissance de soi, 1931. Buddhism: The multifarious forms, philosophic, religious, ethical and sociological, which the teachings of Gautama Buddha (q.v.) have produced. They centre around the main doctrine of the catvari arya-satyani(q.v.), the four noble truths, the last of which enables one in eight stages to reach nirvana (q.v.): Right views, right resolve, right speech, right conduct, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration. In the absence of contemporary records of Buddha and Buddhistic teachings, much value was formerly attached to the palm leaf manuscripts in Pali, a Sanskrit dialect; but recently a good deal of weight has been given also the Buddhist tradition in Sanskrit, Tibetan, and Chinese. Buddhism split into Mahayanism and Hinayanism (q.v.), each of which, but particularly the former, blossomed into a variety of teachings and practices. The main philosophic schools are the Madhyamaka or Sunyavada, Yogacara, Sautrantika, and Vaibhasika (q.v.). The basic assumptions in philosophy are a causal nexus in nature and man, of which the law of karma (q.v.) is but a specific application; the impermanence of things, and the illusory notion of substance and soul. Man is viewed realistically as a conglomeration of bodily forms (rupa), sensations (vedana), ideas (sanjna), latent karma (sanskaras), and consciousness (vijnana). The basic assumptions in ethics are the universality of suffering and the belief in a remedy. There is no god; each one may become a Buddha, an enlightened one. Also in art and esthetics Buddhism has contributed much throughout the Far East. -- K.F.L.

Buddhism ::: The teachings of Gautama the Buddha. Buddhism today is divided into two branches, the Northern andthe Southern. The Southern still retains the teachings of the "Buddha's brain," the "eye doctrine," that isto say his outer philosophy for the general world, sometimes inadequately called the doctrine of formsand ceremonies. The Northern still retains his "heart doctrine" -- that which is hid, the inner life, theheart-blood, of the religion: the doctrine of the inner heart of the teaching.The religious philosophy of the Buddha-Sakyamuni is incomparably nearer to the ancient wisdom, theesoteric philosophy of the archaic ages, than is Christianity. Its main fault today is that teachers later thanthe Buddha himself carried its doctrines too far along merely formal or exoteric lines; yet, with all that, tothis day it remains the purest and holiest of the exoteric religions on earth, and its teachings evenexoterically are true -- once they are properly understood. They need but the esoteric key in interpretationof them. As a matter of fact, the same may be said of all the great ancient world religions. Christianity,Brahmanism, Taoism, and others all have the same esoteric wisdom behind the outward veil of theexoteric formal faith.

  “But it is probable that the theosophic effort which Jesus attempted to initiate did not endure for fifty years after his death. Almost immediately after his passing, his disciples, all half-instructed, and in some cases almost illiterate, men . . . foisted upon the world of their time the forms and beliefs of early Christianity; and had there been nothing but these, that religious system had not lived another fifty years. But what happened? During the oncoming of the dark cycle after Jesus (which began as before said about the time of Pythagoras), the last few rays from the setting sun of the ancient light shone feebly in the minds of certain of these Christian Fathers, Clement of Alexandria for one, and Origen of Alexandria for another, and in one or two more like these, who had been initiated at least in the lowest of some of the then degenerate pagan Mysteries; and these men entered into the Christian Church and introduced some poor modicum of that light, . . . which they still cherished; and these rays they derived mainly from the Neo-pythagorean and the Neoplatonic system” (Fund 486-7).

But there is another trinity besides that of Father-Mother-Son, that of the one divine root and its dual aspects — a conception altogether lost in Christianity. The Christian God is at best but a Demiourgos or inferior creative power, and his necessary attributes clash irreconcilably with those pertaining to the supreme hierarch of our universe; but in many of the sayings of Jesus and in the Epistles of Paul is clear evidence of the true teachings as to the Trinity and the relation of the Father and the Son.

Byzantine Period ::: In 313 the Byzantine Empire was established in the eastern part of the Roman Empire after the emperor Constantine adopted Christianity. The Land of Israel had become a predominantly Christian country, and Jews were deprived of most of the little autonomy they still had.

Calendar ::: In general, Christianity operates on a "solar" calendar based on the relationship between the sun and the earth (365.25 days per year). The main Christian observances are Easter, Pentecost, and Christmas. The Islamic calendar is "lunar," based on the relationship of earth and moon (354 days in a year). Thus, every 100 solar years are equal to about 103 lunar years. Muslim calendric observances include fasting during the month of Ramadan, followed by the feast of fast breaking (id al-fitr), and the time for pilgrimage to Mecca (hajj) and associated practices such as the Feast of Sacrifice. Judaism follows a lunar calendar adjusted every three years or so to the solar cycle (by adding a second 12th month)—thus “lunisolar.” The oldest Jewish annual observances are Passover/Pesach, Shavuot, Yom Kippur and Sukkot; other ancient celebrations include Rosh Ha-Shana, Simhat Torah, Hanukkah and Purim. See also B.C.E., CE.

canonical (Historically, "according to religious law") 1. "mathematics" A standard way of writing a formula. Two formulas such as 9 + x and x + 9 are said to be equivalent because they mean the same thing, but the second one is in "canonical form" because it is written in the usual way, with the highest power of x first. Usually there are fixed rules you can use to decide whether something is in canonical form. Things in canonical form are easier to compare. 2. "jargon" The usual or standard state or manner of something. The term acquired this meaning in computer-science culture largely through its prominence in {Alonzo Church}'s work in computation theory and {mathematical logic} (see {Knights of the Lambda-Calculus}). Compare {vanilla}. This word has an interesting history. Non-technical academics do not use the adjective "canonical" in any of the senses defined above with any regularity; they do however use the nouns "canon" and "canonicity" (not "canonicalness"* or "canonicality"*). The "canon" of a given author is the complete body of authentic works by that author (this usage is familiar to Sherlock Holmes fans as well as to literary scholars). "The canon" is the body of works in a given field (e.g. works of literature, or of art, or of music) deemed worthwhile for students to study and for scholars to investigate. The word "canon" derives ultimately from the Greek "kanon" (akin to the English "cane") referring to a reed. Reeds were used for measurement, and in Latin and later Greek the word "canon" meant a rule or a standard. The establishment of a canon of scriptures within Christianity was meant to define a standard or a rule for the religion. The above non-technical academic usages stem from this instance of a defined and accepted body of work. Alongside this usage was the promulgation of "canons" ("rules") for the government of the Catholic Church. The usages relating to religious law derive from this use of the Latin "canon". It may also be related to arabic "qanun" (law). Hackers invest this term with a playfulness that makes an ironic contrast with its historical meaning. A true story: One Bob Sjoberg, new at the {MIT AI Lab}, expressed some annoyance at the incessant use of jargon. Over his loud objections, {GLS} and {RMS} made a point of using as much of it as possible in his presence, and eventually it began to sink in. Finally, in one conversation, he used the word "canonical" in jargon-like fashion without thinking. Steele: "Aha! We've finally got you talking jargon too!" Stallman: "What did he say?" Steele: "Bob just used "canonical" in the canonical way." Of course, canonicality depends on context, but it is implicitly defined as the way *hackers* normally expect things to be. Thus, a hacker may claim with a straight face that "according to religious law" is *not* the canonical meaning of "canonical". (2002-02-06)

Cartesianism: The philosophy of the French thinker, Rene Descartes (Cartesius) 1596-1650. After completing his formal education at the Jesuit College at La Fleche, he spent the years 1612-1621 in travel and military service. The reminder of his life was devoted to study and writing. He died in Sweden, where he had gone in 1649 to tutor Queen Christina. His principal works are: Discours de la methode, (preface to his Geometric, Meteores, Dieptrique) Meditationes de prima philosophia, Principia philosophiae, Passions de l'ame, Regulae ad directionem ingenii, Le monde. Descartes is justly regarded as one of the founders of modern epistemology. Dissatisfied with the lack of agreement among philosophers, he decided that philosophy needed a new method, that of mathematics. He began by resolving to doubt everything which could not pass the test of his criterion of truth, viz. the clearness and distinctness of ideas. Anything which could pass this test was to be readmitted as self-evident. From self-evident truths, he deduced other truths which logically follow from them. Three kinds of ideas were distinguished: innate, by which he seems to mean little more than the mental power to think things or thoughts; adventitious, which come to him from without; factitious, produced within his own mind. He found most difficulty with the second type of ideas. The first reality discovered through his method is the thinking self. Though he might doubt nearly all else, Descartes could not reasonably doubt that he, who was thinking, existed as a res cogitans. This is the intuition enunciated in the famous aphorism: I think, therefore I am, Cogito ergo sum. This is not offered by Descartes as a compressed syllogism, but as an immediate intuition of his own thinking mind. Another reality, whose existence was obvious to Descartes, was God, the Supreme Being. Though he offered several proofs of the Divine Existence, he was convinced that he knew this also by an innate idea, and so, clearly and distinctly. But he did not find any clear ideas of an extra-mental, bodily world. He suspected its existence, but logical demonstration was needed to establish this truth. His adventitious ideas carry the vague suggestion that they are caused by bodies in an external world. By arguing that God would be a deceiver, in allowing him to think that bodies exist if they do not, he eventually convinced himself of the reality of bodies, his own and others. There are, then, three kinds of substance according to Descartes: Created spirits, i.e. the finite soul-substance of each man: these are immaterial agencies capable of performing spiritual operations, loosely united with bodies, but not extended since thought is their very essence. Uncreated Spirit, i.e. God, confined neither to space nor time, All-Good and All-Powerful, though his Existence can be known clearly, his Nature cannot be known adequately by men on earth, He is the God of Christianity, Creator, Providence and Final Cause of the universe. Bodies, i.e. created, physical substances existing independently of human thought and having as their chief attribute, extension. Cartesian physics regards bodies as the result of the introduction of "vortices", i.e. whorls of motion, into extension. Divisibility, figurability and mobility, are the notes of extension, which appears to be little more thin what Descartes' Scholastic teachers called geometrical space. God is the First Cause of all motion in the physical universe, which is conceived as a mechanical system operated by its Maker. Even the bodies of animals are automata. Sensation is the critical problem in Cartesian psychology; it is viewed by Descartes as a function of the soul, but he was never able to find a satisfactory explanation of the apparent fact that the soul is moved by the body when sensation occurs. The theory of animal spirits provided Descartes with a sort of bridge between mind and matter, since these spirits are supposed to be very subtle matter, halfway, as it were, between thought and extension in their nature. However, this theory of sensation is the weakest link in the Cartesian explanation of cognition. Intellectual error is accounted for by Descartes in his theory of assent, which makes judgment an act of free will. Where the will over-reaches the intellect, judgment may be false. That the will is absolutely free in man, capable even of choosing what is presented by the intellect as the less desirable of two alternatives, is probably a vestige of Scotism retained from his college course in Scholasticism. Common-sense and moderation are the keynotes of Descartes' famous rules for the regulation of his own conduct during his nine years of methodic doubt, and this ethical attitude continued throughout his life. He believed that man is responsible ultimately to God for the courses of action that he may choose. He admitted that conflicts may occur between human passions and human reason. A virtuous life is made possible by the knowledge of what is right and the consequent control of the lower tendencies of human nature. Six primary passions are described by Descartes wonder, love, hatred, desire, joy and sorrow. These are passive states of consciousness, partly caused by the body, acting through the animal spirits, and partly caused by the soul. Under rational control, they enable the soul to will what is good for the body. Descartes' terminology suggests that there are psychological faculties, but he insists that these powers are not really distinct from the soul itself, which is man's sole psychic agency. Descartes was a practical Catholic all his life and he tried to develop proofs of the existence of God, an explanation of the Eucharist, of the nature of religious faith, and of the operation of Divine Providence, using his philosophy as the basis for a new theology. This attempted theology has not found favor with Catholic theologians in general.

Carus, Paul. (1852-1919). An early supporter of Buddhism in America and the proponent of the "religion of science": a faith that claimed to be purified of all superstition and irrationality and that, in harmony with science, would bring about solutions to the world's problems. Carus was born in Ilsenberg in Harz, Germany. He immigrated to America in 1884, settling in LaSalle, Illinois, where he assumed the editorship of the Open Court Publishing Company. He attended the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893 and became friends with several of the Buddhist delegates, including DHARMAPALA and SHAKU SoEN, who were among the first to promote his writing. Later, Shaku Soen's student, DAISETZ TEITARO SUZUKI, would spend eleven years working with and for Carus in LaSalle. In 1894, Carus published The Gospel of Buddha according to Old Records, an anthology of passages from Buddhist texts drawn from contemporary translations in English, French, and German, making particular use of translations from the PAli by THOMAS W. RHYS DAVIDS, as well as translations of the life of the Buddha from Chinese and Tibetan sources. Second only to Edwin Arnold's Light of Asia in intellectual influence at the time, The Gospel was arranged like the Bible, with numbered chapters and verses and a table at the end that listed parallel passages from the New Testament. The Gospel was intended to highlight the many agreements between Buddhism and Christianity, thereby bringing out "that nobler Christianity which aspires to the cosmic religion of universal truth." Carus was free in his manipulation of his sources, writing in the preface that he had rearranged, retranslated, and added emendations and elaborations in order to make them more accessible to a Western audience; for this reason, the translated sources are not always easy to trace back to the original literature. He also makes it clear in the preface that his ultimate goal is to lead his readers to the Religion of Science. He believed that both Buddhism and Christianity, when understood correctly, would point the way to the Religion of Science. Although remembered today for his Gospel, Carus wrote some seventy books and more than a thousand articles. His books include studies of Goethe, Schiller, Kant, and Chinese thought.

catechumen ::: L. catechunenus, Gr. --> One who is receiving rudimentary instruction in the doctrines of Christianity; a neophyte; in the primitive church, one officially recognized as a Christian, and admitted to instruction preliminary to admission to full membership in the church.

Celibacy ::: The practice of refraining from sexual relationships in the interest of religious purity, known in Judaism among the Essenes and developed extensively in Christianity.

Chasuble ::: In some sects of Christianity, this is the outermost liturgical vestment worn by the clergy when certain masses and celebrations are held.

Chrestes, Chrestos, Chrestians (Greek) chrestos. Applied by the Greeks as a title of respect equivalent to “the worthy.” Chrestes meant an interpreter of oracles. In the language of the Mysteries, a chrestos was a candidate or neophyte, and a christos (anointed) was an initiate. Christ is a mystical expression for the human inner god, while chrest is the good but as yet unregenerated nature; using here the language of the Mysteries, Christ may be likened to Dionysos, Osiris, or Krishna, who will deliver the suffering Chrest, mankind or Prometheus, in its trial. It is Christos that incarnates in Chrestos. These usages were taken over by the Gnostic schools out of which Christianity largely sprang, and there is abundant evidence to be found among the early Christian writers and the Gnostics themselves that the adherents originally called themselves Chrestians.

Chrestos: An ancient Greek term, used by Gnostics of the first centuries of Christianity for Christ.

christendom ::: n. --> The profession of faith in Christ by baptism; hence, the Christian religion, or the adoption of it.
The name received at baptism; or, more generally, any name or appelation.
That portion of the world in which Christianity prevails, or which is governed under Christian institutions, in distinction from heathen or Mohammedan lands.
The whole body of Christians.


Christian humanism ::: A philosophy in which human freedom and individualism are compatible with the practice of Christianity or intrinsic in its doctrine. It is a combination of humanist and Christian values.

Christianism ::: Another name for Christianity, the monotheistic religion recognizing Jesus Christ as its founder and central figure. With more than two billion adherents, or about one-third of the total world population, it is the largest world religion. Its origins are intertwined with Judaism, with which it shares much sacred lore, including the Old Testament (Hebrew Bible). Christianity is sometimes termed an Abrahamic religion, along with Judaism and Islam.

christianity ::: n. --> The religion of Christians; the system of doctrines and precepts taught by Christ.
Practical conformity of one&


christianization ::: n. --> The act or process of converting or being converted to a true Christianity.

christianize ::: v. t. --> To make Christian; to convert to Christianity; as, to Christianize pagans.
To imbue with or adapt to Christian principles. ::: v. i. --> To adopt the character or belief of a Christian; to become Christian.


christianness ::: n. --> Consonance with the doctrines of Christianity.

Christos (Greek) Anointed; applied in the Greek Mysteries to a candidate who had passed the last degree and become a full initiate. Also the immanent individual god in a person, equivalent in some respects to Dionysos, Krishna, etc. The Hebrew word for anointed (mashiah) is generally written in English as Messiah. What we know as Christianity is a syncretism of borrowings from Neoplatonism, neo-Pythagoreanism, Greek Gnosticism, and Hebrew religion. Christos was commonly used in the Greek translation of the Bible as a title of the Jewish Kings, those who had been anointed for reigning — a symbolic rite taken originally from the Mysteries. St. Paul’s use of the word shows that he understood its true mystical meaning, but spoke with precaution in his public epistles or writings.

Church of the SubGenius "body, humour" A mutant offshoot of {Discordianism} launched in 1981 as a spoof of fundamentalist Christianity by the "Reverend" Ivan Stang, a brilliant satirist with a gift for promotion. Popular among hackers as a rich source of bizarre imagery and references such as "Bob" the divine drilling-equipment salesman, the Benevolent Space Xists, and the Stark Fist of Removal. Much SubGenius theory is concerned with the acquisition of the mystical substance or quality of {slack}. {(http://sunsite.unc.edu/subgenius/slack.html)}. (1996-01-02)

Church of the SubGenius ::: (body, humour) A mutant offshoot of Discordianism launched in 1981 as a spoof of fundamentalist Christianity by the Reverend Ivan Stang, a brilliant SubGenius theory is concerned with the acquisition of the mystical substance or quality of slack. . (1996-01-02)

cid ::: n. --> Chief or commander; in Spanish literature, a title of Ruy Diaz, Count of Bivar, a champion of Christianity and of the old Spanish royalty, in the 11th century.
An epic poem, which celebrates the exploits of the Spanish national hero, Ruy Diaz.


Classical Judaism, Christianity, Islam ::: The forms of the religions that have survived as traditional throughout the centuries. (See also rabbinic, orthodox, and Sunni).

classical theism ::: Traditional ideas of the monotheistic religions such as Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Classical theism holds that God is an absolute, eternal, all-knowing (omniscient), all-powerful (omnipotent), and perfect being. God is related to the world as its cause, but is unaffected by the world (immutable). He is transcendent over the world, which exists relative to him as a temporal effect.

Codex Nazaraeus or the Book of Adam (i.e., of man or humanity); the chief sacred scripture of the Nazarites and of the Mandaeans or Nasoraeans; written in a Chaldeo-Syrian dialect mixed with the mystery language of the Gnostics. It is an instance of esotericism in a sect whose origin was pre-Christian, but which survived for many centuries into the Christian era as an esoteric school running parallel with exoteric Christianity. Its symbolic teachings are shown to be identical with those in The Secret Doctrine.

Conscientialism: (Lat. conscientia + al, pertaining to conscience) Originally denoting simple consciousness without ethical bearing, the term conscience came in modern times to mean in contrast to consciousness, viewed either as a purely intellectual function or as a generic term for mind, a function of distinguishing between right and wrong. With the rise of Christianity the term came to be described as an independent source of moral insight, and with the rise of modern philosophy it became an inner faculty, an innate, primeval thing. -- H.H.

converting the pagans to Christianity.

cromlech ::: n. --> A monument of rough stones composed of one or more large ones supported in a horizontal position upon others. They are found chiefly in countries inhabited by the ancient Celts, and are of a period anterior to the introduction of Christianity into these countries.

cross ::: n. --> A gibbet, consisting of two pieces of timber placed transversely upon one another, in various forms, as a T, or +, with the horizontal piece below the upper end of the upright, or as an X. It was anciently used in the execution of criminals.
The sign or mark of the cross, made with the finger, or in ink, etc., or actually represented in some material; the symbol of Christ&


danna. (檀那). This Japanese term is originally a transcription of the Sanskrit term DANA, or "giving." When referring to a patron of a monk, nun, or monastery, the term danna is used with reference to a "donor" (J. dan'otsu, dan'ochi, dannotsu; S. DANAPATI) or "parish temple" (DANKA). During the Tokugawa period (1603-1868), the Japanese shogunate required every family to register at and support a local temple, called the DANNADERA, which in turned entitled that family to receive funerary services from the local priest. The dannadera, also called the BODAIJI and dankadera, thus served as a means of monitoring the populace and preventing the spread in Japan of subversive religions, such as Christianity and the banned Nichiren-Fuju-Fuse sect of the NICHIREN school. By requiring each Japanese family to be registered at a specific local temple and obligating them to provide for that temple's economic support and to participate in its religious rituals, all Japanese thus became Buddhist in affiliation for the first time in Japanese history.

dechristianize ::: v. t. --> To turn from, or divest of, Christianity.

Deity Intelligence and will superior to the human, forming the intelligent and vital governing essence of the universe, whether this universe be large or small. The principal views as to the nature of deity may be classed as 1) pantheistic, 2) polytheistic, 3) henotheistic, and 4) monotheistic. Pantheism, which views the divine as immanent in all nature and yet transcendent in its higher parts, is characteristic of certain Occidental philosophical systems and of all Oriental systems. Polytheism implies the recognition of an indefinite number of deific powers in the universe, the plural manifestations of the ever immanent, ever perduring, and manifest-unmanifest One. Polytheism is thus a logical development of pantheism. Henotheism is the belief in one god, but not the exclusion of others, such as is found in the Jewish scriptures, where the ancient Hebrews frankly worshiped a tribal deity and fully recognized the existence of other tribal deities. Monotheism is the belief in only one god, as is found in Christianity and Islam. These religions, in inheriting the Jewish tradition, have confounded this merely personal and local conception with the First Cause of the universe, which in theosophy would be called the formative cosmic Third Logos, thus producing an inconsistent idea of a God who is both infinite, delimited, and personal in character, with an intuition, however, of the necessarily impersonal cosmic intelligent root of all.

Demon(s) [from Greek daimones, Latin daemons] In many of the later religions, such as Christianity, either the gods of rival religions, nature spirits of paganism, or the exuviae or shells of the dead. Actually demons are a relatively modern misapprehension of a large class of nature sprites which in ancient thought comprised a vast range of spiritual, semi-spiritual, and astral beings, existing in different degrees of evolutionary unfoldment, and therefore classified into groups from the fully self-conscious down to the only partly conscious elementals of the astral realms. The teaching regarding daimones was extremely recondite; the later medieval Christian Demonologies, however, dealt almost exclusively with beings of low grade and of an astral character lacking moral sense and self-consciousness, which for ages have been called in European countries by names such as fairies, sprites, goblins, hobgoblins, pixies, nixies, and brownies. See also DAEMON

Desideri, Ippolito. (1684-1733). Jesuit missionary to Tibet. He was born in the town of Pistoia in Tuscany in 1684 and entered the Jesuit order in 1700, studying at the Collegio Romano. Following two years of instruction in theology, he requested permission to become a missionary, departing for India in 1712 and reaching Goa the following year. Assigned to the Tibet mission, Desideri and another priest, the Portuguese Manoel Freyre, traveled by ship, horseback, and on foot to Leh, the capital of Ladakh, the westernmost Tibetan domain. Setting out for LHA SA, they were able to survive the difficult seven-month journey thanks to the protection of a Mongolian princess who allowed the two priests to join her caravan. They reached the Tibetan capital on March 18, 1716. After just a month in Lha sa, Desideri's companion decided to return to India. Desideri received permission from the ruler of Tibet, the Mongol warlord Lha bzang Khan, to remain in Tibet. He arranged for Desideri to live at RA MO CHE, and then at SE RA monastery. His notes from his studies indicate that he worked through textbooks on elementary logic through to the masterworks of the DGE LUGS sect, including the LAM RIM CHEN MO of TSONG KHA PA, which Desideri would eventually translate into Italian (the translation is lost). He would go on also to write a number of works in Tibetan, both expositions of Christianity and refutations of Buddhism. The most substantial of these was his unfinished "Inquiry into the Doctrines of Previous Lives and of Emptiness, Offered to the Scholars of Tibet by the White Lama called Ippolito" (Mgo skar [sic] gyi bla ma i po li do zhes bya ba yis phul ba'i bod kyi mkhas pa rnams la skye ba snga ma dang stong pa nyid kyi lta ba'i sgo nas zhu ba). Desideri remained in Tibet until 1721, when Tibet became a mission field of the Capuchins, requiring that the Jesuit abandon his work. After several years in India, he returned to Italy in 1727. Desideri arrived in Rome in the midst of the Rites Controversy, the question of whether non-Christian rituals (such as Chinese ancestor worship) had a place in the methods of the missionaries. As a Jesuit, Desideri was on the losing side of this debate. The last years of his life were consumed with composing long defenses of his work, as well as the remarkable account of his time in Tibet, the Relazione de' viaggi all' Indie e al Thibet. He died in Rome on April 13, 1733. Because of the suppression of the Jesuit order, Desideri's works remained largely unknown, both in Italian and Tibetan, until the twentieth century.

Dharmapāla, Anagārika. (1864-1933). An important figure in the revival of Buddhism in Sri Lanka and the dissemination of Buddhism in the West. Born Don David Hēvāvirtarne in Sri Lanka, at that time the British colony of Ceylon, he was raised in the English-speaking middle class of Colombo and educated in Christian schools run by Anglican missionaries, where he is said to have memorized large portions of the Bible. His family was Buddhist, however, and in 1880, at the age of sixteen, he met HENRY STEEL OLCOTT and MADAME BLAVATSKY, founders of the Theosophical Society, during their visit to Sri Lanka in support of Buddhism. In 1881, he took the Buddhist name Dharmapāla, "Protector of the Dharma," and in 1884 was initiated into the Theosophical Society by Colonel Olcott, later accompanying Madame Blavatsky to the headquarters of the Society in Adyar, India. Under the initial patronage of Theosophists, he studied Pāli, choosing to adopt the lifestyle of a celibate lay religious. Prior to that time in Sri Lanka, the leadership in Buddhism had been provided exclusively by monks and kings. Dharmapāla established a new role for Buddhist laypeople, creating the category of the anagārika (meaning "homeless wanderer"), a layperson who studied texts and meditated, as did monks, but who remained socially active in the world, as did laypeople. Free from the restrictions incumbent on the Sinhalese monkhood, yet distinct from ordinary laity, he regarded this new lifestyle of the anagārika as the most suitable status for him to work for the restoration and propagation of Buddhism. A social reformer, rationalist, and religious nationalist, he promoted rural education and a reformist style of Buddhism, stripped of what he considered extraneous superstitions, as a means of uplifting Sinhalese society and gaining independence for his country as a Buddhist nation. While he was in India in 1891, he was shocked to see the state of decay of the great pilgrimage sites of India, all then under Hindu control, and most especially of BODHGAYĀ, the site of the Buddha's enlightenment. In that same year, he joined a group of leading Sri Lankan Buddhists to found the MAHĀBODHI SOCIETY, which called on Buddhists from around the world to work for the return of important Indian Buddhist sites to Buddhist control, and one of whose aims was the restoration of the MAHĀBODHITEMPLE at Bodhgayā. This goal only came to fruition in 1949, well after his death, when the newly independent Indian government granted Buddhists a role in administering the site. His influential Buddhist journal, The Mahā-Bodhi, also established in 1891, continues to be published today. A gifted orator, in 1893 Anagārika Dharmapāla addressed the World's Parliament of Religions, held in conjunction with the Columbian Exhibition in Chicago, drawing much acclaim. Although he was one of several Buddhist speakers, his excellent English and Anglican education made him an effective spokesperson for the dharma, demonstrating both its affinities with, and superiority to, Christianity. In 1925, he founded the British Mahā Bodhi Society in London and a year later established the first THERAVĀDA monastery in the West, the London Buddhist Vihāra. In 1931, he was ordained as a monk (bhikkhu; BHIKsU), taking the name Devamitta. He died in 1933 at SĀRNĀTH, site of the Buddha's first sermon.

Diaspora: Literally the Greek word signifies a scattering or dispersion. Name given to the countries through which the Jews were dispersed after being exiled or deported from their homeland and also to the Jews living in those lands. Also applied to converts from Judaism to Christianity of the early Church living outside of Palestine. -- J.J.R.

Doctrine ::: A general term for a formally defined belief (e.g., the doctrine of the resurrection in Christianity), or for the total system of beliefs.

Dogma ::: In Christianity, an authoritative statement of belief; official doctrine; can also be used as a general term.

Dogma: The Greek term signified a public ordinance of decree, also an opinion. A present meaning: an established, or generally admitted, philosophic opinion explicitly formulated, in a depreciative sense; one accepted on authority without the support of demonstration or experience. Kant calls a directly synthetical proposition grounded on concepts a dogma which he distinguishes from a mathema, which is a similar proposition effected by a construction of concepts. In the history of Christianity dogmas have come to mean definition of revealed truths proposed by the supreme authority of the Church as articles of faith which must be accepted by all its members. -- J.J.R.

Early Christianity .]

Early Christianity.]

ebionite ::: n. --> One of a sect of heretics, in the first centuries of the church, whose doctrine was a mixture of Judaism and Christianity. They denied the divinity of Christ, regarding him as an inspired messenger, and rejected much of the New Testament.

Ein Sof ::: (Heb. Without limit) A kabbalistic designation for the divine—“the unlimited one.” In early Judaism and Christianity, refers to those considered to be chosen by God for a specific purpose; in some Christian predestination schemes (e.g. Calvinistic), “the elect” are those whom God has chosen (in advance) to have eternal life.

Election ::: A term used theologically in Judaism to indicate God's choice of Israel to receive the covenant—a choice not based on the superiority or previous accomplishments of the people, but on God's graciousness (see covenant). In Christianity, the concept of election was applied to the “new Israel” of Jesus' followers in the last times.

Ephesus was one of the foci of the universal secret doctrine, a laboratory whence sprang light derived from the quintessence of Buddhist, Zoroastrian, and Chaldean philosophy (IU 2:155). It was such in the early days of Christianity, and from it spread that Gnosis to which the Church was later so bitter an antagonist. It was “famous for its great metaphysical College where Occultism (Gnosis) and Platonic philosophy were taught in the days of the Apostle Paul. . . . It was at Ephesus where was the great College of the Essenes and all the lore the Tanaim had brought from the Chaldees” (TG 114).

Esoteric Transmission ::: A concept in certain religions and spiritual traditions that emphasizes a relationship between a teacher and a student (or a group and its members) in order to preserve certain systems of magic and specific spiritual practices. Over time and over the course of many minds working the system, power is built up through a lineage and the rituals and practices themselves become vital to being able to work within the current being taught. This is a complex idea but, as an example, is found in Tibetan Buddhism when one wants to work with a Tantric deity, they first must receive abhisheka from a lama. Even in Christianity there are lineages that confer the power to bestow appellations and blessings of the Church to others. The idea is that these are more than symbolic gestures; being a part of the lineage and being empowered within that lineage is necessary in many cases to work magic or utilize the practices taught effectively or at all.

ethnical ::: a. --> Belonging to races or nations; based on distinctions of race; ethnological.
Pertaining to the gentiles, or nations not converted to Christianity; heathen; pagan; -- opposed to Jewish and Christian.


evangelize ::: v. t. --> To instruct in the gospel; to preach the gospel to; to convert to Christianity; as, to evangelize the world. ::: v. i. --> To preach the gospel.

evidential ::: a. --> Relating to, or affording, evidence; indicative; especially, relating to the evidences of Christianity.

Evil Spirits A vague expression, often applied by theological misinterpretation to the Fallen Angels — the cosmic spirits who form or produce the lower worlds; or to the powers of the matter side of nature. Again, it may designate any of a numerous class of nonphysical beings, such as elementals, nature spirits, ghosts, or astral entities generated by human thoughts, all known in Christianity under the generalizing term Devil.

father and Son. ::: first and Second Persons of the Trinity in Christianity.

Fideism: A doctrine of Abbe Bautain which attempted to justify the teachings of Christianity by the theory that all knowledge rested upon premises accepted by faith. The premises of religion are to be found in the tradition of the Synagogue and Church. This tradition needs no rational criticism because it is self-critical. The doctrine was condemned in 1840 by Gregory XVI. -- G.B.

Floyd, William. Christianity Cross-Examined. New York:

Forerunners and Rivals of Christianity 9, 108.] In the

Forerunners and Rivals of Christianity I, 107 fn.]

Forerunners and Rivals of Christianity II, p. 148.] In

--. Forerunners and Rivals of Christianity. New Hyde

Forerunners and Rivals of Christianity. See Legge.

Fremantle, Ann (ed.). A Treasury of Early Christianity.

Fremantle, A Treasury of Early Christianity .] St.

gnostic ::: a. --> Knowing; wise; shrewd.
Of or pertaining to Gnosticism or its adherents; as, the Gnostic heresy. ::: n. --> One of the so-called philosophers in the first ages of Christianity, who claimed a true philosophical interpretation of the


GNOSTICIANS Members of an esoteric knowledge order, founded in
Alexandria in 300 BC and later extended throughout the whole eastern Mediterranean area.
They possessed gnosis (the knowledge of reality and life) and put it down in a rich symbolic literature. The central symbol was &


Gnosticism and Early Christianity .]

Gnosticistn and Early Christianity. See Grant.

Gnostics Various schools — agreeing in fundamentals, differing in details according to their teachers — which inculcated gnosis (divine wisdom); they preceded or coincided with the early centuries of Christianity, and were grouped about Alexandria, Antioch, and other large centers of the Jewish-Hellenic-Syrian culture. The teachers include Philo Judaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Simon Magus and his pupil Menander, Saturninus, Basilides, Valentinus, Marcion, Celsus, and others. Their teachings in many respects were those of the ancient wisdom, derived from contact with the still extant sources in Egypt, India, Persia, and elsewhere.

Grant, Gnosticism and Early Christianity.] The 3

Grant, R. M. Gnosticism and Early Christianity. New

Guardian Angel Christian term for the various classes of dhyanis which guard the worlds, races, nations, and mankind pertaining to them. The five middle human principles are the essence of the sixfold dhyani-chohans and of the pitris. Equivalents are daimones, genii, theoi, devas, gods, Paracelsus’ flagae, etc. The personal quality that pervades so much of Christianity represents them as special to each individual, which is true enough in a sense; and they may be anything from a ray of divine light from the core of our being, to the kind of karmic heirloom designated as one’s lucky star. As a matter of fact, there is for each human individual an ever watching, forever guiding and stimulating spiritual power within himself, his own spiritual ego which, when allowed by the brain-mind, infills the individual with its strength, wisdom, and peace.

Gunānanda. (1823-1890). Also known as Migettuwatte Gunānanda Thera; prominent figure in the Buddhist revival in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) during the 1860s. Born into a wealthy Buddhist family in Mohottiwatta (Migettuwatta), near Balapitiya in southern Sri Lanka, as a child he studied the Bible and Christianity with a Roman Catholic priest at a local church. He was ordained as a novice Buddhist monk in 1835 and received full ordination in 1844. Gunānanda is best known for his involvement in five debates between Christian missionaries and Buddhist monks. (He was a contemporary of SUMAnGALA, who helped him prepare for the debates.) An impressive orator, Gunānanda's extensive knowledge of both Christian and Buddhist doctrine allowed him to present a nuanced critique of Christianity and the superiority of Buddhism. The last of the debates, between Gunānanda and Reverend David de Silva, took place at Panadura over two days in 1873, with an audience of some five to seven thousand spectators. The audience included the ten-year-old David Hevavitarne, who would later become ANAGĀRIKA DHARMAPĀLA. An edited transcript of the debate, known as the Pānaduravādaya, was published in English in the book Buddhism and Christianity Face to Face in 1878. This book inspired Colonel HENRY STEEL OLCOTT and Madame HELENA PETROVNA BLAVATSKY, founders of the Theosophical Society, to travel to Ceylon, where they played active roles in the revival of Buddhism. Gunānanda wrote many articles and edited three texts on Buddhism. He also sought to revive Sinhala language and literature.

Ha-Levi, Judah: (b. ca. 1080, d. ca. 1140) Poet and philosopher. His Kuzari (Arabic Kitab Al-Khazari), written in dialogue form, has a double purpose. First, as its subtitle, A Book of Proofs and Arguments in Defense of the Humiliated Religion, indicates, it aims to prove the dignity and worth of Judaism. Secondly, he endeavors to show the insufficiency of philosophy and the superiority of the truths of revealed religion to those arrived at by logic. The admission of both Christianity and Islam that Judaism is their source proves the first. The exaltation of intuition as a means of certainty in matters of religion, and the claim that the prophet is the highest type of man rather than the philosopher purposes to substantiate the second. He endows the Jewish people with a special religio-ethical sense which is their share only and constitutes a quasi-biological quality. He assigns also a special importance to Palestine as a contributory factor in the spiritual development of his people, for only there can this religio-ethical sense come to full expression. -- M.W.

Hence in its widest sense Scholasticism embraces all the intellectual activities, artistic, philosophical and theological, carried on in the medieval schools. Any attempt to define its narrower meaning in the field of philosophy raises serious difficulties, for in this case, though the term's comprehension is lessened, it still has to cover many centuries of many-faced thought. However, it is still possible to list several characteristics sufficient to differentiate Scholastic from non-Scholastic philosophy. While ancient philosophy was the philosophy of a people and modern thought that of individuals, Scholasticism was the philosophy of a Christian society which transcended the characteristics of individuals, nations and peoples. It was the corporate product of social thought, and as such its reasoning respected authority in the forms of tradition and revealed religion. Tradition consisted primarily in the systems of Plato and Aristotle as sifted, adapted and absorbed through many centuries. It was natural that religion, which played a paramount role in the culture of the middle ages, should bring influence to bear on the medieval, rational view of life. Revelation was held to be at once a norm and an aid to reason. Since the philosophers of the period were primarily scientific theologians, their rational interests were dominated by religious preoccupations. Hence, while in general they preserved the formal distinctions between reason and faith, and maintained the relatively autonomous character of philosophy, the choice of problems and the resources of science were controlled by theology. The most constant characteristic of Scholasticism was its method. This was formed naturally by a series of historical circumstances,   The need of a medium of communication, of a consistent body of technical language tooled to convey the recently revealed meanings of religion, God, man and the material universe led the early Christian thinkers to adopt the means most viable, most widely extant, and nearest at hand, viz. Greek scientific terminology. This, at first purely utilitarian, employment of Greek thought soon developed under Justin, Clement of Alexandria, Origin, and St. Augustine into the "Egyptian-spoils" theory; Greek thought and secular learning were held to be propaedeutic to Christianity on the principle: "Whatever things were rightly said among all men are the property of us Christians." (Justin, Second Apology, ch. XIII). Thus was established the first characteristic of the Scholastic method: philosophy is directly and immediately subordinate to theology.   Because of this subordinate position of philosophy and because of the sacred, exclusive and total nature of revealed wisdom, the interest of early Christian thinkers was focused much more on the form of Greek thought than on its content and, it might be added, much less of this content was absorbed by early Christian thought than is generally supposed. As practical consequences of this specialized interest there followed two important factors in the formation of Scholastic philosophy:     Greek logic en bloc was taken over by Christians;     from the beginning of the Christian era to the end of the XII century, no provision was made in Catholic centers of learning for the formal teaching of philosophy. There was a faculty to teach logic as part of the trivium and a faculty of theology.   For these two reasons, what philosophy there was during this long period of twelve centuries, was dominated first, as has been seen, by theology and, second, by logic. In this latter point is found rooted the second characteristic of the Scholastic method: its preoccupation with logic, deduction, system, and its literary form of syllogistic argumentation.   The third characteristic of the Scholastic method follows directly from the previous elements already indicated. It adds, however, a property of its own gained from the fact that philosophy during the medieval period became an important instrument of pedogogy. It existed in and for the schools. This new element coupled with the domination of logic, the tradition-mindedness and social-consciousness of the medieval Christians, produced opposition of authorities for or against a given problem and, finally, disputation, where a given doctrine is syllogistically defended against the adversaries' objections. This third element of the Scholastic method is its most original characteristic and accounts more than any other single factor for the forms of the works left us from this period. These are to be found as commentaries on single or collected texts; summae, where the method is dialectical or disputational in character.   The main sources of Greek thought are relatively few in number: all that was known of Plato was the Timaeus in the translation and commentary of Chalcidius. Augustine, the pseudo-Areopagite, and the Liber de Causis were the principal fonts of Neoplatonic literature. Parts of Aristotle's logical works (Categoriae and de Interpre.) and the Isagoge of Porphyry were known through the translations of Boethius. Not until 1128 did the Scholastics come to know the rest of Aristotle's logical works. The golden age of Scholasticism was heralded in the late XIIth century by the translations of the rest of his works (Physics, Ethics, Metaphysics, De Anima, etc.) from the Arabic by Gerard of Cremona, John of Spain, Gundisalvi, Michael Scot, and Hermann the German, from the Greek by Robert Grosseteste, William of Moerbeke, and Henry of Brabant. At the same time the Judae-Arabian speculation of Alkindi, Alfarabi, Avencebrol, Avicenna, Averroes, and Maimonides together with the Neoplatonic works of Proclus were made available in translation. At this same period the Scholastic attention to logic was turned to metaphysics, even psychological and ethical problems and the long-discussed question of the universals were approached from this new angle. Philosophy at last achieved a certain degree of autonomy and slowly forced the recently founded universities to accord it a separate faculty.

Hierarchy ::: The word hierarchy merely means that a scheme or system or state of delegated directive power andauthority exists in a self-contained body, directed, guided, and taught by one having supreme authority,called the hierarch. The name is used by theosophists, by extension of meaning, as signifying theinnumerable degrees, grades, and steps of evolving entities in the kosmos, and as applying to all parts ofthe universe; and rightly so, because every different part of the universe -- and their number is simplycountless -- is under the vital governance of a divine being, of a god, of a spiritual essence; and allmaterial manifestations are simply the appearances on our plane of the workings and actions of thesespiritual beings behind it.The series of hierarchies extends infinitely in both directions. If he so choose for purposes of thought,man may consider himself at the middle point, from which extends above him an unending series of stepsupon steps of higher beings of all grades -- growing constantly less material and more spiritual, andgreater in all senses -- towards an ineffable point. And there the imagination stops, not because the seriesitself stops, but because our thought can reach no farther out nor in. And similar to this series, aninfinitely great series of beings and states of beings descends downwards (to use human terms) -downwards and downwards, until there again the imagination stops, merely because our thought can gono farther.The summit, the acme, the flower, the highest point (or the hyparxis) of any series of animate and"inanimate" beings, whether we enumerate the stages or degrees of the series as seven or ten or twelve(according to whichever system we follow), is the divine unity for that series or hierarchy, and thishyparxis or highest being is again in its turn the lowest being of the hierarchy above it, and so extendingonwards forever -- each hierarchy manifesting one facet of the divine kosmic life, each hierarchyshowing forth one thought, as it were, of the divine thinkers.Various names were given to these hierarchies considered as series of beings. The generalized Greekhierarchy as shown by writers in periods preceding the rise of Christianity may be collected andenumerated as follows: (1) Divine; (2) Gods, or the divine-spiritual; (3) Demigods, sometimes calleddivine heroes, involving a very mystical doctrine; (4) Heroes proper; (5) Men; (6) Beasts or animals; (7)Vegetable world; (8) Mineral world; (9) Elemental world, or what was called the realm of Hades. TheDivinity (or aggregate divine lives) itself is the hyparxis of this series of hierarchies, because each ofthese nine stages is itself a subordinate hierarchy. This (or any other) hierarchy of nine, hangs like apendant jewel from the lowest hierarchy above it, which makes the tenth counting upwards, which tenthwe can call the superdivine, the hyperheavenly, this tenth being the lowest stage (or the ninth, countingdownwards) of still another hierarchy extending upwards; and so on, indefinitely.One of the noblest of the theosophical teachings, and one of the most far-reaching in its import, is that ofthe hierarchical constitution of universal nature. This hierarchical structure of nature is so fundamental,so basic, that it may be truly called the structural framework of being. (See also Planes)

Holocaust Revisionists ::: See Holocaust Denial. ::: Holy Spirit ::: (Heb. Shechinat Hashem ) In Judaism, the presence of God as evidenced in the speech of the prophets and other divine manifestations; in Christianity, understood more generally as the active, guiding presence of God in the church and its members.

Holy Ghost [from Greek hagion pneuma holy spirit or breath] The Holy Ghost or Spirit in the Occident usually means the Third Person of the Christian Trinity or Triune God. The typical form of the primary philosophic and cosmogonic triad is Father-Mother-Son with the female potency figuring both as mother, wife, and daughter of the Son. The Holy Ghost is strictly speaking the feminine principle in the Christian Trinity, and in primitive Christianity was counted the second in serial order or procession, although in later times the West, led by the Roman Catholic Church, transferred the position of the Holy Ghost from second to third. Thus the original series was Father, Holy Ghost or Mother, and Son, whereas the Occident now reckons the series in the procession as Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; and this difference of opinion which arose in the Middle Ages was one of the great factors splitting the Christian Church into the Eastern or Greek Orthodox and the Western. In Christianity, the Son is said to be God made manifest in a particular man; the Holy Ghost is the divine spirit which works in all men and brings them into conformity with the image of the Son or Christ.

Horns Much used in the Bible, often as a symbol of might; and the altar in the tabernacle had horns, which were seized as sanctuary by the fugitive suppliant. In the prophetic and apocalyptic books of Christianity and other religions, we find dragons and other monsters with horns, the number of horns possibly having a symbolical reference to races. Its most general sense is as a symbol of natural generative power, whence it is characteristic of several symbolic animals, as the ram, the bull and cow, the goat, etc. It is seen in Greece in Pan, the god of natural generation and procreative fertility; and in Judaism in the goat which, as the scapegoat, stands among other things for the fall into generation, and was thus said to bear away the burden of the people’s sins in early and medieval Europe. Satan or the Devil is represented with horns in a similar sense, for actually he represents the nether aspect of nature, and in popular belief his horns, like his hoofs and tail, are regarded as horrific and bestial attributes. The moon, the oldest and most graphic symbol of productive generation, is said to have horns and the same are seen in the zodiacal Taurus, the sign of the moon’s elevation, while the ram’s horns are seen in Aries — the one representing the passive, the other the active principle in nature.

Idea: (Gr. idea) This term has enjoyed historically a considerable diversity of usage. In pre-Platonic Greek: form, semblance, nature, fashion or mode, class or species. Plato (and Socrates): The Idea is a timeless essence or universal, a dynamic and creative archetype of existents. The Ideas comprise a hierarchy and an organic unity in the Good, and are ideals as patterns of existence and as objects of human desire. The Stoics: Ideas are class concepts in the human mind. Neo-Platonism: Ideas are archetypes of things considered as in cosmic Mind (Nous or Logos). Early Christianity and Scholasticism: Ideas are archetypes eternally subsistent in the mind of God. 17th Century: Following earlier usage, Descartes generally identified ideas with subjective, logical concepts of the human mind. Ideas were similarly treated as subjective or mental by Locke, who identified them with all objects of consciousness. Simple ideas, from which, by combination, all complex ideas are derived, have their source either in sense perception or "reflection" (intuition of our own being and mental processes). Berkeley: Ideas are sense objects or perceptions, considered either as modes of the human soul or as a type of mind-dependent being. Concepts derived from objects of intuitive introspection, such as activity, passivity, soul, are "notions." Hume: An Idea is a "faint image" or memory copy of sense "impressions." Kant: Ideas are concepts or representations incapable of adequate subsumption under the categories, which escape the limits of cognition. The ideas of theoretical or Pure Reason are ideals, demands of the human intellect for the absolute, i.e., the unconditioned or the totality of conditions of representation. They include the soul, Nature and God. The ideas of moral or Practical Reason include God, Freedom, and Immortality. The ideas of Reason cannot be sensuously represented (possess no "schema"). Aesthetic ideas are representations of the faculty of imagination to which no concept can be adequate.

Idolatry ::: (Gre.To Worship an Image) Idol worship; forbidden in the biblical traditions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

Idol, Idolotry [from Greek eidolon image, idol] The use of images of divinities, which pertains to exotericism, as do visible symbols, ceremonies, and rituals in general. Attitudes vary among religions: Judaism, Islam, and Protestant Christianity absolutely forbid it; Orthodox Christianity permits icons, such as pictures of saints; Roman Catholicism, Hinduism, and Buddhism permit it altogether. Varying degrees of ignorance or enlightenment may regard an idol as in itself a species of imbodied divinity, as transmitting the influence of a divinity or, more spiritually, as a reminder of a divinity. In a real sense, idolatry is the attaching of undue importance to the form rather than to the spirit, and often becomes degraded into worshiping the images made in our imagination and imbodied in work of the hands. “Esoteric history teaches that idols and their worship dies out with the Fourth Race, until the survivors of the hybrid races of the latter (Chinamen, African Negroes, etc.) gradually brought the worship back. The Vedas countenance no idols; all the modern Hindu writings do” (SD 2:723).

Imitatio Dei ::: (Lat. Imitation of God) Theological concept of imitating God by emulating his characteristics and virtues. In Christianity this concept is extended to imitating Jesus through his actions as well. See also Anthropomorphism.

In Christianity, the dove is a symbol of the Holy Ghost, who appears in that form to Jesus at his baptism. It is also often one of the four sacred animals which denote four important human principles along with the bull, the eagle, and the lion. These four animals in Greek mystic mythology are symbols respectively of the planets Venus, the Moon, Mercury (or Jupiter), and the Sun; but it is more properly here a seraph or cherub, the fiery-winged serpent or Agathodaimon. As a symbol of gentleness and love it is frequent in the Hebrew scriptures.

In Christianity, the symbol was not derived from the crucifixion, for though the cross is a frequent early Christian symbol it is not found with a man upon it till the 6th century. It was a symbol of the mystic Christ or Christos — the Word made flesh or the Son of the trinity.

in Buddhism, 'Salvation'in Christianity, and 'Mukhti'

In early Christianity there arose more than one Gnostic sect using the snake as a symbol, such as the Ophites, which in the vision of certain ecclesiastic Fathers was designated devil worship, or by other uncomplimentary names. See also NAGA

infidel ::: a. --> Not holding the faith; -- applied esp. to one who does not believe in the inspiration of the Scriptures, and the supernatural origin of Christianity. ::: n. --> One who does not believe in the prevailing religious faith; especially, one who does not believe in the divine origin and

infidelity ::: n. --> Want of faith or belief in some religious system; especially, a want of faith in, or disbelief of, the inspiration of the Scriptures, of the divine origin of Christianity.
Unfaithfulness to the marriage vow or contract; violation of the marriage covenant by adultery.
Breach of trust; unfaithfulness to a charge, or to moral obligation; treachery; deceit; as, the infidelity of a servant.


In patristic and scholastic Christianity: the creator God, the Ens Realissimum, Ens Perfectissimum, Sui Causa, and the God of mysticism generally (Erigena, Hugo of St. Victor, Cusa, Boehme, Bruno).

  ” ‘In the Krita age, Vishnu, in the form of Kapila and other (inspired sages) . . . imparts to the world true wisdom as Enoch did. In the Treta age he restrains the wicked, in the form of a universal monarch (the Chakravartin or the ‘Everlasting King’ of Enoch) and protects the three worlds (or races). In the Dwapara age, in the person of Veda-Vyasa, he divides the one Veda into four, and distributes it into hundreds (Sata) of branches.’ Truly so; the Veda of the earliest Aryans, before it was written, went forth into every nation of the Atlanto-Lemurians, and sowed the first seeds of all the now existing old religions. The off-shoots of the never dying tree of wisdom have scattered their dead leaves even on Judeo-Christianity. And at the end of the Kali, our present age, Vishnu, or the ‘Everlasting King’ will appear as Kalki, and re-establish righteousness upon earth. The minds of those who live at that time shall be awakened, and become as pellucid as crystal” (SD 2:483).

In very recent years, a new stress has been laid upon the dogmatic side of Christianity as expressed in liturgy. This has been coupled with a revived interest in Thomism, found both in older philosophers such as A. E. Taylor and in younger men like A. G. Hebert (cf. his Grace and Nature, etc.). -- W.N.P.

It is just in these three logoi, considered as a cosmic unit, that arose the original teaching of the Christian Trinity. In the original Christian idea, the Son was identified with the Third Logos and proceeded from the Father and the Holy Spirit, the Second Logos, originally in Christianity a feminine cosmic power; whereas the Roman Catholic Church made the procession of the Son come directly from the First Logos or Father, the Holy Ghost being misplaced and made the Third Logos. In later developments of Christian theology, the Logos is spoken of as the Word made flesh, the manifestation of God on earth, the Son of God, Christ, the miscalled Second Person of the Trinity. This idea was still further narrowed and debased into the doctrine of a single and special earthy manifestation of the Godhead.

John ::: (Heb. Yochanan, meaning God is Merciful) A common first name. In Christianity, it is often used to refer to John the Baptist or John the Apostle.

judaizer ::: n. --> One who conforms to or inculcates Judaism; specifically, pl. (Ch. Hist.), those Jews who accepted Christianity but still adhered to the law of Moses and worshiped in the temple at Jerusalem.

kabbalah ::: Kabbalah Kabbalah is an esoteric Jewish mystical tradition that places mystical significance on letters and numbers, and their interrelationships. Kabbalah means received or tradition and its symbolism has influenced Christianity, Ritual Magick, Wicca, Freemasonry and many other faiths and traditions.

Kautsky, Karl. Foundations of Christianity, (tr.) Henry

Kierkegaard, Sören: (1813-1855) Danish religious thinker whose influence was largely limited to Scandinavian and German circles until recently. His works are now translated into English and his thought revived by contemporary social pessimists. Eternity, he held, is more important than time; sin is worse than suffering ; man is an egotist and must experience despair; God is beyond reason and man; Christianity stands opposed to this world and time and to man's reason; paradoxes are the inevitable result of man's reflections; Christian ethics realizable only in eternity. Kierkegaard was raised in a stern Christian environment; he reacted against orthodox religion and official philosophies (especially Hegelianism). An individualist, a sensitive, melancholic personality suffering intense frustrations. Cf. German ed. of K's writings: Sämmtliche Werke (1909-), and Eng. translations of Swenson (Post-Scientific Philosophy, etc.). -- V.F.

Kim Iryop. (金一葉) (1896-1971). In Korean, Kim "single leaf," influential Korean Buddhist nun during the mid-twentieth century and part of the first generation of Korean women intellectuals, or "new women" (sin yosong), thanks to her preordination career as a leading feminist writer, essayist, and poet. Her secular name was Wonju, and her Buddhist names were Hayop and Paengnyon Toyop; Iryop is her pen name, which Yi Kwangsu (1892-1955?), a pioneer of modern Korean literature, gave her in memory of the influential Japanese feminist writer Higuchi Ichiyo (1872-1896) (J. Ichiyo = K. Iryop). Kim's early years were influenced by Christianity and her father even became a Protestant minister. Her mother died when Kim was very young and her father also passed away while she was still in her teens. Kim was educated at the Ihwa Haktang, a women's academy (later Ewha University), and later studied abroad in Japan. She and other Ihwa graduates participated in the first female-published magazine in Korea, "New Women" (Sinyoja), which began and ended in 1920. Kim was a feminist intellectual who sought self-liberation and the elevation of women's status through her writing. After her first marriage ended in divorce, she continued to pursue her search for her "self" and was involved in much-publicized relationships with men such as Oda Seijo and Im Nowol, a writer of "art-for-art's sake." But Kim's ideal of female liberation based on individual self-identity appears to have undergone a profound transformation, thanks to her associations with Paek Songuk (1897-1981), a Buddhist intellectual who worked to revitalize Korean Buddhism during the Japanese colonial period and eventually became a monk himself in 1929. Through her encounter with Buddhism, Iryop's pursuit of self-liberation seems to have shifted from an emphasis on a self-centered identity based on feminism to the release from the self (ANĀTMAN). After Paek Songuk entered into the Diamond Mountains (KŬMGANGSAN) to become a monk, she again married, seemingly in an attempt both to keep her self-identity as a female and to realize the Buddhist release of self, by combining secular life with Buddhist practice. But a few years later, in 1933, she ultimately decided to become a nun under the tutelage of the Son master MAN'GONG WoLMYoN (1871-1946) and became a long-time resident of SUDoKSA. There, she became an outspoken critic of secularized Japanese-style Buddhism and particularly of its sanction of married monks and eating meat. But most notable were her writings on the pursuit of self-liberation, which she expressed as "becoming one body" (ilch'ehwa) with all people and everything in the universe. Iryop is credited for her contributions to popularizing Buddhism through her accessible writings in the Korean vernacular, as well as for elevating the position of nuns in Korean Buddhism.

labarum ::: n. --> The standard adopted by the Emperor Constantine after his conversion to Christianity. It is described as a pike bearing a silk banner hanging from a crosspiece, and surmounted by a golden crown. It bore a monogram of the first two letters (CHR) of the name of Christ in its Greek form. Later, the name was given to various modifications of this standard.

Locke also was a political, economic and religious thinker of note. A "latitudinarian" and broad churchman in theology and a liberal in politics, he argued against the divine right of kings and the authority of the Bible and the Church, and maintained that political sovereignty rests upon the consent of the governed, and ecclesiastical authority upon the consent of reason. He was also an ardent defender of freedom of thought and speech. Main works: Two Treatises on Gov't, 1689; Reasonableness in Christianity, 1695; Some Thoughts on Education, 1693; An Essay on Human Understanding, 1690. -- B.A.G.F.

Manichaeism ::: One of the major ancient religions. Though its organized form is mostly extinct today, a revival has been attempted under the name of Neo-Manichaeism. However, most of the writings of the founding prophet Mani have been lost. Some scholars and anti-Catholic polemicists argue that its influence subtly continues in Western Christian thought via Saint Augustine of Hippo, who converted to Christianity from Manichaeism and whose writing continues to be enormously influential among Catholic and Protestant theologians.

Manichean ::: Manicheans or their doctrines; i.e. adherents of the dualistic religious system of Manes, a combination of Gnostic Christianity, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, and various other elements, with a basic doctrine of a conflict between light and dark, matter being regarded as dark and evil.

manichean ::: manicheans or their doctrines; i.e. adherents of the dualistic religious system of Manes, a combination of Gnostic Christianity, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, and various other elements, with a basic doctrine of a conflict between light and dark, matter being regarded as dark and evil.

Manicheism: A mystical religio-philosophical doctrine, instituted in Persia by Mani (Manes or Manichaeus), a Magian who, upon conversion to Christianity, sought to synthesize the latter with the dualism of Zoroastrianism, and became a martyr to his faith. The Manicheist creed teaches that to combat the powers of darkness, the mother of light created the first man. As Buddha and Zoroaster, he worked illumination among men; as Jesus, the Son of Man, he had to suffer, become transfigured and symbolize salvation by his apparent death at the cross; as spirit of the sun he attracts all connatural light particles to himself. But final salvation from the throes of evil demons is accomplished by ascetic living, reminding of the Hindu code of ethics, and belief in Mani as the prophesied paraclete.

Manicheism, a religio-philosophical doctrine which spread from Persia to the West and was influential during the 3rd and 7th century, was instituted by Mani (Grk. Manes, Latinized: Manichaeus), a Magian who, upon conversion to Christianity, sought to synthesize the latter with the dualism of Zoroastrianism (q.v.), not without becoming a martyr to his faith. To combat the powers of darkness, the mother of light created the first man. As Buddha (q.v.) and Zoroaster he worked illumination among men ; as Jesus, the Son of Man, he had to suffer, become transfigured and symbolize salvation by his apparent death at the cross; as spirit of the sun he attracts all connatural light particles to himself. But final salvation from the throes of evil demons is accomplished by ascetic living, reminding of the Hindu code of ethics (see Indian Ethics), and belief in Mani as the prophesied paraclete (John 14.16-17). Revived once more in the Occident during the crusades by the Cathari. -- K.F.L.

Marcion(ites) ::: A 2nd century Christian (and his followers) who was considered the first heretic by his opponents because of certain dualistic and gnostic ideas and his call for a severing of Christianity from its Jewish and First Testament roots.

Marranos ::: An old Spanish term meaning "swine," used to execrate medieval Spanish Jews who converted to Christianity but secretly kept their Judaism.

martinism ::: Martinism A mystical tradition, founded by Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin in 18th century France. The 20th century saw a revival of some of the practices which pre-date Martinism proper and which directly inspired it. Martinism is a form of mystical or esoteric Christianity, which sees the figure of Christ as The Repairer who enables individuals to attain an idealised state similar to that in the Garden of Eden prior to the Fall.

meme plague "philosophy" The spread of a successful but pernicious {meme}, especially one that parasitises the victims into giving their all to propagate it. Astrology, BASIC, and the other guy's religion are often considered to be examples. This usage is given point by the historical fact that "joiner" ideologies like Naziism or various forms of millennarian Christianity have exhibited plague-like cycles of exponential growth followed by collapses to small reservoir populations. [{Jargon File}] (1996-08-11)

millennialist ::: n. --> One who believes that Christ will reign personally on earth a thousand years; a Chiliast; also, a believer in the universal prevalence of Christianity for a long period.

Mithraism The worship of Mithras, a remarkable and highly mystical religion which existed long before Zoroaster as the Society of the Magi (the Great Brotherhood of Man) giving its secret teachings to qualified candidates, the future initiates. Although supposedly a worship of the sun, originating in Persia, Mithraism was “really a religious philosophy based upon the Divine, Inner, and Invisible Sun, a vortex so to say of the Divine Spiritual Fire of the Universe, of the Heart of Things” (ET 609 3rd & rev ed). Mithraism spread throughout the Greco-Roman world, especially during the 2nd and 3rd centuries and for a time threatened to supersede Christianity. A number of the liturgical rites and ceremonies of Christianity are probably of Mithraic origin. For example, rites associated with Deo Soli Invicto Mithrae (to the Unconquered God-sun, Mithras), were held at the time of the winter solstice, especially the Night of Light — now Christmas — known as the birthday of Mithras, represented as having been born in a cave or grotto, hence often called the rock-born god. Exceedingly popular in the Roman armies as well as with the rulers of the Roman Empire, Mithraism was regularly established by Trajan about 100 AD in the Empire, and the Emperor Commodus was himself initiated into its mysteries. Sacred caves or grottoes were the principal places of worship, where the Mysteries for which Mithraism was famed were enacted.

Monotheism Belief in a single or supreme god; opposed to polytheism and pantheism, although all polytheistic forms of thought recognize a supreme divinity, of which all others were children or offspring; and pantheism itself, when properly understood, likewise includes all forms or varieties of polytheistic belief. The Hebrews are a notable example of a people following a very definite monotheism in their religious beliefs; subsequent to this were the systems of Christianity and Islam. If deity be regarded as periodic cosmic mind or intelligence incessantly evolving through its emanated hierarchies — the structure inner and outer of the universe — which is the abode of such divinity, governed in its operations by its own spirit-wisdom, far transcending the remotest shadow of the limitations we call personality, then in this sense theosophists might be called pantheists, polytheists, and even monotheists, all in one. But where deity is by human imagination endowed with human attributes, however sublimated, and with human limitations of personality, an unphilosophical, impossible, and unnatural monotheism results. Such a god — being the offspring of human imagination, a creature of human fancy — cannot be universal, and must submit to rivalry with the humanly imagined gods of other religions.

More, Paul Elmer: An American literary critic and philosopher (1864-1937), who after teaching at Bryn Mawr and other colleges, edited The Nation for several years before retiring to lecture at Princeton University and write The Greek Tradition, a series of books in which he argues for orthodox Christianity on the basis of the Platonic dualism of mind-body, matter-spirit, God-man. In The Sceptical Approach to Religion he gave his final position, as ethical theism grounded on man's sense of the good and consciousness of purpose, and validated by the Incarnation of God in Christ. -- W.N.P.

Mystery Religions ::: Designation used for a group of ancient Greco-Roman religions characterized by an emphasis on a central "mystery" (often concerning fertility and immortality). In many ways, both early Judaism and early Christianity include characteristics of such "mysteries."

Nativity In Christianity, the supposed birth of Jesus about the time of the winter solstice. This date is due to the labors of the 6th century Roman abbot, Dionysius Exiguus. The first year of this reckoning, which later became the accepted Christian era, is called 1 AD, and the preceding year is called by chronologers 1 BC, but others here insert a year zero. The epoch of the birth or nativity of Jesus is generally thought to be four years too late, but one may have well-grounded suspicions that these four years themselves are far too late, and efforts by various scholars have at times been made to place the birth of Jesus in the reign of Alexander Jannaeus, the son of Johannes Hyrcanus, the same Alexander having succeeded his brother Aristobolus I, as King of the Jews, in 104 BC.

neo-christianity ::: n. --> Rationalism.

of Christianity). Lyon: Ballanche P£re, 1809.

of God. .. . Historical Christianity, on the other hand, has consistently affirmed the continuing

Old Testament ::: The name traditionally given by Christians to the Jewish biblical writings that together with “the New Testament” constitute the Christian Bible. For most Protestant Christians, the Old Testament is identical to the classical Jewish Bible, while for classical (Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox, etc.) Christianity, the Old Testament also includes “the Apocrypha.”

One 18th century author, Johan Goransson, believes that the Eddas were copied from old Runobocker (books of runes) and that when Christianity first spread its influence in Sweden about two hundred years after Saemund, these ancient writings were systematically destroyed (Sviogota ok Nordmanna Edda xxxi).

One of the ideas which early Christianity took over from the esoteric teaching of the Mediterranean peoples, the apostolic succession was originally derived from the passing on of light from one adept to another at initiation, thus constituting what is called the guruparampara or the succession of teacher following teacher in regular serial order. A similar institution existed in the Eleusinian Mysteries, whose hierophants were drawn from one family, the Eumolpidae, as well as in many other parts of the world.

Orthopraxy ::: (Greek, correct action/activity) In contrast to orthodoxy (right belief), the emphasis in this term concerns conduct, both ethical and liturgical. Historically, Judaism and Islam have tended to emphasize orthopraxy relatively more than orthodoxy, while classical Christianity tended to shift the balance in the other direction.

Ouyi Zhixu. (J. Goyaku/Guyaku Chigyoku; K. Uik Chiuk 益智旭) (1599-1655). One of the four eminent monks (si da gaoseng) of the late-Ming dynasty, along with YUNQI ZHUHONG (1535-1615), HANSHAN DEQING (1546-1623), and DAGUAN ZHENKE (1543-1604); renowned for his mastery of a wide swath of Confucian and Buddhist teachings, particularly those associated with the TIANTAI, PURE LAND, and CHAN traditions. In his youth, he studied Confucianism and despised Buddhism, even writing anti-Buddhist tracts. He had a change of heart at the age of seventeen, after reading some of Zhuhong's writings, and burned his previous screeds. According to his autobiography, Zhixu had his first "great awakening" at the age of nineteen while reading the line in the Lunyu ("Confucian Analects") that "the whole world will submit to benevolence" if one restrains oneself and returns to ritual. After his father's death that same year, he fully committed himself to Buddhism, reading sutras and performing recollection of the Buddha's name (NIANFO) until he finally was ordained under the guidance of Xueling (d.u.), a disciple of Hanshan Deqing, at the age of twenty-four. At that time, he began to read extensively in YOGĀCĀRA materials and had another great awakening through Chan meditation, in which he experienced body, mind, and the outer world suddenly disappearing. He next turned his attention to the bodhisattva precepts and the study of vinaya. Following his mother's death when he was twenty-seven, Zhixu rededicated himself to Chan meditation, but after a serious illness he turned to pure land teachings. In his early thirties, he devoted himself to the study of Tiantai materials, through which he attempted to integrate his previous research in Buddhism and began to write commentaries and treaties on Buddhist scriptures and on such Confucian classics as the Zhouyi ("Book of Changes"). In the late-sixteenth century, Jesuit missionaries such as Michele Ruggieri (1543-1607) and Matteo Ricci (1552-1610) had reintroduced Christianity to China and sought "to complement Confucianism and to replace Buddhism." This emerging religious challenge led Zhixu to publish his Bixie ji ("Collected Essays Refuting Heterodoxy") as a critique of the teachings of Christianity, raising specifically the issue of theodicy (i.e., why a benevolent and omnipotent god would allow evil to appear in the world); Zhixu advocates instead that good and evil come from human beings and are developed and overcome respectively through personal cultivation. After another illness at the age of fifty-six, his later years were focused mostly on pure land teachings and practice. In distinction to Japanese pure land teachers, such as HoNEN (1133-1212) and SHINRAN (1173-1262), who emphasized exclusively Amitābha's "other-power" (C. tali; J. TARIKI), Zhixu, like most other Chinese pure land teachers, advocated the symbiosis between the other-power of Amitābha and the "self-power" (C. jiri; J. JIRIKI) of the practitioner. This perspective is evident in his equal emphasis on the three trainings in meditation (Chan), doctrine (jiao), and precepts (lü) (cf. TRIsIKsĀ). Ouyi's oeuvre numbers some sixty-two works in 230 rolls, including treatises and commentaries on works ranging from Tiantai, to Chan, to Yogācāra, to pure land. His pure land writings have been especially influential, and his Amituojing yaojie ("Essential Explanations" on the AMITĀBHASuTRA) and Jingtu shiyao ("Ten Essentials on the Pure Land") are regarded as integral to the modern Chinese Pure Land tradition.

Paley, William: (1743-1805) Was an English churchman well known for a number of works in theology. He is also widely remembered in the field of ethics. His Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy passed through many editions and served as a text book at Cambridge for many years. As an advocate of the doctrine of expediency, he gave impetus to the later Utilitarian School. He maintained that the beneficial tendency is what makes an action right. See Utilitarianism. Cf W. Paley, Horae Paulinae, 1790; View of the Evidences of Christianity, 1794; Natural Theology, 1802. -- L.E.D.

Parkes, James. Judaism and Christianity. Chicago: U. of

Paul A man by legend said to be of pure Jewish birth, of the tribe of Benjamin, at first a persecutor of Christians but who underwent a mystic enlightenment of which he speaks. His various letters prove that he was an initiate. He recognizes Christ — the Christos — as being principally the higher self in man, and strives to convey this truth to the minds of many congregations, adapting it to their power of comprehension. He evidently does his best to promote as high an interpretation of Christianity as might be possible among the varied and unpromising, and often indeed refractory, elements which he found at hand. His failure to mention the familiar gospel stories is due to the fact that the Gospels are of much later date. The brand of Christianity which has prevailed during the centuries would have been very different if Paul’s philosophic teachings had been taken more seriously, for they are in the main clear enough even without any esoteric key. Often they have been disfigured in interpretation, as in the doctrine of justification by faith and not by works, attributed to him. On reading Romans 3 with an unprejudiced eye, we find him insisting that man is not made virtuous by following the letter of the law and doing pious deeds alone, but also by pistis — a full realization of the truth and determination to follow it. This has become perverted into the dogma that man cannot be saved by any amount of good deeds alone, but must believe that Jesus died in propitiation for his sins.

Persian Philosophy: Persia was a vast empire before the time of Alexander the Great, embracing not only most of the orientnl tribes of Western Asia but also the Greeks of Asia Minor, the Jews and the Egyptians. If we concentrate on the central section of Persia, three philosophic periods may be distinguished Zoroastrianism (including Mithraism and Magianism), Manichaeanism, and medieval Persian thought. Zarathustra (Or. Zoroaster) lived before 600 B.C. and wrote the Avesta, apparently in the Zend language. It is primarily religious, but the teaching that there are two ultimate principles of reality, Ormazd, the God of Light and Goodness, and Ahriman, God of Evil and Darkness, is of philosophic importance. They are eternally fighting Mitra is the intermediary between Ormazd and man. In the third century A. D., Mani of Ecbatana (in Media) combined this dualism of eternal principles with some of the doctrines of Christianity. His seven books are now known only through second-hand reports of Mohammedan (Abu Faradj Ibn Ishaq, 10th c., and Sharastani, 12th c.) and Christian (St. Ephrem, 4th c., and Bar-Khoni, 7th c.) writers. St Augustine of Hippo (354-430 A.D.) has left several works criticizing Manichaeism, which he knew at first-hand. From the ninth century onward, many of the great Arabic philosophers are of Persian origin. Mention might be made of the epicureanism of the Rubaiyat of the Persian poet, Omar Kayyam, and the remarkable metaphysical system of Avicenna, i.e. Ibn Sina (11th c.), who was born in Persia. -- V.J.B.

Political Philosophy: That branch of philosophy which deals with political life, especially with the essence, origin and value of the state. In ancient philosophy politics also embraced what we call ethics. The first and most important ancient works on Political Philosophy were Plato's Politeia (Republic) and Aristotle's Politics. The Politeia outlines the structure and functions of the ideal state. It became the pattern for all the Utopias (see Utopia) of later times. Aristotle, who considers man fundamentally a social creature i.e. a political animal, created the basis for modern theories of government, especially by his distinction of the different forms of government. Early Christianity had a rather negative attitude towards the state which found expression in St. Augustine's De Civitate Dei. The influence of this work, in which the earthly state was declared to be civitas diaboli, a state of the devil, was predominant throughout the Middle Ages. In the discussion of the relation between church and empire, the main topic of medieval political philosophy, certain authors foreshadowed modern political theories. Thomas Aquinas stressed the popular origin of royal power and the right of the people to restrict or abolish that power in case of abuse; William of Ockham and Marsiglio of Padua held similar views. Dante Alighieri was one of the first to recognize the intrinsic value of the state; he considered the world monarchy to be the only means whereby peace, justice and liberty could be secured. But it was not until the Renaissance that, due to the rediscovery of the individual and his rights and to the formation of territorial states, political philosophy began to play a major role. Niccolo Machiavelli and Jean Bodin laid the foundation for the new theories of the state by stressing its independence from any external power and its indivisible sovereignty. The theory of popular rights and of the right of resistance against tyranny was especially advocated by the "Monarchomachi" (Huguenots, such as Beza, Hotman, Languet, Danaeus, Catholics such as Boucher, Rossaeus, Mariana). Most of them used the theory of an original contract (see Social Contract) to justify limitations of monarchical power. Later, the idea of a Natural Law, independent from divine revelation (Hugo Grotius and his followers), served as an argument for liberal -- sometimes revolutionary -- tendencies. With the exception of Hobbes, who used the contract theory in his plea for absolutism, almost all the publicists of the 16th and 17th century built their liberal theories upon the idea of an original covenant by which individuals joined together and by mutual consent formed a state and placed a fiduciary trust in the supreme power (Roger Williams and John Locke). It was this contract which the Pilgrim Fathers translated into actual facts, after their arrival in America, in November, 1620, long before John Locke had developed his theorv. In the course of the 17th century in England the contract theory was generally substituted for the theory of the divine rights of kings. It was supported by the assumption of an original "State of Nature" in which all men enjoyed equal reciprocal rights. The most ardent defender of the social contract theory in the 18th century was J. J. Rousseau who deeply influenced the philosophy of the French revolution. In Rousseau's conception the idea of the sovereignty of the people took on a more democratic aspect than in 17th century English political philosophy which had been almost exclusively aristocratic in its spirit. This tendency found expression in his concept of the "general will" in the moulding of which each individual has his share. Immanuel Kant who made these concepts the basis of his political philosophy, recognized more clearly than Rousseau the fictitious character of the social contract and treated it as a "regulative idea", meant to serve as a criterion in the evaluation of any act of the state. For Hegel the state is an end in itself, the supreme realization of reason and morality. In marked opposition to this point of view, Marx and Engels, though strongly influenced by Hegel, visualized a society in which the state would gradually fade away. Most of the 19th century publicists, however, upheld the juristic theory of the state. To them the state was the only source of law and at the same time invested with absolute sovereignty: there are no limits to the legal omnipotence of the state except those which are self imposed. In opposition to this doctrine of unified state authority, a pluralistic theory of sovereignty has been advanced recently by certain authors, laying emphasis upon corporate personalities and professional groups (Duguit, Krabbe, Laski). Outspoken anti-stateism was advocated by anarchists such as Kropotkin, etc., by syndicalists and Guild socialists. -- W.E.

Polytheism The doctrine of and belief in a plurality of gods, cosmic spirits, or celestial entities under whatever name they may be described. The word came into use as a correlative of monotheism — the doctrine as of the Jews, Christians, and Moslems, of one and only one God. The unphilosophical nature of monotheism, which in the Occident is quite different from the significance of divine unity, is shown by the subterfuges resorted to in order to supply its deficiencies. As divinity cannot be successfully imagined as individually concerned with every operation in the universe, the general term nature is used to denote a kind of secondary god; while the progress of science has analyzed this into various laws and forces, which paradoxically enough perform somewhat the same functions as the gods of polytheism, except in their wrongly supposed lack of intelligence. Less sophisticated and more profound intellects have never ceased to believe in a whole range of cosmic hierarchies, running from divinity down to the so-called nature spirits, and traditional peoples have always looked upon these as powers which are often dreaded and can be propitiated. Even Christianity has its saints, and its theology speaks of Angels and Archangels, of Dominions and Thrones, etc. As soon as we depart from the simple primeval idea of a universe filled with intelligent beings — and indeed formed of these beings themselves — of numerous hierarchies, grades, and kinds, we land in a maze of abstractions and contradictions.

Predestination: The doctrine that all events of man's life, even one's eternal destiny, are determined beforehand by Deity. Sometimes this destiny is thought of in terms of an encompassing Fate or Luck (Roman and Greek), sometimes as the cyclic routine of the wheel of Fortune (Indian), sometimes as due to special gods or goddesses (Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos in Hesiod), sometimes as the Kismet or mysterious Fate (Mohammedanism), as due to rational Necessity (Stoicism) and more often in terms of the sheer will of a sovereign Deity (Hebrew, Jewish and Christian). In historic Christianity utterances of Paul are given as the authority for the doctrine (Eph. 1:11, Rom. 8:30, Rom. 9:18). St. Augustine believed that man's own sinfulness made his salvation utterly dependent upon the sheer grace and election of God. Extreme expressions of Calvinism and Lutheranism held that man does absolutely nothing toward his salvation apart from the grace and good will of the Divine. Classical examples of theological determinism are the views of Bucer (1491-1551), Calvin (see Calvinism), and the American theologian, Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758). The two classic theories concerning the place of the alleged Fall of man are supralapsarianism, the view that the Fall itself was predetermined; infralapsarianism, the view that man's predestination was set up subsequent to the Fall, the Fall itself only being permitted. -- V.F.

Preexistence Existence in a former state: the soul may preexist the body; Christ preexisted as divinity before incarnation. The doctrine of the preexistence of the soul was once part of Christianity, being held as early as the 2nd century and including Justin Martyr, Origen, and many other then eminent Christians among its adherents; but it was formally condemned and anathematized by the Home-Synod held under Mennas at Constantinople around the year 540. The early Christian doctrine was that God emanated all souls of men, but afterwards incarnated them repetitively on earth as a punishment and probation.

Preexistence ::: This term means that the human soul did not first come into being or existence with its present birth onearth; in other words, that it preexisted before it was born on earth.This doctrine of preexistence is by no means typically theosophical, for it likewise was a part of the earlyteachings of Christianity, as is evidenced in the writings that remain to us of Origen, the greatAlexandrian Church Father, and of his school. The theosophical student should be very careful indistinguishing the technical meanings that pertain to several words which in popular and mistaken usageare often employed interchangeably, as for example preexistence, metempsychosis, transmigration,reincarnation, reimbodiment, rebirth, metensomatosis, palingenesis. Each one of these words has aspecific meaning typically its own, and describes or sets forth one phase of the destiny of a reimbodyingand migrating entity. In popular usage, several of these words are used as synonyms, and this usage iswrong. Preexistence, for instance, does not necessarily signify the transmigration of an entity from planeto plane nor, indeed, does it signify as does reincarnation that a migrating monad reinfleshes orreincarnates itself through its ray on earth. Preexistence signifies only that a soul, be it human or other,preexisted before its birth on earth.The doctrine of the great Origen, as found in his works that remain to us, was that the human soulpreexisted in the spiritual world, or within the influence or range of the divine essence or "God," before itbegan a series of reincarnations on earth. It is obvious that Origen's manner of expressing his views is amore or less faithful but distorted reflection of the teaching of the esoteric philosophy. The teaching ofpreexistence as outlined by Origen and his school and followers, with others of his mysticalquasi-theosophical doctrines, was formally condemned and anathematized at the Home Synod held underMennas at Constantinople about 543 of the Christian era. Thus passed out of orthodox Christian theologyas a "newly discovered heresy" what was a most important and mystical body of teaching of the earlycenturies of the new Christian religion -- to the latter's great loss, spiritual and intellectual. The doctrinesof Origen and his school may be said to have formed an important part of original Christian theosophy, aform of universal theosophy of Christianized character. (See under their respective heads the variouscorrelated doctrines mentioned above.)

Priest ::: A functionary usually associated, in antiquity, with temples and their rites (including sacrifice). In classical Christianity, the office of priest was developed (see ordination, clergy) in connection with the celebration of the mass and Eucharist, and with celibacy as an important qualification (especially in Roman Catholicism). See also kohen.

priscillianist ::: n. --> A follower of Priscillian, bishop of Avila in Spain, in the fourth century, who mixed various elements of Gnosticism and Manicheism with Christianity.

proselyte ::: n. --> A new convert especially a convert to some religion or religious sect, or to some particular opinion, system, or party; thus, a Gentile converted to Judaism, or a pagan converted to Christianity, is a proselyte. ::: v. t. --> To convert to some religion, opinion, or system; to

Rāma IV. (Mongkut) (1804-1868). Thai monarch who spent twenty-seven years as a monk before becoming king of Siam. As a monk between 1824 and 1851 (his ordination name was VajiraNāna), Mongkut's studies led him to conclude that the VINAYA was not being strictly observed by the Thai SAMGHA and that many rituals performed by monks did not derive from the Buddha's teachings. In 1830, he organized a small group of reformist monks called the THAMMAYUT nikai (P. Dhammayuttikanikāya), "the group that adheres strictly to the dharma," in contrast to what came to be known as the MAHANIKAI (P. Mahānikāya), the "great congregation" of monks who continued to follow the then-normative practices of Thai Buddhism. To establish this new reform tradition of Thai Buddhism, Mongkut drew on what he considered to be a pure ordination lineage from the Mon people of Burma (Myanmar). Prince Mongkut also sought to produce an authentic recension of the Pāli canon after finding the extant editions deficient and incomplete. His new movement emphasized study of the tipitaka (S. TRIPItIKA) as the basis for understanding Buddhist doctrine and rejected as unorthodox many Buddhist texts popular in Thai Buddhism (such as the Traiphumikatha as well as the JĀTAKA tales). The Thammayut movement also stressed proper monastic discipline, particularly details such as the correct way of wearing the robes (TRICĪVARA) and carrying the alms bowl (PĀTRA), as well as the proper demarcation of monastic space (SĪMĀ). Mongkut's reforms began a trend that led to the SAnGHA ADMINISTRATION ACT, passed in 1902, establishing uniform practices for all monks throughout the country. Mongkut had considerable interaction with Western missionaries and was sensitive to their bias regarding Christianity's supposed superiority over Buddhism because of its affinities for science and technology. In possible response to this European influence, Mongkut and the Thammayut movement also emphasized the rational aspects of Buddhism that sought to make their religion compatible with science and modernity. Mongkut eventually became abbot of WAT BOWONNIWET (Wat Bovoranives) in the Thai capital of Bangkok, which continues to be the headquarters of the Thammayut sect. After Mongkut ascended to the throne, the Thammayut continued to be closely associated with the royal court; the majority of Thai monks, however, have remained in the Mahanikai order. Rāma IV, to the chagrin of many Thais, is the historical (if fanciful) figure behind Anna Leonowens's memoir about her experience in the Thai court as tutor to Mongkut's children, which became the inspiration for Margaret Landon's book Anna and the King of Siam and the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical The King and I.

Redemption ::: A term from ancient economic vocabulary concerning the freeing by purchasing (manumission) of slaves, applied to the religious concept (especially in Christianity) of salvation from slavery to sin (being “redeemed”).

Reformation ::: Name given to the protestant Christian movements (and the period itself) in the 16th century in which Roman Catholicism was opposed in the interest of "reforming" Christianity to what was considered its earliest known form (found in the New Testament).

Remission of Sins Remission in the New Testament (Greek aphesis, Latin remissio) means sending away, discharge. The original meaning of remission of sins was the sending away of sinfulness from one’s heart, the purification of one’s nature, resulting from pledging oneself to a new way of life, undergoing initiation, passing through the second birth. In Christianity remission of sins has come to imply the action of deity through a divine agent, as is supposed to have been the case in Jesus. Jesus’ statement at the Last Supper: “This is my blood of the new testament (covenant, dispensation), which is shed for many for the remission of sins” (Matt 26:28), echoes the initiatory rites of the ancient Mysteries, the remission of sins here meaning that when the vitality (blood) of the immanent Christ in the individual becomes the directing influence in his life, there is then no room for sins, which thereafter are discharged, sent away, refused. The karmic consequence, however, of previous sin must in all cases be worked out.

renegade ::: n. --> One faithless to principle or party.
An apostate from Christianity or from any form of religious faith.
One who deserts from a military or naval post; a deserter.
A common vagabond; a worthless or wicked fellow.


Repentance ::: A term used especially in protestant Christianity to indicate the subjective state of sorrow and concern over sin, on the way to salvation.

Resurrection A rising again, implying a previous descent; a rebirth after death. In its widest sense, the universal law of cyclic renewal manifested in cosmic, solar, terrestrial, and human phenomena, applying to manvantaras, and to reawakenings of the earth and of man — whether humanity as a whole, races, or individuals. In the last case it means regeneration, the second birth, initiation, symbolized by the resurrection of the mystic Christ enacted in the Mysteries, when the candidate rose from that cruciform couch which he had undergone the experiences of death. In Christianity this has become an actual physical or bodily resurrection of Jesus, supported by the stories of the empty tomb and the appearances to the disciples. The dogma of the resurrection of the body, however, is pointedly related to the teaching of the migration of the life-atoms, whereby the reincarnating entity draws together the elements which it had previously discarded. There is an Arabic legend of the bone Luz, said to be one of the bones at the bottom of the spinal column, the os coccygis, as indestructible and forming the nucleus of the resurrection body. In the adytum or Holy of Holies of ancient temples was found a sarcophagus symbolizing the universal process of resurrection, but in degenerate times it was occasionally turned by ignorance into a symbol of physical procreation. Other emblems of resurrection are the frog, phoenix, and egg.

Revelation of John or Apocalypse The last book in the New Testament, a specimen of apocalyptic literature, which in Christianity consists of Jewish Christian mystical books of unknown authorship, attributed among others to Enoch, Ezra, and various apostles. John’s Apocalypse is in part based on the Book of Enoch, and is the work of a Jewish Qabbalist who adapted it to Judaean Christianity, and who had a hereditary aversion to the Greek Mysteries. Like apocalyptic literature in general, it takes the form of visions supposed to be seen by the alleged author, and its burden is the struggle between righteousness and evil, ending in the overthrow of the latter and the establishment of the kingdom of Christ. It marks a stage in the gradual adaption of the original esoteric Christianity to the demands of a creedal and worldly religion.

[Rf. Chateaubriand, Genius of Christianity.]

[Rf. Legge, Forerunners and Rivals of Christianity II,

[Rf. Legge, Forerunners and Rivals of Christianity II.]

Rivals of Christianity II, p. 327.]

Rivals of Christianity X, 187.]

Rule of Faith: In general, an authoritative statement of belief. In historic Christianity such statements appeared out of existing formulae (e.g., the early baptismal confessions) or were formulated to meet existing heresies. In Catholic Christianity the Rule of Faith (Regula Fidei) includes the whole of apostolic teaching and its further elaborations. -- V.F.

runners and Rivals of Christianity, p. 107 fn.;

Sacrament ::: Especially in classical Christianity, a formal religious rite (e.g., baptism, Eucharist) regarded as sacred for its perfect ability to convey divine blessing; in some traditions (especially Protestant), it is regarded as not effective in itself but as a sign or symbol of spiritual reality or truth.

Sacrifice ::: (Latin, perform a sacred act) A general term for the giving up of things of value for religious purposes, such as (1) liturgical sacrifices of animal life or of other valuables (grain, wine, etc.), and (2) personal sacrifices of time or money or talents or potential (e.g., taking holy orders). In classical Christianity, the death of Jesus is interpreted as a sacrifice for sin on behalf of humankind. Islam retains a liturgical use of animal sacrifice especially in connection with the hajj (see also calendar).

Salvation [from Latin salvatio from salvare to save] In Christianity, the saving of individual souls from supposed damnation, usually by faith in the Atonement. In theosophy, as concerns the individual, salvation is achieved by victory of his divine self over the illusions created by the contact of the intermediate nature with the lower planes. In this sense the serpent of Eden, Satan even, is man’s savior, as are Prometheus, Lucifer, etc. Mankind as a whole is saved by those manasaputras who descended into intellectually senseless mankind of the third root-race and who, by thus enlightening the minds of early humanity, became the elect custodians of the mysteries revealed to mankind by its divine teachers. Again, the Silent Watchers in their various grades, who refuse to pass on into a greater light and maintain their post for the protection and guidance of humanity, are saviors also. Yet no one can be saved by the vicarious merit of another; his salvation is achieved by means of that very free will and enlightened intelligence of his own through which he at first risks falling. But the great ones maintain the ideal which the multitude elect to follow, and thus light the path mankind will ultimately tread.

Sanskrit, on the other hand, “was really the sacred language of the Brahmanas and held more or less private or secret by them. The Sanskrit even in those ancient times was the vehicle for the archaic Wisdom-teachings of the Aryan peoples of India, such as the Vedas, and the Puranas, and the Upanishads, and the great epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. But Pali was one of several other languages of culture in ancient India, all which were of so-called Prakrit character, although very little is known about these other literary languages. Pali has survived to the present time because . . . it became the linguistic vehicle in which were enshrined the teachings of Buddhism, i.e., of Southern Buddhism, much as Latin has survived because enshrining the teachings of early medieval Christianity. Just as there were in ancient Italy many other Italic tongues, each one having its literary or cultured form, and likewise its popular idiom, so was it in ancient India.

Sarvaga (Sanskrit) Sarvaga [from sarva all + ga going, permeating] The all-permeant; the spirit-substance of the world, hence its soul. Equivalent to the anima mundi, or in a more abstract sense to the supreme cosmic essence or Second or Manifest-unmanifest Logos, which in early Christianity was feminine and called the Holy Spirit.

Silk Road. (C. Silu 絲路; J. Shiruku rodo シルクロード; K. Pidan kil 緋緞). Term coined by the German geographer Baron Ferdinand von Richthofen in 1877 to describe the ancient caravan routes through Central Asia that connected China, India, Syria, and the Roman Empire; also called the Silk Route. (Translations or transcriptions of the English term are now widely used in Asian languages as well, as in the CJK examples above.) Because silk was among the most highly prized commodities in this East-West trade, von Richthofen chose it as the symbolic designation for these trade routes. Other commodities that were traded along these routes included spices, livestock, perfumes, precious metals, and ceramics. The term Silk Road does not refer to a single road, but rather to a network of major and minor trade routes running through Central Asia that connected East and West. Looked at broadly, the Silk Road ultimately extended as far west as the Mediterranean Sea and as far east as modern Guangzhou (Canton) in China. In addition to facilitating trade, these routes also served as a principal conduit for cultural and religious interaction between the peoples of the different regions of Asia. Thus, it was via the Silk Road that Buddhism migrated out of its Indian homeland and into Central and East Asia; over the centuries, adherents of other religions, such as Nestorian Christianity, Manichaeism, and eventually Islam, would follow the same routes into India and China. From the Indian subcontinent, the Silk Road led northwest through KASHMIR to the outpost of Kashgar; there, it split, with a western route leading to SOGDIANA and eventually Damascus in the Middle East, and an eastern route leading through Central Asia into China and the rest of East Asia. There were two main routes through the oasis kingdoms of Central Asia, both skirting the Takla Makan desert in the Tarim basin. Starting at the city of Kashgar in the west, the northern route moved along the oases kingdoms of KUCHA, TURFAN, and KIZIL along the Tian Mountains; the southern route traveled along the base of the Kunlun Mountains through Niya and KHOTAN, until both routes reconnected at DUNHUANG, often the farthest outpost of the Chinese empire. From Dunhuang the route continued east until it terminated in the Chinese co-capitals of Chang'an and Luoyang, whence it connected to domestic feeder routes spreading throughout East Asia. Many of these Central Asian city-states were populated by various Indo-European peoples. The only remaining evidence of the long-lost native languages of these peoples are inscriptions and fragments of religious and civil-government manuscripts, such as the Niya documents, Gandhāran texts in the KHAROstHĪ script, documents written in the TOCHARIAN and Kuchean languages, and so on. Scores of these documents were discovered in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In missions that began shortly after the death of the Buddha, Indian Buddhist monks accompanied the trading caravans that plied the overland Silk Road. These missions lasted for centuries and changed the religious and cultural landscape of Asia. Buddhist inscriptions, sculptures, manuscripts, reliquary mounds (STuPA), and paintings have been discovered along the Silk Road. From northwestern India, Buddhism was taken to Central Asia. We find a host of inscriptions, texts, and images in the regions of modern-day Pakistan, Afghanistan, Russia, and the Islamic states of the former Soviet Union. By the first century CE, there existed a network of Buddhist religious centers stretching from northwestern India, to the Tarim basin, and into China. Buddhism entered East Asia along the Silk Road as well. According to Chinese sources, interaction between Indian and Chinese culture began as early as the first century BCE, when an emperor of the Han dynasty-by some accounts Emperor Wu (156-87 BCE), by others Emperor Ming (MINGDI) (r. 58-76 CE)-is said to have sent an emissary to the west along the Silk Road in response to the expansion of the KUSHAN empire to gather evidence of the new religion of Buddhism. In the second century CE, monks from India and the oasis kingdoms along the Silk Road began translating Indian and Central Asian Buddhist texts into Chinese. One of the earliest of these translators was AN SHIGAO, who translated dozens of Indian works into Chinese. In the centuries that followed, East Asian pilgrims such as FAXIAN, XUANZANG, YIJING, and HYECH'O used the Silk Road to make their way back and forth between East Asia and the Buddhist homeland of India. From India, these pilgrims brought back manuscripts, relics, and insights into proper religious practice. Today the travelogues of these East Asian monks provide invaluable information regarding the development of Buddhism in Asia. Of the regions along the Silk Road where Buddhism flourished, China, Tibet, and Mongolia are the only ones where Buddhism survived beyond the first millennium CE. This decline was the result of a number of historical factors, including the revival of brahmanical Hinduism in India and the expansion of Islam into Central Asia.

situationalism ::: Another name for Situation Ethics, which is a Christian ethical theory that was principally developed in the 1960s by the Episcopal priest Joseph Fletcher. It basically states that sometimes other moral principles can be cast aside in certain situations if love is best served; as Paul Tillich once put it: 'Love is the ultimate law'. The moral principles Fletcher is specifically referring to are the moral codes of Christianity and the type of love he is specifically referring to is 'Agape' love.

Socinians: Followers of the 16th century Italian, humanistic Christians, Socinus (Sotzzini), Laelius and Faustus. They advocated freedom of thought over against the orthodox expressions of Christianity. The Racovian Catechism (1605) states their method and doctrines. In general, they were anti-Trinitarians (see Trinitarianism), anti-Augustinian (opposing the doctrines or original sin, depravity, predestination), anti-Catholic institutionalism; their interpretation of Christianity was that it is a religion of the attainment of eternal life, Jesus being the revealer of God, and the Scriptures giving a supernatural revelation which is necessary and rationally defensible. A strong ethical note pervaded their theology. They opposed the view of sacramental mysteries. Although condemned by the Protestant churches, the Socinians exerted a tremendous influence even after their formal dissolution as a party. -- V.F.

Solomon', Grant, Gnosticism and Early Christianity,

Spanish Exile ::: In 1492 the Spanish King Ferdinand ordered by a special edict to expel all the Jews from his country (except those choosing to accept Christianity). Approximately 300,000 Spanish Jews left the country in three months, many going to Portugal, only to be expelled from there four years later. Others went to North Africa, Turkey and the land of Israel.

Star-angels the regents or cosmic spirits of the stars: “Every planet according to the esoteric doctrine is in its composition a Septenary like man, in its principles. That is to say, the visible planet is the physical body of the sidereal being, the Atma or Spirit of which is the Angel, or Rishi, or Dhyan-Chohan, or Deva, or whatever we call it” (BCW 10:31). This was the basis for the worship of star-angels by all antiquity, a worship which in modified form was taken over by primitive Christianity and still exists in the Roman Catholic Church, although the esoteric meaning was lost. The seven star-angels — Michael (like unto God), Gabriel (the strength of God), Raphael (divine virtue), Uriel (God’s light and fire), Scaltiel (the speech of God), Jehudiel (the praise of God), and Barachiel (the blessing of God) — referred to the rectors of the seven sacred planets. “It is through their ‘divine attributes,’ which have led to the formation of the names, that these archangels may be identified by an easy esoteric method of transmutation with the Chaldean great gods and even with the Seven Manus and the Seven Rishis of India” (BCW 10:19).

Stole ::: In Christianity this is a liturgical garment, a band of colored cloth actually, that is draped over other garments like chasuble and alb.

Sympathy: On psychological levels, a participation in and feeling for other living beings in adversity or other emotional phases, not always painful, which may or may not lead to participating or alleviating action, explained naturalistically as a general instinct inherent in all creatures, ethically sometimes as an original altruism, sociologically as acquired in the civilisatory process through needs of co-operation, mutual aid, and fellow-feeling in family and group action. Stressed particularly in Hinduism, fostered along with pity (q.v.) in Christianity, discussed and recommended as a shrewd social expedient by such men as Hobbes, Bentham, and Adam Smith, Schopenhauer raised sympathy Mitleid), as an equivalent to love, into an ethical principle which Nietzsche repudiated because to him it increases suffering and through weakness hinders development. Sympathy, as a cultural force, becomes progressively more evident in the increasing establishment of benevolent institutions, such as hospitals, asylums, etc., a more general altruism and ejection (Clifford), an extension of kindness even to animals (first taught by Buddhism, see Ahimsa), reform and relief movements of all kinds, etc. Still regarded highly as a praiseworthy virtue, it has been gradually rid of its dependence on individual ethical culture by scientific conditioning in social planning on a huge scale. See v. Orelli, Die philosophischen Auffassungen des Mttleids (1912); Scheler, Wesen und Formen der Sympathie (1926). -- K.F.L.

Syncretism; Syncretism is the interworking of two or more cultural perspectives into one system. Gnosticism (and therefore Christianity), as well as Kabbalah and the Mysteries of Mithras etc grew from syncretism. This has often been confused with eclecticism but is not the same thing. The latter is a picking and choosing according to taste, without the internal framework of a genuine understanding of function. The former is when two systems come together with cultural perspectives that need to be worked out. Thus the important deeper "hard parts" of a system will still be included after syncratism, but lost on eclecticism.

Ta’aroa (Tahitian) The chief Tahitian god who broke out of the darkness within the cosmic egg. After living alone, he created a daughter with whom he made the manifested world. Later he fashioned man out of red earth, and then put him to sleep for ages — referring to the ages during which the mind principle had not yet awakened to conscious activity. During this sleep Ta’aroa extracted a bone from the man, and from this fashioned woman, a reference to the third root-race when the androgynous mankind separated into the present type of sexual humanity. The mental sleep of the third root-race mankind lasted from a number of minor time periods after the separation, and before mind really incarnated in the relatively mindless bodies. Whether the myths relating to the creation of man and woman are indigenous or imported from Christianity is debated.

Thaphabaoth (Thartharoth, Thautabaoth, Onoel)—drawing on Ophitic sources, Origen, in his Contra Celsum, lists Thaphabaoth, along with Michael and Gabriel, as an angel (or demon) hostile to man. In gnostic lore, Thaphabaoth is an archontic demon, one of 7 rulers of the lower realms. When invoked, he manifests in the form of a bear Thaphabaoth is the Hebraized form of the Greek Tartarus. [Rf. Thorndike, The History of Magic and Experimental Sciences', Grant, Gnosti¬ cism and Early Christianity, Mead, Thrice-Greatest Hermes I, 294.]

The Christ ::: From the Greek meaning "Anointed One", this is a title in Christianity referring to their savior and redeemer: Jesus of Nazareth. In certain gnostic traditions the allegory reflected in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ is at play in the hearts of individuals and is a Solar rite that gives rise to the actualization of Solar Consciousness.

The Eden in Genesis is a marvelous fusion of many meanings into one narrative, where the Adams of the various root-races are made into one. Eden was an ancient name for Mesopotamia and adjacent regions; and under that one name are comprised the meanings of an abode of initiates, a sacred land from which races emerged, and a goal of bliss in the future. The Eden of the Hebrew books, which Judaism, Christianity, and Islam alike have located in Mesopotamia and in the now sandy lands of Persia and Afghanistan, refers also to what was in prehistoric times a great and highly developed center of culture and the civilization which there had its seat, including a number of Mystery schools. When the changing cycles brought about a degeneration and final breakup of this seat of archaic wisdom, it was represented as the loss by the then human Adam — the then race — of the Paradise in which he had dwelt. Edens and Paradises always contain trees; and these, by one interpretation, signify the initiates in the sacred land, and by another they are the Tree of Life and the Tree of Wisdom for man himself. In the Qabbalah, Eden is a place of initiation.

The ideas of the Virgin Mary in orthodox Christianity have been taken over from the pagans, as for example from the mother in the triad which heads all cosmogonies of the countries surrounding the Mediterranean Sea (Isis, Juno, etc.). The word Mary from the Hebrew would seem etymologically cognate with the Latin mare (sea); the Hebrew word meaning bitter, and the sea likewise being bitter it is also cognate with other words meaning water, as in the Jewish expression, the waters of space, or the feminine productive principle. See also IMMACULATE CONCEPTION; VIRGIN BIRTH

The key to an understanding of the nature of the four Gospels lies in a consideration of the process which the functions and teachings of some of the Mystery schools of Asia Minor became gradually transformed into the formal religious system known as Christianity. The Gospels must have originated as extracts from the Mystery-dramas enacted in those schools. The mystical-human birth of Jesus, his trials or tests, his teachings, crucifixion, resurrection, etc., are clearly a form of the world-old and universal Mystery-drama of initiation of a human neophyte re-enacted in those ceremonies. The Gospels’ present form is the result of many copyings, recensions, omissions, additions, and alterations. They are, in fact, symbolic narratives made around the personality and individuality of a real character which thus has become a Mystery-figure; and contain also many teachings properly to be attributed to him, belonging to the general class of logia, or wise sayings of teachers, paralleled in the other world sacred scriptures. Jesus, as represented, is not historical; but there was an actual teacher, doubtless bearing the name Yeshua‘, Latinized as Jesus, who lived about a century earlier than the commonly accepted beginning of the Christian era.

The salient feature of Manichaeism is its uncompromising dualism, for it recognized a world of light and a world of darkness as eternally coeval; and there is a God of light opposed to a hostile Satan. Teachings of the esoteric gnosis as taught by Neoplatonists, Gnostics, and others were materialized, and both doctrine and ritual assumed forms less exacting and therefore better calculated for perpetuation in an age of increasing materialism. It showed little affinity for Christianity or facility for combination with it, and Manichaeism and Christianity may be regarded as Oriental and Occidental products of the same materializing influence transforming and adapting the original gnosis. It has more affinity with Gnostic than with ecclesiastical Christianity, for there was a large amount of truly esoteric thought and teaching in what for centuries passed under the name of Manichaeism.

The Temple representing as it does both the universe and man, as the microcosm, the Three Ancient Grand Masters can be viewed either cosmically or particularly with reference to man. Cosmogonically these Grand Masters represent the trinity of nature and are identical with the triads which are found in all the great world religions: Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva in India; Osiris, Isis, and Horus in Egypt; the highest three Sephiroth in the Jewish Qabbalah — Kether (the Crown), Hochmah (Wisdom), and Binah (Intelligence); and Father, Holy Ghost, and Son in Christianity.

The Visishtadvaita school teaches that the human spirit is separate and different from the one supreme spirit, though dependent on it and ultimately to be united with it, as well as originally in some manner springing forth from it. The Visishtadvaita speaks of the supreme spirit almost as monists do, because apparently ascribing to it a type of individuality, which is as offensive to the rigid logical impersonal eternal All of the Advaita as is the franker dualism of the Dvaitins. This arises from the fact that the Advaitins claim that it is utterly improper to ascribe individuality, personality, or monadism of any kind to the infinite — a claim which is precisely that of modern theosophy. However, “Dualistic and anthropomorphic as may be the philosophy of the Visishtadwaita, when compared with that of the Adwaita — the non-dualists, — it is yet supremely higher in logic and philosophy than the cosmogony accepted by either Christianity, or its great opponent, modern Science” (SD 1:522).

The word Sabean itself has come down to us mainly through Greek and Latin writers, but so thoroughly imbued were the ancient Hebrews with this idea of the celestial hosts or cosmic spirits that the Bible is full of references where the context even wrongly endows the celestial hosts with the properties of the Most High God, and it has been so understood by Christian theologians; forgetting, however, that manifested deities, however high, are but the manifestations of the infinite and ineffable Mystery or parabrahman, from which all the celestial hosts flow or emanate. Thus not only ancient and modern Judaism, but Christianity itself, is filled with the thought of the ancient Sabeans.

This rebuilding of the notion of creature permits St. Thomas also to analyze the problems that Averroism was making more and more prominent. Philosophical truth was discovered by the Greeks and the Arabians neither completely nor adequately nor without error. What the Christian thinker must do in their presence is not to divide his allegiance between them and Christianity, but to discover the meaning of reason and the conditions of true thinking. That discovery will enable him to learn from the Greeks without also learning their errors; and it would thus show him the possibility of the harmony between reason and revelation. He must learn to be a philosopher, to discover the philosopher within the Christian man, in order to meet philosophers. In exploring the meaning of a creature, St. Thomas was building a philosophy which permitted his contemporaries (at least, if they listened to him) to free themselves from the old eternalistic and rigid world of the Greeks and to free their thinking, therefore, from the antinomies which this world could raise up for them. In the harmony of faith and reason which St. Thomas defended against Averroism, we must see the culminating point of his activity. For such a harmony meant ultimately not only a judicious and synthetic diagnosis of Greek philosophy, as well as a synthetic incorporation of Greek ideas in Christian thought, it meant also the final vindication of the humanism and the naturalism of Thomistic philosophy. The expression and the defense of this Christian humanism constitute one of St. Thomas' most enduring contributions to European thought. -- A.C.P.

Thunderer ::: An epithet for Jupiter or the Deity. Jupiter (Latin: Iuppiter; /ˈjʊpɪtɛr/; genitive case: Iovis; /ˈjɔːvɪs/) or Jove is the king of the gods and the god of sky and thunder in myth. Jupiter was the chief deity of Roman state religion throughout the Republican and Imperial eras, until Christianity became the dominant religion of the Empire. In Roman mythology, he negotiates with Numa Pompilius, the second king of Rome, to establish principles of Roman religion such as sacrifice.

to Christianity. He rules theology and morals and

Transcendentalism: Any doctrine giving emphasis to the transcendent or transcendental (q.v.). Originally, a convenient synonym for the "transcendental philosophy" (q.v.) of Kant and Schelling. By extension, post-Kantian idealism. Any idealistic philosophy positing the immanence of the ideal or spiritual in sensuous experience. The philosophy of the Absolute (q.v.), the doctrine of: a) the immanence of the Absolute in the finite; b) the transcendence of the Absolute above the finite conceived as illusion or "unreality". A name, onginally pejorative, given to and later adopted by an idealistic movement in New England centering around the informal and so-called "Transcendental Club," organized at Boston in 1836. An outgrowth of the romantic movement, its chief influences were Coleridge, Schelling and Orientalism. While it embodied a general attitude rather than a systematically worked out philosophy, in general it opposed Lockean empiricism, materialism, rationalism, Calvinism, Deism, Trinitarianism, and middle-class commercialism. Its metaphysics followed that of Kant and post-Kantian idealism posited the immanancc of the divine in finite existence, and tended towards pantheism (Emerson's "Nature", "Oversoul", "The Transcendentalist"). Its doctrine of knowledge was idealistic and intuitive. Its ethics embraced idealism, individualism, mysticism, reformism and optimism regarding human nature. Theologically it was autosoteric, unitarian, and broadly mystical (Theo. Parker's "The Transient and Permanent in Christianity"). Popularly, a pejorative term for any view that is "enthusiastic", "mystical", extravagant, impractical, ethereal, supernatural, vague, abstruse, lacking in common sense. --W.L. Transcendentals (Scholastic): The transcendentalia are notions which apply to any being whatsoever. They are Being, Thing, Something, One, True, Good. While thing (res) and being (ens) are synonymous, the other four name properties of being which, however, are only virtually distinct from the concept to which they apply. -- R.A.

Treasury of Early Christianity, A. See Fremantle.

Treasury of Early Christianity.

Trinity The divine powers at the head of every theogony. In the Christian Trinity, the original idea of a triune divinity is preserved but has become confused and adapted to theological speculation. If the Holy Ghost is regarded as feminine, as it was in primitive Christianity, we have the trinity of Father-Mother-Son. The present manner of the procession of the Holy Ghost in the Occident is due to the early theological quarrels which was one of the main causes of the final rupture between the Greek Orthodox and the Roman Catholic Churches — the filioque (“and from the son”) controversy. The Orthodox held with the original procession of Father, Holy Ghost, and Son, while in the West the Holy Ghost or Spirit has become a kind of emanation from the Father or Son, or both of them, and is scarcely distinguishable in its attributes from the Son; while the place of Mother has been filled in the Roman Catholic Church by Mary who, though the mother of Jesus, nevertheless is not a member of the Trinity.

unchristian ::: a. --> Not Christian; not converted to the Christian faith; infidel.
Contrary to Christianity; not like or becoming a Christian; as, unchristian conduct. ::: v. t. --> To make unchristian.


unchristianize ::: v. t. --> To turn from the Christian faith; to cause to abandon the belief and profession of Christianity.

Unveiled and Conybeare, Origins of Christianity,

which commenced in 1904. It superseded the Aeon of Osiris, which was typified by the rise and fall of such religions as Juadaism and Christianity. Previous to that was the Aeon of Isis, the Pagan era, many elements of which are reappearing in the present Aeon.

With reference to the approach to the central reality of religion, God, and man's relation to it, types of the Philosophy of Religion may be distinguished, leaving out of account negative (atheism), skeptical and cynical (Xenophanes, Socrates, Voltaire), and agnostic views, although insertions by them are not to be separated from the history of religious consciousness. Fundamentalism, mainly a theological and often a Church phenomenon of a revivalist nature, philosophizes on the basis of unquestioning faith, seeking to buttress it by logical argument, usually taking the form of proofs of the existence of God (see God). Here belong all historic religions, Christianity in its two principal forms, Catholicism with its Scholastic philosophy and Protestantism with its greatly diversified philosophies, the numerous religions of Hinduism, such as Brahmanism, Shivaism and Vishnuism, the religion of Judaism, and Mohammedanism. Mysticism, tolerated by Church and philosophy, is less concerned with proof than with description and personal experience, revealing much of the psychological factors involved in belief and speculation. Indian philosophy is saturated with mysticism since its inception, Sufism is the outstanding form of Arab mysticism, while the greatest mystics in the West are Plotinus, Meister Eckhart, Tauler, Ruysbroek, Thomas a Kempis, and Jacob Bohme. Metaphysics incorporates religious concepts as thought necessities. Few philosophers have been able to avoid the concept of God in their ontology, or any reference to the relation of God to man in their ethics. So, e.g., Plato, Spinoza, Leibniz, Schelling, and especially Hegel who made the investigation of the process of the Absolute the essence of the Philosophy of Religion.

Woman In philosophy, symbolizes the mother aspect of nature or feminine characteristic of the universe always found in the triads of Father-Mother-Son (changed in the Christian scheme to Father, Son, and Holy Ghost — the Holy Spirit in primitive Christianity always being considered feminine). From time immemorial it has been customary to associate primordial spirit-substance, later becoming matter, with the cosmic feminine principle represented symbolically by a horizontal line); and spirit has always been associated with the masculine principle (represented by a vertical line); but the words feminine and masculine are merely borrowed from human beings, and the characteristics of originating cosmic principles were far better expressed by pairs of opposites such as negative and positive.

Yongsong Chinjong. (龍城震鐘) (1864-1940). Korean monk during the Japanese colonial period (1910-1945), also known as Paek Yongsong; leader of a conservative group of monastic reformers, and one of the thirty-three signatories to the Korean Declaration of Independence in 1919. Ordained at the monastery of HAEINSA in 1879, he received full monastic precepts five years later and became a disciple of Taeŭn Nango (1780-1841) at the hermitage of Ch'ilburam. Later, he had a great awakening while he was studying the JINGDE CHUANDENGLU at the monastery of SONGGWANGSA, where he became a disciple of the SoN master HWANSoNG CHIAN. One year after Korea was annexed by Japan, he established the monastery of Taegaksa and a Son center (Sonhagwon) in Seoul in an attempt to propagate Buddhism among a wider public. On March 1, 1919, he signed the Korean Declaration of Independence as a representative of the Buddhist community and was consequently incarcerated by the Japanese colonial government for eighteen months. During his year and a half in prison, he translated many sutras (such as the voluminous AVATAMSAKASuTRA, or Hwaomgyong) from literary Chinese into han'gŭl, the Korean vernacular script, in order to make more Buddhist texts accessible to ordinary Koreans. After his release from prison in March 1921, he established a community known as the Taegakkyo (Teaching of Great Awakening) and a translation center called Samjang Yokhoe (Society for Translating the TRIPItAKA), and devoted most of his time to the translation of Buddhist scriptures. In 1928 he published the journal Mua ("No Self") and with HANYoNG CHoNGHO also published the journal Puril ("Buddha Sun"). In May 1929, he and 127 other monks submitted a petition to the Japanese colonial government asking for the restoration of the tradition of celibacy in the Buddhist monasteries. Because of his interest in ensuring the continuance of the BHIKsU and BHIKsUnĪ traditions, Yongsong personally established many ordination platforms and transmitted the complete monastic precepts (kujokkye) several times during his career. He also stressed the need for monasteries to be self-sustaining economically. In accordance with his plan for self-sustenance, he participated in the management of a mine in Hamgyong province, and in 1922, he bought some land in Manchuria and ran a farm on the compounds of a branch of the Taegakkyo. He also started a Ch'amson Manil Kyolsahoe (Ten-Thousand Day Meditation Retreat Society) at the monastery of Ch'ilbulsa and attracted many followers from other monasteries. Yongsong was a prolific writer who left behind many works, including his famous Kwiwon chongjong ("The Orthodox Teaching that Returns to the Source"), a tract that compared Buddhism to Confucianism, Daoism, and Christianity, a modern twist on the old "three teachings" syncretism of medieval East Asian philosophy. This work was one of the first attempts by Buddhists to respond to the inroads made by Christianity in modern Korea. In his treatment, he suggests that Confucianism presented a complete moral doctrine but was deficient in transcendental teachings; Daoism was deficient in moral teachings but half-understood transcendental teaching; Christianity was fairly close to the Buddhist ch'on'gyo ("teachings of [humans] and divinities"), which taught the kinds of meritorious actions that would lead to rebirth in heavenly realms but was completely ignorant of the transcendental teaching. Only Buddhism, Yongsong concluded, presented all facets of both moral and transcendental teachings. Yongsong's other works include his Kakhae illyun, Susim non, and Ch'onggong wonil. See also IMWoTKO.

Zoolatry [from Greek zoon animal + latreia worship] Animal worship; animal symbols are found in all religions, as in the religions of ancient Egypt and in Christianity, as the dove and the lamb. The Maharajas of the four quarters of space are sometimes represented as elephants; most of the zodiacal signs are animals, as the name implies. These symbols should not be regarded as arbitrarily chosen on account of a fancied resemblance: the animals are actually emblems, if not in all cases manifestations, of the powers in question. It is the same with plants and stones: they are not emblems only but actually enshrine certain occult qualities. If plants may have medicinal virtues, and stones possess magical powers, why may not animals have the same? The phrase animal worship implies that the veneration has often been transferred from the power to its symbol or emblem, as in the case of idolatry.



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1:I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else. ~ C S Lewis,
2:Democracy has travelled from the East to the West in the shape of Christianity. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Bande Mataram - II, Asiatic Democracy,
3:Christianity was an assertion of human equality in the spirit, a great assertion of the unity of the divine spirit in man. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Bande Mataram - II, Asiatic Democracy,
4:Christianity says, "Love thy neighbour as thyself." And I say . "Recognise thyself in thy neighbour and that all men are in reality one and the same substance." ~ Schopenhauer, the Eternal Wisdom
5:Anyone who is honestly trying to be a Christian will soon find his intelligence being sharpened: one of the reasons why it needs no special education to be a Christian is that Christianity is an education itself." ~ C. S. Lewis, p. 78,
6:If a man knows himself, he shall know God." ~ Clement of Alexandria, (c. 150 - c. 215), Christian theologian. A convert to Christianity, he was an educated man who was familiar with classical Greek philosophy and literature, Wikipedia.,
7:My chief reason for choosing Christianity was because the mysteries were incomprehensible. What's the point of revelation if we could figure it out ourselves? If it were wholly comprehensible, then it would just be another philosophy. ~ Mortimer J Adler,
8:For someone who penetrates the interior essence of Life, the enigmatic content of Christianity is suddenly illuminated in a light of such intensity that anyone perceiving it in this light finds himself profoundly unsettled. ~ Michel Henry, I Am the Truth,
9:CHRISTIANITY: Belief that one God created a universe 13.79 billion yrs old, 93 billion light yrs in diameter ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (1 light yr = approx.6 trillion miles), consisting of over 200 billion galaxies,each containing ave.of 200 billion stars,only to have a personal relationship with you. Lol,
10:Christianity has a built-in defense system: anything that questions a belief, no matter how logical the argument is, is the work of Satan by the very fact that it makes you question a belief. It's a very interesting defense mechanism and the only way to get by it -- and believe me, I was raised Southern Baptist -- is to take massive amounts of mushrooms, sit in a field, and just go, "Show me.". ~ Bill Hicks,
11:The occultist and the philosopher are entirely willing to accept the mystical truths of Christianity for they are a part of all truth, all revelation, and all mysteries. What the mystic seeks to escape is not true Christianity but the contendings of unnumbered jarring sects that have theologized Jesus out of existence and put in his place a figure of their own conception. ~ Manly P Hall, The Students Monthly Letter, 4th year
12:The most dangerous thing you can do is to take any one impulse of your own nature and set it up as the thing you ought to follow at all costs. There is not one of them which will not make us into devils if we set it up as an absolute guide. You might think love of humanity in general was safe, but it is not. If you leave out justice you will find yourself breaking agreements and faking evidence in trials 'for the sake of humanity', and become in the end a cruel and treacherous man. ~ C S Lewis, Mere Christianity,
13:To take the last issue, the difficult issue, first. The first great Dharma systems, East and West, all arose, without exception, in the so-called "axial period" (Karl Jaspers), that rather extraordinary period beginning around the 6th century B.C. (plus or minus several centuries), a period that saw the birth of Gautama Buddha, Lao Tzu, Confucius, Moses, Plato, Patanjali—a period that would soon give way, over the next few centuries, to include Ashvaghosa, Nagarjuna, Plotinus, Jesus, Philo, Valentinus…. Virtually all of the major tenets of the perennial philosophy were first laid down during this amazing era (in Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, Judaism, Christianity….) ~ Ken Wilber, Integral Life, right-bucks,
14:For primitive man the world is full of demons and mysterious powers which he fears; the whole of Nature is animated by these forces, which are nothing but man's own inner powers projected into the outside world. Christianity and modern science have de-demonized Nature, which means that the European has consistently taken back the demonic powers out of the world into himself, and has steadily loaded his unconscious with them. Out of man himself the demonic powers rise up in revolt against the supposed spiritual constraints of Christianity. The demons begin to break out in Baroque art: the columns writhe, the furniture sprouts satyr's feet. Man is slowly transformed into a uroboros, the "tail-eater" who devours himself, from ancient times a symbol of the demon-ridden man. ~ Carl Jung,
15:It is no good asking for a simple religion. After all, real things are not simple. They look simple, but they are not. The table I am sitting at looks simple: but ask a scientist to tell you what it is really made of-all about the atoms and how the light waves rebound from them and hit my eye and what they do to the optic nerve and what it does to my brain-and, of course, you find that what we call "seeing a table" lands you in mysteries and complications which you can hardly get to the end of. A child saying a child's prayer looks simple. And if you are content to stop there, well and good. But if you are not--and the modern world usually is not--if you want to go on and ask what is really happening, then you must be prepared for something difficult. If we ask for something more than simplicity, it is silly then to complain that the something more is not simple. ~ C S Lewis, Mere Christianity,
16:It can be expected that the orthodox Christian will at first reject the theories about the Christ which occultism presents; at the same time, this same orthodox Christian will find it increasingly difficult to induce the intelligent masses of people to accept the impossible Deity and the feeble Christ, which historical Christianity has endorsed. A Christ Who is present and living, Who is known to those who follow Him, Who is a strong and able executive, and not a sweet and sentimental sufferer, Who has never left us but Who has worked for two thousand years through the medium of His disciples, the inspired men and women of all faiths, all religions, and all religious persuasions; Who has no use for fanaticism or hysterical devotion, but Who loves all men persistently, intelligently and optimistically, Who sees divinity in them all, and Who comprehends the techniques of the evolutionary development of the human consciousness (mental, emotional and physical, producing civilizations and cultures appropriate to a particular point in evolution) - these ideas the intelligent public can and will accept. p. 589/90 ~ Alice Bailey, in The Externalization of the Hierarchy (1957)
17:Our culture, the laws of our culture, are predicated on the idea that people are conscious. People have experience; people make decisions, and can be held responsible for them. There's a free will element to it. You can debate all that philosophically, and fine, but the point is that that is how we act, and that is the idea that our legal system is predicated on. There's something deep about it, because you're subject to the law, but the law is also limited by you, which is to say that in a well-functioning, properly-grounded democratic system, you have intrinsic value. That's the source of your rights. Even if you're a murderer, we have to say the law can only go so far because there's something about you that's divine.

Well, what does that mean? Partly it means that there's something about you that's conscious and capable of communicating, like you're a whole world unto yourself. You have that to contribute to everyone else, and that's valuable. You can learn new things, transform the structure of society, and invent a new way of dealing with the world. You're capable of all that. It's an intrinsic part of you, and that's associated with the idea that there's something about the logos that is necessary for the absolute chaos of the reality beyond experience to manifest itself as reality. That's an amazing idea because it gives consciousness a constitutive role in the cosmos. You can debate that, but you can't just bloody well brush it off. First of all, we are the most complicated things there are, that we know of, by a massive amount. We're so complicated that it's unbelievable. So there's a lot of cosmos out there, but there's a lot of cosmos in here, too, and which one is greater is by no means obvious, unless you use something trivial, like relative size, which really isn't a very sophisticated approach.

Whatever it is that is you has this capacity to experience reality and to transform it, which is a very strange thing. You can conceptualize the future in your imagination, and then you can work and make that manifest-participate in the process of creation. That's one way of thinking about it. That's why I think Genesis 1 relates the idea that human beings are made in the image of the divine-men and women, which is interesting, because feminists are always criticizing Christianity as being inexorably patriarchal. Of course, they criticize everything like that, so it's hardly a stroke of bloody brilliance. But I think it's an absolute miracle that right at the beginning of the document it says straightforwardly, with no hesitation whatsoever, that the divine spark which we're associating with the word, that brings forth Being, is manifest in men and women equally. That's a very cool thing. You got to think, like I said, do you actually take that seriously? Well, what you got to ask is what happens if you don't take it seriously, right? Read Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment. That's the best investigation into that tactic that's ever been produced. ~ Jordan Peterson, Biblical Series, 1,
18:There's an idea in Christianity of the image of God as a Trinity. There's the element of the Father, there's the element of the Son, and there's the element of the Holy Spirit. It's something like the spirit of tradition, human beings as the living incarnation of that tradition, and the spirit in people that makes relationship with the spirit and individuals possible. I'm going to bounce my way quickly through some of the classical, metaphorical attributes of God, so that we kind of have a cloud of notions about what we're talking about, when we return to Genesis 1 and talk about the God who spoke chaos into Being.

There's a fatherly aspect, so here's what God as a father is like. You can enter into a covenant with it, so you can make a bargain with it. Now, you think about that. Money is like that, because money is a bargain you make with the future. We structured our world so that you can negotiate with the future. I don't think that we would have got to the point where we could do that without having this idea to begin with. You can act as if the future's a reality; there's a spirit of tradition that enables you to act as if the future is something that can be bargained with. That's why you make sacrifices. The sacrifices were acted out for a very long period of time, and now they're psychological. We know that you can sacrifice something valuable in the present and expect that you're negotiating with something that's representing the transcendent future. That's an amazing human discovery. No other creature can do that; to act as if the future is real; to know that you can bargain with reality itself, and that you can do it successfully. It's unbelievable.

It responds to sacrifice. It answers prayers. I'm not saying that any of this is true, by the way. I'm just saying what the cloud of ideas represents. It punishes and rewards. It judges and forgives. It's not nature. One of the things weird about the Judeo-Christian tradition is that God and nature are not the same thing, at all. Whatever God is, partially manifest in this logos, is something that stands outside of nature. I think that's something like consciousness as abstracted from the natural world. It built Eden for mankind and then banished us for disobedience. It's too powerful to be touched. It granted free will. Distance from it is hell. Distance from it is death. It reveals itself in dogma and in mystical experience, and it's the law. That's sort of like the fatherly aspect.

The son-like aspect. It speaks chaos into order. It slays dragons and feeds people with the remains. It finds gold. It rescues virgins. It is the body and blood of Christ. It is a tragic victim, scapegoat, and eternally triumphant redeemer simultaneously. It cares for the outcast. It dies and is reborn. It is the king of kings and hero of heroes. It's not the state, but is both the fulfillment and critic of the state. It dwells in the perfect house. It is aiming at paradise or heaven. It can rescue from hell. It cares for the outcast. It is the foundation and the cornerstone that was rejected. It is the spirit of the law.

The spirit-like aspect. It's akin to the human soul. It's the prophetic voice. It's the still, small voice of conscience. It's the spoken truth. It's called forth by music. It is the enemy of deceit, arrogance, and resentment. It is the water of life. It burns without consuming. It's a blinding light.

That's a very well-developed set of poetic metaphors. These are all...what would you say...glimpses of the transcendent ideal. That's the right way of thinking about it. They're glimpses of the transcendent ideal, and all of them have a specific meaning. In part, what we're going to do is go over that meaning, as we continue with this series. What we've got now is a brief description, at least, of what this is. ~ Jordan Peterson, Biblical Series, 1,

*** WISDOM TROVE ***

1:Christianity is a fighting religion. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove
2:Culture eats Christianity for breakfast. ~ peter-drucker, @wisdomtrove
3:Humor (is) intrinsitc to Christianity. ~ soren-kierkegaard, @wisdomtrove
4:The Bible is the Constitution of Christianity. ~ billy-graham, @wisdomtrove
5:The heart of Christianity is a myth which is also a fact. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove
6:Christianity is art and not money. Money is its curse. ~ william-blake, @wisdomtrove
7:Hatred of Judaism is at bottom hatred of Christianity. ~ sigmund-freud, @wisdomtrove
8:The idea of Christ is much older than Christianity. ~ george-santayana, @wisdomtrove
9:Unsaintly saints are the tragedy of Christianity. ~ aiden-wilson-tozer, @wisdomtrove
10:The glory of Christianity is to conquer by forgiveness. ~ william-blake, @wisdomtrove
11:Christianity demands the crucifixion of the intellect. ~ soren-kierkegaard, @wisdomtrove
12:If Christianity was morality, Socrates would be the Saviour. ~ william-blake, @wisdomtrove
13:I never gave up Christianity until I was forty years of age. ~ charles-darwin, @wisdomtrove
14:The only thing Christianity can not be... is moderately important. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove
15:The truly simple way of presenting Christianity is to do it. ~ soren-kierkegaard, @wisdomtrove
16:The complacency of Christians is the scandal of Christianity. ~ aiden-wilson-tozer, @wisdomtrove
17:Good-nature is one of the richest fruits of true Christianity. ~ henry-ward-beecher, @wisdomtrove
18:Christianity is a lifestyle. And being a Christian is more than a label. ~ joyce-meyer, @wisdomtrove
19:Christianity has not message for those who do not realize they are sinners. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove
20:The Christian idea of &
21:Women are a new race, recreated since the world received Christianity. ~ henry-ward-beecher, @wisdomtrove
22:Real Christianity can be summed up in two commands: Love God, and love people. ~ joyce-meyer, @wisdomtrove
23:Christendom has done away with Christianity without being quite aware of it. ~ soren-kierkegaard, @wisdomtrove
24:Every other religion is a salvation by self, Christianity is a salvation by Christ. ~ max-lucado, @wisdomtrove
25:Socialism is, in fact, a form of Christianity, people wishing to imitate Christ. ~ kurt-vonnegut, @wisdomtrove
26:Spreading Christianity abroad is sometimes an excuse for not having it at home. ~ henry-ward-beecher, @wisdomtrove
27:With the rise of Christianity, faith replaced thought as the bringer of immortality. ~ hannah-arendt, @wisdomtrove
28:Christianity even when watered down is hot enough to boil all modern society to rags. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove
29:If Christianity is only one more bit of good advice, then Christianity is of no importance. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove
30:Christianity at any given time is strong or weak depending upon her concept of God. ~ aiden-wilson-tozer, @wisdomtrove
31:Christianity is simply the ideal form of manhood represented to us by Jesus Christ. ~ henry-ward-beecher, @wisdomtrove
32:Christianity is not a spectator sport. It's something in which we become totally involved. ~ billy-graham, @wisdomtrove
33:If a man is going to write on chemistry, he learns chemistry. The same is true of Christianity. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove
34:He who affirms that Christianity makes men miserable, is himself an utter stranger to it. ~ charles-spurgeon, @wisdomtrove
35:What a solace Christianity must be to one who has an undoubted conviction of its truth! ~ napoleon-bonaparte, @wisdomtrove
36:Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove
37:Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good. ~ h-l-mencken, @wisdomtrove
38:If Christianity was something we were making up, of course we could make it easier. But it is not. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove
39:I have a great mind to believe in Christianity for the mere pleasure of fancying I may be damned. ~ lord-byron, @wisdomtrove
40:In Science we have been reading only the notes to a poem; in Christianity we find the poem itself. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove
41:The main point of Christianity was this: that Nature is not our mother: Nature is our sister. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove
42:Christianity has always insisted that the cross we bear always precedes the crown we wear. ~ martin-luther-king, @wisdomtrove
43:Christianity supplies a Hell for the people who disagree with you and a Heaven for your friends. ~ elbert-hubbard, @wisdomtrove
44:The sincere Christian knows that what died in Auschwitz was not the Jewish people but Christianity. ~ elie-wiesel, @wisdomtrove
45:Judaism is not complete without Christianity and without Judaism, Christianity would not exist. ~ benjamin-disraeli, @wisdomtrove
46:The peculiar doctrine of Christianity is that of a universal sacrifice and perpetual propitiation. ~ samuel-johnson, @wisdomtrove
47:The practical effect of Christianity is happiness, therefore let it be spread abroad everywhere! ~ charles-spurgeon, @wisdomtrove
48:Christianity is hard when we try to serve God in man's way instead of serving God in God's way. ~ aiden-wilson-tozer, @wisdomtrove
49:The trouble with Communism is the Communists, just as the trouble with Christianity is the Christians. ~ h-l-mencken, @wisdomtrove
50:Christianity teaches us to love our neighbor as ourself; modern society acknowledges no neighbor. ~ benjamin-disraeli, @wisdomtrove
51:There are those who hate Christianity and call their hatred an all-embracing love for all religions. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove
52:Christianity may be OK between consenting adults in private but should not be taught to young children. ~ francis-crick, @wisdomtrove
53:When people sugarcoat Christianity, arrange it all nicely, they have, in effect, taken away the Cross. ~ aiden-wilson-tozer, @wisdomtrove
54:With Christianity, freedom and equality became the two basic concepts of Europe; they are themselves Europe. ~ peter-drucker, @wisdomtrove
55:I see no contradiction between Buddhism and Christianity ... I intend to become as good a Buddhist as I can. ~ thomas-merton, @wisdomtrove
56:Pure Christianity, instead of being shaped by its environment, actually stands in sharp opposition to it. ~ aiden-wilson-tozer, @wisdomtrove
57:In the Christianity of Christendom the Cross has become something like the child’s hobby-horse and trumpet. ~ soren-kierkegaard, @wisdomtrove
58:I would not have you exchange the gold of individual Christianity for the base metal of Christian Socialism. ~ charles-spurgeon, @wisdomtrove
59:Jews show so near an affinity to you... Where is your Christianity if you do not believe in their Judaism? ~ benjamin-disraeli, @wisdomtrove
60:One of the reasons why it needs no special education to be a Christian is that Christianity is an education itself. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove
61:We Christians must look sharp that our Christianity does not simply refine our sins without removing them. ~ aiden-wilson-tozer, @wisdomtrove
62:Either communism must die or Christianity must die because it's actually a battle between Christ and Anti-Christ. ~ billy-graham, @wisdomtrove
63:I know the greatness of Christianity; it is a past greatness.. I live in 1924, and the Christian venture is done. ~ d-h-lawrence, @wisdomtrove
64:For Shakespeare, in the matter of religion, the choice lay between Christianity and nothing. He chose nothing. ~ george-santayana, @wisdomtrove
65:To the frivolous Christianity is certainly not glad tidings, for it wishes first of all to make them serious. ~ soren-kierkegaard, @wisdomtrove
66:When we Christians behave badly, or fail to behave well, we are making Christianity unbelievable to the outside world ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove
67:Christianity teaches salvation by grace through faith, every other religion teaches salvation through works and merit. ~ max-lucado, @wisdomtrove
68:If your Christianity depends upon a pastor's preaching, then you're a long way from being where you should be. ~ aiden-wilson-tozer, @wisdomtrove
69:Evangelical Christianity, as everyone knows, is founded upon hate, as the Christianity of Christ was founded upon love. ~ h-l-mencken, @wisdomtrove
70:May God deliver us from the easygoing, smooth, comfortable Christianity that never lets the truth get hold of us. ~ aiden-wilson-tozer, @wisdomtrove
71:The glory of Christianity is to conquer by forgiveness. It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend. ~ henry-ward-beecher, @wisdomtrove
72:My tactics were, by God's aid, to employ every means to make it clear what the requirement of Christianity truly is. ~ soren-kierkegaard, @wisdomtrove
73:The goal of Buddhism is to create Buddhas, not Buddhists, as the goal of Christianity is to create Christs, not Christians. ~ adyashanti, @wisdomtrove
74:To some degree Satanism is purely a kind of disease of Christianity. You've got to really be Christian to believe in Satan. ~ alan-moore, @wisdomtrove
75:I believe in Christianity as I believe the sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove
76:Unless Christianity is wholly false, the perception of ourselves which we have in moments of shame must be the only true one. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove
77:We who defend Christianity find ourselves constantly opposed not by the irreligion of our headers but by their real religion. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove
78:Christianity can be summed up in the two terms faith and love... receiving from above [faith] and giving out below [love]. ~ martin-luther, @wisdomtrove
79:The ne plus ultra of wickedness ... is embodied in what is commonly presented to mankind as the creed of Christianity. ~ john-stuart-mill, @wisdomtrove
80:To make Christianity a private affair while banishing all privacy is to relegate it to the rainbow's end or the Greek Calends. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove
81:Those who talk of the bible as a monument of English prose are merely admiring it as a monument over the grave of Christianity. ~ t-s-eliot, @wisdomtrove
82:I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove
83:There's no way to reconcile Islam with Christianity. This difference of opinion admits of compromise as much as a coin toss does. ~ sam-harris, @wisdomtrove
84:Christianity takes for granted the absence of any self-help and offers a power which is nothing less than the power of God. ~ aiden-wilson-tozer, @wisdomtrove
85:For there is some danger of falling into a soft and effeminate Christianity, under the plea of a lofty and ethereal theology. ~ charles-spurgeon, @wisdomtrove
86:Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove
87:The Gateway to Christianity is not through an intricate labyrinth of dogma, but by a simple belief in the person of Christ. ~ norman-vincent-peale, @wisdomtrove
88:And this is one of the most crucial definitions for the whole of Christianity; that the opposite of sin is not virtue but faith. ~ soren-kierkegaard, @wisdomtrove
89:Christianity met the mythological search for romance by being a story and the philosophical search for truth by being a true story. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove
90:There is no religion like Christianity, it is not one religion among others, it is completely different, its mixing apples and oranges. ~ max-lucado, @wisdomtrove
91:Christianity in its true sense puts an end to the State. It was so understood from its very beginning, and for that Christ was crucified. ~ leo-tolstoy, @wisdomtrove
92:Preparation for becoming attentive to Christianity does not consist in reading many books ... but in fuller immersion in existence. ~ soren-kierkegaard, @wisdomtrove
93:A Christianity which will not help those who are struggling from the bottom to the top of society, needs another Christ to die for it. ~ henry-ward-beecher, @wisdomtrove
94:The Spirit-filled life is not a special, deluxe edition of Christianity. It is part and parcel of the total plan of God for His people. ~ aiden-wilson-tozer, @wisdomtrove
95:When you get a new worldview you get a new world. It's like the shift from medieval Christianity to the Renaissance and enlightenment. ~ barbara-marx-hubbard, @wisdomtrove
96:What we want is not more little books about Christianity, but more little books by Christians on other subjects&
97:If Jesus does come down out of the clouds like a superhero, Christianity will stand revealed as a science . That will be the science of Christianity. ~ sam-harris, @wisdomtrove
98:Christianity is the strangest religion ever set up, for it committed a murder upon Jesus in order to redeem mankind from the sin of eating an apple. ~ thomas-paine, @wisdomtrove
99:Reality, in fact, is always something you couldn't have guessed. That's one of the reasons I believe Christianity. It's a religion you couldn't have guessed. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove
100:The trouble with Christianity is, not that its failed, but that it's never been tried . . . not that it can't remake the world, but that it's difficult. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove
101:There's not much practical Christianity in the man who lives on better terms with angels and seraphs than with his children, servants and neighbours. ~ henry-ward-beecher, @wisdomtrove
102:Christianity does not involve the belief that all things were made for man. it does involve the belief that god loves man and for his sake became man and died. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove
103:The primary paradox of Christianity is that the ordinary condition of man is not his sane or sensible condition; that the normal itself is an abnormality. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove
104:Those who would most scornfully repudiate Christianity as a mere "opiate of the people" have a contempt for the rich, that is, for all mankind except the poor. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove
105:There is no reason whatsoever to think that Buddhism can compete successfully with the relentless evangelizing of Christianity and Islam. Nor should it try to. ~ sam-harris, @wisdomtrove
106:How do you cause people to believe in an imagined order such as Christianity, democracy or capitalism? First, you never admit that the order is imagined. ~ yuval-noah-harari, @wisdomtrove
107:Christianity, with its doctrine of humility, of forgiveness, of love, is incompatible with the state, with its haughtiness, its violence, its punishment, its wars ~ leo-tolstoy, @wisdomtrove
108:Now that I am a Christian I do have moods in which the whole thing looks improbable: but when I was an atheist I had moods in which Christianity looked terribly probable. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove
109:The task of the church is twofold: to spread Christianity throughout the world and to make sure that the Christianity she spreads is the pure New Testament kind. ~ aiden-wilson-tozer, @wisdomtrove
110:Secularism teaches us that we ought to look to this world. Christianity teaches us that the best way to prepare for this world is to be fully prepared for the next. ~ charles-spurgeon, @wisdomtrove
111:Some folks think that Christianity means a kind of insurance policy, and that it has little to do with this life, but that it is a very good thing when a man dies. ~ henry-ward-beecher, @wisdomtrove
112:A man who first tried to guess &
113:Ecclesiastes said that "all is vanity," Most modern preachers say the same, or show it By their examples of true Christianity: In short, all know, or very short may know it. ~ lord-byron, @wisdomtrove
114:I realize that many elements of the Buddhist teaching can be found in Christianity, Judaism, Islam. I think if Buddhism can help, it is the concrete methods of practice. ~ thich-nhat-hanh, @wisdomtrove
115:Religion is, in fact, the dominion of the soul; it is the hope, the anchor of safety, the deliverance from evil. What a service has Christianity rendered to humanity! ~ napoleon-bonaparte, @wisdomtrove
116:The greatest proof of Christianity for others is not how far a man can logically analyze his reasons for believing, but how far in practice he will stake his life on his belief. ~ t-s-eliot, @wisdomtrove
117:The introduction of Christianity, which, under whatever form, always confers such inestimable benefits on mankind, soon made a sensible change in these rude and fierce manners. ~ edmund-burke, @wisdomtrove
118:The more I considered Christianity, the more I found that while it had established a rule and order, the chief aim of that order was to give room for good things to run wild. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove
119:Christian Science … is the direct denial both of science and of Christianity, for Science rests wholly on the recognition of truth and Christianity on the recognition of pain. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove
120:What has been presented as Christianity during these nineteen centuries is only a beginning, full of mistakes, not full blown Christianity springing from the spirit of Jesus. ~ albert-schweitzer, @wisdomtrove
121:Christianity thinks of human individuals not as mere members of a group or items in a list, but as organs in a body-different from one another and each contributing what no other could. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove
122:He was obliged however to throw over Christianity. Those who base their conduct upon what they are rather than upon what they ought to be, always must throw it over in the end . . . . ~ e-m-forster, @wisdomtrove
123:In some Churches today and on some religious television programs, we see the attempt to make Christianity popular and pleasant. We have taken the cross away and substituted cushions. ~ billy-graham, @wisdomtrove
124:The fact that my continuous and public rejection of Christianity does not worry me in the least should suggest to you just how inadequate I think your reasons for being a Christian are. ~ sam-harris, @wisdomtrove
125:The Son of God became a man to enable men to become sons of God." ~ Mere Christianity, By C. S. Lewis ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove
126:Worldly wisdom thinks that love is a relationship between man and man. Christianity teaches that love is a relationship between man-God-man, that is, that God is the middle term. ~ soren-kierkegaard, @wisdomtrove
127:Government is violence, Christianity is meekness, non-resistance, love. And, therefore, government cannot be Christian, and a man who wishes to be a Christian must not serve government. ~ leo-tolstoy, @wisdomtrove
128:Above all, do not attempt to use science (I mean, the real sciences) as a defence against Christianity. They will positively encourage him to think about realities he can’t touch and see. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove
129:In many churches Christianity has been watered down until the solution is so weak that if it were poison it would not hurt anyone, and if it were medicine it would not cure anyone! ~ aiden-wilson-tozer, @wisdomtrove
130:The notion that everyone would like Christianity to be true, and therefore all atheists are brave men who have accepted the defeat of all their deepest desires, is simply impudent nonsense. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove
131:Luther, you had 95 theses . . . The matter is far more terrible-there is only one thesis. The Christianity of the New Testament does not exist at all. Here there is nothing to reform. ~ soren-kierkegaard, @wisdomtrove
132:Celibacy doesn't make you enlightened, otherwise every nun or priest in Buddhism or Christianity would be enlightened. People who don't date and can't get any action would be enlightened. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove
133:If Christianity is untrue, then no honest man will want to believe it, however helpful it might be; if it is true, every honest man will want to believe it, even if it gives him no help at all ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove
134:Social media has lots of benefits, but compared to Christianity, it tends to group people by interests. Religion puts you with people who have nothing in common except that you're human. ~ alain-de-botton, @wisdomtrove
135:I didn’t go to religion to make me happy. I always knew a bottle of Port would do that. If you want a religion to make you feel really comfortable, I certainly don’t recommend Christianity. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove
136:To justify Christian morality because it provides a foundation of morality, instead of showing the necessity of Christian morality from the truth of Christianity, is a very dangerous inversion. ~ t-s-eliot, @wisdomtrove
137:The heart of Christianity is a myth which is also a fact. The old myth of the Dying God, without ceasing to be a myth, comes down from the heaven of legend and imagination to the earth of history. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove
138:Christendom has had a series of revolutions and in each one of them Christianity has died. Christianity has died many times and risen again; for it had a God who knew the way out of the grave. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove
139:Most of us are not really approaching the subject in order to find out what Christianity says; we are approaching it in the hope of finding support from Christianity for the views of our own party. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove
140:If you examined a hundred people who had lost their faith in Christianity, I wonder how many of them would turn out to have reasoned out of it by honest argument? Do not most people simply drift away? ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove
141:We are told that Christ was killed for us, that His death has washed out our sins, and that by dying He disabled death itself. That is the formula. That is Christianity. That is what has to be believed. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove
142:We are forbidden to neglect the assembling of ourselves together. Christianity is already institutional in the earliest of its documents. The Church is the Bride of Christ. We are members of one another. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove
143:If you take Christ out of Christianity, Christianity is dead. If you remove grace out of the gospel, the gospel is gone. If the people do not like the doctrine of grace, give them all the more of it. ~ charles-spurgeon, @wisdomtrove
144:The human race in the course of time has taken the liberty of softening and softening Christianity until at last we have contrived to make it exactly the opposite of what it is in the New Testament. ~ soren-kierkegaard, @wisdomtrove
145:... .it is of the very essence of Christianity to face suffering and death not because they are good, not because they have meaning, but because the resurrection of Jesus has robbed them of their meaning. ~ thomas-merton, @wisdomtrove
146:Theres some inherently unique characteristics of Christianity, the chief of which is that Christianity teaches that we are saved by what Christ has done for us, instead of we are saved by what we do for God. ~ max-lucado, @wisdomtrove
147:Being no bigot myself, I am disposed to indulge the professors of Christianity in the church that road to heaven which to them shall seem the most direct, plainest, easiest and least liable to exception. ~ george-washington, @wisdomtrove
148:It is largely because the free-thinkers, as a school, have hardly made up their minds whether they want to be more optimist or more pessimist than Christianity that their small but sincere movement has failed. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove
149:The basic trouble with the church today is her unworthy concept of God... Our religion is weak because our God is weak... Christianity at any given time is strong or weak depending on her concept of God. ~ aiden-wilson-tozer, @wisdomtrove
150:Enemy-occupied territory - that is what this world is. Christianity is the story of how the rightful king has landed, you might say landed in disguise, and is calling us to take part in a great campaign of sabotage. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove
151:Belief in heaven and hell is a big deal in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and some forms of doctrinaire Buddhism. For the rest of us it's simply meaningless. We don't live in order to die, we live in order to live. ~ ursula-k-le-guin, @wisdomtrove
152:Of all the systems of religion that ever were invented, there is no more derogatory to the Almighty, more unedifiying to man, more repugnant to reason, and more contradictory to itself than this thing called Christianity. ~ thomas-paine, @wisdomtrove
153:The Mosaic religion had been a Father religion; Christianity became a Son religion. The old God, the Father, took second place; Christ, the Son, stood in His stead, just as in those dark times every son had longed to do. ~ sigmund-freud, @wisdomtrove
154:We believe that the very beginning and end of salvation, and the sum of Christianity, consists of faith in Christ, who by His blood alone, and not by any works of ours, has put away sin, and destroyed the power of death. ~ martin-luther, @wisdomtrove
155:Christianity tells people to repent and promises them forgiveness. It therefore has nothing (as far as I know) to say to people who do not know they have done anything to repent of and who do not feel that they need forgiveness. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove
156:I think we must fully face the fact that when Christianity does not make a man very much better, it makes him very much worse... Conversion may make of one who was, if no better, no worse than an animal, something like a devil. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove
157:Christianity is about the heart, and the Bible says that we cannot get to heaven on our own good works. No matter how good we are, we cannot be good enough, because God is perfect, and we're always going to be less than perfect. ~ joyce-meyer, @wisdomtrove
158:You would get longer livelier and more frequent letters from me, if it weren't for the Christian religion. How that bell tolling at the end of the garden, dum dum, dum dum, annoys me! Why is Christianity so insistent and so sad? ~ virginia-woolf, @wisdomtrove
159:Historical theology has too often failed to interpret repentance as a positive creative force. ... Essentially, if Christianity is to succeed in the next millennium, it must cease to be a negative religion and must become positive. ~ robert-h-schuller, @wisdomtrove
160:It is a bitter thought, how different a thing the Christianity of the world might have been, if the Christian faith had been adopted as the religion of the empire under the auspices of Marcus Aurelius instead of those of Constantine. ~ john-stuart-mill, @wisdomtrove
161:Christianity is strange. It bids man recognise that he is vile, even abominable, and bids him desire to be like God. Without such a counterpoise, this dignity would make him horribly vain, or this humiliation would make him terribly abject. ~ blaise-pascal, @wisdomtrove
162:Many people profess Christianity. Very few live it-almost none. And when you live it people may think you're crazy. It has been truthfully said that the world is equally shocked by one who repudiates Christianity as by one who practices it. ~ peace-pilgrim, @wisdomtrove
163:God has given us two hands - one to receive with and the other to give with. We are cisterns made for hoarding; we are channels made for sharing. If we fail to fulfill this divine duty and privilege we have missed the meaning of Christianity. ~ billy-graham, @wisdomtrove
164:Christianity works while infidelity talks. She feeds the hungry, clothes the naked, visits and cheers the sick, and seeks the lost, while infidelity abuses her and babbles nonsense and profanity. &
165:If Bible Christianity is to survive the present world upheaval, we shall need to have a fresh revelation of the greatness and the beauty of Jesus... . He alone can raise our cold hearts to rapture and restore again the art of true worship. ~ aiden-wilson-tozer, @wisdomtrove
166:The Christian churches and Christianity have nothing in common save in name: they are utterly hostile opposites. The churches are arrogance, violence, usurpation, rigidity, death; Christianity is humility, penitence, submissiveness, progress, life. ~ leo-tolstoy, @wisdomtrove
167:It is after you have realized that there is a real Moral Law, and a Power behind the law, and that you have broken that law and put yourself wrong with that Power - it is after all this, and not a moment sooner, that Christianity begins to talk. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove
168:Jesus means something to our world because a mighty spiritual force streams forth from him and flows through our being also. This fact can neither be shaken nor confirmed by any historical discovery. It is the solid foundation of Christianity. ~ albert-schweitzer, @wisdomtrove
169:Muhammad has always been standing higher than the Christianity. He does not consider god as a human being and never makes himself equal to God. Muslims worship nothing except God and Muhammad is his Messenger. There is no any mystery and secret in it. ~ leo-tolstoy, @wisdomtrove
170:The religion of both Old and New Testaments is marked by fervent outspoken testimonies against evil. To speak smooth things in such a case may be sentimentalism, but it is not Christianity. It is a betrayal of the cause of truth and righteousness. ~ charles-spurgeon, @wisdomtrove
171:I think that one of the things that Christianity really needs, and the church really needs, is credibility. People need to be able to trust us and they need to believe we really want to help them and that it's not just, I'm-doing-this-for-me type thing. ~ joyce-meyer, @wisdomtrove
172:If conversion to Christianity makes no improvement in a man's outward actions – if he continues to be just a snobbish or spiteful or envious or ambitious as he was before – then I think we must suspect that his &
173:People define Christianity differently. I think a large portion of our population are Christians, they're not all growing in their faith, they're not all active, but I believe that a lot of people believe in Jesus and believe that he is their Lord and Savior. ~ joel-osteen, @wisdomtrove
174:There is this difference between the love taught by Christianity and that taught by Hinduism: Christianity teaches us to love our neighbours as we should wish them to love us; Hinduism asks us to love them as ourselves, in fact to see ourselves in them. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove
175:Even when I feared and detested Christianity, I was struck by its essential unity, which, in spite of its divisions, it has never lost. I trembled on recognizing the same unmistakable aroma coming from the writings of Dante and Bunyan, Thomas Aquinas and William Law. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove
176:Until self-effacing men return again to spiritual leadership, we may expect a progressive deterioration in the quality of popular Christianity year after year till we reach the point where the grieved Holy Spirit withdraws - like the Shekinah from the temple. ~ aiden-wilson-tozer, @wisdomtrove
177:Christianity as a specific doctrine was slain with Jesus, suddenly and utterly. He was hardly cold in his grave, or high in his heaven (as you please), before the apostles dragged the tradition of him down to the level of the thing it has remained ever since. ~ george-bernard-shaw, @wisdomtrove
178:If Christianity is valid, why is there so much evil in the world?" To this the famous preacher replied, "With so much soap, why are there so many dirty people in the world? Christianity, like soap, must be personally applied if it is to make a difference in our lives. ~ billy-graham, @wisdomtrove
179:The whole of ancient astrology owed its origin to conversation with the cosmic intelligences. But by the time of the first centuries after the rise of Christianity, ancient astrology - that is to say, conversation with cosmic intelligences - was a thing of the past. ~ rudolf-steiner, @wisdomtrove
180:It appears to me (whether rightly or wrongly) that direct arguments against Christianity and theism produce hardly any effect on the public; and freedom of thought is best promoted by the gradual illumination of men's minds, which follows from the advance of science. ~ charles-darwin, @wisdomtrove
181:I wish it (Christianity) were more productive of good works ... I mean real good works ... not holy day keeping, sermon-hearing ... or making long prayers, filled with flatteries and compliments despised by wise men, and much less capable of pleasing the Deity. ~ benjamin-franklin, @wisdomtrove
182:In a sense it (Christianity) creates, rather than solves, the problem of pain, for pain would be no problem unless side by side with our daily experience of this painful world, we had received what we think a good assurance that ultimate reality is righteousness and loving. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove
183:But if Christianity really gives peace, and we really want peace, patriotism is a survival from barbarous times, which must not only not be evoked and educated, as we now do, but which must be eradicated by all means, by means of preaching, persuasion, contempt, and ridicule. ~ leo-tolstoy, @wisdomtrove
184:Christianity isn’t moving people’s lives today. What’s moving people’s lives is the stock market and the baseball scores. What are people excited about? It’s a totally materialistic level that has taken over the world. There isn’t even an ideal that anybody’s fighting for. ~ joseph-campbell, @wisdomtrove
185:If Christianity was something we were making up, of course we could make it easier. But it is not. We cannot compete, in simplicity with people who are inventing religions. How could we? We are dealing with Fact. Of course anyone can be simple if he has no facts to bother about. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove
186:A recovery of the old sense of sin is essential to Christianity. Christ takes it for granted that men are bad. Until we really feel this assumption of His to be true, though we are part of the world He came to save, we are not part of the audience to whom His words are addressed. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove
187:One of the greatest foes of the Christian is religious complacency.. Orthodox Christianity has fallen to its present low estate from lack of spiritual desire. Among the many who profess the Christian faith, scarcely one in a thousand reveals any passionate thirst for God. ~ aiden-wilson-tozer, @wisdomtrove
188:You are Christians; find out what is true and false in Christianity - and you will then find out what is true. Find out what is true and false in your environment with all its oppressions and cruelties, and then you will find out what is true. Why do you want philosophies? ~ jiddu-krishnamurti, @wisdomtrove
189:... Christ did not appoint professors, but followers. If Christianity ... is not reduplicated in the life of the person expounding it, then he does not expound Christianity, for Christianity is a message about living and can only be expounded by being realized in men's lives. ~ soren-kierkegaard, @wisdomtrove
190:The classical error of historical Christianity is that we have never started with the value of the person. Rather, we have started from the &
191:There is no doctrine which I would more willingly remove from Christianity than the doctrine of hell, if it lay in my power. But it has the support of Scripture and, especially, of our Lord's own words; it has always been held by the Christian Church, and it has the support of reason. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove
192:Even those who have renounced Christianity and attack it, in their inmost being still follow the Christian ideal, for hitherto neither their subtlety nor the ardour of their hearts has been able to create a higher ideal of man and of virtue than the ideal given by Christ of old. ~ fyodor-dostoevsky, @wisdomtrove
193:The greatest danger to Christianity is, I contend, not heresies, not heterodoxies, not atheists, not profane secularism - no, but the kind of orthodoxy which is cordial drivel, mediocrity served up sweet. There is nothing that so insidiously displaces the majestic as cordiality. ~ soren-kierkegaard, @wisdomtrove
194:All religions- Hinduism, Islam, Christianity-and I have also followed the paths of the different Hindu sects. I have found that it is the same God toward whom all are directing their steps, though along different paths. You must try all beliefs and traverse all the different ways once. ~ sri-ramakrishna, @wisdomtrove
195:There have been men before who got so interested in proving the existence of God that they came to care nothing for God himself, as if the good Lord had nothing to do but to exist. There have been some who were so preoccupied with spreading Christianity that they never gave a thought to Christ. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove
196:Jesus was not a white man; He was not a black man. He came from that part of the world that touches Africa and Asia and Europe. Christianity is not a white man's religion and don't let anybody ever tell you that it's white or black. Christ belongs to all people; He belongs to the whole world. ~ billy-graham, @wisdomtrove
197:Women are strange little beasts,' he said to Dr. Coutras. &
198:Christianity persecuted, tortured, and burned. Like a hound it tracked the very scent of heresy. It kindled wars, and nursed furious hatreds and ambitions... Man, far from being freed from his natural passions, was plunged into artificial ones quite as violent and much more disappointing. ~ george-santayana, @wisdomtrove
199:If we look back into history for the character of the present sects in Christianity, we shall find few that have not in their turns been persecutors, and complainers of persecution. The primitive Christians thought persecution extremely wrong in the Pagans, but practised it on one another. ~ benjamin-franklin, @wisdomtrove
200:I know men; and I tell you that Jesus Christ is not a man. Superficial minds see a resemblance between Christ and the founders of empires, and the gods of other religions. That resemblance does not exist. There is between Christianity and whatever other religions the distance of infinity. ~ napoleon-bonaparte, @wisdomtrove
201:[Christianity] endeavors equally to establish these two things: that God has set up in the Church visible signs to make himself known to those who should seek him sincerely, and that he has nevertheless so disguised them that he will only be perceived by those who seek him with all their heart. ~ blaise-pascal, @wisdomtrove
202:I can indeed hardly see how anyone ought to wish Christianity to be true for if so the plain language of the text seems to show that the men who do not believe, and this would include my father, brother and almost all of my friends, will be everlastingly punished. And this is a damnable doctrine. ~ charles-darwin, @wisdomtrove
203:God takes that which is nothing and makes something out of it. When you become a Christian, you cannot patch your Christianity onto your old life. You are to start over. Accept God's call as a promotion. Burn the old bridges and fix it so you cannot go back ; then serve God with all your heart. ~ aiden-wilson-tozer, @wisdomtrove
204:My long-time view about Christianity is that it represents an amalgam of two seemingly immiscible parts-the religion of Jesus and the religion of Paul. Thomas Jefferson attempted to excise the Pauline parts of the New Testament. There wasn't much left when he was done, but it was an inspiring document. ~ carl-sagan, @wisdomtrove
205:In all church discussions we are apt to forget the second Testament is avowedly only a supplement. Jesus came to complete the law and the prophets. Christianity is completed Judaism, or it is nothing. Christianity is incomprehensible without Judaism, as Judaism is incomplete without Christianity. ~ benjamin-disraeli, @wisdomtrove
206:It is good to remember that the goal of Buddhism is to create Buddhas, not Buddhists, as the goal of Christianity is to create Christs, not Christians. In the same vein, my teachings are not meant to acquire followers or imitators, but to awaken beings to eternal truth and thus to awakened life and living. ~ adyashanti, @wisdomtrove
207:Christianity affirms that at the heart of reality is a Heart, a loving Father who works through history for the salvation of His children. Man cannot save himself, for man is not the measure of all things and humanity is not God. Bound by the chains of his own sin and finiteness, man needs a Savior. ~ martin-luther-king, @wisdomtrove
208:I gave up Christianity at about 14. Came back to it when getting on for 30. Not an emotional conversion; almost purely philosophical. I didn't want to. I'm not in the least a religious type. I want to be let alone, to feel I'm my own master; but since the facts seemed to be just the opposite, I had to give in. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove
209:Peace of heart that is won by refusing to bear the common yoke of human sympathy is a peace unworthy of a Christian. To seek tranquility by stopping our ears to the cries of human pain is to make ourselves not Christian but a kind of degenerate stoic having no relation either to stoicism or Christianity. ~ aiden-wilson-tozer, @wisdomtrove
210:The greatest, strongest, mightiest plea for the church of God in the world is the existence of the Spirit of God in its midst, and the works of the Spirit of God are the true evidences of Christianity. They say miracles are withdrawn, but the Holy Spirit is the standing miracle of the church of God to-day. ~ charles-spurgeon, @wisdomtrove
211:Anyone who is honestly trying to be a Christian will soon find his intelligence being sharpened: one of the reasons why it needs no special education to be a Christian is that Christianity is an education itself. That is why an uneducated believer like Bunyan was able to write a book that has astonished the whole world. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove
212:Christianity asserts that every individual human being is going to live for ever, and this must be either true or false. Now there are a good many things which would not be worth bothering about if I were going to live only seventy years, but which I had better bother about very seriously if I am going to live for ever. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove
213:At the end of one millennium and nine centuries of Christianity, it remains an unshakable assumption of the law in all Christian countries and of the moral judgement of Christians everywhere that if a man and a woman, entering a room together, close the door behind them, the man will come out sadder and the woman wiser. ~ h-l-mencken, @wisdomtrove
214:The highfalutin aims of democracy, whether real or imaginary, are always assumed to be identical with its achievements. This, of course, is sheer hallucination. Not one of those aims, not even the aim of giving every adult a vote, has been realized. It has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good. ~ h-l-mencken, @wisdomtrove
215:Many a man, brought up in the glib profession of some shallow form of Christianity, who comes through reading Astronomy to realize for the first time how majestically indifferent most reality is to man, and who perhaps abandons his religion on that account, may at that moment be having his first genuinely religious experience. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove
216:It would be an error to wish to spread Christianity from a center in Asia, where other peoples are still settled, and Buddhism would be equally false for the European population. No religious view is right if it is not suited to the innermost needs of the time, and such a view will never be able to give a cultural impulse. ~ rudolf-steiner, @wisdomtrove
217:According to most philosophers, God in making the world enslaved it. According to Christianity, in making it, He set it free. God had written, not so much a poem, but rather a play; a play he had planned as perfect, but which had necessarily been left to human actors and stage-managers, who had since made a great mess of it. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove
218:The core of original sin, then is LOT - Lack of Trust. Or, it could be considered an innate inability to adequately value ourselves. Label it a &
219:I am not saying people should not be free to join whichever reason they choose but should we be forced to live our lives around a belief system that originated somewhere around the fourth or fifth century BC. I cannot see any more reason to base a belief system around Christianity, Judaism or Islam than I can around Lord of the Rings. ~ alan-moore, @wisdomtrove
220:Syllogisms –∞ la mode - If you are against labor racketeers, then you are against the working man. If you are against demagogues, then you are against democracy. If you are against Christianity, then you are against God. If you are against trying a can of Old Dr. Quack's Cancer Salve, then you are in favor of letting Uncle Julius die. ~ h-l-mencken, @wisdomtrove
221:In the same way a Christian is not a man who never goes wrong, but a man is enabled to repent and pick himself up and begin over again after each stumble&
222:If you have to be reasoned into Christianity, some wise fellow can reason you out of it! If you come to Christ by a flash of the Holy Spirit so that by intuition you know that you are God's child, you know it by the text but you also know it by the inner light, the inner illumination of the Spirit, and no one can ever reason you out of it. ~ aiden-wilson-tozer, @wisdomtrove
223:I want to look my best for God. So many people have the attitude that if you're a Christian you've got to dress bad, wear an old color, not do anything to your hair, have nothing. It's no wonder that Christianity is not very attractive. I mean, how many people do you know in a Western culture that's going to go, &
224:Differ though we might with Christianity's view of what precisely our souls need, it is hard to discredit the provocative underlying thesis, which seems no less relevant in the secular realm than in the religious one-that we have within us a precious, childlike, vulnerable core which we should nourish and nurture on its turbulent journey through life. ~ alain-de-botton, @wisdomtrove
225:With respect to love we speak continually about perfection and the perfect person. With respect to love Christianity also speaks continually about perfection and the perfect person. Alas, but we men talk about finding the perfect person in order to love him. Christianity speaks about being the perfect person who limitlessly loves the person he sees. ~ soren-kierkegaard, @wisdomtrove
226:Socialism" is no more an evil word than "Christianity." Socialism no more prescribed Joseph Stalin and his secret police and shuttered churches than Christianity prescribed the Spanish Inquisition. Christianity and socialism alike, in fact, prescribe a society dedicated to the proposition that all men, women, and children are created equal and shall not starve. ~ kurt-vonnegut, @wisdomtrove
227:No one is without Christianity, if we agree on what we mean by that word. It is every individual's individual code of behavior by means of which he makes himself a better human being than his nature wants to be, if he followed his nature only. Whatever its symbol - cross or crescent or whatever - that symbol is man's reminder of his duty inside the human race. ~ william-faulkner, @wisdomtrove
228:There is no possibility whatsoever of reconciling science and theology, at least in Christendom. Either Jesus arose from the dead or He didn't. If he did, then Christianity becomes plausible; if He did not, then it is sheer nonsense. I defy any genuine scientists to say that he believes in the Resurrection, or indeed in any other cardinal dogma of the Christian system. ~ h-l-mencken, @wisdomtrove
229:Christianity, as it had played out over the past two millennia, meant power disguised as principle, guilt imposed on the susceptible, irrationality run amok, and the suppression of free inquiry. It meant hypocrisy and self-righteousness, dogmatism, and superstition. It meant monks flogging themselves and soldiers wearing crosses and the auto-da-fe of the Inquisition. ~ bernard-haisch, @wisdomtrove
230:Many of us Christians have become extremely skillful in arranging our lives so as to admit the truth of Christianity without being embarrassed by its implications. We arrange things so that we can get on well enough without divine aid, while at the same time ostensibly seeking it. We boast in the Lord but watch carefully that we never get caught depending on Him. ~ aiden-wilson-tozer, @wisdomtrove
231:When we Christians behave badly, or fail to behave well, we are making Christianity unbelievable to the outside world. The wartime posters told us that Careless Talk costs Lives. It is equally true that Careless Lives cost Talk. Our careless lives set the outer world talking; and we give them grounds for talking in a way that throws doubt on the truth of Christianity itself. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove
232:We talk eloquently about our commitment to the principles of Christianity, and yet our lives are saturated with the practices of paganism. We proclaim our devotion to democracy, but we sadly practice the very opposite of the democratic creed... . This strange dichotomy, this agonizing gulf between the ought and the is, represents the tragic theme of man's earthly pilgrimage. ~ martin-luther-king, @wisdomtrove
233:Christianity possesses the great advantage over Judaism of being represented as coming from the mouth of the first Teacher not as a statutory but as a moral religion, and as thus entering into the closest relation with reason so that, through reason, it was able of itself, without historical learning, to be spread at all times and among all peoples with the greatest trustworthiness. ~ immanuel-kant, @wisdomtrove
234:No one returns from Christianity to the same state he was before Christianity but into a worse state: the difference between a pagan and an apostate is the difference between an unmarried woman and an adulteress. For faith perfects nature but faith lost corrupts nature. Therefore many men of our time have lost not only the supernatural light but also the natural light which pagans possessed. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove
235:He came, not as a flash of light or as an unapproachable conqueror, but as one whose first cries were heard by a peasant girl and a sleepy carpenter. God tapped humanity on its collective shoulder, "Pardon me," he said, and eternity interrupted time, divinity interrupted carnality, and heaven interrupted the earth in the form of a baby. Christianity was born in one big heavenly interruption. ~ max-lucado, @wisdomtrove
236:If you have once accepted Christianity, then some of its main doctrines shall be deliberately held before your mind for some time every day. That is why daily prayers and religious reading and churchgoing are necessary parts of the Christian life. We have to be continually reminded of what we believe. Neither this belief nor any other will automatically remain alive in the mind. It must be fed. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove
237:There is a greater Christian faith than one which settles for the temporal happiness, and that is the augmentation of faith. The more faithful you become, the harder the obstacles get; but the harder the obstacles get, the tougher your spine grows; and the tougher your spine grows, the less dependent you are on man's approval. I came to know this about Christianity when valuing faith before comfort. ~ criss-jami, @wisdomtrove
238:Christianity, like genius, is one of the hardest concepts to forgive. We hear what we want to hear and accept what we want to accept, for the most part, simply because there is nothing more offensive than feeling like you have to re-evaluate your own train of thought and purpose in life. You have to die to an extent in your hunger for faith, for wisdom, and quite frankly, most people aren't ready to die. ~ criss-jami, @wisdomtrove
239:We would labor earnestly to raise a believer in salvation by free will into a believer in salvation by grace, for we long to see all religious teaching built upon the solid rock of truth and not upon the sand of imagination. At the same time, our grand object is not the revision of opinions, but the regeneration of natures. We should bring men to Christ, not to our own particular views of Christianity. ~ charles-spurgeon, @wisdomtrove
240:To be honest, one can only feel glad that so many modern iconoclasts consider Christianity to be full of exceptionally hypocritical, religious zealots - it's biblically accurate and a prophecy fulfilled. The old smoke screen is one of Satan's favorite tricks. He conceals the authentic. He has a persistent strategy of targeting those who remind him of Christianity because he fears those who remind him of Christ. ~ criss-jami, @wisdomtrove
241:There are three means of believing&
242:It has been left to the last Christians, or rather to the first Christians fully committed to blaspheming and denying Christianity, to invent a new kind of worship of Sex, which is not even a worship of Life. It has been left to the very latest Modernists to proclaim an erotic religion which at once exalts lust and forbids fertility . . . The new priests abolish the fatherhood and keep the feast - to themselves. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove
243:The fact is that, we are not producing saints. We are making converts to an effete type of Christianity, that bears little resemblance to that of the New Testament. The average so-called Bible Christian of our times is but a shallow display of true sainthood. Yet, we put millions of dollars behind movements’ to perpetuate this lower form of religion and attack the man who dares to challenge the wisdom of it. ~ aiden-wilson-tozer, @wisdomtrove
244:Any objection to the carryings on of our present gold-calf Christianity is met with the triumphant reply, ‘But we are winning them!’ Winning them to what? To true discipleship? To cross-carrying? To self-denial? To separation from the world? To crucifixion of the flesh? To holy living? To hard self-discipline ? To love for God? To total committal to Christ? Of course the answer to all these questions is... No. ~ aiden-wilson-tozer, @wisdomtrove
245:Christianity does not oppose debauchery and uncontrollable passions and the like as much as it opposes... flat mediocrity, this nauseating atmosphere, this homey, civil togetherness, where admittedly great crimes, wild excesses, and powerful aberrations cannot easily occur - but where God's unconditional demand has even greater difficulty in accomplishing what it requires: the majestic obedience of submission. ~ soren-kierkegaard, @wisdomtrove
246:For Christianity is a fighting religion. It thinks God has made the world- that space and time, heat and cold, and all the colors and tastes, and all the animals and vegetables, are things that God &
247:Christianity does not want us to reduce by one atom the hatred we feel for cruelty and treachery. We ought to hate them. Not one word of what we have said about them needs to be unsaid. But it does want us to hate them in the same way in which we hate things in ourselves: being sorry that the man should have done such things, and hoping, if it is anyway possible, that somehow, sometime, somewhere he can be cured and made human again. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove
248:... the kingdom of God is that invisible collection of committed Christians that transcends cultures, ideologies... and creeds- all bound by the golden commitment to say nothing and do nothing that would attack the self-esteem, the self-respect, and the dignity of any other human being, whether or not they are committed members of the kingdom of God. The dignity of the person then is the irreducible cell of true Christianity. ~ robert-h-schuller, @wisdomtrove
249:People try to persuade us that the objections against Christianity spring from doubt. That is a complete misunderstanding. The objections against Christianity spring from insubordination, the dislike of obedience, rebellion against all authority. As a result, people have hitherto been beating the air in their struggle against objections, because they have fought intellectually with doubt instead of fighting morally with rebellion. ~ soren-kierkegaard, @wisdomtrove
250:A perfect practice of Christianity would, of course, consist in a perfect imitation of the life of Christ - I mean, in so far as it was applicable in one's own particular circumstance. Not in an idiotic sense - it doesn't mean that every Christian should grow a beard, or be a bachelor, or become a travelling preacher. It means that every single act and feeling, every experience, whether pleasant or unpleasant, must be referred to God. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove
251:Each religion has helped mankind. Paganism increased in man the light of beauty, the largeness and height of his life, his aim at a many-sided perfection; Christianity gave him some vision of divine love and charity; Buddhism has shown him a noble way to be wiser, gentler, purer, Judaism and Islam how to be religiously faithful in action and zealously devoted to God; Hinduism has opened to him the largest and profoundest spiritual possibilities. ~ sri-aurobindo, @wisdomtrove
252:But we are gravely mistaken to think that Christianity protects us from the pain and agony of mortal existence. Christianity has always insisted that the cross we bear precedes the crown we wear. To be a Christian, one must take up his cross, with all of its difficulties and agonizing and tragedy-packed content, and carry it until that very cross leaves its marks upon us and redeems us to that more excellent way which comes only through suffering. ~ martin-luther-king, @wisdomtrove
253:Whoever thou art, whatever in other respects thy life may be, my friend, by ceasing to take part (if ordinarily thou doest) in the public worship of God, as it now is (with the claim that it is the Christianity of the New Testament), thou hast constantly one guilt the less, and that a great one: thou dost not take part in treating God as a fool by calling that the Christianity of the New Testament which is not the Christianity of the New Testament. ~ soren-kierkegaard, @wisdomtrove
254:I would say if a man is going to write on chemistry, he learns chemistry. The same is true of Christianity. But to speak of the craft itself, I would not know how to advise a man how to write. It is a matter of talent and interest. I believe he must be strongly moved if he is to become a writer. Writing is like a &
255:The fault with all religions like Christianity is that they have one set of rules for all. But Hindu religion is suited to all grades of religious aspiration and progress. It contains all the ideals in their perfect form. For example, the ideal of Shanta or blessedness is to be found in Vasishtha; that of love in Krishna; that of duty in Rama and Sita; and that of intellect in Shukadeva. Study the characters of these and of other ideal men. Adopt one which suits you best. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove
256:Now the story of Christ is simply a true myth: a myth working on us the same way as the others, but with this tremendous difference that it really happened: and one must be content to accept it in the same way, remembering that it is God’s myth where the others are men’s myths: i.e., the Pagan stories are God expressing Himself through the minds of poets, using such images as He found there, while Christianity is God expressing Himself through what we call &
257:At the center of the Christian faith is the affirmation that there is a God in the universe who is the ground and essence of all reality. A Being of infinite love and boundless power, God is the creator, sustainer, and conserver of values... .In contrast to the ethical relativism of [totalitarianism], Christianity sets forth a system of absolute moral values and affirms that God has placed within the very structure of this universe certain moral principles that are fixed and immutable. ~ martin-luther, @wisdomtrove
258:The spiritual differs from the religious in being able to endure isolation. The rank of a spiritual person is proportionate to his strength for enduring isolation, whereas we religious people are constantly in need of &
259:Christianity is not a patent medicine. Christianity claims to give an account of facts - to tell you what the real universe is like. Its account of the universe may be true, or it may not, and once the question is really before you, then your natural inquisitiveness must make you want to know the answer. If Christianity is untrue, then no honest man will want to believe it, however helpful it might be: if it is true, every honest man will want to believe it, even if it gives him no help at all. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove
260:[Buddhism and Christianity] are in one sense parallel and equal; as a mound and a hollow, as a valley and a hill. There is a sense in which that sublime despair is the only alternative to that divine audacity. It is even true that the truly spiritual and intellectual man sees it as sort of dilemma; a very hard and terrible choice. There is little else on earth that can compare with these for completeness. And he who does not climb the mountain of Christ does indeed fall into the abyss of Buddha. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove
261:To defend something is always to discredit it. Let a man have a warehouse full of gold, let him be willing to give away a ducat to every one of the poor - but let him also be stupid enough to begin this charitable undertaking of his with a defense in which he offers three good reasons in justification; and it will almost come to the point of people finding it doubtful whether indeed he is doing something good. But now for Christianity. Yes, the person who defends that has never believed in it. ~ soren-kierkegaard, @wisdomtrove
262:Christianity seems at first to be all about morality, all about duties and rules and guilt and virtue, yet it leads you on, out of all that, into something beyond. One has a glimpse of a country where they do not talk of those things, except perhaps as a joke. Every one there is filled full with what we should call goodness as a mirror is filled with light. But they do not call it goodness. They do not call it anything. They are not thinking of it. They are too busy looking at the source from which it comes. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove
263:The heart of Christianity is a myth which is also a fact. The old myth of the Dying God, without ceasing to be myth, comes down from the heaven of legend and imagination to the earth of history. It happens - at a particular date, in a particular place, followed by definable historical consequences. We pass from a Balder or an Osiris, dying nobody knows when or where, to a historical Person crucified (it is all in order) under Pontius Pilate. By becoming fact it does not cease to be myth: that is the miracle. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove
264:Judaism, Christianity, and I'm sure other religions also, are having to deal with the fact that they may or may not have lived up at all times to the injunctions of their own mystical center. For instance, when I went to Sunday school, I remember learning more about Jewish history than about God. So, once again, that doesn't mean there's anything wrong with the Jewish religion, it just means that sometimes people are not fed the mystical food - the spiritual food - of their own religious background. ~ marianne-williamson, @wisdomtrove
265:The church has lost her testimony. She has no longer anything to say to the world. Her once robust shout of assurance has faded away to an apologetic whisper. She who one time went out to declare now goes out to inquire. Her dogmatic declaration has become a respectful suggestion, a word of religious advice, given with the understanding that it is after all only an opinion and not meant to sound bigoted. Pure Christianity, instead of being shaped by its culture, actually stands in sharp opposition to it. ~ aiden-wilson-tozer, @wisdomtrove
266:Either Christianity is true or it's false. If you bet that it's true, and you believe in God and submit to Him, then if it IS true, you've gained God, heaven, and everything else. If it's false, you've lost nothing, but you've had a good life marked by peace and the illusion that ultimately, everything makes sense. If you bet that Christianity is not true, and it's false, you've lost nothing. But if you bet that it's false, and it turns out to be true, you've lost everything and you get to spend eternity in hell. ~ blaise-pascal, @wisdomtrove
267:The more we know of the fixed laws of nature the more incredible do miracles become, - that the men at that time were ignorant and credulous to a degree almost incomprehensible by us, - that the Gospels cannot be proved to have been written simultaneously with the events, - that they differ in many important details, far too important as it seemed to me to be admitted as the usual inaccuracies of eye-witnesses; - by such reflections as these... I gradually came to disbelieve in Christianity as a divine revelation. ~ charles-darwin, @wisdomtrove
268:Once you can say with confidence born from direct experience: &
269:... I couldn't but surmise that the devil, looking at the cruel wars that Christianity has occasioned, the persecutions, the tortures Christian has inflicted on Christian, the unkindness, the hypocrisy, the intolerance, must consider the balance sheet with complacency. And when he remembers that it has laid upon mankind the bitter burden of the sense of sin that has darkened the beauty of the starry night and cast a baleful shadow on the passing pleasures of a world to be enjoyed, he must chuckle as he murmurs: give the devil his due. ~ william-somerset-maugham, @wisdomtrove
270:Our mistake is that we want God to send revival on our terms. We want to get the power of God into our hands, to call it to us that it may work for us in promoting and furthering our kind of Christianity. We want still to be in charge, guiding the chariot through the religious sky in the direction we want it to go, shouting "Glory to God," but modestly accepting a share of the glory for ourselves in a nice inoffensive sort of way. We are calling on God to send fire on our altars, completely ignoring the fact that they are OUR altars and not God's. ~ aiden-wilson-tozer, @wisdomtrove
271:Of all the systems of religion that ever were invented, there is no more derogatory to the Almighty, more unedifying to man, more repugnant to reason, and more contradictory to itself than this thing called Christianity. Too absurd for belief, too impossible to convince, and too inconsistent for practice, it renders the heart torpid or produces only atheists or fanatics. As an engine of power, it serves the purpose of despotism, and as a means of wealth, the avarice of priests, but so far as respects the good of man in general it leads to nothing here or hereafter. ~ thomas-paine, @wisdomtrove
272:We never try to convert those who receive (aid) to Christianity but in our work we bear witness to the love of God's presence and if Catholics, Protestants, Buddhists, or agnostics become for this better men - simply better - we will be satisfied. It matters to the individual what church he belongs to. If that individual thinks and believes that this is the only way to God for her or him, this is the way God comes into their life - his life. If he does not know any other way and if he has no doubt so that he does not need to search then this is his way to salvation. ~ mother-teresa, @wisdomtrove
273:We too often forget that faith is a matter of questioning and struggle before it becomes one of certitude and peace. You have to doubt and reject everything else in order to believe firmly in Christ, and after you have begun to believe, your faith itself must be tested and purified. Christianity is not merely a set of forgone conclusions. Faith tends to be defeated by the burning presence of God in mystery, and seeks refuge from him, flying to comfortable social forms and safe convictions in which purification is no longer an inner battle but a matter of outward gesture. ~ thomas-merton, @wisdomtrove
274:Christianity persecuted, tortured, and burned. Like a hound it tracked the very scent of heresy. It kindled wars, and nursed furious hatreds and ambitions. It sanctified, quite like Mohammedism, extermination and tyranny. All this would have been impossible if, like Buddhism, it had looked only for peace and the liberation of souls. It looked beyond; it dreamt of infinite blisses and crowns it should be crowned with before an electrified universe and an applauding God... Buddhism had tried to quiet a sick world with anesthetics; Christianity sought to purge it with fire. ~ george-santayana, @wisdomtrove
275:How do you cause people to believe in an imagined order such as Christianity, democracy or capitalism? First, you never admit that the order is imagined. You always insist that the order sustaining society is an objective reality created by the great gods or by the laws of nature. People are unequal, not because Hammurabi said so, but because Enlil and Marduk decreed it. People are equal, not because Thomas Jefferson said so, but because God created them that way. Free markets are the best economic system, not because Adam Smith said so, but because these are the immutable laws of nature. ~ yuval-noah-harari, @wisdomtrove
276:The antidote to a meaningless and lawless existence was provided by humanism, a revolutionary new creed that conquered the world during the last few centuries. The humanist religion worships humanity, and expects humanity to play the part that God played in Christianity and Islam, and that the laws of nature played in Buddhism and Daoism. Whereas traditionally the great cosmic plan gave meaning to the life of humans, humanism reverses the roles and expects the experiences of humans to give meaning to the cosmos. According to humanism, humans must draw from within their inner experiences not only the meaning of their own lives, but also the meaning of the entire universe. This is the primary commandment humanism has given us: create meaning for a meaningless world. ~ yuval-noah-harari, @wisdomtrove
277:According to the science of biology, people were not ‘created’. They have evolved. And they certainly did not evolve to be ‘equal’. The idea of equality is inextricably intertwined with the idea of creation. The Americans got the idea of equality from Christianity, which argues that every person has a divinely created soul, and that all souls are equal before God. However, if we do not believe in the Christian myths about God, creation and souls, what does it mean that all people are ‘equal’? Evolution is based on difference, not on equality. Every person carries a somewhat different genetic code, and is exposed from birth to different environmental influences. This leads to the development of different qualities that carry with them different chances of survival. ‘Created equal’ should therefore be translated into ‘evolved differently’. ~ yuval-noah-harari, @wisdomtrove
278:The Scientific Revolution has not been a revolution of knowledge. It has been above all a revolution of ignorance. The great discovery that launched the Scientific Revolution was the discovery that humans do not know the answers to their most important questions. Premodern traditions of knowledge such as Islam, Christianity, Buddhism and Confucianism asserted that everything that is important to know about the world was already known. The great gods, or the one almighty God, or the wise people of the past possessed all-encompassing wisdom, which they revealed to us in scriptures and oral traditions. Ordinary mortals gained knowledge by delving into these ancient texts and traditions and understanding them properly. It was inconceivable that the Bible, the Qur’an or the Vedas were missing out on a crucial secret of the universe – a secret that might yet be discovered by flesh-and-blood creatures. ~ yuval-noah-harari, @wisdomtrove
279:For example, Christianity has been responsible for great crimes such as the Inquisition, the Crusades, the oppression of native cultures across the world, and the disempowerment of women. A Christian might take offence at this and retort that all these crimes resulted from a complete misunderstanding of Christianity. Jesus preached only love, and the Inquisition was based on a horrific distortion of his teachings. We can sympathise with this claim, but it would be a mistake to let Christianity off the hook so easily. Christians appalled by the Inquisition and by the Crusades cannot just wash their hands of these atrocities – they should rather ask themselves some very tough questions. How exactly did their ‘religion of love’ allow itself to be distorted in such a way, and not once, but numerous times? Protestants who try to blame it all on Catholic fanaticism are advised to read a book about the behaviour of Protestant colonists in Ireland or in North America. Similarly, Marxists should ask themselves what it was about the teachings of Marx that paved the way to the Gulag, scientists should consider how the scientific project lent itself so easily to destabilising the global ecosystem, and geneticists in particular should take warning from the way the Nazis hijacked Darwinian theories. ~ yuval-noah-harari, @wisdomtrove

*** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***

1:Christianity is a fighting religion. ~ C S Lewis,
2:Nothing in Christianity is original. ~ Dan Brown,
3:Christianity is a pestilent superstition. ~ Tacitus,
4:Christianity is a religion in a rush. ~ Yann Martel,
5:Christianity is such a silly religion. ~ Gore Vidal,
6:My goal is to destroy Christianity. ~ Erwin McManus,
7:True Christianity is love in action. ~ David O McKay,
8:Christianity... is an Eastern religion. ~ Tom Robbins,
9:Christianity is the salt of the earth. ~ Matthew Henry,
10:In the name of Christ, I quit Christianity. ~ Anne Rice,
11:Christianity is Christ plus nothing! ~ Leonard Ravenhill,
12:Culture eats Christianity for breakfast. ~ Peter Drucker,
13:Why not give Christianity a trial? ~ George Bernard Shaw,
14:Humor (is) intrinsitc to Christianity. ~ Soren Kierkegaard,
15:I think Arminianism is death to Christianity! ~ R C Sproul,
16:Christianity is not a do-it-yourself thing. ~ Jerry Bridges,
17:Christianity is part of the laws of England. ~ Matthew Hale,
18:Christianity made us think there's one heaven. ~ Patti Smith,
19:Imagine that Christianity is about loving God. ~ Marcus Borg,
20:Christmas is the Disneyfication of Christianity. ~ Don Cupitt,
21:Freedom is the cornerstone of Christianity. ~ Brennan Manning,
22:The Bible is the Constitution of Christianity. ~ Billy Graham,
23:Christianity does not provide the reason for ~ Timothy Keller,
24:Christianity is a hangman’s metaphysics… ~ Friedrich Nietzsche,
25:Deity indwelling men! That, I say is Christianity! ~ A W Tozer,
26:If evolution wins, Christianity goes! ~ William Jennings Bryan,
27:The virtue of Christianity is obedience. ~ Julius Charles Hare,
28:Christianity is Platonism for the people. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche,
29:Voltaire abolished Christianity by believing in God. ~ Voltaire,
30:Christianity and monarchy are twin principles. ~ Honor de Balzac,
31:Christianity is a strangely cheery religion. ~ Flannery O Connor,
32:I see Christianity in very humanistic terms. ~ John Shelby Spong,
33:Christianity is a myth that has been literalised. ~ Timothy Freke,
34:Christianity is part of the Common Law of England. ~ Matthew Hale,
35:The best cure for Christianity is reading the Bible. ~ Mark Twain,
36:The major religions, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, ~ Paulo Coelho,
37:Christianity is called the religion of pity. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche,
38:Christianity is the hangman's metaphysics... ~ Friedrich Nietzsche,
39:I did not set out to convert anyone to Christianity. ~ J K Rowling,
40:Christianity did not destroy paganism; it adopted it. ~ Will Durant,
41:Christianity is a metaphysics of the hangman. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche,
42:Christianity is a misogynistic hierarchy of oppression. ~ Anonymous,
43:Christianity is God's marriage proposal to the soul. ~ Peter Kreeft,
44:Christianity is religion for the executioner. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche,
45:Christianity is the only true and perfect religion. ~ Benjamin Rush,
46:Christianity ruined emperors, but saved peoples. ~ Alfred de Musset,
47:Christianity, to be effective in Japan, must change. ~ Shusaku Endo,
48:too many church rules got in the way of Christianity. ~ Helen Bryan,
49:Christianity is the highest perfection of humanity. ~ Samuel Johnson,
50:If you want to kill Christianity you must abolish Sunday. ~ Voltaire,
51:The original language of Christianity is translation. ~ Lamin Sanneh,
52:There is something very unhealthy about Christianity. ~ Adolf Hitler,
53:Christianity is not about morality. It's about reality. ~ Henry Cloud,
54:Christianity is not a religion, it is a relationship. ~ Robert Thieme,
55:Christianity is the enemy of liberty and civilization. ~ August Bebel,
56:Christianity is the metaphysics of the hangman. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche,
57:The heart of Christianity is a myth which is also a fact. ~ C S Lewis,
58:A sophiological Christianity focuses on the path. ~ Cynthia Bourgeault,
59:Christianity is art and not money. Money is its curse. ~ William Blake,
60:Hatred of Judaism is at bottom hatred of Christianity. ~ Sigmund Freud,
61:Humility is first, second and third in Christianity. ~ Saint Augustine,
62:Liquor and Christianity, the European narcotics. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche,
63:The idea of Christ is much older than Christianity. ~ George Santayana,
64:Voltaire abolished Christianity by believing in God. ~ Lytton Strachey,
65:Christianity is completed Judaism or it is nothing. ~ Benjamin Disraeli,
66:Christianity is not a creed for good men, but for men. ~ G K Chesterton,
67:The glory of Christianity is to conquer by forgiveness. ~ William Blake,
68:The Great Commission is the Great Adventure of Christianity. ~ Ron Luce,
69:The two great European narcotics, alcohol and Christianity. ~ Anonymous,
70:Union and Communion: this is the essence of Christianity. ~ Heidi Baker,
71:Christianity has always embraced both reason and faith. ~ Dinesh D Souza,
72:I'm all for Christianity, but insolence must be put down. ~ J P Donleavy,
73:Is your Christianity ancient history--or current events? ~ Sam Shoemaker,
74:National Socialism and Christianity are irreconcilable. ~ Martin Bormann,
75:Refinement is the delicate aroma of Christianity. ~ Charlotte Mary Yonge,
76:Catholicism is the most philosophical branch of Christianity. ~ Tim Crane,
77:Millennials aren't looking for a hipper Christianity. ~ Rachel Held Evans,
78:Only Christianity dares to make God's love unconditional. ~ Philip Yancey,
79:THE COMPLACENCY of CHRISTIANS is the scandal of Christianity. ~ A W Tozer,
80:The opposite of Christianity is not atheism, but idolatry. ~ Peter Kreeft,
81:Christianity demands the crucifixion of the intellect. ~ Soren Kierkegaard,
82:Christianity isn't the only group that has fundamentalists. ~ Tony Campolo,
83:Christianity is part of the law of England. ~ John Scott 1st Earl of Eldon,
84:Christianity and Buddhism are a lot alike, especially Buddhism. ~ C S Lewis,
85:Christianity is not just for the strong; it's for everyone. ~ Timothy Keller,
86:If Christianity was morality, Socrates would be the Saviour. ~ William Blake,
87:I was raised Jewish. I didn't know anything about Christianity. ~ Josh Young,
88:Peanut butter is the greatest invention since Christianity. ~ Diana Vreeland,
89:We shall not rest until we have rooted out Christianity . ~ Heinrich Himmler,
90:Christianity is greatest when it is hated by the world. ~ Ignatius of Antioch,
91:Christianity is the key that fits the lock of the universe. ~ Nancy R Pearcey,
92:I am a believer in the fundamental doctrines of Christianity. ~ Joseph Lister,
93:I never gave up Christianity until I was forty years of age. ~ Charles Darwin,
94:The only thing Christianity can not be...is moderately important. ~ C S Lewis,
95:Two great European narcotics, alcohol and Christianity. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche,
96:Christianity, alcohol the two great means of corruption. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche,
97:Christianity is much more about living and doing than thinking. ~ Richard Rohr,
98:Christianity not only saves you from sin, but from cynicism. ~ E Stanley Jones,
99:For Christianity begins not with a big do, but with a big done. ~ Watchman Nee,
100:It is no fault of Christianity that a hypocrite falls into sin. ~ Saint Jerome,
101:To destroy Christianity, we must first destroy the British Empire. ~ Karl Marx,
102:When I got older, I chose to look at Christianity as another myth. ~ Tori Amos,
103:Christianity, boring? So is television...if we don't plug in. ~ Reinhard Bonnke,
104:Similarly, the presence of God is the central fact of Christianity. ~ A W Tozer,
105:Socialism, like Christianity destroyed itself to gain power ~ Alexander Berkman,
106:There is no biblical Christianity without the cross at its center. ~ John Stott,
107:There is no way you can harmonize neo-Darwinism and Christianity. ~ Lee Strobel,
108:Fundamentalism is to Christianity what paint-by-numbers is to art. ~ Brian Zahnd,
109:I do not find in orthodox Christianity one redeeming feature. ~ Thomas Jefferson,
110:In Christianity, nobody wins until everybody crosses the line. ~ Christine Caine,
111:The truly simple way of presenting Christianity is to do it. ~ Soren Kierkegaard,
112:What brought me to Christianity is Incarnation, not Ressurection. ~ Paul Virilio,
113:Wherever you encounter truth, look upon it as Christianity. ~ Desiderius Erasmus,
114:But Jesus and Christianity have a tenuous relationship at best. ~ David Javerbaum,
115:But the real story of Christianity is a lot less streamlined. ~ Rachel Held Evans,
116:Christianity is a faith in which God sent his Son to die for you. ~ John Ashcroft,
117:Christianity is an entirely new way of being human. ~ Saint Maximus the Confessor,
118:Christianity is warfare, and Christians are spiritualsoldiers. ~ Robert Southwell,
119:Christianity might be a good thing if anyone ever tried it. ~ George Bernard Shaw,
120:Cuz all they have is bigotry and they're calling it Christianity. ~ Thom Hartmann,
121:No nations are more warlike than those which profess Christianity. ~ Pierre Bayle,
122:Authentic Christianity is a roller-coaster ride, not a merry-go-round. ~ Mark Hart,
123:Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law. ~ Thomas Jefferson,
124:Christianity was simple: fight your desires in order to please God. ~ Francis Chan,
125:Self-denial is the shining sore on the leprous body of Christianity. ~ Oscar Wilde,
126:The Templars lost their Christianity when they discovered banking, ~ Oliver Bowden,
127:The wedding of Christianity or Judaism with nationalism is lethal. ~ Arthur Miller,
128:values of Christianity—sacrifice, redemption, forgiveness—because ~ Paul Kalanithi,
129:Without the cross we have a meaningless and powerless Christianity. ~ Michael Catt,
130:Christianity has done a great deal for love by making a sin of it. ~ Anatole France,
131:Christianity is an adventure of the spirit or it is not Christianity. ~ Alan Hirsch,
132:Good-nature is one of the richest fruits of true Christianity. ~ Henry Ward Beecher,
133:The Christian idea of 'putting on Christ' is the whole of Christianity. ~ C S Lewis,
134:The greatest enemy to the movement of Jesus Christ is Christianity. ~ Erwin McManus,
135:There is nothing in Islam that is more violent than Christianity. ~ Karen Armstrong,
136:Too often we argue about Christianity instead of marveling at Jesus. ~ John Ortberg,
137:Christianity and Buddhism are very much alike, especially Buddhism. ~ G K Chesterton,
138:If ISIS represents Islam, then the KKK represents Christianity ~ Kareem Abdul Jabbar,
139:Organized Christianity that fails to make a disturbance is dead. ~ G Campbell Morgan,
140:The only thing wrong with Christianity is the lack of suffering. ~ Winston Churchill,
141:Christianity has made martyrdom sublime, and sorrow triumphant. ~ Edwin Hubbel Chapin,
142:Christianity isn't true because it works; it works because it's true. ~ Lynn Anderson,
143:Christianity taught men that love is worth more than intelligence. ~ Jacques Maritain,
144:Fundamentalism is to Christianity what paint-by-numbers is to art. With ~ Brian Zahnd,
145:I love Christianity, Islam and many other faiths - through Hinduism. ~ Mahatma Gandhi,
146:The essential point of view of Christianity is sin. ~ Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel,
147:We're rediscovering Christianity as an Eastern religion, as a way of life. ~ Rob Bell,
148:We would be much worse without Christianity; but we wouldn't know it. ~ Joseph Sobran,
149:All the advantages of Christianity and alcohol; none of their defects. ~ Aldous Huxley,
150:A naturalistic Christianity leaves out all that is specifically Christian. ~ C S Lewis,
151:Christianity is a fine religion and I wish more Christians practiced it. ~ John Scalzi,
152:Christianity is the very root and foundation of Western civilization. ~ Dinesh D Souza,
153:Christianity is word-centered because God rules through his gospel word. ~ Tim Chester,
154:If you take away the cross as an atoning act, you take away Christianity. ~ R C Sproul,
155:The idea of heaven is Christianity's way of creating a hell on earth. ~ Marilyn Manson,
156:Be living witnesses of the greatness and beauty of Christianity. ~ Gianna Beretta Molla,
157:Christianity has not message for those who do not realize they are sinners. ~ C S Lewis,
158:The rapid spread of Christianity is forcing an official rethink on religion ~ Anonymous,
159:[The United States is] founded on the principles of Christianity ~ Franklin D Roosevelt,
160:Democracy, as has been said of Christianity, has never really been tried. ~ Stuart Chase,
161:I do not believe profanity has anything to do with Christianity, thank you. ~ Dee Snider,
162:In order to see Christianity, one must forget all the Christians. ~ Henri Frederic Amiel,
163:Sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll is easy. True christianity…that's rebellion. ~ Alice Cooper,
164:[167] Submission and use of reason; that is what makes true Christianity. ~ Blaise Pascal,
165:Christianity is radically different from every other religion in the world. ~ David Platt,
166:Christianity is the complete negation of common sense and sound reason. ~ Mikhail Bakunin,
167:No one can say Christianity has failed. It has never been tried. ~ Adam Clayton Powell Jr,
168:Nothing is more depressing and more illogical than aggressive Christianity. ~ Gerald Vann,
169:Christianity is never as weak as it appears, nor as strong as it appears. ~ Philip Jenkins,
170:[Christianity is] the most ... perverted system that ever shone on man. ~ Thomas Jefferson,
171:Surely the principles of Christianity lead to action as well as meditation. ~ William Pitt,
172:Christianity [is] a rebellion against natural law, a protest against nature. ~ Adolf Hitler,
173:Christianity is the root of all democracy, the highest fact in the rights of men. ~ Novalis,
174:Christianity remains to this day the greatest misfortune of humanity. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche,
175:Christianity teaches that the human race is depraved, fallen, and sinful. ~ D James Kennedy,
176:Socialism appeals to me. It's like imposed Christianity. You've got to share. ~ Lewis Black,
177:The only thing Christianity ever contributed to Satanism was the name ~ Anton Szandor LaVey,
178:This is the crux of Christianity: to remember and give thanks, 'eucharisteo'. ~ Ann Voskamp,
179:Without Christianity we might, of course, merely sink into an apathetic decline ~ T S Eliot,
180:Women are a new race, recreated since the world received Christianity. ~ Henry Ward Beecher,
181:Christianity gutted of Christ is devoid of both its beauty and its power. ~ Paul David Tripp,
182:Christianity is not a mere religion but an experimentally testable science. ~ Frank J Tipler,
183:I can't believe in Christianity, but I think Jesus was a wonderful teacher. ~ Billy Connolly,
184:I have always considered Christianity as the strong ground of republicanism. ~ Benjamin Rush,
185:II. Medieval Christianity, from Gregory I to the Reformation. A.D. 590–1517. ~ Philip Schaff,
186:Regarding Christianity: Ten thousand difficulties do not make one doubt. ~ John Henry Newman,
187:But Paul is saying that in Christianity, the verdict leads to performance. ~ Timothy J Keller,
188:One cannot refute Christianity; one cannot refute a disease of the eye. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche,
189:One is not converted to christianity; one must be morbid enough for it. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche,
190:The virtue of Paganism was strength: the virtue of Christianity is obedience. ~ Augustus Hare,
191:Christianity in my youth wasn’t just the right choice; it was the only choice. ~ Scott Douglas,
192:Christianity is not a religion, it’s a relationship with God through Christ. ~ Jerry B Jenkins,
193:Christianity without discipleship is always Christianity without Christ. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer,
194:I am no friend of present-day Christianity, though its Founder was sublime. ~ Vincent Van Gogh,
195:If Christianity had asserted itself in Germany, six million Jews would have lived. ~ Malcolm X,
196:If Christianity needed an Anti-Christ, they needed look no farther than Paul. ~ Jeremy Bentham,
197:Christianity has made more lunatics than it ever provided asylums for. ~ Robert Green Ingersoll,
198:Christianity is not just about what we believe; it’s also about how we behave. ~ John R W Stott,
199:Christianity is not primarily about lifestyle change; it is about knowing God. ~ Michael Reeves,
200:Prayer is the hard-work business of Christianity, and it nets amazing results. ~ David Jeremiah,
201:What many people today assume Christianity to be is basically Plutarch plus Jesus. ~ N T Wright,
202:When you enter the voting booth, don't leave your Christianity in the parking lot. ~ R C Sproul,
203:Bad theology begets ugly Christianity. Good theology begets beautiful Christianity. ~ Tony Jones,
204:Christendom has done away with Christianity without being quite aware of it. ~ Soren Kierkegaard,
205:Christianity has always seemed to fight a losing battle against race. ~ Charles Hamilton Houston,
206:Christianity is the greatest civilizing, moulding, uplifting power on this globe. ~ Mark Hopkins,
207:Christmas shows us that Christianity is not good advice. It is good news. THE ~ Timothy J Keller,
208:Every exceptional bias against Christianity I find to be evidence for its validity. ~ Criss Jami,
209:Every other religion is a salvation by self, Christianity is a salvation by Christ. ~ Max Lucado,
210:Hopefully, I'll be remembered as the person who brought an end to Christianity. ~ Marilyn Manson,
211:If you're not a thorn in somebody's side, you aren't doing Christianity right. ~ Mother Angelica,
212:It is not Christianity, but priestcraft that has subjected woman as we find her. ~ Lucretia Mott,
213:Only Judaism and Christianity are religions of public record, eyewitnessed facts. ~ Peter Kreeft,
214:People who have failed at Christianity aren't likely to make great Buddhists. ~ Robertson Davies,
215:The primary declaration of Christianity is not "This do!" but "This happened! ~ Evelyn Underhill,
216:The real truth, I thought, in terms of what faith is and what Christianity is. ~ Martin Scorsese,
217:The underground appeared in this novel as the failure and reversal of Christianity. ~ Ren Girard,
218:Christianity commands us to pass by injuries; policy, to let them pass by us. ~ Benjamin Franklin,
219:Christianity is an extreme call to a radical life following a revolutionary leader. ~ Steve Saint,
220:Christianity is not a consumer good. You should turn to it only if it is true. ~ Timothy J Keller,
221:Christianity is not something you do, so much as something that is done to you. ~ Ian Morgan Cron,
222:Mindless Christianity is no Christianity at all. You can't love what you don't know. ~ R C Sproul,
223:Now, if it were the case that Christianity were true, would you want to know it? ~ Nabeel Qureshi,
224:Oliver was beginning to think too many church rules got in the way of Christianity. ~ Helen Bryan,
225:There is no doctrine of Christianity but what has been anticipated by the Vedas. ~ Horace Greeley,
226:American Christianity is based more on a godless culture than it is the word of God. ~ Paul Washer,
227:Christianity does not set faith against thinking. It sets faith against assuming. ~ Timothy Keller,
228:Christianity is so much more than getting your doctrine right, but it is not less. ~ Kevin DeYoung,
229:If Christianity is really true it will be offending and correcting you somewhere. ~ Timothy Keller,
230:I think they do more damage to Christianity than the most committed atheist. ~ John F MacArthur Jr,
231:Regarding Christianity: Ten thousand difficulties do not make one doubt. ~ Saint John Henry Newman,
232:Seek each day to do or say something to further Christianity among the heathen. ~ Jonathan Goforth,
233:Christianity is just as threatening as radical Islam in a country like America... ~ Rosie O Donnell,
234:ironically the term tolerance is used to justify intolerance toward Christianity. ~ Nancy R Pearcey,
235:It is our taste that decides against Christianity now, no longer our reasons. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche,
236:It was through the Hindu religion that I learnt to respect Christianity and Islam. ~ Mahatma Gandhi,
237:Jesus was a lover of life, a very affirmative person, but Christianity is life-negative. ~ Rajneesh,
238:We do not have time to waste our lives coasting out casual, comfortable Christianity. ~ David Platt,
239:Christianity is not a religion; it is the announcement of the end of religion. ~ Robert Farrar Capon,
240:In the process of replacing the old religions, Christianity became a religion. ~ Alexander Schmemann,
241:Religion is man's attempt to reach God and Christianity is God's attempt to reach man. ~ Greg Laurie,
242:Spreading Christianity abroad is sometimes an excuse for not having it at home. ~ Henry Ward Beecher,
243:The fable of a god or gods visiting the earth did not originate with Christianity. ~ Richard Carlile,
244:Those who say Islam is a warlike religion must ask if Christianity has been as well. ~ Wendell Berry,
245:We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity. ~ Ann Coulter,
246:With the rise of Christianity, faith replaced thought as the bringer of immortality. ~ Hannah Arendt,
247:Christianity contains within itself a germ hostile to the Church (Dietrich Bonhoeffer) ~ Eric Metaxas,
248:Christianity is neither a system of ideas nor of morality but a way, a way of life. ~ Kevin Vanhoozer,
249:I know nothing about Christianity, nothing about football, and I'm not a Republican. ~ Sandra Bullock,
250:The more I see of Italy and her treasures, the more I see paganism in Christianity. ~ Henrietta Szold,
251:We're going to protect Christianity. We don't have to be politically correct about it. ~ Donald Trump,
252:Authentic Christianity is a supernatural walk with a living, dynamic, communicating God. ~ Bill Hybels,
253:Cargo cults fascinate me partly because Christianity itself is in many ways a cargo cult. ~ Nick Laird,
254:Christianity does not begin with our pursuit of Christ, but with Christ’s pursuit of us. ~ David Platt,
255:Christianity is an idea, and as such is indestructible and immortal, like every idea. ~ Heinrich Heine,
256:Everything about Christianity is contained in the pathetic image of 'the flock. ~ Christopher Hitchens,
257:Justification by faith alone, is the hinge upon which the whole of Christianity turns ~ Charles Simeon,
258:o be entirely honest, I know of nothing quite so boring as Christianity without Christ. ~ W Ian Thomas,
259:Research for this book has made me aware of aspects of Christianity I find disturbing. ~ Elaine Pagels,
260:A nation's religion is its life, and as such white Christianity is a miserable failure. ~ W E B Du Bois,
261:Christianity can be condensed into four words: Admit, Submit, Commit and Transmit. ~ Samuel Wilberforce,
262:Christianity is haunted by the theory of a God with a craving for bloody sacrifices. ~ John B S Haldane,
263:If anything is to be done, one must try to introduce Christianity into Christendom. ~ S ren Kierkegaard,
264:If Christianity is only one more bit of good advice, then Christianity is of no importance. ~ C S Lewis,
265:Isn't that the story for many of us in America? Christianity is our default setting. ~ Jefferson Bethke,
266:No Christian can be a pessimist, for Christianity is a system of radical optimism. ~ William Ralph Inge,
267:Of all religions, Christianity is without a doubt the one that should inspire tolerance most ~ Voltaire,
268:The philosophy of the discoveries, the emigration, and the colonisation was Christianity. ~ Hugh Thomas,
269:A Christian might be tired of the Christianity, but certainly he is scared of the Islam. ~ M F Moonzajer,
270:And my Christianity, first and foremost, governed the way that I tried to deal with people. ~ Mike Pence,
271:Besides, Christianity is not a doctrine to be taught, but rather a life to be lived. ~ S ren Kierkegaard,
272:Christianity is simply the ideal form of manhood represented to us by Jesus Christ. ~ Henry Ward Beecher,
273:Christianity promises to make men free; it never promises to make them independent. ~ William Ralph Inge,
274:Christianity spreads through the joy of disciples who know that they are loved and saved. ~ Pope Francis,
275:I learned more about Christianity from my mother than from all the theologians in England. ~ John Wesley,
276:the essence of Christianity is not about religion at all, but about the person of Christ. ~ Eric Metaxas,
277:The longer I live, the more convinced I am that Christianity is one long shout of joy! ~ Geoffrey Fisher,
278:We live in a culture that is paradoxically both jaded by and ignorant about Christianity. ~ Holly Ordway,
279:We're (millennials) looking for a truer Christianity, a more authentic Christianity. ~ Rachel Held Evans,
280:Christianity is not about behavior modification. It is about inward heart transformation. ~ Joseph Prince,
281:Christianity is not a spectator sport. It's something in which we become totally involved. ~ Billy Graham,
282:FREUDIANISM interprets man in terms of sex; Christianity interprets sex in terms of man. ~ Fulton J Sheen,
283:Not the way to God but the way of God to humanity: that is the sum of Christianity. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer,
284:Christianity has nothing to offer a happy man living in a natural, intelligible universe. ~ George H Smith,
285:if Christianity is true, then the end of our exploring will be joy and goodness and life. ~ G K Chesterton,
286:If you’re too chicken to repent, then please don’t ever say Christianity is for weak people. ~ Bill Hybels,
287:In discussing Barbarism and Christianity I have actually been discussing the Fall of Rome. ~ Edward Gibbon,
288:The sacrifice that Christianity asks of us is not ultimately a sacrifice of the intellect. ~ Marcus J Borg,
289:According to the legends, Christianity first arrived in Ireland on a spring night in AD 433. ~ Neil Hegarty,
290:Art cannot be used to show the validity of Christianity; it should rather be the reverse. ~ Hans Rookmaaker,
291:...centre of the centre, the real heart of Christianity as it has been until now. ~ David Friedrich Strauss,
292:Christianity in China from 150 years prior to the time of its inscription, circa 780. ~ Sinclair B Ferguson,
293:If a man is going to write on chemistry, he learns chemistry. The same is true of Christianity. ~ C S Lewis,
294:Love is the most attractive quality in the world. And it lies at the heart of Christianity. ~ Michael Green,
295:That is one of the reasons I believe Christianity. It is a religion you could not have guessed. ~ C S Lewis,
296:The resurrection makes Christianity the most irritating religion on the face of the earth. ~ Timothy Keller,
297:What is happening within Christianity is that it doesn't know it needs to promote itself. ~ Stephen Baldwin,
298:Christianity even when watered down is hot enough to boil all modern society to rags. ~ Gilbert K Chesterton,
299:Christianity is not "Jesus is our example." Christianity is "Jesus is our substitute." ~ Tullian Tchividjian,
300:Christianity is perfectly easy or perfectly impossible. It depends on who’s running the ship. ~ John Crowder,
301:He who affirms that Christianity makes men miserable, is himself an utter stranger to it. ~ Charles Spurgeon,
302:I consider a decent respect for Christianity among the best recommendations for public service. ~ John Adams,
303:I don't perceive an anti-religious agenda, especially with regard to Christians and Christianity. ~ Bill Nye,
304:If Mere Christianity helps make Christianity comprehensible, Orthodoxy makes it weird again. ~ Leah Libresco,
305:It is an alarming experience to be, in your person, representing Christianity to the natives. ~ Isak Dinesen,
306:The way that I see Christianity is that its role is to enhance the life of every person. ~ John Shelby Spong,
307:What a solace Christianity must be to one who has an undoubted conviction of its truth! ~ Napoleon Bonaparte,
308:At the centre of Christianity is community; we are gathered by the Lord around the altar. ~ Timothy Radcliffe,
309:Christianity is a very historical religion - it makes specific claims that are open to testing. ~ Lee Strobel,
310:Christianity is not a purely intellectual, internal faith. It can only be lived in community. ~ Philip Yancey,
311:Now Christianity sounded good at first to the naive convert. Love, peace and charity - ~ William S Burroughs,
312:The First Amendment was written by the Founders to protect the free exercise of Christianity. ~ Bryan Fischer,
313:There have been two great narcotics in European civilisation: Christianity and alcohol. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche,
314:You know, the one with all the well meaning rules that don't work out in real life, uh, Christianity. ~ Homer,
315:But as St. Francis did not love humanity but men, so he did not love Christianity but Christ. ~ G K Chesterton,
316:Christianity has done more to elevate the status of women than any other movement in history. ~ Stasi Eldredge,
317:Christianity without discipleship is always Christianity without Christ. DIETRICH BONHOEFFER ~ John Ortberg Jr,
318:Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good. ~ H L Mencken,
319:Has the pope questioned the Christianity of the Castro brothers, of any other private citizen? ~ Rush Limbaugh,
320:I consider Western Christianity in its practical working a negation of Christ's Christianity. ~ Mahatma Gandhi,
321:If Christianity was something we were making up, of course we could make it easier. But it is not. ~ C S Lewis,
322:I have a great mind to believe in Christianity for the mere pleasure of fancying I may be damned. ~ Lord Byron,
323:In Science we have been reading only the notes to a poem; in Christianity we find the poem itself. ~ C S Lewis,
324:The idea of waste only comes into our Christianity when we underestimate the worth of our Lord. ~ Watchman Nee,
325:The main point of Christianity was this: that Nature is not our mother: Nature is our sister. ~ G K Chesterton,
326:We wish to fill our culture once more with the spirit of Christianity - but not only in theory. ~ Adolf Hitler,
327:A Christianity that is walled off from the culture around it is a Christianity that dies. The ~ Russell D Moore,
328:evangelical Christianity needs to recover the form and beauty that are intrinsic to Christianity. ~ Brian Zahnd,
329:I like to read about different religions - Judaism, Islam, Christianity, Hinduism and Buddhism. ~ Wesley Snipes,
330:The conversion of a savage to Christianity is the conversion of Christianity to savagery. ~ George Bernard Shaw,
331:Today we are engaged in a final, all-out battle between communistic atheism and Christianity. ~ Joseph McCarthy,
332:Christianity and Western civilization-what countless crimes have been committed in thy name! ~ Ngugi wa Thiong o,
333:Christianity is a superhuman paradox whereby two opposite passions may blaze beside each other. ~ G K Chesterton,
334:Christianity is supposed to be all about love but it’s utterly useless when you’re in love. ~ Jane Gardam,
335:[Christianity] neither enjoins the nastiness of the Cynic, nor the insensibility of the Stoic. ~ George Berkeley,
336:Do you know what Christianity is? We believe your religion [Judaism], but you [Jews] have to obey. ~ Ann Coulter,
337:In Christianity neither morality nor religion come into contact with reality at any point. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche,
338:It is an invention of the devil, an infernal falsity for the destruction of all Christianity. ~ Michael Servetus,
339:Only Christianity dares to make God’s love unconditional (What’s So Amazing About Grace, 45). ~ Warren W Wiersbe,
340:The essential fact of Christianity is that God thought all men worth the sacrifice of his son. ~ William Barclay,
341:Why does so much Christianity smack of power and aggression when Jesus was humble and subversive? ~ Jen Hatmaker,
342:Because this is the world that science built, with the henchmen of capitalism and Christianity. ~ Terence McKenna,
343:blunt conclusion was that “Christianity has an image problem” among American youth.48 Similarly, ~ Robert P Jones,
344:Catholic, I discovered, meant a type of Christianity for humans who like gold leaf, Latin, and guilt. ~ Matt Haig,
345:Catholicism, I discovered, was a type of Christianity for humans who like gold leaf, Latin and guilt. ~ Matt Haig,
346:Chase God's heart today. Christianity has got to be more than a label, a lingo, and a lifestyle. ~ Lysa TerKeurst,
347:Christianity stretches back through the ages, but in essence it exists only at one time: right now. ~ Yann Martel,
348:Christianity supplies a Hell for the people who disagree with you and a Heaven for your friends. ~ Elbert Hubbard,
349:Christianity will doubtless still survive in the earth ten centuries hence- stuffed and in a museum. ~ Mark Twain,
350:If you want a religion to make you feel really comfortable, I certainly don't recommend Christianity. ~ C S Lewis,
351:In religion, you obey because God is useful. In Christianity, you obey because God is beautiful. ~ Timothy Keller,
352:Their opposition to Christianity is not intellectual. They simply do not want Christ to reign over them! ~ Carman,
353:The sincere Christian knows that what died in Auschwitz was not the Jewish people but Christianity. ~ Elie Wiesel,
354:The Son of God became a man to enable men to become sons of God." ~ Mere Christianity, By C. S. Lewis ~ C S Lewis,
355:The spiritualization of sensuality is called love: it is a great triumph over Christianity. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche,
356:We're more popular than Jesus now; I don't know which will go first, rock 'n' roll or Christianity. ~ John Lennon,
357:If you take the 'love your enemy' out of Christianity, you've 'unChristianed' the Christian faith. ~ Miroslav Volf,
358:PART OF THE GENIUS of genuine Christianity is that each generation has to think it through afresh. ~ Scot McKnight,
359:Spirituality is what is left when authentic Christianity is evacuated from the public square. ~ R Albert Mohler Jr,
360:the Romans first neutralized Greek philosophy, then turned Christianity into a prop for their empire. ~ Ian Morris,
361:This was the bonus to liberal Christianity: I could use my reason and believe at the same time. ~ Nadia Bolz Weber,
362:To me [Christianity] was all nonsense based on that profane compilation of fables called the Bible. ~ Bill Haywood,
363:We must view humility as one of the most essential things that characterizes true Christianity. ~ Jonathan Edwards,
364:Christianity is not about moving away from vice to virtue. It's moving away from virtue to Christ. ~ Rod Rosenbladt,
365:Christianity is the only religion in the world where a man's God comes and lives inside of Him! ~ Leonard Ravenhill,
366:Every spiritual tradition has this idea of death and resurrection. It's not unique to Christianity. ~ Deepak Chopra,
367:For even those who have renounced Christianity and attack it still follow the Christian ideal. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky,
368:HE who affirms that Christianity makes men miserable, is himself an utter stranger to it. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon,
369:I believe in Christianity, Judaism and Islamism, but I stay away from churches, synagogues and mosques. ~ Ted Lange,
370:Jesus was a real revolutionary and that Christianity had unfortunately given the guy a bad name. ~ Nadia Bolz Weber,
371:Judaism is not complete without Christianity and without Judaism, Christianity would not exist. ~ Benjamin Disraeli,
372:Men have not got tired of Christianity; they have never found enough Christianity to get tired of. ~ G K Chesterton,
373:The peculiar doctrine of Christianity is that of a universal sacrifice and perpetual propitiation. ~ Samuel Johnson,
374:The practical effect of Christianity is happiness, therefore let it be spread abroad everywhere! ~ Charles Spurgeon,
375:We can’t understand Christian history without Asia—or, indeed, Asian history without Christianity. ~ Philip Jenkins,
376:We live in a culture where the truth claims of Christianity are not only rejected, they are ridiculed. ~ R C Sproul,
377:Catholic doctrine and discipline may be walls; but they are the walls of a playground. Christianity ~ G K Chesterton,
378:Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried. ~ D Martyn Lloyd Jones,
379:Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried. ~ Gilbert K Chesterton,
380:Men had been living a proud life, having felt no need for the spirit-until Christianity invented it. ~ Yukio Mishima,
381:My concern is that somebody would make a decision against Christianity because of Mr. Trump's behavior. ~ Max Lucado,
382:Riches naturally beget pride, love of the world, and every temper that is destructive of Christianity. ~ John Wesley,
383:The main point of Christianity was this: that Nature is not our mother: Nature is our sister. ~ Gilbert K Chesterton,
384:The next challenge for Christianity is to remind Europeans that we are called to seek the truth. ~ Timothy Radcliffe,
385:The trouble with Communism is the Communists, just as the trouble with Christianity is the Christians. ~ H L Mencken,
386:Christianity is the most ridiculous, the most absurd and bloody religion that has ever infected the world. ~ Voltaire,
387:Christianity teaches us to love our neighbor as ourself; modern society acknowledges no neighbor. ~ Benjamin Disraeli,
388:It seems true that the growth of science and secularism made organized Christianity feel under threat. ~ Mary Douglas,
389:the American church is a difficult place to fit in if you want to live out New Testament Christianity. ~ Francis Chan,
390:There are those who hate Christianity and call their hatred an all-embracing love for all religions. ~ G K Chesterton,
391:The sanctification of political power by Christianity is blasphemy; it is the negation of Christianity. ~ Leo Tolstoy,
392:Until then he had believed they justified colonialism: Christianity, civilization, and commerce. ~ Mario Vargas Llosa,
393:A single friar who goes counter to all Christianity for a thousand years must be wrong. ~ Charles V Holy Roman Emperor,
394:Chesterton said once that there is only one unanswerable argument against Christianity: Christians. And ~ Peter Kreeft,
395:Christianity is strange: it requires human beings to recognize that they are vile and even abominable. ~ Blaise Pascal,
396:Instead of making Christianity a vehicle of truth, you make truth only a horse for Christianity. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson,
397:Religion says, 'I obey; therefore I am accepted.' Christianity says, 'I'm accepted, therefore I obey. ~ Timothy Keller,
398:Christianity gave Eros poison to drink; he did not die of it, certainly, but degenerated to Vice. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche,
399:Christianity may be OK between consenting adults in private but should not be taught to young children. ~ Francis Crick,
400:One cannot worship the false god of nationalism and the God of Christianity at the same time. . ~ Martin Luther King Jr,
401:There is much, of course, in the exclusive claims of Christianity which make it hostile to other faiths. ~ Annie Besant,
402:You told me that Christianity is the religion of peace."
"Ah, no. It is the faith for forgiveness. ~ Neal Stephenson,
403:A kind, courteous Christian is the most powerful argument that can be produced in favor of Christianity. ~ Ellen G White,
404:All distinctions between the many different kinds of love are essentially abolished by Christianity. ~ S ren Kierkegaard,
405:Christianity is most admirably adapted to the training of slaves, to the perpetuation of a slave society. ~ Emma Goldman,
406:Christianity is not a life system that operates on the basis of speculative reason or pragmatic expediency. ~ R C Sproul,
407:Compassion is the key in Islam and Buddhism and Judaism and Christianity. They are profoundly similar. ~ Karen Armstrong,
408:Love is the hardest lesson in Christianity; but, for that reason, it should be most our care to learn it. ~ William Penn,
409:Of all the duties enjoined by Christianity none is more essential and yet more neglected than prayer. ~ Francois Fenelon,
410:Perhaps, after all, it is Christianity that is sane and all its critics that are mad—in various ways. I ~ G K Chesterton,
411:The power of Christianity lies in its revelation in act, of that which Plato divined in theory. ~ Alfred North Whitehead,
412:where would Christianity be today if Jesus had been given ten to twenty with time off for good behavior ~ William Gaddis,
413:At this time of year it's easy to forget the true meaning of Christianity - the lies, the corruption, the abuse. ~ Banksy,
414:One of the great wonders of Christianity is that you were born into your times, to set your times aright. ~ John Eldredge,
415:That old queer Nietzsche had it right: Christianity was, at the end of the day, a feminine religion. ~ Michel Houellebecq,
416:The time has come for a new kind of conversation, a new kind of Christianity, a new kind of revolution. ~ Shane Claiborne,
417:Christianity does not start with an invitation we offer to Jesus, but with an invitation Jesus offers to us. ~ David Platt,
418:Christianity gave eroticism its savor of sin and legend when it endowed the human female with a soul. ~ Simone de Beauvoir,
419:I do regard Islam to be a religion of peace in the same sense as Christianity, Buddhism and Hinduism are. ~ Mahatma Gandhi,
420:If your Christianity depends upon a pastor's preaching, then you're a long way from being where you should be. ~ A W Tozer,
421:The general principles on which the fathers achieved independence were the general principles of Christianity ~ John Adams,
422:Christianity in India is inextricably mixed up for the last hundred and fifty years with the British rule. ~ Mahatma Gandhi,
423:Christianity is about learning to love like Jesus loved and Jesus loved the poor and Jesus loved the broken. ~ Rich Mullins,
424:Christianity's goal is not escape from this world. It loves this world and seeks to change it for the better. ~ Marcus Borg,
425:If following Jesus Christ doesn't cost you anything, it's because you've bought into 'American Christianity.' ~ Paul Washer,
426:If the Christian faith gets too identified with a party, it reduces Christianity to a political position ~ Timothy J Keller,
427:There are those who hate Christianity and call their hatred an all-embracing love for all religions. ~ Gilbert K Chesterton,
428:Christianity is not about learning how to live within the lines; Christianity is about the joy of coloring. ~ Mike Yaconelli,
429:Existentialism is possible only in a world where God is dead or a luxury, and where Christianity is dead. ~ Gabriel Vahanian,
430:III. Modern Christianity, from the Reformation of the sixteenth century to the present time. A.D. 1517–1880. ~ Philip Schaff,
431:I left Christianity because I wanted to be a moral person. That is why I left. I no longer believed in its lies. ~ Anne Rice,
432:I see no contradiction between Buddhism and Christianity ... I intend to become as good a Buddhist as I can. ~ Thomas Merton,
433:Socialism isn't a dirty word; it just means sharing. Really, it's just the bureaucratic arm of Christianity. ~ Russell Brand,
434:To the corruptions of Christianity I am indeed opposed; but not to the genuine precepts of Jesus himself. ~ Thomas Jefferson,
435:Well, I am a Christian who believes that there are certainly many more paths to God other than Christianity. ~ Oprah Winfrey,
436:With Christianity, freedom and equality became the two basic concepts of Europe; they are themselves Europe. ~ Peter Drucker,
437:A crossless Christianity isn’t just a deficient Christianity; it’s the same old satanism of human striving. ~ Russell D Moore,
438:Christianity's goal is not escape from this world. It loves this world and seeks to change it for the better. ~ Marcus J Borg,
439:For Christianity does not mean what you think or what I think concerning Christ, but what IS OF Christ. My ~ George MacDonald,
440:I think this lack of a center has something to do with the loss of certainties that Christianity had to offer ~ Bridget Riley,
441:Christianity is not consistency to conscience or to convictions; Christianity is being true to Jesus Christ. ~ Oswald Chambers,
442:G. K. Chesterton famously quipped, “There is only one unanswerable argument against Christianity: Christians. ~ Dallas Willard,
443:If a man cannot serve two masters, neither can Christianity, or several thousand of them as the case may be. ~ E A Bucchianeri,
444:Jews show so near an affinity to you... Where is your Christianity if you do not believe in their Judaism? ~ Benjamin Disraeli,
445:That Christianity should never have been a religion. What it should be is an ethic: a way of living right. ~ Kenneth C Johnson,
446:The Declaration of Independence laid the cornerstone of human government upon the first precepts of Christianity. ~ John Adams,
447:The first nation to separate Christianity from government produced perhaps the most religious nation on earth. ~ Philip Yancey,
448:The influence of the Jews had helped also to undermine heathenism and thus to prepare the ground for Christianity. ~ Anonymous,
449:if Christianity is really true, then it involves the whole man, including his intellect and creativeness. ~ Francis A Schaeffer,
450:In the Christianity of Christendom the Cross has become something like the child’s hobby-horse and trumpet. ~ Soren Kierkegaard,
451:In the Christianity of Christendom the Cross has become something like the child’s hobby-horse and trumpet. ~ S ren Kierkegaard,
452:I think we have to recover our spiritual nature. The way we have interpreted Christianity does not do that. ~ John Shelby Spong,
453:I would not have you exchange the gold of individual Christianity for the base metal of Christian Socialism. ~ Charles Spurgeon,
454:Look, don't judge Christianity by the imperfect examples that we have seen in history. Judge it by Jesus Christ. ~ Chuck Smith,
455:One of the reasons why it needs no special education to be a Christian is that Christianity is an education itself. ~ C S Lewis,
456:The version of Christianity that is dying today is rooted in the grossly misunderstood concept of atonement ~ John Shelby Spong,
457:What right have such men to represent Christianity—as if it were an institution for getting up idiots genteelly? ~ George Eliot,
458:Where Christianity disappears, greed, envy, and lust invent a thousand ideologies to justify themselves. ~ Nicol s G mez D vila,
459:Christianity is in no way a stoic faith. It fundamentally rejects the "stiff upper lip" school of thought. ~ Tullian Tchividjian,
460:Christianity is our foe. If animal rights is to succeed, we must destroy the Judeo-Christian religious tradition. ~ Peter Singer,
461:Either communism must die or Christianity must die because it's actually a battle between Christ and Anti-Christ. ~ Billy Graham,
462:Everyone says forgiveness is a lovely idea, until they have something to forgive. —C. S. LEWIS, MERE CHRISTIANITY ~ Sheila Walsh,
463:If you are looking for a religion centered around yourself, Ben, I must agree that Christianity is a poor choice. ~ Randy Alcorn,
464:I know the greatness of Christianity; it is a past greatness.. I live in 1924, and the Christian venture is done. ~ D H Lawrence,
465:M. How do you think Christianity started? Or anything else? With a little group of people who didn’t give up hope. ~ John Fowles,
466:Properly understood, Christianity is by no means the opiate of the people. It’s more like the smelling salts. ~ Timothy J Keller,
467:The cross of the Cruxifixion without the cross of the Resurrection is the symbol of a mutilated Christianity. ~ Frederick Franck,
468:Autonomous Christianity never works, because our spiritual life was designed by God to be a community project. ~ Paul David Tripp,
469:Christianity does not direct us to focus on finding the right person; it calls us to become the right person. Our ~ Gary L Thomas,
470:Christianity is not a message which has to be believed, but an experience of faith that becomes a message. ~ Edward Schillebeeckx,
471:Christianity is not engrossed by this transitory world, but measures all things by the thought of eternity. ~ John Gresham Machen,
472:Christianity is preached by the ignorant and believed by the learned. And in this way is like no other thing. ~ Joseph de Maistre,
473:Christianity stamped its character on jurisprudence; for empire has ever a connection with the priesthood. ~ Baron de Montesquieu,
474:For Shakespeare, in the matter of religion, the choice lay between Christianity and nothing. He chose nothing. ~ George Santayana,
475:If Christianity is going to mean anything at all for us now, then the humanity of God cannot be a half measure. ~ Christian Wiman,
476:If Jesus had known that his image would end up on Justin Bieber's calf, he would've never started Christianity. ~ Natasha Leggero,
477:I see with greater and greater clearness that consistent Christianity is the easiest Christianity to defend ~ John Gresham Machen,
478:I think a lot of bands are influenced by religious symbolism and not even necessarily Christianity or Catholicism. ~ Chino Moreno,
479:People are so inoculated in childhood with small doses of Christianity that they seldom catch the real thing. ~ Richard Wurmbrand,
480:The teaching of the Buddha is called the Dhamma. He did not teach Buddhism, any more than Jesus taught Christianity. ~ Ayya Khema,
481:Though the ancients were ignorant of the principles of Christianity there were in them the germs of its spirit. ~ Herman Melville,
482:To the frivolous Christianity is certainly not glad tidings, for it wishes first of all to make them serious. ~ Soren Kierkegaard,
483:When we Christians behave badly, or fail to behave well, we are making Christianity unbelievable to the outside world ~ C S Lewis,
484:As with early Judaism and early Christianity, early Islam would be rooted in opposition to a corrupt status quo. ~ Lesley Hazleton,
485:Bonhoeffer's emphasis on the deep this-worldliness of Christianity does not lead to de-escahtologizing the gospel. ~ G C Berkouwer,
486:Christianity has enriched the erotic meal with the appetizer of curiosity and spoiled it with the dessert of remorse. ~ Karl Kraus,
487:Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law. ~ Thomas Jefferson, letter to Dr. Thomas Cooper (10 February 1814),
488:I am told that only two groups carry very little negative baggage inside of Christianity: Franciscans and Quakers. ~ Mirabai Starr,
489:It is fatally easy to think of Christianity as something to be discussed and not as something to be experienced. ~ William Barclay,
490:It is important to show people ways that we can reclaim Christianity from some of the misunderstandings of our time. ~ Marcus Borg,
491:Morality is: the mediocre are worth more than the exceptions ... I abhore Christianity with a deadly hatred. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche,
492:The deeper our insight into the methods of nature . . . the more incredible the popular Christianity seems to us. ~ John Burroughs,
493:When we Christians behave badly, or fail to behave well, we are making Christianity unbelievable to the outside world. ~ C S Lewis,
494:Christianity teaches salvation by grace through faith, every other religion teaches salvation through works and merit. ~ Max Lucado,
495:Religion is spelled DO. Christianity is spelled DONE. One endlessly works to earn love. The other simply receives it! ~ Bill Hybels,
496:Any person who only sticks with Christianity as long as things are going his or her way, is a stranger to the cross ~ Timothy Keller,
497:As our culture has become increasingly hostile to Christianity, it has become correspondingly open to wickedness. ~ Rick Scarborough,
498:Christianity is not the faith of the complacent, the comfortable or of the timid. It demands and creates heroic souls. ~ Mitt Romney,
499:religion was a dead, man-made thing, and at the heart of Christianity was something else entirely—God himself, alive. ~ Eric Metaxas,
500:The "Donation of Constantine" purported to date from Constantine’s alleged conversion to Christianity in A.D. 312. ~ Michael Baigent,
501:There is enough Christianity in our country's history to make it a significant component of our heritage and identity. ~ Joel Hunter,
502:Almost every sect of Christianity is a perversion of its essence, to accommodate it to the prejudices of the world. ~ William Hazlitt,
503:Evangelical Christianity, as everyone knows, is founded upon hate, as the Christianity of Christ was founded upon love. ~ H L Mencken,
504:Any person who only sticks with Christianity as long as things are going his or her way, is a stranger to the cross ~ Timothy J Keller,
505:Christianity is not devotion to work, or to a cause, or a doctrine, but devotion to a Person, the Lord Jesus Christ. ~ Oswald Chambers,
506:Conservatives should be adamant about the need for the reappearance of Judeo-Christianity in the public square. ~ William F Buckley Jr,
507:Education without religion is in danger of substituting wild theories for the simple commonsense rules of Christianity. ~ Samuel Morse,
508:Genuine Christianity is more than a relationship with Jesus, as expressed in personal piety, church attendance, Bible ~ Charles Colson,
509:history of Christianity is principally a story of mankind’s misery and ignorance rather than of its requited love of God. ~ Sam Harris,
510:IT IS A COMMON REPROACH AGAINST CHRISTIANITY THAT ITS dogmas are unchanging, while human knowledge is in continual growth. ~ C S Lewis,
511:Postmodern people have been rejecting Christianity for years, thinking that it was indistinguishable from moralism. ~ Timothy J Keller,
512:The days of the Cross are counted. We must deliver the German nation from the pernicious influence of Christianity. ~ Erich Ludendorff,
513:.. 'The rise of christianity as the result of impact of iranian religion on judaism', I don't think is entirely false. ~ Bernard Lewis,
514:The time has come when the whole world must be concerned about me. From now on, American Christianity must follow me. ~ Sun Myung Moon,
515:True Christianity is a life of sacrifice. It requires that in everything we live for the Lord and others, not ourselves. ~ Rick Joyner,
516:Where the successful or failed dialogues between Christianity and other cultures are concerned, we could go on for hours. ~ Ren Girard,
517:Democracy has travelled from the East to the West in the shape of Christianity. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Bande Mataram - II, Asiatic Democracy,
518:I am utterly struck how, 300 years after his execution, Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire. ~ Peter Jennings,
519:I had once thought that Christianity was a soft, wish-fulfillment religion. Now I saw that it was entirely the opposite. ~ Holly Ordway,
520:Is this idea of the non-fruit-bearing Christian something that we have concocted in order to make Christianity “easier”? ~ Francis Chan,
521:It is not possible to be incidentally a Christian. The fact of Christianity must be overwhelmingly first or nothing. ~ Sheldon Vanauken,
522:Jesus is too colossal for the pen of phrasemongers, however artful. No man can dispose of Christianity with a bon mot ~ Albert Einstein,
523:Mormonism's uniqueness is in the fact that it was the first really successful attempt to pass paganism off as Christianity; ~ Ed Decker,
524:most rejected Christianity because they thought it means becoming judgmental, narrow-minded, intolerant, and unkind ~ Rachel Held Evans,
525:Surely the principles as well as the practice of Christianity are simple and lead not to meditation only, but to action. ~ Eric Metaxas,
526:The crucified Christ has become a stranger to the civil religion of the First World and to that world's Christianity. ~ J rgen Moltmann,
527:The denunciation of injustice implies the rejection of the use of Christianity to legitimize the established order. ~ Gustavo Gutierrez,
528:The glory of Christianity is to conquer by forgiveness. It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend. ~ Henry Ward Beecher,
529:This is what Christianity is. We believe the Old Testament, but ours is more like Federal Express. You have to obey laws. ~ Ann Coulter,
530:Christianity is not about doing right to become righteous. It is all about believing right in Jesus to become righteous. ~ Joseph Prince,
531:Christianity is not being weighed in the balance and found wanting. It's being tried, found difficult and rejected! ~ Leonard Ravenhill,
532:Christianity was preached by ignorant men and believed by servants, and that is why it resembles nothing ever known. ~ Joseph de Maistre,
533:Christians know that Christianity is simply extended training in dying early. That is what we have always been about. ~ Stanley Hauerwas,
534:I am not asking anyone to accept Christianity if his best reasoning tells him that the weight of the evidence is against it. ~ C S Lewis,
535:I think it's important to remember that Christianity was based in love and tolerance and forgiveness and acceptance. ~ Kristin Chenoweth,
536:I want people to see that Christianity claims to be true in the deep sense, and if it isn't, then it solves nothing at all. ~ Greg Koukl,
537:My tactics were, by God's aid, to employ every means to make it clear what the requirement of Christianity truly is. ~ Soren Kierkegaard,
538:No true civilization can be expected permanently to continue which is not based on the great principles of Christianity. ~ Tryon Edwards,
539:One of the biggest obstacles in the way of people coming to Christianity is that they think they know about it already. ~ Timothy Keller,
540:The goal of Buddhism is to create Buddhas, not Buddhists, as the goal of Christianity is to create Christs, not Christians. ~ Adyashanti,
541:There is no Christianity without the cross. If the cross is not central to our religion, ours is not the religion of Jesus. ~ John Stott,
542:Today's marginalization of Christianity is a direct result of our failure to understand our faith as a total worldview. ~ Charles Colson,
543:To some degree Satanism is purely a kind of disease of Christianity. You've got to really be Christian to believe in Satan. ~ Alan Moore,
544:Until we understand that our grief outweighs a thousand joys, we will never understand what Christianity is all about. ~ Herman Melville,
545:We’ve limited Christianity to salvation and sanctification,” he said. But “Christianity is the truth about everything. ~ Nancy R Pearcey,
546:But not to believe in miracles means not believing that God can do anything, which seems a fundamental tenet of Christianity. ~ Anonymous,
547:Christianity can be summed up in the two terms faith and love...receiving from above [faith] and giving out below [love]. ~ Martin Luther,
548:Christianity is merely a system for turning priestesses into handmaidens, queens into concubines, and goddesses into muses. ~ Tom Robbins,
549:Fundamentalist Christianity appeals to pre-civilized, prudish tribal people who are not ready for urban feudal pleasures. ~ Timothy Leary,
550:Hypocrisy has a devastating impact on the life of the church and on the representation of Christianity to a dying world. And ~ R C Sproul,
551:I believe in Christianity as I believe the sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else. ~ C S Lewis,
552:Jesus smashed two of the rich young ruler's assumptions: Christianity is something you can ADD and something you can DO. ~ Timothy Keller,
553:Like every alternative to Christianity, the mechanistic worldview was essentially a substitute religion, a mental idol. ~ Nancy R Pearcey,
554:The ne plus ultra of wickedness ... is embodied in what is commonly presented to mankind as the creed of Christianity. ~ John Stuart Mill,
555:Unless Christianity is wholly false, the perception of ourselves which we have in moments of shame must be the only true one. ~ C S Lewis,
556:We who defend Christianity find ourselves constantly opposed not by the irreligion of our headers but by their real religion. ~ C S Lewis,
557:Although there has always been a hermeneutic problem in Christianity, the hermeneutic question today seems to us a new one. ~ Paul Ricoeur,
558:Christianity alone teaches that our only way for reconciliation with God is by his grace that is received through faith. ~ Robert Jeffress,
559:Christianity got over the difficulty of combining furious opposites, by keeping them both, and keeping them both furious. ~ G K Chesterton,
560:Christianity has always had sort of an ability to absorb the developments in science. But, it's always done it very slowly. ~ George Coyne,
561:Christianity has not conquered nationalism; the opposite has been the case nationalism has made Christianity its footstool. ~ Arthur Keith,
562:I knew very little about the religion. [Christianity] It had a reputation for few gods and great violence. But good schools. ~ Yann Martel,
563:It could be argued that it began long before Christianity arrived in a boat and seeped into Kerala like tea from a teabag. ~ Arundhati Roy,
564:It seems to me that Islam and Christianity and Judaism all have the same god, and he's telling them all different things. ~ Billy Connolly,
565:It takes a great deal of Christianity to wipe out uncivilised Eastern instincts, such as falling in love at first sight. ~ Rudyard Kipling,
566:It takes a great deal of Christianity to wipe out uncivilized Eastern instincts, such as falling in love at first sight. ~ Rudyard Kipling,
567:The lifeblood of Christianity is not our persistence in moving toward God but God's persistence in moving toward us. ~ Tullian Tchividjian,
568:The writings of leading ID proponents reveal that the designer postulated by their argument is the God of Christianity. ~ John E Jones III,
569:To be frank, I suspect that today there is little respect for Christianity as source of moral teaching about goodness. ~ Timothy Radcliffe,
570:To make Christianity a private affair while banishing all privacy is to relegate it to the rainbow's end or the Greek Calends. ~ C S Lewis,
571:When doubts haunt me” Sabapathy Kulandran. Grace in Christianity and Hinduism. Lutterworth Press: Cambridge, England, 2004, ~ Stephen Cope,
572:Do you think you would ever have heard of Christianity if the Apostles had gone out and said, ‘I believe in consensus?’ ~ Margaret Thatcher,
573:Lucas continued, speaking pensively in a dreamy tone, "The painters, you know, the painters, what they did for Christianity! ~ Iris Murdoch,
574:Radical Christianity is not going on a missions trip or a big conference. Radical Christianity is staying steady for decades. ~ Mike Bickle,
575:There never has been a period of history, in which the Common Law did not recognize Christianity as lying at its foundation. ~ Joseph Story,
576:Those who talk of the bible as a monument of English prose are merely admiring it as a monument over the grave of Christianity. ~ T S Eliot,
577:Throughout the history of Christianity, there had been a core of belief that man was not doomed to be everlastingly corrupt. ~ Robert Payne,
578:What is more harmful than any vice? Practical sympathy and pity for all the failures and all the weak : Christianity. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche,
579:What is wrong with Christianity is that it refrains from doing all those things that Christ commanded should be done. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche,
580:Whoever shall introduce into public affairs the principles of primitive Christianity will change the face of the world. ~ Benjamin Franklin,
581:Christianity has kept itself going for centuries on hope alone, and has perpetrated all manner of naughtiness in the meantime. ~ Rachel Cusk,
582:For me to live in a world that is not inclusive of other people who are not Christian would be the opposite of Christianity. ~ Oprah Winfrey,
583:If Christianity is not scientific, and Science is not God, then there is no invariable law, and truth becomes an accident. ~ Mary Baker Eddy,
584:Many people confuse religion with God and walk away from them both. The point isn't Christianity, the point is being a Christian. ~ Rob Bell,
585:Subjectivity is truth and if subjectivity is in existing, then, if I may put it this way, Christianity is a perfect fit. ~ S ren Kierkegaard,
586:The Founders believed that pluralism survived only within the concept of religious liberty espoused by American Christianity. ~ David Barton,
587:The unique value of Christianity lies in those things which would never in a million years occur to men if left to themselves. ~ Hugh Nibley,
588:Were it not for the work of the Holy Spirit there would be no gospel, no faith, no church, no Christianity in the world at all. ~ J I Packer,
589:By the seventh century, Christianity probably was far stronger and more sophisticated in North Africa and Asia than in Europe. ~ Rodney Stark,
590:Christianity accepted as given a metaphysical system derived from several already existing and mutually incompatible systems. ~ Aldous Huxley,
591:Christianity has always been the hope of God through Jesus played out in the lives of real people living in real circumstances. ~ Doug Pagitt,
592:Christianity is about taking broken people, transforming them, and then using those transformed people to transform the world. ~ Francis Chan,
593:Christianity is not a theory or speculation, but a life; not a philosophy of life, but a life and a living process. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge,
594:Christianity isn't looking for a rainbow. If it were... we'd pass out opium at services. We're trying to serve God, not be God. ~ John Updike,
595:Early Christianity, like Roman-era philosophical traditions, laid emphasis on everyday behavior, about how to live your life. ~ Larry Hurtado,
596:First I believe it to be a grave mistake to present Christianity as something charming and popular with no offense inn it. ~ Dorothy L Sayers,
597:Jesus Christ was the biggest blight on the human race, he was. And all them socialists and communists - second rate Christianity. ~ Nick Cave,
598:Monastic life thus became a living protest against the secularization of Christianity, against the cheapening of grace. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer,
599:Our task is not one of producing persuasive propaganda; Christianity shows its greatness when it is hated by the world. ~ Ignatius of Antioch,
600:The future is already won, and the more hostile the culture, the easier it is to communicate the difference of Christianity. ~ Timothy Keller,
601:Urban evangelism requires immersion in the various cultures’ greatest hopes, fears, views, and objections to Christianity. ~ Timothy J Keller,
602:[Christianity] existed and flourishes, not only without the support of human laws, but in spite of every opposition from them. ~ James Madison,
603:Christianity means community through Jesus Christ and in Jesus Christ. No Christian community is more or less than this. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer,
604:Christianity was literally born in the Middle East, and we must not forget our Middle Eastern brothers and sisters in Christ. ~ Prince Charles,
605:Do you know what fascinated him about Christianity? The elaborate rituals of sacrifice and the symbolic re-enactments of violence. ~ Rawi Hage,
606:I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else. ~ C S Lewis,
607:In Latin America in general, it's very important that Christianity not be simply a thing of reason, but also of the heart. ~ Pope Benedict XVI,
608:It is fascinating to note how often in the history of Christianity the teaching concerning Jesus’s presence in the Eucharist ~ Robert E Barron,
609:I was trying to say something about Christianity, the idea that you have to be tortured to attain heaven. I didn't believe that. ~ John Lennon,
610:My objection to Christianity is that it is infinitely cruel, infinitely selfish, and, I might add, infinitely absurd. ~ Robert Green Ingersoll,
611:The hub of Christianity is not "do something for Jesus." The hub of Christianity is "Jesus has done everything for you". ~ Tullian Tchividjian,
612:There's no way to reconcile Islam with Christianity. This difference of opinion admits of compromise as much as a coin toss does. ~ Sam Harris,
613:This is Christianity: believing Christ to be everything you need for every moment you live. You live by faith in the Son of God. ~ David Platt,
614:Christianity is not a religion at all, but a revelation and a rescue and an ensuing relationship with God through Jesus Christ. ~ Michael Green,
615:Doctrines like Christianity or Islam or Marxism require unanimity of belief. One dissenter casts doubt on the creed of millions. ~ Edward Abbey,
616:I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else. ~ C S Lewis,
617:If Islam despises Christianity, it has a thousandfold right to do so: Islam at least assumes that it is dealing with men. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche,
618:Our culture is superior. Our culture is superior because our religion is Christianity and that is the truth that makes men free. ~ Pat Buchanan,
619:We are in the times of the beginning of a new epoch for Christianity. True apostolic Christianity is being restored to the earth. ~ Rick Joyner,
620:What Christendom needs at every moment is someone who expresses Christianity uncalculatingly or with absolute recklessness. ~ S ren Kierkegaard,
621:Christianity got over the difficulty of combining furious opposites, by keeping them both, and keeping them both furious. ~ Gilbert K Chesterton,
622:Christianity is a founding murder in reverse, which illuminates what has to remain hidden to produce ritual, sacrificial religions. ~ Ren Girard,
623:Christianity is not about good people getting better. It is good news for bad people coping with their failure to be good. ~ Tullian Tchividjian,
624:Christianity isn’t a religion, it’s a relationship. And as we all know, a relationship requires a high commitment to communication. ~ Kay Arthur,
625:For there is some danger of falling into a soft and effeminate Christianity, under the plea of a lofty and ethereal theology. ~ Charles Spurgeon,
626:The Founders never intended to separate Christianity from government, only to keep a single denomination from running the nation. ~ David Barton,
627:There is no such thing as low-cost Christianity. Following Jesus means swimming against the tide, renouncing evil and selfishness ~ Pope Francis,
628:Christianity is a religion in a rush. Look at the world created in seven says. Even on a symbolic lovel, that's creation in frenzy. ~ Yann Martel,
629:For me, Satan and a literal hell are fables born of Christianity’s desire to control humanity by increasing its fear of death. ~ Christopher Pike,
630:Like fundamentalist Judaism and medieval Christianity, Islam is totalist. That is to say, it makes a total claim on the individual. ~ Martin Amis,
631:Nothing is more familiar or characteristic among Christians than assertion. Take away assertions, and you take away Christianity. ~ Martin Luther,
632:surely nothing can be farther from the spirit of Christianity than allowing massacres, fights, and transactions of that sort.”32 ~ Philip Jenkins,
633:The Jesus whom God sent to claim and save us is what keeps me in Christianity, despite a hundred reasons to pack up and leave. ~ Nadia Bolz Weber,
634:the rise of Chrislam, in which some people saw no difference between Christianity and Islam, so had no problem mixing their worship. ~ Cliff Ball,
635:Totalitarians are fond of saying that Christianity is the enemy of the State—a euphemistic way of saying an enemy of themselves. ~ Fulton J Sheen,
636:Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important. ~ C S Lewis,
637:Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance, the only thing it cannot be is moderately important. ~ C S Lewis,
638:Christianity is at its purest a philosophy about a person, Jesus Christ, and at its dirtiest a philosophy about requirements and law. ~ Criss Jami,
639:Christianity is the only faith whose founder died for His followers in order to enable them to escape the consequences of their sins. ~ Tim LaHaye,
640:Compared with the thousands of years in which human life has been on this planet, Christianity is a recent development. ~ Kenneth Scott Latourette,
641:Gouverneur Morris had often told me that General Washington believed no more of that system (Christianity) than did he himself. ~ Thomas Jefferson,
642:My "Christianity" was once again just the American religion of work hard, do good, feel good, and maybe God will say, "We good. ~ Jefferson Bethke,
643:The crusades are perhaps the most egregious example of how distorted Christianity can become when we separate Christ from his ideas. ~ Brian Zahnd,
644:The Gateway to Christianity is not through an intricate labyrinth of dogma, but by a simple belief in the person of Christ. ~ Norman Vincent Peale,
645:The largest churches in the history of Christianity are in existence at this very moment. Most of them are not in the United States. ~ Rick Warren,
646:The Party, as such, stands for positive Christianity, but does not bind itself in the matter of creed to any particular confession. ~ Adolf Hitler,
647:The world out there is not waiting for a new definition of Christianity; it's waiting for a new demonstration of Christianity. ~ Leonard Ravenhill,
648:We cannot build Christian churches on a sub-Christian gospel. People who don’t want Christianity don’t want almost-Christianity. ~ Russell D Moore,
649:We've been taught a watered-down version of following Jesus for so long that people think it's Christianity, but it's not biblical. ~ Francis Chan,
650:Christianity is a religion in a rush. Look at the world created in seven days. Even on a symbolic level, that's creation in a frenzy. ~ Yann Martel,
651:Christianity teaches that this life is not the only life, and there is a final judgment in which all earthly accounts are settled. ~ Dinesh D Souza,
652:It should go without saying that these rival belief systems [Judaism, Islam, Christianity] are all equally uncontaminated by evidence. ~ Sam Harris,
653:The Spirit-filled life is not a special, deluxe edition of Christianity. It is part and parcel of the total plan of God for His people. ~ A W Tozer,
654:They mourned for his kind of Christianity, and he frankly scoffed at theirs; but both parties went on loving each other just the same. ~ Mark Twain,
655:We’ve got to stand up not only for free speech, but also for all that we’ve inherited from the Enlightenment and from Christianity. ~ Roger Scruton,
656:And this is one of the most crucial definitions for the whole of Christianity; that the opposite of sin is not virtue but faith. ~ Soren Kierkegaard,
657:And this is one of the most crucial definitions for the whole of Christianity; that the opposite of sin is not virtue but faith. ~ S ren Kierkegaard,
658:But herein lies the rub: Christianity has been on a long-term trend of decline in every Western cultural context that we can identify. ~ Alan Hirsch,
659:Christianity is not about religion. It's about faith, about being held, about being forgiven. It's about finding joy and finding home. ~ Bear Grylls,
660:For two thousand years Christianity has been telling us: life is death, death is life; it is high time to consult the dictionary. ~ Remy de Gourmont,
661:I'm not somebody who goes to church on a regular basis. The specific elements of Christianity are not something I'm a huge believer in. ~ Bill Gates,
662:I was about 21 when I read that [Mere Christianity], and my faith was really being shaken during those days. Its a great, classic book. ~ Max Lucado,
663:Liberal Christians are distinguished by how much moral and intellectual ground they can concede to the adversaries of Christianity. ~ Dinesh D Souza,
664:Luther's return from the cloister to the world was the worst blow the world had suffered since the days of early Christianity. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer,
665:Nothing is more witty and grotesque than ancient mythology and Christianity; that is because they are so mystical. ~ Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel,
666:One might say that Christianity’s original answer to the question “What is the purpose of life?” was: the purpose of life is Sunday. ~ Pekka Himanen,
667:One reason the broader world does not look to Christianity for guidance is that we Christians have not spoken with a credible voice. ~ Philip Yancey,
668:The essence of Christianity...is an ever-new encounter with... the God who speaks to us, who approaches us and who befriends us! ~ Pope Benedict XVI,
669:There is no religion like Christianity, it is not one religion among others, it is completely different, its mixing apples and oranges. ~ Max Lucado,
670:The sinner is at the heart of Christianity. No one is as competent as the sinner in matters of Christianity. No one, except a saint. ~ Charles Peguy,
671:The word "Christianity" is already a misunderstanding; in reality there has been only one Christian, and he died on the cross. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche,
672:Organized Christianity has probably done more to retard the ideals that were its founder's than any other agency in the world. ~ Richard Le Gallienne,
673:Pure Christianity and serious godliness fear not the scrutiny of a free thought, but despise the impotent malice of a prejudiced one. ~ Matthew Henry,
674:The best argument for Christianity is the Gregorian chant. Listening to that music, one can believe anything -- while the music lasts. ~ Edward Abbey,
675:The reason that Christianity is the best friend of government is because Christianity is the only religion that changes the heart. ~ Thomas Jefferson,
676:The word 'Christianity' is already a misunderstanding - in reality there has been only one Christian, and he died on the Cross. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche,
677:Bob Dylan's Christianity has been allusive, idiosyncratic, and never the sort to place him on anyone's side in any Kulturkampf. ~ Christopher Caldwell,
678:Christianity is a power religion. Christ has the power to re-create men from the inside out, as every man who has ever met Him knows. ~ Peter Marshall,
679:Christianity is the companion of liberty in all its conflicts, the cradle of its infancy, and the divine source of its claims. ~ Alexis de Tocqueville,
680:Christianity is the heresy of heresies, the underlying cause of the weakness, lethargy, sickness, and failure of the modern church. ~ Peter J Leithart,
681:Christianity loses its scriptural fidelity and internal power when it no longer affirms both sola fide and the necessity of obedience. ~ Kevin DeYoung,
682:He that has learned to feel his sins, and to trust Christ as a Saviour, has learned the two hardest and greatest lessons in Christianity. ~ J I Packer,
683:I can't get very far away from Christianity, I can't get very far away from the angels and the saints. I work them in always, in some way. ~ Anne Rice,
684:It is curious that Christianity, which is idealism, is sturdily defended by the brokers, and steadily attacked by the idealists. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson,
685:My mind rejects the whole present social order and Christianity — home, the recognised virtues, classes of life, and religious doctrines ~ James Joyce,
686:Nature wants us to enjoy life to the full and die without giving it a second thought; Christianity wants the opposite. ~ Charles Augustin Sainte Beuve,
687:Sabbath on Saturday in favor of The Lord's Day (Sunday). (Mag 9.1), rejected Judaizing (Mag 10.3), first use of term Christianity (Mag 10). ~ Josephus,
688:The problem with Christianity is not that it has been tried and found wanting, but that it has been found difficult and left untried. ~ G K Chesterton,
689:The visitor from outer space made a serious study of Christianity, to learn, if he could, why Christians found it so easy to be cruel. ~ Kurt Vonnegut,
690:We are all meant to be mothers of God, for God is always needing to be born. ~ Meister Eckhart, as quoted in Christianity (1995) by Joe Jenkins, p. 27,
691:As long as Christianity is treated as “moral poetry” and “tales of consolation,” it poses no threat to the sovereignty of secularism. ~ Nancy R Pearcey,
692:Christianity in its true sense puts an end to the State. It was so understood from its very beginning, and for that Christ was crucified. ~ Leo Tolstoy,
693:Do you think Christianity could have lasted for nearly two thousand years on its promises unless the Lord could deliver on them? ~ Norman Vincent Peale,
694:For centuries many of the world's distinguished philosophers have assaulted Christianity as being irrational, superstitious and absurd. ~ Josh McDowell,
695:I am personally convinced of the great power and deep significance of Christianity, and I won't allow any other religion to be promoted. ~ Adolf Hitler,
696:I believe in Christianity because the Scriptures said: "The things that have been done in the dark will be known on the house tops." ~ Fannie Lou Hamer,
697:if you remove the cross from Christianity, all that remains is some wise moral teaching not terribly different from any other religion. ~ Gary L Thomas,
698:In the name of social order, liberal thought, and sometimes even Christianity, the novelist is asked to be the handmaid of his age. ~ Flannery O Connor,
699:Preparation for becoming attentive to Christianity does not consist in reading many books ... but in fuller immersion in existence. ~ Soren Kierkegaard,
700:The answer, of course, in the mouth of a Christian teacher is that in Christianity alone is there both present joy and future hope. ~ Mary Augusta Ward,
701:The establishment of Christianity . . . arrested the normal development of the physical sciences for over fifteen hundred years. ~ Andrew Dickson White,
702:The test of a man's conversion is whether he has enough Christianity to get it to other people. If he hasn't, there is something wrong. ~ Sam Shoemaker,
703:You cannot train yourself. I feel the same way about Christianity and about what the church is: The church is the gym of the soul. ~ Sylvester Stallone,
704:I can't help being Christian because I was brought up in Britain, and the morality of Christianity is part of the fabric of this country. ~ Helen Mirren,
705:It is a peculiar habit of Christianity to conceive the most compassionate and forgiving divinities and use them to sponsor atrocity. ~ Barbara W Tuchman,
706:Just as Christianity must destroy reason before it can introduce faith, so it must destroy happiness before it can introduce salvation. ~ George H Smith,
707:Nothing is more generally known than the duties which belong to christianity; and yet, how amazing is it, nothing is less practised? ~ George Whitefield,
708:Science has done more for the development of western civilization in one hundred years than Christianity did in eighteen hundred years. ~ John Burroughs,
709:The Christian Coalition is still about Christianity, even if it's an idea of Christianity that many Christians might not go along with. ~ Salman Rushdie,
710:The juice goes out of Christianity when it becomes too based on faith rather than on living like Jesus or seeing the world as Jesus saw it. ~ Steve Jobs,
711:These two words, grace and peace, include all that belong to Christianity. Grace releases sin, and peace makes the conscience quiet. The ~ Martin Luther,
712:We will no longer be oppressed by the fascism called Christianity. We will no longer be oppressed by the mentality of the police state. ~ Marilyn Manson,
713:When I read the Upanishads, which are part of Vedanta, I found a profundity of worldview that made my Christianity seem like third grade. ~ Huston Smith,
714:any list of major human developments include the establishment of other major faiths like Hinduism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. ~ Erik Brynjolfsson,
715:Christianity offers reasons for not fearing death or the universe, and in so doing it fails to teach adequately the virtue of courage. ~ Bertrand Russell,
716:The primary source of the appeal of Christianity was Jesus - His incarnation, His life, His crucifixion, and His resurrection. ~ Kenneth Scott Latourette,
717:The visitor from outer space made a serious study of Christianity, to learn, if he could, why Christians found it so easy to be cruel. He ~ Kurt Vonnegut,
718:Christianity and Islam were willing to accept rewards in heaven for their sacrifice,” said Valentine. “Then they were all selfish pigs, ~ Orson Scott Card,
719:Christianity met the mythological search for romance by being a story and the philosophical search for truth by being a true story. ~ Gilbert K Chesterton,
720:I decline Christianity because it is Jewish, because it is international, and because, in cowardly fashion, it preaches Peace on Earth. ~ Erich Ludendorff,
721:Our best answers in defense of Christianity have always been useless clanging symbols unless our lives have inspired the world to ask. ~ Rachel Held Evans,
722:The great truths of Christianity do not belong to the professional theologians alone, but to every person who calls upon the name of Christ. ~ Paul Washer,
723:A Christianity which will not help those who are struggling from the bottom to the top of society, needs another Christ to die for it. ~ Henry Ward Beecher,
724:And in history I found that Christianity, so far from belonging to the Dark Ages, was the one path across the Dark Ages that was not dark. ~ G K Chesterton,
725:Christianity is the best way to cure gayness — just get on your knees, take a swig of wine, and accept the body of a man into your mouth. ~ Stephen Colbert,
726:- Murder is a sin. It's a sin in Judaism, it's a sin in Christianity, it's a sin in Islam and every other…
- I'll decide what's a sin. ~ Robert Ferrigno,
727:Or, if you want the positive but somewhat callous view, you might wish to describe Christianity as the gateway drug to supply-side capitalism ~ Thomas King,
728:People may say what they like about the decay of Christianity the religious system that produced green Chartreuse can never really die. ~ Hector Hugh Munro,
729:Some modern scholars contend that in terms of what "religion" was in that [Roman-era setting], you can't even call Christianity a religion. ~ Larry Hurtado,
730:The Christianity that had come in my life as a child was all this idea that you're never going to see God. It's like hypocrisy, in a way. ~ George Harrison,
731:There is something that pretends to be christianity which is mostly mood. The measure of its faith is merely the measure of its feeling. ~ Elisabeth Elliot,
732:To believe Christianity stands in opposition to slavery is at best to think anachronistically and at worst to not understand Christianity. ~ Derrick Jensen,
733:Vainglory, however, no matter how much medieval Christianity insisted it was a sin, is a motor of mankind, no more eradicable than sex. ~ Barbara W Tuchman,
734:What we want is not more little books about Christianity, but more little books by Christians on other subjects—with their Christianity latent. ~ C S Lewis,
735:When contrasted with the much longer time that life has been present, the course of Christianity thus far is but a brief moment. ~ Kenneth Scott Latourette,
736:all theisms—Judaism, Christianity and Islam—the difference between the self and God is radical. Pride is the fundamental sin of human beings. ~ James W Sire,
737:And that he, who can dig the Grand Canyon with his pinkie, thinks you’re worth his death on Roman timber. Christ is the reward of Christianity. ~ Max Lucado,
738:Jesus had led me to research on primitive Christianity. The problem of the Last Supper belongs, of course, to both of these subjects. It ~ Albert Schweitzer,
739:The Bible is not my book nor Christianity my profession. I could never give assent to the long, complicated statements of Christian dogma. ~ Abraham Lincoln,
740:The reason why the ancient world was so pure, light and serene was that it knew nothing of the two great scourges : the pox and Christianity. ~ Adolf Hitler,
741:We're in danger of losing an even more foundational belief of Christianity: that salvation is only possible through faith in Jesus Christ. ~ Robert Jeffress,
742:What we want is not more little books about Christianity, but more little books by Christians on other subjects--with their Christianity latent. ~ C S Lewis,
743:“Christianity has never relinquished the hope of finally reducing this world of selfish discontinuity to the realm of continuity afire with love.” ~ Bataille,
744:Christianity . . . sees the necessity for man to have spiritual values and it shows him how to get at those through physical sacraments. ~ Malcolm Muggeridge,
745:Excarnation The process by which religion (and Christianity in particular) is dis-embodied and de-ritualized, turned into a “belief system. ~ James K A Smith,
746:If, in other religions, we pray to God, only in Christianity does God himself pray, that is to say, address an external unfathomable authority. ~ Slavoj i ek,
747:No two persons think alike, even if they outwardly profess the same faith, so we have as many religions in Christianity as we have believers. ~ Marcus Garvey,
748:The conflict is not between Christianity and Islam or between East and West - instead, it is between stupid people and other stupid people. ~ Terry Pratchett,
749:The extreme greatness of Christianity lies in the fact that it does not seek a supernatural remedy for suffering but a supernatural use for it. ~ Simone Weil,
750:The juice goes out of Christianity when it becomes too based on faith rather than on living like Jesus or seeing the world as Jesus saw it, ~ Walter Isaacson,
751:They haven't eliminated religion from the public school. They have eliminated Christianity and have replaced it with an anti-God religion—humanism. ~ Ken Ham,
752:True Christianity today is not different from primitive Christianity ... She remains what she has been since her foundation: always the same. ~ Pope Pius XII,
753:Whenever folks say radical Christianity is "a phase" of youth, I tell them they need to meet our 80-year-old nun or my friend Tony Campolo. ~ Shane Claiborne,
754:When you get a new worldview you get a new world. It's like the shift from medieval Christianity to the Renaissance and enlightenment. ~ Barbara Marx Hubbard,
755:But Christianity is not just for the strong; it’s for everyone, especially for people who admit that, where it really counts, they’re weak. ~ Timothy J Keller,
756:Christianity doesn't offer a smooth flight; it provides a safe landing. The promise of Jesus is not one of happiness, He promises righteousness. ~ Ray Comfort,
757:Christianity makes of life a moral drama in which we play a starring role and in which the most ordinary events take on a grand significance. ~ Dinesh D Souza,
758:Failure to recognize the value of mere being with God, as the beloved, without doing anything, is to gouge the heart out of Christianity.”10 ~ Brennan Manning,
759:I am a Christian, not because someone explained the nuts and bolts of Christianity, but because there were people willing to be nuts and bolts. ~ Rich Mullins,
760:I look upon Phrenology as the guide to philosophy and the handmaid of Christianity. Whoever disseminates true Phrenology is a public benefactor. ~ Horace Mann,
761:There is not a greater paradox in nature,--than that so good a religion [as Christianity] should be no better recommended by its professors. ~ Laurence Sterne,
762:The secularization of Western culture was accompanied by the elevation of art to the position of a substitute religion to replace Christianity. ~ Leland Ryken,
763:After I set out to refute Christianity intellectually and couldn't, I came to the conclusion the Bible was true and Jesus Christ was God's Son. ~ Josh McDowell,
764:Although Christianity had almost cleanly swept through Igbo land, crumbs and pieces of the African traditional religion had eluded the broom. ~ Chigozie Obioma,
765:Atheistic secular humanists should be removed from office and Christians should be elected...Government and true Christianity are inseparable. ~ Robert Simonds,
766:Christianity isn't meant to simply be believed; it's meant to be lived, shared, eaten, spoken, and enacted in the presence of other people. ~ Rachel Held Evans,
767:Paganism declared that virtue was in a balance; Christianity declared it was in a conflict: the collision of two passions apparently opposite. ~ G K Chesterton,
768:The question was summed up for him thus: "If I do not accept the answers Christianity gives to the problems of my life, what answers do I accept? ~ Leo Tolstoy,
769:There is not one redeeming feature in our superstition of Christianity. It has made one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites. ~ Thomas Jefferson,
770:The social principles of Christianity preach cowardice, self-contempt, abasement, submission, humility, in a word all the qualities of the canaille ~ Karl Marx,
771:Christianity had ceased to be the creed of the poor. He spoke with pompous exaggeration. Whether man were the best or the worst of created beings. ~ Georg Ebers,
772:Christianity has in fact long vanished, not only from the reason but also from the life of mankind, and it is nothing more than a fixed idea. ~ Ludwig Feuerbach,
773:Christianity is a missionary religion, converting, advancing, aggressive, encompassing the world; a non-missionary church is in the bands of death. ~ Max Muller,
774:Christianity is not about not swearing. It’s not about not having impure thoughts. Really, it’s not about not at all. Christianity is about Jesus. ~ Judah Smith,
775:Christianity is not a religion at all but a way of life, a falling in love with God, and through him a falling in love with our fellows. ~ John Bertram Phillips,
776:Clearly a big challenge for Christianity is how to remain in contact with the millions of people who look for God but do not come to Church. ~ Timothy Radcliffe,
777:If anyone should have a reason to not be afraid, to move beyond the expectations of culture, that is kind of the whole message of Christianity. ~ Michael Gungor,
778:If you believed in Christianity or Islam it was called 'faith', but if you believed in astrology or friday the thirteenth it was Superstition! ~ Jostein Gaarder,
779:Lecrae’s message is that we do not need to be afraid of cultural differences because Christianity has the resources to speak to every culture. ~ Nancy R Pearcey,
780:No where else in Christianity does the terrible or heroic name of Armageddon play such role as in America. Not even in the Revelation of John. ~ Jurgen Moltmann,
781:One of the things people don't know about exorcism, is that you can't really use exorcism on things that are older than Christianity. ~ Dolores Ashcroft Nowicki,
782:The Bible is not my book and Christianity is not my religion. I could never give assent to the long complicated statements of Christian dogma. ~ Abraham Lincoln,
783:The overwhelming emphasis of contemporary Christianity: "Just do it." The overwhelming emphasis of Biblical Christianity: "It is finished" ~ Tullian Tchividjian,
784:As late as 1951, out of the 16 million people in the northern region, only one had a full university degree-and he was a convert to Christianity. ~ Thomas Sowell,
785:Christianity preaches the infinite worth of that which is seemingly worthless and the infinite worthlessness of that which is seemingly so valued. ~ Eric Metaxas,
786:He talks about the Scylla of Atheism and the Charybdis of Christianity - a state of mind which, by the way, is not conducive to bold navigation. ~ Norman Douglas,
787:I am convinced that what drives most people away from Christianity is not the cost of discipleship but rather the cost of false fundamentals. ~ Rachel Held Evans,
788:Our accepted chronology of the ancient church is wrong: ancient Semitic Christianity dies out not in the fourth century, but in the fourteenth.8 ~ Philip Jenkins,
789:Sure, Christianity is a world religion and I don't deny that. But having said that, this is, when it is all said and done, a relationship with God. ~ Greg Laurie,
790:That the world is in a bad shape is undeniable, but there is not the faintest reason in history to suppose that Christianity offers a way out. ~ Bertrand Russell,
791:The essence of Christianity, as I see it, is love. The essence of Humanism (and I'm also a Humanist) is love. At that level, we're not far apart. ~ Mark Thomas,
792:Christianity finds all its doctrines stated in the Bible, and Christianity denies no part, nor attempts to add anything to the Word of God. ~ William F Buckley Jr,
793:Christianity is the most ridiculous, the most absurd, and bloody religion that has ever infected the world.

[In a letter to Frederick the Great] ~ Voltaire,
794:Christianity, sharing the Christian faith, in common, gives you instant friendship, and that is the remarkable thing, because it transcends culture. ~ John Lennox,
795:I believe that men are generally still a little afraid of the dark though the witches are all hung, and Christianity and candles have been introduced. ~ Anais Nin,
796:I believe that men are generally still a little afraid of the dark though the witches are all hung, and Christianity and candles have been introduced. ~ Ana s Nin,
797:If Jesus does come down out of the clouds like a superhero, Christianity will stand revealed as a science . That will be the science of Christianity. ~ Sam Harris,
798:I think it's very healthy to use journalistic and legal techniques to investigate the evidence for and against Christianity and other faith systems. ~ Lee Strobel,
799:Only Christianity and its teachings can explain the purpose and meaning of this world- and also gives the basis for right and wrong, good and evil, etc. ~ Ken Ham,
800:Paganism declared that virtue was in a balance; Christianity declared it was in a conflict: the collision of two passions apparently opposite. Of ~ G K Chesterton,
801:That's why I believe in Christianity because the Scriptures said: "The things that have been done in the dark will be known on the house tops." ~ Fannie Lou Hamer,
802:The supernatural greatness of Christianity lies in the fact that it does not seek a supernatural remedy for suffering but a supernatural use for it. ~ Simone Weil,
803:Christianity is not an ethical code. It is a love affair, a Spirit-filled way of living aimed at making us professional lovers of God and people. ~ Brennan Manning,
804:Christianity is the strangest religion ever set up, for it committed a murder upon Jesus in order to redeem mankind from the sin of eating an apple. ~ Thomas Paine,
805:Having embraced Islam, I felt as if I were born again. I found in Islam the answers to those queries which I had failed to find in Christianity. ~ Jermaine Jackson,
806:If, therefore, a man will so live as to show that he feels and believes the most fundamental doctrines of Christianity, he must live above the world. ~ William Law,
807:The false gospel of self-justification is a great enemy of the Christian faith because so many have been misled to believe that it is Christianity. ~ Gloria Furman,
808:There are two atheisms of which one is a purification of the notion of God. ~ Simone Weil, as quoted in The New Christianity (1967) edited by William Robert Miller,
809:Authentic Christianity should lead to maturity, personality, and reality. It should fashion whole men and women living lives of love and communion ~ Brennan Manning,
810:But one of the strange marks of the strength of Christianity is that, since it came, no pagan in our civilisation has been able to be really human. ~ G K Chesterton,
811:I believe that Christianity happens when men and women experience the reckless, raging confidence that comes from knowing the God of Jesus Christ. ~ Brennan Manning,
812:I regard Christianity neither as an inclusive divine revelation nor as an historical phenomenon, but as a teaching which-gives us the meaning of life. ~ Leo Tolstoy,
813:I think when you look at religion, you look at where Christianity came from. You know, my mom delved deeper into that. And she felt a deep connection. ~ Trevor Noah,
814:Some of the simplest of truths are also some of the most difficult of truths, but such is Christianity: 'If it's not about Christ, it's not about life. ~ Criss Jami,
815:The death of Christianity will not be the result of everyone rejecting the Gospel, but the result of everyone accepting a watered-down version of it. ~ Chip Brogden,
816:What Christianity promises, I do not understand. What its god could possibly want, I have never been able to imagine, not even when I was a Christian. ~ Tom Bissell,
817:When you fuse Christianity with power, it isn't long before Christians start imposing the cross on others rather than taking it up for themselves. ~ Andrew Sullivan,
818:While I love Mohammed and Jesus Christ'I reject all men's religions, not just Islam, but Christianity, Judaism and whatever else the men use for a whip. ~ Kola Boof,
819:Both Islam and Christianity are monotheistic, believing there is “no God but one,” but they differ fundamentally on who that God is: Allah or Jesus. ~ Nabeel Qureshi,
820:Christianity is in its very essence a resurrection religion. The concept of resurrection lies at its heart. If you remove it, Christianity is destroyed. ~ John Stott,
821:many believers naively assume that real Christianity is alive and well and respected by the majority of our people. Brace yourself. It’s an illusion. ~ Mark Driscoll,
822:Paul may be an excellent source for those interested in the early formation of Christianity, but he is a poor guide for uncovering the historical Jesus. ~ Reza Aslan,
823:religion to other religions. Then he came to his main point: the essence of Christianity is not about religion at all, but about the person of Christ. ~ Eric Metaxas,
824:Science is only truly consistent with an atheistic worldview with regards to the claimed miracles of the gods of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. ~ Lawrence M Krauss,
825:There is much in Christianity which can be subjected to exact analysis. But the ultimate things are shrouded in the silent mysteries of God. ~ Hans Urs von Balthasar,
826:Toward the end of his life, [Arnold] Toynby said the Christianity he saw developing was brittle, imperialistic and incapable of reforming itself. ~ John Shelby Spong,
827:And yet when you take Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, whatever, their combined killings in the name of religion -- well, that would be zero. ~ Eric Bolling,
828:But Christianity is not belief in belief. It is belief in a propositional truth: that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and savior of sinners. ~ R Albert Mohler Jr,
829:I always have had, and always shall have, a profound regard for Christianity, the religion of my fathers, and for its rights, its usages and observances. ~ Henry Clay,
830:One of the greatest injustices we do to our young people is to ask them to be conservative. Christianity is not conservative, but revolutionary. ~ Francis A Schaeffer,
831:Over time, I started becoming more and more aware of the vastness and complexity of the universe, which led me away from any sort of conventional Christianity. ~ Moby,
832:The cross is the beauty of Christianity because it is at the cross that we encounter cosuffering love and costly forgiveness in its most beautiful form. ~ Brian Zahnd,
833:The greatest test of Christianity is the wear and tear of daily life; it is like the shining of silver: the more it is rubbed the brighter it grows. ~ Oswald Chambers,
834:While the other world religions emphasized mystery and intuition, Christianity alone embraced reason and logic as the primary guide to religious truth. ~ Rodney Stark,
835:Believing in the divinity of Jesus is the heart of Christian orthodoxy. But believing in the viability of Jesus’s ideas makes Christianity truly radical. ~ Brian Zahnd,
836:Christianity is the present: it is both gift and task, receiving the gift of God’s inner closeness and—as a consequence—bearing witness to Jesus Christ. ~ Benedict XVI,
837:How is it then that we’ve come to imagine that Christianity consists primarily in what we do for God? How has this come to be the good news of Jesus? ~ Brennan Manning,
838:Nothing breaks down barriers and preconceived ideas about 'Christians and Christianity' more than when we treat people the way Jesus treated His enemies. ~ Chip Ingram,
839:Of course, there are always going to be some unsettled areas, but for me the overall evidence for Christianity chases away any real doubt that it's true. ~ Lee Strobel,
840:Superficial similarities exist between Christianity and some ancient pagan religions. But careful study reveals that there are far more dissimilarities. ~ Carl E Olson,
841:But in Christianity, by contrast, the freedom of the children of God was also freedom from all important worldly interests, from all art and science, etc. ~ Bruno Bauer,
842:Christianity preaches the infinite worth of that which is seemingly worthless and the infinite worthlessness of that which is seemingly so valued. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer,
843:Christianity will only make a contribution to the future of Europe if it can prove that people like Sam Harris are wrong and that we can make peace. ~ Timothy Radcliffe,
844:Externalities are to do with our doing; internalities have to do with our being; and Christianity is about who I am in Christ, not what I do for Him. ~ Timothy J Keller,
845:In a postmodern world where all religious activity is seen as what we do for God, we need to proclaim Christianity is about what God has done for us. ~ Jefferson Bethke,
846:Many things about American life, that even secular people consider good, have flowed from the presence of a robust, resilient institutional Christianity. ~ Ross Douthat,
847:People are often unhappy in the Christian life because they have thought of Christianity, and the whole message of the gospel, in inadequate terms. ~ Martyn Lloyd Jones,
848:Probably the most profound thing in the Bible is 'Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you.' This is what, to me, is the essence of Christianity. ~ Dave Brubeck,
849:The whole history of Christianity proves that she has little indeed to fear from persecution as a foe, but much to fear from persecution as an ally. ~ Thomas B Macaulay,
850:we have to be known for who and what we are for more than who or what we are against. If we fail, Christianity will have a funeral rather than a future. ~ Mark Driscoll,
851:Christianity is a confession, not an explanation. We will attempt to explain what we legitimately can, but we will always confess more than we can explain. ~ Brian Zahnd,
852:Christianity is at its best when it is peculiar, marginalized, suffering, and it is at its worst when it is popular, credible, triumphal, and powerful. ~ Shane Claiborne,
853:I am Tamil, Sinhalese, Muslim and Burgher. I am a Buddhist, a Hindu, a follower of Islam and Christianity. I am today, and always, proudly Sri Lankan. ~ Kumar Sangakkara,
854:I'd like to learn to meditate with more enthusiasm. I can sit down and get quiet for 20 minutes, but it just has not been a part of my Christianity at all. ~ Anne Lamott,
855:I’ve never fully understood how Christianity became quite so tame and respectable, given its origins among drunkards, prostitutes, and tax collectors. ~ Nadia Bolz Weber,
856:Reality, in fact, is always something you couldn't have guessed. That's one of the reasons I believe Christianity. It's a religion you couldn't have guessed. ~ C S Lewis,
857:the church sacrifices the beauty of Christianity when it chooses the political form over the cruciform. Reaching for the ring of power distorts our beauty. ~ Brian Zahnd,
858:The Crusades, like the conquests that followed, were as much about overcoming Europe’s monetary shortage as about converting heathens to Christianity.14 ~ Niall Ferguson,
859:The difference between the three Abrahamic religions: Christianity - mumbling to the ceiling, Judaism - mumbling to the wall, Islam - mumbling to the floor. ~ Bill Maher,
860:Thus in Christianity the alienation had become total, and it was this total alienation that was the biggest obstacle to the progress of self-consciousness. ~ Bruno Bauer,
861:What happened once I started distributing communion was the truly disturbing, dreadful realization about Christianity: You can't be a Christian by yourself. ~ Sara Miles,
862:I believe what I practice has to do with something deeper than religion, that it embodies all religions, including Judaism. And Christianity. And Islam. ~ Madonna Ciccone,
863:... in Northern Ireland, if you don't have basic Christianity, rather than merely religion, all you get out of the experience of living is bitterness. ~ Bernadette Devlin,
864:Our proportionate admission of the claims of good or of evil determines the harmony of our existence, - our health, our longevity, and our Christianity. ~ Mary Baker Eddy,
865:Rupert Sheldrake puts it, “The evangelists of science and technology have succeeded beyond the wildest dreams of the missionaries of Christianity. ~ Stephen Harrod Buhner,
866:The dogma of Christianity gets worn away before the advances of science. Religion will have to make more and more concessions. Gradually the myths crumble. ~ Adolf Hitler,
867:There's not much practical Christianity in the man who lives on better terms with angels and seraphs than with his children, servants and neighbours. ~ Henry Ward Beecher,
868:According to some liberation theologians atheism is not the cause of the conflict between Christianity and Marxism, but is rather the link between them. ~ Ernesto Cardenal,
869:Christianity does not involve the belief that all things were made for man. it does involve the belief that god loves man and for his sake became man and died. ~ C S Lewis,
870:Christianity is the story of how the rightful King has landed, you might say in disguise, and is calling us all to take part in His great campaign of sabotage. ~ C S Lewis,
871:Die Theologie ist die Anthropologie. - Theology is Anthropology. ~ Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity ["Wesen des Christenthums"], Preface to the 2nd Ed. (1843),
872:her object is doing good; she a Christian, yet she's always angry; and she always has enemies, and always enemies in the name of Christianity and doing good. ~ Leo Tolstoy,
873:If Christian scientists had more science and doctors more Christianity, it wouldn't make any difference which you called in - if you had a good nurse. ~ Finley Peter Dunne,
874:If religion is onlya garment of Christianityand even this garment has looked very different at different timesthen what is religionless Christianity? ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer,
875:If this religion is true, then there is only one Savior, only one narrow path to life. Christianity cannot live in peace with any other religion. ~ Robert Green Ingersoll,
876:Islam and Islamic values now have a level of immunity from comment and criticism in the Western world that Christianity has lost and Judaism has never had. ~ Bernard Lewis,
877:Islam undoubtedly deserves respect. It has some things in common with Christianity, such as Abraham as a common progenitor, and the belief in only one God. ~ Walter Kasper,
878:I think I could make the case for any kind of organized religion, but I'm not an expert in those, so let me narrow my focus to talk about Christianity. ~ John Shelby Spong,
879:Knowledge about Him will not do. Work for Him will not do. We must have personal, vital fellowship with Him; otherwise, Christianity becomes a joyless burden. ~ John Piper,
880:Let the professors of Christianity recommend their religion by deeds of benevolence - by Christian meekness - by lives of temperance and holiness. ~ Richard Mentor Johnson,
881:The heaviest blow that ever struck humanity was the coming of Christianity. Bolshevism is Christianity's illegitimate child. Both are inventions of the Jew. ~ Adolf Hitler,
882:The KKK interspersed Christianity with racism to create a nationalistic form of religion that excluded all but American-born, Protestant white men and women. ~ Jemar Tisby,
883:The man who attempts Christianity without the church shoots himself in the foot, shoots his children in the leg, and shoots his grandchildren in the heart. ~ Kevin DeYoung,
884:Those who would most scornfully repudiate Christianity as a mere "opiate of the people" have a contempt for the rich, that is, for all mankind except the poor. ~ C S Lewis,
885:You might say that when two Christians are following Christ together there is not twice as much Christianity as when they are apart, but sixteen times as much. ~ C S Lewis,
886:Christianity is the only true and perfect religion; and... in proportion as mankind adopt its principles and obey its precepts, they will be wise and happy. ~ Benjamin Rush,
887:For example, if you doubt Christianity because “There can’t be just one true religion,” you must recognize that this statement is itself an act of faith. ~ Timothy J Keller,
888:God did not, as the Bible says, make man in His image; on the contrary man, as I have shown in The Essence of Christianity, made God in his image. ~ Ludwig Feuerbach,
889:There is no reason whatsoever to think that Buddhism can compete successfully with the relentless evangelizing of Christianity and Islam. Nor should it try to. ~ Sam Harris,
890:We are settling for a Christianity that revolves around catering to ourselves when the central message of Christianity is actually about abandoning ourselves. ~ David Platt,
891:God is raising up a new standard, a new banner if you will, that's going to radically change the expression, the understanding of Christianity in our generation. ~ Paul Cain,
892:He who first invented the notion of defending Christianity is de facto Judas No. 2; he also betrays with a kiss, only his treachery is that of stupidity. ~ S ren Kierkegaard,
893:How do you cause people to believe in an imagined order such as Christianity, democracy or capitalism? First, you never admit that the order is imagined. ~ Yuval Noah Harari,
894:I believe that Christianity trains black people, especially black women, to think like slaves, and I believe that Islam is mainly fueled by its hatred for women. ~ Kola Boof,
895:I believe that men are generally still a little afraid of the dark, though the witches are all hung, and Christianity and candles have been introduced. ~ Henry David Thoreau,
896:If the God of Christianity exists, the evidence for His existence is abundant and plain so that it is both unscientific and sinful not to believe in Him. ~ Cornelius Van Til,
897:I loathe the mess of mean superstitions and misunderstood prophecies which is still rammed down the throats of children under the name of Christianity. ~ George Bernard Shaw,
898:I talk about a Christianity that is enlightened enough to separate spirituality from the rest of life. Not just church and state, but knowledge and church. ~ Ayaan Hirsi Ali,
899:The form of Christianity that developed in Europe and later spread to America and the rest of the world was the last great creation of the ancient pagan world. ~ Will Durant,
900:Transvaluation of values,” a term derived from Nietzsche (who derided Christianity’s embrace of the weak), is the heart of Niebuhr’s perspective on the cross. ~ James H Cone,
901:While we may lament the loss we experience in Western Christianity, we should acknowledge that it may be God’s will that oppressive Western systems decline. ~ Soong Chan Rah,
902:In addition to this, Acts explains how Christianity, although it is new, is in reality the one true religion, rooted in God’s promises from the beginning of time. ~ Anonymous,
903:In America, about the only thing censored today is Christianity, the same Christianity that was the driving force behind the building of this great nation. ~ Rick Scarborough,
904:Oysters are more beautiful than any religion... There's nothing in Christianity or Buddhism that quite matches the sympathetic unselfishness of an oyster. ~ Hector Hugh Munro,
905:Reformed theology is committed to Christianity as a revealed faith, a faith that rests not on human insight but on information that comes to us from God himself. ~ R C Sproul,
906:spreading the gospel is the natural—or supernatural—overflow, not of a religion they adhere to called Christianity, but of a relationship they have with Christ. ~ David Platt,
907:The Christian missionary may preach the gospel to the poor naked heathen, but the spiritual heathen who populate Europe have as yet heard nothing of Christianity. ~ Carl Jung,
908:You could fill whole libraries with the lies that have been told about Christians and Christianity. The world lies about this subject more than anything else. ~ Matthew Kelly,
909:Christianity even when watered down is hot enough to boil all modern society to rags. The mere minimum of the Church would be a deadly ultimatum to the world. ~ G K Chesterton,
910:Christianity has been watered down until the solution is so weak that if it were poison it would not hurt anyone, and if it were medicine it would not cure anyone. ~ A W Tozer,
911:Christianity says, “Love thy neighbour as thyself.” And I say . “Recognise thyself in thy neighbour and that all men are in reality one and the same substance.” ~ Schopenhauer,
912:Christianity was permitted to tell Sunday school stories as object lessons to inspire morality, but it was not allowed to claim that those stories were true. ~ Nancy R Pearcey,
913:Hallelujah! Amen! Christianity is so inherent in western story-telling, you can't really get around it. But it wasn't something that drew me to it more or less. ~ Keanu Reeves,
914:I definitely have a kind of Stockholm Syndrome for superhero movies because it's very clear that's the era we're in. It's like Christianity in the Middle Ages. ~ Wesley Morris,
915:I have recently been examining all the known superstitions of the world and do not find in our particular superstition [Christianity] one redeeming feature. ~ Thomas Jefferson,
916:(In fact, hypocrisy in the church probably repels people more than any other factor. Someone once said the biggest problem with Christianity is Christians!) ~ Norman L Geisler,
917:I realized there was very little in Hollywood I would ever feel comfortable doing. If I kept one foot there and one foot in my Christianity, I would never grow. ~ Willie Aames,
918:Many of us Christians have become extremely skillful in arranging our lives so as to admit the truth of Christianity without being embarrassed by its implications. ~ A W Tozer,
919:The trouble with Christianity is, not that its failed, but that it's never been tried . . . not that it can't remake the world, but that it's difficult. ~ Gilbert K Chesterton,
920:Christianity as the ongoing expression of the Jesus story lived out in the lives of individuals and in the heart of society is a beauty that can redeem the world. ~ Brian Zahnd,
921:Christianity, with its doctrine of humility, of forgiveness, of love, is incompatible with the state, with its haughtiness, its violence, its punishment, its wars ~ Leo Tolstoy,
922:If Christianity is pessimistic as to man, it is optimistic as to human destiny. Well, I can say that, pessimistic as to human destiny, I am optimistic as to man. ~ Albert Camus,
923:Marxism was a simple substitute for Christianity. Replace God with Marx, Satan with the bourgeoisie, Heaven with a classless society, the Church with the Party, ~ Arundhati Roy,
924:Most Christians are sheltered within their own groups and are too busy arguing with other Christians to notice the sad state of Christianity in a broader sense. ~ Mark Driscoll,
925:the great political unknown of the coming decades, the most powerful international wild card, will be that mysterious non-Western ideology called Christianity. ~ Philip Jenkins,
926:We must get back to a very strong Christianity... Christianity shaped America and England, and we need to get back to those moral foundations that made us great. ~ George Carey,
927:If you can get out of the mind you will get out of Christianity, Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, and all kinds of rubbish will be just finished. You can come to a full stop. ~ Osho,
928:I think these people [Al-Qaida, terrorists] need to be forcibly converted to Christianity ... It's the only thing that can probably turn them into human beings. ~ Michael Savage,
929:Most people today in our churches are lost, and they demonstrate that they are lost because their entire Christianity is nothing more than, 'They made a decision.' ~ Paul Washer,
930:Then there is the worst part of Christianity, which is awful: power, corruption, manipulation... But then again, these feature are ever present in any organization. ~ Bruce Kent,
931:The primary paradox of Christianity is that the ordinary condition of man is not his sane or sensible condition; that the normal itself is an abnormality. ~ Gilbert K Chesterton,
932:We stood in front of that hill as if it were an altar, a consecrated knoll displaying the colonizer’s gifts to the bloodline: Christianity, education, and rank. ~ Cinelle Barnes,
933:Christianity was an assertion of human equality in the spirit, a great assertion of the unity of the divine spirit in man. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Bande Mataram - II, Asiatic Democracy,
934:Just like in Christianity or Buddhism, obviously there are certain practices that dictate one's life, but I don't think you can say all Muslim women are a certain way. ~ Nia Long,
935:So at last when I believed Christianity was dead, I said, "Even so, I will believe in it, and I will weep at its tomb until it rises again, as it surely will. ~ Richard Wurmbrand,
936:The accumulation of wealth is a process which is of itself morally neutral. True, as Christianity teaches, riches bring temptations. But then so does poverty. ~ Margaret Thatcher,
937:There is something frightful in the fact that the most dangerous thing of all, playing at Christianity, is never included in the list of heresies and schisms. ~ S ren Kierkegaard,
938:Acceptance of the power of God in one's life lays the groundwork for personal commitment to both science and Christianity, which so often have been in conflict. ~ Kenneth Lee Pike,
939:A man who first tried to guess 'what the public wants,' and then preached that as Christianity because the public wants it, would be a pretty mixture of fool and knave ~ C S Lewis,
940:The only really effective apologia for Christianity comes down to two arguments, namely, the saints the Church has produced and the art which has grown in her womb. ~ Benedict XVI,
941:Christianity has basically communicated to men that the reason God put you on this Earth is to be a good boy. Mind your manners, be a nice guy. That's soul killing! ~ John Eldredge,
942:If what you do brings freedom and life, it is most likely Christianity. If it doesn’t, it is probably religion, and there is already too much of that in the world. ~ James L Rubart,
943:If you want a religion that makes sense, then I suggest something other than Christianity. But if you want a religion that makes life, then, I think this is the one. ~ Rich Mullins,
944:I know I can't tell you what it's like to be gay. But I can tell you what it's not. It's not hiding behind words, Mama. Like family and decency and Christianity. ~ Armistead Maupin,
945:In short, if we do not comprehend the massive role that sin plays in the Bible and therefore in biblically faithful Christianity, we shall misread the Bible. ~ Christopher W Morgan,
946:In the last generation, with public Christianity in headlong retreat, we have caught our first, distant view of a de-Christianized world , and it is not encouraging. ~ Paul Johnson,
947:Islam is a religion of success. Unlike Christianity, which has as its main image, in the west at least, a man dying in a devastating, disgraceful, helpless death. ~ Karen Armstrong,
948:When Christianity is received, it stimulates the faculties, and calls forth new ideas, new motives and new sentiments. It has been the mother of all modern education ~ James McCosh,
949:While modern evangelical Christianity has undeniable historical roots, its explosion over the past thirty years is a triumph of the Gospel According to Wal-Mart. ~ Charles P Pierce,
950:I'd say the ratio of kids using Christianity as a cover for illicit activities to kids actually engaging in the sincere worship of our Savior was about three to one. ~ Nick Offerman,
951:I realize that many elements of the Buddhist teaching can be found in Christianity, Judaism, Islam. I think if Buddhism can help, it is the concrete methods of practice. ~ Nhat Hanh,
952:I won't say that the papers misquote me, but I sometimes wonder where Christianity would be today if some of those reporters had been Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. ~ Barry Goldwater,
953:Many people perceive Christianity as something institutional - rather than as an encounter with Christ - which explains why they don't see it as a source of joy. ~ Pope Benedict XVI,
954:But Christianity is an invention of sick brains: one could imagine nothing more senseless, nor any more indecent way of turning the idea of the Godhead into a mockery. ~ Adolf Hitler,
955:Modern philosophy certainly exacts a surrender of all supernaturalism and fixed dogma and rigid institutionalism with which Christianity has been historically associated ~ John Dewey,
956:Now that I am a Christian I do have moods in which the whole thing looks improbable: but when I was an atheist I had moods in which Christianity looked terribly probable. ~ C S Lewis,
957:One rationalist had hardly done calling Christianity a nightmare before another began to call it a fool's paradise. This puzzled me; the charges seemed inconsistent. ~ G K Chesterton,
958:The question is not if the candidate's heart is favorable to Christianity, but if he has Christ as his starting point even for politics, and will speak out His name! ~ Abraham Kuyper,
959:the whole Pelagian poison of free-will ... a clear exaltation of the old idol free-will into the throne of God ... That the decaying estate of Christianity have invented. ~ John Owen,
960:Christianity happens when men and women accept with unwavering trust that their sins have not only been forgiven but forgotten, washed away in the blood of the Lamb. ~ Brennan Manning,
961:If only Jesus' followers shared his personality. That one shift alone would correct so many of the ridiculous and horrifying things that pass for popular Christianity. ~ John Eldredge,
962:It was only with Christianity that the idea of what a person believed in started to matter, and matter a lot, because his or her eternal life suddenly depended on it. ~ Raymond Khoury,
963:Secularism teaches us that we ought to look to this world. Christianity teaches us that the best way to prepare for this world is to be fully prepared for the next. ~ Charles Spurgeon,
964:There is no leveller like Christianity—but it levels by lifting to a lofty table-land, accessible only to humility. He only who is humble can rise, and rising lift. ~ George MacDonald,
965:Worst of all, they had thrown off the old Roman martial virtues of honor and duty and adopted Christianity with its feminine qualities of forgiveness and gentleness. ~ Lars Brownworth,
966:Because we believe that somewhere in the nest of paradigms contained in the phrase "missional church" lies nothing less that the future viability of Western Christianity. ~ Alan Hirsch,
967:Christianity is not a doctrine, not truth as truth, but the knowledge of a Person; it is knowing the Lord Jesus. You cannot be educated into being a Christian. ~ Theodore Austin Sparks,
968:Christianity is the supernatural operation of the Holy Spirit.The faith once delivered to the saints is a miracle gospel, a miracle salvation with physical evidences. ~ Reinhard Bonnke,
969:Christianity would have lacked a great essence without the Bible. A Christian who seldom devotes a little time to read the Bible is with a great question mark. ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah,
970:I consider Christianity to be one of the great disasters of the human race... It would be impossible to imagine anything more un - Christianlike than theology. ~ Alfred North Whitehead,
971:If there is one thing I long for above all else, it's that the years to come may see Christianity in this country able again to capture the imagination of our culture. ~ Rowan Williams,
972:Some folks think that Christianity means a kind of insurance policy, and that it has little to do with this life, but that it is a very good thing when a man dies. ~ Henry Ward Beecher,
973:The highest glory of the American Revolution was this: it connected in one indissoluble bond the principles of civil government with the principles of Christianity. ~ John Quincy Adams,
974:The impulse to share the lives of the poor, the desire to make social service, irrespective of propaganda, express the spirit of Christ, is as old as Christianity itself. ~ Jane Addams,
975:The ultimate goal of the anti-religious elites is to transform America into a completely secular nation, a nation that is legally and culturally biased against Christianity. ~ Ron Paul,
976:Christianity stands or falls as a living program, a way of life, made concrete in the life of man by the life of God through the life of the concretely living Christ. ~ Kenneth Lee Pike,
977:I have not given it [synagogue] up. Christianity is the completion of the synagogue, for the synagogue was a promise, and Christianity is the fulfillment of that promise. ~ Israel Zolli,
978:In its Roman-era setting, for example, Christianity was so different that critics of the time referred to it as a "superstition" (meaning a bogus or dangerous religion). ~ Larry Hurtado,
979:I think a toxic message in a lot of Christianity has been that the self has to be annihilated in order for God to be found. I think that has been a toxic message. ~ Barbara Brown Taylor,
980:The only really effective apologia for Christianity comes down to two arguments, namely, the saints the Church has produced, and the art which has grown in her womb. ~ Pope Benedict XVI,
981:The removal of religion as history from our schoolbooks betrays the intellectual dishonesty of secular humanist educators and reveals their blind hostility to Christianity. ~ Tim LaHaye,
982:Christianity without the living Christ is inevitably Christianity without discipleship, and Christianity without discipleship is always Christianity without Christ. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer,
983:Ecclesiastes said that "all is vanity," Most modern preachers say the same, or show it By their examples of true Christianity: In short, all know, or very short may know it. ~ Lord Byron,
984:He spends his life explaining from his pulpit that the glory of Christianity consists in the fact that though it is not true it has been found necessary to invent it. ~ Hector Hugh Munro,
985:I’d often thought being a Christian meant by definition being a bad one, since nothing is more difficult than Christianity, so I was more or less used to that feeling. ~ Charlaine Harris,
986:I love the religion of Christianity - which cometh from above - which is a pure, peaceable, gentle, easy to be entreated, full of good fruits, and without hypocrisy. ~ Frederick Douglass,
987:it. Philosophy may instruct men to be calm under their troubles; but Christianity teaches them to be joyful, because such exercises proceed from love and not fury in God. ~ Matthew Henry,
988:Let us not fool ourselves - without Christianity, without Christian education, without the principles of Christ inculcated into young life, we are simply rearing pagans. ~ Peter Marshall,
989:The more I have read the Bible and studied the life of Jesus, the more I have become convinced that Christianity spreads best not through force but through fascination. ~ Shane Claiborne,
990:There are many in the Church as well as out of it who need to learn that Christianity is neither creed nor a ceremonial, but a life vitaly connected with a loving Christ. ~ Josiah Strong,
991:A wise man will always be a Christian, because the perfection of wisdom is to know where lies tranquillity of mind and how to attain it, which Christianity teaches. ~ Walter Savage Landor,
992:I am an average good Christian, when you don't push my Christianity too far. And all the rest of you—which is a great comfort—are, in this respect, much the same as I am. ~ Wilkie Collins,
993:I'm very interested in the history of Christianity, and what I can say for sure is that the Catholics and the Jesuits and stuff were very big on teaching and on learning. ~ Ben Mendelsohn,
994:Now that I am a Christian I do have moods in which the whole thing looks very improbable: but when I was an atheist I had moods in which Christianity looked terribly probable. ~ C S Lewis,
995:Religion is, in fact, the dominion of the soul; it is the hope, the anchor of safety, the deliverance from evil. What a service has Christianity rendered to humanity! ~ Napoleon Bonaparte,
996:The problem of pain is not a nail in the coffin of Christianity; it is a crowbar that jerks the lid off the coffin and allows all who are willing to climb out of their sleep. ~ Ted Dekker,
997:The spiritual sense of our place in nature... can be traced to the origins of human civilization... The last vestige of organized goddess worship was eliminated by Christianity. ~ Al Gore,
998:True virtue never looks so lovely as when it is most oppressed, and the divine excellence of real Christianity is never demonstrated as clearly as when it faces trials. ~ Jonathan Edwards,
999:At the cross a world of sin is absorbed by the love of God and recycled into grace and mercy. This is what the cross is about! This is what Christianity reveals. Christianity ~ Brian Zahnd,
1000:faith in progress was fundamental to western Christianity. As for Orthodox Christianity in the Byzantine East, it prohibited both clocks and pipe organs from its churches.51 ~ Rodney Stark,
1001:I think that Rodney Stark studies of new religious movements in the modern world give us some insights into the kinds of questions that we can ask about early Christianity. ~ Larry Hurtado,
1002:Speaking in tongues is not enough.If we turn men from unchristian religions to christianity we must produce miracles which convince men that Christ lives and He is real today. ~ T L Osborn,
1003:If Christianity should happen to be true, then it is quite impossible that those who know this truth and those who don’t should be equally well equipped for leading a good life. ~ C S Lewis,
1004:It seems that in our society Christianity has made permanent inroads in the eye-for-an-eye department but has made little progress on the practical application of forgiveness. ~ Steve Toltz,
1005:Sexual pessimism and hostility toward the pleasures of the flesh are a legacy from the ancient world which Christianity has preserved in a special measure to this day. ~ Uta Ranke Heinemann,
1006:The apostle of Christianity and the infidel can meet without a chance of a quarrel; but it is never safe to bring together two men who differ about a saint or a surplice. ~ Anthony Trollope,
1007:The greatest proof of Christianity for others is not how far a man can logically analyze his reasons for believing, but how far in practice he will stake his life on his belief. ~ T S Eliot,
1008:The passion of Christianity comes from deliberately signing away my own rights and becoming a bondservant of Jesus Christ. Until I do that, I will not begin to be a saint. ~ Oswald Chambers,
1009:Within three hundred years Jesus went from being a Jewish apocalyptic prophet to being God himself, a member of the Trinity. Early Christianity is nothing if not remarkable. ~ Bart D Ehrman,
1010:He who begins by loving Christianity more than Truth, will proceed by loving his sect or church better than Christianity, and end in loving himself better than all. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge,
1011:I believe one of the most pervasive problems in contemporary Western Christianity is that we mistakenly assume that information automatically translates into transformation. ~ Gregory A Boyd,
1012:In Ethiopia, the black people became Christians 1700 years ago, hundreds of years before Northern Europe turned to Christianity... And here, most of the saints are black. ~ Henry Louis Gates,
1013:Since the rise of Christianity and up to the current day, martyrs - those who die because of their faith in Christ - have been a strong segment of the population of believers. ~ Randy Frazee,
1014:The shaking of American culture is no sign that God has given up on American Christianity. In fact, it may be a sign that God is rescuing American Christianity from itself. ~ Russell D Moore,
1015:True Christianity is love in action. There is no better way to manifest love for God than to show an unselfish love for your fellow men. This is the spirit of missionary work ~ David O McKay,
1016:Christianity is within a man, even as he is gifted with reason; it is associated with your mother's chair, and with the first remembered, tones of her blessed voice. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge,
1017:I think Christianity is the same as Buddhism and Hinduism - whenever a religion begins to say that these are the things you have to do to be loved by God, you have a religion. ~ Erwin McManus,
1018:People on death row, the treatment of animals, women's right to choose. So much in America is based on religious fundamentalist Christianity. Grow up! This is the modern world! ~ Eddie Vedder,
1019:The introduction of Christianity, which, under whatever form, always confers such inestimable benefits on mankind, soon made a sensible change in these rude and fierce manners. ~ Edmund Burke,
1020:The whole case for Christianity is that a man who is dependent upon the luxuries of this life is a corrupt man, spiritually corrupt, politically corrupt, financially corrupt. ~ G K Chesterton,
1021:You may be a fantastic person, and you may have some wonderful religious views that might even turn out to be true, but the religion you'd be following would not be Christianity. ~ Greg Koukl,
1022:Christianity is a rebellion against natural law, a protest against nature. Taken to its logical extreme, Christianity would mean the systematic cultivation of the human failure. ~ Adolf Hitler,
1023:I believe I am not mistaken in saying that Christianity is a demanding and serious religion. When it is delivered as easy and amusing, it is another kind of religion altogether. ~ Neil Postman,
1024:If Christianity should happen to be true - that is to say, if its God is the real God of the universe - then defending it may mean talking about anything and everything. ~ Gilbert K Chesterton,
1025:In what did the emancipating message of Christianity consist but in the announcement that God recognizes those weak and tender impulses which paganism had so rudely overlooked? ~ William James,
1026:Nearly all that we call human history … [is] the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy.” C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity ~ Nancy R Pearcey,
1027:Perhaps the True Self--and the full Christ Mystery (not the same as organized Christianity)--will always live in the backwaters of any empire and the deep mines of any religion. ~ Richard Rohr,
1028:So great was the preference given to sacred over profane learning that Christianity had been in existence fifteen hundred years, and had not produced a single astronomer. ~ John William Draper,
1029:The essence of the Hebrew Bible, transmitted by Christianity, is separation: between life and death, nature and God, good and evil, man and woman, and the holy and the profane. ~ Dennis Prager,
1030:All I do know is that extremism of any kind has never taken root in Bridelow, where a practical paganism and a humble Christianity have comfortably linked hands for so long. Many ~ Phil Rickman,
1031:Christ died"--that is history; "Christ died for our sins"--that is doctrine. Without these two elements, joined in an absolutely indissoluble union, there is no Christianity. ~ J Gresham Machen,
1032:Christianity is the Story of how the world began, why the world is the way it is, what role we play in the drama, and how all the plotlines of the Story are resolved in the end. ~ Gregory Koukl,
1033:Christianity offers the only viable, reasonable, definitive answer to the questions of Where did I come from? Why am I here? Where am I going? Does life have any meaningful purpose? ~ Tom DeLay,
1034:Every fundamentalist movement I've studied in Judaism, Christianity and Islam is convinced at some gut, visceral level that secular liberal society wants to wipe out religion. ~ Karen Armstrong,
1035:Every one of the “great” belief systems of the world, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism and Confucianism, insists on women’s inferiority as an article of faith. Individual ~ Rosalind Miles,
1036:If those who had set themselves to explain the various theories of Christianity had set themselves instead to do the will of the Master, how different the world would be now! ~ George MacDonald,
1037:The infidelity that springs from the heart is not to be reached by a course of lectures on the evidences of Christianity; argument did not cause, and argument will not remove it. ~ Mark Hopkins,
1038:The only way to show a true respect for God is to act morally while ignoring God’s existence.”
― A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam ~ Karen Armstrong,
1039:This soldier had been taken prisoner in some remote part of Asia, and was threatened with an immediate agonising death if he did not renounce Christianity and follow Islam. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky,
1040:We believe it is important to boldly stand against the ideas Matthew Vines is promoting by saying unequivocally that the book God and the Gay Christian is dangerous to Christianity. ~ Anonymous,
1041:We have a lowest-common-denominator Christianity being taught in so many denominations that has produced a people who simply do not know some of the most basic Christian truths. ~ Albert Mohler,
1042:All the other religions center on people’s righteousness—what we do and how good we are. Real Christianity centers on Jesus’ righteousness—what he has done and how good he is. ~ Jefferson Bethke,
1043:Christianity is seen by more and more people as a negative message: anti gay, anti immigrant, anti abortion (as the only life issue), anti gay marriage, anti the Democratic party. ~ Richard Rohr,
1044:For many people, the reluctance to embrace Christianity is as practical as it is intellectual. They want to know what the benefits of Christianity are, or what's in it for them. ~ Dinesh D Souza,
1045:I said, well, it's a very primitive country, the United States, and it's full of superstitions, which come out of a very fundamental religious bias, which is primitive Christianity. ~ Gore Vidal,
1046:It's really ludicrous; her object is doing good; she a Christian, yet she's always angry; and she always has enemies, and always enemies in the name of Christianity and doing good. ~ Leo Tolstoy,
1047:What has been presented as Christianity during these nineteen centuries is only a beginning, full of mistakes, not full blown Christianity springing from the spirit of Jesus. ~ Albert Schweitzer,
1048:What replaces Christianity isn't going to be Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and so on. It's going to be something else and something secular people may not like very much. ~ Ross Douthat,
1049:An early execution of Jesus Christ would have been not just an early execution and collapse of Christianity, but also an abrupt end to the new purpose of God for mankind! ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah,
1050:As Tim Keller says, the gospel is not just the ABCs of Christianity, it is the A–Z; it is not the first step in a stairway of truths, it is more like the hub of God’s wheel of truth. ~ J D Greear,
1051:Christianity did not begin with a confession. It began with an invitation into friendship, into creating a new community, into forming relationships based on love and service. ~ Diana Butler Bass,
1052:Christianity is the enemy of liberty and civilization. It has kept mankind in slavery and oppression. The Church and the State have always fraternally united to exploit the people. ~ August Bebel,
1053:Faith in the real annihilation of the world - … a world antagonistic to the wishes of the Christian is therefore a phenomenon belonging to the inmost essence of Christianity[.] ~ Ludwig Feuerbach,
1054:In affirming my belief in Christ's teaching, I could not help explaining why I do not believe, and consider as mistaken, the Church's doctrine, which is usually called Christianity. ~ Leo Tolstoy,
1055:I regard monotheism as the greatest disaster ever to befall the human race. I see no good in Judaism, Christianity, or Islam - good people, yes, but any religion based on a single... ~ Gore Vidal,
1056:The difficulty comes from this, that Christianity (Christian orthodoxy) is exclusive and that belief in its truth excludes belief in any other truth. It does not absorb; it repulses. ~ Andre Gide,
1057:The only means of establishing and perpetuating our republican forms of government is the universal education of our youth in the principles of Christianity by means of the Bible. ~ Benjamin Rush,
1058:Wherever Christianity has produced what historians call a 'popular piety' claiming to be part of the national heritage, anti-Christian reaction among the intelligentsia has followed. ~ J I Packer,
1059:Christ died"--that is history; "Christ died for our sins"--that is doctrine. Without these two elements, joined in an absolutely indissoluble union, there is no Christianity. ~ John Gresham Machen,
1060:Every other religion and philosophy says you have to do something to connect to God; but Christianity says no, Jesus Christ came to do for you what you couldn’t do for yourself. ~ Timothy J Keller,
1061:Fundamentalist Christianity is not just a threat to lesbians and gays, but to all Americans who cherish democracy and the rights and protections guaranteed us by the U.S. constitution. ~ Mel White,
1062:In other times it may have been the business of Christianity to champion the equality of all men; its business today will be to defend passionately human dignity and reserve. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer,
1063:The Americans of the age were not an irreligious people; and the fact that they were Christian was very important, for the marks of Christianity lay all across the Constitution. ~ Theodore H White,
1064:The Marxist thus finds himself in real agreement with the Christian in those two beliefs which Christianity paradoxically demands - that poverty is blessed and yet ought to be removed. ~ C S Lewis,
1065:The word "emptiness" for example, is a very important word both in Christianity and in Buddhism. It has shades of meaning however, that are different in the respective traditions. ~ Thomas Keating,
1066:But under President Obama, as much as under his predecessor, the continuing call to celebrate Islam rather than any other religion – like Christianity, say – is especially ongoing. ~ Douglas Murray,
1067:Christ as our Savior have received the automatic and glorious result of eternal salvation. However, the primary reason God left us on earth after our salvation was for our Christianity ~ Beth Moore,
1068:Christianity thinks of human individuals not as mere members of a group or items in a list, but as organs in a body-different from one another and each contributing what no other could. ~ C S Lewis,
1069:He was obliged however to throw over Christianity. Those who base their conduct upon what they are rather than upon what they ought to be, always must throw it over in the end . . . . ~ E M Forster,
1070:In some Churches today and on some religious television programs, we see the attempt to make Christianity popular and pleasant. We have taken the cross away and substituted cushions. ~ Billy Graham,
1071:It is time we acknowledged that no real foundation exists within the canons of Christianity, Islam, Judaism, or any of our other faiths for religious tolerance and religious diversity. ~ Sam Harris,
1072:Learning about the intellectual basis for Christianity bolsters the faith of Christians-espe cially those who may be experiencing doubts-and prepares them to share Christ with others. ~ Lee Strobel,
1073:Men have not got tired of Christianity; they have never found enough Christianity to get tired of. Men have never wearied of political justice; they have wearied of waiting for it. ~ G K Chesterton,
1074:The event testified to within Christianity is evident in a life that has been freed from an idolatrous existence that turns us from the world to an iconic engagement with the world. ~ Peter Rollins,
1075:The more I considered Christianity, the more I found that while it had established a rule and order, the chief aim of that order was to give room for good things to run wild. ~ Gilbert K Chesterton,
1076:William Henry Flower the Anglican too praised evolution as a cleansing solvent, dissolving the dross which had 'encrusted' Christianity 'in the days of ignorance and superstition'. ~ Adrian Desmond,
1077:And the more I considered Christianity, the more I found that while it had established a rule and order, the chief aim of of that order was to give room for good things to run wild. ~ G K Chesterton,
1078:Christian Science … is the direct denial both of science and of Christianity, for Science rests wholly on the recognition of truth and Christianity on the recognition of pain. ~ Gilbert K Chesterton,
1079:In the early days of Christianity the exercise of chastity was frequently combined with a close and romantic intimacy of affection between the sexes which shocked austere moralists. ~ Havelock Ellis,
1080:The fact that my continuous and public rejection of Christianity does not worry me in the least should suggest to you just how inadequate I think your reasons for being a Christian are. ~ Sam Harris,
1081:The only way to doubt Christianity rightly and fairly is to discern the alternate belief under each of your doubts and then to ask yourself what reasons you have for believing it. ~ Timothy J Keller,
1082:We've taken the lifeblood out of Christianity and put Kool-Aid in its place so that it tastes better to the crowds, and the consequences are catastrophic. ~ David PlattFollow Me, pg. 7 ~ David Platt,
1083:Worldly wisdom thinks that love is a relationship between man and man. Christianity teaches that love is a relationship between man-God-man, that is, that God is the middle term. ~ Soren Kierkegaard,
1084:Above all, do not attempt to use science (I mean, the real sciences) as a defence against Christianity. They will positively encourage him to think about realities he can’t touch and see. ~ C S Lewis,
1085:Because Christianity is a religion of death, it could be treated with the utmost realism, and it could have its orgies, just likethe old religion of nature and life. ~ Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel,
1086:Christians are the only group Hollywood can offend with impunity, the only creed it actually goes out of its way to insult... The tenets of Christianity are regularly held up to ridicule. ~ Don Feder,
1087:Evangelicals have been distinctive in featuring the crisis conversion. But what is essential to Christianity is the whole life committed to God, from the beginning of faith until death. ~ Mark A Noll,
1088:Government is violence, Christianity is meekness, non-resistance, love. And, therefore, government cannot be Christian, and a man who wishes to be a Christian must not serve government. ~ Leo Tolstoy,
1089:It was Christianity, with its heartfelt resentment against life, that first made something unclean of sexuality: it threw filth on the origin, on the essential fact of our life. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche,
1090:I've always wondered what it means to the Republican Party to be pro-Israel. My husband says that is is because certain sects of Christianity need Jews in Israel for the second coming. ~ Jill Soloway,
1091:The institutions of Churchianity are not Christianity. An institution is a good thing if it is second; immediately an institution recognizes itself it becomes the dominating factor. ~ Oswald Chambers,
1092:What can convince modern man is not a historical or a psychological or a continually ever modernizing Christianity but only the unrestricted and uninterrupted message of Revelation. ~ Romano Guardini,
1093:What is the difference between the Christian God, and the gods of the other religions?" He simply, yet profoundly answered, "The main difference is this: The God of Christianity exists. ~ R C Sproul,
1094:European Christianity has allowed itself to be intimately united with the powers of this world. Now that these powers are falling, it is as if it were buried under their ruins. ~ Alexis de Tocqueville,
1095:I think Rodney Stark makes a substantial contribution to the study of early Christianity in posing the kinds of questions that he pursues (which reflect his social-science background). ~ Larry Hurtado,
1096:It was only Christianity, with resentment against life in its foundations, which made sexuality something impure: it threw filth on the beginning, on the prerequisite of our life ~ Friedrich Nietzsche,
1097:Jude has a very different character. It is not the cradle of Christianity, or of the assembly on earth: it is its decay and its death here below. It does not keep its first estate. ~ John Nelson Darby,
1098:There are some great values in Christianity, but I think the values are located more deeply in our humanity than they are in our religion. There are certainly some survival values. ~ John Shelby Spong,
1099:When you grow up in America things like Christianity waters down your feeling... When you're taught to love everybody, taught to love you're enemies, what value does that put on love? ~ Marilyn Manson,
1100:You think Christianity is favorable to women? On the contrary. It is the Christian countries that have produced the prostitute and the most vile estimations of women in the world. ~ Dorothy Richardson,
1101:Among the many reasons assignable for the sad decay of true Christianity, perhaps the neglecting to assemble ourselves together, in religious societies, may not be one of the least. ~ George Whitefield,
1102:Christianity is more than a theory about the universe, more than teachings written down on paper; it is a path along which we journey—in the deepest and richest sense, the way of life. ~ Kallistos Ware,
1103:Great books are written for Christianity much oftener than great deeds are done for it. City libraries tell us of the reign of Jesus Christ but city streets tell us of the reign of Satan. ~ Horace Mann,
1104:I didn’t go to religion to make me happy. I always knew a bottle of Port would do that. If you want a religion to make you feel really comfortable, I certainly don’t recommend Christianity. ~ C S Lewis,
1105:In Saudi Arabia, among other countries, Muslims are not free to convert to Christianity, and Christians are not free to practice their faith. The Koran is not a rights-respecting document. ~ Ibn Warraq,
1106:It is fatal to let people suppose that Christianity is only a mode of feeling; it is vitally necessary to insist that it is first and foremost a rational explanation of the universe. ~ Dorothy L Sayers,
1107:It is true that Christianity is not bound up with any particular race or culture. It is neither of the East or of the West, but has a universal mission to the human race as a whole ~ Christopher Dawson,
1108:The fruits of Christianity were religious wars, butcheries, crusades, inquisitions, extermination of the natives of America, and the introduction of African slaves in their place. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer,
1109:The notion that everyone would like Christianity to be true, and therefore all atheists are brave men who have accepted the defeat of all their deepest desires, is simply impudent nonsense. ~ C S Lewis,
1110:The only really effective apologia for Christianity comes down to two arguments,” Ratzinger said, “namely, the saints the Church has produced, and the art which has grown in her womb. ~ Robert E Barron,
1111:There are things that I do agree with in Christianity and things that I dont agree with. Im not a regular churchgoer, but I do think that I have my own beliefs that I feel strongly about. ~ Haylie Duff,
1112:You know, Christianity has its own superstition anyway: Why you turn three times, what this saint means, why you pray to the patron saint of lost causes, why you go this way or that way. ~ Ciaran Hinds,
1113:You thought you were going to be made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it himself. (Quoted by C.S.Lewis in Mere Christianity) ~ George MacDonald,
1114:But this people has deliberately made itself stupid, for nearly a millennium: nowhere have the two great European narcotics, alcohol and Christianity, been abused more dissolutely. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche,
1115:Christianity alone inspires and guides progress; for the progress of man is movement toward God. and movement toward God wili ensure a gradual unfolding of all that exalts and adorns man. ~ Mark Hopkins,
1116:Christianity is not a law of bondage; and if it respect the hand of God which sometimes raises up tyrants, it draws up where obedience degenerates into guilty cowardice. ~ Jean Baptiste Henri Lacordaire,
1117:Is it being said too often how much we in the West have suffered because of the long wars between Islam and Christianity, leaving us biased and with gaps in our information? I think not. ~ Doris Lessing,
1118:Of course if no one had ever been exposed to dangerous ideas from scandalous women, Christianity itself would not have had its unique beginning nor its glorious history, but whatever. ~ Nadia Bolz Weber,
1119:what about Christianity? Are we right in the face of so long a record of its poverty in international achievement, to keep invoking it as a standard, almost synonymous with civilization? ~ Rose Macaulay,
1120:And the founder of Christianity made no secret indeed of his estimation of the Jewish people. When He found it necessary, He drove those enemies of the human race out of the Temple of God. ~ Adolf Hitler,
1121:As a result of the assault on Christianity, the Christian faith has been isolated more and more into a tiny private sector of life and removed from the whole public spectrum of America. ~ D James Kennedy,
1122:He carried the Bible; the soldier carried the gun; the administrator and the settler carried the coin. Christianity, Commerce, Civilization: the Bible, the Coin, the Gun: Holy Trinity. ~ Ng g wa Thiong o,
1123:ISIS goes after any group that deviates from its extreme ideology, dissident Muslims, for example, or the Yazidis who practice an ancient religion distinct from both Islam and Christianity. ~ Tom Gjelten,
1124:Of course slavery and the Muslims were deeply implicated in the slave trade, Islam was an Imperialist religion which destroyed Christianity in the Near East, yet nobody mentions those facts. ~ Ibn Warraq,
1125:The goals of American Christianity are often a nice marriage, children who don't swear, and good church attendance. Taking the words of Christ literally and seriously is rarely considered. ~ Francis Chan,
1126:The more we can do to support and promulgate the intellectual traditions of the Abrahamic faiths - of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam - the better armed we will be to fight fundamentalism. ~ Jon Meacham,
1127:There is no time limit, no statute of limitations. Sharing our lives with dear people to win them to Jesus is the substance of Christianity, the delightful work we’ve been commissioned to. ~ Jen Hatmaker,
1128:To justify Christianity because it provides a foundation of morality, instead of showing the necessity of Christian morality from the truth of Christianity, is a very dangerous inversion, ~ Philip Yancey,
1129:Because of our failure to live out our beliefs, our own lack of moral clarity, and our meddling with partisan politics, Western culture no longer looks to Christianity as its moral source. ~ Philip Yancey,
1130:Celibacy doesn't make you enlightened, otherwise every nun or priest in Buddhism or Christianity would be enlightened. People who don't date and can't get any action would be enlightened. ~ Frederick Lenz,
1131:Christianity was beauty created by controlling a million monsters of ugliness . . . modern art and science practically mean having the million monsters and being unable to control them... ~ G K Chesterton,
1132:I do not believe there are any new objections to be discovered to the truth of Christianity. Men may argue ingeniously against our faith, but what can they say in defense of their own? ~ Francis Scott Key,
1133:If Christianity is untrue, then no honest man will want to believe it, however helpful it might be; if it is true, every honest man will want to believe it, even if it gives him no help at all ~ C S Lewis,
1134:It is a sign of the frailty of contemporary Christianity, rather than its strength, that we often do not begin to question until the megaphone of suffering has awakened us from our sleep. ~ G K Chesterton,
1135:It is very disturbing to see people use Christianity and the Bible to support a certain political agenda, especially when one cannot connect that agenda with the authentic teachings of Christ. ~ Anne Rice,
1136:I was, as the prophet said, hungering and thirsting for righteousness. I found it at the eternal and material core of Christianity: body, blood, bread, wine, poured out freely, shared by all. ~ Sara Miles,
1137:Social media has lots of benefits, but compared to Christianity, it tends to group people by interests. Religion puts you with people who have nothing in common except that you're human. ~ Alain de Botton,
1138:Christianity in particular should be dubbed a great treasure-chamber of ingenious consolations, such a store of refreshing, soothing, deadening drugs has it accumulated within itself. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche,
1139:I didn’t go to religion to make me happy. I always knew a bottle of Port would do that. If you want a religion to make you feel really comfortable, I certainly don’t recommend Christianity..... ~ C S Lewis,
1140:I offer early Christianity as a case-study to show that the phenomena that we group under "religion(s)" comprise a somewhat artificial category, and that "religions" are not "all the same." ~ Larry Hurtado,
1141:It is not by telling people about ourselves that we demonstrate our Christianity. Words are cheap. It is by costly, self-denying Christian practice that we show the reality of our faith. ~ Jonathan Edwards,
1142:I was, as the prophet said, hungering and thirsting for righteousness. I found it at the eternal and material core of Christianity: body, blood, bread, wine, poured out freely, shared by all. ~ Sarah Miles,
1143:Many who profess faith seem to think that Christianity is something to add to their already busy lives, not something that controls, constrains, and shapes their vision and all of their goals. ~ D A Carson,
1144:O Luther, you had 95 theses . . . The matter is far more terrible-there is only one thesis. The Christianity of the New Testament does not exist at all. Here there is nothing to reform. ~ Soren Kierkegaard,
1145:That is why, according to this newer psychology, Christianity has already fulfilled its biological mission, and it is impossible for the modern man to understand its original significance. ~ Muhammad Iqbal,
1146:The Indian is making an amazing discovery, namely that Christianity and Jesus are not the same - that they may have Jesus without the system that has been built up around Him in the West. ~ E Stanley Jones,
1147:Those who want to reduce Christianity to a set of moral guidelines and restrict Jesus to the role of ethical teacher or moralist fail to observe that much of what Jesus said was about Himself. ~ R C Sproul,
1148:To justify Christian morality because it provides a foundation of morality, instead of showing the necessity of Christian morality from the truth of Christianity, is a very dangerous inversion. ~ T S Eliot,
1149:All three of our major religions in Britain ~ Christianity, Islam and Judaism - have a hateful idea at the very core. That idea is Exclusion: the "othering," if you like, of the unredeemed. ~ Matthew Parris,
1150:But this nation has deliberately made itself stupid, for practically a thousand years: nowhere else are the two great European narcotics, alcohol and Christianity, so viciously abused. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche,
1151:Christianity is a marketable product. It has very little to do with Jesus Christ. I'm sure it has nothing to do with Jesus Christ at all - what the experience was like to be around the guy. ~ Frederick Lenz,
1152:Christianity israrely understood by those outside its bounds. In fact, this is probably one of the greatest tasks confronting the apologist–to rescue Christianity from misunderstandings. ~ Alister E McGrath,
1153:Christianity liberates us from any life-denying reductionism that dishonors and debases humanity. It affirms the high dignity of humans as full persons made in the image of a personal God. ~ Nancy R Pearcey,
1154:For Hindus to expect Islam, Christianity or Zoroastrianism to be driven out of India is as idle a dream as it would be for Mussalmans to have only Islam of their imagination rule the world. ~ Mahatma Gandhi,
1155:I believe that everybody has the right to believe what they want to believe and to knock somebody's faith and religion is foolish, whatever it may be - Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism. ~ Nicolas Cage,
1156:I never saw, heard, nor read, that the clergy were beloved in any nation where Christianity was the religion of the country. Nothing can render them popular, but some degree of persecution. ~ Jonathan Swift,
1157:In the process we have unnecessarily (and unbiblically) drawn a line of distinction, assigning the obligations of Christianity to a few while keeping the privileges of Christianity for us all. ~ David Platt,
1158:It could plausibly be argued that far from Christian theology having hampered the study of nature for fifteen hundred years, it was Greek corruptions of biblical Christianity which hampered it. ~ Mary Hesse,
1159:Non-Western expressions of Christianity, therefore, can be portrayed as inferior to the successful formula for ministry put forth by many white evangelicals in mainstream Christian culture. ~ Soong Chan Rah,
1160:Precepts in Buddhism and commandments in Judiasm and Christianity are important jewels that we need to study and practice. They provide guidelines that can help us transform our suffering. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh,
1161:The command “Be ye perfect” is not idealistic gas. Nor is it a command to do the impossible. He is going to make us into creatures that can obey that command. C. S. LEWIS, MERE CHRISTIANITY ~ Dallas Willard,
1162:The duel between Christianity and atheism is the most important in the world, and the struggle between individualism and collectivism is the same struggle reproduced on another level. ~ William F Buckley Jr,
1163:The idea that emotion can be separated from sex is a Christian illusion, one of the most ingenious but finally unworkable strategies in Christianity's ancient campaign against pagan nature. ~ Camille Paglia,
1164:the presence of God is the central fact of Christianity. At the heart of the Christian message is God Himself waiting for His redeemed children to push in to conscious awareness of His presence. ~ A W Tozer,
1165:what makes Christianity unique. We have a perfect God dying for a sinful people. Even more incredible, this sinful people doesn’t have to be good to be loved. We can be bad and still be loved, ~ Henry Cloud,
1166:With two thousand years of Christianity behind him... a man can't see a regiment of soldiers march past without going off the deep end. It starts off far too many ideas in his head. ~ Louis Ferdinand Celine,
1167:I belong to the middle class that grew up very influenced by the Catholic church. The people of the novel are from a more pagan and practical world in which the Christianity is just a veneer. ~ John McGahern,
1168:Intelligence, patriotism, Christianity, and a firm reliance on Him, who has never yet forsaken this favored land, are still competent to adjust, in the best way, all our present difficulty. ~ Abraham Lincoln,
1169:Many books have been written to show that Christianity has emasculated the world, that it shoved aside the enlightenment and wisdom of Hellas for a doctrine of superstition and ignorance. ~ Edgar Lee Masters,
1170:The democratic concept of man is false, because it is Christian. The democratic concept holds that . . . each man is a sovereign being. This is the illusion, dream, and postulate of Christianity. ~ Karl Marx,
1171:There were games and activities as well as sermons, because, as he pointed out regularly, most of Jesus’s preaching happened outside, and that meant there was more to Christianity than church. ~ Stephen King,
1172:The very concept of sin comes from the Bible. Christianity offers to solve a problem of its own making! Would you be thankful to a person who cut you with a knife in order to sell you a bandage? ~ Dan Barker,
1173:What does Christianity mean today? National Socialism is a religion. All we lack is a religious genius capable of uprooting outmoded religious practices and putting new ones in their place. ~ Joseph Goebbels,
1174:Christianity does NOT replace the technical. When he tells you to feed the hungry and doesn't give you lessons in cookery. If you want to learn THAT, you must go to a cook rather than a Christian. ~ C S Lewis,
1175:Christianity is fundamentally convalescence.. .God is not only the doctor who prescribes, He is the nurse who lifts up our powerless head and puts the spoon in our mouth...And He is the medicine. ~ John Piper,
1176:Christianity is not a doctrine, not, I mean, a theory about what has happened & will happen to the human soul, but a description of something that actually takes place in human life. ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein,
1177:Indeed, in this ordinance, the whole of what Christianity means is expressed: one Lord Jesus Christ, incarnate, atoning, and triumphant as the sum and substance of the observance. Without ~ Thomas R Schreiner,
1178:Over the past two hundred years philosophy has shaken off Christian faith. It has not given up Christianity's cardinal error -the belief that humans are radically different from all other animals. ~ John Gray,
1179:The heart of Christianity is a myth which is also a fact. The old myth of the Dying God, without ceasing to be a myth, comes down from the heaven of legend and imagination to the earth of history. ~ C S Lewis,
1180:The virgin birth has never been a major stumbling block in my struggle with Christianity; it's far less mind boggling than the Power of all Creation stooping so low as to become one of us. ~ Madeleine L Engle,
1181:To try to talk about art and about Christianity is for me one and the same thing, and it means attempting to share the meaning of my life, what gives it, for me, its tragedy and its glory. ~ Madeleine L Engle,
1182:we’re tired of the culture wars, tired of Christianity getting entangled with party politics and power. Millennials want to be known by what we’re for, I said, not just what we’re against. ~ Rachel Held Evans,
1183:Christendom has had a series of revolutions and in each one of them Christianity has died. Christianity has died many times and risen again; for it had a God who knew the way out of the grave. ~ G K Chesterton,
1184:Christianity is not a religion for the masses, let alone for all. Cultivated by few and translated into deeds, it is one of the most splendid blossoms that can grow in the soul of a good man. ~ Joseph Goebbels,
1185:Christianity offers similar stories, and the global Christianity that perished in the late Middle Ages has revived in the past century. China offers an amazing example of long-term continuity. ~ Philip Jenkins,
1186:Christianity, whatever else it is, is an explosion. Unless it is sensational there is simply no sense in it. Unless the Gospel sounds like a gun going off it has not been uttered at all. ~ Gilbert K Chesterton,
1187:Civilization, we shall find, like Universalism and Christianity, is anti evolutionary in its effects; it works against the laws and conditions which regulated the earlier stages of man's ascent. ~ Arthur Keith,
1188:If Christianity is dull and boring, if it is a burden and not a blessing, then most likely we are involved in a project, not a Person - a system not a Savior, rules rather than a relationship. ~ Joseph Stowell,
1189:Most of us are not really approaching the subject in order to find out what Christianity says; we are approaching it in the hope of finding support from Christianity for the views of our own party. ~ C S Lewis,
1190:The history of Christianity, therefore, must be of concern to all who are interested in the record of man and particularly to all who seek to understand the contemporary human scene. ~ Kenneth Scott Latourette,
1191:There is a dramatic difference between historic Christianity and the teachings of Jesus Christ. I publicly state that I am not a follower of historic Christianity; I am a follower of Jesus Christ! ~ John Hagee,
1192:To stay away from Christianity because part of the Bible's teaching is offensive to you assumes that if there is a God he wouldn't have any views that upset you. Does that belief make sense? ~ Timothy J Keller,
1193:When it wishes anything done which is really serious, it collects twelve of the ordinary men standing round. The same thing was done, if I remember right, by the Founder of Christianity. ~ Gilbert K Chesterton,
1194:Although Christianity has never been the guarantee of a democratic state anywhere in the world, no democracy has ever thrived successfully for any period of time outside of Christian influence. ~ Theodore White,
1195:As a performer, I wanted to be the loudest, most persistent alarm clock I could be, because there didn’t seem like any other way to snap society out of its Christianity- and media-induced coma. ~ Marilyn Manson,
1196:Ever since Constantine made Christianity the official “imperial faith, ” Christians have been trying to push the camel of power and wealth through the slender needle’s eye of the vision of Jesus. ~ Kurt Neilson,
1197:If Christianity only means one more bit of good advice, then Christianity is of no importance. There has been no lack of good advice for the last four thousand years. A bit more makes no difference. ~ C S Lewis,
1198:North Eurasia is one of the best examples of religious tolerance and peaceful coexistence of Islam and Christianity. This is a rare thing in today's world, even in its most liberal parts. ~ Nursultan Nazarbayev,
1199:Some people think that if they will do certain things, they will somehow earn the favor of God, but this misses the whole point of Christianity and ironically devolves into a me-centered approach. ~ David Platt,
1200:You said that facts are meaningless, unless meanings are put into them. Well, Christianity, the mystery of the individual, is precisely what must be put into the facts to make them meaningful. ~ Boris Pasternak,
1201:And that is precisely what Christianity is about. This world is like a great sculptor's shop. We are the statues and there is a rumour going around that some of us are some day going to come to life. ~ C S Lewis,
1202:A Puritan believed it was necessary to venture back to the absolute beginning of Christianity, before the church had been corrupted by centuries of laxity and abuse, to locate divine truth. ~ Nathaniel Philbrick,
1203:At Jerusalem, I went to the mosque and sat down. A man asked me what I wanted. I told him I was a Muslim. Now I realize I can get direct contact with God, unlike Christianity or any other religion. ~ Cat Stevens,
1204:Christianity does not begin with our pursuit of Christ, but with Christ’s pursuit of us. Christianity does not start with an invitation we offer to Jesus, but with an invitation Jesus offers to us. ~ David Platt,
1205:Christianity is not a program for avoiding mistakes; it is a faith of the guilty. There is no “right” or perfect way to be. We learn from our mistakes; we extend grace to others and ourselves. ~ Nadia Bolz Weber,
1206:Christianity takes this beating that I really don't understand and yet you can't say anything negative about the Muslims because that's horrible, you can't say anything negative about other faiths. ~ Kevin Sorbo,
1207:His eyes widened. “You mean the symbol we use for peace began as a hate symbol against Christianity?” She nodded. “It was a visual representation of the way Nero crucified Christians upside down. ~ Colleen Coble,
1208:The problem with fear-based Christianity is we only obey when the fear is there. If you only want to obey God when you feel threatened by his commands, it’s not God you worship, but your fear. ~ Jefferson Bethke,
1209:Today, many women of faith are conflicted. We are moving away from the church and formalized Christianity in record numbers because of the gap between patriarchal doctrine and our real lives. ~ Jennifer Crumpton,
1210:We should give our children the impression that the most wonderful thing in the world is Christianity; and that there is nothing in life comparable to being a Christian.4 MARTYN-LLOYD JONES ~ John F MacArthur Jr,
1211:If you examined a hundred people who had lost their faith in Christianity, I wonder how many of them would turn out to have reasoned out of it by honest argument? Do not most people simply drift away? ~ C S Lewis,
1212:I think fundamentally, the question of whether or not Christianity makes sense - whether it withstands scrutiny, whether the evidence supports it or hurts it - always comes down to the Resurrection. ~ Lee Strobel,
1213:My view of Christianity is that the hallmark of being a Christian is to reach out to people who have been left behind. So I think there was a religious aspect to my decision to support civil unions. ~ Howard Dean,
1214:Nancy Rue has once more proven that Christianity doesn't necessary arrive in a double-breasted suit or wearing pearls. Sometimes it roars in on a Harley, packing more punch than a three-part sermon. ~ DiAnn Mills,
1215:Now, a plain word here about the Christian church trying to carry on in its own power: That kind of Christianity makes God sick, for it is trying to run a heavenly institution after an earthly manner. ~ A W Tozer,
1216:People don't ask questions about spiritual matters unless God is at work in their lives. When you see someone seeking God or asking questions about Christianity, you are witnessing God at work. ~ Henry T Blackaby,
1217:The slightest overview of historical Christian thought from the Reformers to the present reveals that there is a great contrast between the gospel of contemporary Christianity and that of our fathers. ~ Anonymous,
1218:unless we recognize the radical nature of Christianity, which means shedding the imperatives of the secular world and taking with extreme seriousness the imperatives of God, we are kidding ourselves. ~ May Sarton,
1219:We know something of the history of the spread of Christianity, but much passed from recorded memory and much was transmitted by tradition whose accuracy has been repeatedly questioned. ~ Kenneth Scott Latourette,
1220:When St Genesius, the patron saint of actors, refused to act in a Roman play that ridiculed Christianity, the legend goes, the producers executed him. It reminds some people of Broadway today. ~ Samuel G Freedman,
1221:Christianity is not a religion that offers the solace of revenge to its adherents. For that you must go to the old women who know which herbs to pluck and what charms to say under a waning moon. ~ Bernard Cornwell,
1222:It should seem that Negroes, of all Americans, would be found in the Free-thought fold, since they have suffered more than any other class of Americans from the dubious blessings of Christianity. ~ Hubert Harrison,
1223:Much of what is called Christianity has more to do with disguising the ego behind the screen of religion and culture than any real movement toward a God beyond the small self, and a new self in God. ~ Richard Rohr,
1224:No one expects this nation to become a theocracy, where Christianity is the only value, but we do indeed say that the essential values and founding principles of the nation should not be ignored. ~ D James Kennedy,
1225:The fourth rule is: "Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules." You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity. ~ Saul Alinsky,
1226:Christianity was from the beginning, essentially and fundamentally, life's nausea and disgust with life, merely concealed behind, masked by, dressed up as, faith in "another" or "better" life. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche,
1227:Far from being an aberration that is not representative of Christianity, the persecution of heretics follows logically from the connection of faith and salvation as presented by Jesus in the Gospels. ~ Shadia Drury,
1228:if you think Lone Ranger Christianity is acceptable to God, you need to read the New Testament again. It’s time for millions of church members to connect relationally by getting involved in a group. ~ Thom S Rainer,
1229:Islam developed in opposition to orthodox Christianity from the very start, and it considers itself superior to Christianity. So far, it has only been tolerant in places where it is in the minority. ~ Walter Kasper,
1230:Perhaps as good a classification as any of the main types is that of the three lusts distinguished by traditional Christianity - the lust of knowledge, the lust of sensation, and the lust of power. ~ Irving Babbitt,
1231:...The conversation had become unreal since Christianity had entered it. Ronny approved of religion as long as it endorsed the National Anthem, but he objected when it attempted to influence his life. ~ E M Forster,
1232:The gospel is not just the A-B-C's but the A-Z of Christianity. The gospel is not just the minimum required doctrine necessary to enter the kingdom, but the way we make all progress in the kingdom. ~ Timothy Keller,
1233:the history of Protestantism is very great. It presents like no other of Luther's writings the central thought of Christianity, the justification of the sinner for the sake of Christ's merits alone. ~ Martin Luther,
1234:They [muslims] are chopping off heads in Syria. Christianity is under siege. I'm Protestant, Presbyterian, and I'm proud of it. Other religions frankly are banding together, we need to band together. ~ Donald Trump,
1235:We are told that Christ was killed for us, that His death has washed out our sins, and that by dying He disabled death itself. That is the formula. That is Christianity. That is what has to be believed. ~ C S Lewis,
1236:Christendom has had a series of revolutions and in each one of them Christianity has died. Christianity has died many times and risen again; for it had a God who knew the way out of the grave. ~ Gilbert K Chesterton,
1237:Christianity isn't dead. It still has the capacity to scare people. It still gives people the creeps, which means there is still some power behind the religion, as sort of watered down as it can be. ~ Tucker Carlson,
1238:Everyone is groping and grasping,” he says. “People are turning to Buddhism, Christianity, self-help, and Taoism. CEOs and billionaires run around with their spiritual masters and visit meditation rooms. ~ Anonymous,
1239:In Bach there is still too much crude Christianity, crude Germanism, crude scholasticism; he stands on the threshold of European (modern) music, but he looks back from there to the Middle Ages. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche,
1240:...I really want to believe. I find the goodies offered by Christianity extremely attractive. But I am damned (again!) if I am going to sell my evolutionary birthright for a mess of religious pottage. ~ Michael Ruse,
1241:the church has allowed itself to become dangerously polarized into two camps: politicized and privatized views of faith. The problem is, neither view has anything to do with historic Christianity. ~ Charles W Colson,
1242:The national government...will maintain and defend the foundations on which the power of our nation rests. It will offer strong protection to Christianity as the very basis of our collective morality. ~ Adolf Hitler,
1243:We are forbidden to neglect the assembling of ourselves together. Christianity is already institutional in the earliest of its documents. The Church is the Bride of Christ. We are members of one another. ~ C S Lewis,
1244:You have to realize that, compared with the Korean brand of Confucianism, Christianity is a walk in the park. Compared with what came before, Protestantism is almost a freaking liberation theology. ~ Gary Shteyngart,
1245:Christianity is usually called a religion. As a religion it has had a wider geographic spread and is more deeply rooted among more peoples than any other religion in the history of mankind. ~ Kenneth Scott Latourette,
1246:Christianity taught that men ought to be as chaste as pagans thought honest women ought to be; the contraceptive morality teaches that women need to be as little chaste as pagans thought men need be. ~ G E M Anscombe,
1247:Christianity taught the capacity, the element, to love the All-perfect without a stingy bargain for personal happiness. It taught that to love Him was happiness;--to love Him in others' virtues. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson,
1248:He felt that Christianity, like almost all forms of superstition, made men weaker and more resigned, and that the point was not to await some reward in the sky but to fight for one’s rights on earth. ~ Isabel Allende,
1249:Hymns of today that may be sung by people who know the thought of the age...are not afraid that any truth of science will destroy Christianity, or any revolution will overthrow the Kingdom of Heaven. ~ Henry Van Dyke,
1250:In requiring this candor and simplicity of mind in those who would investigate the truth of our religion, Christianity demands nothing more than is readily conceded to every branch of human science. ~ Simon Greenleaf,
1251:I've got some repenting to do. I doubt, however, that those who have wedded Christianity with laissez-faire capitalism will see things this way. I can just hear them saying, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” ~ Tony Campolo,
1252:Modern man has lost any sense of God's nearness, but Christianity teaches that God reveals himself through every single thing he has ever brought into being, whether a created object or historical event. ~ R C Sproul,
1253:No account of the Renaissance can be complete without some notice of the attempt made by certain Italian scholars of the fifteenth century to reconcile Christianity with the religion of ancient Greece. ~ Walter Pater,
1254:Putting on Christ'...is not one among many jobs a Christian has to do; and it is not a sort of special exercise for the top class. It is the whole of Christianity. Christianity offers nothing else at all. ~ C S Lewis,
1255:Rauschenbusch rejected the usual religious emphasis on matters of piety, metaphysics, and the supernatural, interpreting Christianity instead as a spirit of brotherhood made manifest in social ethics. ~ Taylor Branch,
1256:When people give their lives to liberate others as Jesus did, they are realizing the true Christianity that Martin Luther King, Jr., Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and other Christian voices have called for. ~ Timothy J Keller,
1257:While other worldviews lead us to sit in the midst of life’s joys, foreseeing the coming sorrows, Christianity empowers its people to sit in the midst of this world’s sorrows, tasting the coming joy. ~ Timothy Keller,
1258:A key difference between Christianity and Islam is that Muslims believe that the Koran contains verbatim the word of God; it is written in the imperative. This precludes a comparison with Christianity. ~ Geert Wilders,
1259:Christian bashing is alive and well on college and university campuses also. In fact, it's ever more direct and overt because Christianity is not 'politically correct.' Never has been. Never will be. ~ D James Kennedy,
1260:Christianity ... that musty old theology, which already has its grave clothes on, and is about to be buried... A wall of Bible, brimstone, church and corruption has hitherto hemmed women into nothingness. ~ Lucy Stone,
1261:I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ: I therefore hate the corrupt, slaveholding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land. ~ Frederick Douglass,
1262:It seems to me that nothing would be more foolish than to re-establish the worship of Wotan. Our old mythology ceased to be viable when Christianity implanted itself. Nothing dies unless it is moribund. ~ Adolf Hitler,
1263:Once Christianity is no longer seen as part and parcel of patriotism, the church must offer more than “What would Jesus do?” moralism and the “I vote values” populism to which we’ve grown accustomed. ~ Russell D Moore,
1264:Truth can stand by itself...If there be but one right [religion], and [Christianity] that one, we should wish to see the nine hundred and ninety-nine wandering sects gathered into the fold of truth. ~ Thomas Jefferson,
1265:A billion hours ago, modern Homo sapiens emerged. A billion minutes ago, Christianity began. A billion seconds ago, the IBM personal computer was released. A billion Google searches ago… was this morning. ~ Laszlo Bock,
1266:As I read him [Jung], he announces the end of an era of Christianity and the beginning of another. The era of belief is over, and the era of experience - long foreshadowed by the mystics - has just begun. ~ David Tacey,
1267:A tree is known by its fruit; or, as we say, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. When we Christians behave badly, or fail to behave well, we are making Christianity unbelievable to the outside world. ~ C S Lewis,
1268:If you take Christ out of Christianity, Christianity is dead. If you remove grace out of the gospel, the gospel is gone. If the people do not like the doctrine of grace, give them all the more of it. ~ Charles Spurgeon,
1269:If you wish to assured of the truth of Christianity, try it. Believe, and if thy belief be right, that insight which gradually transmutes faith into knowledge will be the reward of thy belief. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge,
1270:I think that the core doctrines of Christianity - the incarnation, the resurrection, life after death-these are as strong as ever. In fact, the belief in life after death has increased in this century. ~ Andrew Greeley,
1271:The best thing is to let Christianity gradually fade out,” he said in October of that year. “A long phase-out has something conciliatory. The dogma of Christianity will collapse in the face of science. ~ Volker Ullrich,
1272:The human race in the course of time has taken the liberty of softening and softening Christianity until at last we have contrived to make it exactly the opposite of what it is in the New Testament. ~ Soren Kierkegaard,
1273:The same means that have supported every other popular belief have supported Christianity. War, imprisonment, and falsehood; deeds of unexampled and incomparable atrocity have made it what it is. ~ Percy Bysshe Shelley,
1274:This very individualistic form of Protestant Christianity that became so basic in English and then American life is to a large degree responsible for the historical success of Britain and America. ~ Walter Russell Mead,
1275:While other worldviews lead us to sit in the midst of life’s joys, foreseeing the coming sorrows, Christianity empowers its people to sit in the midst of this world’s sorrows, tasting the coming joy. ~ Timothy J Keller,
1276:An enforced uniformity of religion throughout a nation or civil state, confounds the civil and religious, denies the principles of Christianity and civility, and that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh. ~ Roger Williams,
1277:if I’d have to convert. It would upset my parents, but at least it would upset both of them equally. Dad would feel I’d chosen a form of Christianity, and Mimmy would be equally certain that I hadn’t. ~ Joshilyn Jackson,
1278:I'm not going to get in to an argument with anyone about the relative merits of Judaism and Christianity, and what it means for a Jewish kid to be a Christian - I'm just not interested in that argument. ~ T Bone Burnett,
1279:I often think that woman is more free in Islam than in Christianity. Woman is more protected by Islam than by the faith which preaches monogamy. In AI Quran the law about woman is juster and more liberal. ~ Annie Besant,
1280:....it is of the very essence of Christianity to face suffering and death not because they are good, not because they have meaning, but because the resurrection of Jesus has robbed them of their meaning. ~ Thomas Merton,
1281:To me, every dirty act was simply a sacrament of sin, a passionately religious protest against Christianity, which was for me the symbol of all vileness, meanness, treachery, falsehood and oppression. ~ Aleister Crowley,
1282:Broadly speaking, however, Christianity is a universal church originating in a germ that was alien to the society in which it played its part, while Islam originated in a germ that was indigenous. ~ Arnold Joseph Toynbee,
1283:Christianity has been successfully attacked and marginalized… because those who professed belief were unable to defend the faith from attack, even though its attackers’ arguments were deeply flawed. ~ William Wilberforce,
1284:If someone dies as a child, they go to heaven. But, as an adult, he made a choice of accepting Christianity, so, that's not apostacy. If he was a Muslim as an adult, then changed, that would be apostacy. ~ Anjem Choudary,
1285:If we were to set out to establish a religion in polar opposition to the Beatitudes Jesus taught, it would look strikingly similar to the pop Christianity that has taken over the airwaves of North America. ~ Tony Campolo,
1286:It was only after meeting “Smiling Jim” Trepomena of Knights of Christianity United in Faith that Atlanta discovered that both male supremacy and orgasms were part of the International Communist Conspiracy. ~ Robert Shea,
1287:Nietzsche, who called alcohol and Christianity “the two great European narcotics,” was not averse to the therapeutic use of cannabis. “To escape from unbearable pressure you need hashish,” Nietzsche wrote. ~ Martin A Lee,
1288:The greatest danger to Christianity is, I contend, not heresies, heterodoxies, not atheists, not profane secularism – no, but the kind of orthodoxy which is cordial drivel, mediocrity served up sweet. ~ S ren Kierkegaard,
1289:The next decade cannot be a decade of confrontation and contention. It cannot be east vs. West. It cannot be men vs. women. It cannot be Islam vs. Christianity. That is what the enemies of dialogue want. ~ Benazir Bhutto,
1290:Theres some inherently unique characteristics of Christianity, the chief of which is that Christianity teaches that we are saved by what Christ has done for us, instead of we are saved by what we do for God. ~ Max Lucado,
1291:A lot of people think Christianity is about always being perfect. It's actually the opposite of that. It's realizing that we're all humans, and that's why God sent his Son to this earth - to save people. ~ Billy Ray Cyrus,
1292:As an atheist evolving to agnosticism, and seeking answers to whether or not belief in God is potentially rational, my life was turned upside down 35 years ago by reading C. S. Lewis's Mere Christianity. ~ Francis Collins,
1293:Atheists have just as much civil right to teach atheism as Christians have to teach Christianity; agnostics have just as much right to teach agnosticism as Christians have to teach their religion. ~ William Jennings Bryan,
1294:Christianity did not come with tidings of great joy, but with a message of eternal grief. It came with the threat of everlasting torture on its lips. It meant war on earth and perdition hereafter. ~ Robert Green Ingersoll,
1295:I dont agree with those who think that the conflict is simply between two religions, namely Christianity and Islam... To me, the key conflict is between irrational blind faith and rational, logical minds. ~ Taslima Nasrin,
1296:In naturalism, man is actually very insignificant, but arrogates to himself stupendous power. In Christianity, man is actually the apex of created significance, but is called to see it in abject humility. ~ Ravi Zacharias,
1297:In point of fact, Western philosophy has never set itself free of Christianity: wherever Christianity did not have a hand in the construction of modern philosophy it served instead as a stumbling block. ~ Jacques Maritain,
1298:It is theologically and anthropologically important for woman to be at the center of Christianity. Through Mary, and the other holy women, the feminine element stands at the heart of the Christian religion. ~ Benedict XVI,
1299:Our society is the product of several great religious and philosophical traditions. The ideas of the Greeks and Romans, Christianity, Judaism, humanism and the Enlightenment have made us who we are. ~ Jan Peter Balkenende,
1300:A Christianity that does not have as its primary focus the deepening of passions for God is a false Christianity, no matter how zealously it seeks conversions or how forcefully it advocates righteous behavior. ~ J D Greear,
1301:In relation to Monotheism considered as such, Judaism stabilized but “confiscated” the Message; Christianity universalized but “altered” it; Islam in turn restored it by stabilizing and universalizing it. ~ Frithjof Schuon,
1302:Just as a flower is made only of non-flower elements, Buddhism is made only of non-Buddhist elements, including Christian ones, and Christianity is made of non-Christian elements, including Buddhist ones. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh,
1303:More than Christianity, the religion of Victorian times was a belief in human advance - the conviction that freed from ignorance and superstition, humanity could expand its power and be master of its destiny. ~ John N Gray,
1304:The ancient traditions, even Christianity, say God is Love. There is symmetry here. The fundamental step where you get into this transcendent state is this feeling of ebullience, love and caring and unity. ~ Edgar Mitchell,
1305:The danger is not Islam or Christianity or any other religion. It is the human heart—the capacity we all have for evil. All human institutions with a lust for power give their utopian visions divine sanction ~ Chris Hedges,
1306:When Christianity is assumed to be an "answer" that makes the world intelligible, it reflects an accommodated church committed to assuring Christians that the way things are is the way things have to be. ~ Stanley Hauerwas,
1307:why cannot you simply take what is good in Christianity, what you can define as valuable, what you can comprehend, and leave all the rest, all the absolute dogmas that are in their nature incomprehensible? ~ G K Chesterton,
1308:As for the status of Western Christianity, we are in a place where our task is to redefine the primary symbols of our faith or tradition in a more human direction. That's the thing I spend my time doing. ~ John Shelby Spong,
1309:Being no bigot myself, I am disposed to indulge the professors of Christianity in the church that road to heaven which to them shall seem the most direct, plainest, easiest and least liable to exception. ~ George Washington,
1310:Christianity, above all, consoles; but there are naturally happy souls who do not need consolation. Consequently Christianity begins by making such souls unhappy, for otherwise it would have no power over them. ~ Andre Gide,
1311:Christianity does not think of man finally submitting to the power of God, it thinks of Him as finally surrendering to the love of God. It is not that man's will is crushed, but that man's heart is broken. ~ William Barclay,
1312:...it was born out of habits of mind produced by Christianity: that if you sacrificed yourself you would somehow attain the object of your desires. It was a knife of an idea, a cruel instrument of sacrifice... ~ Peter Carey,
1313:One of Christianity’s key contributions to Western civilization was to give men and women a sense of freedom from the whims of fate, a hope for life after death because of the victory of Jesus Christ. And ~ Charles J Chaput,
1314:What is Christianity all about? It is about an intimate relationship with God. And I HATE a christendom, a churchianity that God is not big enough and glorious enough so that we have to give them other things. ~ Paul Washer,
1315:But Christianity is a queer business! If at the outset we try to do anything, we get nothing; if we seek to attain something, we miss everything. For Christianity begins not with a big DO, but with a big DONE. ~ Watchman Nee,
1316:Christianity was an epidemic rather than a religion. It appealed to fear, hysteria and ignorance. It spread across the Western world, not because it was true, but because humans are gullible and superstitious. ~ Colin Wilson,
1317:More probably, foolish preachers, by always telling you how much Christianity will help you and how good it is for society, have actually led you to forget that Christianity is not a patent medicine. Christianity ~ C S Lewis,
1318:This vision of life is deeply centered in God, the sacred. So it was for Jesus. So it is in all of the enduring religions of the world. What makes Christianity Christian is centering in God as known in Jesus. ~ Marcus J Borg,
1319:Whenever we are tempted to despair about the shape of American Christianity, we should remember that Jesus never promised the triumph of the American church. He promised the triumph of the church. . ~ Russell D Moore,
1320:Human experience always contains both pain and joy. One of the reasons we can be confident that Christianity is actually true is it allows us to make sense of both aspects of the world. Of both beauty and pain. ~ Holly Ordway,
1321:In Destroyer of the gods I focus on several major features of early Christianity that made it distinctive, even odd or bizarre .We don't today realize just how different early Christianity was in that context. ~ Larry Hurtado,
1322:The essential message of Judaism and Christianity is that life is not an end in itself. Life is to be a means—to goodness, to sanctity, and to God. The belief in life as an end in itself is a form of idolatry. ~ Dennis Prager,
1323:The problem with Christianity is more people profess the truth than live it. So much hypocrisy abounds that I can no longer say I count myself among them without being held to the same unachievable standard. ~ Shannon L Alder,
1324:The seeds of who I am now had been planted. "Fools aren't born," I wrote in my notebook one day during ethics class. "They are watered and grown like weeds by institutions such as Christianity." ~ Marilyn Manson,
1325:America's problem isn't too much religion or too little of it. It's bad religion: the slow-motion collapse of traditional Christianity and the rise of a variety of destructive pseudo-Christianities in its place. ~ Ross Douthat,
1326:I could not help but think that somewhere along the way we had missed what is radical about our faith and replaced it with what is comfortable. We were settling for a Christianity that revolves around catering to ~ David Platt,
1327:In the minds of most people, Christianity is supposed to be about love of God and neighbor (even though it is true that at the heart of Christianity does not lie human love at all, but God’s love for humanity24 ~ Miroslav Volf,
1328:Is this idea of the non-fruit bearing Christian something that we have concocted in order to make Christianity 'easier?' ...so that we can follow our own course while still calling ourselves followers of Christ? ~ Francis Chan,
1329:It is largely because the free-thinkers, as a school, have hardly made up their minds whether they want to be more optimist or more pessimist than Christianity that their small but sincere movement has failed. ~ G K Chesterton,
1330:It is much to be lamented that a man of Franklin's general good character and great influence should have been an unbeliever in Christianity, and also have done as much as he did to make others unbelievers. ~ Benjamin Franklin,
1331:It is theologically and anthropologically important for woman to be at the center of Christianity. Through Mary, and the other holy women, the feminine element stands at the heart of the Christian religion. ~ Pope Benedict XVI,
1332:P. T. Forsyth’s book Positive Preaching and the Modern Mind. These are its opening words: ‘It is, perhaps, an overbold beginning, but I will venture to say that with its preaching Christianity stands or falls. ~ John R W Stott,
1333:The pens sharpen – Islamophobia! No such thing. Primitive Middle Eastern religions (and most others) are much the same – Islam, Christianity and Judaism all define themselves through disgust for women's bodies. ~ Polly Toynbee,
1334:We live in an age in which only one prejudice is tolerated - anti-Christian bigotry... Today, the only group you can hold up to public mockery is Christians. Attacks on the Church and Christianity are common. ~ D James Kennedy,
1335:Christianity has operated with an unmitigated arrogance and cruelty - necessarily, since a religion ordinarily imposes on those who have discovered the true faith the spiritual duty of liberating the infidels. ~ James A Baldwin,
1336:Enemy-occupied territory---that is what this world is. Christianity is the story of how the rightful king has landed, you might say landed in disguise, and is calling us to take part in a great campaign of sabotage. ~ C S Lewis,
1337:The Christian is a [person] of joy... A gloomy Christian is a contradiction of terms, and nothing in all religious history has done Christianity more harm than its connection with black clothes and long faces. ~ William Barclay,
1338:The dogma of the Incarnation is the most dramatic thing about Christianity, and indeed, the most dramatic thing that ever entered the mind of man; but if you tell people so, they stare at you in bewilderment. ~ Dorothy L Sayers,
1339:The great enemy of the salvation of man, in my opinion, never invented a more effective means of limiting Christianity from the world than by persuading mankind that it was improper to read the Bible at schools. ~ Benjamin Rush,
1340:Are we not the clay and God the potter? When he refuses to conform to our wills, do we discard him? If you are looking for a religion centered around yourself, Ben, I must agree that Christianity is a poor choice. ~ Randy Alcorn,
1341:Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn't argue with that; I'm right and I will be proved right. We're more popular than Jesus now; I don't know which will go first - rock and roll or Christianity. ~ John Lennon,
1342:I don’t think people realize how fucking weird Christianity is if you’re not raised around it. But, hey, it got me off time-out. And, who knows, maybe a billion white people can’t be wrong and it’s all really true. ~ Eddie Huang,
1343:It has been said that in the New Testament doctrine is grace, and ethics is gratitude; and something is wrong with any form of Christianity in which, experimentally and practically, this saying is not being verified. ~ Anonymous,
1344:...like a magnetic compass turning north, I always tried to head in the direction of the better, which is the direction to God. ...the directions that appeared to lead away from Christianity led me deeper into it. ~ Huston Smith,
1345:Who does not see that the same authority which can establish Christianity, in exclusion of all other Religions, may establish with the same ease any particular sect of Christians, in exclusion of all other Sects? ~ James Madison,
1346:Christianity at any given time is strong or weak depending upon her concept of God. And I insist upon this and I have said it many times, that the basic trouble with the Church today is her unworthy conception of God. ~ A W Tozer,
1347:Christianity is founded upon the law of forgiveness - Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the Karmic law, and the Christ within each man is his Redeemer and Salvation from all inharmonious conditions. ~ Florence Scovel Shinn,
1348:Enemy-occupied territory—that is what this world is. Christianity is the story of how the rightful king has landed, you might say landed in disguise, and is calling us all to take part in a great campaign of sabotage. ~ C S Lewis,
1349:Far from God seeking to destroy the "self" as many distortions of Christianity would claim, God redeems the self. He heals the self so that it may be useful and fulfilled in the mission to which the person is called. ~ R C Sproul,
1350:Made no mistake: America is a Christian nation. The bedrock of our theo-democracy is our Judeo-Christian values. that term, by the way, is a bit of a misnomer. It implies that Christianity and Judaism are equal. ~ Stephen Colbert,
1351:Most of us are not really approaching the subject [scriptures] in order to find out what Christianity says: we are approaching it [them] in the hope of finding support from Christianity for the views of our own party. ~ C S Lewis,
1352:My goal is to destroy Christianity as a world religion and be a recatalyst for the movement of Jesus Christ ... Some people are upset with me because it sounds like I'm anti-Christian. I think they might be right. ~ Erwin McManus,
1353:The essence of Christianity consists therein: that the creation of the Father, destroyed by sin, is again restored in the death of the Son of God and recreated by the grace of the Holy Spirit to a Kingdom of God. ~ Herman Bavinck,
1354:The philosopher will ask himself ... if the criticism we are now suggesting is not the philosophy which presses to the limit that criticism of false gods which Christianity has introduced into our history. ~ Maurice Merleau Ponty,
1355:Christianity also stands in opposition to intellectual, as well as physical, health. To doubt becomes sin. 'Faith means not wanting to know what it true' a description that strikes me as stunning and quite exact. ~ Robert Sheaffer,
1356:Christianity . . . dispelled the mysteries. Christ was the product and reformer of a patriarchal, nomadic, pastoral religion, whose prophets represented their Messiah as a being of absolute divine origin. P. 135 ~ Carl Gustav Jung,
1357:Christianity is not a system of ideas. It is a love relationship with God. It is intimate friendship with the King of kings, who is our loving Father, our Savior the lover of our souls, and His ever-present Spirit. ~ Sylvia Gunter,
1358:If I had said that I didn’t want to know if Christianity was true, David would not have pursued our conversations any further. He had long before realized that people who want to avoid the truth usually succeeded. ~ Nabeel Qureshi,
1359:Strange Christianity, whose most pressing anxiety seems to be that God’s grace might prove to be all too free on this side, that hell, instead of being populated with so many people, might some day prove to be empty! ~ Slavoj i ek,
1360:There are people who want to make men's lives more difficult for no other reason than the chance it provides them afterwards to offer their prescription for alleviating life; their Christianity, for instance. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche,
1361:There’s an irony: the passionate defense of the Bible as a “history book” among the more conservative wings of Christianity, despite intentions, isn’t really an act of submission to God; it is making God submit to us. ~ Peter Enns,
1362:Up until today evil has lured goodness into evil, but goodness has not been able to lure evil into goodness. This may be the reason why up to today Christianity has not been able to boldly fulfill the Will of God. ~ Sun Myung Moon,
1363:We see that it is not the task of Christianity to provide easy answers to every question, but to make us progressively aware of a mystery. God is not so much the object of our knowledge as the cause of our wonder. ~ Kallistos Ware,
1364:While other creeds endeavor to get us out of the world and into heaven, in Christianity, heaven comes down and Christ comes into this world to get us. To suffer with us. We find favor —only because Christ feels pain. ~ Ann Voskamp,
1365:For a religious leader to question a person's faith is disgraceful. I'm proud to be a Christian, and as president, I will not allow Christianity to be consistently attacked and weakened, unlike what is happening now. ~ Donald Trump,
1366:Galen's observations reflect one of the distinctive features of early Christianity. Roman-era religion was mainly about ritual actions vis-à-vis the gods, and there was little to do with ordering behavior otherwise. ~ Larry Hurtado,
1367:Only a country that is based upon an extremely primitive religion, which is Christianity, I am a devoted enemy of monotheism in all of its forms, could have come with a categorizing of people as one thing or the other. ~ Gore Vidal,
1368:The distinction between the religious and secular orders is a fundamental aspect of Christianity. This distinction is an innovation compared to Islam and Judaism, and it is an advantage that has helped shape Europe. ~ Walter Kasper,
1369:There is a great gulf between the Christianity that wrestles with whether to worship at the cost of imprisonment and death, and the Christianity that wrestles with whether the kids should play soccer on Sunday morning. ~ John Piper,
1370:We usually speak of the Jewish-Christian civilization - perhaps, the time has come, especially with regard to the Middle East conflict, to talk about the Jewish-Muslim civilization as an axis opposed to Christianity. ~ Slavoj Zizek,
1371:What role have I left for religion? None. And I have left none because the Gospel of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ leaves none. Christianity is not a religion; it is the announcement of the end of religion. ~ Robert Farrar Capon,
1372:While some who downplay Christ's divinity have imagined Jesus as a great social worker 'being kind to old ladies, small dogs and little children,' orthodox Christianity has not wanted Jesus to have a political message. ~ N T Wright,
1373:You can laugh at Christianity; you can mock and ridicule it. But it works. It changes lives. If you trust Christ, start watching your attitudes and actions, because Jesus Christ is in the business of changing lives. ~ Josh McDowell,
1374:Baptists have long upheld the ideal of a free church in a free state. And from the beginning, they believed that forcing a person to worship against his will violated the principles of both Christianity and civility. ~ George W Bush,
1375:Even though most people who reject Christianity treat it as a refuge for enemies of reason, the truth is that there may be no worldview in the history of the human race that has a higher regard for the laws of logic. ~ Ronald H Nash,
1376:If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end: if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth—only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin with and, in the end, despair. —from Mere Christianity ~ C S Lewis,
1377:If you take away the Jewish contribution to Christianity, there would be no Christianity. Judaism does not need Christianity to explain its existence; Christianity, however, cannot explain its existence without Judaism. ~ John Hagee,
1378:I think when religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism - as well as Christianity and Judaism - were founded, at that time societies were generally male-dominated. So, therefore this social notion also influenced religion. ~ Dalai Lama,
1379:It is largely because the free-thinkers, as a school, have hardly made up their minds whether they want to be more optimist or more pessimist than Christianity that their small but sincere movement has failed. ~ Gilbert K Chesterton,
1380:Lenin, Stalin, and Rakosi recognized that a renewed and purified Christianity was the only force that could move the masses as powerfully as the Marxist ideal could. They attacked it as the enemy that it was and is. ~ Charles Colson,
1381:The people look forbidding, solemn, marked by that impossible ideal, Communism, which, like Christianity, seemed to demand too much of humanity and, falling into the wrong hands, led too easily to horrible brutality. ~ John Mortimer,
1382:There are many definite methods, honest and dishonest, which make people rich; the only instinct I know of which does it is that instinct which theological Christianity crudely describes as the sin of avarice. ~ Gilbert K Chesterton,
1383:To think that humans evolved from lower species BUT the evolutionary process somehow came to a halt and we all arrived at the finish line simultaneously is to embrace a fiction possibly more implausible than Christianity. ~ Jim Goad,
1384:Christianity has such a contemptible opinion of human nature that it does not believe a man can tell the truth unless frightened by a belief in god. No lower opinion of the human race has ever been expressed. ~ Robert Green Ingersoll,
1385:Christianity is more than history; it is also a system of truths. Every event which its history records, either is a truth, or suggests a truth, or expresses a truth which man needs to assent to or to put into practice. ~ Noah Porter,
1386:Christianity that was described as “mysterious, wonderful, spontaneous, producing perception, establishing essentials, for the salvation of creatures and the benefit of man.” This was Jingjiao, the “luminous teaching ~ Philip Jenkins,
1387:Christianity without the living Jesus Christ remains necessarily a Christianity without discipleship; and a Christianity without discipleship is always a Christianity without Jesus Christ. It is an idea, a myth. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer,
1388:I delighted in the music of Africa, the earliest of the slave plantation songs, the transformation into Christianity and all that Christianity brought to the lives of the Africans who were forced to come to America. ~ Harry Belafonte,
1389:Is the Christianity we have been living out in our families, congregations, and communities a means of deeper conversion, or does it function as a vaccination against taking faith with the seriousness the Gospel demands? ~ Rod Dreher,
1390:It was by his death that he wished above all else to be remembered. There is then, it is safe to say, no Christianity without the cross. If the cross is not central to our religion, ours is not the religion of Jesus. ~ John R W Stott,
1391:The fact that the Catholic Church has come to an agreement with Fascist Italy ... proves beyond doubt that the Fascist world of ideas is closer to Christianity than those of Jewish liberalism or even atheistic Marxism. ~ Adolf Hitler,
1392:The man who takes no count of what is fair, friendly, pure, unselfish, lovely, gracious,—where is his claim to call Jesus his master? where his claim to Christianity? What saves his claim from being merest mockery? ~ George MacDonald,
1393:There’s an irony: the passionate defense of the Bible as a “history book” among the more conservative wings of Christianity, despite intentions, isn’t really an act of submission to God; it is making God submit to us. In ~ Peter Enns,
1394:Dangerous Helpfulness. There are people who want to make men's lives more difficult for no other reason than afterwards to offer them their prescriptions for making life easier -- their Christianity, for example. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche,
1395:Like Bauer, Feuerbach in The Essence of Christianity characterized religion as a form of alienation. God, he wrote, is to be understood as the essence of the human species, externalized and projected into an alien reality. ~ Anonymous,
1396:The reason I like socialism is that it's kind of enforced Christianity. It's basically very Christian, in the sense of "do unto others as you would have them do unto you." These people have nothing, so you have to share. ~ Lewis Black,
1397:Buddhism is a hundred times as realistic as Christianity it is part of its living heritage that it is able to face problems objectively and coolly; it is the product of long centuries of philosophical speculation. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche,
1398:How we think about God matters. It affects the credibility of religion in general and of Christianity in particular. Our concept of God can make God seem real or unreal, just as it can also make God seem remote or near. ~ Marcus J Borg,
1399:If you were born in Arkansas and you think Christianity is true and Islam false, knowing full well that you would think the opposite if you had been born in Afghanistan, you are the victim of childhood indoctrination. ~ Richard Dawkins,
1400:I know Christianity; and I know I have to move away from it and approach Jesus Christ on my own. I have to talk to Him directly and seek His guidance and protection as I seek to make my commitment to Him central to my life. ~ Anne Rice,
1401:In the bosom of the Church today, 'integralists' are those who do not understand that Christianity needs a new theology, and 'progressives' are those who do not understand that the new theology must be Christian. ~ Nicol s G mez D vila,
1402:I've said this before, and I know this raises questions in the minds of some evangelicals. I do not believe that my mother, who never formally embraced Christianity as far as I know ... I do not believe she went to hell. ~ Barack Obama,
1403:I was born Jewish and so I remain, even if that's unacceptable for many. For me, the vocation of Israel is bringing light to the goyim. That's my hope and I believe that Christianity is the means for achieving it. ~ Jean Marie Lustiger,
1404:Remember this: you must always be growing in the gospel and your knowledge of it. It is not Christianity 101, but Christianity from A to Z. You have not mastered the gospel, nor will you master it, but it will master you! ~ Paul Washer,
1405:The most serious Christians have always been well disposed towards me. I myself, an opponent of Christianity - de rigueur, am far from bearing a grudge against the individual for what is the fatality of millennia. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche,
1406:This book is written for those who want more Jesus. It is for those who are bored with what American Christianity offers. It is for those who don't want to plateau, those who would rather die before their convictions do. ~ Francis Chan,
1407:This is the stunning message of Christianity: Jesus died for you so that he might live in you. Jesus doesn’t merely improve your old nature; he imparts to you an entirely new nature—one that is completely united with his. ~ David Platt,
1408:3. Exclusivism: This position teaches that the central claims of biblically faithful Christianity are true. Correspondingly, where the teachings of other religions conflict with these claims, they must necessarily be false. ~ D A Carson,
1409:Belief in heaven and hell is a big deal in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and some forms of doctrinaire Buddhism. For the rest of us it's simply meaningless. We don't live in order to die, we live in order to live. ~ Ursula K Le Guin,
1410:From every point of view, therefore, the problem in question is the most serious concern of the Church. What is the relation between Christianity and modern culture; may Christianity be maintained in a scientific age? ~ J Gresham Machen,
1411:I ... am endeavoring ... to attend to my own duty only as a Christian. ... let us take care that our Christianity, though put to the test ... be not shaken, and that our love for things really good wax not cold. ~ William Samuel Johnson,
1412:Of all the systems of religion that ever were invented, there is no more derogatory to the Almighty, more unedifiying to man, more repugnant to reason, and more contradictory to itself than this thing called Christianity. ~ Thomas Paine,
1413:The Mosaic religion had been a Father religion; Christianity became a Son religion. The old God, the Father, took second place; Christ, the Son, stood in His stead, just as in those dark times every son had longed to do. ~ Sigmund Freud,
1414:We believe that the very beginning and end of salvation, and the sum of Christianity, consists of faith in Christ, who by His blood alone, and not by any works of ours, has put away sin, and destroyed the power of death. ~ Martin Luther,
1415:When the bishop eventually heard of it there would be trouble, but the bishop had his hands full of more urgent matters at the moment, and Oliver was beginning to think too many church rules got in the way of Christianity. ~ Helen Bryan,
1416:Christianity is a religion of salvation, and the fact is that there is nothing in any of the non-Christian religions to compare with this message of a God who loved, and came after, and died for, a world of lost sinners. ~ John R W Stott,
1417:Ever since I served as an infantryman in the First World War I have had a great dislike of people who, themselves in ease and safety, issue exhortations to men in the front line." C S Lewis, Mere Christianity, Preface, p. xii ~ C S Lewis,
1418:Sincerity is a Christian virtue, as is honesty about our struggles. But my generation needs to realize that Christianity is more than chic fragility, endless self-revelation, and the coolness that comes with authenticity. ~ Kevin DeYoung,
1419:Christianity is, I believe, about expanded life, heightened consciousness and achieving a new humanity. It is not about closed minds, supernatural interventions, a fallen creation, guilt, original sin or divine rescue. ~ John Shelby Spong,
1420:For this remains as I have already pointed out the essential difference between the two religions of decadence : Buddhism promises nothing, but actually fulfils; Christianity promises everything, but fulfils nothing. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche,
1421:Humanity-Religion could only be true if at least half of man’s nature, aspirations and sorrows were ignored. Christianity, on the other hand, at least included and accounted for these, even if it did not explain them. ~ Robert Hugh Benson,
1422:Judaism says, “The Messiah is going to come, and that’s the end of history”; Christianity says, “The Messiah is going to come back, and that’s the end of history”; Islam says, “The Messiah came; history is irrelevant.” One ~ Stewart Brand,
1423:she had wondered if any of his Christianity was true. Had it all been a cover? A way to network and look honest? Or had he truly loved Jesus, but found ways to compartmentalize the sin in his life as so many others did? ~ Terri Blackstock,
1424:The essence of Christianity is told us in the Garden of Eden history. The fruit that was forbidden was on the tree of knowledge. The subtext is, All the suffering you have is because you wanted to find out what was going on. ~ Frank Zappa,
1425:The juice goes out of Christianity when it becomes too based on faith rather than on living like Jesus or seeing the world as Jesus saw it,” he told me. “I think different religions are different doors to the same house. ~ Walter Isaacson,
1426:Christianity brought something new and revolutionary: freedom and unconditional dignity for each individual, regardless of his religion, culture or nationality. But the East and the West have parted ways since the Crusades. ~ Walter Kasper,
1427:Islam, in contrast to Christianity and Buddhism, does not have monasticism; spiritual life, social life, they are all integrated and related together in one way or another. And the Prophet represents that in his life. ~ Seyyed Hossein Nasr,
1428:I think we must fully face the fact that when Christianity does not make a man very much better, it makes him very much worse... Conversion may make of one who was, if no better, no worse than an animal, something like a devil. ~ C S Lewis,
1429:• Maybe attaching your brand name to some singing nuns would work perfectly well. It wouldn’t make any sense, but then neither does Christianity or Harry Potter, neither of which seem to suffer inordinately from the fact. ~ Rory Sutherland,
1430:Some conservative evangelicals write or speak as if the only legitimate form of Christianity is inerrantism. Only a tiny minority throughout church history has held this conviction, and it often proves counterproductive. ~ Craig L Blomberg,
1431:The Christian cannot be satisfied so long as any human activity is either opposed to Christianity or out of connection with Christianity. Christianity must pervade not merely all nations but also all of human thought. ~ John Gresham Machen,
1432:The divinity of Jesus is made a convenient cover for absurdity. Nowhere in the Gospels do we find a precept for Creeds, Confessions, Oaths, Doctrines, and whole carloads of other foolish trumpery that we find in Christianity. ~ John Adams,
1433:This is the rule of most perfect Christianity, its most exact definition, its highest point, namely, the seeking of the common good ... for nothing can so make a person an imitator of Christ as caring for neighbors. ~ Saint John Chrysostom,
1434:Three hundred years after its appearance Christianity was the recognized state religion in the Roman World Empire, and in barely sixty years socialism has won itself a position which makes its victory absolutely certain. ~ Friedrich Engels,
1435:Who killed Christianity in Europe? Was it, as (Max) Weber himself predicted, that the spirit of capitalism was bound to destroy the Protestant ethic parents, as materialism corrupted the original aestheticism of the godly? ~ Niall Ferguson,
1436:Another difficulty with the reservation scheme was that it reinforced the popular association of Christianity with foreign imperialism, and thus with enmity to the nationalism that was rising in the early twentieth century. ~ Philip Jenkins,
1437:Christianity doesn’t deny the reality of suffering and evil… Our hope… is not based on the idea that we are going to be free of pain and suffering. Rather, it is based on the conviction that we will triumph over suffering. ~ Brennan Manning,
1438:Christianity tells people to repent and promises them forgiveness. It therefore has nothing (as far as I know) to say to people who do not know they have done anything to repent of and who do not feel that they need forgiveness. ~ C S Lewis,
1439:During the Roman occupation of Palestine, Christianity was founded by Paul of Tarsus as a less ruthlessly monotheistic sect of Judaism and a less exclusive one, which looked outwards from the Jews to the rest of the world. ~ Richard Dawkins,
1440:How should followers of Jesus relate to people of other religions? Christianity has a nauseating, infuriating, depressing record when it comes to encountering people of other religions. Jesus accepted everyone and so should we. ~ Tim LaHaye,
1441:I believe that the duel between Christianity and atheism is the most important in the world. I further believe that the struggle between individualism and collectivism is the same struggle reproduced on another level. ~ William F Buckley Jr,
1442:I strongly doubt that American Christianity has the foresight or flexibility to embark on new paths of action. It has always been torn between being good and being real and generally chosen to be good. ~ Vine Deloria Jr,
1443:The greatness of Christianity did not lie in attempted negotiations for compromise with any similar philosophical opinions in the ancient world, but in its inexorable fanaticism in preaching and fighting for its own doctrine. ~ Adolf Hitler,
1444:... the history of the race, from infancy through its stages of barbarism, heathenism, civilization, and Christianity, is a process of suffering, as the lower principles of humanity are gradually subjected to the higher. ~ Catharine Beecher,
1445:Well, to be clear, I am a scholar of religions with four degrees, including one in the New Testament and fluency in Biblical Greek who has been studying the origins of Christianity for two decades who also happens to be Muslim. ~ Reza Aslan,
1446:What is clear is that the Gospel of Judas has joined the other spectacular discoveries that are exploding the myth of a monolithic Christianity and showing how diverse and fascinating the early Christian movement really was. ~ Elaine Pagels,
1447:If ideas and beliefs are to be denied validity outside the geographical and cultural bounds of their origin, Buddhism would be confined to north India, Christianity to a narrow tract in the Middle East and Islam to Arabia. ~ Aung San Suu Kyi,
1448:If we toss about the idea of “God in the flesh” as if it were just that thing we believe, we are not tuned in to the shock and even offense that John’s opening lines would have generated. Christianity is a weird religion, folks. ~ Peter Enns,
1449:It is here that we see the dawn of hope: for no matter how formidably Communism bristles with tanks and rockets, no matter what successes it attains in seizing the planet, it is doomed never to vanquish Christianity. ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn,
1450:Paul, in speaking of equality as the very soul and essence of Christianity, said, "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female; for ye are all one in Christ Jesus. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton,
1451:Almost every variation of Christianity had been in the business of suppressing sex and its enjoyment, but suppressed desires didn’t just disappear. They festered. They created guilt and shame and, in the worst cases, deviancy. ~ Sierra Simone,
1452:Being nice to people is, in fact, one of the incidental tenets of Christianity, as opposed to other religions whose tenets are more along the lines of 'kill everyone who doesn't smell bad and doesn't answer to the name Mohammed' ~ Ann Coulter,
1453:Christianity has the rancor of the sick at its very core-the instinct against the healthy, against health. Everything that is well-constructed, proud, gallant and, above all, beautiful gives offense to its ears and eyes. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche,
1454:Christianity is not a set of beliefs or doctrines one believes in order to be a Christian, but rather Christianity is to have one's body shaped, one's habits determined, in such a way that the worship of God is unavoidable. ~ Stanley Hauerwas,
1455:It just seems helpful to admit that Christianity is as complicated and conflicted as any other religion, with groups of followers who can believe in the unity of their faith even as they refuse Communion to one another. ~ Barbara Brown Taylor,
1456:Moral values have been thrown out the window. Christianity is out the window. And that's wrong. Parents should be at home, teaching kids right from wrong, making sure they get a great education so they can be a success in life. ~ Albert Belle,
1457:Perhaps the dominant myth in the evangelical church today is that the success of Christianity depends on how popular it is, and that the kingdom of God and the glory of Christ somehow advance on the back of public favor. ~ John F MacArthur Jr,
1458:We shall do well ever to remember, that Christianity is not a mere speculative theory, that is to inform the mind; but a great practical lesson, to renew the heart, and to bring us back to the state from whence we are fallen. ~ Charles Simeon,
1459:automatic and glorious result of eternal salvation. However, the primary reason God left us on earth after our salvation was for our Christianity to “succeed” right here on this turf. We’re getting by but getting by, was never our ~ Beth Moore,
1460:Christianity, in particular, presents impressive obstacles to thinking intelligently about the nature of the human mind, asserting, as it does, the real existence of individual souls who are subject to the eternal judgment of God. ~ Sam Harris,
1461:Christianity is a life, not a doctrine . . . I'm not saying never doubt or question. The Lord gave you a mind so that you would make honest use of it. I'm saying you must be sure that the doubts and questions are your own. ~ Marilynne Robinson,
1462:The God of Christianity never claims to be fair. He goes beyond fair. The Bible teaches that he decided not to give us what we deserve--that's mercy. In addition, God decided to give us what we don't deserve--we call that grace. ~ Andy Stanley,
1463:The greatest tragedy in the history of Christianity was neither the Crusades nor the Reformation nor the Inquisition, but rather the split that opened up between theology and spirituality at the end of the Middle Ages. ~ Hans Urs von Balthasar,
1464:The ideal of toleration sounds like a formal condition allowing all flowers to bloom, but it turns out on examination to adumbrate a determinate form of life no less intrusive than the Sharia or “fundamentalist” Christianity. ~ Kenneth Minogue,
1465:The question is not, do we go to church; the question is, have we been converted. The crux of Christianity is not whether or not we give donations to popular charities but whether or not we are really committed to the poor. ~ Joan D Chittister,
1466:The truth is that most of our modern values are antithetical to the specific teachings of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. And where we do find these values expressed in our holy books, they are almost never best expressed there. ~ Sam Harris,
1467:Whereas militant Christianity triumphs over all, generative Christianity transforms the world through humble service to all. It is not about victory; it is about following Christ in order to seed human community with grace. ~ Diana Butler Bass,
1468:Christianity satisfies suddenly and perfectly man's ancestral instinct for being the right way up; satisfies it supremely in this, that by its creed Joy becomes something gigantic, and Sadness something special and small. ~ Gilbert K Chesterton,
1469:It is apparent that Christianity and Islam must come, and come immediately, to a closer understanding, and it is equally apparent that their unity if achieved, will be the most effective defensive measure against Communist expansion. ~ Aly Khan,
1470:I’ve heard skeptics satirically summarize the substitutionary atonement approach to Christianity this way: “God sent himself in the form of his own son to sacrifice himself to himself so that he could save humanity from himself. ~ Mike McHargue,
1471:The Christians had then struck back with a decal of a larger fish, labeled “TRUTH,” eating the Darwin fish, which distilled Christianity to its core principle: the ultimate devouring of Science by the giant, horrific Jesus-fish. ~ Robert Kroese,
1472:The Government of the Reich, who regard Christianity as the unshakable foundation of the morals and moral code of the nation, attach the greatest value to friendly relations with the Holy See and are endeavouring to develop them. ~ Adolf Hitler,
1473:The irony of Christianity is that believers get so angry, and self righteous toward other Christians who sin differently than they do. Christianity is like one large fraternity where brother and sisterhood is tested by hazing. ~ Shannon L Alder,
1474:There was reference made to a book written in Greek by a former Rabbi who had been converted to Christianity. There was reference to a publication of a high clergyman of Milan. Not even did Jews raise objections to that book. ~ Julius Streicher,
1475:When the Apostles were taken away, Christianity did not at once break into portions; yet separate localities might begin to be the scene of internal dissensions, and a local arbiter in consequence would be wanted. Christians ~ John Henry Newman,
1476:Another observation, in a former letter of yours, has not escaped my remembrance – the three lessons which a minister has to learn: 1. Humility. 2. Humility. 3. Humility. How long are we learning the true nature of Christianity! ~ Charles Simeon,
1477:Birth control appeals to the advanced radical because it is calculated to undermine the authority of the Christian churches. I look forward to seeing humanity free someday of the tryanny of Christianity no less than Capitalism. ~ Margaret Sanger,
1478:Christianity is saving truth and it’s sanctifying truth, but we believe that it’s Total Truth. It is the truth about every aspect of life from economics to masculinity to marriage. God has the right view on all of these things. ~ Nancy R Pearcey,
1479:I ... having filled my life with the spiritual blessings Christianity gave me, brimful of these blessings and living by them, I, like a child, not understanding them, destroy them -- that is, I wish to destroy that by which I live. ~ Leo Tolstoy,
1480:Many humanists in the West are stirred by a sense of outrage at what professed Christians, past and present, have done; and this makes them see their humanism as a kind of crusade, with the killing of Christianity as its prime goal. ~ J I Packer,
1481:No one who has not examined patiently and honestly the other religions of the world can know what Christianity really is, or can join with such truth and sincerity in the words of St. Paul, "I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ. ~ Max Muller,
1482:Not only did she convert to Christianity, she devoted herself entirely to “a religion rooted in the most ordinary yet subversive practice: a dinner table where everyone is welcome, where the despised and outcasts are honored. ~ Rachel Held Evans,
1483:The main point of Christianity was this: that Nature is not our mother: Nature is our sister. We can be proud of her beauty, since we have the same father; but she has no authority over us; we have to admire, but not to imitate. ~ G K Chesterton,
1484:There is a great difference between Christianity and religion at the south. If a man goes to the communion table, and pays money into the treasury of the church, no matter if it be the price of blood, he is called religious. ~ Harriet Ann Jacobs,
1485:The visitor from outer space made a serious study of Christianity, to learn, if he could, why Christians found it so easy to be cruel. He concluded that at least part of the trouble was slipshod storytelling in the New Testament. ~ Kurt Vonnegut,
1486:This determined bias against religion, especially Christianity, is clearly evident when viewed against the religious heritage of American culture as revealed in the Church of the Holy Trinity v. United States, 143 U.S. 452. 1892. ~ Mathew Staver,
1487:Today we are engaged in a final, all-out battle between communistic atheism and Christianity. The modern champions of communism have selected this as the time, and ladies and gentlemen, the chips are down - they are truly down. ~ Joseph McCarthy,
1488:Twenty percent of Kerala’s population were Syrian Christians, who believed that they were descendants of the one hundred Brahmins whom St. Thomas the Apostle converted to Christianity when he traveled East after the Resurrection. ~ Arundhati Roy,
1489:You would get longer livelier and more frequent letters from me, if it weren't for the Christian religion. How that bell tolling at the end of the garden, dum dum, dum dum, annoys me! Why is Christianity so insistent and so sad? ~ Virginia Woolf,
1490:Because of Christianity the West has missed many things, and one of them is meditation, the rarest flowering of a human being, because they have made it equivalent to contemplation. Contemplation is thinking. Meditation is no-thinking. ~ Rajneesh,
1491:By sacrificing good taste, this worship achieved what Christianity has shirked: the inclusion of merriment. All spirit as well as all matter must participate in salvation, and if practical jokes are banned, the circle is incomplete. ~ E M Forster,
1492:Christianity does not condemn the world. The world has condemned itself when on Calvary it condemned the One who was its true self. “He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not” (Jn. 1:10). ~ Alexander Schmemann,
1493:Christianity has therefore retained a strong hold on the public mind in America... In the United States... Christianity itself is a fact so irresistibly established, that no one undertakes either to attack or to defend it. ~ Alexis de Tocqueville,
1494:Democracy ….[is not]… simply a form of government but an organizing principle that bundles individual freedoms, Christianity, and capitalism into a marketable product carrying with it the unexamined promise of wealth and prosperity. ~ Thomas King,
1495:The central tenet of Christianity as it has come down to us is that we are to reach out when our instinct is to pull inward; to give when we want to take; to love when we are inclined to hate; to include when are tempted to exclude. ~ Jon Meacham,
1496:Until Islam can do what Judaism and Christianity have done—question, critique, interpret, and ultimately modernize its holy scripture—it cannot free Muslims from a host of anachronistic and at times deadly beliefs and practices. ~ Ayaan Hirsi Ali,
1497:Adeline had come to Christianity the same way she had come to sex and smoking:through peer pressure.Thinking about her six kids and her smoker's hack, she wondered if perhaps peer pressure didn't always lead to the best habits. ~ Christopher Moore,
1498:A primary goal of the spiritual life is to learn to quiet the mind through prayer and meditation, through spiritual practice, so that we can hear what in both Judaism and Christianity, is called the small, still voice within. ~ Marianne Williamson,
1499:Christianity has sufficient inner strength to survive and flourish on its own. It does not need state subsidies, nor state privileges, nor state prestige. The more it obtains state support the greater it curtails human freedom. ~ William O Douglas,
1500:Christianity is not a system of philosophy, nor a ritual, nor a code of laws; it is the impartation of a divine vitality. Without the way there is no going, without the truth there is no knowing, without life there is no living. ~ Merrill C Tenney,

IN CHAPTERS [255/255]



   73 Integral Yoga
   41 Occultism
   34 Psychology
   32 Christianity
   27 Philosophy
   13 Science
   8 Yoga
   6 Poetry
   2 Mythology
   1 Thelema
   1 Sufism
   1 Integral Theory
   1 Fiction
   1 Alchemy


   37 Carl Jung
   31 The Mother
   26 Satprem
   21 Sri Aurobindo
   18 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
   17 Nolini Kanta Gupta
   12 Friedrich Nietzsche
   12 Aleister Crowley
   12 Aldous Huxley
   10 A B Purani
   9 Saint Augustine of Hippo
   7 Sri Ramakrishna
   5 Jordan Peterson
   5 James George Frazer
   5 George Van Vrekhem
   2 Swami Vivekananda
   2 Robert Browning
   2 Joseph Campbell
   2 Franz Bardon


   17 Mysterium Coniunctionis
   12 The Perennial Philosophy
   10 Twilight of the Idols
   10 Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo
   10 Aion
   9 City of God
   8 Agenda Vol 08
   7 Let Me Explain
   7 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01
   6 The Secret Doctrine
   6 The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna
   6 The Future of Man
   6 Liber ABA
   5 The Practice of Psycho therapy
   5 The Golden Bough
   5 The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious
   5 Preparing for the Miraculous
   5 Maps of Meaning
   5 Magick Without Tears
   5 Essays In Philosophy And Yoga
   5 Agenda Vol 10
   4 The Red Book Liber Novus
   4 The Bible
   4 Hymn of the Universe
   4 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02
   4 Agenda Vol 09
   3 The Human Cycle
   3 On Thoughts And Aphorisms
   3 Letters On Yoga II
   3 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07
   3 A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah
   2 Thus Spoke Zarathustra
   2 The Hero with a Thousand Faces
   2 Talks
   2 Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness
   2 Questions And Answers 1957-1958
   2 Isha Upanishad
   2 Initiation Into Hermetics
   2 Essays On The Gita
   2 Browning - Poems
   2 Bhakti-Yoga
   2 Agenda Vol 06


0.00a - Introduction, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
  Some of the passages in the book force me today to emphasize that so far as the Qabalah is concerned, it could and should be employed without binding to it the partisan qualities of any one particular religious faith. This goes as much for Judaism as it does for Christianity. Neither has much intrinsic usefulness where this scientific scheme is concerned. If some students feel hurt by this statement, that cannot be helped. The day of most contemporary faiths is over; they have been more of a curse than a boon to mankind. Nothing that I say here, however, should reflect on the peoples concerned, those who accept these religions. They are merely unfortunate. The religion itself is worn out and indeed is dying.
  The Qabalah has nothing to do with any of them. Attempts on the part of cultish-partisans to impart higher mystical meanings, through the Qabalah, etc., to their now sterile faiths is futile, and will be seen as such by the younger generation. They, the flower and love children, will have none of this nonsense.

0.00 - INTRODUCTION, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
   The Christian missionaries gave the finishing touch to the process of transformation. They ridiculed as relics of a barbarous age the images and rituals of the Hindu religion. They tried to persuade India that the teachings of her saints and seers were the cause of her downfall, that her Vedas, Puranas, and other scriptures were filled with superstition. Christianity, they maintained, had given the white races position and power in this world and assurance of happiness in the next; therefore Christianity was the best of all religions. Many intelligent young Hindus became converted. The man in the street was confused. The majority of the educated grew materialistic in their mental outlook. Everyone living near Calcutta or the other strong-holds of Western culture, even those who attempted to cling to the orthodox traditions of Hindu society, became infected by the new uncertainties and the new beliefs.
   But the soul of India was to be resuscitated through a spiritual awakening. We hear the first call of this renascence in the spirited retort of the young Gadadhar: "Brother, what shall I do with a mere bread-winning education?"
  --
   Eight years later, some time in November 1874, Sri Ramakrishna was seized with an irresistible desire to learn the truth of the Christian religion. He began to listen to readings from the Bible, by Sambhu Charan Mallick, a gentleman of Calcutta and a devotee of the Master. Sri Ramakrishna became fascinated by the life and teachings of Jesus. One day he was seated in the parlour of Jadu Mallick's garden house (This expression is used throughout to translate the Bengali word denoting a rich man's country house set in a garden.) at Dakshineswar, when his eyes became fixed on a painting of the Madonna and Child. Intently watching it, he became gradually overwhelmed with divine emotion. The figures in the picture took on life, and the rays of light emanating from them entered his soul. The effect of this experience was stronger than that of the vision of Mohammed. In dismay he cried out, "O Mother! What are You doing to me?" And, breaking through the barriers of creed and religion, he entered a new realm of ecstasy. Christ possessed his soul. For three days he did not set foot in the Kali temple. On the fourth day, in the afternoon, as he was walking in the Panchavati, he saw coming toward him a person with beautiful large eyes, serene countenance, and fair skin. As the two faced each other, a voice rang out in the depths of Sri Ramakrishna's soul: "Behold the Christ, who shed His heart's blood for the redemption of the world, who suffered a sea of anguish for love of men. It is He, the Master Yogi, who is in eternal union with God. It is Jesus, Love Incarnate." The Son of Man embraced the Son of the Divine Mother and merged in him. Sri Ramakrishna krishna realized his identity with Christ, as he had already realized his identity with Kali, Rama, Hanuman, Radha, Krishna, Brahman, and Mohammed. The Master went into samadhi and communed with the Brahman with attributes. Thus he experienced the truth that Christianity, too, was a path leading to God-Consciousness. Till the last moment of his life he believed that Christ was an Incarnation of God. But Christ, for him, was not the only Incarnation; there were others — Buddha, for instance, and Krishna.
   --- ATTITUDE TOWARD DIFFERENT RELIGIONS
  --
   Without being formally initiated into their doctrines, Sri Ramakrishna thus realized the ideals of religions other than Hinduism. He did not need to follow any doctrine. All barriers were removed by his overwhelming love of God. So he became a Master who could speak with authority regarding the ideas and ideals of the various religions of the world. "I have practised", said he, "all religions — Hinduism, Islam, Christianity — and I have also followed the paths of the different Hindu sects. I have found that it is the same God toward whom all are directing their steps, though along different paths. You must try all beliefs and traverse all the different ways once. Wherever I look, I see men quarrelling in the name of religion — Hindus, Mohammedans, Brahmos, Vaishnavas, and the rest. But they never reflect that He who is called Krishna is also called Siva, and bears the name of the Primal Energy, Jesus, and Allah as well — the same Rama with a thousand names. A lake has several ghats. At one the Hindus take water in pitchers and call it 'jal'; at another the Mussalmans take water in leather bags and call it pani'. At a third the Christians call it 'water'. Can we imagine that it is not 'jal', but only 'pani' or 'water'? How ridiculous! The substance is One under different names, and everyone is seeking the same substance; only climate, temperament, and name create differences. Let each man follow his own path. If he sincerely and ardently wishes to know God, peace be unto him! He will surely realize Him."
   In 1867 Sri Ramakrishna returned to Kamarpukur to recuperate from the effect of his austerities. The peaceful countryside, the simple and artless companions of his boyhood, and the pure air did him much good. The villagers were happy to get back their playful, frank, witty, kind-hearted, and truthful Gadadhar, though they did not fail to notice the great change that had come over him during his years in Calcutta. His wife, Sarada Devi, now fourteen years old, soon arrived at Kamarpukur. Her spiritual development was much beyond her age and she was able to understand immediately her husband's state of mind. She became eager to learn from him about God and to live with him as his attendant. The Master accepted her cheerfully both as his disciple and as his spiritual companion. Referring to the experiences of these few days, she once said: "I used to feel always as if a pitcher full of bliss were placed in my heart. The joy was indescribable."
  --
   Keshab was the leader of the Brahmo Samaj, one of the two great movements that, during the latter part of the nineteenth century, played an important part in shaping the course of the renascence of India. The founder of the Brahmo movement had been the great Raja Rammohan Roy (1774-1833). Though born in an orthodox brahmin family, Rammohan Roy had shown great sympathy for Islam and Christianity. He had gone to Tibet in search of the Buddhist mysteries. He had extracted from Christianity its ethical system, but had rejected the divinity of Christ as he had denied the Hindu Incarnations. The religion of Islam influenced him, to a great extent, in the formulation of his monotheistic doctrines. But he always went back to the Vedas for his spiritual inspiration. The Brahmo Samaj, which he founded in 1828, was dedicated to the "worship and adoration of the Eternal, the Unsearchable, the Immutable Being, who is the Author and Preserver of the Universe". The Samaj was open to all without distinction of colour, creed, caste, nation, or religion.
   The real organizer of the Samaj was Devendranath Tagore (1817-1905), the father of the poet Rabindranath. His physical and spiritual beauty, aristocratic aloofness, penetrating intellect, and poetic sensibility made him the foremost leader of the educated Bengalis. These addressed him by the respectful epithet of Maharshi, the "Great Seer". The Maharshi was a Sanskrit scholar and, unlike Raja Rammohan Roy, drew his inspiration entirely from the Upanishads. He was an implacable enemy of image worship ship and also fought to stop the infiltration of Christian ideas into the Samaj. He gave the movement its faith and ritual. Under his influence the Brahmo Samaj professed One Self-existent Supreme Being who had created the universe out of nothing, the God of Truth, Infinite Wisdom, Goodness, and Power, the Eternal and Omnipotent, the One without a Second. Man should love Him and do His will, believe in Him and worship Him, and thus merit salvation in the world to come.
  --
   In 1878 a schism divided Keshab's Samaj. Some of his influential followers accused him of infringing the Brahmo principles by marrying his daughter to a wealthy man before she had attained the marriageable age approved by the Samaj. This group seceded and established the Sadharan Brahmo Samaj, Keshab remaining the leader of the Navavidhan. Keshab now began to be drawn more and more toward the Christ ideal, though under the influence of Sri Ramakrishna his devotion to the Divine Mother also deepened. His mental oscillation between Christ and the Divine Mother of Hinduism found no position of rest. In Bengal and some other parts of India the Brahmo movement took the form of unitarian Christianity, scoffed at Hindu rituals, and preached a crusade against image worship. Influenced by Western culture, it declared the supremacy of reason, advocated the ideals of the French Revolution, abolished the caste-system among its own members, stood for the emancipation of women, agitated for the abolition of early marriage, sanctioned the remarriage of widows, and encouraged various educational and social-reform movements. The immediate effect of the Brahmo movement in Bengal was the checking of the proselytizing activities of the Christian missionaries. It also raised Indian culture in the estimation of its English masters. But it was an intellectual and eclectic religious ferment born of the necessity of the time. Unlike Hinduism, it was not founded on the deep inner experiences of sages and prophets. Its influence was confined to a comparatively few educated men and women of the country, and the vast masses of the Hindus remained outside it. It sounded monotonously only one of the notes in the rich gamut of the Eternal Religion of the Hindus.
   --- ARYA SAMAJ
   The other movement playing an important part in the nineteenth-century religious revival of India was the Arya Samaj. The Brahmo Samaj, essentially a movement of compromise with European culture, tacitly admitted the superiority of the West. But the founder of the Arya Samaj was a ' pugnacious Hindu sannyasi who accepted the challenge of Islam and Christianity and was resolved to combat all foreign influence in India. Swami Dayananda (1824-1883) launched this movement in Bombay in 1875, and soon its influence was felt throughout western India. The Swami was a great scholar of the Vedas, which he explained as being strictly monotheistic. He preached against the worship of images and re-established the ancient Vedic sacrificial rites. According to him the Vedas were the ultimate authority on religion, and he accepted every word of them as literally true. The Arya Samaj became a bulwark against the encroachments of Islam and Christianity, and its orthodox flavour appealed to many Hindu minds. It also assumed leadership in many movements of social reform. The caste-system became a target of its attack. Women it liberated from many of their social disabilities. The cause of education received from it a great impetus. It started agitation against early marriage and advocated the remarriage of Hindu widows. Its influence was strongest in the Punjab, the battle-ground of the Hindu and Islamic cultures. A new fighting attitude was introduced into the slumbering Hindu society. Unlike the Brahmo Samaj, the influence of the Arya Samaj was not confined to the intellectuals. It was a force that spread to the masses. It was a dogmatic movement intolerant of those who disagreed with its views, and it emphasized only one way, the Arya Samaj way, to the realization of Truth. Sri Ramakrishna met Swami Dayananda when the latter visited Bengal.
   --- KESHAB CHANDRA SEN
  --
   Sri Ramakrishna also became acquainted with a number of people whose scholarship or wealth entitled them everywhere to respect. He had met, a few years before, Devendranath Tagore, famous all over Bengal for his wealth, scholarship, saintly character, and social position. But the Master found him disappointing; for, whereas Sri Ramakrishna expected of a saint complete renunciation of the world, Devendranath combined with his saintliness a life of enjoyment. Sri Ramakrishna met the great poet Michael Madhusudan, who had embraced Christianity "for the sake of his stomach". To him the Master could not impart instruction, for the Divine Mother "pressed his tongue". In addition he met Maharaja Jatindra Mohan Tagore, a titled aristocrat of Bengal; Kristodas Pal, the editor, social reformer, and patriot; Iswar Vidyasagar, the noted philanthropist and educator; Pundit Shashadhar, a great champion of Hindu orthodoxy; Aswini Kumar Dutta, a headmaster, moralist, and leader of Indian Nationalism; and Bankim Chatterji, a deputy magistrate, novelist, and essayist, and one of the fashioners of modern Bengali prose. Sri Ramakrishna was not the man to be dazzled by outward show, glory, or eloquence. A pundit without discrimination he regarded as a mere straw. He would search people's hearts for the light of God, and if that was missing he would have nothing to do with them.
   --- KRISTODAS PAL

0.00 - The Book of Lies Text, #The Book of Lies, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
  Mysteries in Christianity.
                 [183]

01.05 - The Nietzschean Antichrist, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   This is the Nietzsche we all know. But there is another aspect of his which the world has yet been slow to recognise. For, at bottom, Nietzsche is not all storm and fury. If his Superman is a Destroying Angel, he is none the less an angel. If he is endowed with a supreme sense of strength and power, there is also secreted in the core of his heart a sense of the beautiful that illumines his somewhat sombre aspect. For although Nietzsche is by birth a Slavo-Teuton, by culture and education he is pre-eminently Hellenic. His earliest works are on the subject of Greek tragedy and form what he describes as an "Apollonian dream." And to this dream, to this Greek aesthetic sense more than to any thing else he sacrifices justice and pity and charity. To him the weak and the miserable, the sick and the maimed are a sort of blot, a kind of ulcer on the beautiful face of humanity. The herd that wallow in suffering and relish suffering disfigure the aspect of the world and should therefore be relentlessly mowed out of existence. By being pitiful to them we give our tacit assent to their persistence. And it is precisely because of this that Nietzsche has a horror of Christianity. For compassion gives indulgence to all the ugliness of the world and thus renders that ugliness a necessary and indispensable element of existence. To protect the weak, to sympathise with the lowly brings about more of weakness and more of lowliness. Nietzsche has an aristocratic taste par excellencewhat he aims at is health and vigour and beauty. But above all it is an aristocracy of the spirit, an aristocracy endowed with all the richness and beauty of the soul that Nietzsche wants to establish. The beggar of the street is the symbol of ugliness, of the poverty of the spirit. And the so-called aristocrat, die millionaire of today is as poor and ugly as any helpless leper. The soul of either of them is made of the same dirty, sickly stuff. The tattered rags, the crouching heart, the effeminate nerve, the unenlightened soul are the standing ugliness of the world and they have no place in the ideal, the perfect humanity. Humanity, according to Nietzsche, is made in order to be beautiful, to conceive the beautiful, to create the beautiful. Nietzsche's Superman has its perfect image in a Grecian statue of Zeus cut out in white marble-Olympian grandeur shedding in every lineament Apollonian beauty and Dionysian vigour.
   The real secret of Nietzsche's philosophy is not an adoration of brute force, of blind irrational joy in fighting and killing. Far from it, Nietzsche has no kinship with Treitschke or Bernhard. What Nietzsche wanted was a world purged of littleness and ugliness, a humanity, not of saints, perhaps, but of heroes, lofty in their ideal, great in their achievement, majestic in their empirea race of titanic gods breathing the glory of heaven itself.

01.08 - Walter Hilton: The Scale of Perfection, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   Indeed, it would be interesting to compare and contrast the Eastern and Western approach to Divine Love, the Christian and the Vaishnava, for example. Indian spirituality, whatever its outer form or credal formulation, has always a background of utter unity. This unity, again, is threefold or triune and is expressed in those great Upanishadic phrases,mahvkyas,(1) the transcendental unity: the One alone exists, there is nothing else than theOneekamevdvityam; (2) the cosmic unity: all existence is one, whatever exists is that One, thereare no separate existences:sarvam khalvidam brahma neha nnsti kincaa; (3) That One is I, you too are that One:so' ham, tattvamasi; this may be called the individual unity. As I have said, all spiritual experiences in India, of whatever school or line, take for granted or are fundamentally based upon this sense of absolute unity or identity. Schools of dualism or pluralism, who do not apparently admit in their tenets this extreme monism, are still permeated in many ways with that sense and in some form or other take cognizance of the truth of it. The Christian doctrine too says indeed, 'I and my Father in Heaven are one', but this is not identity, but union; besides, the human soul is not admitted into this identity, nor the world soul. The world, we have seen, according to the Christian discipline has to be altogether abandoned, negatived, as we go inward and upward towards our spiritual status reflecting the divine image in the divine company. It is a complete rejection, a cutting off and casting away of world and life. One extreme Vedantic path seems to follow a similar line, but there it is not really rejection, but a resolution, not the rejection of what is totally foreign and extraneous, but a resolution of the external into its inner and inmost substance, of the effect into its original cause. Brahman is in the world, Brahman is the world: the world has unrolled itself out of the Brahmansi, pravttiit has to be rolled back into its, cause and substance if it is to regain its pure nature (that is the process of nivitti). Likewise, the individual being in the world, "I", is the transcendent being itself and when it withdraws, it withdraws itself and the whole world with it and merges into the Absolute. Even the Maya of the Mayavadin, although it is viewed as something not inherent in Brahman but superimposed upon Brahman, still, has been accepted as a peculiar power of Brahman itself. The Christian doctrine keeps the individual being separate practically, as an associate or at the most as an image of God. The love for one's neighbour, charity, which the Christian discipline enjoins is one's love for one's kind, because of affinity of nature and quality: it does not dissolve the two into an integral unity and absolute identity, where we love because we are one, because we are the One. The highest culmination of love, the very basis of love, according to the Indian conception, is a transcendence of love, love trans-muted into Bliss. The Upanishad says, where one has become the utter unity, who loves whom? To explain further our point, we take two examples referred to in the book we are considering. The true Christian, it is said, loves the sinner too, he is permitted to dislike sin, for he has to reject it, but he must separate from sin the sinner and love him. Why? Because the sinner too can change and become his brother in spirit, one loves the sinner because there is the possibility of his changing and becoming a true Christian. It is why the orthodox Christian, even such an enlightened and holy person as this mediaeval Canon, considers the non-Christian, the non-baptised as impure and potentially and fundamentally sinners. That is also why the Church, the physical organisation, is worshipped as Christ's very body and outside the Church lies the pagan world which has neither religion nor true spirituality nor salvation. Of course, all this may be symbolic and it is symbolic in a sense. If Christianity is taken to mean true spirituality, and the Church is equated with the collective embodiment of that spirituality, all that is claimed on their behalf stands justified. But that is an ideal, a hypothetical standpoint and can hardly be borne out by facts. However, to come back to our subject, let us ow take the second example. Of Christ himself, it is said, he not only did not dislike or had any aversion for Judas, but that he positively loved the traitor with a true and sincere love. He knew that the man would betray him and even when he was betraying and had betrayed, the Son of Man continued to love him. It was no make-believe or sham or pretence. It was genuine, as genuine as anything can be. Now, why did he love his enemy? Because, it is said, the enemy is suffered by God to do the misdeed: he has been allowed to test the faith of the faithful, he too has his utility, he too is God's servant. And who knows even a Judas would not change in the end? Many who come to scoff do remain to pray. But it can be asked, 'Does God love Satan too in the same way?' The Indian conception which is basically Vedantic is different. There is only one reality, one truth which is viewed differently. Whether a thing is considered good or evil or neutral, essentially and truly, it is that One and nothing else. God's own self is everywhere and the sage makes no difference between the Brahmin and the cow and the elephant. It is his own self he finds in every person and every objectsarvabhtsthitam yo mm bhajati ekatvamsthitah"he has taken his stand upon oneness and loves Me in all beings."2
   This will elucidate another point of difference between the Christian's and the Vaishnava's love of God, for both are characterised by an extreme intensity and sweetness and exquisiteness of that divine feeling. This Christian's, however, is the union of the soul in its absolute purity and simplicity and "privacy" with her lord and master; the soul is shred here of all earthly vesture and goes innocent and naked into the embrace of her Beloved. The Vaishnava feeling is richer and seems to possess more amplitude; it is more concrete and less ethereal. The Vaishnava in his passionate yearning seeks to carry as it were the whole world with him to his Lord: for he sees and feels Him not only in the inmost chamber of his soul, but meets Him also in and I through his senses and in and through the world and its objects around. In psychological terms one can say that the Christian realisation, at its very source, is that of the inmost soul, what we call the "psychic being" pure and simple, referred to in the book we are considering; as: "His sweet privy voice... stirreth thine heart full stilly." Whereas the Vaishnava reaches out to his Lord with his outer heart too aflame with passion; not only his inmost being but his vital being also seeks the Divine. This bears upon the occult story of man's spiritual evolution upon earth. The Divine Grace descends from the highest into the deepest and from the deepest to the outer ranges of human nature, so that the whole of it may be illumined and transformed and one day man can embody in his earthly life the integral manifestation of God, the perfect Epiphany. Each religion, each line of spiritual discipline takes up one limb of manone level or mode of his being and consciousness purifies it and suffuses it with the spiritual and divine consciousness, so that in the end the whole of man, in his integral living, is recast and remoulded: each discipline is in charge of one thread as it were, all together weave the warp and woof in the evolution of the perfect pattern of a spiritualised and divinised humanity.

01.09 - William Blake: The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   The ideal was Blake's. It will not sound so revolting if we understand what the poet meant by Hell. Hell, he explains, is simply the body, the Energy of Lifehell, because body and life on earth were so considered by the orthodox Christianity. The Christian ideal demands an absolute denial and rejection of life. Fulfilment is elsewhere, in heaven alone. That is, as we know, the ideal of the ascetic. The life of the spirit (in heaven) is a thing away from and stands against the life of the flesh (on earth). In the face of this discipline, countering it, Blake posited a union, a marriage of the two, considered incompatibles and incommensurables. Enfant terrible that he was, he took an infinite delight in a spirit of contradiction and went on expatiating on the glory of the misalliance. He declared a new apocalypse and said that Lucifer, the one called Satan, was the real God, the so-called Messiah the fake one: the apparent Milton spoke in praise of God and in dispraise of Satan, but the real, the esoteric Milton glorified Satan, who is the true God and minimised or caricatured the counterfeit or shadow God. Here is Blakean Bible in a nutshell:
   But first the notion that man has a body distinct from his soul is to be expunged.. . . If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.

01.11 - The Basis of Unity, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   India did not and could not stop at mere cultural fusionwhich was a supreme gift of the Moguls. She did not and could not stop at another momentous cultural fusion brought about by the European impact. She aimed at something more. Nature demanded of her that she should discover a greater secret of human unity and through progressive experiments apply and establish it in fact. Christianity did not raise this problem of the greater synthesis, for the Christian peoples were more culture-minded than religious-minded. It was left for an Asiatic people to set the problem and for India to work out the solution.
   ***

0 1962-12-15, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Even in America, mon petit, theyre in its grip. Theyre always falling back into their Christianity.
   Its going to be very hard.

0 1963-07-03, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   But I think not think, I see that his belief is, first, simply a question of habit, because he was born in that religion, and then a question of political necessity I dont think he has the conviction that it is the pure Truth. Whereas the previous Pope really believed in it. This one knows too much in his supraconscient to believe that Christianity is the pure and exclusive Truth. Only, you see, when youre lucky enough to be the Pope, youve got to believe that the Pope is the Pope! Try to imagine, look at the global situation from a distance: of course the whole world isnt Catholic, but there are Catholics all over the world.
   What seems bizarre to those who have gone beyond the petty, purely terrestrial limitshuman terrestrial limitsis that belief in a SINGLE divine manifestation on the earth; all the religions are based on that, everyone says, Christ was the only one, or Buddha was the only one, or elsewhere Mohammed was the only one, and so forth. Well, that only one is something IMPOSSIBLE as soon as you rise a little above the ordinary earth atmosphere it appears childish. You can understand the thing and accept it only as a sort of recurrent movement of the divine Consciousness on the earth.

0 1965-05-19, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Thats why certain minds have postulated that the creation was the result of an error. But we find all the possible conceptions: the perfect creation, then a fault that introduced the error; the creation itself as a lower movement, which must end since it began; then the conception of the Vedas according to what Sri Aurobindo told us about it, which was a progressive and infinite unfolding or discoveryindefinite and infiniteof the All by Himself. Naturally, all these are human translations. For the moment, as long as we express ourselves humanly, its a human translation; but depending on the initial stand of the human translator (that is, a stand that accepts the primordial error, or the accident in the creation, or the conscious supreme Will since the beginning, in a progressive unfolding), the conclusions or the descents in the yogic attitude are different. There are the nihilists, the Nirvanists and the illusionists, there are all the religions (like Christianity) that accept the devils intervention in one form or another; and then pure Vedism, which is the Supremes eternal unfolding in a progressive objectification. And depending on your taste, you are here or there or here, and there are nuances. But according to what Sri Aurobindo felt to be the most total truth, according to that conception of a progressive universe, you are led to say that, every minute, what takes place is the best possible for the unfolding of the whole. The logic of it is absolute. And I think that all the contradictions can only stem from a more or less pronounced tendency for this or that position, that other position; all the minds that accept the intrusion of a fault or an error and the resulting conflict between forces pulling backward and forces pulling forward, can naturally dispute the possibility. But you are forced to say that for someone who is spiritually attuned to the supreme Will or the supreme Truth, what happens is necessarily, every instant, the best for his personal realizationthis is true in all cases. The unconditioned best can only be accepted by one who sees the universe as an unfolding, the Supreme growing more and more conscious of Himself.
   (silence)

0 1965-10-16, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   If he was brought up in a Christian way, its the photo where he is young which is good, they instantly see in it the face of Christ I All of them. The day before yesterday again, an American painter, who is here and has read Sri Aurobindos books, wanted to do a portrait of Sri Aurobindo (he never saw him) from photosits just as it was with the bust in Sri Aurobindos room!1 They all make a mystic Sri Aurobindo with narrow temples, like that (gesture tapering upward), a long mystic face, because they cant get out of their Christianity! For them, of course, the Power, anything that expresses the Power, oh! (gesture of repulsion)
   I wanted to say that to this American. For them, spiritual life is sacrifice, its the God who sacrifices himself: he renounces the joys of the earth and sacrifices his existence to save mankind. And they cant get out of it!

0 1966-11-26, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   No, there is an insistence (the same insistence as this Gentlemans, at any rate) on the impossibility of the thing, and it gives such obvious proof. Naturally, the inside doesnt budge, it smilesit doesnt budge but the body that gives it terrible tension. Because its very conscious of its infirmity (it cant boast of being transformed), very conscious that its millions of miles away from transformation. So so it doesnt take much to convince it. Whats more difficult is to give it the certitude that things will be different. It doesnt even understand very well how they can be different. Then there come all other beliefs, all other so-called revelations, the heavens and so on. The whole of Christianity and Islam have very easily solved the problem: Oh, no, things here will never be fine, but over there they can be perfect. That goes without saying. Then there is the whole of Nirvanism and Buddhism: The world is an error that must disappear. So it all comes in waves, and the body feels very you understand, it would like to have a certitude of its possibility. That doesnt often happen to it. But the attack was too strong; it was from everything and everywhere at the same time, so strong: This Matter CANNOT be transformed. So it fought and fought and fought, and suddenly it was obliged to lie down. But as soon as it lies down and abandons itself completely, there is Peace, and such a strong Peaceso strong, so powerful. Then its fine.
   It came with hosts of suggestions (they arent suggestions: they are formations), adverse formations of disorganization; like, for instance the one C. [one of Mothers attendants, who has just fallen ill] received. I was warned two days beforeh and and tried my best: I couldnt I couldnt, he gave way. So now its dragging on and on (the doctor himself says theres no reason for it to last so long), its dragging on because he gave way. So all that must be slowly won back. And it comes to everyone, to every circumstancenot to me, never to me because it has no effect on me: if the suggestion comes, I say, So what! I dont care. So it doesnt try, its useless. But it comes to everyone, to disorganize everything and everyone, one after another. This morning, it was everybody at the same time, a complete disorganization of everything. I resisted and resisted and resisted, then suddenly something (Mother makes a gesture). So the body said, All right.

0 1967-01-28, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Lots of sects and movements have been accused of practicing this kind of sexuality (I think it was the moral basis for the accusation against the Templars). Its probably the result of the Christian attitude; Christianity has spoken of sin and made it a sin, so theres the result. Its the reaction.
   But as soon as you are capable of having the true Ananda, truly, spontaneously, its absolutely repugnant, just like wallowing in mud.

0 1967-07-29, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Christianity DEIFIES suffering to make it the instrument of the earths salvation.
   Its hard to explain because its the state of consciousness that is different. Now its a memory, but at that moment it was a visiona very, very deep vision, very sharp, naturally exceeding all that occurred on earth, but also all the ways of expressing what occurred. The personality of Christ and so onit was all so different! And it became, yes, I might say symbolic, but thats not it. At the same time, it placed this religion among all the others, in a very defined place in the earth evolutionin the evolution of the earth CONSCIOUSNESS.
  --
   You see, Sri Aurobindo says, Man loves suffering, therefore Christ still hangs on the cross in Jerusalem, then I said, Christianity (I mean the universal, or anyway terrestrial, origin of what expressed itself on earth as the Christian religion), the action of this religion on earth has been to deify suffering because it was NECESSARY for men to understandnot only to understand but to feel and adhere to the raison dtre (the universal raison dtre) of suffering on earth as a means of evolution. Basically, we could say that they sanctified suffering so it may be recognized as a means indispensable to the evolution of the earth.
   So now, that action has been exploited to the full and more, and ought to be gone beyond, and thats why it must be left behind in order to find something else.
  --
   Have you sometimes had that kind of very global vision in time and space, in which each thing has its place and everything is coordinated by a total consciousness? (It must be new only to me.) It is a knowledge-vision. My consciousness, the consciousness there (gesture above and around) is constantly a consciousness of action. Since the beginning of those creative bursts of Love, it has been a consciousness of action, always actionaction, action, perpetual action. In fact, constant creation. But this morning, it wasnt action: it was (laughing) the observation, I could say, the observation of that action as a sort of vision, as you would look at a picture, you know. Instead of being on the highest intellectual plane, that of absolute comprehension and that puts each thing in its place, it was (how can I explain it?). Its a knowledge through subjective vision. Not the vision of something foreign to you: its the same state of consciousness as that of the doer, but instead of only doing, it sees at the same time. That was this mornings experience. It was rather new in the sense that I only had it now and then, like that, but never with that totality, that clarity and that sort of absoluteness. It is the sensation of a self-evident, absolute, indisputable knowledgeits not trying to express something: its SEEING. Seeing, really seeing, but seeing not one thing after another: seeing everything at once, a totality in space and in time. And seeing every detail with total precision, which makes it possible to write a thing like this (the note on Christianity).
   To be clear, I should tell the whole thing. Yesterday I had an opportunity to speak to someone about this constant presence of Sri Aurobindo, here, who sees, says, does, all the time. Then, after I had spoken, I wondered, How is it that this brain Because, I think I told you, when Sri Aurobindo left his body, several times, several days in a row, I stood near his bed for one or two hours, and I feltMATERIALLY feltwhat came out of his body enter mine. To such a point that I remember having said, Well, if anyone denies afterlife, I have proof it exists. So I thought, Why does this brain (Mothers) go on working according to its usual routine now that the consciousness of the Presence is constant? Then this morning I had this experience, and while having the experience, I felt, This is how Sri Aurobindo used to see! (Laughing) That must be it! And for some time I have noticed that as soon as, for this body or for other bodies, for events, for as soon as something is formulated (its neither a desire nor an aspiration, but something like the living perception of a possibility that SHOULD be realizedit comes sometimes), it gets done! It gets done automatically and immediately. So this morning, for, oh, half an hour, the impression was so charming, so pleasant: Ah, there we are! THIS IS HOW we should see things!

0 1967-08-12, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   (Mother comes across the note she wrote on Christianity and commented on July 29)
   Christianity deifies suffering to make it the instrument of the earths salvation.
   You know, it came to me as a discovery. The whole religion, instead of being seen like this (gesture from below), was seen like that (gesture from above). Here is what I mean: the ordinary idea of Christianity is that the son (to use their language), the son of God came to give his message (a message of love, unity, fraternity and charity) to the earth; and the earth, that is, those who govern, who werent ready, sacrificed him, and his Father, the supreme Lord, let him be sacrificed in order that his sacrifice would have the power to save the world. That is how they see Christianity, in its most comprehensive idea the vast majority of Christians dont understand anything whatsoever, but I mean that among them there may be (perhaps, its possible), among the cardinals for instance who have studied occultism and the deeper symbols of things, some who understand a little better anyway. But according to my vision (Mother points to her note on Christianity), what happened was that in the history of the evolution of the earth, when the human race, the human species, began to question and rebel against suffering, which was a necessity to emerge more consciously from inertia (its very clear in animals, it has become very clear already: suffering was the means to make them emerge from inertia), but man, on the other hand, went beyond that stage and began to rebel against suffering, naturally also to revolt against the Power that permits and perhaps uses (perhaps uses, to his mind) this suffering as a means of domination. So that is the place of Christianity. There was already before it a fairly long earth historywe shouldnt forget that before Christianity, there was Hinduism, which accepted that everything, including destruction, suffering, death and all calamities, are part of the one Divine, the one God (its the image of the Gita, the God who swallows the world and its creatures). There is that, here in India. There was the Buddha, who on the other hand, was horrified by suffering in all its forms, decay in all its forms, and the impermanence of all things, and in trying to find a remedy, concluded that the only true remedy is the disappearance of the creation. Such was the terrestrial situation when Christianity arrived. So there had been a whole period before it, and a great number of people beginning to rebel against suffering and wanting to escape from it like that. Others deified it and thus bore it as an inescapable calamity. Then came the necessity to bring down on earth the concept of a deified, divine suffering, a divine suffering as the supreme means to make the whole human consciousness emerge from Unconsciousness and Ignorance and lead it towards its realization of divine beatitude, but notnot by refusing to collaborate with life, but IN life itself: accepting suffering (the crucifixion) in life itself as a means of transformation in order to lead human beings and the entire creation to its divine Origin.
   That gives a place to all religions in the development from the Inconscient to the divine Consciousness.
  --
   Instead of looking at it from below, there was all of a sudden an overall vision from right above of how it was all organized with such a clear consciousness, such a clear will, each thing coming just when it was necessary so nothing would be overlooked and everything might come out, emerge from that Unconsciousness, and become increasingly conscious. And so, in this immense history, the earth history, Christianity finds its placeits legitimate place. That has a double advantage: for those who despise it its value is restored, and as for those who believe its the unique truth, they are made to see that its only one element among others in the whole. There.
   Thats why I found it interestingbecause it was the result of a vision, and that vision came because I started concerning myself with religions (started again, to tell the truth, because I was very familiar with that subject in the past). And when I was asked questions on the Israelites and the Muslims, I looked and said, Here is their place. Here is their place and their raison dtre. Then, one day I said to myself, Well, it is true! Seen in that way, its obvious: Christianity is like a rehabilitation of suffering as a means of development of the consciousness.
   And so Sri Aurobindos sentence assumes its full value. Christianity came because men were rebelling against pain and trying to escape from the world in order to escape from pain. Then, as the years went by and with the unfolding, men took a liking to suffering! And because they love it (see how Sri Aurobindos sentence becomes clear), Christ still hangs on the cross in Jerusalem. It assumes its full significance.
   ***
  --
   Couldnt we publish in the Bulletin what youve just said about Christianity?
   I am not very fond of talking about religions, its too early. People are still too full of passion when you speak to them about religion.

0 1967-08-19, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   (Soon afterwards, concerning a sympathizer of the Ashram, Mrs. Z, who cannot get out of her Christianity.2)
   Now then, did you see this lady?
  --
   This morning, Christianity too was there among all the other things.
   (silence)
   You understand, behind this whole earth evolution, there is, more or less consciously (its an unexpressed need rather than a precise consciousness), the need to live the Divineor to put it differently, the need to live divinely. And it is clear that what was expressed as different religions were solutions found individually (found, and perhaps partially lived); and here [in India], there was this solution: in order to really become the Divine again, there should be no more creation. That was the Nirvanic solution. And instinctivelyinstinctivelymankind felt death to be the negation of the Divine. But like all negation, it had the capacity to lead and open the way. The solution of Christianity wasnt completely new, it was the adaptation of an ancient solution: a life in other worldswhich was expressed by that quite childish conception of paradise. But that was a conception for public use: a life in the presence of the Divine, exclusively taken up with the Divine, and so one sang and Touchingly simple. Anyway, they conceived of a world (not a material one) in which a divine life had been realized. In the ancient Indian traditions, there had also been a first hint of already divine worlds, as a sort of reaction to that Nirvanismif we want to be divine, we must stop being, or if the Divine wants to be pure, he must stop manifesting! So they were all somewhat clumsy attempts to find the means, and perhaps at the same time inner preparations, to make people capable of really making contact with the Divine. Then there was that great reaction of the cult of Matter, which has been VERY useful to knead it and make it less unconscious of itself: it has forcibly brought consciousness back into Matter. So perhaps all that has sufficiently prepared the moment of the coming of Total Manifestation (gesture of descent).
   This morning, during the experience, the body felt the whole bliss of the condition, but it was very conscious of its incapacity to manifest and very conscious in such a perfect peace, like this (gesture with the palms of the hands open upward), in which there wasnt even the intensity of the need. It was simply a vision of how things were, how the condition was. And it was something like this: the conditions of the earth are such, the conditions of the substance are such that a local and momentary manifestation, as an example, is not impossible, but the transformation that would make possible the new Manifestation of the supramental being and not just as an isolated case, but with its place and role in earth lifedoes not appear to be immediate. That was the impression.
  --
   By a rather striking "coincidence," since Mother's vision of July 29 (" Christianity deifies suffering"), Christianity was going to crowd in on Mother in succession: monks, bishops etc., including the present lady who will figure in the Agenda on several occasions. Which goes to show that Mother's "visions" are in reality actions.
   ***

0 1967-09-03, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   I wrote her a letter in which I said this: You have to see for yourself, feel for yourself. If you are satisfied with the religious experience that Christianity represents, I do not see why I should disabuse you. Each one follows the path he feels is good for him. If you came and told me, I am seeking something else, it would be a different matter and I might be able to do something to help you. But until then, I really cannot do anything for you, and words are wasted. It is for you to feel and see.
   Thats very good, excellent, really. Thats what she had to hear. Theyre all the same, they want to profit from others, you know. And thats really falsehood.

0 1967-09-16, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   This great "Plan" is the whole enlargement of Christianity which, since 1967, appears to have taken a decisive turn.
   See Agenda VI of July 3 and September 7, 1963, and Agenda V of December 2, 1964.

0 1967-10-04, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   I also had a recoil. But I put it down to prejudices. I dont trust my feelings, you understand, in my life Ive had such abhorrence of this Christianity.
   Was he wearing his habit?

0 1967-10-07, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Yes, his idea is to broaden his Christianity, to find a truth and then take it there.
   Oh!
  --
   Sri Aurobindo once said (jokingly, as it were), while talking with those around him (I was there and we were talking about Christianity and the new Christ), he told them, Oh, if the new Christ comes, the Church will crucify him!
   (silence)

0 1968-01-12, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   There is a key in the relationship between man and woman, but not in their sexual relations. The so-called left-hand Tantrics (of the Vama Marga) are to true Tantrism what Boccaccios tales are to Christianity, or what the sodden Roman Bacchus is to Dionysos of the Greek mysteries. I know Tantrism, to say the least. As for the Cathars, whom I hold in the highest esteem, it would be doing them little honor to believe that they followed a sort of yoga of sexuality. Through my own experience I have often had the feeling of reliving the Cathars experience, and I see plainly that if some of them attempted to mix sexual relations into the true relationship between man and woman, they soon realized their error. It is a dead-end road, or rather its only end is to show you that it leads you nowhere forward. The Cathars were too sincere and conscious men to persist in a burdening experience. For ultimately, and that is the crux of the matter, the sexual experience in its very nature (whether or not there is backward flow or whatever its mode) automatically fastens you again to the old animal vibrations there is nothing you can do about it: however much love you may put into it, the very function is tied to millennia of animality. It is as if you wanted to plunge into a swamp without stirring up any mudit cannot be done, the milieu is like that. And when one knows how much transparency, clarification and inner stillness it takes to slowly rise to a higher consciousness, or to allow a higher light to enter our waters without being instantly darkened, one fails to see how sexual activity can help you attain that still limpidity in which things can start happening??? The union, the oneness of two beings, the true and complete meeting of two beings does not take place at that level or through those means. That is all I can say. But I have seen that in the silent tranquillity of two beings who have the same aspiration, who have overcome the difficult transition, something quite unique slowly takes place, of which one can have no inkling as long as one is still stuck in the struggles of the flesh, to use a preachers language! I think the Cathars experience begins after that transition. After it, the man-woman couple assumes its true meaning, its effectiveness, if I may say so. Sex is only a first mode of meeting, the first device invented by Nature to break the shell of individual egosafterwards, one grows and discovers something else, not through inhibition or repression, but because something different and infinitely richer takes over. Those who are so eager to preserve sex and to mystify it in order to move on to the second stage of evolution are very much like children clinging to their scootersit isnt more serious than that. There is nothing in it to do a yoga with, nothing also to be indignant about or raise ones eyebrows at. So I have nothing to criticize, I am merely observing and putting things in their place. All depends on the stage one has reached. As for those who want to use sex for such and such a sublime or not-so-sublime reason, well, let them have their experience. As Mother told me on the very same subject no later than yesterday, To tell the truth, the Lord makes use of everything. One is always on the way towards something. One is always on the way, through any means, but what is necessary is, as much as possible, to keep ones lucidity and not to deceive oneself.
   I will try to find one or two passages from Sri Aurobindo to give you his point of view.

0 1968-03-20, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   So theres a problem. He is an important person, and he wants to leave everythingthis whole Christianity he rejects, he no longer wants it. He wants to leave his Church, his episcopate, everything, and remain here. He has found something here.
   Yes, I saw that man: he was very much attached.

0 1968-04-03, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   This would seem to be the continuation or concretization of the movement begun in 1967 with Mother's note, " Christianity deifies suffering to make it the instrument of the earth's salvation" (July 29, 1967), then the visits of Mrs. Z, who claimed to want to bring about a rapprochement between the Church and the Ashram, and again of the monk who wanted to broaden his Christianity with the new Truth (Agenda 8).
   ***

0 1968-05-02, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   In Spain! You know, that inexorable Christianity From seven to eighteenits dreadful!
   No, hes a very nice man, but vitally not strong enough. But if he lived in a convent for so many years, then I understand.

0 1969-03-26, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Because some five or six months ago, I wrote to him a few reflections of yours about Christianity. I wrote him that, developing it (it really came to me).1 And then he came out with it all!
   What! Bah-bah!
  --
   These last few days, Mothers presence has revealed itself in my being and activities, stronger and more VISIBLE. In the polls commission, of which you know I am a member at the Popes pleasure, I felt the other day an irrepressible force in my breast: I had to speak out. I knew that my words would cause a scandal in the meeting. The little voice was telling me, Now is the time, cry out the message Mother has given you; do not fear, she is with you. And I spoke, to the great consternation of those present. Listen to me, all of you. The only thing that could open up Christianity (because its closed in on itself, turned towards the past, and therefore immutable, unprogressive: there is the seed of its own death and decomposition), the only thing would be for it to admit a force from the FUTURE. Satprem, do you remember these words? You conveyed them from Mother to me on 26 November 68, the day I sent you that article on the crisis of Christianity. I went on: There are new forces and new facts. Someone has said it (I did not name Sri Aurobindo, following your same letter), and has spoken of the SUPRAMENTAL, but the word, the form or terms matter little.(There I quoted you again.) If only Christianity could admit, for instance, Christs reincarnation, or a second, FUTURE Christ, it would be saved, its attitude would be open instead of being closed. That is the crux of the whole matter, and beating about the bush, carrying out all kinds of reform and modernization is nothing, it only touches appearances, and unless we touch this center But of course, it instantly means heresy! Yet there is the only salvation for the Church, the only thing that really needs rethinking. All the rest is chatter. We have shut everything up: we are the depositaries of the faithDepositum Fidei! And nothing to add. Does it mean that Christ died without leaving any possibility to add to his message? But we arent the same men as in Palestine. We have limited the Divines powers. We have forbidden Christ any expansion. We have locked him up and thrown the key into the sea..
   The silence was dense, the stupefaction huge. And I went on again: But we believe we are the interpreters, and except us none has the right to speak. Nevertheless we are faced with the current phenomenon of anti-establishment protest. The youth is running away from us, our formulas are old, ineffective, we preach without conviction, we demand absurd things, and to have peace, we stick a label of sin on all taboos. I know that my speech will be called subversive. In dictatorial or established regimes, those who move forward are suspicious. For twenty centuries we have used the weapon of heresy, and we know the atrocities that were committed in the name of Christ: that was our defenseit was his wisdom to keep power But if Christ suddenly appeared here, in front of us, do you think he would recognize himself in us? Is the Christ we preach the Christ of the BEATITUDES? Our preoccupation is to prohibit opening. And we make fools of ourselves with the pill. But are we also preoccupied with the TRUTH? Yet we should read our holy books again, but read them without passion, without egoistic interest; almost two thousand years ago, St. Paul said, Multifariam, multisque modis olim Deus loquens in prophetis, novissime diebus istis locutus est nobis in Filio (several times and in several ways God has spoken through the prophets, but now in these last days he has spoken to us through his Son Jesus Christ). Thus God has spoken in several ways. I know that a new light has just appeared, a new Consciousness let us go in search of it. But we shall have to step down from our throne, from our convenience; perhaps to leave the place to others and do away with the Hierarchy: no more Pope or Cardinals or Bishops, but all of us seekers of the TRUTH, of the CONSCIOUSNESS, the POWER, the SUPRANATURAL, the SUPRAHUMAN..
  --
   (Extracts from a letter from Satprem to P.L., following the conversation of November 2, 1968, in which Mother spoke about the future of Christianity. See [Agenda IX](/agenda/09/november-2-1968#p27) under that date.)
   November 26, 1968
   Thank you for the photos and the interesting article on the crisis of the Church. In this connection, Mother told me that the only thing that could open up Christianity (because it is closed in on itself, turned towards the past, and therefore immutable, unprogressive, that is the germ of its death and its decomposition), the only thing would be for it to admit a Force from the Future. Sri Aurobindo spoke of the supramental, but the form or the terms matter little; if only Christianity could admit, for instance, the reincarnation of Christ, or a second, future Christ, it would be savedits attitude would be open instead of being closed. Thats the crux of the whole matter, and beating about the bush, carrying out all kinds of reform and modernization is nothing, it only touches appearances, leaving this center untouched. But of course, it instantly means heresy! Yet, there is the only salvation for the Church, the only thing that really needs rethinking. All the rest is chatter and papering over the old cracks.
   Your photo of Msgr. Z fitted precisely with the vision! Now you have nothing to fear anymore. Simply keep me informed if you notice outer changes in this person.

0 1969-04-02, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   We have gone a little beyond the times when someone could be locked up. They can tell him he has fallen from Christianity, but I think he doesnt care. Or does he?
   He would be affected, because he would be unable to do anything for Catholicism anymore.

0 1969-08-02, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   As for me, Ill add something. You understand, they made an attempt to unify all of Christendom, and the Pope went to Geneva to unite with the Protestantswhich wouldnt have been so good. Thats not the thing needed, because it would have streng thened Christianitydivision takes away some of its power. Its the unification of ALL religions thats needed, not the unification of Christianity they havent reached that point. So after looking a good deal, I saw it was, on the contrary, a divine grace that it didnt work out.
   If you have the opportunity, you can tell him that.
  --
   All that gives strength to Christianity isnt good. Christianity hoped to dominate the earth, and its this division that prevented its domination. In other words, I dont think uniting with the Protestants would help the general work of unification. And for the time being, they cant in the least conceive of anything else than putting all Christians together.
   ***

0 1969-09-13, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   My fear is that he may still be very much Christian without knowing it, he may be under the impression that Christianity is the most important thing.
   Yes, but he cant do any more for Christianity, thats the thing.
   Ah, certainly not!
   Yes, but deep down he keeps that desire of doing something for Christianityof bringing the light in there.
   Then he must stay on! Its obvious: if he still has that idea of doing something for Christianity, he must stay onwhat will happen will happen!
   But he takes it as a sort of work given to him by you.

0 1969-12-31, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   As soon as I saw him, it instantly came (gesture of massive descent), like that, like an answer to the will to transform Christianity And it was so powerful, there was such a powerful vibration that I felt it was BEING done .
   The cross is the symbol of transformation, you know: Matter (transversal gesture) penetrated by the Spirit; and the junction is the transformation. A tremendous Force came, like that, for this cross to become truly the flower of transformation.

0 1970-07-29, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   I think I told you that when P. L. caused that scandal there [at the Vatican], I was clearly told that it was the beginning of the conversion of Christianity. And naturally, thats what interests me, much more than personal questions.
   But I see that P. L. may only be an intermediary, and R. may be how should I put it?
  --
   I dont think the time has come to wage battle, you understand. Its this whole transformation of Christianity thats starting, this whole Western world that We shouldnt enter into conflict as yet, we should let it be. Well see.
   But you know, with this Msgr. R., I feel a man with an opening above, who understands VERY WELL what the superman is for him the superman means something. Thats how he can be touched.

0 1971-12-25, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Good morning! Its the festival of Light: Christmas is the festival of the return of the Lightits much older than Christianity!when the days were beginning to grow longer (Mother laughs).
   And next Saturday is the first of January. Ill see you.

03.01 - Humanism and Humanism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   The Indian outlook, it is said, is at a double remove from this type of humanism. It has not the pagan GrrecoRoman humanism, nor has it the religious humanism of Christianity. Its spirit can be rendered in the vigorous imagery of Blake: it surrounds itself with cold floods of abstraction and the forests of solitude.
   The religious or Christian humanism of the West is in its essential nature the pagan and profane humanism itself, at least an extension of the same. The sympathy that a St. Francis feels for his leprous brother is, after all, a human feeling, a feeling that man has for man; and even his love for the bird or an inanimate object is also a very human feeling, transferred to another receptacle and flowing in another direction. Itis a play of the human heart, only refined and widened; there is no change in kind.
  --
   Esoteric Christianity also has given us the conception of the Human Divine; but it is somewhat different from the Vaishnava revelation which has found rather the Divine Human. In other words, as I have already said, one has brought down the divinity nearer to the human appreciation and has humanised it; in the other the human has been uplifted and made into an archetypal reality where the human terms have been more or less symbols and figures having not merely human but a supra-human significance. The entire Vaishnava Lila passes not on this earth at all, but eternally in the eternal world of consciousness cinmayabehind all earthly (and human) manifestation and expression.
   It is the cult of the Divine Human which enunciates the mystic truth that man is greater than all and surpasses the Vedic Law (which aims usually at the impersonal Absolute). But Man here is to be understood as the Divine Person in his human norm, not at all the human man, as modern humanists of our country would like to have. It does not mean the glorification of man's human attributes and movements, even if they be most sattwic and idealistic; it refers rather to the divinised type, the archetype that is eternal in the super-consciousness. And when such a Man lives and acts upon earth he does so in manner and measure that do not belong to this plane.

03.04 - The Other Aspect of European Culture, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   In this connection the history of Ireland's destiny affords an instructive study, since it is symbolic also of Europe's life-course. It was the natural idealism, the inborn spiritual outlook which Ireland possessed of yore the Druidic Mysteries were more ancient than the Greek culture and formed perhaps the basis of the Orphic and Eleusinian Mysterieswhich impelled her foremost to embrace the new revelation brought on by Christianity. As she was among the pioneers to champion the cause of the Christ, she became also the fortress where the new cult found a safe refuge when the old world was being overwhelmed and battered to pieces by the onrush of peoples of a dense and rough-hewn nature. When continental Europe lay a desert waste under the heels of the barbarians that almost wiped away the last vestiges of the Classical Culture, it was Ireland who nursed and reared the New Child in her bosom and when the time came sent Him out again to reconquer and revivify Europe. Once more when the tide of Modernism began to rise and swell and carry everything before it, Ireland stood firm and threw up an impregnable barrier. The story of Ireland's struggle against Anglo-Saxon domination is at bottom the story of the struggle between Europe's soul power and body power. Ireland was almost slain in the combat, physically, but would not lose her soul. And now she rises victorious at long last, her ancient spirit shines resplendent, the voice of the Irish Renaissance that speaks through Yeats and Russell1 heralds a new dawn for her and who knows if not for Europe and the whole West?
   Is it meant that "Mediaeval obscurantism" was Europe's supreme ideal and that the cry should be: "Back to the Dark Age, into the gloom of Mystic superstitions and Churchian dogmas?" Now, one cannot deny that there was much of obscurantism and darkness in that period of Europe's evolution. And the revolt launched against it by the heralds of the Modern Age was inevitable and justified to some extent; but to say that unadulterated superstition was what constituted the very substance of Middle Age Culture and that the whole thing was more or less a nightmare, is only to land into another sort of superstition and obscurantism. The best when corrupt does become the worst. The truth of the matter is that in its decline the Middle Age clung to and elaborated only the formal aspect of its culture, leaving aside its inner realisation, its living inspiration. The Renaissance was a movement of reaction and correction against the lifeless formalism, the dry scholasticism of a decadent Middle Age; it sought to infuse a new vitality, by giving a new outlook and intuition to Europe's moribund soul. But, in fact, it has gone a little too far in its career of correction. In its violent enthusiasm to pull down the worn-out edifice of the past and to build anew for the future, it has almost gone to the length of digging up the solid foundation and erasing the fundamental ground-plan upon which Europe's real life and culture reposed and can still safely repose.

03.06 - Divine Humanism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   The Indian outlook, it is said, is at a double remove from this type of humanism. It has not the pagan Grco-Roman humanism, nor has it the religious humanism of Christianity. Its spirit can best be rendered in the vigorous imagery of Blake; it surrounds itself:
   With cold floods of abstraction and
  --
   Esoteric Christianity also has given us the conception of the Human Divine; but it is somewhat different from the Vaishnava revelation which has found rather the Divine Human. In other words, as I have already said, one has brought down the divinity nearer to human appreciation and has humanised it; in the other, the human has been uplifted and made into an archetypal reality where the human terms are more or less symbols and figures, having not merely a human but a suprahuman significance. The entire Vaishnava Lila takes place not on this earth at all, but eternally in the eternal world of the inner consciousness cinmayabehind all earthly (and human) manifestation and expression.
   It is the cult of the Divine Human which enunciates the mystic truth that Man is greater than all and surpasses even the Vedic Law (which aims usually at the impersonal Absolute). But Man -here is to be understood as the Divine Person in his human norm, not the human man at all, as modern humanists of our country would like to have it. It does not mean the glorification of man's human attributes and movements, even if they be most sattwic and idealistic; it refers rather to the divinised type, the archetype that is eternally in the super-consciousness. And when such a Man lives and acts on earth, he does so in a manner and measure that do not belong to this plane of humanity familiar to us.

03.09 - Buddhism and Hinduism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   Buddhism, or for that matter, Christianity or Mohammadenism or any credal and personal religion, is easy to understand. For they are each of them a single and simple entity, whereas Hinduism is a multiple and complex organism. The difference is that between a tree, a huge mighty tree, may be, and a vast and tangled forest. Buddhism, for example, "may be likened to the great Bo tree under which, one may say, it was born; but Hinduism is a veritable Dandakaranya.
   For Hinduism means all things to all men, while a personal religion is meant truly for a certain type of persons. Hinduism recognises differences and distinction even while admitting the fundamental unity of mankind; it does not impose uniformity as the other type does. Hinduism embraces all varieties of religious experience; it is not based on a single experience however overwhelming that may be.

04.01 - The March of Civilisation, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   That is how the spirit of progress and evolution has worked and advanced in the European world. And one can take it as the pattern of human growth generally; but in the scheme described above we have left out one particular phase and purposely. I refer to the great event of Christ and Christianity. For without that European civilisation loses more than half of its import and value. After the Roman Decline began the ebbtide, the trough, the dark shadow of the deepening abyss of the Middle Ages. But even as the Night fell and darkness closed around, a new light glimmered, a star was born. A hope and a help shone "in a naughty world". It was a ray of consciousness that came from a secret cave, from a domain hidden behind and deep within in the human being. Christ brought a leaven into the normal manifest mode of consciousness, an otherworldly mode into the worldly life. He established a living and dynamic contact with the soul, the inner person in man, the person that is behind but still rules the external personality made of mind and life and body consciousness. The Christ revelation was also characteristic in the sense that it came as a large, almost a mass movementthis approach of the soul personality to earthly life. The movement faded or got adulterated, deformed like all human things; but something remained as a permanent possession of man's heritage.
   This episode links up with the inner story of mankind, its spiritual history. The growing or evolving consciousness of man was not only an outgoing and widening movement: it was also a heightening, an ascent into ranges that are not normally perceived, towards summits of our true reality. We have spoken of the Grco-Roman culture as the source and foundation of European civilisation; but apart from that there was a secret vein of life that truly vivified it, led it by an occult but constant influence along channels and achievements that are meant to serve the final goal and purpose. The Mysteries prevalent and practised in Greece itself and Crete and the occult rites of Egyptian priests, the tradition of a secret knowledge and discipline found in the Kabbalah, the legendary worship of gods and goddesses sometimes confused, sometimes identified with Nature forcesall point to the existence of a line of culture which is known in India as Yoga. If all other culture means knowledge, Yoga is the knowledge of knowledge. As the Upanishad says, there are two categories of knowledge, the superior and-the inferior. The development of the mind and life and body belongs to the domain of Inferior Knowledge: the development of the soul, the discovery of the Spirit means the Superior Knowledge.

05.02 - Gods Labour, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   A great mystery of existence, its central rub is the presence of Evil. All spiritual, generally all human endeavour has to face and answer this Sphinx. As he answers, so will be his fate. He cannot rise up even if he wishes, earth cannot progress even when there is the occasion, because of this besetting obstacle. It has many names and many forms. It is Sin or Satan in Christianity; Buddhism calls it Mara. In India it is generally known as Maya. Grief and sorrow, weakness and want, disease and death are its external and ubiquitous forms. It is a force of gravitation, as graphically named by a modern Christian mystic, that pulls man down, fixes him upon earth with its iron law of mortality, never allowing him to mount high and soar in the spiritual heavens. It has also been called the Wheel of Karma or the cycle of Ignorance. And the aim of all spiritual seekers has been to rise out of itsome-how, by force of tapasy, energy of concentrated will or divine Gracego through or by-pass and escape into the Beyond. This is the path of ascent I referred to at the outset. In this view it is taken for granted that this creation is transient and empty of happinessanityam asukham (Gita)it is anatta, empty of self or consciousness (Buddha) and it will be always so. The only way to deal with it, the way of the wise, is to discard it and pass over.
   Sri Aurobindo's view is different. He says Evil can be and has to be conquered here itself, here upon this earth and in this body-the ancients also said, ihaiva tairjitah, they have conquered even here, prkariravimokat, before leaving the body. You have to face Evil full-square and conquer it, conquer it not in the sense that you simply rise above it so that it no longer touches you, but that you remain where you are in the very field of Evil and drive it out from there completely, erase and annihilate it where it was reigning supreme. Hence God has to come down from his heaven and dwell here upon earth and among men and in the conditions of mortality, show thus by his living and labour that this earthly earth can be transformed into a heavenly earth and this human body into a "body divine".
  --
   God made man, the spirit become flesh: this is Grace, the benediction of the Holy One upon the sinful earth. The working of Grace in one of its characteristic movements has been beautifully envisaged in esoteric Christianity. The burden of sin that is to say, of weakness, impurity and ignorancelies so heavy upon man, the force of gravitation is so absolute, that it is divine intervention alone, and in the most physical sense, which can save him. God takes upon himself man's load and relieves him of it: thus freed he can soar up easily and join the company of the Happy in heaven alongside God. This is the ransom paid by God to His Enemy, the vicarious atonement suffered by the Divine, the cross he has to bear when he comes upon this earth, into this vale of tears. I t is said, in terms of human feeling, pity so moved him that he left the happy abode of heaven, came down among men and lived like one of them, sharing their sorrow and pain and, what is divine, taking up the evil into himself, drinking, as it were, out of the poisoned bowl, so that man, frail mortal creature, may escape his doom.
   This way too, as all other ways, has indeed been the way of escape. God came down in order to take away some men with him. They were the blessed ones, but the normal humanity remains as it is, as it has been, on the whole. The few that pass beyond do not seem to leave any trace here below. There was no regeneration of mankind, no reformation of earthly life.

05.09 - Varieties of Religious Experience, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   The special gift of the Chaldean line of discipline lay in another direction. It cultivated not so much the higher lines of spiritual realisation but was occupied with what may be called the mid regions, the occult world. This material universe is not moved by the physical, vital or mental forces that are apparent and demonstrable, but by other secret and subtle forces; in fact, these are the motive forces, the real agents that work out and initiate movements in Nature, while the apparent ones are only the external forms and even masks. This occultism was also practised very largely in ancient Egypt from where the Greeks took up a few threads. The MysteriesOrphic and Eleusiniancultivated the tradition within a restricted circle and in a very esoteric manner. The tradition continued into the Christian Church also and an inner group formed in its heart that practised and kept alive something of this ancient science. The external tenets and dogmas of the Church did not admit or tolerate this which was considered as black magic, the Devil's Science. The evident reason was that if one pursued this line of occultism and tasted of the power it gave, one might very likely deviate from the straight and narrow path leading to the Spirit and spiritual salvation. In India too the siddhis or occult powers were always shunned by the truly spiritual, although sought by the many who take to the spiritual lifeoften with disastrous results. In Christianity, side by side with the major saints, there was always a group or a line of practicants that followed the occult system, although outwardly observing the official creed. It is curious to note that often where the original text of the Bible speaks of gods, in the plural, referring to the deities or occult powers, the official version translates it as God, to give the necessary theistic value and atmosphere.
   But if occultism is to be feared because of its wrong use and potential danger, spirituality too should then be placed on the same footing. All good things in the world have their deformation and danger, but that is no reason why one should avoid them altogether. What is required is right attitude and discrimination, training and discipline. Viewed in the true light, occultism is dynamic spirituality; in other words, it seeks to express and execute, bring down to the material life the powers and principles of the Spirit through the agency of the subtler forces of mind and life and the subtle physical.

05.18 - Man to be Surpassed, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   Yes, man's true humanity, says Kahler, almost echoing Nietzcshe, consists precisely in his capacity to surpass himself. The animal is wholly engrossed in its natural nature and activities; but man is capable of standing back, can separate from his biological self, observe, control and direct. For him "existence" truly means (as the Existentialist declares today) ex+sistere or ex+stare, to stay or stand outside. That is the surpassing enjoyed by him and demanded of himgoing beyond one's natural or normal self. But there is a danger here. For there can be a too much surpassing, a going away altogether, as religion or spirituality usually enjoins. Christianity, for example, which is in many senses a movement contrary to the Greek spirit, taught a transcendence that was for luring or driving the human soul away from the world and men towards an extra-terrestrial summum bonum.
   That is a false light, a wrong lead. Surpassing should not mean going beyondup and away: it means rather coming out of one's self and going abroad, finding one's kinship and unity with others, with the world around. The individualisation of the selfgiven by the Greek culturewas the first step; the next step in evolution is the "collectivisation" of the self. It is not in the Nazi or Bolshevic sense that we have to understand the word: it does not equate with totalitarianism. The peril is there, no doubt.

1.00a - Introduction, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
  All the serious Orders of the world, or nearly all, begin by insisting that the aspirant should take a vow of poverty; a Buddhist Bhikku, for example, can own only nine objects his three robes, begging bowl, a fan, toothbrush, and so on. The Hindu and Mohammedan Orders have similar regulations; and so do all the important Orders of monkhood in Christianity.
  Our own Order is the only exception of importance; and the reason for this is that it is much more difficult to retain one's purity if one is living in the world than if one simply cuts oneself off from it. It is far easier to achieve technical attainments if one is unhampered by any such considerations. These regulations operate as restrictions to one's usefulness in helping the world. There are terrible dangers, the worst dangers of all, associated with complete retirement. In my own personal judgment, moreover, I think that our own ideal of a natural life is much more wholesome.

1.00 - Introduction to Alchemy of Happiness, #The Alchemy of Happiness, #Al-Ghazali, #Sufism
  In form, the book contains a treatise on practical piety, but as is the case with a large proportion of Mohammedan works, the author, whatever may be his subject, finds a place for observations reaching far wide of his apparent aim, so our author is led to make many observations which develop his notions in anatomy, physiology, natural philosophy and natural religion. The partisans of all sorts of opinions will be interested in finding that a Mohammedan author writing so long since in the centre of Asia, had occasion to approve or condemn so many truths, speculations or fancies which are now current among us with the reputation of novelty. Many of the same paradoxes and problems that startle or fascinate in the nineteenth century are here discussed. He came in contact, among his contemporaries, with persons who made the same general objections to natural and revealed religion, as understood by Mohammedans, as are in our days made to Christianity, or who perverted and abused the religion which they professed for their own ends, in the same manner as Christianity is abused among us. And he engaged with earnestness now truthfully, and now erroneously, in refuting these men. His usual stand-point in discussion is equally removed from the most extravagant mysticism, and literal and formal orthodoxy. He attempts a dignified blending of reason [10] and faith, requiring of his fellow men unfeigned piety in the temper and tone of an evangelical Christian. He reminds his readers, in these discourses, that they are not Mussulmans if they are satisfied with merely a nominal faith, and treats with scorn those who are spiritualists only in language and dress.
  It is too narrow a view to adopt, in regard to a man of the sublime character of Ghazzali, that he obtained his ideas from any one school of thinkers, or that being in fellowship with the Soofies, that he was merely a Soofi. He was living in the centre of Aryan peoples and religions. He may have had his doctrine of the future life shaped by Zoroaster, and have been influenced by the missionaries of the Buddhists.

1.00 - Preliminary Remarks, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
  The lack of proof has been so severely felt by Christianity (and in a much less degree by Islam) that fresh miracles have been manufactured almost daily to support the tottering structure. Modern thought, rejecting these miracles, has adopted theories involving epilepsy and madness. As if organisation could spring from disorganization! Even if epilepsy were the cause of these great movements which have caused civilization after civilization to arise from barbarism, it would merely form an argument for cultivating epilepsy.
  Of course great men will never conform with the standards of little men, and he whose mission it is to overturn the world can hardly escape the title of revolutionary. The fades of a period always furnish terms of abuse. The fad of Caiaphas was Judaism, and the Pharisees told him that Christ blasphemed. Pilate was a loyal Roman; to him they accused Christ of sedition. When the Pope had all power it was necessary to prove an enemy a heretic. Advancing to-day towards a medical oligarchy, we try to prove that our opponents are insane, and (in a Puritan country) to attack their morals. We should then avoid all rhetoric, and try to investigate with perfect freedom from bias the phenomena which occurred to these great leaders of mankind.
  --
  Now this woman, though handicapped by a brain that was a mass of putrid pulp, and a complete lack of social status, education, and moral character, did more in the religious world than any other person had done for generations. She, and she alone, made Theosophy possible, and without Theosophy the world-wide interest in similar matters could never have been aroused. This interest is to the Law of Thelema what the preaching of John the Baptist was to Christianity.
  We are now in a position to say what happened to Mohammed. Somehow or another this phenomenon happened in his mind. More ignorant than Anna Kingsford, though, fortunately, more moral, he connected it with the story of the Annunciation, which he had undoubtedly heard in his boyhood, and said Gabriel appeared to me. But in spite of his ignorance, his total misconception of the truth, the power of the vision was such that he was enabled to persist through the usual persecution, and founded a religion to which even to-day one man in every eight belongs.
  The history of Christianity shows precisely the same remarkable fact. Jesus Christ was brought up on the fables to the Old Testament, and so was compelled to ascribe his experiences to Jehovah, although his gentle spirit could have had nothing in common with the monster who was always commanding the rape of virgins and the murder of little children, and whose rites were then, and still are, celebrated by human sacrifice.1
  Similarly the visions of Joan of Arc were entirely Christian; but she, like all the others we have mentioned, found somewhere the force to do great things. Of course, it may be said that there is a fallacy in the argument; it may be true that all these great people saw God, but it does not follow that every one who sees God will do great things.

1.01 - Adam Kadmon and the Evolution, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
  How close Christianity has been to Gnosticism is shown
  by the furore with which all remainders of the latter, and

1.01 - Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious, #The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  the Romans to import Asiatic cults in bulk. If Christianity had
  really been as so often described "alien" to the Germanic
  --
  the Roman legions began to wane. But Christianity had come
  to stay, because it fits in with the existing archetypal pattern. In
  --
  and the Christianity of Negroes and other dark-skinned con-
  verts is certainly an occasion for historical reflections. Why,
  --
  2 9 Just as in Christianity the vow of worldly poverty turned the
  mind away from the riches of this earth, so spiritual poverty
  --
  and Christianity, and that is why there came to him the revealer
  and enlightener, the speaking fountainhead of his soul. Here is

1.01 - Economy, #Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience, #Henry David Thoreau, #Philosophy
  The man who independently plucked the fruits when he was hungry is become a farmer; and he who stood under a tree for shelter, a housekeeper. We now no longer camp as for a night, but have settled down on earth and forgotten heaven. We have adopted Christianity merely as an improved method of _agri_-culture. We have built for this world a family mansion, and for the next a family tomb. The best works of art are the expression of mans struggle to free himself from this condition, but the effect of our art is merely to make this low state comfortable and that higher state to be forgotten. There is actually no place in this village for a work of _fine_ art, if any had come down to us, to stand, for our lives, our houses and streets, furnish no proper pedestal for it. There is not a nail to hang a picture on, nor a shelf to receive the bust of a hero or a saint. When I consider how our houses are built and paid for, or not paid for, and their internal economy managed and sustained, I wonder that the floor does not give way under the visitor while he is admiring the gewgaws upon the mantel-piece, and let him through into the cellar, to some solid and honest though earthy foundation. I cannot but perceive that this so called rich and refined life is a thing jumped at, and I do not get on in the enjoyment of the _fine_ arts which adorn it, my attention being wholly occupied with the jump; for I remember that the greatest genuine leap, due to human muscles alone, on record, is that of certain wandering Arabs, who are said to have cleared twenty-five feet on level ground. Without factitious support, man is sure to come to earth again beyond that distance. The first question which I am tempted to put to the proprietor of such great impropriety is, Who bolsters you? Are you one of the ninety-seven who fail, or of the three who succeed? Answer me these questions, and then perhaps I may look at your bawbles and find them ornamental. The cart before the horse is neither beautiful nor useful. Before we can adorn our houses with beautiful objects the walls must be stripped, and our lives must be stripped, and beautiful housekeeping and beautiful living be laid for a foundation: now, a taste for the beautiful is most cultivated out of doors, where there is no house and no housekeeper.
  Old Johnson, in his Wonder-Working Providence, speaking of the first settlers of this town, with whom he was contemporary, tells us that

1.01 - Historical Survey, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
  The confusion is also due to the efforts of those theo- logians in mediaeval times who, being desirous of saving their benighted Hebrew brethren from the pangs of eternal torture and damnation in the nether regions, muddled and tampered not only with the original texts but with extreme sectarian interpretations in order to show that the authors of the Qabalistic books were desirous that their Jewish posterity should become apostates to Christianity.
  The Qabalah taken in its traditional and literal form

1.01 - MAPS OF EXPERIENCE - OBJECT AND MEANING, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
  morality.... Christianity is a system, a consistently thought out and complete view of things. If one
  breaks out of it a fundamental idea, the belief in God, one thereby breaks the whole thing to pieces: one
  has nothing of any consequence left in ones hands. Christianity presupposes that man does not know,
  cannot know what is good for him and what evil: he believes in God, who alone knows. Christian
  --
  consequently think they no longer have need of Christianity as a guarantee of morality; that is merely
  the consequence of the ascendancy of Christian evaluation and an expression of the strength and depth

1.01 - Prayer, #Bhakti-Yoga, #Swami Vivekananda, #Hinduism
  The one great advantage of Bhakti is that it is the easiest and the most natural way to reach the great divine end in view; its great disadvantage is that in its lower forms it oftentimes degenerates into hideous fanaticism. The fanatical crew in Hinduism, or Mohammedanism, or Christianity, have always been almost exclusively recruited from these worshippers on the lower planes of Bhakti. That singleness of attachment (Nishth) to a loved object, without which no genuine love can grow, is very often also the cause of the denunciation of everything else. All the weak and undeveloped minds in every religion or country have only one way of loving their own ideal, i.e. by hating every other ideal.
  Herein is the explanation of why the same man who is so lovingly attached to his own ideal of God, so devoted to his own ideal of religion, becomes a howling fanatic as soon as he sees or hears anything of any other ideal. This kind of love is somewhat like the canine instinct of guarding the master's property from intrusion; only, the instinct of the dog is better than the reason of man, for the dog never mistakes its master for an enemy in whatever dress he may come before it. Again, the fanatic loses all power of judgment. Personal considerations are in his case of such absorbing interest that to him it is no question at all what a man says whether it is right or wrong; but the one thing he is always particularly careful to know is who says it. The same man who is kind, good, honest, and loving to people of his own opinion, will not hesitate to do the vilest deeds when they are directed against persons beyond the pale of his own religious brotherhood.

1.01 - Principles of Practical Psycho therapy, #The Practice of Psycho therapy, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  Christians, and the German Faith Movement. Not only Christianity with its
  symbols of salvation, but all religions, including the primitive with their

1.01 - Soul and God, #The Red Book Liber Novus, #unset, #Zen
  The Draft continues: My friends, as you can see, mercy is granted to the developed, not the childish. I thank my God for this message. Do not let the teachings of Christianity deceive you!
  Its teachings are good for the most mature minds of bygone time. Today, it serves immature minds. Christianity no longer promises us grace, and yet we still need mercy. That which I tell you is the way of what is to come, my way to mercy (p. 27). i.e., Christ. C.G. Jung, Transformation symbolism in the mass (1942, CW II).
  In Answer to Job Jung noted: Through the indwelling of the third divine person in man, namely the Holy Ghost, a christification of the many arises (1952, CW II, 758).

1.01 - THAT ARE THOU, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
  Philo was the exponent of the Hellenistic Mystery Religion which grew up, as Professor Goodenough has shown, among the Jews of the Dispersion, between about 200 B. C. and 100 A. D. Reinterpreting the Pentateuch in terms of a metaphysical system derived from Platonism, Neo-Pythagoreanism and Stoicism, Philo transformed the wholly transcendental and almost anthropomorphically personal God of the Old Testament into the immanent-transcendent Absolute Mind of the Perennial Philosophy. But even from the orthodox scribes and Pharisees of that momentous century which witnessed, along with the dissemination of Philos doctrines, the first beginnings of Christianity and the destruction of the Temple at Jerusalem, even from the guardians of the Law we hear significantly mystical utterances. Hillel, the great rabbi whose teachings on humility and the love of God and man read like an earlier, cruder version of some of the Gospel sermons, is reported to have spoken these words to an assemblage in the courts of the Temple. If I am here, (it is Jehovah who is speaking through the mouth of his prophet) everyone is here. If I am not here, no one is here.
  The Beloved is all in all; the lover merely veils Him; The Beloved is all that lives, the lover a dead thing.

1.01 - The Ideal of the Karmayogin, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Theism, Christianity, Mahomedanism and Buddhism and yet is none of these, is that to which the World-Spirit moves. In our own, which is the most sceptical and the most believing of all, the most sceptical because it has questioned and experimented the most, the most believing because it has the deepest experience and the most varied and positive spiritual knowledge, - that wider Hinduism which is not a dogma or combination of dogmas but a law of life, which is not a social framework but the spirit of a past and future social evolution, which rejects nothing but insists on testing and experiencing everything and when tested and experienced turning it to the soul's uses, in this
  Hinduism we find the basis of the future world-religion. This sanatana dharma has many scriptures, Veda, Vedanta, Gita,

1.02 - MAPS OF MEANING - THREE LEVELS OF ANALYSIS, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
  valid configurations (and is not even the only one that characterizes Christianity).
  Figure 18: The Positive Constituent Elements of Experience, Personified
  --
  Isis in the Egyptian myth of Osiris, Mary in Christianity) because the unknown is also creative or
  generative.
  --
  container of the primordial element.280 The God of Islam, Judaism and Christianity, Alpha and Omega, the
  beginning and the end, the first and the last (Revelations 22:13), places himself outside of or beyond

1.02 - On the Service of the Soul, #The Red Book Liber Novus, #unset, #Zen
  20). The reference is to Augustine's Confessions (400CE), a devotional work written when he was forty-five years old, in which he narrates his conversion to Christianity in an autobiographical form (Confessions, tr. H. Chadwick [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991]). The Confessions are addressed to God, and recount the years of his wandering from God and the manner of his return. Echoing this in the opening sections of Liber Novus, Jung addresses his soul and recounts the years of his wandering away from her, and the manner of his return. In his published works,
  Jung frequently cited Augustine, and referred to his Confessions several times in Transformations and Symbols of the Libido.

1.02 - SOCIAL HEREDITY AND PROGRESS, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
  3. Education and Christianity
  SINCE these lines are intended for Christian teachers I must
  --
  By definition and in essence Christianity is the religion of the
  Incarnation: God uniting Himself with the world which He cre-
  --
  And so in Christianity we again come upon that mysterious law
  of additivity and social heredity which in every field governs the
  --
  ing, there is no institution, other than Christianity, that seems ca-
  pable of endowing the immense body of things taught with a true

1.02 - The Concept of the Collective Unconscious, #The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  birth mysteries, Christianity included. Christ himself is "twice-
  born": through his baptism in the Jordan he was regenerated
  --
  under the influence of Christianity. Even in the account of
  the miracle at Pentecost the pneuma still has the double mean-

1.02 - The Divine Teacher, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  India has from ancient times held strongly a belief in the reality of the Avatara, the descent into form, the revelation of the Godhead in humanity. In the West this belief has never really stamped itself upon the mind because it has been presented through exoteric Christianity as a theological dogma without any roots in the reason and general consciousness and attitude towards life. But in India it has grown up and persisted as a logical outcome of the Vedantic view of life and taken firm root in the consciousness of the race. All existence is a manifestation of God because He is the only existence and nothing can be except as either a real figuring or else a figment of that one reality. Therefore every conscious being is in part or in some way a descent of the Infinite into the apparent finiteness of
  Essays on the Gita

1.02 - The Eternal Law, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
  not that there was anything to reject; there is nothing to reject anywhere, not in so-called Hinduism any more than in Christianity or in any other aspiration of man; but there is everything to widen, to widen endlessly. What we take for a final truth is most often only a partial experience of the Truth, and certainly the total Experience exists nowhere in time and space, in no place and no being however luminous he may be; for Truth is infinite, forever marching onward.
  But man always takes upon himself an endless burden, said the
  --
  Those who have made some progress with Christianity do not want to give it up, and carry it on their backs; those who have made some progress with Buddhism do not want to leave it, and carry it on their backs. This weighs you down and slows you terribly. Once you have passed through a stage, drop it; let it go! And move on! Yes, there is an eternal law, but it is eternally young and eternally progressive.
  Although India was also able to appreciate that God is the Eternal Iconoclast in his cosmic march, she did not always have the strength to withstand her own wisdom. The vast invisible that pervades this country was to extract from it a double ransom, both human and spiritual; human, because these people, saturated with the Beyond,

1.02 - THE NATURE OF THE GROUND, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
  Mahayana Buddhism teaches these same metaphysical doctrines in terms of the Three Bodies of Buddha the absolute Dharmakaya, known also as the Primordial Buddha, or Mind, or the Clear Light of the Void; the Sambhogakaya, corresponding to Isvara or the personal God of Judaism, Christianity and Islam; and finally the Nirmanakaya, the material body, in which the Logos is incarnated upon earth as a living, historical Buddha.
  Among the Sufis, Al Haqq, the Real, seems to be thought of as the abyss of Godhead underlying the personal Allah, while the Prophet is taken out of history and regarded as the incarnation of the Logos.

1.02 - THE PROBLEM OF SOCRATES, #Twilight of the Idols, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy
  of the morality of amelioration--that of Christianity as well--was
  a misunderstanding._ The most blinding light of day: reason at any

1.02 - The Three European Worlds, #The Ever-Present Origin, #Jean Gebser, #Integral
  As we shall see, these designations are valid not only with respect to art history, but also to aesthetics, cultural history, and the history of the psyche and the mind. The achievement of perspective indicates man's discovery and consequent coming to awareness of space, whereas the unrealized perspective indicates that space is dormant in man and that he is not yet awakened to it. Moreover, the unperspectival world suggests a state in which man lacks self-identity: he belongs to a unit, such as a tribe or communal group, where the emphasis is not yet on the person but on the impersonal, not an the "I" but on the communal group, the qualitative mode of the collective. The illuminated manuscripts and gilt ground of early Romanesque painting depict theunperspectival world that retained the prevailing constitutive elements of Mediterranean antiquity. Not until the Gothic, the forerunner of the Renaissance was there a shift in emphasis. Before that space is not yet our depth-space, rather a cavern (and vault), or simply an in-between space; in both instances it is undifferentiated space. This situation bespeaks for us a hardly conceivable enclosure in the world, an intimate bond between outer and inner suggestive of a correspondence only faintly discernible between soul and nature. This condition was gradually destroyed by the expansion and growing strength of Christianity whose teaching of detachment from nature transforms this destruction into an act of liberation.
  Man's lack of spatial awareness is attended by a lack of ego-consciousness, since in order to objectify and qualify space, a self-conscious "I" is required that is able to stand opposite or confront space, as well as to depict or represent it by projecting it out of his soul or psyche. In this light, Worringer's statements regarding the lack of all space consciousness in Egyptian art are perfectly valid: "Only in the rudimentary form of prehistorical space and cave magic does space have a role in Egyptian architecture . . . . The Egyptians were neutral and indifferent toward space . . . . They were not even potentially aware of spatiality. Their experience was not trans-spatial but pre-spatial; . . . their culture of oasis cultivation was spaceless . . . . Their culture knew only spatial limitations and enclosures in architecture but no inwardness or interiority as such. Just as their engraved reliefs lacked shadow depth, so too was their architecture devoid of special depth. The third dimension, that is the actual dimension of life's tension and polarity, was experience not as a quality but as a mere quantity. How then was space, the moment of depth-seeking extent, to enter their awareness as an independent quality apart from all corporality? . . . The Egyptians lacked utterly any spatial consciousness."

1.03 - APPRENTICESHIP AND ENCULTURATION - ADOPTION OF A SHARED MAP, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
  Nietzsche has been casually regarded as a great enemy of Christianity. I believe, however, that he was
  consciously salutary in that role. When the structure of an institution has become corrupt particularly

1.03 - PERSONALITY, SANCTITY, DIVINE INCARNATION, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
  The doctrine that God can be incarnated in human form is found in most of the principal historic expositions of the Perennial Philosophyin Hinduism, in Mahayana Buddhism, in Christianity and in the Mohammedanism of the Sufis, by whom the Prophet was equated with the eternal Logos.
  When goodness grows weak,
  --
  What we do depends in large measure upon what we think, and if what we do is evil, there is good empirical reason for supposing that our thought patterns are inadequate to material. mental or spiritual reality. Because Christians believed that there had been only one Avatar, Christian history has been disgraced by more and bloother crusades, interdenominational wars, persecutions and proselytizing imperialism than has the history of Hinduism and Buddhism. Absurd and idolatrous doctrines, affirming the quasi-divine nature of sovereign states and their rulers, have led oriental, no less than Western, peoples into innumerable political wars; but because they have not believed in an exclusive revelation at one sole instant of time, or in the quasi-divinity of an ecclesiastical organization, oriental peoples have kept remarkably clear of the mass murder for religions sake, which has been so dreadfully frequent in Christendom. And while, in this important respect, the level of public morality has been lower in the West than in the East, the levels of exceptional sanctity and of ordinary individual morality have not, so far as one can judge from the available evidence, been any higher. If the tree is indeed known by its fruits, Christianitys departure from the norm of the Perennial Philosophy would seem to be philosophically unjustifiable.
  The Logos passes out of eternity into time for no other purpose than to assist the beings, whose bodily form he takes, to pass out of time into eternity. If the Avatars appearance upon the stage of history is enormously important, this is due to the fact that by his teaching he points out, and by his being a channel of grace and divine power he actually is, the means by which human beings may transcend the limitations of history. The author of the Fourth Gospel affirms that the Word became flesh; but in another passage he adds that the flesh profiteth nothingnothing, that is to say, in itself, but a great deal, of course, as a means to the union with immanent and transcendent Spirit. In this context it is very interesting to consider the development of Buddhism. Under the forms of religious or mystical imagery, writes R. E. Johnston in his Buddhist China, the Mahayana expresses the universal, whereas Hinayana cannot set itself free from the domination of historical fact. In the words of an eminent orientalist, Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, The Mahayanist believer is warnedprecisely as the worshipper of Krishna is warned in the Vaishnavite scriptures that the Krishna Lila is not a history, but a process for ever unfolded in the heart of man that matters of historical fact are without religious significance (except, we should add, insofar as they point to or themselves constitute the meanswhe ther remote or proximate, whether political, ethical or spiritualby which men may come to deliverance from selfness and the temporal order.)
  In the West, the mystics went some way towards liberating Christianity from its unfortunate servitude to historic fact. (or, to be more accurate, to those various mixtures of contemporary record with subsequent inference and phantasy, which have, at different epochs, been accepted as historic fact). From the writings of Eckhart, Tauler and Ruysbroeck, of Boehme, William Law and the Quakers, it would be possible to extract a spiritualized and universalized Christianity, whose narratives should refer, not to history as it was, or as someone afterwards thought it ought to be, but to processes forever unfolded in the heart of man. But unfortunately the influence of the mystics was never powerful enough to bring about a radical Mahayanist revolution in the West. In spite of them, Christianity has remained a religion in which the pure Perennial Philosophy has been overlaid, now more, now less, by an idolatrous preoccupation with events and things in timeevents and things regarded not merely as useful means, but as ends, intrinsically sacred and indeed divine. Moreover such improvements on history as were made in the course of centuries were, most imprudently, treated as though they themselves were a part of historya procedure which put a powerful weapon into the hands of Protestant and, later, of Rationalist controversialists. How much wiser it would have been to admit the perfectly avowable fact that, when the sternness of Christ the Judge had been unduly emphasized, men and women felt the need of personifying the divine compassion in a new form, with the result that the figure of the Virgin, mediatrix to the mediator, came into increased prominence. And when, in course of time, the Queen of Heaven was felt to be too awe-inspiring, compassion was re-personified in the homely figure of St. Joseph, who thus became me thator to the me thatrix to the me thator. In exactly the same way Buddhist worshippers felt that the historic Sakyamuni, with his insistence on recollectedness, discrimination and a total dying to self as the principal means of liberation, was too stern and too intellectual. The result was that the love and compassion which Sakyamuni had also inculcated came to be personified in Buddhas such as Amida and Maitreyadivine characters completely removed from history, inasmuch as their temporal career was situated somewhere in the distant past or distant future. Here it may be remarked that the vast numbers of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, of whom the Mahayanist theologians speak, are commensurate with the vastness of their cosmology. Time, for them, is beginningless, and the innumerable universes, every one of them supporting sentient beings of every possible variety, are born, evolve, decay and the, only to repeat the same cycleagain and again, until the final inconceivably remote consummation, when every sentient being in all the worlds shall have won to deliverance out of time into eternal Suchness or Buddhahood This cosmological background to Buddhism has affinities with the world picture of modern astronomyespecially with that version of it offered in the recently published theory of Dr. Weiszcker regarding the formation of planets. If the Weiszcker hypothesis is correct, the production of a planetary system would be a normal episode in the life of every star. There are forty thousand million stars in our own galactic system alone, and beyond our galaxy other galaxies, indefinitely. If, as we have no choice but to believe, spiritual laws governing consciousness are uniform throughout the whole planet-bearing and presumably life-supporting universe, then certainly there is plenty of room, and at the same time, no doubt, the most agonizing and desperate need, for those innumerable redemptive incarnations of Suchness, upon whose shining multitudes the Mahayanists love to dwell.
  For my part, I think the chief reason which prompted the invisible God to become visible in the flesh and to hold converse with men was to lead carnal men, who are only able to love carnally, to the healthful love of his flesh, and afterwards, little by little, to spiritual love.
  --
  Can the many fantastic and mutually incompatible theories of expiation and atonement, which have been grafted onto the Christian doctrine of divine incarnation, be regarded as indispensable elements in a sane theology? I find it difficult to imagine how anyone who has looked into a history of these notions, as expounded, for example, by the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, by Athanasius and Augustine, by Anselm and Luther, by Calvin and Grotius, can plausibly answer this question in the affirmative. In the present context, it will be enough to call attention to one of the bitterest of all the bitter ironies of history. For the Christ of the Gospels, lawyers seemed further from the Kingdom of Heaven, more hopelessly impervious to Reality, than almost any other class of human beings except the rich. But Christian theology, especially that of the Western churches, was the product of minds imbued with Jewish and Roman legalism. In all too many instances the immediate insights of the Avatar and the theocentric saint were rationalized into a system, not by philosophers, but by speculative barristers and metaphysical jurists. Why should what Abbot John Chapman calls the problem of reconciling (not merely uniting) Mysticism and Christianity be so extremely difficult? Simply because so much Roman and Protestant thinking was done by those very lawyers whom Christ regarded as being peculiarly incapable of understanding the true Nature of Things. The Abbot (Chapman is apparently referring to Abbot Marmion) says St John of the Cross is like a sponge full of Christianity. You can squeeze it all out, and the full mystical theory (in other words, the pure Perennial Philosophy) remains. Consequently for fifteen years or so I hated St John of the Cross and called him a Buddhist. I loved St Teresa and read her over and over again. She is first a Christian, only secondarily a mystic. Then I found I had wasted fifteen years, so far as prayer was concerned.
  Now see the meaning of these two sayings of Christs. The one, No man cometh unto the Father but by me, that is through my life. The other saying, No man cometh unto me except the Father draw him; that is, he does not take my life upon him and follow after me, except he is moved and drawn of my Father, that is, of the Simple and Perfect Good, of which St. Paul saith, When that which is perfect is come, that which is in part shall be done away.

1.03 - .REASON. IN PHILOSOPHY, #Twilight of the Idols, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy
  world, whether after the manner of Christianity or of Kant (after all
  a Christian in disguise), is only a sign of decadence,--a symptom of

1.03 - The Desert, #The Red Book Liber Novus, #unset, #Zen
  74. Black Book 2 continues: "I think of Christianity in the desert. Physically, those ancients went into the desert. Did they also enter into the desert of their own self? Or was their self not as barren and desolate as mine? There they wrestled with the devil. I wrestle with waiting. It seems to me not less since it is truly a hot hell" (p. 35).
  75. Around 285, St. Anthony went to live as a hermit in the Egyptian desert, and other hermits followed, whom he and Pachomius organized into a community. This formed the basis of
  --
  5:3). In a number of Christian communities, members talce a vow of poverty. In I934, Jung wrote: "Just as in Christianity the vow of worldly poverty turned the mind away from the riches of this earth, so spiritual poverty seeks to renounce the false riches of the spirit in order to withdraw not only from the sorry remnants-which today call themselves the protestant 'churches' of a great past, but also from all the allurements of exotic aromas; in order, finally; to turn back to itself, where, in the cold light of consciousness, the blank barrenness of the world reaches to the very stars" ("On the archetypes of the collective unconscious," CW 9, I, 29).
  80. The Draft continues: "This, too, is an image of the ancients, that they lived in things symbolically: they renounced wealth in order to have a share of the voluntary poverty of their souls. Therefore I had to grant my soul my most extreme poverty and need. And the scorn of my cleverness rose up against this" (P.47)

1.03 - The Syzygy - Anima and Animus, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  ishes best when its source is undiscovered. Even in Christianity
  the divine syzygy has not become obsolete, but occupies the

1.04 - ADVICE TO HOUSEHOLDERS, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  "I had to practise each religion for a time - Hinduism, Islam, Christianity. Furthermore, I followed the paths of the Saktas, Vaishnavas, and Vedantists. I realized that there is only one God toward whom all are travelling; but the paths are different.
  "While visiting the holy places, I would sometimes suffer great agony. Once I went with Mathur to Raja Babu's drawing-room in Benares. I found that they talked there only of worldly matters - money, real estate, and the like. At this I burst into tears. I said to the Divine Mother, weeping: 'Mother! Where hast Thou brought me? I was much better off at Dakshineswar.' In Allahabad I noticed the same things that I saw elsewhere - the same ponds, the same grass, the same trees, the same tamarind-leaves.

1.04 - Descent into Future Hell, #The Red Book Liber Novus, #unset, #Zen
  [2] When the desert begins to bloom, it brings forth strange plants. You will consider yourself mad, and in a certain sense you will in fact be mad. 88 To the extent that the Christianity of this time lacks madness, it lacks divine life. Take note of what the ancients taught us in images: madness is divine. 89 But because the ancients lived this image concretely in events, it became a deception for us, since we became masters of the reality of the world. It is unquestionable: if you enter into the world of the soul, you are like a madman, and a doctor would consider you to be sick. What I say here can be seen as sickness, but no one can see it as sickness more than I do.
  This is how I overcame madness. If you do not know what divine madness is, suspend judgment and wait for the fruits. 90 But know that there is a divine madness which is nothing other than the overpowering of the spirit of this time through the spirit of the depths. Speak then of sick delusion when the spirit of the depths can no longer stay down and forces a man to speak in tongues instead of in human speech, and makes him believe that he himself is the spirit
  --
  [London: Penguin, 1986], p. 46, line 244). Socrates distinguished four types of divine madness: (I) inspired divination, such as by the prophetess at Delphi; (2) instances in which individuals, when ancient sins have given rise to troubles, have prophesied and incited to prayer and worship; (3) possession by the Muses, since the technically skilled untouched by the madness of the Muses will never be a good poet; and (4) the lover. In the Renaissance, the theme of divine madness was talcen up by the Neoplatonists such as Ecino and by humanists such as Erasmus. Erasmus's discussion is particularly important, as it fuses the classical Platonic conception with Christianity.
  For Erasmus, Christianity was the highest type of inspired madness. Like Plato, Erasmus
  Descent into Future Hell

1.04 - GOD IN THE WORLD, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
  It is in the literature of Mahayana and especially of Zen Buddhism that we find the best account of the psychology of the man for whom Samsara and Nirvana, time and eternity, are one and the same. More systematically perhaps than any other religion, the Buddhism of the Far East teaches the way to spiritual Knowledge in its fulness as well as in its heights, in and through the world as well as in and through the soul. In this context we may point to a highly significant fact, which is that the incomparable landscape painting of China and Japan was essentially a religious art, inspired by Taoism and Zen Buddhism; in Europe, on the contrary, landscape painting and the poetry of nature worship were secular arts which arose when Christianity was in decline, and derived little or no inspiration from Christian ideals.
  Blind, deaf, dumb!

1.04 - Magic and Religion, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
  much of the force by which Christianity conquered the world was
  drawn from the same high conception of God's moral nature and the

1.04 - THE APPEARANCE OF ANOMALY - CHALLENGE TO THE SHARED MAP, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
  The end of Christianity at the hands of its own morality (which cannot be replaced), which turns
  against the Christian God: the sense of truthfulness, highly developed by Christianity, is nauseated by
  the falseness and mendaciousness of all Christian interpretations of the world and of history; rebound

1.04 - The Discovery of the Nation-Soul, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  This has been the rule not only with the nation, but with all communities. A Church is an organised religious community and religion, if anything in the world, ought to be subjective; for its very reason for existencewhere it is not merely an ethical creed with a supernatural authorityis to find and realise the soul. Yet religious history has been almost entirely, except in the time of the founders and their immediate successors, an insistence on things objective, rites, ceremonies, authority, church governments, dogmas, forms of belief. Witness the whole external religious history of Europe, that strange sacrilegious tragi-comedy of discords, sanguinary disputations, religious wars, persecutions, State churches and all else that is the very negation of the spiritual life. It is only recently that men have begun seriously to consider what Christianity, Catholicism, Islam really mean and are in their soul, that is to say, in their very reality and essence.
  But now we have, very remarkably, very swiftly coming to the surface this new psychological tendency of the communal consciousness. Now first we hear of the soul of a nation and, what is more to the purpose, actually see nations feeling for their souls, trying to find them, seriously endeavouring to act from the new sense and make it consciously operative in the common life and action. It is only natural that this tendency should have been, for the most part, most powerful in new nations or in those struggling to realise themselves in spite of political subjection or defeat. For these need more to feel the difference between themselves and others so that they may assert and justify their individuality as against the powerful superlife which tends to absorb or efface it. And precisely because their objective life is feeble and it is difficult to affirm it by its own strength in the adverse circumstances, there is more chance of their seeking for their individuality and its force of self-assertion in that which is subjective and psychological or at least in that which has a subjective or a psychological significance.

1.04 - The First Circle, Limbo Virtuous Pagans and the Unbaptized. The Four Poets, Homer, Horace, Ovid, and Lucan. The Noble Castle of Philosophy., #The Divine Comedy, #Dante Alighieri, #Christianity
  And if they were before Christianity,
  In the right manner they adored not God;

1.05 - 2010 and 1956 - Doomsday?, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
  in Christianity: And I saw a new heaven and a new earth:
  for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away;
  --
  founder of Christianity, was of the same conviction and
  wrote in his first letter to the Thessalonians: We who are
  --
  eastern Mediterranean. Christianity played an important
  role in this cycle, as did the Renaissance, the Enlightenment

1.05 - Christ, A Symbol of the Self, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  77 For anyone who has a positive attitude towards Christianity
  the problem of the Antichrist is a hard nut to crack. It is noth-
  --
  but the spirit of medieval Christianity that underwent strange
  pagan transformations, exchanging the heavenly goal for an
  --
  not good. The God of Christianity, on the other hand, is only
  good. There is no denying that Clement's theology helps us to
  --
  ">3 The author of the Homilies espouses a Petrine Christianity
  distinctly "High Church" or ritualistic in flavour. This, taken
  --
  tury), when there was as yet no need for Christianity to fight
  against its Manichaean competitors. It might easily be a descrip-
  --
  view of the human soul. To offset this, early Christianity, with
  unerring logic, balanced Christ against an Antichrist. For how

1.05 - MORALITY AS THE ENEMY OF NATURE, #Twilight of the Idols, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy
  with some reason, that on the soil from which Christianity grew, the
  idea of the "spiritualisation of passion" could not possibly have been
  --
  triumph over Christianity. Another triumph is our spiritualisation of
  hostility. It consists in the fact that we are beginning to realise
  --
  which is the aim of Christianity. Nothing could make us less envious
  than the moral cow and the plump happiness of a clean conscience. The

1.05 - Prayer, #Hymn of the Universe, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
  lieve, the Christianity of tomorrow will find its
  increasingly clear portrayal:

1.05 - The Activation of Human Energy, #Let Me Explain, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
  arguments for Christianity will be given again in Part 2 (comparison of
  religions).
  --
  progress since the birth of love in Christianity: the coming
  to consciousness of an 'Omega' in the heart of the Noos-

1.05 - THE HOSTILE BROTHERS - ARCHETYPES OF RESPONSE TO THE UNKNOWN, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
  development of Christianity and Christian culture and, therefore, on Western and world society
  although there is little direct reference to Satan, in the Old and New Testaments (surprisingly little: no
  --
  constitute true mythology. These ideas surround the established central writings and ideas of Christianity,
  like a cloud surrounds a mountain. They have been transmitted to us, in part, as religious doctrine; in part,
  --
  monotheism of Judaism and Christianity has its roots in older, more polytheistic thinking. The many gods
  of archaic conceptualization became the single Ruler of more modern religious thinking as a consequence
  --
  force behind the hea then kingdoms is called in Christianity the Antichrist, the earthly ruler demanding
  divine honors.467
  --
  anomaly as constituent element of experience that has lead to some of the worst excesses of Christianity
  (and not just Christianity). It has constantly been the case that proper-thinking people confuse the
  existence of threats to their security and moral integrity with evil. This means that the proper-thinking
  --
  idea of the Devil as the eternal enemy of Christ enabled those who profess Christianity to persecute those
  who do not. The presuppositions of the persecutor are, for example: the Devil is the enemy, the Jew is not
  --
  What primarily distinguishes Christianity (and Judaism) from most Oriental religions, it seems to me,
  is this revolutionary and prophetic element of confrontation with society. This element gives meaning
  --
  absolutist Christianity, which emphasized the ultimate reality and value of the spirit, dogmatically
  concretized; which presumed that everything worth knowing had already been discovered; and which cast
  --
  had to integrate into a nonconfessional Christianity the Hermetic tradition and the natural sciences of
  medicine, astronomy, and mechanics. In fact, this synthesis constituted a new Christian creation,
  --
  Since Christianity is expressly a system of salvation, founded moreover on Gods plan of
  redemption, and God is unity par excellence, one must ask oneself why the alchemists still felt a
  --
  developed. Formal Christianity adopted the position that the sacrifice of Christ brought history to a close,
  and that belief in that sacrifice guaranteed redemption. Alchemy rejected that position, in its pursuit of
  --
  In Christianity, spirit descends to matter, and the result of the union is the birth of Christ (and,
  unfortunately, the formal realization of his opponent). In alchemy, which compensated for the one-sided
  view of Christianity, matter rises to spirit, with analogous result: creation of the lapis or philosophical
  stone, which bears an unmistakable resemblance to Christ, embodied in abstractly material form. This
  --
  Alchemy was a living myth: the myth of the individual man, as redeemer. Organized Christianity had
  sterilized itself, so to speak, by insisting on the worship of something external as the means to salvation.
  --
  The central ideas of Christianity are rooted in Gnostic philosophy, which, in accordance with
  psychological laws, simply had to grow up at a time when the classical religions had become obsolete. It
  --
  The great myths of Christianity the great myths of the past, in general no longer speak to the
  majority of westerners, who regard themselves as educated. The mythic view of history cannot be credited
  --
  (1982). Vol. 2. From Gautama Buddha to the triumph of Christianity.
  (1985). Vol. 3. From Muhammad to the age of reforms.
  --
  Christian views of the sixth deliverance of Israel diverge. For Christianity, Jesus achieved a definitive deliverance
  for all mankind with his revelation that the ideal kingdom of Israel was a spiritual kingdom. For Judaism, the

1.05 - THE MASTER AND KESHAB, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  Narendra, who lived in that quarter of the city, was sent for. In the mean time Sri Ramakrishna and the devotees were invited to the drawing-room upstairs. The floor of the room was covered with a carpet and a white sheet. A few cushions were lying about. On the wall hung an oil painting especially painted for Surendra, in which Sri Ramakrishna was pointing out to Keshab the harmony of Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, and other religions. On seeing the picture Keshab had once said, "Blessed is the man who conceived the idea."
  Sri Ramakrishna was talking joyously with the devotees, when Narendra arrived. This made the Master doubly happy. He said to his young disciple, "We had a boat trip with Keshab today. Vijay and many other Brahmo devotees were there. (Pointing to M.) Ask him what I said to Keshab and Vijay about the mother and daughter observing their religious fast on Tuesdays, each on her own account, though the welfare of the one meant the welfare of the other. I also said to Keshab that trouble-makers like jatila and Kutila were necessary to lend zest to the play. (To M.) Isn't that so?"

1.05 - THE NEW SPIRIT, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
  AS recently AS yesterday Christianity represented the highest
  point attained by the consciousness of Mankind in its striving to
  --
  world. They hold that the time of Christianity is past, and that
  some other shoot must grow in the field of religion to take its place.

1.06 - Being Human and the Copernican Principle, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
  reminiscences about Christ and primitive Christianity wasb e ing human an d the cope r nican princi ple
  123
  --
  ble throughout the history of Christianity remained inter
  twined with the hea then literature and philosophy of

1.06 - MORTIFICATION, NON-ATTACHMENT, RIGHT LIVELIHOOD, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
  OUR kingdom go is the necessary and unavoidable corollary of Thy kingdom come. For the more there is of self, the less there is of God. The divine eternal fulness of life can be gained only by those who have deliberately lost the partial, separative life of craving and self-interest, of egocentric thinking, feeling, wishing and acting. Mortification or deliberate dying to self is inculcated with an uncompromising firmness in the canonical writings of Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism and most of the other major and minor religions of the world, and by every theocentric saint and spiritual reformer who has ever lived out and expounded the principles of the Perennial Philosophy. But this self-naughting is never (at least by anyone who knows what he is talking about) regarded as an end in itself. It possesses merely an instrumental value, as the indispensable means to something else. In the words of one whom we have often had occasion to cite in earlier sections, it is necessary for all of us to learn the true nature and worth of all self-denials and mortifications.
  As to their nature, considered in themselves, they have nothing of goodness or holiness, nor are any real part of our sanctification, they are not the true food or nourishment of the Divine Life in our souls, they have no quickening, sanctifying power in them; their only worth consists in this, that they remove the impediments of holiness, break down that which stands between God and us, and make way for the quickening, sanctifying spirit of God to operate on our souls, which operation of God is the one only thing that can raise the Divine Life in the soul, or help it to the smallest degree of real holiness or spiritual life. Hence we may learn the reason why many people not only lose the benefit, but are even the worse for all their mortifications. It is because they mistake the whole nature and worth of them. They practice them for their own sakes, as things good in themselves; they think them to be real parts of holiness, and so rest in them and look no further, but grow full of self-esteem and self-admiration for their own progress in them. This makes them self-sufficient, morose, severe judges of all those that fall short of their mortifications. And thus their self-denials do only that for them which indulgences do for other people: they withstand and hinder the operation of God upon their souls, and instead of being really self-denials, they streng then and keep up the kingdom of self.

1.06 - THE FOUR GREAT ERRORS, #Twilight of the Idols, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy
  punishment and guilt Christianity is the metaphysics of the hangman.
  What then, alone, can our teaching be?--That no one gives man his

1.06 - The Sign of the Fishes, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  the days of primitive Christianity, Christ has a number of sym-
  bols or "allegories" in common with the devil. Of these I would
  --
  U 6 2 , Christianity in if 6 S , and the Antichrist in U 6 d . 35
  Megarian philosopher Diodoros. But the reason for the Saturn-ass analogy prob-
  --
  to Christianity, <$ T? to Judaism, $ d $ to Islam, and according to
  him (5 9 signifies idolatry ("Commentarium in Ptolemaeum De astrorum
  --
  reasons there are doubts about the Christianity of the Pectorios inscription at
  Autun, in which the fish figures too: *'E(T0ie irv . . . , ixOvv lx tj3V iraXa/xcus

1.07 - THE .IMPROVERS. OF MANKIND, #Twilight of the Idols, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy
  so. Christianity as sprung from Jewish roots and comprehensible only
  as grown upon this soil, represents the counter-movement against that
  --
  anti-Aryan religion: Christianity is the transvaluation of all Aryan
  values, the triumph of Chandala values, the proclaimed gospel of the
  --
  nor the teachers of Judaism and Christianity, have ever doubted their
  right to falsehood. They have never doubted their right to quite a

1.07 - The Literal Qabalah (continued), #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
  There attaches hereto, however, another problem of paramount importance upon which it is necessary to comment before proceeding any further. The fact that the Sephiros fall into triads or trinities, and the fact that such titles as the Father, the Mother, and the Son, have been ascribed to them, has been the means of encouraging many an apologist on behalf of Christianity to argue without sufficient basis that the Christian trinity is implicit in the
  Qabalah. I quote Prof. Abelson in connection with this argument :
  --
  Gabirol, Neoplatonism, Gnosticism, Philonism, and other systems have all left indelible traces (i.e. on the evolution of the Qabalah). But Christianity, be it remembered, besides being a debtor to Judaism, is a debtor to these sources as well ; so that what appears to be Christian may be, in reality, Jewish ; a development of the original material by an unbroken succession of Jewish minds. . . . But it is beyond dispute that the Christian Trinity and the trinities of the ten Sefirot lie in quite distinct planes."
  On this subject I feel in my deepest heart that to Mr.
  --
  Israel to shave their beards and cut their forelocks ; to forsake the faith and counsel of their fathers, and partake of the communion according to the Rite of Rome. With but a few exceptions they failed in the latter, despite wilful perversion of Zoharic doctrine. Many a Rabbi of ortho- doxy, as a direct result, levelled venomous hatred and fiery vituperation against the Zohar, accepting a 'priori the belief of his uncircumcized persecutors that Christianity, or at least the contention that the Trinity and the nomination of Christ as the Jewish Messiah, appeared in the Zohar.
  The fault lies with them also for the neglect of so great a heritage.

1.07 - The Prophecies of Nostradamus, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  mentioned above, is characteristic of Christianity. The quartile aspect between
  Mercury and Mars "injures" Mercury by "martial" violence. According to
  --
  lar to Roger Bacon, who had revived the theory that Christianity
  was under the influence of the planet Mercury. Pierre d'Ailly

1.07 - The Three Schools of Magick 2, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
  This School being debased by nature, is not so far removed from conventional religion as either the White or the Yellow. Most primitive fetishistic religions may, in fact, be considered fairly faithful representatives of this philosophy. Where animism holds sway, the "medicine-man" personifies this universal evil, and seeks to propitiate it by human sacrifice. The early forms of Judaism, and that type of Christianity which we associate with the Salvation Army, Billy Sunday and the Fundamentalists of the back-blocks of America, are sufficiently simple cases of religion whose essence is the propitiation of a malignant demon.
  When the light of intelligence begins to dawn dimly through many fogs upon these savages, we reach a second stage. Bold spirits master courage to assert that the evil which is so obvious, is, in some mysterious way, an illusion. They thus throw back the whole complexity of sorrow to a single cause; that is, the arising of the illusion aforesaid. The problem then assumes a final form: How is that illusion to be destroyed.
  --
  The basis of the Black philosophy is not impossibly mere climate, with its resulting etiolation of the native, its languid, bilious, anaemic, fever-prostrated, emasculation of the soul of man. We accordingly find few true equivalents of this School in Europe. In Greek philosophy there is no trace of any such doctrine. The poison in its foulest and most virulent form only entered with Christianity.*[AC17] But even so, few men of any real eminence were found to take the axioms of pessimism seriously. Huxley, for all of his harping on the minor key, was an eupeptic Tory. The culmination of the Black philosophy is only found in Schopenhauer, and we may regard him as having been obsessed, on the one hand, by the despair born of that false scepticism which he learnt from the bankruptcy of Hume and Kant; on the other, by the direct obsession of the Buddhist documents to which he was one of the earliest Europeans to obtain access. He was, so to speak, driven to suicide by his own vanity, a curious parallel to Kiriloff in The Possessed of Dostoiewsky.
  We have, however, examples plentiful enough of religions deriving almost exclusively from the Black tradition in the different stages. We have already mentioned the Evangelical cults with their ferocious devil-god who creates mankind for the pleasure of damning it and forcing it to crawl before him, while he yells with druken glee over the agony of his only son.[AC18] But in the same class, we must place Christian Science, so grotesquely afraid of pain, suffering and evil of every sort, that its dupes can think of nothing better than to bleat denials of its actuality, in the hope of hypnotizing themselves into anaesthesia.
  --
  It appears that the Levant, from Byzantium and Athens to Damascus, Jerusalem, Alexandria and Cairo, was preoccupied with the formulation of this School in a popular religion, beginning in the days of Augustus Caesar. For there are elements of this central idea in the works of the Gnostics, in certain rituals of what Frazer conveniently calls the Asiatic God, as in the remnants of the Ancient Egyptian cult. The doctrine became abominably corrupted in committee, so to speak, and the result was Christianity, which may be regarded as a White ritual overlaid by a mountainous mass of Black doctrine, like the baby of the mother that King Solomon non-suited.
  We may define the doctrine of the White School in its purity in very simple terms.
  --
  Mysticism, both Catholic and Protestant, made a further attempt to free Christianity from the dark cloud of iniquity. They joined hands with the Sufis and the Vedantists. But this again led to the mere denial of the reality of evil. Thus drawing away, little by little, from clear appreciation of the facts of Nature, their doctrine became purely theoretical, and faded away, while the thundercloud of sin settled down more heavily than ever.
  The most important of all the efforts of the White School, from an exoteric point of view, is Islam. In its doctrine there is some slight taint, but much less than in Christianity. It is a virile religion. It looks facts in the face, and admits their horror; but it proposes to overcome them by sheer dint of manhood. Unfortunately, the metaphysical conceptions of its quasi-profane Schools are grossly materialistic. It is only the Pantheism of the Sufis which eliminates the conception of propitiation; and, in practice, the Sufis are too closely allied to the Vedantists to retain hold of reality.
  That will be all for the present.
  --
   [AC18] N.B. Christianity was in its first stage a Jewish Communism, hardly distinguishable from Marxism.
  * [AC19] This passage appears to be a direct hint at the Formula of the IX O.T.O., and the preparation of the Elixir of Life.

1.07 - TRUTH, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
  The overvaluation of words and formulae may be regarded as a special case of that overvaluation of the things of time, which is so fatally characteristic of historic Christianity. To know Truth-as-Fact and to know it unitively, in spirit and in truth-as-immediate-apprehensionthis is deliverance, in this standeth our eternal life. To be familiar with the verbalized truths, which symbolically correspond to Truth-as-Fact insofar as it can be known in, or inferred from, truth-as-immediate-apprehension, or truth-as-historic-revelationthis is not salvation, but merely the study of a special branch of philosophy. Even the most ordinary experience of a thing or event in time can never be fully or adequately described in words. The experience of seeing the sky or having neuralgia is incommunicable; the best we can do is to say blue or pain, in the hope that those who hear us may have had experiences similar to our own and so be able to supply their own version of the meaning. God, however, is not a thing or event in time, and the time-bound words which cannot do justice even to temporal matters are even more inadequate to the intrinsic nature and our own unitive experience of that which belongs to an incommensurably different order. To suppose that people can be saved by studying and giving assent to formulae is like supposing that one can get to Timbuctoo by poring over a map of Africa. Maps are symbols, and even the best of them are inaccurate and imperfect symbols. But to anyone who really wants to reach a given destination, a map is indispensably useful as indicating the direction in which the traveller should set out and the roads which he must take.
  In later Buddhist philosophy words are regarded as one of the prime determining factors in the creative evolution of human beings. In this philosophy five categories of being are recognizedName, Appearance, Discrimination, Right Knowledge. Suchness. The first three are related for evil, the last two for good. Appearances are discriminated by the sense organs, then reified by naming, so that words are taken for things and symbols are used as the measure of reality. According to this view, language is a main source of the sense of separateness and the blasphemous idea of individual self-sufficiency, with their inevitable corollaries of greed, envy, lust for power, anger and cruelty. And from these evil passions there springs the necessity of an indefinitely protracted and repeated separate existence under the same, self-perpetuated conditions of craving and infatuation. The only escape is through a creative act of the will, assisted by Buddha-grace, leading through selflessness to Right Knowledge, which consists, among other things, in a proper appraisal of Names, Appearances and Discrimination. In and through Right Knowledge, one emerges from the infatuating delusion of I, me, mine, and, resisting the temptation to deny the world in a state of premature and one-sided ecstasy, or to affirm it by living like the average sensual man, one comes at last to the transfiguring awareness that samsara and nirvana are one, to the unitive apprehension of pure Suchness the ultimate Ground, which can only be indicated, never adequately described in verbal symbols.
  --
  Away, then, with the fictions and workings of discursive reason, either for or against Christianity! They are only the wanton spirit of the mind, whilst ignorant of God and insensible of its own nature and condition. Death and life are the only things in question; life is God living and working in the soul; death is the soul living and working according to the sense and reason of bestial flesh and blood. Both this life and this death are of their own growth, growing from their own seed within us, not as busy reason talks and directs, but as the heart turns either to the one or to the other.
  William Law
  --
  Between the horns of Chuang Tzus dilemma there is no way but that of love, peace and joy. Only those who manifest their possession, in however small a measure, of the fruits of the Spirit can persuade others that the life of the spirit is worth living. Argument and controversy are almost useless; in many cases, indeed, they are positively harmful. But this, of course, is a thing that clever men with a gift for syllogisms and sarcasm, find it peculiarly hard to admit. Milton, no doubt, genuinely believed that he was working for truth, righteousness and the glory of God by exploding in torrents of learned scurrility against the enemies of his favourite dictator and his favourite brand of nonconformity. In actual fact, of course, he and the other controversialists of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries did nothing but harm to the cause of true religion, for which, on one side or the other, they fought with an equal learning and ingenuity and with the same foulmou thed intemperance of language. The successive controversies went on, with occasional lucid intervals, for about two hundred yearsPapists arguing with anti-Papists, Protestants with other Protestants, Jesuits with Quietists and Jansenists. When the noise finally died down, Christianity (which, like any other religion, can survive only if it manifests the fruits of the Spirit) was all but dead; the real religion of most educated Europeans was now nationalistic idolatry. During the eighteenth century this change to idolatry seemed (after the atrocities committed in the name of Christianity by Wallenstein and Tilly) to be a change for the better. This was because the ruling classes were determined that the horrors of the wars of religion should not be repeated and therefore deliberately tempered power politics with gentlemanliness. Symptoms of gentlemanliness can still be observed in the Napoleonic and Crimean wars. But the national Molochs were steadily devouring the eighteenth-century ideal. During the first and second World Wars we have witnessed the total elimination of the old checks and self-restraints. The consequences of political idolatry now display themselves without the smallest mitigation either of humanistic honour and etiquette or of transcendental religion. By its internecine quarrels over words, forms of organization, money and power, historic Christianity consummated the work of self-destruction, to which its excessive preoccupation with things in time had from the first so tragically committed it.
  Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment;

1.08 - Psycho therapy Today, #The Practice of Psycho therapy, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  achievement of Christianity that, in contrast to these archaic systems which
  are all based on the original projection of psychic contents, it gave to each
  --
  represents mass psychology raised to the nth power. Therefore Christianity
  in its best days never subscribed to a belief in the State, but set before man

1.08 - RELIGION AND TEMPERAMENT, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
  In the course of history it has often happened that one or other of the imperfect religions has been taken too seriously and regarded as good and true in itself, instead of as a means to the ultimate end of all religion. The effects of such mistakes are often disastrous. For example, many Protestant sects have insisted on the necessity, or at least the extreme desirability, of a violent conversion. But violent conversion, as Sheldon has pointed out, is a phenomenon confined almost exclusively to persons with a high degree of somatotonia. These persons are so intensely extraverted as to be quite unaware of what is happening in the lower levels of their minds. If for any reason their attention comes to be turned inwards, the resulting self-knowledge, because of its novelty and strangeness, presents itself with the force and quality of a revelation and their metanoia, or change of mind, is sudden and thrilling. This change may be to religion, or it may be to something else for example, to psycho-analysis. To insist upon the necessity of violent conversion as the only means to salvation is about as sensible as it would be to insist upon the necessity of having a large face, heavy bones and powerful muscles. To those naturally subject to this kind of emotional upheaval, the doctrine that makes salvation dependent on conversion gives a complacency that is quite fatal to spiritual growth, while those who are incapable of it are filled with a no less fatal despair. Other examples of inadequate theologies based upon psychological ignorance could easily be cited. One remembers, for instance, the sad case of Calvin, the cerebrotonic who took his own intellectual constructions so seriously that he lost all sense of reality, both human and spiritual. And then there is our liberal Protestantism, that predominantly viscerotonic heresy, which seems to have forgotten the very existence of the Father, Spirit and Logos and equates Christianity with an emotional attachment to Christs humanity or, (to use the currently popular phrase) the personality of Jesus, worshipped idolatrously as though there were no other God. Even within all-comprehensive Catholicism we constantly hear complaints of the ignorant and self-centred directors, who impose upon the souls under their charge a religious dharma wholly unsuited to their naturewith results which writers such as St. John of the Cross describe as wholly pernicious. We see, then, that it is natural for us to think of God as possessed of the qualities which our temperament tends to make us perceive in Him; but unless nature finds a way of transcending itself by means of itself, we are lost. In the last analysis Philo is quite right in saying that those who do not conceive God purely and simply as the One injure, not God of course, but themselves and, along with themselves, their fellows.
  The way of knowledge comes most naturally to persons whose temperament is predominantly cerebrotonic. By this I do not mean that the following of this way is easy for the cerebrotonic. His specially besetting sins are just as difficult to overcome as are the sins which beset the power-loving somatotonic and the extreme viscerotonic with his gluttony for food and comfort and social approval. Rather I mean that the idea that such a way exists and can be followed (either by discrimination, or through non-attached work and one-pointed devotion) is one which spontaneously occurs to the cerebrotonic. At all levels of culture he is the natural monotheist; and this natural monotheist, as Dr. Radins examples of primitive theology clearly show, is often a monotheist of the tat tvam asi, inner-light school. Persons committed by their temperament to one or other of the two kinds of extraversion are natural polytheists. But natural polytheists can, without much difficulty, be convinced of the theoretical superiority of monotheism. The nature of human reason is such that there is an intrinsic plausibility about any hypothesis which seeks to explain the manifold in terms of unity, to reduce apparent multiplicity to essential identity. And from this theoretical monotheism the half-converted polytheist can, if he chooses, go on (through practices suitable to his own particular temperament) to the actual realization of the divine Ground of his own and all other beings. He can, I repeat, and sometimes he actually does. But very often he does not. There are many theoretical monotheists whose whole life and every action prove that in reality they are still what their temperament inclines them to bepoly theists, worshippers not of the one God they sometimes talk about, but of the many gods, nationalistic and technological, financial and familial, to whom in practice they pay all their allegiance.
  --
  Primitive Buddhism is no less predominantly cerebrotonic than primitive Christianity, and so is Vedanta, the metaphysical discipline which lies at the heart of Hinduism. Confucianism, on the contrary, is a mainly viscerotonic systemfamilial, ceremonious and thoroughly this-worldly. And in Mohammedanism we find a system which incorporates strongly somatotonic elements. Hence Islams black record of holy wars and persecutionsa record comparable to that of later Christianity, after that religion had so far compromised with unregenerate somatotonia as to call its ecclesiastical organization the Church Militant.
  So far as the achievement of mans final end is concerned, it is as much of a handicap to be an extreme cerebrotonic or an extreme viscerotonic as it is to be an extreme somatotonic. But whereas the cerebrotonic and the viscerotonic cannot do much harm except to themselves and those in immediate contact with them, the extreme somatotonic, with his native aggressiveness, plays havoc with whole societies. From one point of view civilization may be defined as a complex of religious, legal and educational devices for preventing extreme somatotonics from doing too much mischief, and for directing their irrepressible energies into socially desirable channels. Confucianism and Chinese culture have sought to achieve this end by inculcating filial piety, good manners and an amiably viscerotonic epicureanism the whole reinforced somewhat incongruously by the cerebrotonic spirituality and restraints of Buddhism and classical Taoism. In India the caste system represents an attempt to subordinate military, political and financial power to spiritual authority; and the education given to all classes still insists so strongly upon the fact that mans final end is unitive knowledge of God that even at the present time, even after nearly two hundred years of gradually accelerating Europeanization, successful somatotonics will, in middle life, give up wealth, position and power to end their days as humble seekers after enlightenment. In Catholic Europe, as in India, there was an effort to subordinate temporal power to spiritual authority; but since the Church itself exercised temporal power through the agency of political prelates and mitred business men, the effort was never more than partially successful. After the Reformation even the pious wish to limit temporal power by means of spiritual authority was completely abandoned. Henry VIII made himself, in Stubbss words, the Pope, the whole Pope, and something more than the Pope, and his example has been followed by most heads of states ever since. Power has been limited only by other powers, not by an appeal to first principles as interpreted by those who are morally and spiritually qualified to know what they are talking about. Meanwhile, the interest in religion has everywhere declined and even among believing Christians the Perennial Philosophy has been to a great extent replaced by a metaphysic of inevitable progress and an evolving God, by a passionate concern, not with eternity, but with future time. And almost suddenly, within the last quarter of a century, there has been consummated what Sheldon calls a somatotonic revolution, directed against all that is characteristically cerebrotonic in the theory and practice of traditional Christian culture. Here are a few symptoms of this somatotonic revolution.
  In traditional Christianity, as in all the great religious formulations of the Perennial Philosophy, it was axiomatic that contemplation is the end and purpose of action. Today the great majority even of professed Christians regard action (directed towards material and social progress) as the end, and analytic thought (there is no question any longer of integral thought, or contemplation) as the means to that end.
  In traditional Christianity, as in the other formulations of the Perennial Philosophy, the secret of happiness and the way to salvation were to be sought, not in the external environment, but in the individuals state of mind with regard to the environment. Today the all-important thing is not the state of the mind, but the state of the environment. Happiness and moral progress depend, it is thought, on bigger and better gadgets and a higher standard of living.
  In traditional Christian education the stress was all on restraint; with the recent rise of the progressive school it is all on activity and self-expression.
  --
  Like technological progress, with which it is so closely associated in so many ways, modern war is at once a cause and a result of the somatotonic revolution. Nazi education, which was specifically education for war, had two principal aims: to encourage the manifestation of somatotonia in those most richly endowed with that component of personality, and to make the rest of the population feel ashamed of its relaxed amiability or its inward-looking sensitiveness and tendency towards self-restraint and tender-mindedness. During the war the enemies of Nazism have been compelled, of course, to borrow from the Nazis educational philosophy. All over the world millions of young men and even of young women are being systematically educated to be tough and to value toughness beyond every other moral quality. With this system of somatotonic ethics is associated the idolatrous and polytheistic theology of nationalisma pseudo-religion far stronger at the present time for evil and division than is Christianity, or any other monotheistic religion, for unification and good. In the past most societies tried systematically to discourage somatotonia. This was a measure of self-defense; they did not want to be physically destroyed by the power-loving aggressiveness of their most active minority, and they did not want to be spiritually blinded by an excess of extraversion. During the last few years all this has been changed. What, we may apprehensively wonder, will be the result of the current world-wide reversal of an immemorial social policy? Time alone will show.
  next chapter: 1.09 - SELF-KNOWLEDGE

1.08 - The Depths of the Divine, #Sex Ecology Spirituality, #Ken Wilber, #Philosophy
  Literal or mythic Christianity, for example, originating from the magic-mythic and mythic stages of development, and beset by "mythic dissociation," imagines God as a Cosmic Father set above and apart from nature (ontologically divorced), and thus any action on God's part is and must be "supernatural"-a "miraculous" suspension of the laws of nature on behalf of "His children," activities that are all nonetheless variations on turning spinach into potatoes.
  This dissociation of "natural" and "supernatural," and a praying, a begging, for the latter to miraculously intervene in the former, Emerson calls "meanness and theft," a vicious craving for commodities:

1.08 - The Gods of the Veda - The Secret of the Veda, #Vedic and Philological Studies, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  It is true that apart from these experiences the existence of various worlds & different orders of beings was a logical necessity of the Vedic conception of existence. Existence being a life, a soul expressing itself in forms, every distinct order of consciousness, every stratum or sea of conscious-being (samudra, sindhu, apah as the Vedic thinkers preferred to call them) demanded its own order of objective experiences (lokas, worlds), tended inevitably to throw itself into forms of individualised being (vishah, ganah, prajah). Moreover, in a world so conceived, nothing could happen in this world without relation to some force or being in the worlds behind; nor could there be any material, vital or mental movement except as the expression of a life & a soul behind it. Everything here must be supported from the worlds of mind or it could not maintain its existence. From this idea to the peopling of the world with innumerable mental & vital existences,existences essentially vital like the Naiads, Dryads, Nereids, Genii, Lares & Penates of the Greeks and Romans, the wood-gods, river-gods, house-gods, tree-deities, snake-deities of the Indians, or mental like the intermediate gods of our old Pantheon, would be a natural and inevitable step. This Animism is a remarkably universal feature in the religious culture of the ancient world. I cannot accept the modern view that its survival in a crude form among the savages, those waifs & strays of human progress, is a proof of their low & savage originany more than the peculiarly crude ideas of Christianity that exist in uneducated negro minds [and] would survive in a still more degraded form if they were long isolated from civilised life, would be a proof to future research that Christianity originated from a cannibal tribe on the African continent. The idea is essentially a civilised conception proceeding from keen susceptibility & only possible after a meditative dwelling upon Naturenot different indeed in rank & order from Wordsworths experience of Nature which no one, I suppose, would consider an atavistic recrudescence of old savage mentality, and impossible to the animal man. The dog & crow who reason from their senses, do not stand in awe of inanimate objects, or of dawn & rain & shine or expect from them favours.
  But the great gods of the Veda belong to a higher order than these beings who attach themselves to the individual object and the particular movement. They are great world-powers; they support the wide laws & universal functions of the world. Their dwelling-place is in Swar, the world of pure mind, and they only enter into and are not native to or bound by life & matter.

1.08 - The Historical Significance of the Fish, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  untary witness to the truth of Christianity.
  4 Eisler, The Royal Art of Astrology, p. 107.
  --
  ment and confusion. Christianity has insisted on God's goodness
  as a loving Father and has done its best to rob evil of substance.
  --
  thereby extinguish it. The advocates of Christianity squander
  their energies in the mere preservation of what has come down
  --
  This characteristic coincides with the claim of Christianity to
  be the beginning and end of all things, and with its eschato-

1.08 - The Three Schools of Magick 3, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
  During the last two generations the Masters of the Yellow School have been compelled to take notice of the progressive ruin of the White adepts. Christianity, which possessed at least the semblance of a White formula, is in the agonies of decomposition, even before it is actually dead. Materialistic science has overwhelmed the faith and hope of the Christians (they never possessed any charity to overwhelm) with a demonstration of the sorrow, transitoriness and cruel futility of the Universe. A vast wave of pessimism has engulfed the fortress of Mansoul.
  It was indeed a deadly blow to the adepts of the White School when Science, their own familiar friend in whom they trusted, lifted up his heel against them. It was in this conjuncture that the Yellow adepts sent forth into the Western world a messenger, Helena Petrowna Blavatsky, with the distinct mission to destroy, on the one hand, the crude schools of Christianity, and, on the other, to eradicate the materialism from Physical Science. She made the necessary connection with Edward Maitl and and Anna Kingsford, who were trying rather helplessly to put the exoteric formulae of the White School into the hands of students, and with the secret representatives of the Rosicrucian Brotherhood. It is not for us in this place to estimate the degree of success with which she carried out her embassy; but at least we see today that Physical Science is at last penetrating to the spiritual basis of material phenomena. The work of Henry Poincar, Einstein, Whitehead, and Bertr and Russell is sufficient evidence of this fact.
   Christianity, too, has fallen into a lower degree of contempt than ever. Realizing that it was moribund, it made a supreme and suicidal effort, and plunged into the death-spasm of the first world-war. It was too far corrupt to react to the injections of the White formula which might have saved it. We see today that Christianity is more bigoted, further divorced from reality, than ever. In some countries it has again become a persecuting church.
  With horrid glee the adepts of the Black School looked on at these atrocious paroxysms. But it did more. It marshalled its forces quietly, and prepared to clean up the debris of the battlefields. It is at present (1924 e.v.) pledged to a supreme attempt to chase the manly races from their spiritual halidom. (The spasm still [1945 e.v.] continues; note well the pro-German screams of Anglican Bishops, and the intrigues of the Vatican.)

1.08 - THINGS THE GERMANS LACK, #Twilight of the Idols, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy
  narcotics, alcohol and Christianity, been so viciously abused as in
  Germany. Recently a third opiate was added to the list, one which in

1.08 - Worship of Substitutes and Images, #Bhakti-Yoga, #Swami Vivekananda, #Hinduism
  The same ideas apply to the worship of the Pratimas as to that of the Pratikas; that is to say, if the image stands for a god or a saint, the worship is not the result of Bhakti, and does not lead lo liberation; but if it stands for the one God, the worship thereof will bring both Bhakti and Mukti. Of the principal religions of the world we see Vedantism, Buddhism, and certain forms of Christianity freely using images; only two religions, Mohammedanism and Protestantism, refuse such help. Yet the Mohammedans use the grave of their saints and martyrs almost in the place of images; and the Protestants, in rejecting all concrete helps to religion, are drifting away every year farther and farther from spirituality till at present there is scarcely any difference between the advanced Protestants and the followers of August Comte, or agnostics who preach ethics alone. Again, in Christianity and Mohammedanism whatever exists of image worship is made to fall under that category in which the Pratika or the Pratima is worshipped in itself, but not as a "help to the vision" (Drishtisaukaryam) of God; therefore it is at best only of the nature of ritualistic Karmas and cannot produce either Bhakti or Mukti. In this form of image-worship, the allegiance of the soul is given to other things than Ishvara, and, therefore, such use of images, or graves, or temples, or tombs, is real idolatry; it is in itself neither sinful nor wicked it is a rite a Karma, and worshippers must and will get the fruit thereof.
  next chapter: 1.09 - The Chosen Ideal

1.09 - SKIRMISHES IN A WAY WITH THE AGE, #Twilight of the Idols, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy
  therefore, they assert that they no longer need Christianity as a
  guarantee of morality, this in itself is simply the outcome of the
  --
  the "will"--the greatest forgery, Christianity always excepted, which
  history has to show. Examined more carefully, he is in this respect
  --
  of the great facts of human culture, which Christianity completely
  repudiates. (He approved of them as paths to "salvation," as
  --
  comedy which Christianity has made of the hour of death. We should
  never forgive Christianity for having so abused the weakness of the
  dying man as to do violence to his conscience, or for having used

1.09 - The Ambivalence of the Fish Symbol, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  in Christianity, the second Person of the Trinity, the human
  figure split off from the fish hints at God's incarnation. 13 What
  --
  custom paved the way for the eucharistic fish in Christianity. 18
  18 7 The ambivalent attitude towards the fish is an indication of

1.10 - Aesthetic and Ethical Culture, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  We get then by elimination to a positive idea and definition of culture. But still on this higher plane of the mental life we are apt to be pursued by old exclusivenesses and misunderstandings. We see that in the past there seems often to have been a quarrel between culture and conduct; yet according to our definition conduct also is a part of the cultured life and the ethical ideality one of the master impulses of the cultured being. The opposition which puts on one side the pursuit of ideas and knowledge and beauty and calls that culture and on the other the pursuit of character and conduct and exalts that as the moral life must start evidently from an imperfect view of human possibility and perfection. Yet that opposition has not only existed, but is a naturally strong tendency of the human mind and therefore must answer to some real and important divergence in the very composite elements of our being. It is the opposition which Arnold drew between Hebraism and Hellenism. The trend of the Jewish nation which gave us the severe ethical religion of the Old Testament,crude, conventional and barbarous enough in the Mosaic law, but rising to undeniable heights of moral exaltation when to the Law were added the Prophets, and finally exceeding itself and blossoming into a fine flower of spirituality in Judaic Christianity,1was dominated by the preoccupation of a terrestrial and ethical righteousness and the promised rewards of right worship and right doing, but innocent of science and philosophy, careless of knowledge, indifferent to beauty. The Hellenic mind was less exclusively but still largely dominated by a love of the play of reason for its own sake, but even more powerfully by a high sense of beauty, a clear aesthetic sensibility and a worship of the beautiful in every activity, in every creation, in thought, in art, in life, in religion. So strong was this sense that not only manners, but ethics were seen by it to a very remarkable extent in the light of its master idea of beauty; the good was to its instinct largely the becoming and the beautiful. In philosophy itself it succeeded in arriving at the conception of the Divine as Beauty, a truth which the metaphysician very readily misses and impoverishes his thought by missing it. But still, striking as is this great historical contrast and powerful as were its results on European culture, we have to go beyond its outward manifestation if we would understand in its source this psychological opposition.
  The conflict arises from that sort of triangular disposition of the higher or more subtle mentality which we have already had occasion to indicate. There is in our mentality a side of will, conduct, character which creates the ethical man; there is another side of sensibility to the beautiful,understanding beauty in no narrow or hyper-artistic sense,which creates the artistic and aesthetic man. Therefore there can be such a thing as a predominantly or even exclusively ethical culture; there can be too, evidently, a predominantly or even exclusively aesthetic culture. There are at once created two conflicting ideals which must naturally stand opposed and look askance at each other with a mutual distrust or even reprobation. The aesthetic man tends to be impatient of the ethical rule; he feels it to be a barrier to his aesthetic freedom and an oppression on the play of his artistic sense and his artistic faculty; he is naturally hedonistic,for beauty and delight are inseparable powers, and the ethical rule tramples on pleasure, even very often on quite innocent pleasures, and tries to put a strait waistcoat on the human impulse to delight. He may accept the ethical rule when it makes itself beautiful or even seize on it as one of his instruments for creating beauty, but only when he can subordinate it to the aesthetic principle of his nature,just as he is often drawn to religion by its side of beauty, pomp, magnificent ritual, emotional satisfaction, repose or poetic ideality and aspiration,we might almost say, by the hedonistic aspects of religion. Even when fully accepted, it is not for their own sake that he accepts them. The ethical man repays this natural repulsion with interest. He tends to distrust art and the aesthetic sense as something lax and emollient, something in its nature undisciplined and by its attractive appeals to the passions and emotions destructive of a high and strict self-control. He sees that it is hedonistic and he finds that the hedonistic impulse is non-moral and often immoral. It is difficult for him to see how the indulgence of the aesthetic impulse beyond a very narrow and carefully guarded limit can be combined with a strict ethical life. He evolves the puritan who objects to pleasure on principle; not only in his extremesand a predominant impulse tends to become absorbing and leads towards extremes but in the core of his temperament he remains fundamentally the puritan. The misunderstanding between these two sides of our nature is an inevitable circumstance of our human growth which must try them to their fullest separate possibilities and experiment in extremes in order that it may understand the whole range of its capacities.
  --
    The epithet is needed, for European Christianity has been something different, even at its best of another temperament, Latinised, Graecised, Celticised or else only a rough Teutonic imitation of the old-world Hebraism.
    Tapas is the energising conscious-power of cosmic being by which the world is created, maintained and governed; it includes all concepts of force, will, energy, power, everything dynamic and dynamising. Ananda is the essential nature of bliss of the cosmic consciousness and, in activity, its delight of self-creation and self-experience.

1.10 - Theodicy - Nature Makes No Mistakes, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
  ichaeism, and even Christianity) the separation between
  Positive and Negative, Light and Darkness has been seen

1.10 - THINGS I OWE TO THE ANCIENTS, #Twilight of the Idols, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy
  fatality of Christianity, Plato is that double-faced fascination
  called the "ideal," which made it possible for the more noble natures

1.11 - The Kalki Avatar, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
  phenomenon is to be found in Christianity. (In Essays on the
  Gita, Sri Aurobindo repeatedly names as Avatars Krishna,
  Buddha and Christ.) In Christianity its founder is seen
  mostly unawares as an Avatar, for Christ is at the same
  --
  difference with Hinduism is that in Christianity Christ is
  held to be the only Avatar, the one and only Redeemer of a
  --
  struggles in Christianity, and to the Crusades and the Wars
  of Religion. Christs own words as quoted in the gospel of
  --
  70 In persons knowledgeable about Christianity, this image will bring
  to mind the figure of the Messiah in the biblical book of Revelation, writ-

1.1.2 - Commentary, #Kena and Other Upanishads, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  the people; the similar lure in popular Christianity and popular
  Islam has no meaning for the conscience of modern humanity.

1.12 - TIME AND ETERNITY, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
  In the modern world the gods to whom human sacrifice is offered are personifications, not of Nature, but of mans own, home-made political ideals. These, of course, all refer to events in timeactual events in the past or the present, fancied events in the future. And here it should be noted that the philosophy which affirms the existence and the immediate realizableness of eternity is related to one kind of political theory and practice; the philosophy which affirms that what goes on in time is the only reality, results in a different kind of theory and justifies quite another kind of political practice. This has been clearly recognized by Marxist writers,* who point out that when Christianity is mainly preoccupied with events in time, it is a revolutionary religion, and that when, under mystical influences, it stresses the Eternal Gospel, of which the historical or pseudo-historical facts recorded in Scripture are but symbols, it becomes politically static and reactionary.
  This Marxian account of the matter is somewhat oversimplified. It is not quite true to say that all theologies and philosophies whose primary concern is with time, rather than eternity, are necessarily revolutionary. The aim of all revolutions is to make the future radically different from and better than the past. But some time-obsessed philosophies are primarily concerned with the past, not the future, and their politics are entirely a matter of preserving or restoring the status quo and getting back to the good old days. But the retrospective time-worshippers have one thing in common with the revolutionary devotees of the bigger and better future; they are prepared to use unlimited violence to achieve their ends. It is here that we discover the essential difference between the politics of eternity-philosophers and the politics of time-philosophers. For the latter, the ultimate good is to be found in the temporal worldin a future, where everyone will be happy because all are doing and thinking something either entirely new and unprecedented or, alternatively, something old, traditional and hallowed. And because the ultimate good lies in time, they feel justified in making use of any temporal means for achieving it. The Inquisition burns and tortures in order to perpetuate a creed, a ritual and an ecclesiastico-politico-financial organization regarded as necessary to mens eternal salvation. Bible-worshipping Protestants fight long and savage wars, in order to make the world safe for what they fondly imagine to be the genuinely antique Christianity of apostolic times. Jacobins and Bolsheviks are ready to sacrifice millions of human lives for the sake of a political and economic future gorgeously unlike the present. And now all Europe and most of Asia has had to be sacrificed to a crystal-gazers vision of perpetual Co-Prosperity and the Thousand-Year Reich. From the records of history it seems to be abundantly clear that most of the religions and philosophies which take time too seriously are correlated with political theories that inculcate and justify the use of large-scale violence. The only exceptions are those simple Epicurean faiths, in which the reaction to an all too real time is Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die. This is not a very noble, nor even a very realistic kind of morality. But it seems to make a good deal more sense than the revolutionary ethic: Die (and kill), for tomorrow someone else will eat, drink and be merry. In practice, of course, the prospect even of somebody elses future merriment is extremely precarious. For the process of wholesale dying and killing creates material, social and psychological conditions that practically guarantee the revolution against the achievement of its beneficent ends.
  For those whose philosophy does not compel them to take time with an excessive seriousness the ultimate good is to be sought neither in the revolutionarys progressive social apocalypse, nor in the reactionarys revived and perpetuated past, but in an eternal divine now which those who sufficiently desire this good can realize as a fact of immediate experience. The mere act of dying is not in itself a passport to eternity; nor can wholesale killing do anything to bring deliverance either to the slayers or the slain or their posterity. The peace that passes all understanding is the fruit of liberation into eternity; but in its ordinary everyday form peace is also the root of liberation. For where there are violent passions and compelling distractions, this ultimate good can never be realized. That is one of the reasons why the policy correlated with eternity-philosophies is tolerant and non-violent. The other reason is that the eternity, whose realization is the ultimate good, is a kingdom of heaven within. Thou art That; and though That is immortal and impassible, the killing and torturing of individual thous is a matter of cosmic significance, inasmuch as it interferes with the normal and natural relationship between individual souls and the divine eternal Ground of all being. Every violence is, over and above everything else, a sacrilegious rebellion against the divine order.
  Passing now from theory to historical fact, we find that the religions, whose theology has been least preoccupied with events in time and most concerned with eternity, have been consistently the least violent and the most humane in political practice. Unlike early Judaism, Christianity and Mohammedanism (all of them obsessed with time), Hinduism and Buddhism have never been persecuting faiths, have preached almost no holy wars and have refrained from that proselytizing religious imperialism, which has gone hand in hand with the political and economic oppression c the coloured peoples. For four hundred years, from the beginning of the sixteenth century to the beginning of the twentieth, most of the Christian nations of Europe have spent a good part of their time and energy in attacking, conquering and exploiting their non-Christian neighbours in other continents. In the course of these centuries many individual churchmen did their best to mitigate the consequences of such iniquities; but none of the major Christian churches officially condemned them. The first collective protest against the slave system, introduced by the English and the Spaniards into the New World, was made in 1688 by the Quaker Meeting of Germantown. This fact is highly significant. Of all Christian sects in the seventeenth century, the Quakers were the least obsessed with history, the least addicted to the idolatry of things in time. They believed that the inner light was in all human beings and that salvation came to those who lived in conformity with that light and was not dependent on the profession of belief in historical or pseudo-historical events, nor on the performance of certain rites, nor on the support of a particular ecclesiastical organization. Moreover their eternity-philosophy preserved them from the materialistic apocalypticism of that progress-worship which in recent times has justified every kind of iniquity from war and revolution to sweated labour, slavery and the exploitation of savages and childrenhas justified them on the ground that the supreme good is in future time and that any temporal means, however intrinsically horrible, may be used to achieve that good. Because Quaker theology was a form of eternity-philosophy, Quaker political theory rejected war and persecution as means to ideal ends, denounced slavery and proclaimed racial equality. Members of other denominations had done good work for the African victims of the white mans rapacity. One thinks, for example, of St. Peter Claver at Cartagena. But this heroically charitable slave of the slaves never raised his voice against the institution of slavery or the criminal trade by which it was sustained; nor, so far as the extant documents reveal, did he ever, like John Woolman, attempt to persuade the slave-owners to free their human chattels. The reason, presumably, was that Claver was a Jesuit, vowed to perfect obedience and constrained by his theology to regard a certain political and ecclesiastical organization as being the mystical body of Christ. The heads of this organization had not pronounced against slavery or the slave trade. Who was he, Pedro Claver, to express a thought not officially approved by his superiors?
  Another practical corollary of the great historical eternity-philosophies, such as Hinduism and Buddhism, is a morality inculcating kindness to animals. Judaism and orthodox Christianity taught that animals might be used as things, for the realization of mans temporal ends. Even St. Francis attitude towards the brute creation was not entirely unequivocal. True, he converted a wolf and preached sermons to birds; but when Brother Juniper hacked the feet off a living pig in order to satisfy a sick mans craving for fried trotters, the saint merely blamed his disciples intemperate zeal in damaging a valuable piece of private property. It was not until the nineteenth century, when orthodox Christianity had lost much of its power over European minds, that the idea that it might be a good thing to behave humanely towards animals began to make headway. This new morality was correlated with the new interest in Nature, which had been stimulated by the romantic poets and the men of science. Because it was not founded upon an eternity-philosophy, a doctrine of divinity dwelling in all living creatures, the modern movement in favour of kindness to animals was and is perfectly compatible with intolerance, persecution and systematic cruelty towards human beings. Young Nazis are taught to be gentle with dogs and cats, ruthless with Jews. That is because Nazism is a typical time-philosophy, which regards the ultimate good as existing, not in eternity, but in the future. Jews are, ex hypothesi, obstacles in the way of the realization of the supreme good; dogs and cats are not. The rest follows logically.
  Selfishness and partiality are very inhuman and base qualities even in the things of this world; but in the doctrines of religion they are of a baser nature. Now, this is the greatest evil that the division of the church has brought forth; it raises in every communion a selfish, partial orthodoxy, which consists in courageously defending all that it has, and condemning all that it has not. And thus every champion is trained up in defense of their own truth, their own learning and their own church, and he has the most merit, the most honour, who likes everything, defends everything, among themselves, and leaves nothing uncensored in those that are of a different communion. Now, how can truth and goodness and union and religion be more struck at than by such defenders of it? If you ask why the great Bishop of Meaux wrote so many learned books against all parts of the Reformation, it is because he was born in France and bred up in the bosom of Mother Church. Had he been born in England, had Oxford or Cambridge been his Alma Mater, he might have rivalled our great Bishop Stillingfleet, and would have wrote as many learned folios against the Church of Rome as he has done. And yet I will venture to say that if each Church could produce but one man apiece that had the piety of an apostle and the impartial love of the first Christians in the first Church at Jerusalem, that a Protestant and a Papist of this stamp would not want half a sheet of paper to hold their articles of union, nor be half an hour before they were of one religion. If, therefore, it should be said that churches are divided, estranged and made unfriendly to one another by a learning, a logic, a history, a criticism in the hands of partiality, it would be saying that which each particular church too much proves to be true. Ask why even the best amongst the Catholics are very shy of owning the validity of the orders of our Church; it is because they are afraid of removing any odium from the Reformation. Ask why no Protestants anywhere touch upon the benefit or necessity of celibacy in those who are separated from worldly business to preach the gospel; it is because that would be seeming to lessen the Roman error of not suffering marriage in her clergy. Ask why even the most worthy and pious among the clergy of the Established Church are afraid to assert the sufficiency of the Divine Light, the necessity of seeking only the guidance and inspiration of the Holy Spirit; it is because the Quakers, who have broke off from the church, have made this doctrine their corner-stone. If we loved truth as such, if we sought for it for its own sake, if we loved our neighbour as ourselves, if we desired nothing by our religion but to be acceptable to God, if we equally desired the salvation of all men, if we were afraid of error only because of its harmful nature to us and our fellow-creatures, then nothing of this spirit could have any place in us.

1.13 - Gnostic Symbols of the Self, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  not so popular in primitive Christianity. The Gnostics favoured
  it because it was an old-established symbol for the "good" genius
  --
  it acquired its meaning in primitive Christianity without any
  real support from the written tradition, whereas the serpent can
  --
  Primitive Christianity, II, p. 576) declares that it is just the "consciousness of
  imperfection and the will to progress that is the sign of perfection." He bases

1.13 - THE HUMAN REBOUND OF EVOLUTION AND ITS CONSEQUENCES, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
  considerations, that Christianity decisively takes the lead with its
  extraordinary power of immortalizing and personalizing in

1.14 - Bibliography, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  lation, see: Alexandrian Christianity. Selected Translations of
  Clement and Origen. ... By John Ernest Leonard Oulton and
  --
  Weiss, Johannes. The History of Primitive Christianity. London,
  1937. 2 vols. (Original: Das Urchristentum. Gottingen, 1914-17.)

1.14 - The Secret, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
  254 - This ancient tradition, known also to the Hebrews, seems to have been revived, quite literally, by Christianity and the immaculate conception of the Virgin Mary.
  255 - The material Inconscient.

1.14 - The Structure and Dynamics of the Self, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  age of Gnosticism and early Christianity. Man in those days was
  close to the "kingless [i.e., independent] race," that is, to the

1.14 - TURMOIL OR GENESIS?, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
  ses" the ascending force of Christianity is directly geared to the
  propulsive mechanism of human superevolution. To the Christian,
  --
  importance, urgency and interest; Christianity itself becomes no
  more than a sort of alien proliferation, without analogy or roots in

1.15 - Index, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  animus and, 267; Christianity
  and, 109; and disposition of soul,
  --
  ix, 149; in primitive Christianity,
  188; "round," 127/f, 137-38, 140,
  --
  atastasis in, 169; Christianity and,
  70; as mysterium coniunctionis,
  --
  nature: Christianity and, 174; im-
  provement of, 143; individual, of
  --
  divine, in Christianity, 21; proto-
  type of divine couples, 34; Valen-

1.15 - Truth, #Initiation Into Hermetics, #Franz Bardon, #Occultism
  Therefore from is standpoint and in conformity with the degree of his maturity, each one will have his own truth, providing he sees it quite honestly. Only he who knows and masters the absolute laws of the microcosm and the macrocosm is entitled to speak of an absolute truth. Certain aspects of the absolute truth will be surely acknowledged by everyone. Nobody, indeed, will doubt that there is life, volition, memory and intellect, and will refrain from arguing about these facts. No sincere adept will impose his truth to anyone who is not yet ripe for it. The person concerned would do nothing else but regard it again from his own standpoint. Therefore it would be useless to argue with non-professionals on higher kinds of truth, except people eager to search the heights of truth and beginning to ripen for it. Anything else would be a profanation and, from the magical point o view, absolutely incorrect. At this point, all of us will have to remember the words of the great Master of Christianity: Cast not your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet.
  To truth belongs also the capacity of correctly differentiating among knowledge and wisdom. Knowledge depends, in all domains of the human existence, on the maturity, receptivity and understanding of the mind, and the memory without regard to whether or not we have been able to enrich our knowledge by reading, transmitting or other experiences.

1.16 - MARTHAS GARDEN, #Faust, #Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #Poetry
  For thou hast no Christianity.
  FAUST

1.16 - Religion, #Initiation Into Hermetics, #Franz Bardon, #Occultism
  The incipient magician will confess his faith to a universal religion. He will find out that every religion has good points as well as bad ones. He will therefore keep the best of it for himself and ignore the weak points, which does not necessarily mean that he must profess a religion, but he shall express awe to each for of worship, for each religion has its proper principle of God, whether the point in question be Christianity, Buddhism, Islam or any other kind of religion. Fundamentally he may be faithful to his own religion. But he will not be satisfied with the official doctrines of his Church, and will try to penetrate deeper into gods workshop. And such is the purpose of our initiation. According to the universal laws, the magician will form his own point of view about the universe which henceforth will be his true religion. He will state that, apart from the deficiencies, each defender of religion will endeavour to represent his religion as the best of all. Each religious truth is relative and the comprehension of it depends on the maturity of the person concerned. Therefore the adept does not interfere with anybody in this respect, nor will he try to sidetrack anyone from his truth, criticize him, to say nothing of condemning him. At the bottom of his heart he may feel sorry for fanatics or atheists without showing it outwardly. Let everybody hold on to what he believes and makes him happy and content. Should everybody stick to this maxim, there would be neither hatred nor religious dissensions on this earth. There would be no reason for disputes and all turns of mind could exist happily side by side.
  Quite a different thing is, if a seeker, dissatisfied by materialism and doctrines, and longing for spiritual support, will ask advice and information of an adept. In such a case the adept is obliged to supply the seeker with spiritual light and insight, according to his mental powers. Then the magician should spare neither time nor pains to communicate his spiritual treasures and lead the seeker to the light.

1.17 - Religion as the Law of Life, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  We need not follow the rationalistic or atheistic mind through all its aggressive indictment of religion. We need not for instance lay a too excessive stress on the superstitions, aberrations, violences, crimes even, which Churches and cults and creeds have favoured, admitted, sanctioned, supported or exploited for their own benefit, the mere hostile enumeration of which might lead one to echo the cry of the atheistic Roman poet, To such a mass of ills could religion persuade mankind. As well might one cite the crimes and errors which have been committed in the name of liberty or of order as a sufficient condemnation of the ideal of liberty or the ideal of social order. But we have to note the fact that such a thing was possible and to find its explanation. We cannot ignore for instance the bloodstained and fiery track which formal external Christianity has left furrowed across the mediaeval history of Europe almost from the days of Constantine, its first hour of secular triumph, down to very recent times, or the sanguinary comment which such an institution as the Inquisition affords on the claim of religion to be the directing light and regulating power in ethics and society, or religious wars and wide-spread State persecutions on its claim to guide the political life of mankind. But we must observe the root of this evil, which is not in true religion itself, but in its infrarational parts, not in spiritual faith and aspiration, but in our ignorant human confusion of religion with a particular creed, sect, cult, religious society or Church. So strong is the human tendency to this error that even the old tolerant Paganism slew Socrates in the name of religion and morality, feebly persecuted non-national faiths like the cult of Isis or the cult of Mithra and more vigorously what it conceived to be the subversive and anti-social religion of the early Christians; and even in still more fundamentally tolerant Hinduism with all its spiritual broadness and enlightenment it led at one time to the milder mutual hatred and occasional though brief-lived persecution of Buddhist, Jain, Shaiva, Vaishnava.
  The whole root of the historic insufficiency of religion as a guide and control of human society lies there. Churches and creeds have, for example, stood violently in the way of philosophy and science, burned a Giordano Bruno, imprisoned a Galileo, and so generally misconducted themselves in this matter that philosophy and science had in self-defence to turn upon Religion and rend her to pieces in order to get a free field for their legitimate development; and this because men in the passion and darkness of their vital nature had chosen to think that religion was bound up with certain fixed intellectual conceptions about God and the world which could not stand scrutiny, and therefore scrutiny had to be put down by fire and sword; scientific and philosophical truth had to be denied in order that religious error might survive. We see too that a narrow religious spirit often oppresses and impoverishes the joy and beauty of life, either from an intolerant asceticism or, as the Puritans attempted it, because they could not see that religious austerity is not the whole of religion, though it may be an important side of it, is not the sole ethico-religious approach to God, since love, charity, gentleness, tolerance, kindliness are also and even more divine, and they forgot or never knew that God is love and beauty as well as purity. In politics religion has often thrown itself on the side of power and resisted the coming of larger political ideals, because it was itself, in the form of a Church, supported by power and because it confused religion with the Church, or because it stood for a false theocracy, forgetting that true theocracy is the kingdom of God in man and not the kingdom of a Pope, a priesthood or a sacerdotal class. So too it has often supported a rigid and outworn social system, because it thought its own life bound up with social forms with which it happened to have been associated during a long portion of its own history and erroneously concluded that even a necessary change there would be a violation of religion and a danger to its existence. As if so mighty and inward a power as the religious spirit in man could be destroyed by anything so small as the change of a social form or so outward as a social readjustment! This error in its many shapes has been the great weakness of religion as practised in the past and the opportunity and justification for the revolt of the intelligence, the aesthetic sense, the social and political idealism, even the ethical spirit of the human being against what should have been its own highest tendency and law.

1.17 - The Divine Birth and Divine Works, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
   permanent, vital, universal effect of Buddhism and Christianity has been the force of their ethical, social and practical ideals and their influence even on the men and the ages which have rejected their religious and spiritual beliefs, forms and disciplines; later
  Hinduism which rejected Buddha, his sangha and his dharma, bears the ineffaceable imprint of the social and ethical influence of Buddhism and its effect on the ideas and the life of the race, while in modern Europe, Christian only in name, humanitarianism is the translation into the ethical and social sphere and the aspiration to liberty, equality and fraternity the translation into the social and political sphere of the spiritual truths of
   Christianity, the latter especially being effected by men who aggressively rejected the Christian religion and spiritual discipline and by an age which in its intellectual effort of emancipation tried to get rid of Christianity as a creed. On the other hand the life of Rama and Krishna belongs to the prehistoric past which has come down only in poetry and legend and may even be regarded as myths; but it is quite immaterial whether we regard them as myths or historical facts, because their permanent truth and value lie in their persistence as a spiritual form, presence, influence in the inner consciousness of the race and the life of the human soul. Avatarhood is a fact of divine life and consciousness which may realise itself in an outward action, but must persist, when that action is over and has done its work, in a spiritual influence; or may realise itself in a spiritual influence and teaching, but must then have its permanent effect, even when the new religion or discipline is exhausted, in the thought, temperament and outward life of mankind.
  We must then, in order to understand the Gita's description of the work of the Avatar, take the idea of the Dharma in its fullest, deepest and largest conception, as the inner and the outer law by which the divine Will and Wisdom work out the spiritual evolution of mankind and its circumstances and results in the life of the race. Dharma in the Indian conception is not merely the good, the right, morality and justice, ethics; it is the whole government of all the relations of man with other beings, with
  --
  It is these things that condition and determine the work of the Avatar. In the Buddhistic formula the disciple takes refuge from all that opposes his liberation in three powers, the dharma, the sangha, the Buddha. So in Christianity we have the law of Christian living, the Church and the Christ.
  These three are always the necessary elements of the work of the Avatar. He gives a dharma, a law of self-discipline by which to grow out of the lower into the higher life and which necessarily includes a rule of action and of relations with our fellowmen and other beings, endeavour in the eightfold path or the law of faith, love and purity or any other such revelation of the nature of the divine in life. Then because every tendency in man has its collective as well as its individual aspect, because those who follow one way are naturally drawn together into spiritual companionship and unity, he establishes the sangha, the fellowship and union of those whom his personality and his teaching unite. In Vaishnavism there is the same trio, bhagavata, bhakta, bhagavan, - the bhagavata, which is the law of the Vaishnava dispensation of adoration and love, the bhakta representing the fellowship of those in whom that law is manifest, bhagavan, the divine Lover and

1.18 - M. AT DAKSHINESWAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  "Keshab at one time thought a great deal of Christianity and the Christian views. At that time, and even before, he belonged to Devendranath Tagore's organization."
  M: "Had Keshab Babu come here from the very beginning, he would not have been so preoccupied with social reform. He would not have been so busy with the abolition of the caste system, widow remarriage, intercaste marriage, women's education, and such social activities."

1.18 - THE HEART OF THE PROBLEM, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
  chic warmth! Nor is it because Christianity has lost
  anything of its absolute power to attract: on the
  --
  This, and simply this, that Christianity will lose, to the extent that
  it fails to embrace as it should everything that is human on earth, the

1.19 - GOD IS NOT MOCKED, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
  In the past the nations of Christendom persecuted in the name of their faith, fought religious wars and undertook crusades against infidels and heretics; today they have ceased to be Christian in anything but name, and the only religion they profess is some brand of local idolatry, such as nationalism, state-worship, boss-worship and revolutionism. From these fruits of (among other things) historic Christianity, what inferences can we draw as to the nature of the tree? The answer has already been given in the section on Time and Eternity. If Christians used to be persecutors and are now no longer Christians, the reason is that the Perennial Philosophy incorporated in their religion was overlaid by wrong beliefs that led inevitably, since God is never mocked, to wrong actions. These wrong beliefs had one element in commonnamely, an overvaluation of happenings in time and an undervaluation of the everlasting, timeless fact of eternity. Thus, belief in the supreme importance for salvation of remote historical events resulted in bloody disputes over the interpretation of the not very adequate and often conflicting records. And belief in the sacredness, nay, the actual divinity, of the ecclesiastico-politico-financial organizations, which developed after the fall of the Roman Empire, not only added bitterness to the all too human struggles for their control, but served to rationalize and justify the worst excesses of those who fought for place, wealth and power within and through the Church. But this is not the whole story. The same overvaluation of events in time, which once caused Christians to persecute and fight religious wars, led at last to a wide-spread indifference to a religion that, in spite of everything, was still in part preoccupied with eternity. But nature abhors a vacuum, and into the yawning void of this indifference there flowed the tide of political idolatry. The practical consequences of such idolatry, as we now see, are total war, revolution and tyranny.
  Meanwhile, on the credit side of the balance sheet, we find such items as the following: an immense increase in technical and governmental efficiency and an immense increase in scientific knowledgeeach of them a result of the general shift of Western mans attention from the eternal to the temporal order, first within the sphere of Christianity and then, inevitably, outside it.
  next chapter: 1.20 - TANTUM RELIGIO POTUIT SUADERE MALORUM

1.2.01 - The Call and the Capacity, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Plotinus and the European mystics who derived from him were identical, as has been shown recently, with the approach and experiences of one type of Indian Yoga. Especially, since the introduction of Christianity Europeans have followed its mystic disciplines which were one in essence with those of Asia, however much they may have differed in forms, names and symbols.
  The Call and the Capacity
  --
  (who does not seem to have shared your friend X's objection to these scholastic (?) distinctions) that Hindu spiritual thought and life acknowledged or followed after only the Transcendent and neglected the Immanent Divinity while Christianity gave due place to both Aspects; but, in matter of fact, Indian spirituality, even if it laid the final stress on the Highest beyond form and name, yet gave ample recognition and place to the
  Divine immanent in the world and the Divine immanent in the human being. Indian spirituality has, it is true, a wider and more minute knowledge behind it; it has followed hundreds of different paths, admitted every kind of approach to the Divine and has thus been able to enter into fields which are outside the less ample scope of occidental practice; but that makes no difference to the essentials, and it is the essentials alone that matter.

1.20 - TANTUM RELIGIO POTUIT SUADERE MALORUM, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
  The extract that follows is a moving protest against the crimes and follies perpetrated in the name of religion by those sixteenth-century Reformers who had turned to God without turning away from themselves and who were therefore far more keenly interested in the temporal aspects of historic Christianity the ecclesiastical organization, the logic-chopping, the letter of Scripturethan in the Spirit who must be worshipped in spirit, the eternal Reality in the selfless knowledge of whom stands mans eternal life. Its author was Sebastian Castellio, who was at one time Calvins favourite disciple, but who parted company with his master when the latter burned Servetus for heresy against his own heresy. Fortunately Castellio was living in Basel when he made his plea for charity and common decency; penned in Geneva, it would have earned him torture and death.
  If you, illustrious Prince (the words were addressed to the Duke of Wurtemberg) had informed your subjects that you were coming to visit them at an unnamed time, and had requested them to be prepared in white garments to meet you at your coming, what would you do if on arrival you should find that, instead of robing themselves in white, they had spent their time in violent debate about your personsome insisting that you were in France, others that you were in Spain; some declaring that you would come on horseback, others that you would come by chariot; some holding that you would come with great pomp and others that you would come without any train or following? And what especially would you say if they debated not only with words, but with blows of fist and sword strokes, and if some succeeded in killing and destroying others who differed from them? He will come on horseback. No, he will not; it will be by chariot. You lie. I do not; you are the liar. Take thata blow with the fist. Take that a sword-thrust through the body. Prince, what would you think of such citizens? Christ asked us to put on the white robes of a pure and holy life; but what occupies our thoughts? We dispute not only of the way to Christ, but of his relation to God the Father, of the Trinity, of predestination, of free will, of the nature of God, of the angels, of the condition of the soul after deathof a multitude of matters that are not essential to salvation; matters, moreover, which can never be known until our hearts are pure; for they are things which must be spiritually perceived.

1.22 - ON THE GIFT-GIVING VIRTUE, #Thus Spoke Zarathustra, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy
  filth of the words: revenge, punishment, reward, retri bution," which he associates with Christianity; but also
  that rigorism for which "virtue is the spasm under

1.22 - THE END OF THE SPECIES, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
  education, i8fT.; and Christianity,
  241I; and mankind, 2 iff.
  --
  and Christianity, 86f;
  convergence of, 8 if.

1.23 - FESTIVAL AT SURENDRAS HOUSE, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  PRATAP: "Some women of our country have been to England. This Marhatta lady, who is very scholarly, also visited England. Later she embraced Christianity. Have you heard her name, sir?"
  Egotism brings calamity

1.24 - PUNDIT SHASHADHAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  Pundit Shashadhar, a man of fair complexion and no longer young, had a string of rudraksha beads around his neck. He was one of the renowned Sanskrit scholars of his time-a pillar of orthodox Hinduism, which had reasserted itself after the first wave of Christianity and Western culture had passed over Hindu society. His clear exposition of the Hindu scriptures, his ringing sincerity, and, his stirring eloquence had brought back a large number of the educated young Hindus of Bengal to the religion of their forefa thers.
  The pundit saluted the Master with reverence. Narendra, Rkhl , Ram, Hazra, and M., who had come with the Master, seated themselves in the room as near the Master as they could, anxious not to miss one of his words.

1.24 - RITUAL, SYMBOL, SACRAMENT, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
  That very large numbers of men and women have an ineradicable desire for rites and ceremonies is clearly demonstrated by the history of religion. Almost all the Hebrew prophets were opposed to ritualism. Rend your hearts and not your garments. I desire mercy and not sacrifice. I hate, I despise your feasts; I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. And yet, in spite of the fact that what the prophets wrote was regarded as divinely inspired, the Temple at Jerusalem continued to be, for hundreds of years after their time, the centre of a religion of rites, ceremonials and blood sacrifice. (It may be remarked in passing that the shedding of blood, ones own or that of animals or other human beings, seems to be a peculiarly efficacious way of constraining the occult or psychic world to answer petitions and confer supernormal powers. If this is a fact, as from the anthropological and antiquarian evidence it appears to be, it would supply yet another cogent reason for avoiding animal sacrifices, savage bodily austerities and even, since thought is a form of action, that imaginative gloating over spilled blood, which is so common in certain Christian circles.) What the Jews did in spite of their prophets, Christians have done in spite of Christ. The Christ of the Gospels is a preacher and not a dispenser of sacraments or performer of rites; he speaks against vain repetitions; he insists on the supreme importance of private worship; he has no use for sacrifices and not much use for the Temple. But this did not prevent historic Christianity from going its own, all too human, way. A precisely similar development took place in Buddhism. For the Buddha of the Pali scriptures, ritual was one of the fetters holding back the soul from enlightenment and liberation. Nevertheless, the religion he founded has made full use of ceremonies, vain repetitions and sacramental rites.
  There would seem to be two main reasons for the observed developments of the historical religions. First, most people do not want spirituality or deliverance, but rather a religion that gives them emotional satisfactions, answers to prayer, supernormal powers and partial salvation in some sort of posthumous heaven. Second, some of those few who do desire spirituality and deliverance find that, for them, the most effective means to those ends are ceremonies, vain repetitions and sacramental rites. It is by participating in these acts and uttering these formulas that they are most powerfully reminded of the eternal Ground of all being; it is by immersing themselves in the symbols that they can most easily come through to that which is symbolized. Every thing, event or thought is a point of intersection between creature and Creator, between a more or less distant manifestation of God and a ray, so to speak, of the unmanifest Godhead; every thing, event or thought can therefore be made the doorway through which a soul may pass out of time into eternity. That is why ritualistic and sacramental religion can lead to deliverance. But at the same time every human being loves power and self-enhancement, and every hallowed ceremony, form of words or sacramental rite is a channel through which power can flow out of the fascinating psychic universe into the universe of embodied selves. That is why ritualistic and sacramental religion can also lead away from deliverance.
  There is another disadvantage inherent in any system of organized sacramentalism, and that is that it gives to the priestly caste a power which it is all too natural for them to abuse. In a society which has been taught that salvation is exclusively or mainly through certain sacraments, and that these sacraments can be administered effectively only by a professional priesthood, that professional priesthood will possess an enormous coercive power. The possession of such power is a standing temptation to use it for individual satisfaction and corporate aggrandizement. To a temptation of this kind, if repeated often enough, most human beings who are not saints almost inevitably succumb. That is why Christ taught his disciples to pray that they should not be led into temptation. This is, or should be, the guiding principle of all social reformto organize the economic, political and social relationships between human beings in such a way that there shall be, for any given individual or group within the society, a minimum of temptations to covetousness, pride, cruelty and lust for power. Men and women being what they are, it is only by reducing the number and intensity of temptations that human societies can be, in some measure at least, delivered from evil. Now, the sort of temptations, to which a priestly caste is exposed in a society that accepts a predominantly sacramental religion, are such that none but the most saintly persons can be expected consistently to resist them. What happens when ministers of religion are led into these temptations is clearly illustrated by the history of the Roman church. Because Catholic Christianity taught a version of the Perennial Philosophy, it produced a succession of great saints. But because the Perennial Philosophy was overlaid with an excessive amount of sacramentalism and with an idolatrous preoccupation with things in time, the less saintly members of its hierarchy were exposed to enormous and quite unnecessary temptations and, duly succumbing to them, launched out into persecution, simony, power politics, secret diplomacy, high finance and collaboration with despots.
  I very much doubt whether, since the Lord by his grace brought me into the faith of his dear Son, I have ever broken bread or drunk wine, even in the ordinary course of life, without remembrance of, and some devout feeling regarding, the broken body and the blood-shedding of my dear Lord and Saviour.

1.27 - CONTEMPLATION, ACTION AND SOCIAL UTILITY, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
  In Buddhism, as in Vedanta and in all but the most recent forms of Christianity, right action is the means by which the mind is prepared for contemplation. The first seven branches of the Eightfold Path are the active, ethical preparation for unitive knowledge of Suchness. Only those who consistently practise the Four Virtuous Acts, in which all other virtues are includednamely, the requital of hatred by love, resignation, holy indifference or desirelessness, obedience to the dharma or Nature of Thingscan hope to achieve the liberating realization that samsara and nirvana are one, that the soul and all other beings have as their living principle the Intelligible Light or Buddha-womb.
  A question now, quite naturally, presents itself: Who is called to that highest form of prayer which is contemplation? The answer is unequivocally plain. All are called to contemplation, because all are called to achieve deliverance, which is nothing else but the knowledge that unites the knower with what is known, namely the eternal Ground or Godhead. The oriental exponents of the Perennial Philosophy would probably deny that everyone is called here and now; in this particular life, they would say, it may be to all intents and purposes impossible for a given individual to achieve more than a partial deliverance, such as personal survival in some kind of heaven, from which there may be either an advance towards total liberation or else a return to those material conditions which, as all the masters of the spiritual life agree, are so uniquely propitious for taking the cosmic intelligence test that results in enlightenment. In orthodox Christianity it is denied that the individual soul can have more than one incarnation, or that it can make any progress in its posthumous existence. If it goes to hell, it stays there. If it goes to purgatory, it merely expiates past evil doing, so as to become capable of the beatific vision. And when it gets to heaven, it has just so much of the beatific vision as its conduct during its one brief life on earth made it capable of, and everlastingly no more. Granted these postulates, it follows that, if all are called to contemplation, they are called to it from that particular position in the hierarchy of being, to which nature, nurture, free will and grace have conspired to assign them. In the words of an eminent contemporary theologian, Father Garigou-Lagrange, all souls receive a general remote call to the mystical life, and if all were faithful in avoiding, as they should, not only mortal but venial sins, if they were, each according to his condition, generally docile to the Holy Ghost, and if they lived long enough, a day would come when they would receive the proximate and efficacious vocation to a high perfection and to the mystical life properly so called. This view that the life of mystical contemplation is the proper and normal development of the interior life of recollectedness and devotion to Godis then justified by the following considerations. First, the principle of the two lives is the same. Second, it is only in the life of mystical contemplation that the interior life finds its consummation. Third, their end, which is eternal life, is the same; moreover only the life of mystical contemplation prepares imme thately and perfectly for that end.
  There are few contemplatives, because few souls are perfectly humble.

1.37 - Oriential Religions in the West, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
  Bulgaria. Their worship survived the establishment of Christianity
  by Constantine; for Symmachus records the recurrence of the festival
  --
  Mother of the Gods but also to Christianity. The similarity struck
  the Christian doctors themselves and was explained by them as a work
  --
  Mithraic religion proved a formidable rival to Christianity,
  combining as it did a solemn ritual with aspirations after moral
  --
  shrewd ecclesiastics, who clearly perceived that if Christianity was
  to conquer the world it could do so only by relaxing the too rigid
  --
  might be drawn between the history of Christianity and the history
  of Buddhism. Both systems were in their origin essentially ethical
  --
  weakness the gradual divergence of Buddhism and Christianity from
  their primitive patterns. For it should never be forgotten that by

1.439, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
  One seer speaks in the terms of Christianity, another in those of Islam, a third of Buddhism, etc. Is that due to their upbringing?
  M.: Whatever may be their upbringing, their experience is the same.

1.47 - Reincarnation, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
  Even the Judaism Christianity Islam line of thought contains some such element. The Jews were always expecting Elias to return; the disciples of Christ constantly asked questions involving it; and I feel that the Mohammedan doctrine of Antichrist and the Judgment at least toys with the idea. Were I not so ignorant, I could dig up all sorts of support for this thesis. But it doesn't matter so much in any case; we do not trouble to find "authority;" we put our shirts on Experience.
  Now as to (1) what is evidence for me is hearsay for you; so forget it! But there is a clear method of obtaining these memories for yourself. See Liber Thisharb (Magick, pp. 415 - 422); and go to it!

1.50 - Eating the God, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
  is doubtless far older than Christianity.
  The Aino or Ainu of Japan are said to distinguish various kinds of
  --
  spread and even the rise of Christianity. The Brahmans taught that
  the rice-cakes offered in sacrifice were substitutes for human

1.550 - 1.600 Talks, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
  One seer speaks in the terms of Christianity, another in those of Islam, a third of Buddhism, etc. Is that due to their upbringing?
  M.: Whatever may be their upbringing, their experience is the same.

1.62 - The Fire-Festivals of Europe, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
  prior to the spread of Christianity. Indeed the earliest proof of
  their observance in Northern Europe is furnished by the attempts
  --
  June). A faint tinge of Christianity has been given to them by
  naming Midsummer Day after St. John the Baptist, but we cannot doubt
  --
  connexion with Christianity but carry their hea then origin plainly
  stamped upon them. But while the two solstitial celebrations were

1.65 - Balder and the Mistletoe, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
  introduction of Christianity. The pretence of throwing the victim
  chosen by lot into the Beltane fire, and the similar treatment of

1.69 - Original Sin, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
  And now you of all people! fire him off at me. "Gold Hair" you write; "what about R.B's defence of Christianity?" You mean, of course,
    "'Tis the faith that launched point-blank its dart

1929-06-09 - Nature of religion - Religion and the spiritual life - Descent of Divine Truth and Force - To be sure of your religion, country, family-choose your own - Religion and numbers, #Questions And Answers 1929-1931, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  Religion belongs to the higher mind of humanity. It is the effort of mans higher mind to approach, as far as lies in its power, something beyond it, something to which humanity gives the name God or Spirit or Truth or Faith or Knowledge or the Infinite, some kind of Absolute, which the human mind cannot reach and yet tries to reach. Religion may be divine in its ultimate origin; in its actual nature it is not divine but human. In truth we should speak rather of religions than of religion; for the religions made by man are many. These different religions, even when they had not the same origin, have most of them been made in the same way. We know how the Christian religion came into existence. It was certainly not Jesus who made what is known as Christianity, but some learned and very clever men put their heads together and built it up into the thing we see. There was nothing divine in the way in which it was formed, and there is nothing divine either in the way in which it functions. And yet the excuse or occasion for the formation was undoubtedly some revelation from what one could call a Divine Being, a Being who came from elsewhere bringing down with him from a higher plane a certain Knowledge and Truth for the earth. He came and suffered for his Truth; but very few understood what he said, few cared to find and hold to the Truth for which he suffered. Buddha retired from the world, sat down in meditation and discovered a way out of earthly suffering and misery, out of all this illness and death and desire and sin and hunger. He saw a Truth which he endeavoured to express and communicate to the disciples and followers who gathered around him. But even before he was dead, his teaching had already begun to be twisted and distorted. It was only after his disappearance that Buddhism as a full-fledged religion reared its head founded upon what the Buddha is supposed to have said and on the supposed significance of these reported sayings. But soon too, because the disciples and the disciples disciples could not agree on what the Master had said or what he meant by his utterances, there grew up a host of sects and sub-sects in the body of the parent religiona Southern Path, a Northern Path, a Far Eastern Path, each of them claiming to be the only, the original, the undefiled doctrine of the Buddha. The same fate overtook the teaching of the Christ; that too came to be made in the same way into a set and organised religion. It is often said that, if Jesus came back, he would not be able to recognise what he taught in the forms that have been imposed on it, and if Buddha were to come back and see what has been made of his teaching, he would immediately run back discouraged to Nirvana! All religions have each the same story to tell. The occasion for its birth is the coming of a great Teacher of the world. He comes and reveals and is the incarnation of a Divine Truth. But men seize upon it, trade upon it, make an almost political organisation out of it. The religion is equipped by them with a government and policy and laws, with its creeds and dogmas, its rules and regulations, its rites and ceremonies, all binding upon its adherents, all absolute and inviolable. Like the State, it too administers rewards to the loyal and assigns punishments for those that revolt or go astray, for the heretic and the renegade.
  The first and principal article of these established and formal religions runs always, Mine is the supreme, the only truth, all others are in falsehood or inferior. For without this fundamental dogma, established credal religions could not have existed. If you do not believe and proclaim that you alone possess the one or the highest truth, you will not be able to impress people and make them flock to you.

1950-12-25 - Christmas - festival of Light - Energy and mental growth - Meditation and concentration - The Mother of Dreams - Playing a game well, and energy, #Questions And Answers 1950-1951, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  That is why the 25th of December was a festival of Light long before Jesus Christ. This festival was in vogue long before Christianity; it originated in Egypt and very probably the birthday of Christ was fixed on the same day as that of the return of the Light.
  Then Mother reads the first part of her article Energy Inexhaustible (On Education).

1957-04-03 - Different religions and spirituality, #Questions And Answers 1957-1958, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
    Each religion has helped mankind. Paganism increased in man the light of beauty, the largeness and height of his life, his aim at a many-sided perfection; Christianity gave him some vision of divine love and charity; Buddhism has shown him a noble way to be wiser, gentler, purer; Judaism and Islam how to be religiously faithful in action and zealously devoted to God; Hinduism has opened to him the largest and profoundest spiritual possibilities. A great thing would be done if all these God-visions could embrace and cast themselves into each other; but intellectual dogma and cult-egoism stand in the way.
    All religions have saved a number of souls, but none yet has been able to spiritualise mankind. For that there is needed not cult and creed, but a sustained and all-comprehending effort at spiritual self-evolution.

1957-10-02 - The Mind of Light - Statues of the Buddha - Burden of the past, #Questions And Answers 1957-1958, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  You have a guide for a part of the way but when you have travelled this part leave the road and the guide and go farther! This is something men find difficult to do. When they get hold of something which helps them, they cling to it, they do not want to move any more. Those who have progressed with the help of Christianity do not want to give it up and they carry it on their shoulders; those who have progressed with the help of Buddhism do not want to leave it and they carry it on their shoulders, and so this hampers the advance and you are indefinitely delayed.
  Once you have passed the stage, let it drop, let it go! Go farther.

1960 07 06, #On Thoughts And Aphorisms, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   The Gospels were the starting-point of the Christian religion. To say what they have brought to the world it would be necessary to give a historical and psychological account of the development of the life of Christianity and the action of the Christian religion upon earth. That would take a long time and be somewhat out of place here.
   I can only say that the writers of the Gospels have tried to reproduce exactly what Christ taught and that they have in a certain measure succeeded in transmitting his message. It is a message of peace, brotherhood and love.

1969 11 16, #On Thoughts And Aphorisms, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   201Mediaeval Christianity said to the race, Man, thou art in thy earthly life an evil thing and a worm before God; renounce then egoism, live for a future state and submit thyself to God and His priest. The results were not over-good for humanity. Modern knowledge says to the race, Man, thou art an ephemeral animal and no more to Nature than the ant and the earthworm, a transitory speck only in the universe. Live then for the State and submit thyself antlike to the trained administrator and the scientific expert. Will this gospel succeed any better than the other?
   202Vedanta says rather, Man, thou art of one nature and substance with God, one soul with thy fellow-men. Awake and progress then to thy utter divinity, live for God in thyself and in others. This gospel which was given only to the few, must now be offered to all mankind for its deliverance.

1970 02 07, #On Thoughts And Aphorisms, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   324Vedanta realised is the only practicable basis for a communistic society. It is the kingdom of the saints dreamed of by Christianity, Islam and Puranic Hinduism.
   As Sri Aurobindo tells us so well, individualism is a kind of self-justified jealousy, the reign of each one for himself.

1f.lovecraft - The Horror at Red Hook, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
   was some remnant of Nestorian Christianity tinctured with the Shamanism
   of Thibet. Most of the people, he conjectured, were of Mongoloid stock,

1.rb - Bishop Blougram's Apology, #Browning - Poems, #Robert Browning, #Poetry
  Like you this Christianity or not?
  It may be false, but will you wish it true?

1.rb - Caliban upon Setebos or, Natural Theology in the Island, #Browning - Poems, #Robert Browning, #Poetry
  some elements associated with branches of Christianity,
  particularly the narrower kind of Calvinist sect. He is by implication

1.ww - The Excursion- X- Book Ninth- Discourse of the Wanderer, and an Evening Visit to the Lake, #Wordsworth - Poems, #unset, #Zen
  Wanderer asserts that an active principle pervades the Universe, its noblest seat the human soul--How lively this principle is in Childhood--Hence the delight in old Age of looking back upon Childhood--The dignity, powers, and privileges of Age asserted-- These not to be looked for generally but under a just government-- Right of a human Creature to be exempt from being considered as a mere Instrument--The condition of multitudes deplored--Former conversation recurred to, and the Wanderer's opinions set in a clearer light--Truth placed within reach of the humblest-- Equality--Happy state of the two Boys again adverted to--Earnest wish expressed for a System of National Education established universally by Government--Glorious effects of this foretold--Walk to the Lake--Grand spectacle from the side of a hill--Address of Priest to the Supreme Being--In the course of which he contrasts with ancient Barbarism the present appearance of the scene before him--The change ascribed to Christianity--Apostrophe to his flock, living and dead--Gratitude to the Almighty--Return over the Lake-- Parting with the Solitary--Under what circumstances.
  "TO every Form of being is assigned,"

2.01 - On Books, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
   There also what happens is that forces in life, at first, resist any such movement of descent. When they find that they can't resist then they accept the new element and, in accepting, turn it into something else than what it was intended to be! For example, you find that Christianity was at first opposed, and when it was afterwards accepted it became an oppressive religion. Why? Because, it was the lower forces of nature that came in with the acceptance. It means there must have been something in the very beginning, that gave an opening. I believe many of the Christian martyrs did not suffer in the genuine Christian spirit. Most of them were full of the spirit of revenge. So, in the beginning there was passive resistance but when Christianity came to power it turned oppressive. Thus, by accepting Christianity the lower forces occupied the place of the genuine spiritual force of Christ. They had thought, "Let us establish a new religion and the thing will be done." But the problem is not so simple.
   There is a spiritual solution which I propose; but it aims at changing the whole basis of human nature. It is not a question of carrying on a movement nor is it a question of a few years. It cannot be done unless you establish spirituality as the basis of life. It is clear that Mind has not been able to change human nature radically. You can go on changing human institutions infinitely and yet the imperfection will break through all your institutions.
  --
   Disciple: Perhaps, it is due to the influence of Christianity in which the idea of serving the poor finds a place.
   Sri Aurobindo: But the Christian idea of service from disinterestedness is quite different from that of duty for duty's sake which is a rational standpoint. Christian service is done as God's will, that is a religious law. When Reason got the upper hand over religion it began to question the foundation of religion and then the rationalists advocated the doing of duty for the sake of society, as a social demand. The rationalists have fragmentary ideas about these things. It has become difficult now to study philosophy there are so many new ones, like the poets!

2.01 - The Attributes of Omega Point - a Transcendent God, #Let Me Explain, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
  thereby providing a proof and defence of the truth of Christianity).
  Such is the definition he gives in the summary of his thought (p. 145):

2.01 - The Road of Trials, #The Hero with a Thousand Faces, #Joseph Campbell, #Mythology
  to Mohammedanism and Christianity), as well as an important influence in the
  religions of the pagan Celts, Greeks, Romans, Slavs, and Germans.

2.02 - On Letters, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
   Time after time something comes down from Above, but again you find humanity the same as ever. Look at Christianity, all the millions in Europe who profess it. Do you think they believe in Christianity? Not even ten percent try to live out Christianity. That is the difficulty with humanity. Something comes down from Above. In order to make it available to the whole community you have to give it such a form as to make it suitable to all capacities and in that change the Truth gets mixed with their falsehood so much so that it no longer remains what it was. Buddha came and tried and did not succeed, and I think any such effort would not succeed.
   Disciple: Anatole France seems to hold that humanity is what it is and is going to be what it is. Perfection may come to man but humanity will remain what it is. True perfection is possible but it would be in something that is different from man.

2.02 - The Ishavasyopanishad with a commentary in English, #Isha Upanishad, #unset, #Zen
  between this community and that community. Christianity hopes
  The Ishavasyopanishad
  --
  survived from a dead Christianity. In order for it to be true of
  the sensational man, he must cease to be sensational, he must
  --
  rationalism from the coffers of Christianity on which European
  civilisation is precariously living at the present day. One trembles
  --
  In liberty the union of the individual moral liberty of Christianity with the civic liberty of Greece; in equality, the democratic
  spiritual equality of Christianity applied to society; fraternity,
  the aspiration to universal brotherhood, which is the peculiar
  and distinguishing idea of Christianity; in humanity, the Buddhistic spirit of mercy, pity, love, of which Europe knew nothing
  till Christianity breathed it forth over the Mediterranean and
  with greater purity over Ireland, mingled with the sense of the
  --
  other mistake Science has made, it borrows from Christianity;
  it is that action and emotion can be directed towards beings

2.03 - Karmayogin A Commentary on the Isha Upanishad, #Isha Upanishad, #unset, #Zen
  attach the highest importance. The one law of Christianity which
  replaces all the commandments is to love one's neighbour as
  --
  love, the central position in Christianity; salvation by faith &
  works, the central position in Mahomedanism. In Hinduism,
  --
  Semitic tradition passed from Judaism into Christianity and less
  300

2.03 - The Christian Phenomenon and Faith in the Incarnation, #Let Me Explain, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
  vergence towards Christianity - already appears to be coming
  about in a group of high-minded thinkers alive to modern
  --
  When, finally, we turn to Christianity, two observations
  must be made, one affirmative, one a restrictive qualification,
  --
  ture Christianity has always found its proper balance by
  directing itself towards the Spirit that unifies and synthesizes.
  --
  Is it not obvious that Christianity will be able to breathe
  freely and spread its wings wide only if it can look forward
  --
  powering proof of the truth of Christianity.
  First, however, we must see how this singular 'Christian phenome-
  --
  night; and Christianity, in spite of its framework of ritual,
  teaching and hierarchy, would inevitably collapse into
  --
  strength in Christianity than anywhere else. If that were not
  so, then, in spite of all the excellences and all the appeal of the

2.03 - THE ENIGMA OF BOLOGNA, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  [86] The psychological meaning of the myth is clear: Cadmus has lost his sister-anima because she has flown with the supreme deity into the realm of the suprahuman and the subhuman, the unconscious. At the divine comm and he is not to regress to the incest situation, and for this reason he is promised a wife. His sister-anima, acting as a psychopomp in the shape of a cow (to correspond with the bull of Zeus), leads him to his destiny as a dragon-slayer, for the transition from the brother-sister relationship to an exogamous one is not so simple. But when he succeeds in this, he wins Harmonia, who is the dragons sister. The dragon is obviously disharmony, as the armed men sprung from its teeth prove. These kill one another off as though exemplifying the maxim of Pseudo-Democritus, nature subdues nature, which is nothing less than the uroboros conceptually formulated. Cadmus holds fast to Harmonia while the opposites in projected form slaughter one another. This image is a representation of the way in which a split-off conflict behaves: it is its own battle-ground. By and large this is also true of yang and yin in classical Chinese philosophy. Hand in hand with this selfcontained conflict there goes an unconsciousness of the moral problem of opposites. Only with Christianity did the metaphysical opposites begin to percolate into mans consciousness, and then in the form of an almost dualistic opposition that reached its zenith in Manichaeism. This heresy forced the Church to take an important step: the formulation of the doctrine of the privatio boni, by means of which she established the identity of good and being. Evil as a
   (something that does not exist) was laid at mans dooromne bonum a Deo, omne malum ab homine.230 This idea together with that of original sin formed the foundation of a moral consciousness which was a novel development in human history: one half of the polarity, till then essentially metaphysical, was reduced to a psychic factor, which meant that the devil had lost the game if he could not pick on some moral weakness in man. Good, however, remained a metaphysical substance that originated with God and not with man. Original sin had corrupted a creature originally good. As interpreted by dogma, therefore, good is still wholly projected but evil only partly so, since the passions of men are its main source. Alchemical speculation continued this process of integrating metaphysical projections in so far as it began to dawn on the adept that both opposites were of a psychic nature. They expressed themselves first of all in the duplicity of Mercurius, which, however, was cancelled out in the unity of the stone. The lapis wasDeo concedentemade by the adept and was recognized as an equivalent of the homo totus. This development was extremely important, because it was an attempt to integrate opposites that were previously projected.

2.04 - Positive Aspects of the Mother-Complex, #The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  official spokesmen of Christianity publicly announce their in-
  ability to understand the foundations of religious experience!

2.04 - The Living Church and Christ-Omega, #Let Me Explain, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
  this reason. The essence of Christianity is neither more nor
  less than a belief in the unification of the world in God by the
  --
  In him henceforth, by the whole logic of Christianity,
  personality expands (or rather centres itself) till it becomes

2.05 - Apotheosis, #The Hero with a Thousand Faces, #Joseph Campbell, #Mythology
  that this ideal is peculiar to Christianity. "It is safe to say," writes Professor
  Salmony, "that Occidental judgment has been falsified, up to the present, by

2.05 - The Religion of Tomorrow, #Let Me Explain, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
  disappear, Christianity, which might at first have been
  thought to be shaken too, is showing, on the contrary, every
  --
  whole of Christianity rests, and by which it is summed up:
  103
  --
  nothing within Christianity except Catholicism possesses
  these characteristics.
  --
  It is abundantly clear that if Christianity (as it professes
  and feels itself to be) is indeed destined to be the religion of
  --
  ward moving world, Christianity - however worn out
  it may appear to our modern Gentiles - immediately and
  --
  in the course of man's history, only Christianity, once this
  'connection' has been made, shows the astonishing power of
  --
  It is still Christianity, I repeat, and Christianity it will
  always be: but it is a 're-born' Christianity, as certain of vic-
  tory tomorrow as it was in its first days - because it alone
  --
  Such a Christianity is still in real fact the true application
  of the Gospel, since it represents the same force applied to

2.07 - On Congress and Politics, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
   Sri Aurobindo: Yes, I read it. There is the same mixture of which I have already spoken, only by his reading of books, I am afraid, he has made it worse. There was a mixture of Tolstoy, Christianity and Jainism. Now he has added the Veda, Koran and Gita to it.
   Disciple: Did he not see that Ahimsa applied that way would not succeed?
  --
   Disciple: It contains at the end Gandhiji's estimate of Christianity. He differs, he says, from orthodox Christianity. He believes in the symbolic interpretation of Christ, Mary and the Holy Ghost.
   Sri Aurobindo: A lot of Christians also believe the same.

2.08 - ALICE IN WONDERLAND, #God Exists, #Swami Sivananda Saraswati, #Hinduism
  To face God and to encounter Him in our actual life is to live religion. So, religion is not ringing a bell, waving a light, or chanting a Mantra. It is encountering God face to face. So, religion is superior to philosophy, if you understand religion in the true sense of the term. Religion is not Hinduism, Christianity, Buddhism. It is the art of envisaging God-being.
  Man melting, like ice vanishing before the blaze of the sun. That is religion. When the sun of God-consciousness rises, this substance called body-consciousness evaporates into an ethereal nothing. Gradually, we begin to approximate God-being. The life of religion is the way of gradual approximation to God-consciousness. Here, true love begins to preponderate in our lives. We do not merely think of God as philosophers or academicians or professors. We love God; and we cannot love a thing which is not really there. We cannot love a thing which is only an idea or a concept in our mind.

2.08 - On Non-Violence, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
   Sri Aurobindo: I believe Gandhi does not know what actually happens to the man's nature when he takes to non-violence. He thinks that men get purified by it. But when men suffer, or subject themselves to voluntary suffering, what happens is that their vital being gets strengthened. These movements affect the vital being only and not any other part. Now, when you cannot oppose the force that oppresses, you say that you will suffer. That suffering is vital and it gives strength. When the man who has thus suffered gets power he becomes a worse oppressor. That is what I have written in the Essays on the Gita that when a nation gets freedom by the suffering of its leaders and other men, it oppresses other nations in its turn. It is almost always the case with those who suppress their vital being. It allows the pressure on itself, gets strong and then finds vent in some other direction. The same thing happened to the Puritans in England. Cromwell and his men came to power and became the worst oppressors. In Christianity the principle of non-violence is there but it is meant to be practised for religious and spiritual development. It may be partial but it can certainly develop certain types of spiritual temperaments. What one can do is to transform the spirit of violence. But in this practice of Satyagraha it is not transformed. When you insist on such a one-sided principle what happens is that cant, hypocrisy and dishonesty get in and there is no purification at all. Purification can come by the transformation of the impulse of violence, as I said. In that respect the old system in India was much better. The man who had the fighting spirit became the Kshatriya and then the fighting spirit was raised above the ordinary vital influence. The attempt was to spiritualise it. It succeeded in doing what passive resistance cannot and will not achieve. The Kshatriya was the man who would not allow any oppression, who would fight it out and he was the man who would not oppress anybody. That was the ideal.
   Disciple: Those who take to non-violence as a religion cannot intellectually conceive the possibility of transforming the spirit of violence.
  --
   Sri Aurobindo: Christianity and Buddhism, I am afraid, will ever remain without being given a trial. They make such a demand on human nature that it cannot be fulfilled so long as man is what he is.
   Disciple: I get puzzled by Mahatmaji's logic, or shall I say, by his want of logic. At one time he says: "You must not fast against your enemy because by that you do violence to him. But you can fast when you have a grievance, or a cause, against your father." Then in the Vaikom Satyagraha when the people began to fast he said: "Why do you fast? The king is your father, why do you injure his feelings?"
  --
   In that way everyone has established idol-worship. He has criticised the Arya Samaj but why not criticise Mahomedanism? His statement is adulatory of the Koran and of Christianity which is idolatry of the Bible, Christ and the Cross. Man is hardly able to do without externals and only a few will go to the kernel.
   About conversion also you "do not merely change compartments", as he says, but you change the environment. All are not going to practise the central core of spirituality. Very few can do that, but from the externals some can come to the internal.

2.0 - THE ANTICHRIST, #Twilight of the Idols, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy
  An Attempted Criticism of Christianity
  PREFACE
  --
  We must not deck out and adorn Christianity: it has waged a deadly
  war upon this _higher_ type of man, it has set a ban upon all the
  --
  pariah, the villain. Christianity has sided with everything weak, low,
  and botched; it has made an ideal out of _antagonism_ towards all the
  --
  it had only been perverted by his Christianity.
  A painful and ghastly spectacle has just risen before my eyes. I tore
  --
  partial paralysis of Christianity--and of reason.... One needs only to
  pronounce the words "Tbingen Seminary," in order to understand what
  --
  In Christianity neither morality nor religion comes in touch at all
  with reality. Nothing but imaginary _causes_ (God, the soul, the ego,
  --
  With my condemnation of Christianity I should not like to have done
  an injustice to a religion which is related to it and the number of
  --
  For being able to compare them at all, the critic of Christianity is
  profoundly grateful to Indian scholars.--Buddhism is a hundred times
  more realistic than Christianity,--it is part of its constitutional
  heritage to be able to face problems objectively and coolly, it is
  --
  has--and this distinguishes it fundamentally from Christianity,--the
  self-deception of moral concepts beneath it,--to use my own
  --
  the normal case. In Christianity all the instincts of the subjugated
  and oppressed come to the fore: it is the lowest classes who seek
  --
  When Christianity departed from its native soil, which consisted of the
  lowest classes, the _submerged masses_ of the ancient world, and set
  --
  inner tension in hostile deeds and ideas. Christianity was in need of
  _barbaric_ ideas and values, in order to be able to master barbarians:
  --
  hardening of the body. Christianity aims at mastering _beasts of prey_;
  its expedient is to make them _ill,_--to render feeble is the Christian
  --
  close and exhaustion of civilisation; Christianity does not even find
  civilisation at hand when it appears, in certain circumstances it lays
  --
  At bottom there are in Christianity one or two subtleties which belong
  to the Orient In the first place it knows that it is a matter of
  --
  foreground. All this on condition that Christianity wishes to rule
  over a certain soil, on which Aphrodisiac or Adonis cults had already
  --
  Here I only touch upon the problem of the origin of Christianity.
  The first principle of its solution reads: Christianity can be
  understood only in relation to the soil out of which it grew,--it is
  --
  of all decadent movements (St Paul and Christianity for instance), in
  order to create something from them which is stronger than every party
  --
  Judaism and Christianity,--that is to say, for the sacerdotal class,
  decadence is but a _means;_ this category of men has a vital interest
  --
  determines a particular series of conceptions: early Christianity deals
  only in Judo-Semitic conceptions (--the eating and drinking at the
  --
  With every extension of Christianity over ever larger and ruder
  masses, who were ever less able to grasp its first principles, the
  --
  reasoning. The fatal feature of Christianity lies in the necessary
  fact that its faith had to become as morbid, base and vulgar as the
  --
  himself a Christian!... What then does Christianity deny? What does
  it call "world"? "The world" to Christianity means that a man is a
  soldier, a judge, a patriot, that he defends himself, that he values
  --
  history of Christianity.--The very word " Christianity" is a
  misunderstanding,--truth to tell, there never was more than one
  --
  is even necessary: genuine, primitive Christianity will be possible
  in all ages.... _Not_ a faith, but a course of action, above all a
  --
  of consciousness, is tantamount to denying Christianity. _In fact
  there have never been any Christians._ The "Christian," he who for two
  --
  the root of Christianity. What follows therefrom? That here, even
  _in psychologicis_, error is fundamental,--that is to say capable
  --
  stead,--and the whole of Christianity tumbles into nonentity!--Surveyed
  from above, this strangest of all facts,-a religion not only dependent
  --
  Buddhism promises little but fulfils more, Christianity promises
  everything but fulfils nothing.--The "glad tidings" were followed
  --
  of Christianity._ He did more: he once more falsified the history of
  Israel, so as to make it appear as a prologue to _his_ mission: all the
  --
  with which herds are formed. What was the only part of Christianity
  which was subsequently borrowed by Muhamed? St Paul's invention, his
  --
  personal vanity that Christianity owes its _triumph,_--by this means
  it lured all the bungled and the botched, all revolting and revolted
  --
   Christianity: Christianity, prompted by the most secret recesses of
  bad instincts, has waged a deadly war upon all feeling of reverence
  --
  influence which, springing from Christianity, has insinuated itself
  even into politics! Nowadays no one has the courage of special rights,
  --
  continue _to create revolutions,_--it is Christianity, let there be no
  doubt about it, and Christian values, which convert every revolution
  into blood and crime! Christianity is the revolt of all things that
  crawl on their bellies against everything that is lofty: the gospel of
  --
  a matter of _race._ With Christianity, the art of telling holy lies,
  which constitutes the whole of Judaism, reaches its final mastership,
  --
  have of casting their eyes heavenwards.--Fortunately for Christianity,
  books are for the greatest number, merely literature. We must not let
  --
  dei negatio._--A religion such as Christianity which never once comes
  in touch with reality, and which collapses the very moment reality
  --
  are lunatic asylums. Christianity is in _need_ of illness, just as
  Ancient Greece was in need of a superabundance of health. The actual
  --
  "highest" states which Christianity holds up to mankind as the value
  of values, are epileptic in character,--the Church has pronounced only
  --
  to Christianity,--he must be sick enough for it ... We others who
  possess enough courage both for health and for contempt, how rightly
  --
  movement of Christianity, as a European movement, was from first to
  last, a general accumulation of the ruck and scum of all sorts and
  kinds (--and these, by means of Christianity, aspire to power). It
  does _not_ express the downfall of a race, it is rather a conglomerate
  --
  of antiquity, of _noble_ antiquity, which made Christianity possible:
  the learned idiocy which nowadays tries to support such a notion cannot
  --
  Christian instincts triumphed.... Christianity was not "national," it
  was not determined by race,--it appealed to all the disinherited forms
  of life, it had its allies everywhere. Christianity is built upon the
  rancour of the sick; its instinct is directed _against_ the sound,
  --
  divine.... Christianity was a victory; a _nobler_ type of character
  perished through it,-- Christianity has been humanity's greatest
  --
  illness belongs to the essence of Christianity, the typically Christian
  state, "faith," _must_ also be a form of illness, and all straight,
  --
  down his life (or which, as in the case of primitive Christianity,
  provokes an epidemic of sacrifices),--this conclusion put a tremendous
  --
  The fact that, in Christianity, "holy" ends are entirely absent,
  constitutes _my_ objection to the means it employs. Its ends are only
  --
  the end aspired to by Christianity be compared with that of the
  Law-Book of Manu; if only these two utterly opposed aims be put under
  a strong light The critic of Christianity simply cannot avoid making
   Christianity _contemptible._--A Law-Book like that of Manu comes into
  --
  latent Christianity--to deny immortality was at that time a genuine
  _deliverance._--And Epicurus had triumphed, every respectable thinker
  --
  ourselves, they are not even men. If Islam despises Christianity, it is
  justified a thousand times over; for Islam presupposes men.
  --
  culture: the reason of this is obvious; Christianity, alcohol--the two
  _great_ means of corruption. As a matter of fact choice ought to be
  just as much out of the question between Islam and Christianity, as
  between an Arab and a Jew. The decision is already self-evident; nobody
  --
  quarter, at the very seat of Christianity, and there to place _noble_
  values on the throne,--that is to say, to _introduce_ them into the
  --
  miracle that had taken place, the overcoming of Christianity at its
  _headquarters,_--the fire of his hate knew only how to draw fresh fuel
  --
  the face: the old corruption, the _peceatum originate,_ Christianity
  _no_ longer sat upon the Papal chair! But Life! The triumph of
  --
  be able to get rid of Christianity, the _Germans_ will be to blame.
  --With this I will now conclude and pronounce my judgment. I _condemn_
  --
  blessings of Christianity! To breed a self-contradiction, an art of
  self-profanation, a will to lie at any price, an aversion, a contempt
  --
  call the blessings of Christianity?--Parasitism as the only method of
  the Church; sucking all the blood, all the love, all the hope of life
  --
  This eternal accusation against Christianity I would fain write on all
  walls, wherever there are walls,--I have letters with which I can make
  even the blind see.... I call Christianity the one great curse, the one
  enormous and innermost perversion, the one great instinct of revenge,
  --
  fatality came into being--from the first day of Christianity!--_why
  not rather from its last day?--From to-day?_--Transvaluation of all
  --
  characteristic of real Christianity.--TR.
  [4] "_reine Thorheit_" in the German text, referring once again to

2.12 - On Miracles, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
   Disciple: Moti Babu related to me about your conversion to Christianity how one day when you did not attend Church the priest asked you about it next day and then you did not make any reply but simply wept.
   Sri Aurobindo: What is all this legend? I never became a Christian and never used to go to Church. Who has built up this fantastic story?
  --
   But if India remains indifferent and sticks to old worn-out forms and refuses to move forward, or listen to the call of her soul, then the Truth may recede and try somewhere else. The Truth is not confined to India, it is not India's property. But there is very little chance of its succeeding elsewhere if it fails in India. It may make an unsuccessful, or partially successful, effort somewhere else, like Christianity, and then retire.
   3 SEPTEMBER 1926

2.13 - On Psychology, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
   Sri Aurobindo: Yes; when the Europeans say that he is more Christian than many Christians and that he is "the Christ of the modern times" they are perfectly right. All his preaching is derived from Christianity, and though the form that is given to it is Indian, the essential spirit is Christian. He may not be exactly Christ, but at any rate he comes in continuation of the same movement.
   He is largely influenced by Tolstoy and the Bible and by Jainism in his preachings; at any rate, more than by the Indian scriptures the Upanishads or the Gita which he interprets in the light of his own ideas.
  --
   Sri Aurobindo: Yes, because the Europeans call him spiritual. What he preaches is not Indian spirituality but something derived from Russian Christianity, non-violence, suffering, etc.
   Disciple: He admits to have been greatly influenced by Tolstoy.

2.16 - The Magick Fire, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
  16:But the worst of all phantasms are the moral ideas and the religious ideas. Sanity consists in the faculty of adjusting ideas in proper proportion. Any one who accepts a moral or religious truth without understanding it is only kept out of the asylum because he does not follow it out logically. If one really believed in Christianity,1 if one really thought that the majority of mankind was doomed to eternal punishment, one would go raving about the world trying to "save" people. Sleep would not be possible until the horror of the mind left the body exhausted. Otherwise, one must be morally insane. Which of us can sleep if one we love is in danger of mere death? We cannot even see a dog drown without at least interrupting all our business to look on. Who then can live in London and reflect upon the fact that of its seven million souls, all but about a thousand Plymouth Brethren will be damned? Yet the thousand Plymouth Brethren (who are the loudest in proclaiming that they will be the only ones saved) seem to 1 "One would go mad if one took the Bible seriously; but to take it seriously one must be already mad."-Crowley. get on very well, thank you. Whether they are hypocrites or morally insane is a matter which we can leave to their own consideration.
  17:All these phantoms, of whatever nature, must be evoked, examined, and mastered; otherwise we may find that just when we want it there is some idea with which we have never dealt; and perhaps that idea, springing on us by surprise, and as it were from behind, may strangle us. This is the legend of the sorcerer strangled by the Devil!

2.1.7.08 - Comments on Specific Lines and Passages of the Poem, #Letters On Poetry And Art, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  This has nothing to do with Christianity or Christ but only with the symbol of the cross used here to represent a seemingly eternal world-pain which appears falsely to replace the eternal bliss. It is not Christ but the world-soul which hangs here.
  1948

2.17 - December 1938, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
   Sri Aurobindo: If kings and emperors had left Buddhism to those people who were really spiritual it would have been much better for real Buddhism. It was after Constantine embraced Christianity that it began to decline. The King of Norway, on whom Longfellow wrote a poem, killed all who were not Christians and thus succeeded in establishing Christianity! The same happened to Mohammedanism. When it succeeded, the followers of the Prophet became Khalifas; after them the religion declined. It is not kings and emperors that keep alive spirituality but people who are really spiritual that do so.
   Disciple: Asoka sacrificed everything for Buddhism.

2.21 - 1940, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
   Disciple: Most of these people do not believe in any religion. They seem to want to destroy Christianity and all religion.
   Sri Aurobindo: That is what I meant when I said these Germans have preserved the barbarian in them. What they have got is scientific knowledge, mechanical skill, but all the cultural activities that used to be there are suppressed. And Hitler suppresses them wherever he goes; he has done it in Poland and in Czechoslovakia.

2.22 - 1941-1943, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
   Disciple: The symbolism which he claims to have evolved for the complete explanation and interpretation of Christianity looked very elaborate to me.
   Sri Aurobindo: Yes, all that may be true, but it is not poetry. Middleton Murry and some others try to make so much of his poetry. It is the same when you find people trying to indicate that the names of certain countries stand for certain activities and certain contributions, and even the individual names of Gods.

2.22 - THE STILLEST HOUR, #Thus Spoke Zarathustra, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy
  of cruelty in the Greek agon or denounces Christianity for
  vilifying sex, whether he contrasts sublimation and extirpation or the egoism of the creative and the vengeful: all

2.25 - List of Topics in Each Talk, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
   | 13-09-24 | Tarakeshwar affair; Das and Kamal; Gandhi, Christianity, Karma, Faust, spinning |
   | 10-10-25 | Sri Aurobindo and Moropant Joshi |
  --
   | 23-12-38 | Divine's Omnipotence; Christianity, Buddhism, Mohammedanism; Ramana Maharshi |
   | 26-12-38 | Bla-bhva; self-offering; meditation; physical being; dreams, visions, fantasies; Pranam and meditation with Mother |

2.28 - The Divine Life, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  69: Our nature is complex and we have to find a key to some perfect unity and fullness of its complexity. Its first evolutionary basis is the material life: Nature began with that and man also has to begin with it; he has first to affirm his material and vital existence. But if he stops there, there can be for him no evolution; his next and greater preoccupation must be to find himself as a mental being in a material life - both individual and social - as perfected as possible. This was the direction which the Hellenic idea gave to European civilisation, and the Roman reinforced - or weakened - it with the ideal of organised power: the cult of reason, the interpretation of life by an intellectual thought critical, utilitarian, organising and constructive, the government of life by Science are the last outcome of this inspiration. But in ancient times the higher creative and dynamic element was the pursuit of an ideal truth, good and beauty and the moulding of mind, life and body into perfection and harmony by this ideal. Beyond and above this preoccupation, as soon as mind is sufficiently developed, there awakes in man the spiritual preoccupation, the discovery of a self and inmost truth of being and the release of man's mind and life into the truth of the Spirit, its perfection by the power of the Spirit, the solidarity, unity, mutuality of all beings in the Spirit. This was the Eastern ideal carried by Buddhism and other ancient disciplines to the coasts of Asia and Egypt and from there poured by Christianity into Europe.
  70: But these motives, burning for a time like dim torchlights in the confusion and darkness created by the barbaric flood that had submerged the old civilisations, have been abandoned by the modern spirit which has found another light, the light of Science. What the modern spirit has sought for is the economic social ultimate, - an ideal material organisation of civilisation and comfort, the use of reason and science and education for the generalisation of a utilitarian rationality which will make the individual a perfected social being in a perfected economic society. What remained from the spiritual ideal was - for a time - a mentalised and moralised humanitarianism relieved of all religious colouring and a social ethicism which was deemed allsufficient to take the place of a religious and individual ethic. It was so far that the race had reached when it found itself hurried forward by its own momentum into a subjective chaos and a chaos of its life in which all received values were overthrown and all firm ground seemed to disappear from its social organisation, its conduct and its culture.

3.00.2 - Introduction, #The Practice of Psycho therapy, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  rule of wisdom once and for all, or Christianity have set up the Kingdom
  of Heaven upon earth?
  --
  viewpoints, of the two branches into which Christianity has been split,
  cannot maintain the exclusive validity of either of them, for to do so would
  --
  materialism and a certain species of joyful Christianity join hands like
  brothers.) The goal is important only as an idea; the essential thing is the

30.04 - Intuition and Inspiration in Art, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   A similar event seems to have taken place in Europe with the advent of Christianity. The Graeco-Latin culture was predominantly based on reason and knowledge like that of the Indian Aryans. But Christ appeared on the. scene with the emotional gift of the psychic being.
   Again, if in Rabindranath we get at the fountainhead of some of the deepest, purest inspiration, we see on the other hand an effort and aspiration for intuition in Madhusudan.

3.01 - INTRODUCTION, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  [106] Here again we see the contrast between alchemy and the prevailing Christian ideal of attempting to restore the original state of innocence by monasticism and, later, by the celibacy of the priesthood. The conflict between worldliness and spirituality, latent in the love-myth of Mother and Son, was elevated by Christianity to the mystic marriage of sponsus (Christ) and sponsa (Church), whereas the alchemists transposed it to the physical plane as the coniunctio of Sol and Luna. The Christian solution of the conflict is purely pneumatic, the physical relations of the sexes being turned into an allegory orquite illegitimatelyinto a sin that perpetuates and even intensifies the original one in the Garden. Alchemy, on the other hand, exalted the most heinous transgression of the law, namely incest, into a symbol of the union of opposites, hoping in this way to bring back the golden age. For both trends the solution lay in extrapolating the union of sexes into another medium: the one projected it into the spirit, the other into matter. But neither of them located the problem in the place where it arose the soul of man.
  [107] No doubt it would be tempting to assume that it was more convenient to shift such a supremely difficult question on to another plane and then represent it as having been solved. But this explanation is too facile, and is psychologically false because it supposes that the problem was asked consciously, found to be painful, and consequently moved on to another plane. This stratagem accords with our modern way of thinking but not with the spirit of the past, and there are no historical proofs of any such neurotic operation. Rather does all the evidence suggest that the problem has always seemed to lie outside the psyche as known to us. Incest was the hierosgamos of the gods, the mystic prerogative of kings, a priestly rite, etc. In all these cases we are dealing with an archetype of the collective unconscious which, as consciousness increased, exerted an ever greater influence on conscious life. It certainly seems today as if the ecclesiastical allegories of the bridegroom and bride, not to mention the now completely obsolete alchemical coniunctio, had become so faded that one meets with incest only in criminology and the psychopathology of sex. Freuds discovery of the Oedipus complex, a special instance of the incest problem in general, and its universal incidence have, however, reactivated this ancient problem, though mostly only for doctors interested in psychology. Even though laymen know very little about certain medical anomalies or have a wrong idea of them, this does not alter the facts any more than does the laymans ignorance of the actual percentage of cases of tuberculosis or psychosis.

3.01 - The Principles of Ritual, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
  of a religion. It is the method of Catholic Christianity, and consists
  in the dramatization of the legend of the God. The Bacch of

3.02 - King and Queen, #The Practice of Psycho therapy, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  proposition, a distinct falling away from the lofty ideal of Christianity;
  and, in consequence, the projections have largely fallen away from the

3.02 - SOL, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  [130] In view of the supreme importance of the ego in bringing reality to light, we can understand why this infinitesimal speck in the universe was personified as the sun, with all the attributes that this image implies. As the medieval mind was incomparably more alive than ours to the divine quality of the sun, we may assume that the totality character of the sun-image was implicit in all its allegorical or symbolic applications. Among the significations of the sun as totality the most important was its frequent use as a God-image, not only in pagan times but in the sphere of Christianity as well.
  [131] Although the alchemists came very close to realizing that the ego was the mysteriously elusive arcane substance and the longed-for lapis, they were not aware that with their sun symbol they were establishing an intimate connection between God and the ego. As already remarked, projection is not a voluntary act; it is a natural phenomenon beyond the interference of the conscious mind and peculiar to the nature of the human psyche. If, therefore, it is this nature that produces the sun symbol, nature herself is expressing an identity of God and ego. In that case only unconscious nature can be accused of blasphemy, but not the man who is its victim. It is the rooted conviction of the West that God and the ego are worlds apart. In India, on the other hand, their identity was taken as self-evident. It was the nature of the Indian mind to become aware of the world-creating significance of the consciousness68 manifested in man.69 The West, on the contrary, has always emphasized the littleness, weakness, and sinfulness of the ego, despite the fact that it elevated one man to the status of divinity. The alchemists at least suspected mans hidden godlikeness, and the intuition of Angelus Silesius finally expressed it without disguise.

3.03 - SULPHUR, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  [148] From this we would have to conclude that the alchemists had discovered the psychological existence of a shadow which opposes and compensates the conscious, positive figure. For them the shadow was in no sense a privatio lucis; it was so real that they even thought they could discern its material density, and this concretism led them to attri bute to it the dignity of being the matrix of an incorruptible and eternal substance. In the religious sphere this psychological discovery is reflected in the historical fact that only with the rise of Christianity did the devil, the eternal counterpart of Christ, assume his true form, and that the figure of Antichrist appears on the scene already in the New Testament. It would have been natural for the alchemists to suppose that they had lured the devil out of the darkness of matter. There were indeed indications of this, as we have seen, but they are exceptions. Far more prevalent and truly characteristic of alchemy was the optimistic notion that this creature of darkness was destined to be the medicina, as is proved by the use of the term medicina et medicus for the untrustworthy sulphur. The very same appellation appears as an allegory of Christ in St. Ambrose.167 The Greek word
   (poison and antidote) is indicative of this ambivalence. In our parable of the sulphur the river of most dangerous water, which caused so many deaths, is analogous to the water from the side of Christ and the streams that flowed from his belly. What in one place is a river of grace is a deadly poison in anotherharbouring within it, however, the potentialities of healing.

3.04 - LUNA, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  [170] In interpreting the words your understanding increases in my sister, etc., it is well to remember that a philosophical interpretation of myths had already grown up among the Stoics, which today we should not hesitate to describe as psychological. This work of interpretation was not interrupted by the development of Christianity but continued to be assiduously practised in a rather different form, namely in the hermeneutics of the Church Fathers, which was to have a decided influence on alchemical symbolism. The Johannine interpretation of Christ as the pre-worldly Logos is an early attempt of this kind to put into other words the meaning of Christs essence. The later medievalists, and in particular the natural philosophers, made the Sapientia Dei the nucleus of their interpretation of nature and thus created a new nature-myth. In this they were very much influenced by the writings of the Arabs and of the Harranites, the last exponents of Greek philosophy and gnosis, whose chief representative was Tabit ibn Qurra in the tenth century. One of these writings, the Liber Platonis quartorum, is a dialogue in which Thebed (Tabit) speaks in person. In this treatise the intellect as a tool of natural philosophy plays a role that we do not meet again until the sixteenth century, in Gerhard Dorn. Pico della Mirandola appeals to the psychological interpretation of the ancients and mentions that the Greek Platonists described Sol as
  251 and Luna as
  --
  [200] We learn that the winged youth is espoused to the central Water. This is the fountain of the soul or the fount of wisdom,346 from which the inner life wells up. The nymph of the spring is in the last analysis Luna, the mother-beloved, from which it follows that the winged youth is Sol, the filius solis, lapis, aurum philosophicum, lumen luminum, medicina catholica, una salus, etc. He is the best, the highest, the most precious in potentia. But he will become real only if he can unite with Luna, the mother of mortal bodies. If not, he is threatened with the fate of the puer aeternus in Faust, who goes up in smoke three times.347 The adept must therefore always take care to keep the Hermetic vessel well sealed, in order to prevent what is in it from flying away. The content becomes fixed through the mystery of the coniunctio, in which the extreme opposites unite, night is wedded with day, and the two shall be one, and the outside as the inside, and the male with the female neither male nor female.348 This apocryphal saying of Jesus from the beginning of the second century is indeed a paradigm for the alchemical union of opposites. Obviously this problem is an eschatological one, but, aside from the somewhat tortuous language of the times, it cannot be called abstruse since it has universal validity, from the tao of Lao-tzu to the coincidentia oppositorum of Cusanus. The same idea penetrated into Christianity in the form of the apocalyptic marriage of the Lamb (Rev. 22 : 9ff.), and we seldom find a high point of religious feeling where this eternal image of the royal marriage does not appear.
  [201] I can do no more than demonstrate the existence of this image and its phenomenology. What the union of opposites really means transcends human imagination. Therefore the worldly-wise can dismiss such a fantasy without further ado, for it is perfectly clear: tertium non datur. But that doesnt help us much, for we are dealing with an eternal image, an archetype, from which man can turn away his mind for a time but never permanently.349 Whenever this image is obscured his life loses its proper meaning and consequently its balance. So long as he knows that he is the carrier of life and that it is therefore important for him to live, then the mystery of his soul lives alsono matter whether he is conscious of it or not. But if he no longer sees the meaning of his life in its fulfilment, and no longer believes in mans eternal right to this fulfilment, then he has betrayed and lost his soul, substituting for it a madness which leads to destruction, as our time demonstrates all too clearly.

3.05 - SAL, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  [251] It is not easy for a modern mind to conceive salt, a cold-damp, lunar-terrestrial substance, as a bird and a spirit. Spirit, as the Chinese conceive it, is yang, the fiery and dry element, and this accords with the views of Heraclitus as well as with the Christian concept of the Holy Ghost as tongues of fire. Luna, we have seen, is unquestionably connected with mens, manas, mind, etc. But these connections are of a somewhat ambiguous nature. Although the earth can boast of an earth-spirit and other daemons, they are after all spirits and not spirit. The cold side of nature is not lacking in spirit, but it is a spirit of a special kind, which Christianity regarded as demonic and which therefore found no acclaim except in the realm of the magical arts and sciences. This spirit is the snake-like Nous or Agathodaimon, which in Hellenistic syncretism merges together with Hermes. Christian allegory and iconography also took possession of it on the basis of John 3 : 14: And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up. The mercurial serpent or spirit Mercurius is the personification and living continuation of the spirit who, in the prayer entitled the Secret Inscription in the Great Magic Papyrus of Paris, is invoked as follows:
  Greetings, entire edifice of the Spirit of the air, greetings, Spirit that penetratest from heaven to earth, and from earth, which abideth in the midst of the universe, to the uttermost bounds of the abyss, greetings, Spirit that penetratest into me, and shakest me. . . . Greetings, beginning and end of irremovable Nature, greetings, thou who revolvest the elements that untiringly render service, greetings, brightly shining sun, whose radiance ministereth to the world, greetings, moon shining by night with disc of fickle brilliance, greetings, all ye spirits of the demons of the air. . . . O great, greatest, incomprehensible fabric of the world, formed in a circle! . . . dwelling in the aether, having the form of water, of earth, of fire, of wind, of light, of darkness, star-glittering, damp-fiery-cold Spirit! [
  --
  ). There the gods of destruction and the god of salvation are all together.469 The Red Sea is a water of death for those that are unconscious, but for those that are conscious it is a baptismal water of rebirth and transcendence.470 By unconscious are meant those who have no gnosis, i.e., are not enlightened as to the nature and destiny of man in the cosmos. In modern language it would be those who have no knowledge of the contents of the personal and collective unconscious. The personal unconscious is the shadow and the inferior function,471 in Gnostic terms the sinfulness and impurity that must be washed away by baptism. The collective unconscious expresses itself in the mythological teachings, characteristic of most mystery religions, which reveal the secret knowledge concerning the origin of all things and the way to salvation. Unconscious people who attempt to cross the sea without being purified and without the guidance of enlightenment are drowned; they get stuck in the unconscious and suffer a spiritual death in so far as they cannot get beyond their one-sidedness. To do this they would have to be more conscious of what is unconscious to them and their age, above all of the inner opposite, namely those contents to which the prevailing views are in any way opposed. This continual process of getting to know the counterposition in the unconscious I have called the transcendent function,472 because the confrontation of conscious (rational) data with those that are unconscious (irrational) necessarily results in a modification of standpoint. But an alteration is possible only if the existence of the other is admitted, at least to the point of taking conscious cognizance of it. A Christian of today, for instance, no longer ought to cling obstinately to a one-sided credo, but should face the fact that Christianity has been in a state of schism for four hundred years, with the result that every single Christian has a split in his psyche. Naturally this lesion cannot be treated or healed if everyone insists on his own standpoint. Behind those barriers he can rejoice in his absolute and consistent convictions and deem himself above the conflict, but outside them he keeps the conflict alive by his intransigence and continues to deplore the pig-headedness and stiff-neckedness of everybody else. It seems as if Christianity had been from the outset the religion of chronic squabblers, and even now it does everything in its power never to let the squabbles rest. Remarkably enough, it never stops preaching the gospel of neighbourly love.
  [258] We should get along a lot better if we realized that the majority views of others are condoned by a minority in ourselves. Armed with this psychological insight, which today no longer has the character of revelation since common sense can grasp it, we could set out on the road to the union of the opposites and would then, as in the Peratic doctrine, come to the place where the gods of destruction and the god of salvation are together. By this is obviously meant the destructive and constructive powers of the unconscious. This coincidentia oppositorum forms a parallel to the Messianic state of fulfilment described in Isaiah 11 : 6ff. and 35 : 5ff., though with one important difference: the place of genesis outside of generationpresumably an opus contra naturam is clearly not paradise but
  --
  [286] It is characteristic of Maiers views that the idea of most importance is not Mercurius, who elsewhere appears strongly personified, but a substance brought by the phoenix, the bird of the spirit. It is this inorganic substance, and not a living being, which is used as a symbol of wholeness, or as a means towards wholeness, a desideratum apparently not fulfilled by the Christ-symbol.530 Involuntarily one asks oneself whether the intense personalization of the divine figures, as is customary in Christianity and quite particularly in Protestantism,531 is not in the end compensated, and to some extent mitigated, by a more objective point of view emanating from the unconscious.
  e. Ascent and Descent
  --
  [325] Here salt undoubtedly means insight, understanding, wisdom. In both Matthew and Mark the salt is liable to lose its savour. Evidently this salt must keep its tang, just as the wise virgins kept their lamps trimmed. For this purpose a flexibility of mind is needed, and the last thing to guarantee this is rigid insistence on the necessity of faith. Everyone will admit that it is the task of the Church to safeguard her store of wisdom, the aqua doctrinae, in its original purity, and yet, in response to the changing spirit of the times, she must go on altering it and differentiating it just as the Fathers did. For the cultured Greco-Roman world early Christianity was among other things a message in philosophical disguise, as we can see quite plainly from Hippolytus. It was a competing philosophical doctrine that reached a certain peak of perfection in St. Thomas. Until well into the sixteenth century the degree of philosophical truth of Christian doctrine corresponded to that of scientific truth today.
  [326] The physicians and natural philosophers of the Middle Ages nevertheless found themselves faced with problems for which the Church had no answer. Confronted with sickness and death, the physicians did not hesitate to seek counsel with the Arabs and so resuscitate that bit of the ancient world which the Church thought she had exterminated for ever, namely the Mandaean and Sabaean remnants of Hellenistic syncretism. From them they derived a sal sapientiae that seemed so unlike the doctrine of the Church that before long a process of mutual assimilation arose which put forth some very remarkable blossoms. The ecclesiastical allegories kept, so far as I can judge, to the classical usage of Sal. Only St. Hilary (d. 367) seems to have gone rather more deeply into the nature of salt when he remarks that salt contains in itself the element of water and fire, and by this is one out of two.642 Picinellus observes: Two elements which stir up an implacable enmity between themselves are found in wondrous alliance in salt. For salt is wholly fire and wholly water.643 For the rest he advises a sparing use of salt: Let the word be sprinkled with salt, not deluged with it,644 and another, earlier allegorist, the Jesuit Nicholas Caussin,645 does not mention salt at all.

3.07 - The Formula of the Holy Grail, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
  the sham occult creeds, as well as the emasculated forms of so-called Christianity.
  2. [Chaldan Oracles, fragment 172 in Westcott / Cory editions.]

3.0 - THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE, #Twilight of the Idols, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy
  What are the two thousand years in which Christianity has maintained
  its sway? For the mightiest thought of all many millenniums will be

3.1.04 - Transformation in the Integral Yoga, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  I have not denied that the ideal of a change on earth is of old standing. It is there vaguely in the human mind perhaps since the beginning, though more often perfection is put in some golden age of the past and deterioration and a cataclysm is the law of the future. Christianity foresees a descent of Christ and his rule on earth, but this is figured as an outward event, not as a change produced by an inward power and process or by Yoga. A reign of the saints is also foreshadowed in some Hindu scriptures, but that equally is something different from my conception. As for sainthood itself or the siddhis of Yoga including a siddha body, that too is not what I mean by transformationit is a radical change of consciousness and nature itself that I envisage. I do not know also that these things were sought by the process of descent the Tamil Shaiva saints for instance sought for the siddha body by tremendous austerities; the siddhis they sought were all there in the sukshma mental and vital worlds and by a stupendous effort and mastery of the body they brought them down into the physical instrument. I have always said that these things and these methods are out of my scope and eschewed by me in my Yoga. I tried some of these but after achieving some initial results I saw it was a bypath and I left it.
  To get rid of or mastery over kma-krodha is not the transformation, it is at best a preliminary step towards it provided it is done not in the moral way by mental self-control but in the spiritual way. Sainthood is not my object. I do not know how far Ramakrishna had gone towards the transformation as I conceive it; the metaphors you quote contain nothing precise with which I can compare my own experience or my own intuitions about the change. According to certain accounts there was a descent of Kali into his body which made it luminous, but he repressed it as something contrary to what he was seeking after. If there is something anywhere in the past which coincides with the aim and conceived process of my Yoga I shall be glad to know of it; for that would certainly be an aid to me. I put no value on the newness of what I am doing or trying to do. If the path was already there open and complete, it is a great pity that I should have wasted all my life clearing it out anew with much difficulty and peril when I could just have walked on a clear and safe avenue towards the goal of my endeavour. But the nearest I could get to it were some things in the Veda and Upanishads (secret words, veiled hints) which seemed to coincide with or point towards certain things in my own knowledge and experience. But after incorporating certain parts of the Vedic method as far as I could interpret or recover it, I found it was insufficient and I had to seek farther.

3.10 - The New Birth, #The Practice of Psycho therapy, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  theriomorphic symbols in Christianity is here compensated by a wealth of
  allegorical animal forms which tally quite well with mater natura.

31.10 - East and West, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   No doubt, the East has moral codes and in profusion, but they are not considered to be the last word on spirituality; they all fall under the category of the 'Lesser Knowledge' (Apara Vidya) and therefore the East has not confined itself within the play of the lower - the three gunasof nature. Its gaze is fixed on a still higher region. Europe claims herself to be the follower of the Christ. But how has Christianity developed there? It was the Church martyr in the beginning, it developed into the Church militant which finally turned into the Church political. The Christian church aimed at establishing the kingdom of Heaven on earth, but as a matter of fact, it has succeeded in establishing something of an earthly kingdom only. On the other hand, the religion of the East has quite a different movement. The ideal of the East is represented by Vedic seers like Vasishtha and Viswamitra who sought to realise the great Heavens - the Vast Truth. And their descendants clung to this ideal so firmly that no other thing existed for them. Vasishtha and Viswamitra have been consummated in Buddha and Shankara. The West has brought religion down to the level of the mundane and is about to lose it there, while the East has pushed religion up and is at last on the verge of losing the world in the Brahman or the Void.
   Alexander, Caesar and Napoleon are the ideal men of action in the West, while Krishna, Arjuna and Bhishma are the representatives 'of the ideal of the East. The European heroes display daemoniac restlessness and exuberance. The Indian heroes possess the godly virtues of calmness and poise along with clear insight. Napoleon is a mighty Vibhuti of the Divine Power. But Sri Krishna is the Incarnation of God Himself Leaving aside some solitary exceptions, the West has generally failed to imbibe spirituality; even so the East has failed to assimilate the true spirit of earthly action. As in the West the Christ is practically buried in oblivion, so the East has somehow managed to wipe out the teachings of Sri Krishna. And, in consequence, the people of the East try to avoid action as much as possible in order to attain to union with God. The West moves in the diametrically opposite direction and tries to attain perfection in every sphere of work in the outer world. Typically, Haeckel was enthusiastic enough to devote his entire life to the discovery of the life-history of the cray fish. To plant a banner in the polar region has been the mission of many a youth in the West. The Eastern mind is apt to look upon these things as a mere child's play. The Eastern mind was never content until it could in some way or other associate even the inescapable mundane knowledge with the knowledge of the Self. The motto of the East runs: "Know the Self alone and cast aside all other thoughts."

3.2.05 - Our Ideal, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Buddhism and Vaishnavism filtered through the Semitic temperament entered Europe in the form of Christianity. Christianity came within an ace of spiritualising and even of asceticising the mind of Europe; it was baffled by its own theological deformation in the minds of the Greek fathers of the Church and by the sudden flooding of Europe with a German barbarism whose temperament in its merits no less than in its defects was the very antitype both of the Christian spirit and the Graeco-Roman intellect.
  The Islamic invasion of Spain and the southern coast of the Mediterranean - curious as the sole noteworthy example of Asiatic culture using the European method of material and political irruption as opposed to a peaceful invasion by ideas - may be regarded as a third attempt. The result of its meeting with
  Graecised Christianity was the reawakening of the European mind in feudal and Catholic Europe and the obscure beginnings of modern thought and science.
  The fourth and last attempt which is as yet only in its slow initial stage is the quiet entry of Eastern and chiefly of

3.2.10 - Christianity and Theosophy, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  object:3.2.10 - Christianity and Theosophy
  author class:Sri Aurobindo
  --
  The gospel of suffering, the obsessing sense of sin and the dramatic vital turn which goes with these things are certainly the most prominent defects of the Christian attitude, and they keep the religion even in its esoteric movements too much tied to a half-spiritualised vital movement. Christianity seems to me to have never clarified its intelligence by the spiritual light in the higher reaches of the mind; it is lacking in a spiritual philosophy and never really went beyond theologyin spite of one or two large thinkers who were the exception rather than the rule. One has to pass beyond even the higher mind, but not to have developed the spiritual light in it leaves the instrument defective and, instead of going above the mind, one is then apt to be content to remain below receiving whatever flashes and upliftings one can from a high and far-off and very much veiled Divine. And in such a state it is easier to mistake partial deities or even, if one is not careful, undivine Powers for the Supreme.
  ***
  --
  I feel it difficult to say anything about Xs Christ and Krishna. The attraction which she says people feel for Christ has never touched me, partly because I got disgusted with the dryness and deadness of Christianity in England and partly because the Christ of the gospels (apart from a few pregnant episodes) is luminous no doubt, but somewhat shadowy and imperfectly constructed in his luminosity; there is more of the ethical put forward than of the spiritual or divine man. The Christ that has strongly lived in the Western saints and mystics is the Christ of St. Francis of Assisi, St. Teresa and others. But apart from that, is it a fact that Christ has been strongly or vividly loved by Christians? Only by a very few, it seems to me. As for Krishna, to judge him and his revealing tradition by the Christ figure and Christ tradition is not possible. The two stand in two different worlds. There is nothing in the latter of the great and boundless and sovereign spiritual knowledge and power of realisation we find in the Gita, nothing of the emotional force, passion, beauty of the Gopi symbol and all that lies behind it, nothing of the many-sided manifestation of the Krishna figure. The other has other qualities: there is no gain in putting them side by side and trying to weigh them against each other. That is the besetting sin of the Christian mind even in those who are most liberal like Dr. Stanley Jones; they cannot get altogether free from the sectarian narrowness and leave each manifestation to its own inner world for those to follow who have the inner drawing to the one or the other. I have always refrained from these comparisons in my published writings in order to avoid this error. What I feel personally is for myself I cant ask others to conform to my measure.
  ***

32.11 - Life and Self-Control (A Letter), #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   Of course, there is no hard arid fast rule that there must be a barrier between life and beyond-life, between self-restraint and self-indulgence. A synthesis between the two may be difficult, but not impossible. Indeed, it was in India again that there developed such lines of synthetic sadhana. Rather it was Europe that gave evidence ofthis conflict and duality much more than India. We may remember the motto: "Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's, etc." By pointing to the path of self-restraint Christianity holds that it leads to the Kingdom of Christ and those who would remain chained down to their senses will remain in their low, unrefined state of nature. In Europe this conflict has led to two extremes. Self-restraint in Christianity has become self-mortification: but, on the other hand, when Europeans do not think it harmful to give a long rope to the senses, they have gone to the excess of unbridled license. In India there has been an attempt at a synthesis of these two aspects of life. Worldly life was taken as a preparation for or as a stepping-stone to the world beyond. So self-restraint was given a place not only in the sphere of sadhana for liberation, but also in the field of enjoyment. Hence we see in India as much preponderance of sattwic qualities as we see in Europe preponderance of rajasic dynamism. No doubt, the sattwic state easily lapses into the inertia of tamas. As a matter of fact, such has been the case in India. But rajas also meets the same end. The one slowly slides to extinction; the other shoots up like a rocket and falls like a burnt stick. Thus both suffer the same fate.
   In general, life is the play-field of the senses. If self-control implies moving away from the senses, then it is not possible for it to have a place in life. But self-control may mean keeping the senses under control, under a system of rule and discipline. This is the popular sense of self-control: it is a graded withdrawal, a first step towards detachment. This is also how it developed in India. But, as a matter of fact, this popular approach to self-control is not India's speciality alone. Europe has given it a recognised place, not only in the Christian religious life but in her worldly life too. But it will not do to forget that the untrammelled freedom of the senses and their unbridled license have been accepted as an ideal specially in modern times, and it is confined to a particular community. What they are now attempting to reject as a bourgeois trait was one day an aid in the building up of the Euorpean society. To be sure, Europe was not so inclined towards detachment as India. Europe has gone in for the cultivation of the senses, but that does not mean that she has been sticking to an excessive and disorderly play of the senses. Neither Byron nor Oscar Wilde is the ultimate ideal of Europe. When the famous novelist Balzac used to sit down to write he would do so in a lonely place in a monk's tunic in order to help his one-pointed concentration. Napoleon, Caesar and Alexander were no helpless slaves of their senses. In fact, no country or race can build its greatness except on the foundation of self-control. It is not that self-control must necessarily be self-mortification. There can be a via media, and in ordinary life this is a necessity. Self-indulgence is the debit side. True, this side of Europe is much to the fore, but that leads one to think that she is living on her old capital, and it is not long before her capital runs short. The root of the capital is self-restraint, and it is the credit side, the side of accumulated power.

3.21 - Of Black Magic, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
  abuse for the clergy of historic Christianity (e.g. in II of this chapter). Nor should
  it be assumed that Crowleys use of Left Hand Path has any particular

3.4.03 - Materialism, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Objection can at once be made that all these great things have no connection with materialism. The impulse towards them was of old standing and long active in the human mind; the very principle of the humanitarianism which has been one of the striking developments of modern sentiment, was first brought out from our nature and made prominent by religion, compassion and the love of man first intimately and powerfully enforced by Christianity and Buddhism; if they have now a little developed, it is the natural expanding from seeds that had long been sown. Materialism was rather calculated to encourage opposite instincts; and the good it favoured it limited, made arid, mechanised. If all these nobler things have grown and are breaking the bounds set to them, it is because man is fortunately inconsistent and after a certain stage of our development cannot be really and wholly materialistic; he needs ideals, ethical expansion, a closer emotional fulfilment, and these needs he has tacked on to his development of materialistic opinion and corrected its natural results by them. But the ideals themselves were taken from an anterior opinion and culture.
  This is the truth, but not the whole truth. The old religious cultures were often admirable in the ensemble and always in some of their parts, but if they had not been defective, they could neither have been so easily breached, nor would there have been the need of a secularist age to bring out the results the religions had sown. Their faults were those of a certain narrowness and exclusive vision. Concentrated, intense in their ideal and intensive in their effect, their expansive influence on the human mind was small. They isolated too much their action in the individual, limited too narrowly the working of their ideals in the social order, tolerated for instance and even utilised for the ends of church and creed an immense amount of cruelty and barbarism which were contrary to the spirit and truth from which they had started. What they discouraged in the soul of the individual, they yet maintained in the action and the frame of society, seemed hardly to conceive of a human order delivered from these blots. The depth and fervour of their aspiration had for its shadow a want of intellectual clarity, an obscurity which confused their working and baulked the expansion of their spiritual elements. They nourished too a core of asceticism and hardly cared to believe in the definite amelioration of the earth life, despised by them as a downfall or a dolorous descent or imperfection of the human spirit, or whatever earthly hope they admitted saw itself postponed to the millennial end of things. A belief in the vanity of human life or of existence itself suited better the preoccupation with an aim beyond earth. Perfection, ethical growth, liberation became individual ideals and figured too much as an isolated preparation of the soul for the beyond. The social effect of the religious temperament, however potentially considerable, was cramped by excessive other-worldliness and distrust in the intellect accentuated to obscurantism.

3.5.02 - Thoughts and Glimpses, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Each religion has helped mankind. Paganism increased in man the light of beauty, the largeness and height of his life, his aim at a many-sided perfection; Christianity gave him some vision of divine love and charity; Buddhism has shown him a noble way to be wiser, gentler, purer, Judaism and Islam how to be religiously faithful in action and zealously devoted to God; Hinduism has opened to him the largest and profoundest spiritual possibilities. A great thing would be done if all these God-visions could embrace and cast themselves into each other; but intellectual dogma and cult egoism stand in the way.
  All religions have saved a number of souls, but none yet has been able to spiritualise mankind. For that there is needed not cult and creed, but a sustained and all-comprehending effort at spiritual self-evolution.

3-5 Full Circle, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
  "Mankind," wrote Dr. Fosdick, "desperately needs what Christianity at its best has to offer--that idea has become ever more urgent and commanding. I emphasize at its best because Christianity can be and often is perverted, corrupted, degraded, until far from serving good ends it becomes a deplorable evil. I grow weary at times with preachers who, without clarifying definitions, set over against each other words like ` Christianity' and `secularism,' as though secularism were cursing the world and Christianity alone could save it. The fact is that so-called ` Christianity' at its worst has produced some of the most hideous persecutions, wars and fanaticisms in history, and that today it is sometimes bigoted, superstitious, intolerant, socially disruptive, while so-called `secularism' is sometimes humane, ethically-minded and socially constructive." pp. 267-8.45
  Dr. Fosdick's sermons and books display hundreds of concrete examples of Christianity and secularism at their best and also at their worst: These examples can now be mapped into the Periodic coordinate system, as in Figures V-3 and 4, and thus be given more clarifying definitions than humanists have here-to-fore commanded.
  "I do not wish to use the word ` Christianity' as though it were an unambiguous term," he wrote a little further on. "One needs to define what one means by it." He then uses what scientists call a type specimen or a paradigmatic case:46 "For me the essence of Christianity is incarnate in the personality of the Master . . . and in the fundamental principles of life's conduct which Jesus of Nazareth exhibited. I am sure that the world today desperately needs his faith and his way of life, and that without them there is no hope."45,47 Each concrete aspect of this paradigmatic case can be mapped unambiguously into the Periodic coordinate system, and the word ` Christianity' thus rendered quite unambiguous.--A number of its parts will, I predict, be found to belong to the Literate Culture (Period 5), and to require transposition in order to regain their original meaning for Industrial culture. And others of its parts will have to be completed.
  "This conviction [that we must emulate this paradigm] has been forced home on our generation by our disillusionment with some of the reliances in which we trusted for the salvation of the world--science and education, for example . . . They are only instruments and the crucial question on which everything in the end depends is what kind of people--with what undergirding conviction about God and man, with what quality of character and with what ethical standards--are going to use them." (Ibid.)
  --
  "I have lived into a generation," Dr. Fosdick continued, "where not science alone but education too `has created a world in which Christianity is an imperative."' He then lists almost all the defects which the crisis ridden university's now perfectly feasible assembly plant, Figure IV-11, has been shown to correct: "Facts without values, fragmentary specialties with no integrating philosophy of life as a whole, data with no ethical standards for their use, techniques with no convictions about life's ultimate meaning or with corrupting convictions--here, too, a panacea has turned out to be a problem. What quality of faith and character is going to use our educated minds?"p.271.
  Answer: The quality wherein Unified Science and religion at its best coincide; and that is probably throughout.
  --
  23. Kim, Young Oon, Divine Principle and its Application. Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity. 1611 Upshur St., N.W. Washington, D.C. 20011, 1968.
  24. Edwards, David L., editor, The Honest to God Debate. Westminster Press, Philadelphia, 1963.
  --
  47. Compare to this the following statement by Werner Heisenberg: "If we ask Western man what is good and what is evil, what is worth striving for and what is to be rejected, we shall find time and again that his answers reflect the ethical norms of Christianity even when he has long since lost all touch with Christian images and parables. If the magnetic force that has guided this particular compass--and what else was its source but the central order?--should ever become extinct, terrible things may happen to mankind..." (p. 2174).
  48. Inferred from the discovery of the consecutive formation of atoxns in the expanding shells of quasars (Fig. II-2).

3.6.01 - Heraclitus, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Equally striking is his condemnation of idol-worship, one of the earliest in human history,-"he who prays to an image is chattering to a stone wall." The intolerant violence of this protestant rationalism and positivism makes Heraclitus again a precursor of a whole movement of the human mind. It is not indeed a religious protest such as that of Mahomed against the naturalistic, Pagan and idolatrous polytheism of the Arabs or of the Protestants against the aesthetic and emotional saint-worship of the Catholic Church, its Mariolatry and use of images and elaborate ritual; its motive is philosophic, rational, psychological. Heraclitus was not indeed a pure rationalist He believes in the Gods, but as psychological presences, cosmic powers, and he is too impatient of the grossness of the physical image, its hold on the senses, its obscuration of the psychological significance of the godheads to see that it is not to the stone, but to the divine person figured in the stone that the prayer is offered. It is noticeable that in his conception of the gods he is kin to the old Vedic seers, though not at all a religious mystic in his temperament. The Vedic religion seems to have excluded physical images and it was the protestant movements of Jainism and Buddhism which either introduced or at least popularised and made general the worship of images in India. Here too Heraclitus prepares the way for the destruction of the old religion, the reign of pure philosophy and reason and the void which was filled up by Christianity; for man cannot live by reason alone. When it was too late, some attempt was made to re-spiritualise the old religion, and there was the remarkable effort of Julian and Libanius to set up a regenerated Paganism against triumphant Christianity; but the attempt was too unsubstantial, too purely philosophic, empty of the dynamic power of the religious spirit. Europe had killed its old creeds beyond revival and had to turn for its religion to Asia.
  Thus, for the general life of man Heraclitus has nothing to give us beyond his hint of an aristocratic principle in society and politics,-and we may note that this aristocratic bent was very strong in almost all the subsequent Greek philosophers. In religion his influence tended to the destruction of the old creed without effectively putting anything more profound in its place; though not himself a pure rationalist, he prepared the way for philosophic rationalism. But even without religion philosophy by itself can give us at least some light on the spiritual destiny of man, some hope of the infinite, some ideal perfection after which we can strive. Plato who was influenced by Heraclitus, tried to do this for us; his thought sought after God, tried to seize the ideal, had its hope of a perfect human society. We know how the Neo-platonists developed his ideas under the influence of the East and how they affected Christianity. The Stoics, still more directly the intellectual descendants of Heraclitus, arrived at very remarkable and fruitful ideas of human possibility and a powerful psychological discipline,-as we should say in India, a Yoga,-by which they hoped to realise their ideal. But what has Heraclitus himself to give us? Nothing directly; we have to gather for ourselves whatever we can from his first principles and his cryptic sentences.
  Heraclitus was regarded in ancient times as a pessimistic thinker and we have one or two sayings of his from which we can, if we like, deduce the old vain gospel of the vanity of things. Time, he says, is playing draughts like a child, amusing itself with counters, building castles on the sea-shore only to throw them down again. If that is the last word, then all human effort and aspiration are vain. But on what primary philosophical conception does this discouraging sentence depend? Everything turns on that; for in itself this is no more than an assertion of a self-evident fact, the mutability of things and the recurrent transiency of forms. But if the principles which express themselves in forms are eternal or if there is a Spirit in things which finds its account in the mutations and evolutions of Time and if that Spirit dwells in the human being as the immortal and infinite power of his soul, then no conclusion of the vanity of the world or the vanity of human existence arises. If indeed the original and eternal principle of Fire is a purely physical substance or force, then, truly, since all the great play and effort of consciousness in us must sink and dissolve into that, there can be no permanent spiritual value in our being, much less in our works. But we have seen that Heraclitus' Fire cannot be a purely physical or inconscient principle. Does he then mean that all our existence is merely a continual changeable Becoming, a play or Lila with no purpose in it except the playing and no end except the conviction of the vanity of all cosmic activity by its relapse into the indistinguishable unity of the original principle or substance? For even if that principle, the One to which the many return, be not merely physical or not really physical at all, but spiritual, we may still, like the Mayavadins, affirm the vanity of the world and of our human existence, precisely because the one is not eternal and the other has no eventual aim except its own self-abolition after the conviction of the vanity and unreality of all its temporal interests and purposes. Is the conviction of the world by the one absolute Fire such a conviction of the vanity of all the temporal and relative values of the Many?

36.07 - An Introduction To The Vedas, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 08, #unset, #Zen
   Here arises the second question. The Western and modern scholars are prone to make a difference between the Veda and the Shruti. According to them, the term Shruti is synonymous with the Upanishad and not with the Veda proper. But what is it that we actually find in the Upanishad that is considered by all scholars, oriental and occidental, as the repository of knowledge of the highest order? The Upanishad has been studied much more than the Veda in India and abroad. The reason is this that the ideas and language of the Upanishad are simpler than those of the Veda, and also more familiar to modern thought. The Upanishad is free from all the intricacies of sacrificial rites, ceremonies and obscure mantras, etc. It deals precisely with the clear realised truths that form the basis of the philosophical doctrines. That is why the Europeans hold that the Upanishad comes in as a reaction and protest against the Veda. Towards the end of the Vedic era the Aryan Hindus bade farewell to their cult of Nature-worship and sacrifices and turned towards the quest of God and metaphysical truths and thus a new era was ushered in. Now, on what ground do the European scholars make such an assertion as regards the historical development of Indian thought? As a matter of fact, we do notice that every teacher of Philosophy whenever he has cited anything from the Upanishad has also tried to corroborate it with a similar quotation from the Veda for its justification. There is no iota of proof that the Upanishad held any view contrary to that of the Veda or ever contradicted it. The Upanishad is the culmination of or a complement to the Veda. Since the advent of the dialectic philosopher Hegel it has become a fashion among Western scholars to find an antithesis in every field of historical truth. From their own history they come to learn that Christianity arose as a revolt against the idolatry of the Romans, again Martin Luther and Protestantism stood out against the Roman Catholic Church. Likewise they are, as it were, eager to discover a revolt in the religious history of India. It is not that such a spirit of antithesis is altogether absent in the history of Indian religions, but it is utterly meaningless to say that this antithesis exists as between the Veda and the Upanishad as well. In fact, the Upanishad has always approached the Veda most reverentially and hardly failed to mention: "This we heard from the ancient sages who had explained it to us."
   Besides, in the current commentaries on the Veda we come across explanations which are at places self-contradictory, inconsistent, lacking in clarity, fanciful and arbitrary. The same word has been used at different places to convey different meanings without any justification, and also at times the commentators have been constrained to keep silent or to confess that they could make neither head nor tail of a passage, a sentence or a word. For instance, the word ghrta (clarified butter) has been explained as jala (water) and the word water has been used for antariksa (ether) and the word vyoman (ether) has been interpreted as prthivi (earth). That is why in the interpretations of Sayana or Ramesh Dutta, in spite of their supplying synonyms of words, a passage taken as a whole appears to be quite odd, confusing and utterly meaningless. One is at a loss to know whether one should indulge in laughter or shed tears over such a performance. It may be argued that the Veda was written in a remote antiquity, hence much of its archaic language is not likely to be understood by men of the present age. It is enough on our part to be able to form a general idea of it. But when one has to resort to a makeshift hocus-pocus even for gathering this general idea, then it becomes quite clear that there must have been some serious blunder somewhere. If it were possible to get the general idea of the Veda quite easily, then all the interpreters would necessarily have pursued it. But unfortunately in the present age we find that besides the sacrificial and naturalistic interpretations there are historical (by Abinash Chandra Das), geographical (by Umesh Chandra Vidyaratna), astronomical (by Tilak), scientific (by Paramasiva Aiyar) and even an interpretation based on Chemistry (by Narayan Gaur) and so on and so forth. Many minds, many ways: nowhere else may this oft-quoted adage be so aptly applied as in the case of the multifarious interpretations of the Veda. A few portions of the Veda that had appealed to an interpreter most in accordance with his own bent of mind gave him the impetus to endeavour to interpret the whole of the Veda in that light. The result has been that the same sloka has been interpreted in ever so many ways. But none of these interpreters has even attempted interpreting the whole or the major portion of the Veda. From this we can dare conclude that the key to the proper interpretation of the Vedic mysteries has not hitherto been found. All are but groping in the dark.

4.01 - INTRODUCTION, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  [352] This gives rise to a peculiar double trinity, consisting on the one hand of a divine series, father-god, divine son, the ka-mutef, and on the other hand a human series, father-god, human divine son (Pharaoh), and Pharaohs ka. In the first series the father changes into the son and the son into the father through the procreative power of the ka-mutef. All three figures are consubstantial. The second, divine-human series, which is likewise bound into a unity by consubstantiality, represents the manifestation of God in the earthly sphere.12 The divine mother is not included in either triunity; she stands outside it, a figure now wholly divine, now wholly human. We should mention in this connection a late Egyptian trinity amulet discussed by Spiegelberg: Horus and Hathor sit facing one another, and between them and over them hovers a winged serpent. The three deities all hold the ankh (symbol of life). The inscription says: Bait is one, Hathor one, Akori one, one is their power. Greetings, Father of the World, greetings, three-formed God.13 Bat is Horus. The amulet, which is three-cornered, may date from the first or second century A.D. Spiegelberg writes: For my feeling this epigram, despite its Greek form, breathes an Egyptian spirit of Hellenistic nature and contains nothing Christian. But it is born of a spirit that made its contri bution to the development of the dogma of the Trinity in Christianity.14 The illustrations of the coniunctio in the Rosarium, showing King, Queen, and the dove of the Holy Ghost, correspond to the figures on the amulet exactly.15

4.01 - The Presence of God in the World, #Hymn of the Universe, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
  as a menace to them. Christianity, for example, is
  essentially based on the twofold belief that man is

4.02 - Autobiographical Evidence, #Let Me Explain, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
  (given a particular condition of Christianity and of the world)
  is necessarily active in all the souls around me. It is, in conse-

4.02 - GOLD AND SPIRIT, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  ), the king, is none other than gold, the king of metals.20 But it is equally clear that the gold comes into being only through the liberation of the divine soul or pneuma from the chains of the flesh. No doubt it would have suited our rational expectations better if the text had said not flesh but ore or earth. Although the elements are mentioned as the prison of the divine psyche, the whole of nature is meant, Physis in general; not just ore and earth but water, air, and fire, and besides these the flesh, an expression that already in the third century meant the world in a moral sense as opposed to the spirit, and not simply the human body. Consequently, there can be no doubt that the chrysopoeia (gold-making) was thought of as a psychic operation running parallel to the physical process and, as it were, independent of it. The moral and spiritual transformation was not only independent of the physical procedure but actually seemed to be its causa efficiens. This explains the high-flown language, which would be somewhat out of place in a merely chemical recipe. The psyche previously imprisoned in the elements and the divine spirit hidden in the flesh overcome their physical imperfection and clo the themselves in the noblest of all bodies, the royal gold. Thus the philosophic gold is an embodiment of psyche and pneuma, both of which signify life-spirit. It is in fact an aurum non vulgi, a living gold, so to speak, which corresponds in every respect to the lapis. It, too, is a living being with a body, soul, and spirit, and it is easily personified as a divine being or a superior person like a king, who in olden times was considered to be God incarnate.21 In this connection Zosimos availed himself of a primordial image in the form of the divine Anthropos, who at that time had attained a crucial significance in philosophy and religion, not only in Christianity but also in Mithraism. The Bible as well as the Mithraic monuments and the Gnostic writings bear witness to this. Zosimos has, moreover, left us a long testimony on this theme.22 The thoughts of this writer, directly or indirectly, were of decisive importance for the whole philosophical and Gnostic trend of alchemy in the centuries that followed. As I have dealt with this subject in considerable detail in Psychology and Alchemy I need not go into it here. I mention it only because the above passage from Zosimos is, to my knowledge, the earliest reference to the king in alchemy. As an Egyptian, Zosimos would have been familiar with the mystique of kingship, which at that time was enjoying a new efflorescence under the Caesars, and so it was easy for him to carry over the identity of the divine pneuma with the king into alchemical practice, itself both physical and pneumatic, after the older writings of Pseudo-Democritus had paved the way with their views on
   (divine nature).23

4.02 - Humanity in Progress, #Hymn of the Universe, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
  of the flow, Christianity is led to the discovery,
  below God, of earthly values, while humanism is
  --
  for Christianity could there be than an enduring
  youthfulness drawn from Christ-Omega?)

4.03 - Prayer to the Ever-greater Christ, #Let Me Explain, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
  show the relation of Christianity and the fact of religion to
  Science and Society, and to indicate in what direction Chris-
  --
  vl Christianity in the World (1933)
  vii. Modern Unbelief (1933)
  --
  6. Pantheism and Christianity (1923)
  7. Christology and Evolution (Christmas 1933)
  --
  9. Some General Aspects of the Essence of Christianity (May
  1939)
  --
  12. Christianity and Evolution (11 November 1945)
  13. Some Reflections on Original Sin (November 1947)
  --
  action, human; new Christianity
  animator of, 106; problem of,
  --
  99; new Christianity true
  application of, 106; teaching of,
  --
  of world, 155. See Christianity,
  Eastern religions

4.04 - In the Total Christ, #Hymn of the Universe, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
  would be emptied in a moment, and Christianity,
  for all its framework of ritual, of precepts, of hier-

4.04 - THE REGENERATION OF THE KING, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  This verse confirms the decrepit condition of the king, who apart from his original defect, or because of it, is also suffering from senile debility. It was a bold stroke for a canon to identify the king with the Ancient of Days from Daniel 7 : 9: I beheld till the thrones were cast down, and the Ancient of Days did sit, whose garments were white as snow, and the hair of his head like pure wool: his throne was like the fiery flame, and his wheels as burning fire. There can be no doubt that Ripley the alchemist was here speculating over the head of Ripley the cleric to hit upon an idea that in the Middle Ages must have seemed like blasphemy: the identification of the transformative substance with God. To our way of thinking this kind of allegory or symbolization is the height of absurdity and unintelligibility. It was even hard for the Middle Ages to swallow.79 But where it met with acceptance, as in philosophical alchemy, it does much to explain the hymnlike or at any rate highly emotional language of some of the treatises. We have here, in fact, a new religious declaration: God is not only in the unspotted body of Christ and continually present in the consecrated Host butand this is the novel and significant thinghe is also hidden in the cheap, despised, common-or-garden substance, even in the uncleanness of this world, in filth.80 He is to be found only through the art, indeed he is its true object and is capable of progressive transformationDeo adjuvante. This strange theologem did not, of course, mean that for the alchemists God was nothing but a substance that could be obtained by chemical transformationfar from it. Such an aberration was reserved rather for those moderns who put matter or energy in the place of God. The alchemists, so far as they were still pagans, had a more mystical conception of God dating from late antiquity, which, as in the case of Zosimos, could be described as Gnostic; or if they were Christians, their Christianity had a noticeable admixture of hea thenish magical ideas about demons and divine powers and an anima mundi inherent or imprisoned in physical nature. The anima mundi was conceived as that part of God which formed the quintessence and real substance of Physis, and which was to Godto use an apt expression of Isidore81as the accrescent soul (
  , grown-on) was to the divine soul of man. This accrescent soul was a second soul that grew through the mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms up to man, pervading the whole of nature, and to it the natural forms were attached like appendages (
  --
  . The uroboros is a very ancient pagan symbol, and we have no reason to suppose that the idea of a self-generating and self-devouring being was borrowed from Christianity, e.g., from Tertullian, although the analogy with Christ, who as the one God begets himself and voluntarily offers himself for sacrifice, and then in the rite of the Eucharist, through the words of the consecration, performs his own immolation, is very striking. The concept of the uroboros must be much older, and may ultimately go back to ancient Egyptian theology, to the doctrine of the homoousia of the Father-God with the divine son, Pharaoh.
  [424] In the Cantilena, the mythologem of the uroboros is unexpectedly, and most unusually, translated into feminine form: it is not the father and son who merge into one another, but the mother who merges with her own substance, eating her own tail or impregnating herself, as the king in the Allegoria Merlini drank his own water.223 The queen is in a condition of psychic pregnancy: the anima has become activated and sends her contents into consciousness. These correspond to the peacocks flesh and the lions blood. If the products of the anima (dreams, fantasies, visions, symptoms, chance ideas, etc.) are assimilated, digested, and integrated, this has a beneficial effect on the growth and development (nourishment) of the psyche. At the same time the cibatio and imbibitio of the anima-mother indicate the integration and completion of the entire personality. The anima becomes creative when the old king renews himself in her. Psychologically the king stands first of all for Sol, whom we have interpreted as consciousness. But over and above that he represents a dominant of consciousness, such as a generally accepted principle or a collective conviction or a traditional view. These systems and ruling ideas age and thereby forcibly bring about a metamorphosis of the gods as described in Spittelers Olympian Spring. It seldom occurs as a definite collective phenomenon. Mostly it is a change in the individual which may, under certain conditions, affect society when the time is fulfilled. In the individual it only means that the ruling idea is in need of renewal and alteration if it is to deal adequately with the changed outer or inner conditions.

4.05 - THE DARK SIDE OF THE KING, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  The comparison of the god to a snake reminds us of his chthonic form in the underworld, just as the rejuvenated phoenix (falcon) first takes the form of a worm.328 As Christianity borrowed a good deal from the Egyptian religion it is not surprising that the allegory of the snake found its way into the world of Christian ideas (John 3 : 14) and was readily seized on by the alchemists.329 The dragon is an allegory of Christ as well as of the Antichrist.330 A remarkable parallel occurs in the anonymous treatise, De promissionibus (5th cent.).331 It concerns a version of the legend of St. Sylvester, according to which this saint imprisoned a dragon in the Tarpeian Rock and so rendered him harmless. The other version of this story is related by a certain monk who discovered that the alleged dragon, to whom offerings of virgins were made, was nothing but a mechanical device. St. Sylvester locked the dragon up with a chain, as in Rev. 20 : 1; but in the parallel story the artificial dragon brandished a sword in its mouth, like the Son of Man in Rev. 1 : 16.332

4.08 - THE RELIGIOUS PROBLEM OF THE KINGS RENEWAL, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  [514] Medical psychology has recognized today that it is a therapeutic necessity, indeed, the first requisite of any thorough psychological method, for consciousness to confront its shadow.396 In the end this must lead to some kind of union, even though the union consists at first in an open conflict, and often remains so for a long time. It is a struggle that cannot be abolished by rational means.397 When it is wilfully repressed it continues in the unconscious and merely expresses itself indirectly and all the more dangerously, so no advantage is gained. The struggle goes on until the opponents run out of breath. What the outcome will be can never be seen in advance. The only certain thing is that both parties will be changed; but what the product of the union will be it is impossible to imagine. The empirical material shows that it usually takes the form of a subjective experience which, according to the unanimous testimony of history, is always of a religious order. If, therefore, the conflict is consciously endured and the analyst follows its course without prejudice, he will unfailingly observe compensations from the unconscious which aim at producing a unity. He will come across numerous symbols similar to those found in alchemyoften, indeed, the very same. He will also discover that not a few of these spontaneous formations have a numinous quality in harmony with the mysticism of the historical testimonies. It may happen, besides, that a patient, who till then had shut his eyes to religious questions, will develop an unexpected interest in these matters. He may, for instance, find himself getting converted from modern paganism to Christianity or from one creed to another, or even getting involved in fundamental theological questions which are incomprehensible to a layman. It is unnecessary for me to point out here that not every analysis leads to a conscious realization of the conflict, just as not every surgical operation is as drastic as a resection of the stomach. There is a minor surgery, too, and in the same way there is a minor psycho therapy whose operations are harmless and require no such elucidation as I am concerned with here. The patients I have in mind are a small minority with certain spiritual demands to be satisfied, and only these patients undergo a development which presents the doctor with the kind of problem we are about to discuss.
  [515] Experience shows that the union of antagonistic elements is an irrational occurrence which can fairly be described as mystical, provided that one means by this an occurrence that cannot be reduced to anything else or regarded as in some way unau thentic. The decisive criterion here is not rationalistic opinions or regard for accepted theories, but simply and solely the value for the patient of the solution he has found and experienced. In this respect the doctor, whose primary concern is the preservation of life, is in an advantageous position, since he is by training an empiricist and has always had to employ medicines whose healing power he knew even though he did not understand how it worked. Equally, he finds all too often that the scientifically explained and attested healing power of his medicines does not work in practice.
  --
  [520] Consciousness is renewed through its descent into the unconscious, whereby the two are joined. The renewed consciousness does not contain the unconscious but forms with it a totality symbolized by the son. But since father and son are of one being, and in alchemical language King Sol, representing the renewed consciousness, is the son, consciousness would be absolutely identical with the King as dominant. For the alchemists this difficulty did not exist, because the King was projected into a postulated substance and hence behaved merely as an object to the consciousness of the artifex. But if the projection is withdrawn by psychological criticism, we encounter the aforesaid difficulty that the renewed consciousness apparently coincides with the renewed king, or son. I have discussed the psychological aspect of this problem in the second of the Two Essays on Analytical Psychology, in the chapter on the mana personality. The difficulty cannot be resolved by purely logical argument but only by careful observation and analysis of the psychic state itself. Rather than launch out into a detailed discussion of case-histories I would prefer to recall the well-known words of Paul, I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me (Gal. 2 : 20), which aptly describe the peculiar nature of this state. From this we can see that that other, earlier state, when the king aged and disappeared, is marked by a consciousness in which a critical ego knowingly took the place of the sick king, looking back to an earlier mythical time when this ego still felt absolutely dependent on a higher and mightier non-ego. The subsequent disappearance of the feeling of dependence and the simultaneous streng thening of criticism are felt as progress, enlightenment, liberation, indeed as redemption, although a one-sided and limited being has usurped the throne of a king. A personal ego seizes the reins of power to its own destruction; for mere egohood, despite possessing an anima rationalis, is not even sufficient for the guidance of personal life, let alone for the guidance of men. For this purpose it always needs a mythical dominant, yet such a thing cannot simply be invented and then believed in. Contemplating our own times we must say that though the need for an effective dominant was realized to a large extent, what was offered was nothing more than an arbitrary invention of the moment. The fact that it was also believed in goes to prove the gullibility and cluelessness of the public and at the same time the profoundly felt need for a spiritual authority transcending egohood. An authority of this kind is never the product of rational reflection or an invention of the moment, which always remains caught in the narrow circle of ego-bound consciousness; it springs from traditions whose roots go far deeper both historically and psychologically. Thus a real and essentially religious renewal can be based, for us, only on Christianity. The extremely radical reformation of Hinduism by the Buddha assimilated the traditional spirituality of India in its entirety and did not thrust a rootless novelty upon the world. It neither denied nor ignored the Hindu pantheon swarming with millions of gods, but boldly introduced Man, who before that had not been represented at all. Nor did Christ, regarded simply as a Jewish reformer, destroy the law, but made it, rather, into a matter of conviction. He likewise, as the regenerator of his age, set against the Greco-Roman pantheon and the speculations of the philosophers the figure of Man, not intending it as a contradiction but as the fulfilment of a mythologem that existed long before him the conception of the Anthropos with its complex Egyptian, Persian, and Hellenistic background.
  [521] Any renewal not deeply rooted in the best spiritual tradition is ephemeral; but the dominant that grows from historical roots act like a living being within the ego-bound man. He does not possess it, it possesses him; therefore the alchemists said that the artifex is not the master but rather the minister of the stoneclearly showing that the stone is indeed a king towards whom the artifex behaves as a subject.
  --
  [525] We have here a discrepancy between the alchemical and psychological symbolism and the Christian. It is indeed difficult to imagine what kind of coniunctio beyond the union of conscious (male) and unconscious (female) in the regenerated dominant could be meant, unless we assume, with the dogmatic tradition, that the regenerated dominant also brings the corpus mysticum of mankind (Ecclesia as Luna) into glorious reality. Among the alchemists, who were mostly solitaries by choice, the motif of the Apocalyptic marriage, characterized as the marriage of the Lamb (Rev. 19 : 7ff.), is missing, the accent here lying on the sacrificial appellation lamb. According to the oldest and most primitive tradition the king, despite his dignity and power, was a victim offered up for the prosperity of his country and his people, and in his godlike form he was even eaten. As we know, this archetype underwent an extremely complicated development in Christianity. From the standpoint of Christian symbolism the alchemists conception of the goal lacked, firstly, the motif of the heavenly marriage and, secondly, the almost more important motif of sacrifice and the totem meal. (The mourned gods of Asia MinorTammuz, Adonis, etc.were, in all probability, originally sacrifices for the fruitfulness of the year.) The lapis was decidedly an ideal for hermits, a goal for isolated individuals. Besides that, it was a food (cibus immortalis), could be multiplied indefinitely, was a living being with body, soul, and spirit, an androgyne with incorruptible body, etc. Though likened to King Sol and even named such, it was not a sponsus, not a victim, and belonged to no community; it was like the treasure hid in a field, the which when a man hath found, he hideth (Matt. 13 : 44), or like one pearl of great price, for which a man went and sold all that he had, and bought it (Matt. 13 : 46). It was the well-guarded, precious secret of the individual.403 And though the old Masters emphasized that they would not hide their secret jealously 404 and would reveal it to all seekers, it was perfectly clear that the stone remained the preoccupation of the individual.
  [526] In this connection it should not be forgotten that in antiquity certain influences, evidently deriving from the Gnostic doctrine of the hermaphroditic Primordial Man,405 penetrated into Christianity and there gave rise to the view that Adam had been created an androgyne.406 And since Adam was the prototype of Christ, and Eve, sprung from his side, that of the Church, it is understandable that a picture of Christ should develop showing distinctly feminine features.407 In religious art the Christ-image has retained this character to the present day.408 Its veiled androgyny reflects the hermaphroditism of the lapis, which in this respect has more affinity with the views of the Gnostics.
  [527] In recent times the theme of androgyny has been subjected to quite special treatment in a book by a Catholic writer which merits our attention. This is Die Gnosis des Christentums, by Georg Koepgen, an important work that appeared in 1939 with the episcopal imprimatur in Salzburg, and since then has been placed on the Index. Of the Apollinian-Dionysian conflict in antiquity, Koepgen says it found its solution in Christianity because in the person of Jesus the male is united with the female. Only in him do we find this juxtaposition of male and female in unbroken unity. If men and women can come together as equals in Christian worship, this has more than an accidental significance: it is the fulfilment of the androgyny that was made manifest in Christ (p. 316). The change of sex in the believer is suggested in Rev. 14 : 4: These are they that were not defiled with women; for they are virgins. Koepgen says of this passage: Here the new androgynous form of existence becomes visible. Christianity is neither male nor female, it is male-female in the sense that the male paired with the female in Jesuss soul. In Jesus the tension and polaristic strife of sex are resolved in an androgynous unity. And the Church, as his heir, has taken this over from him: she too is androgynous. As regards her constitution the Church is hierarchically masculine, yet her soul is thoroughly feminine. The virgin priest . . . fulfils in his soul the androgynous unity of male and female; he renders visible again the psychic dimension which Christ showed us for the first time when he revealed the manly virginity of his soul.409
  [528] For Koepgen, therefore, not only Christ is androgynous but the Church as well, a remarkable conclusion the logic of which one cannot deny. The consequence of this is a special emphasis on bisexuality and then on the peculiar identity of the Church with Christ, which is based also on the doctrine of the corpus mysticum. This certainly forestalls the marriage of the Lamb at the end of time, for the androgyne has everything it needs410 and is already a complexio oppositorum. Who is not reminded here of the fragment from the Gospel according to the Egyptians cited by Clement of Alexandria: When ye have trampled on the garment of shame, and when the two become one and the male with the female is neither male nor female.411

4.1 - Jnana, #Essays Divine And Human, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  200. Mediaeval Christianity said to the race, "Man, thou art in thy earthly life an evil thing & a worm before God; renounce
  Jnana

4.3.1.04 - The Disappearance of the I Sense, #Letters On Yoga III, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  esoteric Christianity abolishes the limitation). An I which is not
  separate in that way is no I at all.

5.01 - EPILOGUE, #The Phenomenon of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
  To those who only know it outwardly, Christianity seems
  desperately intricate. In reality, taken in its main lines, it con-
  --
  In its Judaic phase, Christianity might well have considered
  itself the particular religion of one people. Later on, coming
  --
  think they are honouring Christianity when they reduce it to a
  sort of gentle philanthropism. Those who fail to see in it the
  --
  disappear, Christianity, which might at first have been thought
  to be shaken too, is showing, on the contrary, every sign of
  --
  More necessary. To say of Christianity that, despite appear-
  ances to the contrary, it is acclimatising itself and expanding
  --
  of Christianity. In return, is not the Christian faith destined,
  is it not preparing, to save and even to take the place of evolu-
  --
  summit of mind. And at the present moment Christianity
  is the unique current of thought, on the entire surface of the
  --
  Alone, unconditionally alone, in the world today, Christianity
  shows itself able to reconcile, in a single living act, the All and
  --
  In other words can we not say that Christianity fulfils all the
  conditions we are entitled to expect from a religion of the

5.08 - ADAM AS TOTALITY, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  [630] An alchemical recipe says: Sow the gold in foliated white earth.270 Thus the gold (sun) and the white earth, or moon271 are united. In Christianity, as in alchemy, earth and moon are closely related, conjoined by the figure of the divine mother. The sun-moon conjunction takes place in the head, an indication of the psychic nature of this event.272 As I said, the concept of the psychic, as we understand it today, did not exist in the Middle Ages, and even the educated modern man finds it difficult to understand what is meant by reality of the psyche. So it is not surprising that it was incomparably more difficult for medieval man to imagine something between esse in re and esse in intellectu solo.273 The way out lay in metaphysics.274 The alchemist was therefore compelled to formulate his quasichemical facts metaphysically too.275 Thus the white earth corresponds to the earth that signified mankind, is exalted above all the circles of the World, and placed in the intellectual heaven of the most holy Trinity.276 (Where, we may add, it is obviously added to the Trinity as the Fourth, thereby making it a totality.)277 This cheerful piece of heterodoxy remained unconscious and its consequences never appeared on the surface.
  [631] The conclusion which Eleazar draws requires elucidation. It is in itself remarkable that he should paraphrase, in connection with the perfect state, i.e., the coniunctio Solis et Lunae, just that passage in Job (supra, par. 624) and say: Out of my earth shall come forth blood. This is feasible only if the coniunctio symbolizes the production of the hermaphroditic second Adam, namely Christ and the corpus mysticum of the Church. In the ecclesiastical rite the equivalent of the coniunctio is the mixing of substances, or the Communion in both kinds. The passage from Job must therefore be interpreted as though Christ were speaking: From my earth, my body, will come forth blood. In the Greek Orthodox rite the loaf of bread stands for Christs body. The priest pierces it with a small silver lance, to represent by analogy the wound in his side from which blood and grace flow, and perhaps also the slaying of the victim (mactatio Christi).
  --
  [643] The combination of water and crystal is found also in the Cabalistic Sifra de Zeniutha. 178 of Lurias commentary says: The second form is called crystalline dew, and this is formed of the Severity of the Kingdom346 of the first Adam, which entered into the Wisdom of Macroprosopus:347 hence in the crystal there appears a distinct red colour. And this [form] is the Wisdom whereof they said, that Judgments are rooted in it.348 Although alchemy was undoubtedly influenced by such comparisons, the stone cannot be traced back to Christ, despite all the analogies.349 It was the mystical property of alchemy, this stone that is no stone, or the stone that hath a spirit and is found in the streamings of the Nile.350 It is a symbol that cannot be explained away as yet another supererogatory attempt to obscure the Christian mystery. On the contrary, it appears as a new and singular product which in early times gradually crystallized out through the assimilation of Christian ideas into Gnostic material; later, clear attempts were made in turn to assimilate the alchemical ideas to the Christian, though, as Eleazars text shows, there was an unbridgeable difference between them. The reason for this is that the symbol of the stone, despite the analogy with Christ, contains an element that cannot be reconciled with the purely spiritual assumptions of Christianity. The very concept of the stone indicates the peculiar nature of this symbol. Stone is the essence of everything solid and earthly. It represents feminine matter, and this concept intrudes into the sphere of spirit and its symbolism. The Churchs hermeneutic allegories of the cornerstone and the stone cut out of a mountain without hands,351 which were interpreted as Christ, were not the source of the lapis symbol, but were used by the alchemists in order to justify it, for the
   was not of Christian origin. The stone was more than an incarnation of God, it was a concretization, a materialization that reached down into the darkness of the inorganic realm or even arose from it, from that part of the Deity which put itself in opposition to the Creator because, as the Basilidians say, it remained latent in the panspermia (universal seed-bed) as the formative principle of crystals, metals, and living organisms. The inorganic realm included regions, like that of hell-fire, which were the dominion of the devil. The three-headed Mercurial serpent was, indeed, a triunity in matter352the lower triad353complementing the divine Trinity.
  --
  [646] The nigredo corresponds to the darkness of the unconscious, which contains in the first place the inferior personality, the shadow. This changes into the feminine figure that stands immediately behind it, as it were, and controls it: the anima, whose typical representative the Shulamite is. I am black, but comelynot hateful, as Eleazar would have us believe, after having reconsidered the matter. For since nature was deformed by the sin of Adam, her blackness must in his view be regarded as ugliness, as the blackness of sin, as the Saturnine initial state, heavy and black as lead. But the Shulamite, the priestess of Ishtar, signifies earth, nature, fertility, everything that flourishes under the damp light of the moon, and also the natural life-urge. The anima is indeed the archetype of life itself, which is beyond all meaning and all moral categories. What at first struck us as incomprehensible, namely that the old Adam should come forth from her again, thus reversing the sequence of Creation, can now be understood, for if anyone knows how to live the natural life it is the old Adam. Here he is not so much the old Adam as an Adam reborn from a daughter of Eve, an Adam restored to his pristine naturalness. The fact that she gives rebirth to Adam and that a black Shulamite produces the original man in his savage, unredeemed state rules out the suspicion that the old Adam is a slip of the pen or a misprint. There is a method in it, which allows us to guess what it was that induced the author to adopt a Jewish pseudonym. For the Jew was the handiest example, living under everyones eyes, of a non-Christian, and therefore a vessel for all those things a Christian could not or did not like to remember. So it was really very natural to put those dark, half-conscious thoughts which began with the Movement of the Free Spirit, the late Christian religion of the Holy Ghost, and which formed the life-blood of the Renaissance, into the mouth of an allegedly Jewish author. Just as the era of the Old Testament prophets began with Hosea, who was commanded by God to marry another Shulamite, so the cours damour of Ren dAnjou, the minnesingers and saints with their passionate love of God, were contemporaneous with the Brethren of the Free Spirit. Eleazars text is nothing but a late echo of these centuries-old events which changed the face of Christianity. But in any such echo there is also a premonition of future developments: in the very same century the author of Faust, that momentous opus, was born.
  [647] The Shulamite remains unchanged, as did the old Adam. And yet Adam Kadmon is born, a non-Christian second Adam, just at the moment when the transformation is expected. This extraordinary contradiction seems insoluble at first sight. But it becomes understandable when we consider that the illumination or solificatio of the Shulamite is not the first transformation but the second, and takes place within. The subject of transformation is not the empirical man, however much he may identify with the old Adam, but Adam the Primordial Man, the archetype within us. The black Shulamite herself represents the first transformation: it is the coming to consciousness of the black anima, the Primordial Mans feminine aspect. The second, or solificatio, is the conscious differentiation of the masculine aspecta far more difficult task. Every man feels identical with this, though in reality he is not. There is too much blackness in the archetype for him to put it all down to his own account, and so many good and positive things that he cannot resist the temptation to identify with them. It is therefore much easier to see the blackness in projected form: The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat holds true even of the most enlightened psychology. But the masculine aspect is as unfathomable as the feminine aspect. It would certainly not be fitting for the empirical man, no matter how swollen his ego-feelings, to appropriate the whole range of Adams heights and depths. Human being though he is, he has no cause to attribute to himself all the nobility and beauty a man can attain to, just as he would assuredly refuse to accept the guilt for the abjectness and baseness that make man lower than an animalunless, of course, he were driven by insanity to act out the role of the archetype.

5 - The Phenomenology of the Spirit in Fairytales, #The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  or one Person of the Godhead (as in Christianity).
  39 1 The corresponding development of spirit in the reverse,
  --
  technics is capable of responsibility or not? Christianity has
  shown us the way, but, as the facts bear witness, it has not

6.01 - THE ALCHEMICAL VIEW OF THE UNION OF OPPOSITES, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  [668] I have just said that symbols are tendencies whose goal is as yet unknown.54 We may assume that the same fundamental rules obtain in the history of the human mind as in the psychology of the individual. In psycho therapy it often happens that, long before they reach consciousness, certain unconscious tendencies betray their presence by symbols, occurring mostly in dreams but also in waking fantasies and symbolic actions. Often we have the impression that the unconscious is trying to enter consciousness by means of all sorts of allusions and analogies, or that it is making more or less playful attempts to attract attention to itself. One can observe these phenomena very easily in a dream-series. The series I discussed in Psychology and Alchemy offers a good example.55 Ideas develop from seeds, and we do not know what ideas will develop from what seeds in the course of history. The Assumption of the Virgin, for instance, is vouched for neither in Scripture nor in the tradition of the first five centuries of the Christian Church. For a long time it was officially denied even, but, with the connivance of the whole medieval and modern Church, it gradually developed as a pious opinion and gained so much power and influence that it finally succeeded in thrusting aside the necessity for scriptural proof and for a tradition going back to primitive times, and in attaining definition in spite of the fact that the content of the dogma is not even definable.56 The papal declaration made a reality of what had long been condoned. This irrevocable step beyond the confines of historical Christianity is the strongest proof of the autonomy of archetypal images.

6.05 - THE PSYCHOLOGICAL INTERPRETATION OF THE PROCEDURE, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  [704] What are we to think of this most peculiar philtre? Did Dorn really mean that these magic herbs should be mixed together and that the air-coloured quintessence should be distilled from the Tartarus, or was he using these secret names and procedures to express a moral meaning? My conjecture is that he meant both, for it is clear that the alchemists did in fact operate with such substances and thought-processes, just as, in particular, the Paracelsist physicians used these remedies and reflections in their practical work. But if the adept really concocted such potions in his retort, he must surely have chosen his ingredients on account of their magical significance. He worked, accordingly, with ideas, with psychic processes and states, but referred to them under the name of the corresponding substances. With the honey the pleasure of the senses and the joy of life went into the mixture, as well as the secret fear of the poison, the deadly danger of worldly entanglements. With the Chelidonia the highest meaning and value, the self as the total personality, the healing and whole-making medicine which is recognized even by modern psycho therapy, was combined with spiritual and conjugal love, symbolized by rosemary; and, lest the lower, chthonic element be lacking, Mercurialis added sexuality, together with the red slave moved by passion,124 symbolized by the red lily, and the addition of blood threw in the whole soul. All this was united with the azure quintessence, the anima mundi extracted from inert matter, or the God-image imprinted on the worlda mandala produced by rotation;125 that is to say the whole of the conscious man is surrendered to the self, to the new centre of personality which replaces the former ego. Just as, for the mystic, Christ takes over the leadership of consciousness and puts an end to a merely ego-bound existence, so the filius macrocosmi, the son of the great luminaries and of the dark womb of the earth, enters the realm of the psyche and seizes the human personality, not only in the shining heights of consciousness but in the dark depths which have not yet comprehended the light that appeared in Christ. The alchemist was well aware of the great shadow which Christianity obviously had not assimilated, and he therefore felt impelled to create a saviour from the womb of the earth as an analogy and complement of Gods son who came down from above.
  [705] The production of the caelum is a symbolic rite performed in the laboratory. Its purpose was to create, in the form of a substance, that truth, the celestial balsam or life principle, which is identical with the God-image. Psychologically, it was a representation of the individuation process by means of chemical substances and procedures, or what we today call active imagination. This is a method which is used spontaneously by nature herself or can be taught to the patient by the analyst. As a rule it occurs when the analysis has constellated the opposites so powerfully that a union or synthesis of the personality becomes an imperative necessity. Such a situation is bound to arise when the analysis of the psychic contents, of the patients attitude and particularly of his dreams, has brought the compensatory or complementary images from the unconscious so insistently before his mind that the conflict between the conscious and the unconscious personality becomes open and critical. When this confrontation is confined to partial aspects of the unconscious the conflict is limited and the solution simple: the patient, with insight and some resignation or a feeling of resentment, places himself on the side of reason and convention. Though the unconscious motifs are repressed again, as before, the unconscious is satisfied to a certain extent, because the patient must now make a conscious effort to live according to its principles and, in addition, is constantly reminded of the existence of the repressed by annoying resentments. But if his recognition of the shadow is as complete as he can make it, then conflict and disorientation ensue, an equally strong Yes and No which he can no longer keep apart by a rational decision. He cannot transform his clinical neurosis into the less conspicuous neurosis of cynicism; in other words, he can no longer hide the conflict behind a mask. It requires a real solution and necessitates a third thing in which the opposites can unite. Here the logic of the intellect usually fails, for in a logical antithesis there is no third. The solvent can only be of an irrational nature. In nature the resolution of opposites is always an energic process: she acts symbolically in the truest sense of the word,126 doing something that expresses both sides, just as a waterfall visibly mediates between above and below. The waterfall itself is then the incommensurable third. In an open and unresolved conflict dreams and fantasies occur which, like the waterfall, illustrate the tension and nature of the opposites, and thus prepare the synthesis.

6.08 - THE CONTENT AND MEANING OF THE FIRST TWO STAGES, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  [744] The demand that arises under such conditions is for a new interpretation, in accord with the spirit of the age, of the archetypes that compensate the altered situation of consciousness. Christianity, for instance, was a new and more suitable formulation of the archetypal myth, which in its turn gave the rite its vitality. The archetype is a living idea that constantly produces new interpretations through which that idea unfolds. This was correctly recognized by Cardinal Newman in regard to Christianity.218 Christian doctrine is a new interpretation and development of its earlier stages, as we can see very clearly from the ancient tradition of the God-man. This tradition is continued in the unfolding of ecclesiastical dogma, and it is naturally not only the archetypes mentioned in the canonical writings of the New Testament that develop, but also their near relatives, of which we previously knew only the pagan forerunners. An example of this is the newest dogma concerning the Virgin; it refers unquestionably to the mother goddess who was constantly associated with the young dying son. She is not even purely pagan, since she was very distinctly prefigured in the Sophia of the Old Testament. For this reason the definition of the new dogma does not really go beyond the depositum fidei, for the mother goddess is naturally implied in the archetype of the divine son and accordingly underwent a consistent development in the course of the centuries.219 The depositum fidei corresponds in empirical reality to the treasure-house of the archetypes, the gazophylacium of the alchemists, and the collective unconscious of modern psychology.
  [745] The objection raised by theologians that the final state of the dogma in any such development would be necessarily more complete or perfect than in the apostolic era is untenable. Obviously the later interpretation and formulation of the archetype will be much more differentiated than in the beginning. A glance at the history of dogma is sufficient to confirm this. One has only to think of the Trinity, for which there is no direct evidence in the canonical writings. But it does not follow from this that the primitive Christians had a less complete knowledge of the fundamental truths. Such an assumption borders on pernicious intellectualism, for what counts in religious experience is not how explicitly an archetype can be formulated but how much I am gripped by it. The least important thing is what I think about it.220
  --
  [747] Christianity, to return to our previous argument, was a unio mentalis in the overcoming of the body. In just this respect the rite fulfilled its purpose, so far as that is possible for fallible human beings. Ancient mans sensuous delight in the body and in nature did not disappear in the process, but found free play in the long list of sins which has never at any time diminished in scope. His knowledge of nature, however, presents a special problem. Ever since antiquity it had flourished only in secret and among the few, but it handed down certain basic conceptions through the centuries and, in the later Middle Ages, fertilized mans reawakened interest in natural bodies. Had the alchemists not had at least a secret premonition that their Christian unio mentalis had not yet realized the union with the world of the body, their almost mystical thirst for knowledge would scarcely be explicable, let alone the symbolism, rivalling that of Christianity, which began to develop already at the end of the thirteenth century. The Christ-lapis parallel shows more clearly than anything else that the world of natural bodies laid claim to equality and hence to realization in the second stage of the coniunctio.
  [748] This raised the question of the way in which the coniunctio could be effected. Dorn answered this by proposing, instead of an overcoming of the body, the typical alchemical process of the separatio, solutio, incineratio, sublimatio, etc. of the red or white wine, the purpose of this procedure being to produce a physical equivalent of the substantia coelestis, recognized by the spirit as the truth and as the image of God innate in man. Whatever names the alchemists gave to the mysterious substance they sought to produce, it was always a celestial substance, i.e., something transcendental, which, in contrast to the perishability of all known matter, was incorruptible, inert as a metal or a stone, and yet alive, like an organic being, and at the same time a universal medicament. Such a body was quite obviously not to be met with in experience. The tenacity with which the adepts pursued this goal for at least seventeen hundred years can be explained only by the numinosity of this idea. And we do indeed find, even in the ancient alchemy of Zosimos, clear indications of the archetype of the Anthropos,221 as I have shown in Psychology and Alchemy; an image that pervades the whole of alchemy down to the figure of the homunculus in Faust. The idea of the Anthropos springs from the notion of an original state of universal animation, for which reason the old Masters interpreted their Mercurius as the anima mundi; and just as the original animation could be found in all matter, so too could the anima mundi. It was imprinted on all bodies as their raison dtre, as an image of the demiurge who incarnated in his own creation and got caught in it. Nothing was easier than to identify this anima mundi with the Biblical imago Dei, which represented the truth revealed to the spirit. For the early thinkers the soul was by no means a merely intellectual concept; it was visualized sensuously as a breath-body or a volatile but physical substance which, it was readily supposed, could be chemically extracted and fixed by means of a suitable procedure. This intention was served by the preparation of the phlegma vini. As I pointed out earlier, this was not the spirit and water of the wine but its solid residue, the chthonic and corporeal part which would not ordinarily be regarded as the essential and valuable thing about the wine.

6.09 - THE THIRD STAGE - THE UNUS MUNDUS, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  [772] What, then, do the statements of the alchemists concerning their arcanum mean, looked at psychologically? In order to answer this question we must remember the working hypothesis we have used for the interpretation of dreams: the images in dreams and spontaneous fantasies are symbols, that is, the best possible formulation for still unknown or unconscious facts, which generally compensate the content of consciousness or the conscious attitude. If we apply this basic rule to the alchemical arcanum, we come to the conclusion that its most conspicuous quality, namely, its unity and uniquenessone is the stone, one the medicine, one the vessel, one the procedure, and one the disposition235presupposes a dissociated consciousness. For no one who is one himself needs oneness as a medicinenor, we might add, does anyone who is unconscious of his dissociation, for a conscious situation of distress is needed in order to activate the archetype of unity. From this we may conclude that the more philosophically minded alchemists were people who did not feel satisfied with the then prevailing view of the world, that is, with the Christian faith, although they were convinced of its truth. In this latter respect we find in the classical Latin and Greek literature of alchemy no evidences to the contrary, but rather, so far as Christian treatises are concerned, abundant testimony to the firmness of their Christian convictions. Since Christianity is expressly a system of salvation, founded moreover on Gods plan of redemption, and God is unity par excellence, one must ask oneself why the alchemists still felt a disunity in themselves, or not at one with themselves, when their faith, so it would appear, gave them every opportunity for unity and unison. (This question has lost nothing of its topicality today, on the contrary!) The question answers itself when we examine more closely the other attributes that are predicated of the arcanum.
  [773] The next quality, therefore, which we have to consider is its physical nature. Although the alchemists attached the greatest importance to this, and the stone was the whole raison dtre of their art, yet it cannot be regarded as merely physical since it is stressed that the stone was alive and possessed a soul and spirit, or even that it was a man or some creature like a man. And although it was also said of God that the world is his physical manifestation, this pantheistic view was rejected by the Church, for God is Spirit and the very reverse of matter. In that case the Christian standpoint would correspond to the unio mentalis in the overcoming of the body. So far as the alchemist professed the Christian faith, he knew that according to his own lights he was still at the second stage of conjunction, and that the Christian truth was not yet realized. The soul was drawn up by the spirit to the lofty regions of abstraction; but the body was de-souled, and since it also had claims to live the unsatisfactoriness of the situation could not remain hidden from him. He was unable to feel himself a whole, and whatever the spiritualization of his existence may have meant to him he could not get beyond the Here and Now of his bodily life in the physical world. The spirit precluded his orientation to physis and vice versa. Despite all assurances to the contrary Christ is not a unifying factor but a dividing sword which sunders the spiritual man from the physical. The alchemists, who, unlike certain moderns, were clever enough to see the necessity and fitness of a further development of consciousness, held fast to their Christian convictions and did not slip back to a more unconscious level. They could not and would not deny the truth of Christianity, and for this reason it would be wrong to accuse them of heresy. On the contrary, they wanted to realize the unity foreshadowed in the idea of God by struggling to unite the unio mentalis with the body.
  [774] The mainspring of this endeavour was the conviction that this world was in a morbid condition and that everything was corrupted by original sin. They saw that the soul could be redeemed only if it was freed by the spirit from its natural attachment to the body, though this neither altered nor in any way improved the status of physical life. The Microcosm, i.e., the inner man, was capable of redemption but not the corrupt body. This insight was reason enough for a dissociation of consciousness into a spiritual and a physical personality. They could all declare with St. Paul: O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death?236 They therefore strove to find the medicine that would heal all the sufferings of the body and the disunion of the soul, the

6.0 - Conscious, Unconscious, and Individuation, #The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  Negroes, and Christianity, 14
  nekyia, 184
  --
  poverty: Christianity and, 15; spiri-
  tual, 17
  --
  sponsus et sponsa, in Christianity,
  250

6.10 - THE SELF AND THE BOUNDS OF KNOWLEDGE, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  [777] If we now recall to what a degree the soul has humanized and realized itself, we can judge how very much it today expresses the body also, with which it is coexistent. Here is a coniunctio of the second degree, such as the alchemists at most dreamed of but could not realize. Thus far the transformation into the psychological is a notable advance, but only if the centre experienced proves to be a spiritus rector of daily life. Obviously, it was clear even to the alchemists that one could have a lapis in ones pocket without ever making gold with it, or the aurum potabile in a bottle without ever having tasted that bittersweet drinkhypo thetically speaking, of course, for they never succumbed to the temptation to use their stone in reality because they never succeeded in making one. The psychological significance of this misfortune should not be overestimated, however. It takes second place in comparison with the fascination which emanated from the sensed and intuited archetype of wholeness. In this respect alchemy fared no worse than Christianity, which in its turn was not fatally disturbed by the continuing non-appearance of the Lord at the Second Coming. The intense emotion that is always associated with the vitality an archetypal idea conveyseven though only a minimum of rational understanding may be presenta premonitory experience of wholeness to which a subsequently differentiated understanding can add nothing essential, at least as regards the totality of the experience. A better developed understanding can, however, constantly renew the vitality of the original experience. In view of the inexhaustibility of the archetype the rational understanding derived from it means relatively little, and it would be an unjustifiable overestimation of reason to assume that, as a result of understanding, the illumination in the final state is a higher one than in the initial state of numinous experience. The same objection, as we have seen, was made to Cardinal Newmans view concerning the development of dogma, but it was overlooked that rational understanding or intellectual formulation adds nothing to the experience of wholeness, and at best only facilitates its repetition. The experience itself is the important thing, not its intellectual representation or clarification, which proves meaningful and helpful only when the road to original experience is blocked. The differentiation of dogma not only expresses its vitality but is needed in order to preserve its vitality. Similarly, the archetype at the basis of alchemy needs interpreting if we are to form any conception of its vitality and numinosity and thereby preserve it at least for our science. The alchemist likewise interpreted his experience as best he could, though without ever understanding it to the degree that psychological explanation makes possible today. But his inadequate understanding did not detract from the totality of his archetypal experience any more than our wider and more differentiated understanding adds anything to it.
  [778] With the advance towards the psychological a great change sets in, for self-knowledge has certain ethical consequences which are not just impassively recognized but demand to be carried out in practice. This depends of course on ones moral endowment, on which as we know one should not place too much reliance. The self, in its efforts at self-realization, reaches out beyond the ego-personality on all sides; because of its all-encompassing nature it is brighter and darker than the ego, and accordingly confronts it with problems which it would like to avoid. Either ones moral courage fails, or ones insight, or both, until in the end fate decides. The ego never lacks moral and rational counterarguments, which one cannot and should not set aside so long as it is possible to hold on to them. For you only feel yourself on the right road when the conflicts of duty seem to have resolved themselves, and you have become the victim of a decision made over your head or in defiance of the heart. From this we can see the numinous power of the self, which can hardly be experienced in any other way. For this reason the experience of the self is always a defeat for the ego. The extraordinary difficulty in this experience is that the self can be distinguished only conceptually from what has always been referred to as God, but not practically. Both concepts apparently rest on an identical numinous factor which is a condition of reality. The ego enters into the picture only so far as it can offer resistance, defend itself, and in the event of defeat still affirm its existence. The prototype of this situation is Jobs encounter with Yahweh. This hint is intended only to give some indication of the nature of the problems involved. From this general statement one should not draw the overhasty conclusion that in every case there is a hybris of ego-consciousness which fully deserves to be overpowered by the unconscious. That is not so at all, because it very often happens that ego-consciousness and the egos sense of responsibility are too weak and need, if anything, streng thening. But these are questions of practical psycho therapy, and I mention them here only because I have been accused of underestimating the importance of the ego and giving undue prominence to the unconscious. This strange insinuation emanates from a theological quarter. Obviously my critic has failed to realize that the mystical experiences of the saints are no different from other effects of the unconscious.
  --
  [786] It therefore seems to me, on the most conservative estimate, to be wiser not to drag the supreme metaphysical factor into our calculations, at all events not at once, but, more modestly, to make an unknown psychic or perhaps psychoid238 factor in the human realm responsible for inspirations and suchlike happenings. This would make better allowance not only for the abysmal mixture of truth and error in the great majority of inspirations but also for the numerous contradictions in Holy Writ. The psychoid aura that surrounds consciousness furnishes us with better and less controversial possibilities of explanation and moreover can be investigated empirically. It presents a world of relatively autonomous images, including the manifold God-images, which whenever they appear are called God by nave people and, because of their numinosity (the equivalent of autonomy!), are taken to be such. The various religious denominations support this traditional viewpoint, and their respective theologians believe themselves, inspired by Gods word, to be in a position to make valid statements about him. Such statements always claim to be final and indisputable. The slightest deviation from the dominant assumption provokes an unbridgeable schism. One cannot and may not think about an object held to be indisputable. One can only assert it, and for this reason there can be no reconciliation between the divergent assertions. Thus Christianity, the religion of brotherly love, offers the lamentable spectacle of one great and many small schisms, each faction helplessly caught in the toils of its own unique rightness.
  [787] We believe that we can make assertions about God, define him, form an opinion about him, differentiate him as the only true one amongst other gods. The realization might by this time be dawning that when we talk of God or gods we are speaking of debatable images from the psychoid realm. The existence of a transcendental reality is indeed evident in itself, but it is uncommonly difficult for our consciousness to construct intellectual models which would give a graphic description of the reality we have perceived. Our hypotheses are uncertain and groping, and nothing offers us the assurance that they may ultimately prove correct. That the world inside and outside ourselves rests on a transcendental background is as certain as our own existence, but it is equally certain that the direct perception of the archetypal world inside us is just as doubtfully correct as that of the physical world outside us. If we are convinced that we know the ultimate truth concerning metaphysical things, this means nothing more than that archetypal images have taken possession of our powers of thought and feeling, so that these lose their quality as functions at our disposal. The loss shows itself in the fact that the object of perception then becomes absolute and indisputable and surrounds itself with such an emotional taboo that anyone who presumes to reflect on it is automatically branded a heretic and blasphemer. In all other matters everyone would think it reasonable to submit to objective criticism the subjective image he has devised for himself of some object. But in the face of possession or violent emotion reason is abrogated; the numinous archetype proves on occasion to be the stronger because it can appeal to a vital necessity. This is regularly the case when it compensates a situation of distress which no amount of reasoning can abolish. We know that an archetype can break with shattering force into an individual human life and into the life of a nation. It is therefore not surprising that it is called God. But as men do not always find themselves in immediate situations of distress, or do not always feel them to be such, there are also calmer moments in which reflection is possible. If one then examines a state of possession or an emotional seizure without prejudice, one will have to admit that the possession in itself yields nothing that would clearly and reliably characterize the nature of the possessing factor, although it is an essential part of the phenomenon that the possessed always feels compelled to make definite assertions. Truth and error lie so close together and often look so confusingly alike that nobody in his right senses could afford not to doubt the things that happen to him in the possessed state. I John 4 : 1 admonishes us: Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God; because many false prophets are gone out into the world. This warning was uttered at a time when there was plenty of opportunity to observe exceptional psychic states. Although, as then, we think we possess sure criteria of distinction, the rightness of this conviction must nevertheless be called in question, for no human judgment can claim to be infallible.
  --
  [789] That a psychological approach to these matters draws man more into the centre of the picture as the measure of all things cannot be denied. But this gives him a significance which is not without justification. The two great world-religions, Buddhism and Christianity, have, each in its own way, accorded man a central place, and Christianity has stressed this tendency still further by the dogma that God became very man. No psychology in the world could vie with the dignity that God himself has accorded to him.

APPENDIX I - Curriculum of A. A., #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
    Liber XV. (15) [] - Ecclesiae Gnosticae Catholicae Cannon Missae ::: Represents the original and true pre-Christian Christianity. Equinox XI (vol. iii, part 1) And Appendix VI of this book.
    Liber XVI. (16) [B] - Liber Turris vel Domus Dei. ::: An Instruction for attainment by the direct destruction of thoughts as they arise in the mind. Equinox VI, p. 9.
  --
    Liber DCCCLXXXVIII. (888) [] - The Gospel According to Saint Bernard Shaw ::: A complete study of the origins of Christianity. Unpublished.
    Liber CMXIII. (913) [B] - Liber Viae Memoriae ::: Gives methods for attaining the magical memory, or memory of past lives, and an insight into the function of the Aspirant in this present life. Equinox VII, p. 105.

Blazing P3 - Explore the Stages of Postconventional Consciousness, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
  Kabbalah, and the Kingdom of Heaven of Christianity.
  Attainment of this kind of consciousness causes a permanent alteration in the practitioners

BOOK I. - Augustine censures the pagans, who attributed the calamities of the world, and especially the sack of Rome by the Goths, to the Christian religion and its prohibition of the worship of the gods, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
  But among their own famous men they have a very noble example of the voluntary endurance of captivity in obedience to a religious scruple. Marcus Attilius Regulus, a Roman general, was a prisoner in the hands of the Carthaginians. But they, being more anxious to exchange their prisoners with the Romans than to keep them, sent Regulus as a special envoy with their own ambassadors to negotiate this exchange, but bound him first with an oath, that if he failed to accomplish their wish, he would return to Carthage. He went, and persuaded the senate to the opposite course, because he[Pg 23] believed it was not for the advantage of the Roman republic to make an exchange of prisoners. After he had thus exerted his influence, the Romans did not compel him to return to the enemy; but what he had sworn he voluntarily performed. But the Carthaginians put him to death with refined, elaborate, and horrible tortures. They shut him up in a narrow box, in which he was compelled to stand, and in which finely sharpened nails were fixed all round about him, so that he could not lean upon any part of it without intense pain; and so they killed him by depriving him of sleep.[71] With justice, indeed, do they applaud the virtue which rose superior to so frightful a fate. However, the gods he swore by were those who are now supposed to avenge the prohibition of their worship, by inflicting these present calamities on the human race. But if these gods, who were worshipped specially in this behalf, that they might confer happiness in this life, either willed or permitted these punishments to be inflicted on one who kept his oath to them, what more cruel punishment could they in their anger have inflicted on a perjured person? But why may I not draw from my reasoning a double inference? Regulus certainly had such reverence for the gods, that for his oath's sake he would neither remain in his own land, nor go elsewhere, but without hesitation returned to his bitterest enemies. If he thought that this course would be advantageous with respect to this present life, he was certainly much deceived, for it brought his life to a frightful termination. By his own example, in fact, he taught that the gods do not secure the temporal happiness of their worshippers; since he himself, who was devoted to their worship, was both conquered in battle and taken prisoner, and then, because he refused to act in violation of the oath he had sworn by them, was tortured and put to death by a new, and hitherto unheard of, and all too horrible kind of punishment. And on the supposition that the worshippers of the gods are rewarded by felicity in the life to come, why, then, do they calumniate the influence of Christianity? why do they assert that this[Pg 24] disaster has overtaken the city because it has ceased to worship its gods, since, worship them as assiduously as it may, it may yet be as unfortunate as Regulus was? Or will some one carry so wonderful a blindness to the extent of wildly attempting, in the face of the evident truth, to contend that though one man might be unfortunate, though a worshipper of the gods, yet a whole city could not be so? That is to say, the power of their gods is better adapted to preserve multitudes than individuals,as if a multitude were not composed of individuals.
  But if they say that M. Regulus, even while a prisoner and enduring these bodily torments, might yet enjoy the blessedness of a virtuous soul,[72] then let them recognise that true virtue by which a city also may be blessed. For the blessedness of a community and of an individual flow from the same source; for a community is nothing else than a harmonious collection of individuals. So that I am not concerned meantime to discuss what kind of virtue Regulus possessed: enough, that by his very noble example they are forced to own that the gods are to be worshipped not for the sake of bodily comforts or external advantages; for he preferred to lose all such things rather than offend the gods by whom he had sworn. But what can we make of men who glory in having such a citizen, but dread having a city like him? If they do not dread this, then let them acknowledge that some such calamity as befell Regulus may also befall a community, though they be worshipping their gods as diligently as he; and let them no longer throw the blame of their misfortunes on Christianity. But as our present concern is with those Christians who were taken prisoners, let those who take occasion from this calamity to revile our most wholesome religion in a fashion not less imprudent than impudent, consider this and hold their peace; for if it was no reproach to their gods that a most punctilious worshipper of theirs should, for the sake of keeping his oath to them, be deprived of his native land without hope of finding another, and fall into the hands of his enemies, and be put to death by a long-drawn and exquisite torture, much less ought the[Pg 25] Christian name to be charged with the captivity of those who believe in its power, since they, in confident expectation of a heavenly country, know that they are pilgrims even in their own homes.
    16. Of the violation of the consecrated and other Christian virgins to which they were subjected in captivity, and to which their own will gave no consent; and whether this contaminated their souls.
  But they fancy they bring a conclusive charge against Christianity, when they aggravate the horror of captivity by adding that not only wives and unmarried maidens, but even consecrated virgins, were violated. But truly, with respect to this, it is not Christian faith, nor piety, nor even the virtue of chastity, which is hemmed into any difficulty: the only difficulty is so to treat the subject as to satisfy at once modesty and reason. And in discussing it we shall not be so careful to reply to our accusers as to comfort our friends. Let this, therefore, in the first place, be laid down as an unassailable position, that the virtue which makes the life good has its throne in the soul, and thence rules the members of the body, which becomes holy in virtue of the holiness of the will; and that while the will remains firm and unshaken, nothing that another person does with the body, or upon the body, is any fault of the person who suffers it, so long as he cannot escape it without sin. But as not only pain may be inflicted, but lust gratified on the body of another, whenever anything of this latter kind takes place, shame invades even a thoroughly pure spirit from which modesty has not departed,shame, lest that act which could not be suffered without some sensual pleasure, should be believed to have been committed also with some assent of the will.
  17. Of suicide committed through fear of punishment or dishonour.
  --
  30. That those who complain of Christianity really desire to live without restraint in shameful luxury.
  If the famous Scipio Nasica were now alive, who was once your pontiff, and was unanimously chosen by the senate, when, in the panic created by the Punic war, they sought for the best citizen to entertain the Phrygian goddess, he would curb this shamelessness of yours, though you would perhaps scarcely dare to look upon the countenance of such a man. For why in your calamities do you complain of Christianity, unless because you desire to enjoy your luxurious licence unrestrained, and to lead an abandoned and profligate life without the interruption of any uneasiness or disaster? For certainly your desire for peace, and prosperity, and plenty is not prompted by any purpose of using these blessings honestly, that is to say, with moderation, sobriety, temperance, and piety; for your purpose rather is to run riot in an endless variety of sottish pleasures, and thus to generate from your prosperity a moral pestilence which will prove a thousand-fold more disastrous than the fiercest enemies. It was such a calamity as this that Scipio, your chief pontiff, your best man in the judgment of the whole senate, feared when he refused to agree to the destruction of Carthage, Rome's rival; and opposed Cato, who advised its destruction. He feared security, that enemy of weak minds, and he perceived that a wholesome fear would be a fit guardian for the citizens. And[Pg 43] he was not mistaken: the event proved how wisely he had spoken. For when Carthage was destroyed, and the Roman republic delivered from its great cause of anxiety, a crowd of disastrous evils forthwith resulted from the prosperous condition of things. First concord was weakened, and destroyed by fierce and bloody seditions; then followed, by a concatenation of baleful causes, civil wars, which brought in their train such massacres, such bloodshed, such lawless and cruel proscription and plunder, that those Romans who, in the days of their virtue, had expected injury only at the hands of their enemies, now that their virtue was lost, suffered greater cruelties at the hands of their fellow-citizens. The lust of rule, which with other vices existed among the Romans in more unmitigated intensity than among any other people, after it had taken possession of the more powerful few, subdued under its yoke the rest, worn and wearied.
  31. By what steps the passion for governing increased among the Romans.
  --
  Oh infatuated men, what is this blindness, or rather madness, which possesses you? How is it that while, as we hear, even the eastern nations are bewailing your ruin, and while powerful states in the most remote parts of the earth are mourning your fall as a public calamity, ye yourselves should be crowding to the theatres, should be pouring into them and filling them; and, in short, be playing a madder part now than ever before? This was the foul plague-spot, this the wreck of virtue and honour that Scipio sought to preserve you from when he prohibited the construction of theatres; this was his reason for desiring that you might still have an enemy to fear, seeing as he did how easily prosperity would corrupt and destroy you. He did not consider that republic flourishing whose walls stand, but whose morals are in ruins. But the seductions of evil-minded devils had more influence with you than the precautions of prudent men. Hence the injuries you do, you will not permit to be imputed to you; but the injuries you suffer, you impute to Christianity. Depraved by good fortune, and not chastened by adversity, what you desire in the restoration of a peaceful and secure state, is not the tranquillity of the commonwealth, but the impunity of your own vicious luxury. Scipio wished you to be hard pressed by an enemy, that you might not abandon yourselves to luxurious manners; but so abandoned are you, that not even when crushed by the enemy is your luxury repressed. You have missed the profit of your calamity; you have been made most wretched, and have remained most profligate.
  [Pg 46]

BOOK II. - A review of the calamities suffered by the Romans before the time of Christ, showing that their gods had plunged them into corruption and vice, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
  But remember that, in recounting these things, I have still to address myself to ignorant men; so ignorant, indeed, as to give birth to the common saying, "Drought and Christianity go hand in hand."[83] There are indeed some among them who[Pg 51] are thoroughly well educated men, and have a taste for history, in which the things I speak of are open to their observation; but in order to irritate the uneducated masses against us, they feign ignorance of these events, and do what they can to make the vulgar believe that those disasters, which in certain places and at certain times uniformly befall mankind, are the result of Christianity, which is being everywhere diffused, and is possessed of a renown and brilliancy which quite eclipse their own gods.[84] Let them then, along with us, call to mind with what various and repeated disasters the prosperity of Rome was blighted, before ever Christ had come in the flesh, and before His name had been blazoned among the nations with that glory which they vainly grudge. Let them, if they can, defend their gods in this article, since they maintain that they worship them in order to be preserved from these disasters, which they now impute to us if they suffer in the least degree. For why did these gods permit the disasters I am to speak of to fall on their worshippers before the preaching of Christ's name offended them, and put an end to their sacrifices?
    4. That the worshippers of the gods never received from them any healthy moral precepts, and that in celebrating their worship all sorts of impurities were practised.

BOOK III. - The external calamities of Rome, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
  Let those who have no gratitude to Christ for His great benefits, blame their own gods for these heavy disasters. For certainly when these occurred the altars of the gods were kept blazing, and there rose the mingled fragrance of "Saban incense and fresh garlands;"[154] the priests were clothed with honour, the shrines were maintained in splendour; sacrifices,[Pg 133] games, sacred ecstasies, were common in the temples; while the blood of the citizens was being so freely shed, not only in remote places, but among the very altars of the gods. Cicero did not choose to seek sanctuary in a temple, because Mucius had sought it there in vain. But they who most unpardonably calumniate this Christian era, are the very men who either themselves fled for asylum to the places specially dedicated to Christ, or were led there by the barbarians that they might be safe. In short, not to recapitulate the many instances I have cited, and not to add to their number others which it were tedious to enumerate, this one thing I am persuaded of, and this every impartial judgment will readily acknowledge, that if the human race had received Christianity before the Punic wars, and if the same desolating calamities which these wars brought upon Europe and Africa had followed the introduction of Christianity, there is no one of those who now accuse us who would not have attri buted them to our religion. How intolerable would their accusations have been, at least so far as the Romans are concerned, if the Christian religion had been received and diffused prior to the invasion of the Gauls, or to the ruinous floods and fires which desolated Rome, or to those most calamitous of all events, the civil wars! And those other disasters, which were of so strange a nature that they were reckoned prodigies, had they happened since the Christian era, to whom but to the Christians would they have imputed these as crimes? I do not speak of those things which were rather surprising than hurtful,oxen speaking, unborn infants articulating some words in their mothers' wombs, serpents flying, hens and women being changed into the other sex; and other similar prodigies which, whether true or false, are recorded not in their imaginative, but in their historical works, and which do not injure, but only astonish men. But when it rained earth, when it rained chalk, when it rained stonesnot hailstones, but real stonesthis certainly was calculated to do serious damage. We have read in their books that the fires of Etna, pouring down from the top of the mountain to the neighbouring shore, caused the sea to boil, so that rocks were burnt up, and the pitch of ships began to run,a phenomenon incredibly surprising, but at the same time no[Pg 134] less hurtful. By the same violent heat, they relate that on another occasion Sicily was filled with cinders, so that the houses of the city Catina were destroyed and buried under them,a calamity which moved the Romans to pity them, and remit their tri bute for that year. One may also read that Africa, which had by that time become a province of Rome, was visited by a prodigious multitude of locusts, which, after consuming the fruit and foliage of the trees, were driven into the sea in one vast and measureless cloud; so that when they were drowned and cast upon the shore the air was polluted, and so serious a pestilence produced that in the kingdom of Masinissa alone they say there perished 800,000 persons, besides a much greater number in the neighbouring districts. At Utica they assure us that, of 30,000 soldiers then garrisoning it, there survived only ten. Yet which of these disasters, suppose they happened now, would not be attri buted to the Christian religion by those who thus thoughtlessly accuse us, and whom we are compelled to answer? And yet to their own gods they attri bute none of these things, though they worship them for the sake of escaping lesser calamities of the same kind, and do not reflect that they who formerly worshipped them were not preserved from these serious disasters.
  [Pg 135]

BOOK II. -- PART I. ANTHROPOGENESIS., #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
  divinities. Therefore Christianity has made of them infernal gods.
  They are truly "the great, beneficent and powerful Gods," as Cassius Hermone calls them (See
  --
  religion of all, Christianity, all the Combatants, gods and demons, adversaries in both the camps, are
  now transformed into Dragons and Satans, simply in order to connect EVIL personified with the

BOOK II. -- PART III. ADDENDA. SCIENCE AND THE SECRET DOCTRINE CONTRASTED, #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
  [[Vol. 2, Page]] 757 PAGANISM AND Christianity AGREE.
  hardly comprehend now that which they read in their Scriptures. See what Seneca says in Epistle 9,
  --
  the same thing, idea for idea. Has Christianity nothing of the kind? It has, we say. Let the reader open
  any English Bible and read chapter iii. of the Second Epistle of Peter, from verse iii. till the xivth, and

BOOK II. -- PART II. THE ARCHAIC SYMBOLISM OF THE WORLD-RELIGIONS, #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
  author of the "Origins of Christianity" evidently knows nothing of the "origins of pagan symbolism"
  or of Esotericism either, otherwise he would have known that the name was a form of universal
  --
  India, or Chaldea with the devil of Christianity, for no such comparison is possible. But we may stop
  to glance at the biography of the Christian Devil, a piratical reprint from the Chaldeo-Judaean
  --
  Mirville, followed the happy suggestion in his "Monumental Christianity," and so did Dr. Sepp of
  Munich in his works written to prove the divinity of Jesus and the Satanic origin of all other Saviours.
  --
  of Enoch to Christianity, with modifications in which we miss the sublime simplicity of the great
  Master of apocalyptic prediction, who prophesied in the name of the antediluvian Patriarch." (INT.
  --
  converted to Christianity (! !) (vide p. 16), the English compiler of Eliphas Levi's works -- "The
  Mysteries of Magic" -- is also of a like opinion. He remarks that: "Outside the erudition of Dr.
  --
  Devil of Christianity, there is an abyss. Alone the sledge hammer of ancient philosophy can kill this
  dogma.
  --
  form of the Cross"; Krishna is likewise shown "crucified." (See Dr. Lundy's Monumental Christianity,
  fig. 72.) Again it is repeated in the Old Testament in the queer injunction to crucify men before the
  --
  We have said it elsewhere. Long before the cross or its sign were adopted as symbols of Christianity,
  the sign of the cross was used as a sign of recognition among adepts and neophytes, the latter being

BOOK I. -- PART I. COSMIC EVOLUTION, #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
  nor the Egyptian religion,.neither to Buddhism, Islam, Judaism nor Christianity exclusively. The
  Secret Doctrine is the essence of all these. Sprung from it in their origins, the various religious
  --
  followed the beginning of Christianity.
  However great and zealous the fanatical efforts, during those early centuries, to obliterate every trace
  --
  replies: "The sins of Islam are as worthless as the dust of Christianity. On the day of resurrection both
  Muhammadans and Christians will see the vanity of their religious doctrines. Men fight about religion
  --
  and logic, an evident effect of Karma. To have let them serve as a prologue to Christianity was a cruel
  revenge on the part of the Rabbis, who knew better what their Pentateuch meant. It was a silent protest
  --
  are the collective hosts of spiritual beings -- the Angelic Hosts of Christianity, the Elohim and
  "Messengers" of the Jews -- who are the vehicle for the manifestation of the divine or universal
  --
  ** Even in Christianity. (See Part II., "Primordial Substance and Divine Thought.")
  *** Gross, "The Hea then Religion," p. 195.
  --
  luxuriant tree in ecclesiastical Christianity. It is already the outline of the two "Supremes" -- God and
  Satan. But in the Stanzas no such idea exists.
  --
  casually, to show that the said superstition belongs to the most ancient beliefs, and even to Judaism -the basis of Christianity. With the Israelites, the chief function of Jehovah was child-giving, and the
  esotericism of the Bible, interpreted Kabalistically, shows undeniably the Holy of Holies in the temple

BOOK I. -- PART III. SCIENCE AND THE SECRET DOCTRINE CONTRASTED, #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
  * In a recent work on the Symbolism in Buddhism and Christianity (in Buddhism and Roman
  Catholicism, rather, many later rituals and dogmas in Northern Buddhism in its popular exoteric form,
  --
  bigotry during early Christianity; and we would fain pass them by again now.
  And yet these lives surrounded us then as they do now. They have worked on, obedient to their own
  --
  days of Christianity the marriage ceremony was a mystery and a true symbol. Now, however, even the
  churches have lost the true meaning of this symbolism.

BOOK I. -- PART II. THE EVOLUTION OF SYMBOLISM IN ITS APPROXIMATE ORDER, #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
  Judaism and Christianity the Messiah is always connected with Water, Baptism, the Fishes (the sign of
  the Zodiac called Meenam in Sanskrit), and even with the Matsya (fish) Avatar, and the Lotus -- the
  --
  Century, were bond fide pagans, or that dogmatic Christianity was borrowed wholesale, and passed in
  full into the Christian Church -- Sun, Tree, Serpent, Crocodile and all.
  --
   Christianity. Yet it is neither just nor correct to say that it is Christianity which has conceived and
  brought forth Satan. As an "adversary," the opposing Power required by the equilibrium and harmony
  --
  identical in Paganism and Christianity; or have we to believe that such prayers are crass idolatry and
  absurd "superstition" only when addressed by a Pagan to his idol, and that the same superstition is
  --
  So far the "blessings of Christianity" do not seem to have made any appreciable advance on the
  morals of the converted Pagans.

BOOK IV. - That empire was given to Rome not by the gods, but by the One True God, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
  If this kingdom was so great and lasting without the aid of the gods, why is the ample territory and long duration of the Roman empire to be ascribed to the Roman gods? For whatever is the cause in it, the same is in the other also. But if they contend that the prosperity of the other also is to be attri buted to the aid of the gods, I ask of which? For the other nations whom Ninus overcame, did not then worship other gods. Or if the Assyrians had gods of their own, who, so to speak, were more skilful workmen in the construction and preservation of the empire, whether are they dead, since they themselves have also lost the empire; or, having been defrauded of their pay, or promised a greater, have they chosen rather to go over to the Medes, and from them again to the Persians, because Cyrus invited them, and promised them something still more advantageous? This nation, indeed, since the time of the kingdom of Alexander the Macedonian, which was as brief in duration as it was great in extent, has preserved its own empire, and at this day occupies no small territories in the East. If this is so, then either the gods are unfaithful, who desert their own and go over to their enemies,[Pg 143] which Camillus, who was but a man, did not do, when, being victor and subduer of a most hostile state, although he had felt that Rome, for whom he had done so much, was ungrateful, yet afterwards, forgetting the injury and remembering his native land, he freed her again from the Gauls; or they are not so strong as gods ought to be, since they can be overcome by human skill or strength. Or if, when they carry on war among themselves, the gods are not overcome by men, but some gods who are peculiar to certain cities are perchance overcome by other gods, it follows that they have quarrels among themselves which they uphold, each for his own part. Therefore a city ought not to worship its own gods, but rather others who aid their own worshippers. Finally, whatever may have been the case as to this change of sides, or flight, or migration, or failure in battle on the part of the gods, the name of Christ had not yet been proclaimed in those parts of the earth when these kingdoms were lost and transferred through great destructions in war. For if, after more than twelve hundred years, when the kingdom was taken away from the Assyrians, the Christian religion had there already preached another eternal kingdom, and put a stop to the sacrilegious worship of false gods, what else would the foolish men of that nation have said, but that the kingdom which had been so long preserved, could be lost for no other cause than the desertion of their own religions and the reception of Christianity? In which foolish speech that might have been uttered, let those we speak of observe their own likeness, and blush, if there is any sense of shame in them, because they have uttered similar complaints; although the Roman empire is afflicted rather than changed,a thing which has befallen it in other times also, before the name of Christ was heard, and it has been restored after such affliction,a thing which even in these times is not to be despaired of. For who knows the will of God concerning this matter?
    8. Which of the gods can the Romans suppose presided over the increase and preservation of their empire, when they have believed that even the care of single things could scarcely be committed to single gods?

Book of Imaginary Beings (text), #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
  In England, after the advent of Christianity, the Valkyries
  (or Choosers of the Slain) were relegated to the villages and
  --
  Under the spreading influence of Christianity, the name
  Valkyrie degenerated; in medieval England a judge had
  --
  converts them to Christianity and, after the death of his
  wife, succeeds in making his way back to England.

Book of Psalms, #The Bible, #Anonymous, #Various
  Following the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in 587 BC, when animal sacrifice could no longer be continued, a sacrifice of praise was instituted among the Jewish people during the Babylonian Exile, which included readings of the Torah, Psalms, and Hymns throughout the day. The risen Christ applied the Psalms to himself when he said to his disciples: "Everything written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms must be fulfilled" (Luke 24:44). This sacrifice of praise continued within Christianity as the Liturgy of the Hours or the Divine Office, of which the Psalms remain an essential part. The Divine Office has evolved throughout the centuries, and today is said five times throughout the day: Matins or Office of Readings; the Lauds or Morning Prayer; Daytime Prayer; Vespers or Evening Prayer; and Compline or Night Prayer.
  This collection of 12 Psalms includes the Messianic Psalms 2, 22, and 110; Psalm 23, which is ingrained in the American conscience; Psalm 31, referenced by Jesus on the Cross; and the Seven Penitential Psalms, which bring comfort to a repentant heart (6, 32, 38, 51, 102, 130, 143). The most famous of the seven is Psalm 51, which is called the Miserere after its first word in Latin and is said every Friday at Lauds in the Liturgy of the Hours.

BOOK VIII. - Some account of the Socratic and Platonic philosophy, and a refutation of the doctrine of Apuleius that the demons should be worshipped as mediators between gods and men, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
  Hermes then follows out at great length the statements of this passage, in which he seems to predict the present time, in which the Christian religion is overthrowing all lying figments with a vehemence and liberty proportioned to its superior truth and holiness, in order that the grace of the true Saviour may deliver men from those gods which man has made, and subject them to that God by whom man was made. But when Hermes predicts these things, he speaks as one who is a friend to these same mockeries of demons, and does not clearly express the name of Christ. On the contrary, he deplores, as if it had already taken place, the future abolition of those things by the observance of which there was maintained[Pg 341] in Egypt a resemblance of heaven,he bears witness to Christianity by a kind of mournful prophecy. Now it was with reference to such that the apostle said, that "knowing God, they glorified Him not as God, neither were thankful, but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened; professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into the likeness of the image of corruptible man,"[316] and so on, for the whole passage is too long to quote. For Hermes makes many such statements agreeable to the truth concerning the one true God who fashioned this world. And I know not how he has become so bewildered by that "darkening of the heart" as to stumble into the expression of a desire that men should always continue in subjection to those gods which he confesses to be made by men, and to bewail their future removal; as if there could be anything more wretched than mankind tyrannized over by the work of his own hands, since man, by worshipping the works of his own hands, may more easily cease to be man, than the works of his hands can, through his worship of them, become gods. For it can sooner happen that man, who has received an honourable position, may, through lack of understanding, become comparable to the beasts, than that the works of man may become preferable to the work of God, made in His own image, that is, to man himself. Wherefore deservedly is man left to fall away from Him who made him, when he prefers to himself that which he himself has made.
  For these vain, deceitful, pernicious, sacrilegious things did the Egyptian Hermes sorrow, because he knew that the time was coming when they should be removed. But his sorrow was as impudently expressed as his knowledge was imprudently obtained; for it was not the Holy Spirit who revealed these things to him, as He had done to the holy prophets, who, foreseeing these things, said with exultation, "If a man shall make gods, lo, they are no gods;"[317] and in another place, "And it shall come to pass in that day, saith the Lord, that I will cut off the names of the idols out of the land, and they shall no more be remembered."[318] But the holy Isaiah prophesies expressly[Pg 342] concerning Egypt in reference to this matter, saying, "And the idols of Egypt shall be moved at His presence, and their heart shall be overcome in them,"[319] and other things to the same effect. And with the prophet are to be classed those who rejoiced that that which they knew was to come had actually come,as Simeon, or Anna, who immediately recognised Jesus when He was born, or Elisabeth, who in the Spirit recognised Him when He was conceived, or Peter, who said by the revelation of the Father, "Thou art Christ, the Son of the living God."[320] But to this Egyptian those spirits indicated the time of their own destruction, who also, when the Lord was present in the flesh, said with trembling, "Art Thou come hither to destroy us before the time?"[321] meaning by destruction before the time, either that very destruction which they expected to come, but which they did not think would come so suddenly as it appeared to have done, or only that destruction which consisted in their being brought into contempt by being made known. And, indeed, this was a destruction before the time, that is, before the time of judgment, when they are to be punished with eternal damnation, together with all men who are implicated in their wickedness, as the true religion declares, which neither errs nor leads into error; for it is not like him who, blown hither and thither by every wind of doctrine, and mixing true things with things which are false, bewails as about to perish a religion which he afterwards confesses to be error.

BOOK V. - Of fate, freewill, and God's prescience, and of the source of the virtues of the ancient Romans, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
  And on this account, Theodosius not only preserved during the lifetime of Gratian that fidelity which was due to him, but also, after his death, he, like a true Christian, took his little brother Valentinian under his protection, as joint emperor, after he had been expelled by Maximus, the murderer of his father. He guarded him with paternal affection, though he might without any difficulty have got rid of him, being entirely destitute of all resources, had he been animated with the desire of extensive empire, and not with the ambition of being a benefactor. It was therefore a far greater pleasure to him, when he had adopted the boy, and preserved to him his[Pg 225] imperial dignity, to console him by his very humanity and kindness. Afterwards, when that success was rendering Maximus terrible, Theodosius, in the midst of his perplexing anxieties, was not drawn away to follow the suggestions of a sacrilegious and unlawful curiosity, but sent to John, whose abode was in the desert of Egypt,for he had learned that this servant of God (whose fame was spreading abroad) was endowed with the gift of prophecy, and from him he received assurance of victory. Immediately the slayer of the tyrant Maximus, with the deepest feelings of compassion and respect, restored the boy Valentinianus to his share in the empire from which he had been driven. Valentinianus being soon after slain by secret assassination, or by some other plot or accident, Theodosius, having again received a response from the prophet, and placing entire confidence in it, marched against the tyrant Eugenius, who had been unlawfully elected to succeed that emperor, and defeated his very powerful army, more by prayer than by the sword. Some soldiers who were at the battle reported to me that all the missiles they were throwing were snatched from their hands by a vehement wind, which blew from the direction of Theodosius' army upon the enemy; nor did it only drive with greater velocity the darts which were hurled against them, but also turned back upon their own bodies the darts which they themselves were throwing. And therefore the poet Claudian, although an alien from the name of Christ, nevertheless says in his praises of him, "O prince, too much beloved by God, for thee olus pours armed tempests from their caves; for thee the air fights, and the winds with one accord obey thy bugles."[224] But the victor, as he had believed and predicted, overthrew the statues of Jupiter, which had been, as it were, consecrated by I know not what kind of rites against him, and set up in the Alps. And the thunderbolts of these statues, which were made of gold, he mirthfully and graciously presented to his couriers, who (as the joy of the occasion permitted) were jocularly saying that they would be most happy to be struck by such thunderbolts. The sons of his own enemies, whose fathers had been slain not so much by his orders as by the vehemence of war, having[Pg 226] fled for refuge to a church, though they were not yet Christians, he was anxious, taking advantage of the occasion, to bring over to Christianity, and treated them with Christian love. Nor did he deprive them of their property, but, besides allowing them to retain it, bestowed on them additional honours. He did not permit private animosities to affect the treatment of any man after the war. He was not like Cinna, and Marius, and Sylla, and other such men, who wished not to finish civil wars even when they were finished, but rather grieved that they had arisen at all, than wished that when they were finished they should harm any one. Amid all these events, from the very commencement of his reign, he did not cease to help the troubled church against the impious by most just and merciful laws, which the heretical Valens, favouring the Arians, had vehemently afflicted. Indeed, he rejoiced more to be a member of this church than he did to be a king upon the earth. The idols of the Gentiles he everywhere ordered to be overthrown, understanding well that not even terrestrial gifts are placed in the power of demons, but in that of the true God. And what could be more admirable than his religious humility, when, compelled by the urgency of certain of his intimates, he avenged the grievous crime of the Thessalonians, which at the prayer of the bishops he had promised to pardon, and, being laid hold of by the discipline of the church, did penance in such a way that the sight of his imperial loftiness prostrated made the people who were interceding for him weep more than the consciousness of offence had made them fear it when enraged? These and other similar good works, which it would be long to tell, he carried with him from this world of time, where the greatest human nobility and loftiness are but vapour. Of these works the reward is eternal happiness, of which God is the giver, though only to those who are sincerely pious. But all other blessings and privileges of this life, as the world itself, light, air, earth, water, fruits, and the soul of man himself, his body, senses, mind, life, He lavishes on good and bad alike. And among these blessings is also to be reckoned the possession of an empire, whose extent He regulates according to the requirements of His providential government at various times. Whence, I see, we must now answer those who, being confuted[Pg 227] and convicted by the most manifest proofs, by which it is shown that for obtaining these terrestrial things, which are all the foolish desire to have, that multitude of false gods is of no use, attempt to assert that the gods are to be worshipped with a view to the interest, not of the present life, but of that which is to come after death. For as to those who, for the sake of the friendship of this world, are willing to worship vanities, and do not grieve that they are left to their puerile understandings, I think they have been sufficiently answered in these five books; of which books, when I had published the first three, and they had begun to come into the hands of many, I heard that certain persons were preparing against them an answer of some kind or other in writing. Then it was told me that they had already written their answer, but were waiting a time when they could publish it without danger. Such persons I would advise not to desire what cannot be of any advantage to them; for it is very easy for a man to seem to himself to have answered arguments, when he has only been unwilling to be silent. For what is more loquacious than vanity? And though it be able, if it like, to shout more loudly than the truth, it is not, for all that, more powerful than the truth. But let men consider diligently all the things that we have said, and if, perchance, judging without party spirit, they shall clearly perceive that they are such things as may rather be shaken than torn up by their most impudent garrulity, and, as it were, satirical and mimic levity, let them restrain their absurdities, and let them choose rather to be corrected by the wise than to be lauded by the foolish. For if they are waiting an opportunity, not for liberty to speak the truth, but for licence to revile, may not that befall them which Tully says concerning some one, "Oh, wretched man! who was at liberty to sin?"[225] Wherefore, whoever he be who deems himself happy because of licence to revile, he would be far happier if that were not allowed him at all; for he might all the while, laying aside empty boast, be contradicting those to whose views he is opposed by way of free consultation with them, and be listening, as it becomes him, honourably, gravely, candidly, to all that can be adduced by those whom he consults by friendly disputation.
  [Pg 228]

BOOK XIII. - That death is penal, and had its origin in Adam's sin, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
  [7] "Hitherto the Apologies had been framed to meet particular exigencies: they were either brief and pregnant statements of the Christian doctrines; refutations of prevalent calumnies; invectives against the follies and crimes of Paganism; or confutations of anti-Christian works like those of Celsus, Porphyry, or Julian, closely following their course of argument, and rarely expanding into general and comprehensive views of the great conflict."Milman, History of Christianity, iii. c. 10. We are not acquainted with any more complete preface to the City of God than is contained in the two or three pages which Milman has devoted to this subject.
  [8] See the interesting remarks of Lactantius, Instit. vii. 25.

BOOK XII. - Of the creation of angels and men, and of the origin of evil, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
  But these things are declared to be false by the loud testimony of religion and truth; for religion truthfully promises a true blessedness, of which we shall be eternally assured, and which cannot be interrupted by any disaster. Let us therefore keep to the straight path, which is Christ, and, with Him as our Guide and Saviour, let us turn away in heart and mind from the unreal and futile cycles of the godless. Porphyry, Platonist though he was, abjured the opinion of his school, that in these cycles souls are ceaselessly passing away and returning, either being struck with the extravagance of the idea, or sobered by his knowledge of Christianity. As I mentioned in the tenth book,[559] he preferred saying that the soul, as it had been sent into the world that it might know evil, and be purged and delivered from it, was never again exposed to such an experience after it had once returned to[Pg 512] the Father. And if he abjured the tenets of his school, how much more ought we Christians to abominate and avoid an opinion so unfounded and hostile to our faith? But having disposed of these cycles and escaped out of them, no necessity compels us to suppose that the human race had no beginning in time, on the ground that there is nothing new in nature which, by I know not what cycles, has not at some previous period existed, and is not hereafter to exist again. For if the soul, once delivered, as it never was before, is never to return to misery, then there happens in its experience something which never happened before; and this, indeed, something of the greatest consequence, to wit, the secure entrance into eternal felicity. And if in an immortal nature there can occur a novelty, which never has been, nor ever shall be, reproduced by any cycle, why is it disputed that the same may occur in mortal natures? If they maintain that blessedness is no new experience to the soul, but only a return to that state in which it has been eternally, then at least its deliverance from misery is something new, since, by their own showing, the misery from which it is delivered is itself, too, a new experience. And if this new experience fell out by accident, and was not embraced in the order of things appointed by Divine Providence, then where are those determinate and measured cycles in which no new thing happens, but all things are reproduced as they were before? If, however, this new experience was embraced in that providential order of nature (whether the soul was exposed to the evil of this world for the sake of discipline, or fell into it by sin), then it is possible for new things to happen which never happened before, and which yet are not extraneous to the order of nature. And if the soul is able by its own imprudence to create for itself a new misery, which was not unforeseen by the Divine Providence, but was provided for in the order of nature along with the deliverance from it, how can we, even with all the rashness of human vanity, presume to deny that God can create new thingsnew to the world, but not to Himwhich He never before created, but yet foresaw from all eternity? If they say that it is indeed true that ransomed souls return no more to misery, but that even so no new thing[Pg 513] happens, since there always have been, now are, and ever shall be a succession of ransomed souls, they must at least grant that in this case there are new souls to whom the misery and the deliverance from it are new. For if they maintain that those souls out of which new men are daily being made (from whose bodies, if they have lived wisely, they are so delivered that they never return to misery) are not new, but have existed from eternity, they must logically admit that they are infinite. For however great a finite number of souls there were, that would not have sufficed to make perpetually new men from eternity,men whose souls were to be eternally freed from this mortal state, and never afterwards to return to it. And our philosophers will find it hard to explain how there is an infinite number of souls in an order of nature which they require shall be finite, that it may be known by God.
  And now that we have exploded these cycles which were supposed to bring back the soul at fixed periods to the same miseries, what can seem more in accordance with godly reason than to believe that it is possible for God both to create new things never before created, and in doing so, to preserve His will unaltered? But whether the number of eternally redeemed souls can be continually increased or not, let the philosophers themselves decide, who are so subtle in determining where infinity cannot be admitted. For our own part, our reasoning holds in either case. For if the number of souls can be indefinitely increased, what reason is there to deny that what had never before been created, could be created? since the number of ransomed souls never existed before, and has yet not only been once made, but will never cease to be anew coming into being. If, on the other hand, it be more suitable that the number of eternally ransomed souls be definite, and that this number will never be increased, yet this number, whatever it be, did assuredly never exist before, and it cannot increase, and reach the amount it signifies, without having some beginning; and this beginning never before existed. That this beginning, therefore, might be, the first man was created.

BOOK XIX. - A review of the philosophical opinions regarding the Supreme Good, and a comparison of these opinions with the Christian belief regarding happiness, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
  For in his book called , in which he collects and comments upon the responses which he pretends were uttered by the gods concerning divine things, he says I give his own words as they have been translated from the Greek: "To one who inquired what god he should propitiate in order to recall his wife from Christianity, Apollo replied in the following verses." Then the following words are given as those of Apollo: "You will probably find it easier to write lasting characters on the water, or lightly fly like a bird through the air, than to restore right feeling in your impious wife once she has polluted herself. Let her remain as she pleases in her foolish deception, and sing false laments to her dead God, who was condemned by right-minded judges, and perished ignominiously by a violent death." Then after these verses of Apollo (which we have given in a Latin version that does not preserve the metrical form), he goes on to say: "In these verses Apollo exposed the incurable corruption of the Christians, saying that the Jews, rather than the Christians, recognised God." See how he misrepresents Christ, giving the Jews the preference to the Christians in the recognition of God. This was his explanation of Apollo's verses, in which he says that Christ was put to death by right-minded or just judges,in other words, that He deserved to die. I leave the responsibility of this oracle regarding Christ on the lying interpreter of Apollo, or on this philosopher who believed it or possibly himself invented it; as to its agreement with Porphyry's opinions or with other oracles, we shall in a little have something to say. In this passage, however, he says that the Jews, as the interpreters of God, judged justly in pronouncing Christ to be worthy of the most shameful death. He should have listened, then, to this God of the Jews to whom he bears this testimony, when that God says, "He that sacrificeth to any other god save to the Lord alone shall be utterly destroyed." But let us come to still plainer expressions, and hear how great a God Porphyry thinks the God of the Jews is. Apollo, he says, when asked whether word, i.e. reason, or law is the better thing, replied in the following verses. Then[Pg 335] he gives the verses of Apollo, from which I select the following as sufficient: "God, the Generator, and the King prior to all things, before whom heaven and earth, and the sea, and the hidden places of hell tremble, and the deities themselves are afraid, for their law is the Father whom the holy Hebrews honour." In this oracle of his god Apollo, Porphyry avowed that the God of the Hebrews is so great that the deities themselves are afraid before Him. I am surprised, therefore, that when God said, He that sacrificeth to other gods shall be utterly destroyed, Porphyry himself was not afraid lest he should be destroyed for sacrificing to other gods.
  This philosopher, however, has also some good to say of Christ, oblivious, as it were, of that contumely of his of which we have just been speaking; or as if his gods spoke evil of Christ only while asleep, and recognised Him to be good, and gave Him His deserved praise, when they awoke. For, as if he were about to proclaim some marvellous thing passing belief, he says, "What we are going to say will certainly take some by surprise. For the gods have declared that Christ was very pious, and has become immortal, and that they cherish his memory: that the Christians, however, are polluted, contaminated, and involved in error. And many other such things," he says, "do the gods say against the Christians." Then he gives specimens of the accusations made, as he says, by the gods against them, and then goes on: "But to some who asked Hecate whether Christ were a God, she replied, You know the condition of the disembodied immortal soul, and that if it has been severed from wisdom it always errs. The soul you refer to is that of a man foremost in piety: they worship it because they mistake the truth." To this so-called oracular response he adds the following words of his own: "Of this very pious man, then, Hecate said that the soul, like the souls of other good men, was after death dowered with immortality, and that the Christians through ignorance worship it. And to those who ask why he was condemned to die, the oracle of the goddess replied, The body, indeed, is always exposed to torments, but the souls of the pious abide in heaven. And the soul you inquire about has been the fatal cause of error to other souls which were not fated to receive the gifts[Pg 336] of the gods, and to have the knowledge of immortal Jove. Such souls are therefore hated by the gods; for they who were fated not to receive the gifts of the gods, and not to know God, were fated to be involved in error by means of him you speak of. He himself, however, was good, and heaven has been opened to him as to other good men. You are not, then, to speak evil of him, but to pity the folly of men: and through him men's danger is imminent."
  Who is so foolish as not to see that these oracles were either composed by a clever man with a strong animus against the Christians, or were uttered as responses by impure demons with a similar design,that is to say, in order that their praise of Christ may win credence for their vituperation of Christians; and that thus they may, if possible, close the way of eternal salvation, which is identical with Christianity? For they believe that they are by no means counterworking their own hurtful craft by promoting belief in Christ, so long as their calumniation of Christians is also accepted; for they thus secure that even the man who thinks well of Christ declines to become a Christian, and is therefore not delivered from their own rule by the Christ he praises. Besides, their praise of Christ is so contrived that whosoever believes in Him as thus represented will not be a true Christian but a Photinian heretic, recognising only the humanity, and not also the divinity of Christ, and will thus be precluded from salvation and from deliverance out of the meshes of these devilish lies. For our part, we are no better pleased with Hecate's praises of Christ than with Apollo's calumniation of Him. Apollo says that Christ was put to death by right-minded judges, implying that He was unrighteous. Hecate says that He was a most pious man, but no more. The intention of both is the same, to prevent men from becoming Christians, because if this be secured, men shall never be rescued from their power. But it is incumbent on our philosopher, or rather on those who believe in these pretended oracles against the Christians, first of all, if they can, to bring Apollo and Hecate to the same mind regarding Christ, so that either both may condemn or both praise Him. And even if they succeeded in this, we for our part would notwithstanding repudiate[Pg 337] the testimony of demons, whether favourable or adverse to Christ. But when our adversaries find a god and goddess of their own at variance about Christ, the one praising, the other vituperating Him, they can certainly give no credence, if they have any judgment, to mere men who blaspheme the Christians.
  When Porphyry or Hecate praises Christ, and adds that He gave Himself to the Christians as a fatal gift, that they might be involved in error, he exposes, as he thinks, the causes of this error. But before I cite his words to that purpose, I would ask, If Christ did thus give Himself to the Christians to involve them in error, did He do so willingly, or against His will? If willingly, how is He righteous? If against His will, how is He blessed? However, let us hear the causes of this error. "There are," he says, "in a certain place very small earthly spirits, subject to the power of evil demons. The wise men of the Hebrews, among whom was this Jesus, as you have heard from the oracles of Apollo cited above, turned religious persons from these very wicked demons and minor spirits, and taught them rather to worship the celestial gods, and especially to adore God the Father. This," he said, "the gods enjoin; and we have already shown how they admonish the soul to turn to God, and comm and it to worship Him. But the ignorant and the ungodly, who are not destined to receive favours from the gods, nor to know the immortal Jupiter, not listening to the gods and their messages, have turned away from all gods, and have not only refused to hate, but have venerated the prohibited demons. Professing to worship God, they refuse to do those things by which alone God is worshipped. For God, indeed, being the Father of all, is in need of nothing; but for us it is good to adore Him by means of justice, chastity, and other virtues, and thus to make life itself a prayer to Him, by inquiring into and imitating His nature. For inquiry," says he, "purifies and imitation deifies us, by moving us nearer to Him." He is right in so far as he proclaims God the Father, and the conduct by which we should worship Him. Of such precepts the prophetic books of the Hebrews are full, when they praise or blame the life of the saints. But in speaking of the Christians he is in error,[Pg 338] and calumniates them as much as is desired by the demons whom he takes for gods, as if it were difficult for any man to recollect the disgraceful and shameful actions which used to be done in the theatres and temples to please the gods, and to compare with these things what is heard in our churches, and what is offered to the true God, and from this comparison to conclude where character is edified, and where it is ruined. But who but a diabolical spirit has told or suggested to this man so manifest and vain a lie, as that the Christians reverenced rather than hated the demons, whose worship the Hebrews prohibited? But that God, whom the Hebrew sages worshipped, forbids sacrifice to be offered even to the holy angels of heaven and divine powers, whom we, in this our pilgrimage, venerate and love as our most blessed fellow-citizens. For in the law which God gave to His Hebrew people He utters this menace, as in a voice of thunder: "He that sacrificeth unto any god, save unto the Lord only, he shall be utterly destroyed."[659] And that no one might suppose that this prohibition extends only to the very wicked demons and earthly spirits, whom this philosopher calls very small and inferior,for even these are in the Scripture called gods, not of the Hebrews, but of the nations, as the Septuagint translators have shown in the psalm where it is said, "For all the gods of the nations are demons,"[660]that no one might suppose, I say, that sacrifice to these demons was prohibited, but that sacrifice might be offered to all or some of the celestials, it was immediately added, "save unto the Lord alone."[661] The God of the Hebrews, then, to whom this renowned philosopher bears this signal testimony, gave to His Hebrew people a law, composed in the Hebrew language, and not obscure and unknown, but published now in every nation, and in this law it is written, "He that sacrificeth unto any god, save unto the Lord alone, he shall be utterly destroyed." What need is there to seek further proofs in the law or the prophets of this same thing? Seek, we need not say, for the passages are neither few nor difficult to find; but what need to collect[Pg 339] and apply to my argument the proofs which are thickly sown and obvious, and by which it appears clear as day that sacrifice may be paid to none but the supreme and true God? Here is one brief but decided, even menacing, and certainly true utterance of that God whom the wisest of our adversaries so highly extol. Let this be listened to, feared, fulfilled, that there may be no disobedient soul cut off. "He that sacrifices," He says, not because He needs anything, but because it behoves us to be His possession. Hence the Psalmist in the Hebrew Scriptures sings, "I have said to the Lord, Thou art my God, for Thou needest not my good."[662] For we ourselves, who are His own city, are His most noble and worthy sacrifice, and it is this mystery we celebrate in our sacrifices, which are well known to the faithful, as we have explained in the preceding books. For through the prophets the oracles of God declared that the sacrifices which the Jews offered as a shadow of that which was to be would cease, and that the nations, from the rising to the setting of the sun, would offer one sacrifice. From these oracles, which we now see accomplished, we have made such selections as seemed suitable to our purpose in this work. And therefore, where there is not this righteousness whereby the one supreme God rules the obedient city according to His grace, so that it sacrifices to none but Him, and whereby, in all the citizens of this obedient city, the soul consequently rules the body and reason the vices in the rightful order, so that, as the individual just man, so also the community and people of the just, live by faith, which works by love, that love whereby man loves God as He ought to be loved, and his neighbour as himself,there, I say, there is not an assemblage associated by a common acknowledgment of right, and by a community of interests. But if there is not this, there is not a people, if our definition be true, and therefore there is no republic; for where there is no people there can be no republic.

BS 1 - Introduction to the Idea of God, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
  You may know, you may not, that Im an admirer of Nietzsche. Nietzsche was a devastating critic of dogmatic Christianity Christianity as it was instantiated in institutions. Although, he is a very paradoxical thinker. One of the things Nietzsche said was that he didnt believe the scientific revolution would have ever got off the ground if it hadnt been for Christianityand, more specifically, for Catholicism. He believed that, over the course of a thousand years, the European mind had to train itself to interpret everything that was known within a single coherent frameworkcoherent if you accept the initial axioms. Nietzsche believed that the Catholicization of the phenomena of life and history produced the kind of mind that was then capable of transcending its dogmatic foundations, and concentrating on something else. In this particular case, it happened to be the natural world.
  Nietzsche believed that Christianity died of its own hand, and that it spent a very long time trying to attune people to the necessity of the truth, absent the corruption, and all that thats always part of any human endeavour. The truth the spirit of truth that was developed by Christianity turned on the roots of Christianity. Everyone woke up and said, or thought, something like, how is it that we came to believe any of this? Its like waking up one day and noting that you really dont know why you put a Christmas tree up, but youve been doing it for a long time, and thats what people do. There are reasons Christmas trees came about. The ritual lasts long after the reasons have been forgotten.
  Nietzsche was a critic of Christianity, and also a champion of its disciplinary capacity. The other thing that Nietzsche believed was that it was not possible to be free unless you had been a slave. By that, he meant that you dont go from childhood to full-fledged adult individuality: you go from child to a state of discipline, which you might think is akin to self-imposed slavery. That would be the best scenario, where you have to discipline yourself to become something specific, before you might be able to reattain the generality you had as a child. He believed that Christianity had played that role for Western civilization. But, in the late 1800s, he announced that God was dead.
  You often hear of that as something triumphant, but, for Nietzsche, it wasnt. He was too nuanced a thinker to be that simpleminded. Nietzsche understood and this is something Im going to try to make clear that theres a very large amount that we dont know about the structure of experience that we dont know about reality and we have our articulated representations of the world. Outside of that, there are things we know absolutely nothing about. Theres a buffer between them, and those are things we sort of know something about. But we dont know them in an articulated way.
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  Heres a political implication: One of the debates, we might say, between early Christianity and the late Roman Empire was whether or not an emperor could be Godliterally to be deified and put into a temple. You can see why that might happen, because thats someone at the pinnacle of a very steep hierarchy, who has a tremendous amount of power and influence. The Christian response to that was, never confuse the specific sovereign with the principle of sovereignty itself. Its brilliant. You can see how difficult it is to come up with an idea like that, so that even the person who has the power is actually subordinate to a divine principle, for lack of a better word. Even the king himself is subordinate to the principle. We still believe that, because we believe our Prime Minister is subordinate to the damn law.
  Whatever the body of law, there's a principle inside that even the leader is subordinate to. Without that, you could argue that you cant even have a civilized society, because your leader immediately turns into something thats transcendent and all-powerful. That's certainly what happened in the Soviet Union, and what happened in Maoist China, and what happened in Nazi Germany. There was nothing for the powerful to subordinate themselves to. Youre supposed to be subordinate to God. What does that mean? Were going to tear that idea apart, but partly what that means is that youre subordinateeven if youre sovereignto the principles of sovereignty itself. And then the question is, what the hell is the principles of sovereignty? I would say we have been working that out for a very long period of time. Thats one of the things that well talk about.
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  Ok, to understand the first part of Genesis Im going to turn, strangely enough, to something thats actually part of the New Testament. This is a central element of Christianity. Its a very strange idea thats gonna take a very long time to unpack. This is what John said about Christ. He said, "in the beginning was the word." That relates back to Genesis 1. "In the beginning was the word, and word was with God, and the word was God." Three sentences like that take a lot of unpacking because, well, none of that seems to make any sense whatsoever. "In the beginning was the word, and the word was both with God and the word was God." So the first question might be, what in the world does that mean? "In the beginning was the word." Thats the logos, and the logos is embodied in the figure of Christ. Theres this idea in John that whatever Christ isa son of Godis not only instantiateda particular time and place, as a carpenter in some backwoods part of the world but is also something eternal that exists up outside of time and space, that was there right at the beginning.
  As far as I can tell, what that logos represents is something like what modern people refer to when they talk about consciousness. Its something like thatits more than that. Its like consciousness and its capacity to be aware and to communicate. Theres an idea underneath that which is that Beingespecially from a phenomenological perspective, so the Being that is experiencecannot exist without consciousness. Its like consciousness shines a light on things to bring it into Being. Without consciousness, what is there? No one experiences anything. Is there anything, when no one experiences anything? Thats the question, and the answer this book is presenting is that no, you have to think about consciousness as a constituent element of reality. Its something thats necessary for reality itself to exist.
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  Whatever it is that is you has this capacity to experience reality and to transform it, which is a very strange thing. You can conceptualize the future in your imagination, and then you can work and make that manifestparticipate in the process of creation. Thats one way of thinking about it. Thats why I think Genesis 1 relates the idea that human beings are made in the image of the divinemen and women, which is interesting, because feminists are always criticizing Christianity as being inexorably patriarchal. Of course, they criticize everything like that, so its hardly a stroke of bloody brilliance. But I think its an absolute miracle that right at the beginning of the document it says straightforwardly, with no hesitation whatsoever, that the divine spark which were associating with the word, that brings forth Being, is manifest in men and women equally. Thats a very cool thing. You got to think, like I said, do you actually take that seriously? Well, what you got to ask is what happens if you dont take it seriously, right? Read Dostoevskys Crime and Punishment. Thats the best investigation into that tactic thats ever been produced.
  What happens in Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment is that the main character, whose name is Raskolnikov, decides that theres no intrinsic value to other people and that, as a consequence, he can do whatever he wants. Its only cowardice that stops him from acting. Why would it be anything else if value of other people is just an arbitrary superstition? Well, then why cant I do exactly what I want, when I want? Which is the psychopaths viewpoint. Well, so Raskolnikov does: he kills someone whos a very horrible person, and he has very good reasons for killing her. Hes half-starved, and a little bit insane, and possessed by this ideologyits a brilliant, brilliant layoutand he finds out something after he kills her, which is that the post-killing Raskolnikov and the pre-killing Raskolnikov are not the same person, even a little bit, because hes broken a rule. Hes broken a serious rule and theres no going back.
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  Theres an idea in Christianity of the image of God as a Trinity. Theres the element of the Father, theres the element of the Son, and theres the element of the Holy Spirit. Its something like the spirit of tradition, human beings as the living incarnation of that tradition, and the spirit in people that makes relationship with the spirit and individuals possible. Im going to bounce my way quickly through some of the classical, metaphorical attri butes of God, so that we kind of have a cloud of notions about what were talking about, when we return to Genesis 1 and talk about the God who spoke chaos into Being.
  Theres a fatherly aspect, so heres what God as a father is like. You can enter into a covenant with it, so you can make a bargain with it. Now, you think about that. Money is like that, because money is a bargain you make with the future. We structured our world so that you can negotiate with the future. I dont think that we would have got to the point where we could do that without having this idea to begin with. You can act as if the futures a reality; theres a spirit of tradition that enables you to act as if the future is something that can be bargained with. Thats why you make sacrifices. The sacrifices were acted out for a very long period of time, and now theyre psychological. We know that you can sacrifice something valuable in the present and expect that youre negotiating with something thats representing the transcendent future. Thats an amazing human discovery. No other creature can do that; to act as if the future is real; to know that you can bargain with reality itself, and that you can do it successfully. Its unbelievable.

ENNEAD 06.05 - The One and Identical Being is Everywhere Present In Its Entirety.345, #Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 04, #Plotinus, #Christianity
  V. RESEMBLANCES TO Christianity.
  TRINITARIAN SIGNIFICANCE OF PLOTINOS.
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  NON-CHRISTIAN ORIGIN OF PARALELLISMS TO Christianity.
  Christian parallelisms in Plotinos have a historical origin in Christian parallelisms in his sources, namely, Stoicism, Numenius and Plato.
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  The Christian origins in Stoicism have been widely discussed; for instance, by Chaignet. But it is likely that this influence affected Christianity indirectly through Plotinos, along with the other Christian ideas we shall later find. At any rate Plotinos is the philosopher who uses the term "spiritual body" most like the Christians.510 The soul is a slave to the body,511 and has a celestial body512 as well as a spiritual body.513 Within us are two men opposing each other,514 the better part often being mastered by the worse part, as thought St.1309 Paul,515 in the struggle between the inner and outer man.516
  With Plotinos the idea of "procession" is not only cosmic but psychological. In other words, when Plotinos speaks of the "procession" of the God-head, he is not, as in Christian doctrine, depicting something unique, which has no connection with the world. He is only referring to the cosmic aspect of an evolution which, in the soul, appears as educational development.517 As the opposite of the soul's procession upwards, there is the soul's descent into hell,518 or, in other words, the soul's descent and ascension.519 This double aspect of man's fate upward or downward is referred to by Plotinos in the regular Christian term "sin," as consisting in missing one's aim.520 The soul repents,521 and its duty is conversion.522 As a result of this conversion comes forgiveness.523
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  Summarizing, he formed a bridge between the pagan world, with its Greco-Roman civilization, and the modern world, in three departments: Christianity, philosophy, and mysticism. So long as the traditional Platonico-Stoical feud persisted there was no hope of progress; because it kept apart two elements that were to fuse into the Christian philosophy. Numenius was the last Platonist, as Posidonius was the last Stoic combatant. However, if reports are to be trusted, Ammonius was an eclecticist, who prided himself on combining Plato with Aristotle. If Plotinos was indeed his disciple, it was the theory eclecticism that he took from his reputed teacher. Practically he was to accomplish it by his dependence on the Numenian Amelius, the Stoic Porphyry, and the negative Eustochius. It will be seen therefore that his chief importance was not in spite of his weakness, but most because of it. By repeatedly "boxing the compass" he thoroughly assimilated the best of the conflicting schools, and became of interest to a sufficiency of different groups (Christian, philosophical and mystical) to insure preservation, study and quotation. His habit of omitting credit to any but ancient thinkers left his own work, to the uninformedwho constituted all but a minimal numberas a body of original thought. Thus he remains to us the last light of Greece, speaking a language with which we are familiar, and leaving us quotations that are imperishable.
  1329
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  This is a lucid, scholarly systematization of the views of Plotinos, giving translation of important and useful passages. It is preceded by a careful indication and exposition of his formative influences, and a full biography dealing with his supposed obligations to Christianity. Accurate references are given for every statement and quotation. The exposition of, and references on Hermetic philosophy are by themselves worth the price of the book.
  Dr Harris, U.S. Commissioner of Education has written about it in the highest terms. Dr. Paul Carus, Editor of the Open Court, devoted half a page of the July 1897 issue to an appreciative and commendatory Review of it. Among the many other strong commendations of the work are the following:
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    To make so lucid and capable a compendium of the works of so great a giant of philosophy as Plotinos, the author must have spent much time in analysing the text and satisfying himself as to the meaning of many obscure passages; to test his absolute accuracy would require the verification of every reference among the hundreds given in the tables at the end of the pamphlet, and we have only had time to verify one or two of the more striking. These are as accurate as anything in a digest can rightly be expected to be. In addition to the detailed chapters on the seven realms of the Plotinic philosophy, on reincarnation, ethics, and sthetics, we have introductory chapters on Platonism, Aristotelianism, Stoicism, and Emanationism, and on the relationship of Plotinos to Christianity and Paganism.
    Those who desire to enter into the Plotinian precincts of the temple of Greek philosophy by the most expeditious path CANNOT do BETTER than take this little pamphlet for their guide; it is of course not perfect, but it is undeniably THE BEST which has yet appeared. We have recommended the T.P.S. to procure a supply of this pamphlet, for to our Platonic friends and colleagues we say not only YOU SHOULD, but YOU MUST read it.

I. THE ATTRACTIVE POWER OF GOD, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
  Therefore deadly sin is a breach of nature, a death of the soul, a disquiet of the heart, a weakening of power, a blindness of the sense, a sorrow of the spirit, a death of grace, a death of virtue, a death of good works, an aberration of the spirit, a fellowship with the devil, an expulsion of Christianity, a dungeon of hell, a banquet of hell, an eternity of hell. Therefore, if thou committest a deadly sin thou art guilty of all these and incurrest their consequences. Regarding the first point: Deadly sin is a breach of nature, for every man's nature is an image and likeness and mirror of the Trinity, of Godhead and of eternity. All these together are marred by a deadly sin; therefore, it is a breach of nature.
  Such sin is also the death of the soul, for death is to lose life. Now God is the life of the soul, and deadly sin separates from God; therefore it is a death of the soul. Deadly sin is also a disquiet of the heart, for everything rests nowhere except in its own proper place; and the proper resting-place of the soul is nowhere except in God as St Augustine saith, "Lord! Thou hast made us for Thyself, therefore we may not rest anywhere save in Thee."
  --
  It is also a fellowship with the Devil, for everything hath fellowship with its like; and sin maketh the soul and Satan resemble each other. It is also an expulsion of Christianity, for it depriveth the sinner of all the profit that comes from Christianity. It is also a dungeon of hell, for if the soul remain in the purity in which God created her, neither angel nor devil may rob her of her freedom. But sin confines it in hell. Sin is also an eternity of hell, for eternity is in the will, and were it not in the will, it would not be in the consciousness.
  Now, people say when they commit sin, that they do not intend to do so always; they intend to turn away from sin. That is just as though a man were to kill himself and suppose that he could make himself alive again by his own strength. That is, however, impossible; but to turn from sin by one's own power and come to God is still much more impossible. Therefore, whosoever is to turn from sin and come to God in His heavenly kingdom, must be drawn by the heavenly Father with the might of His divine power. The Father also draws the Son who comes to help us with His grace, by stimulating our free will to turn away from, and hate sin, which has drawn us aside from God, and from the immutable goodness of the Godhead. Then, if she is willing, He pours the gift of His grace into the soul, which renounces all her misery and sin, and all her works become living. Now, this grace springs from the centre of Godhead and the Father's heart, and flows perpetually, nor ever ceases, if the soul obeys His everlasting love. Therefore He saith in the prophets: "I have loved thee with an everlasting love, therefore with loving kindness have I drawn thee." Out of the overflow of His universal love He desires to draw all to Himself, and to His Only-begotten Son, and to the Holy Ghost in the joy of the heavenly kingdom. Now, we should know that before our Lord Jesus Christ was born, the Heavenly Father drew men with all His might for five thousand, two hundred years; and yet, as far as we know, brought not one into the heavenly kingdom. So, when the Son saw that the Father had thus strongly drawn men and even wearied Himself, and yet not succeeded, He said to the Father: "I will draw them with the cords of a man." It was as though He said, "I see well, Father, that Thou with all Thy might, canst not succeed, therefore will I myself draw them with the cords of a man."

Liber 111 - The Book of Wisdom - LIBER ALEPH VEL CXI, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
   Christianity, and the Organisation of Labour, and the Freedom of Woman;
   who by Nietzsche declared the Principle at the Root of the World-War?

Liber 46 - The Key of the Mysteries, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
   feature in Christianity which has not been taken bodily from the
   worship of Isis, or of Mithras, or of Bacchus, or of Adonis, or of
  --
   Christianity for disturbing the peace of Paganism. "Or," indicates that
   Christianity is but syncretic-eclectic Paganism, and defends it on this
   ground. --- O.M.>> And the universal church, is it any other thing than
  --
   Adam, and Christianity, like the first days of man in the earthly
   paradise, has been only an aspiration and a widowhood.
  --
     Christianity must needs produce anti- Christianity.
     Antichrist is the shadow, the foil, the proof of Christ.
  --
   over ferocity by pardon, that is the secret of Christianity, and it is
   that of eternal victory.
  --
   Christianity is the fruit of the meditations of all the sages of the
   East, who live again in Jesus Christ.
  --
     Christianity is at present divided into two churches: the {58}
     civilizing church, and the savage church; the progressive church,
  --
   The fatherl and of Catholic Christianity is that of the sciences and of
   the fine arts; and the eternal Word of the Gospel, living and incarnate
  --
   Christianity.
   Our God is the God of Moses, unique, immaterial, infinite God, sole
  --
   In making humanity divine, Christianity has revealed the human
   divinity.
  --
   Moses was altogether qabalistic, that Christianity, in instituting a
   new dogma, has simply come nearer to the primitive sources of the
  --
   deceived and irritated Christianity lies at the bottom of
   Protestantism, from the sixteenth century to the eighteenth! Human
  --
   The ancient fathers of Christianity counted an eighth deadly sin: it
   was Sorrow.
  --
   and humanity. One will feel that Christianity only brought light and
   heat into the universal temple by causing to descend therein the spirit

Liber, #Liber Null, #Peter J Carroll, #Occultism
  Liber XV. (15) [] - Ecclesiae Gnosticae Catholicae Cannon Missae ::: Represents the original and true pre-Christian Christianity. Equinox XI (vol. iii, part 1) And Appendix VI of this book.
  Liber XVI. (16) [B] - Liber Turris vel Domus Dei. ::: An Instruction for attainment by the direct destruction of thoughts as they arise in the mind. Equinox VI, p. 9.
  --
  Liber DCCCLXXXVIII. (888) [] - The Gospel According to Saint Bernard Shaw ::: A complete study of the origins of Christianity. Unpublished.
  @Liber CMXIII. (913) [B] - Liber Viae Memoriae ::: Gives methods for attaining the magical memory, or memory of past lives, and an insight into the function of the Aspirant in this present life. Equinox VII, p. 105.

MoM References, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
  (1982). Vol. 2. From Gautama Buddha to the triumph of Christianity.
  (1985). Vol. 3. From Muhammad to the age of reforms.

Phaedo, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
  2. In former ages there was a customary rather than a reasoned belief in the immortality of the soul. It was based on the authority of the Church, on the necessity of such a belief to morality and the order of society, on the evidence of an historical fact, and also on analogies and figures of speech which filled up the void or gave an expression in words to a cherished instinct. The mass of mankind went on their way busy with the affairs of this life, hardly stopping to think about another. But in our own day the question has been reopened, and it is doubtful whether the belief which in the first ages of Christianity was the strongest motive of action can survive the conflict with a scientific age in which the rules of evidence are stricter and the mind has become more sensitive to criticism. It has faded into the distance by a natural process as it was removed further and further from the historical fact on which it has been supposed to rest. Arguments derived from material things such as the seed and the ear of corn or transitions in the life of animals from one state of being to another (the chrysalis and the butterfly) are not 'in pari materia' with arguments from the visible to the invisible, and are therefore felt to be no longer applicable. The evidence to the historical fact seems to be weaker than was once supposed: it is not consistent with itself, and is based upon documents which are of unknown origin. The immortality of man must be proved by other arguments than these if it is again to become a living belief. We must ask ourselves afresh why we still maintain it, and seek to discover a foundation for it in the nature of God and in the first principles of morality.
  3. At the outset of the discussion we may clear away a confusion. We certainly do not mean by the immortality of the soul the immortality of fame, which whether worth having or not can only be ascribed to a very select class of the whole race of mankind, and even the interest in these few is comparatively short-lived. To have been a benefactor to the world, whether in a higher or a lower sphere of life and thought, is a great thing: to have the reputation of being one, when men have passed out of the sphere of earthly praise or blame, is hardly worthy of consideration. The memory of a great man, so far from being immortal, is really limited to his own generation:so long as his friends or his disciples are alive, so long as his books continue to be read, so long as his political or military successes fill a page in the history of his country. The praises which are bestowed upon him at his death hardly last longer than the flowers which are strewed upon his coffin or the 'immortelles' which are laid upon his tomb. Literature makes the most of its heroes, but the true man is well aware that far from enjoying an immortality of fame, in a generation or two, or even in a much shorter time, he will be forgotten and the world will get on without him.

Sayings of Sri Ramakrishna (text), #Sayings of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  482. Every man should follow his own religion. A Christian should follow Christianity, and a
  Mohammedan Mohammedanism. For the Hindu, the ancient path, the path of the Aryan Rishis, is the
  --
  982. I had to practise the various religions once, Hinduism, Islam and Christianity, and I have walked the
  paths of the different sects of Hinduism again-the Sakta, the Vaishnava, the Vedantic and others. And I

Talks With Sri Aurobindo 1, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
  embraced Christianity that it began to decline in its substance. The King of
  Norway, about whom Longfellow wrote a poem, killed all the people who
  were not Christians and thus succeeded in establishing Christianity! The
  same happened to Mohammedanism where it succeeded and the followers of
  --
  much of Christianity is left in him. He has an independent mind.
  NIRODBARAN: Taggart was mainly responsible for crushing the movement, we
  --
  PURANI: But I thought Hitler and Ludendorf were trying to give up Christianity and go back to the old Norse religion.
  SRI AUROBINDO: That's because they found Christ inconvenient in many ways.
  --
  accept it in order to break it. Look, for instance, at Christianity. When it
  came, it was much oppressed, and afterwards it in its turn became oppressive. Never has there been so much oppression and persecution. I dare say
  --
  power. So the passive resistance of Christianity became in the end a movement of persecution. It is the vital mixture the mixture of the life-forces
  that comes in and corrupts the whole spiritual movement.
  --
  of humanity from Christianity and also from Buddhism. Both Vivekananda
  and Gandhi derive it from them. But I don't understand why they speak of
  --
  Catholic Christianity. The latest is St. Theresa of Lisieux.
  SATYENDRA: There are two Saint Theresas. One is the great and famous saint,
  --
  European continent to Christianity. They have also given the greatest Christian philosopher. They were like the Vedantins. They followed a discipline
  very similar to the Indian. They were first suppressed by the Roman emperors who suspected. they would help resistance to Roman rule, and afterwards by the Christian authorities themselves.

The Act of Creation text, #The Act of Creation, #Arthur Koestler, #Psychology
  Neoplatonists, and by the fundamentalist trend in Christianity from
  the Fathers to the Victorians; it postulates an absolute act of creation,
  --
  crude forms of Christianity. Maxwell's religious beliefs were con-
  ceived in symbolic, almost abstract, terms; they compared to Faraday's

The Coming Race Contents, #The Coming Race, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
  a horror of Christianity. For compassion
  gives indulgence to all the ugliness of the
  --
  establish it in fact. Christianity did not raise
  this problem of the greater synthesis, for the

The Dwellings of the Philosophers, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
  belong to Christianity, but also to the mosaic religion and to the primitive religion, which was
  that of the Patriarchs. For this reason this belief is found, albeit altered and disfigured, among
  --
  preserved in the first book of Moses (Gen. 2-3). "This fundamental dogma of Christianity",
  writes Abbot Foucher, "was not unknown in ancient times. People closer to the origin of the
  --
  replica of the cross, major emblem of Christianity and signature of the sacred Art. In fact, the
  92

the Eternal Wisdom, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
  25) Christianity says, "Love thy neighbour as thyself." And I say . "Recognise thyself in thy neighbour and that all men are in reality one and the same substance." ~ Schopenhauer
  26) And let this be our thought, "Our bodies are different, but we have one and the same heart." ~ Mahavagga

The Gospel According to Luke, #The Bible, #Anonymous, #Various
  St. Luke was a Syrian born in Antioch and one of the earliest converts to Christianity. Luke, well-educated in classical Greek and noted for his literary talent, wrote his Gospel and a sequel, the Acts of the Apostles, which follows the Gospel of John. Together the two works cover 60 years of the Life and Teachings of Jesus and the early Christian Church. Luke is unique in that he was the only Gentile to compose a New Testament Book. Luke was a physician (Colossians 4:10-14) and likely accompanied Paul on three of four missionary journeys as described in Acts (the "we" passages from Acts 16:1 to Acts 28:16).
  It is possible that the date of composition of Luke's Gospel was before 70 AD. According to the introduction of Acts, the Gospel of Luke was written first. It is noted that the Acts of the Apostles ends abruptly with St. Paul under house arrest around 62 AD, with no mention of his trial or his subsequent activities; he does not mention the Roman persecution of Christians in the mid 60s, nor the martyrdom of Peter and Paul, the leading figures in Acts. And there is no mention of the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD.

The Gospel According to Mark, #The Bible, #Anonymous, #Various
  Peter was especially fond of Mark, calling Mark his "son" (I Peter 5:13). In fact, post-Apostolic writers such as Papias of Hierapolis and others in the second century considered Peter a primary source of Mark's Gospel (Eusebius 2:15:1-2), as Mark was Peter's "interpreter." It is now thought the Gospel of St. Mark was written after St. Peter's martyrdom in 64 AD, but before the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in 70 AD. It is believed Mark composed his Gospel in Rome or Alexandria. From Rome, Mark went to Egypt and converted many to Christianity there, both in Alexandria and in the countryside. On his return several years later, he was captured and martyred. St. Mark is called the founder and first martyr of the Church of Alexandria by the Coptic Churches of Egypt.
  The concise, narrative Gospel of St. Mark is primarily directed to the Gentiles. The opening sentence declares Jesus Christ the Son of God, and God the Father and the Holy Spirit appear as early as 1:9-11, during the Baptism of Jesus in the River Jordan by John the Baptist! The human emotional side of Jesus is perhaps best portrayed in the Gospel of Mark. Fulfilling the prophecy of Daniel 2:44-45, Jesus announces the Kingdom of God in Mark 1:15: "This is the time of fulfillment. The Kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe in the Gospel."

The Gospel According to Matthew, #The Bible, #Anonymous, #Various
  The Gospel of Matthew is especially important for it is one of the two Gospels originally written by an Apostle (the other being the Gospel of John). The Gospel of Matthew was possibly written in Antioch, Syria, an early home of Christianity. Indeed, the Acts of the Apostles (11:26) recorded that the followers of Jesus were first called Christians in Antioch.
  Matthew's Gospel is directed to an audience steeped in Hebrew tradition. The Gospel of Matthew stressed that Jesus is the Christ (1:16, 16:16) foretold in Hebrew Scripture, our Old Testament, and that the Kingdom of the Lord is the Kingdom of Heaven. For example, Jesus fulfills the prophecies of Isaiah 7:14, that the Lord is to be born of a virgin; and Micah 5:2, that the Lord is to be born in Bethlehem. He was named "Jesus because he will save his people from their sins" (Matthew 1:21). Yeshua, his very name in Hebrew, means "the Lord Saves." Jesus grew up in Nazareth of Galilee and was called a Nazarene (2:23). Jesus calls himself the Son of Man thirty times, fulfilling the destiny of the Messianic figure in Daniel 7:13. He is called the Son of David nine times in the Gospel of Matthew. Just as the twelve sons of Jacob were the origin of the twelve tribes of Israel, Jesus as the Christ chose Twelve Apostles to inaugurate the Kingdom of Heaven.
  --
  The following Scripture is the Revised Standard Version of the King James Bible, which has been accepted and approved by all of Christianity. Permission to publish Scripture quotations from the Revised Standard Version of the Holy Bible (copyright 1946, 1952, and 1971), has been granted by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
  --- THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO MATTHEW

The Pilgrims Progress, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
  {207} CHR. You did well to talk so plainly to him as you did; there is but little of this faithful dealing with men now-a-days, and that makes religion to stink so in the nostrils of many, as it doth; for they are these talkative fools whose religion is only in word, and are debauched and vain in their conversation, that (being so much admitted into the fellowship of the godly) do puzzle the world, blemish Christianity, and grieve the sincere. I wish that all men would deal with such as you have done: then should they either be made more conformable to religion, or the company of saints would be too hot for them. Then did Faithful say,
  How Talkative at first lifts up his plumes!
  --
  ENVY. My Lord, this man, notwithstanding his plausible name, is one of the vilest men in our country. He neither regardeth prince nor people, law nor custom; but doth all that he can to possess all men with certain of his disloyal notions, which he in the general calls principles of faith and holiness. And, in particular, I heard him once myself affirm that Christianity and the customs of our town of Vanity were diametrically opposite, and could not be reconciled. By which saying, my Lord, he doth at once not only condemn all our laudable doings, but us in the doing of them.
  JUDGE. Then did the Judge say to him, Hast thou any more to say?
  --
  FAITH. 1. I say, then, in answer to what Mr. Envy hath spoken, I never said aught but this, That what rule, or laws, or customs, or people, were flat against the Word of God, are diametrically opposite to Christianity. If I have said amiss in this, convince me of my error, and I am ready here before you to make my recantation.
  {235} 2. As to the second, to wit, Mr. Superstition, and his charge against me, I said only this, That in the worship of God there is required a Divine faith; but there can be no Divine faith without a Divine revelation of the will of God. Therefore, whatever is thrust into the worship of God that is not agreeable to Divine revelation, cannot be done but by a human faith, which faith will not be profitable to eternal life.

WORDNET



--- Overview of noun christianity

The noun christianity has 2 senses (first 1 from tagged texts)
                
1. (10) Christianity, Christian religion ::: (a monotheistic system of beliefs and practices based on the Old Testament and the teachings of Jesus as embodied in the New Testament and emphasizing the role of Jesus as savior)
2. Christendom, Christianity ::: (the collective body of Christians throughout the world and history (found predominantly in Europe and the Americas and Australia); "for a thousand years the Roman Catholic Church was the principal church of Christendom")


--- Synonyms/Hypernyms (Ordered by Estimated Frequency) of noun christianity

2 senses of christianity                        

Sense 1
Christianity, Christian religion
   => religion, faith, religious belief
     => belief
       => content, cognitive content, mental object
         => cognition, knowledge, noesis
           => psychological feature
             => abstraction, abstract entity
               => entity
     => theological virtue, supernatural virtue
       => cardinal virtue
         => virtue
           => good, goodness
             => morality
               => quality
                 => attribute
                   => abstraction, abstract entity
                     => entity

Sense 2
Christendom, Christianity
   => body
     => social group
       => group, grouping
         => abstraction, abstract entity
           => entity


--- Hyponyms of noun christianity

1 of 2 senses of christianity                    

Sense 1
Christianity, Christian religion
   => Adventism, Second Adventism
   => Catholicism, Catholicity
   => Albigensianism, Catharism
   => Donatism
   => Protestantism
   => Tractarianism, Puseyism


--- Synonyms/Hypernyms (Ordered by Estimated Frequency) of noun christianity

2 senses of christianity                        

Sense 1
Christianity, Christian religion
   => religion, faith, religious belief

Sense 2
Christendom, Christianity
   => body




--- Coordinate Terms (sisters) of noun christianity

2 senses of christianity                        

Sense 1
Christianity, Christian religion
  -> religion, faith, religious belief
   => apophatism
   => cataphatism
   => doctrine of analogy, analogy
   => cult, cultus, religious cult
   => cult
   => ecclesiasticism
   => mysticism, religious mysticism
   => nature worship
   => revealed religion
   => theism
   => paganism, pagan religion, heathenism
   => Christianity, Christian religion
   => Hinduism, Hindooism
   => Brahmanism, Brahminism
   => Jainism
   => Sikhism
   => Buddhism
   => Taoism, Hsuan Chiao
   => Shinto, Shintoism
   => Manichaeism, Manichaeanism
   => Mithraism, Mithraicism
   => Zoroastrianism, Mazdaism
   => Bahaism
   => shamanism, Asian shamanism
   => shamanism
   => Wicca

Sense 2
Christendom, Christianity
  -> body
   => public
   => Christendom, Christianity
   => church
   => Sacred College, College of Cardinals
   => administration, governance, governing body, establishment, brass, organization, organisation
   => corps
   => constituency
   => electoral college
   => school
   => college
   => university
   => staff, faculty
   => representation
   => colony, settlement
   => ulema, ulama
   => leadership, leaders
   => militia
   => membership, rank
   => occupational group, vocation
   => opposition
   => immigration
   => inspectorate
   => jury
   => panel
   => panel, venire
   => registration, enrollment
   => vote
   => diaspora




--- Grep of noun christianity
christianity



IN WEBGEN [10000/2951]

Wikipedia - Ablution in Christianity
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Wikipedia - A History of Christianity (Johnson book) -- 1976 book by Paul Johnson
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Wikipedia - Christianity in Bolivia
Wikipedia - Christianity in Bosnia and Herzegovina
Wikipedia - Christianity in Botswana
Wikipedia - Christianity in Brazil
Wikipedia - Christianity in Brunei
Wikipedia - Christianity in Bulgaria
Wikipedia - Christianity in Burkina Faso
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Wikipedia - Christianity in Cambodia
Wikipedia - Christianity in Cameroon
Wikipedia - Christianity in Canada
Wikipedia - Christianity in Cape Verde
Wikipedia - Christianity in Chad
Wikipedia - Christianity in Chile
Wikipedia - Christianity in China
Wikipedia - Christianity in Colombia
Wikipedia - Christianity in Cornwall -- History of Christianity
Wikipedia - Christianity in Costa Rica
Wikipedia - Christianity in Croatia
Wikipedia - Christianity in Cuba
Wikipedia - Christianity in Cyprus
Wikipedia - Christianity in Denmark
Wikipedia - Christianity in Djibouti
Wikipedia - Christianity in Dominica
Wikipedia - Christianity in East Timor
Wikipedia - Christianity in Ecuador
Wikipedia - Christianity in Egypt
Wikipedia - Christianity in El Salvador
Wikipedia - Christianity in England
Wikipedia - Christianity in Equatorial Guinea
Wikipedia - Christianity in Eritrea
Wikipedia - Christianity in Estonia
Wikipedia - Christianity in Eswatini
Wikipedia - Christianity in Ethiopia
Wikipedia - Christianity in Europe
Wikipedia - Christianity in Fiji
Wikipedia - Christianity in Finland
Wikipedia - Christianity in France -- Aspect of religious life in France
Wikipedia - Christianity in Gabon
Wikipedia - Christianity in Gaul
Wikipedia - Christianity in Georgia (country)
Wikipedia - Christianity in Germany
Wikipedia - Christianity in Ghana -- Religion in Ghana
Wikipedia - Christianity in Greece
Wikipedia - Christianity in Grenada
Wikipedia - Christianity in Guatemala
Wikipedia - Christianity in Guinea-Bissau
Wikipedia - Christianity in Guinea
Wikipedia - Christianity in Guyana
Wikipedia - Christianity in Haiti
Wikipedia - Christianity in Honduras
Wikipedia - Christianity in Hong Kong
Wikipedia - Christianity in Hungary
Wikipedia - Christianity in Iceland
Wikipedia - Christianity in India -- Type of religion in India
Wikipedia - Christianity in Indonesia
Wikipedia - Christianity in Iran
Wikipedia - Christianity in Iraq
Wikipedia - Christianity in Ireland -- Largest religion in Ireland, Roman Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox and others
Wikipedia - Christianity in Israel -- Christianity in Israel
Wikipedia - Christianity in Italy
Wikipedia - Christianity in Ivory Coast
Wikipedia - Christianity in Jamaica
Wikipedia - Christianity in Japan
Wikipedia - Christianity in Jersey
Wikipedia - Christianity in Jordan
Wikipedia - Christianity in Kazakhstan
Wikipedia - Christianity in Kenya
Wikipedia - Christianity in Kerala
Wikipedia - Christianity in Kiribati
Wikipedia - Christianity in Korea -- Religious community
Wikipedia - Christianity in Kosovo
Wikipedia - Christianity in Kuwait
Wikipedia - Christianity in Kyrgyzstan
Wikipedia - Christianity in Laos
Wikipedia - Christianity in late antiquity -- Christianity in the Roman Empire (c.313 - c.476)
Wikipedia - Christianity in Latvia
Wikipedia - Christianity in Lebanon
Wikipedia - Christianity in Lesotho
Wikipedia - Christianity in Liberia
Wikipedia - Christianity in Libya
Wikipedia - Christianity in Liechtenstein
Wikipedia - Christianity in Lithuania
Wikipedia - Christianity in Luxembourg
Wikipedia - Christianity in Macau
Wikipedia - Christianity in Madagascar -- Christianity in Madagascar
Wikipedia - Christianity in Malawi
Wikipedia - Christianity in Malaysia
Wikipedia - Christianity in Mali
Wikipedia - Christianity in Malta -- Worship of Christ in Malta
Wikipedia - Christianity in Mauritania
Wikipedia - Christianity in Mauritius
Wikipedia - Christianity in Meghalaya -- Christianity in Meghalaya
Wikipedia - Christianity in Merovingian Gaul
Wikipedia - Christianity in Mexico
Wikipedia - Christianity in Moldova
Wikipedia - Christianity in Monaco
Wikipedia - Christianity in Mongolia
Wikipedia - Christianity in Montenegro
Wikipedia - Christianity in Morocco
Wikipedia - Christianity in Mozambique
Wikipedia - Christianity in Myanmar
Wikipedia - Christianity in Nagaland
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Wikipedia - Christianity in Nauru
Wikipedia - Christianity in Nepal
Wikipedia - Christianity in New Zealand
Wikipedia - Christianity in Nicaragua
Wikipedia - Christianity in Nigeria
Wikipedia - Christianity in Niger
Wikipedia - Christianity in Northern Ireland
Wikipedia - Christianity in North Korea
Wikipedia - Christianity in North Macedonia
Wikipedia - Christianity in Norway
Wikipedia - Christianity in Oman
Wikipedia - Christianity in Pakistan
Wikipedia - Christianity in Palau
Wikipedia - Christianity in Palestine
Wikipedia - Christianity in Panama
Wikipedia - Christianity in Papua New Guinea
Wikipedia - Christianity in Paraguay
Wikipedia - Christianity in Peru
Wikipedia - Christianity in Poland
Wikipedia - Christianity in Portugal
Wikipedia - Christianity in Qatar
Wikipedia - Christianity in Romania
Wikipedia - Christianity in Russia
Wikipedia - Christianity in Rwanda
Wikipedia - Christianity in Saint Kitts and Nevis
Wikipedia - Christianity in Saint Lucia
Wikipedia - Christianity in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
Wikipedia - Christianity in Samoa
Wikipedia - Christianity in San Marino
Wikipedia - Christianity in Saudi Arabia
Wikipedia - Christianity in Scotland
Wikipedia - Christianity in Senegal
Wikipedia - Christianity in Serbia
Wikipedia - Christianity in Seychelles
Wikipedia - Christianity in Sierra Leone
Wikipedia - Christianity in Singapore
Wikipedia - Christianity in Slovakia
Wikipedia - Christianity in Slovenia
Wikipedia - Christianity in Solomon Islands
Wikipedia - Christianity in Somalia
Wikipedia - Christianity in South Africa
Wikipedia - Christianity in South Korea
Wikipedia - Christianity in South Sudan
Wikipedia - Christianity in Spain
Wikipedia - Christianity in Sri Lanka
Wikipedia - Christianity in Sudan
Wikipedia - Christianity in Suriname
Wikipedia - Christianity in Sweden
Wikipedia - Christianity in Switzerland
Wikipedia - Christianity in Syria
Wikipedia - Christianity in Taiwan
Wikipedia - Christianity in Tajikistan
Wikipedia - Christianity in Tanzania
Wikipedia - Christianity in Thailand
Wikipedia - Christianity in the 10th century
Wikipedia - Christianity in the 11th century
Wikipedia - Christianity in the 12th century
Wikipedia - Christianity in the 13th century
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Wikipedia - Christianity in the 15th century
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Wikipedia - Christianity in the 7th century
Wikipedia - Christianity in the 8th century
Wikipedia - Christianity in the 9th century
Wikipedia - Christianity in the ante-Nicene period -- period following the Apostolic Age to the First Council of Nicaea in 325
Wikipedia - Christianity in the Bahamas
Wikipedia - Christianity in the Central African Republic
Wikipedia - Christianity in the Comoros
Wikipedia - Christianity in the Czech Republic
Wikipedia - Christianity in the Democratic Republic of the Congo
Wikipedia - Christianity in the Dominican Republic
Wikipedia - Christianity in the Federated States of Micronesia
Wikipedia - Christianity in the Gambia
Wikipedia - Christianity in the Maldives
Wikipedia - Christianity in the Marshall Islands
Wikipedia - Christianity in the Middle Ages
Wikipedia - Christianity in the Middle East -- Ethnic group
Wikipedia - Christianity in the modern era
Wikipedia - Christianity in the Netherlands
Wikipedia - Christianity in the Ottoman Empire
Wikipedia - Christianity in the Philippines
Wikipedia - Christianity in the Republic of Ireland
Wikipedia - Christianity in the Republic of the Congo
Wikipedia - Christianity in the United Arab Emirates
Wikipedia - Christianity in the United Kingdom
Wikipedia - Christianity in the United States -- Most adhered to religion in the United States
Wikipedia - Christianity in Togo
Wikipedia - Christianity in Tonga
Wikipedia - Christianity in Trinidad and Tobago
Wikipedia - Christianity in Tunisia
Wikipedia - Christianity in Turkey -- Overview of Christianity and churches in Turkey
Wikipedia - Christianity in Turkmenistan
Wikipedia - Christianity in Tuvalu
Wikipedia - Christianity in Uganda
Wikipedia - Christianity in Ukraine
Wikipedia - Christianity in Uruguay
Wikipedia - Christianity in Uzbekistan
Wikipedia - Christianity in Vanuatu
Wikipedia - Christianity in Vatican City
Wikipedia - Christianity in Venezuela
Wikipedia - Christianity in Vietnam
Wikipedia - Christianity in Wales
Wikipedia - Christianity in Yemen
Wikipedia - Christianity in Zambia
Wikipedia - Christianity in Zimbabwe
Wikipedia - Christianity Magazine (Churches of Christ) -- Religious magazine
Wikipedia - Christianity Not Mysterious -- 1696 book by John Toland
Wikipedia - Christianity portals
Wikipedia - Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality -- 1980 book by John Boswell
Wikipedia - Christianity Today
Wikipedia - Christianity Unveiled
Wikipedia - Christianity
Wikipedia - Christianization of Bulgaria -- Process by which 9th-century medieval Bulgaria converted to Christianity
Wikipedia - Christianization of Iberia -- Spread of Christianity in Caucasian Iberia
Wikipedia - Christianization -- Process by which Christianity spreads in a society or culture
Wikipedia - Christian mysticism -- Mystical practices and theory within Christianity
Wikipedia - Christian mythology -- Body of myths associated with Christianity
Wikipedia - Christian nationalism -- Christianity-affiliated religious nationalism
Wikipedia - Christian perfection -- Various teachings within Christianity that describe the process of achieving spiritual maturity or perfection
Wikipedia - Christian psychology -- Aspect of psychology adhering to the religion of Christianity
Wikipedia - Christian state -- State which endorses Christianity as the state religion
Wikipedia - Christians -- People who adhere to Christianity
Wikipedia - Christian symbolism -- Use of symbols, including archetypes, acts, artwork or events, by Christianity
Wikipedia - Christian tradition -- Practices or beliefs associated with Christianity
Wikipedia - Christian views on marriage -- Perspective of Christianity regarding marriage
Wikipedia - Christmas -- Holiday originating in Christianity, usually December 25
Wikipedia - Christ the King -- Title of Jesus in Christianity
Wikipedia - Christus Victor -- Book regarding theories of atonement in Christianity
Wikipedia - Church of the Holy Sepulchre -- Church in Jerusalem, Israel, containing the two holiest sites in Christianity
Wikipedia - Circumcision controversy in early Christianity
Wikipedia - Communion under both kinds -- In Christianity, reception of both the consecrated bread and wine of the Eucharist
Wikipedia - Comparison of Buddhism and Christianity
Wikipedia - Constantine I and Christianity
Wikipedia - Constantine the Great and Christianity -- Constantine and Christianity
Wikipedia - Contemplation (Christianity)
Wikipedia - Conversion to Christianity -- Process of religious conversion in which a previously non-Christian person converts to Christianity
Wikipedia - Coptic Christianity
Wikipedia - Criticism of Christianity
Wikipedia - Crosier -- Ceremonial staff in Christianity
Wikipedia - Crypto-Christianity -- Secret practice of Christianity
Wikipedia - Dabru Emet -- Jewish document concerning the relationship between Christianity and Judaism from the year 2000
Wikipedia - Dana L. Robert -- Historian of Christianity and a missiologist
Wikipedia - Dean (Christianity) -- Head of a chapter of canons of a collegiate church or cathedral church
Wikipedia - Decision theology -- The belief by some evangelical denominations of Christianity that individuals must make a conscious decision to "accept" and follow Christ
Wikipedia - Decline of Christianity in various countries -- Phenomenon of decreasing Christian affiliation in the Western world
Wikipedia - Decline of Christianity
Wikipedia - Devil in Christianity -- The Devil in Christianity
Wikipedia - Disciple (Christianity) -- Dedicated follower of Jesus
Wikipedia - Early centers of Christianity -- From the 1st century to the First Council of Nicaea in 325
Wikipedia - Early Christianity
Wikipedia - Eastern Christianity -- Christian traditions originating from Greek- and Syriac-speaking populations
Wikipedia - Eastern Orthodox Christianity in North America
Wikipedia - Eastern Orthodox Christianity
Wikipedia - Eastern Protestant Christianity -- Protestant Christian denominations that developed outside of the West in the late 1800s
Wikipedia - Economy (Eastern Christianity)
Wikipedia - Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople -- Autocephalous church of Eastern Orthodox Christianity
Wikipedia - Elder (Christianity)
Wikipedia - Election (Christianity)
Wikipedia - Emanation (Eastern Orthodox Christianity)
Wikipedia - Encyclopedia of Christianity
Wikipedia - Epanokalimavkion -- Item of clerical clothing in Orthodox Christianity
Wikipedia - Esoteric Christianity -- Christian theology
Wikipedia - Essays and Reviews -- 1860 broad-church volume of seven essays on Christianity
Wikipedia - Eternal life (Christianity)
Wikipedia - Ethiopian Christianity
Wikipedia - Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity
Wikipedia - Eusebius -- 2nd/3rd century Greek historian of Christianity, exegete and Christian polemicist
Wikipedia - Exorcism in Christianity -- Practice of casting out one or more demons from a person
Wikipedia - Ex-voto -- Votive offering to a saint or to a divinity in Christianity
Wikipedia - Faith in Christianity
Wikipedia - Filioque -- Latin term added to the original Nicene Creed, and which has been the subject of great controversy between Eastern and Western Christianity
Wikipedia - Five solae -- Principles of Protestant Christianity
Wikipedia - Folk Christianity
Wikipedia - Fundamentalist Christianity
Wikipedia - Futurism (Christianity) -- Christian eschatological view
Wikipedia - Galilean faith -- ancient term used to refer to Christianity
Wikipedia - General council (Christianity)
Wikipedia - Genesis creation narrative -- Creation myth of both Judaism and Christianity
Wikipedia - Germanic Christianity
Wikipedia - Gilles Quispel -- Dutch theologian and historian of Christianity and Gnosticism
Wikipedia - Glossary of Christianity -- Wikipedia glossary
Wikipedia - Gnostic Christianity
Wikipedia - God (Christianity)
Wikipedia - Godhead in Christianity
Wikipedia - God in Christianity
Wikipedia - God-man (Christianity)
Wikipedia - God the Father -- In Christianity, the first of the three persons of the Trinity, who begets the Son and from whom the Holy Spirit proceeds
Wikipedia - Good news (Christianity)
Wikipedia - Grace (Christianity)
Wikipedia - Grace in Christianity
Wikipedia - Great Church -- A concept in the historiography of early Christianity
Wikipedia - Greek Orthodox Christianity in Lebanon
Wikipedia - Hades in Christianity
Wikipedia - Hakan TaM-EM-^_tan and Turan Topal -- Turkish converts from Islam to Christianity
Wikipedia - Half-Way Covenant -- a historical form of church membership in American Christianity
Wikipedia - Heaven in Christianity
Wikipedia - Hellenistic philosophy and Christianity
Wikipedia - Hell in Christianity
Wikipedia - Helmut Koester -- German-born American scholar of the New Testament and early Christianity (1926-2016)
Wikipedia - Heresy in Christianity in the modern era -- Overview and list of trials since 1893
Wikipedia - Heresy in Christianity -- Formal denial or doubt of a core doctrine of the Christian faith
Wikipedia - Hieromonk -- In Eastern Christianity, a monk who is also a priest
Wikipedia - Hinduism and Christianity
Wikipedia - Historicism (Christianity) -- Method of interpretation of biblical prophecies which associates symbols with historical persons, nations or events.
Wikipedia - Historiography of early Christianity
Wikipedia - History of Christianity during the Middle Ages
Wikipedia - History of Christianity in Britain
Wikipedia - History of Christianity in Hungary
Wikipedia - History of Christianity in Ireland -- Aspect of history
Wikipedia - History of Christianity in Mizoram -- Christianity in Mizoram
Wikipedia - History of Christianity in Sussex
Wikipedia - History of Christianity in Ukraine
Wikipedia - History of Christianity -- Development and growth of the Christian religion
Wikipedia - History of Eastern Christianity
Wikipedia - Holy Spirit (Christianity)
Wikipedia - Holy Spirit in Christianity -- The third person of the Trinity in trinitarian Christianity
Wikipedia - Holy water in Eastern Christianity
Wikipedia - Hygiene in Christianity
Wikipedia - Icon -- Religious work of art in Eastern Christianity
Wikipedia - Idolatry and Christianity
Wikipedia - Incarnation (Christianity) -- Belief that Jesus was made flesh by being conceived in the womb of a woman
Wikipedia - Independent Network Charismatic Christianity -- Movement within evangelical charismatic Christianity
Wikipedia - Index of Christianity-related articles -- Wikipedia index
Wikipedia - Index of Eastern Christianity-related articles -- Wikipedia index
Wikipedia - Interpretatio Christiana -- Adaptation of non-Christian elements of culture or historical facts to the worldview of Christianity.
Wikipedia - Irish Evangelical Society -- Organisation promoting Protestant Christianity in Ireland
Wikipedia - Ishmael -- Hebrew Prophet of Judaism, Christianity and Islam
Wikipedia - J. B. Lightfoot -- British bishop and scholar of early Christianity (1828-1889)
Wikipedia - Jerusalem in Christianity
Wikipedia - Jesus in Christianity -- Jesus in Christianity
Wikipedia - Jesus is Lord -- Creed or statement of faith popular in Christianity
Wikipedia - Jesus -- Central figure of Christianity
Wikipedia - Jewish Christian -- Members of the Jewish movement that later became Christianity
Wikipedia - Journal of Psychology and Christianity
Wikipedia - Jubilee (Christianity)
Wikipedia - Judeo-Christian -- Term grouping Judaism and Christianity together
Wikipedia - Kingdom of God (Christianity) -- Phrase in the New Testament
Wikipedia - Korean Christianity
Wikipedia - Kurdish Christians -- Kurds who follow Christianity
Wikipedia - Latin Christianity
Wikipedia - Liberal Christianity -- Movement that interprets and reforms Christian teaching by taking into consideration modern knowledge, science and ethics
Wikipedia - Libertarian Christianity -- Belief that governments exist to protect the natural rights of individuals, and only to protect natural rights;
Wikipedia - List of converts to Christianity from Islam -- Wikimedia list article: About 10.2 million Muslim converts to Christianity in 2015
Wikipedia - List of converts to Christianity from Judaism
Wikipedia - List of converts to Christianity -- Wikimedia list article
Wikipedia - List of converts to Islam from Christianity -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of Muslim Christianity scholars -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of schisms in Christianity
Wikipedia - Logos (Christianity) -- Name or title of Jesus Christ
Wikipedia - Lord's Day -- In Christianity, sunday as the principal day of communal worship; the weekly memorial of the resurrection of Jesus Christ
Wikipedia - Love of God in Christianity
Wikipedia - Malanka -- Slavic folk Christianity
Wikipedia - Marriage in Christianity
Wikipedia - Martinism -- Form of Christian mysticism and esoteric Christianity
Wikipedia - Maurice Casey -- British scholar of New Testament and early Christianity (1942-2014)
Wikipedia - Mere Christianity
Wikipedia - Merit (Christianity)
Wikipedia - Messianic Judaism -- New religious movement that combines Christianity, Judaism and belief in Jesus as saviour
Wikipedia - Methodism -- Group of historically related denominations of Protestant Christianity
Wikipedia - Minister (Christianity)
Wikipedia - Minor exorcism in Christianity
Wikipedia - Mission (Christianity)
Wikipedia - Molko v. Holy Spirit Ass'n for the Unification of World Christianity -- legal case heard before the California Supreme Court
Wikipedia - Muhammad's views on Christians -- The views of the prophet of Islam Muhammad on Christians and Christianity
Wikipedia - Multiculturalism and Christianity -- Multiculturalism and Christianity
Wikipedia - Muscular Christianity -- Religious and social movement
Wikipedia - Name day -- Tradition in Christianity
Wikipedia - Names of God in Christianity -- Names and titles that refer to the Christian God
Wikipedia - Neo-charismatic movement -- Movement within evangelical Protestant Christianity
Wikipedia - Neoplatonism and Christianity
Wikipedia - New Earth (Christianity)
Wikipedia - Nicene Christianity -- Set of Christian doctrinal traditions reflecting the Nicene Creed
Wikipedia - Nondenominational Christianity -- Churches which distance themselves from the confessionalism or creedalism of other Christian communities
Wikipedia - Nontrinitarianism -- A form of Christianity that rejects the mainstream Christian doctrine of the Trinity
Wikipedia - Novena -- Devotional prayer in Christianity lasting nine days or weeks
Wikipedia - Ordinance (Christianity) -- Religious rituals in Protestantism
Wikipedia - Oriental Orthodox Churches -- Branch of Eastern Christianity
Wikipedia - Origenist Crises -- Two major theological controversies in early Christianity involving the teachings of followers of the third-century theologian Origen of Alexandria
Wikipedia - Origins of Christianity
Wikipedia - Orthodox Christianity
Wikipedia - Outline of Christianity
Wikipedia - Panagia -- Title of Mary in Eastern Catholicism and Orthodox Christianity
Wikipedia - Pandeism and Christianity
Wikipedia - Pan-Orthodox Council -- Synod (19-26 June 2016) of set representative bishops of the universally recognised autocephalous local churches of Eastern Orthodox Christianity held in Kolymvari, Crete
Wikipedia - Passion (Christianity)
Wikipedia - Patriarch -- Highest-ranking bishop in Christianity
Wikipedia - Pauline Allen -- Australian scholar of early Christianity
Wikipedia - Pauline Christianity -- Beliefs espoused by Paul the Apostle
Wikipedia - Pentecostalism -- Renewal movement within Protestant Christianity
Wikipedia - Philip the Arab and Christianity -- analysis of the religious beliefs of Roman Emperor Philip the Arab
Wikipedia - Pliny the Younger on Christians -- Pliny the Younger's views on Christianity
Wikipedia - Pneumatology (Christianity)
Wikipedia - Polygamy in Christianity -- Polygamy in Christianity
Wikipedia - Portal:Christianity/DYK Archive
Wikipedia - Portal:Christianity/Indices
Wikipedia - Portal:Christianity/Projects
Wikipedia - Portal:Christianity/Selected article
Wikipedia - Portal:Christianity/Selected biography
Wikipedia - Portal:Christianity/Selected picture
Wikipedia - Portal:Christianity/Selected scripture
Wikipedia - Portal:Christianity
Wikipedia - Portal:Evangelical Christianity
Wikipedia - Portal talk:Christianity
Wikipedia - Positive Christianity -- Movement within Nazi Germany which mixed ideas of racial purity and Nazi ideology with elements of Christianity
Wikipedia - Postchristianity -- Loss of the primacy of the Christian worldview in political affairs, especially in the Western world
Wikipedia - Postmodern Christianity
Wikipedia - Practice in Christianity
Wikipedia - Predestination in Christianity
Wikipedia - Presbyterianism -- Branch of Protestant Christianity in which the church is governed by presbyters (elders)
Wikipedia - Progressive Christianity -- Post-modern theological approach, not necessarily synonymous with progressive politics
Wikipedia - Progressive revelation (Christianity) -- Doctrine in Christianity that the sections of the Bible that were written later contain a fuller revelation of God than the earlier sections
Wikipedia - Prophets of Christianity
Wikipedia - Protestant Christianity
Wikipedia - Protestant Eastern Christianity
Wikipedia - Protestantism in the United States -- Broad classification of American Christianity encompassing many denominations
Wikipedia - Purgatory -- Religious belief of Christianity, primarily Catholicism
Wikipedia - Redeemer (Christianity) -- Title of Jesus
Wikipedia - Red-Letter Christians -- A non-denominational movement within Christianity
Wikipedia - Religious (Western Christianity) -- Member of a religious order
Wikipedia - Repentance (Christianity)
Wikipedia - Restorationism -- Belief that Christianity should return to the form of the early apostolic church
Wikipedia - Rise of Christianity
Wikipedia - Rogation days -- Days of prayer and fasting in Western Christianity
Wikipedia - Role of Christianity in civilization
Wikipedia - Sabbatarianism -- View within Christianity that advocates the observation of the Sabbath
Wikipedia - Saint (Christianity)
Wikipedia - Salvation (Christianity)
Wikipedia - Salvation in Christianity
Wikipedia - Second death -- Eschatological concept in Judaism and Christianity
Wikipedia - Sin in Christianity
Wikipedia - Skoptsy -- Sect within the larger Spiritual Christianity movement in the Russian Empire, best known for practicing castration of men and the mastectomy of women
Wikipedia - Society for the Restoration of Orthodox Christianity in the Caucasus -- Russian society created to spread Christianity in the Caucasus
Wikipedia - Son of God (Christianity) -- Christian term
Wikipedia - Son of man (Christianity) -- Expression in the sayings of Jesus in Christian writings
Wikipedia - Sovereignty of God in Christianity
Wikipedia - Spiritual body -- In Christianity, a concept mentioned in the New Testament (1 Corinthians 15:44)
Wikipedia - Spiritual Christianity -- Russian religious movement, non-Orthodox
Wikipedia - Split of Christianity and Judaism
Wikipedia - State church of the Roman Empire -- a form of Christianity in the Roman Empire
Wikipedia - Superior General (Christianity) -- Leader of a religious institute in the Roman Catholic Church
Wikipedia - Syriac chant -- Liturgical chant used in Syriac Christianity
Wikipedia - Syriac Christianity
Wikipedia - Televangelism -- Use of media, specifically radio and television, to communicate Christianity
Wikipedia - Template talk:Christianity-bio-book-stub
Wikipedia - Template talk:Christianity by country
Wikipedia - Template talk:Christianity footer
Wikipedia - Template talk:Christianity in China
Wikipedia - Template talk:Christianity in Europe
Wikipedia - Template talk:Christianity in Hawaii
Wikipedia - Template talk:Christianity in India sidebar
Wikipedia - Template talk:Christianity in Kerala
Wikipedia - Template talk:Christianity sidebar
Wikipedia - Template talk:Eastern Christianity footer
Wikipedia - Template talk:History of Christianity
Wikipedia - Template talk:Patriarchates in Christianity
Wikipedia - Template talk:Syriac Christianity footer
Wikipedia - Template talk:Western Christianity footer
Wikipedia - Template talk:WikiProject Christianity
Wikipedia - The Blackwell Companion to Science and Christianity
Wikipedia - The Essence of Christianity
Wikipedia - The Fountain of Christianity -- Book written by Mirza Ghulam Ahmad
Wikipedia - The Good Shepherd (Christianity)
Wikipedia - Theotokos -- Title given to Mary in Eastern Christianity
Wikipedia - Third Heaven -- Division of Heaven in Judaism, Christianity and Islam
Wikipedia - Thuam Hang -- Burmese convert to Christianity
Wikipedia - Timeline of Christianity
Wikipedia - Tree of virtues and tree of vices -- Diagrams of the relationship between virtues and vices in medieval Christianity
Wikipedia - Trinitarian Christianity
Wikipedia - True Orthodoxy -- Movement within Orthodox Christianity that has been separated from the mainstream Eastern Orthodox Church over issues of ecumenism and calendar reform since the 1920s
Wikipedia - Unitarianism -- Christian theological movement which believes that the God in Christianity is one person, as opposed to a Trinity
Wikipedia - Unity School of Christianity
Wikipedia - Universalism (Christianity)
Wikipedia - Visitation (Christianity) -- Christian story and feast of Mary visiting Elizabeth
Wikipedia - Western Christianity -- Religious category composed of the Latin Church, Protestantism, and their derivatives
Wikipedia - Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Christianity
Wikipedia - Wikipedia:WikiProject Charismatic Christianity -- Wikimedia subject-area collaboration
Wikipedia - Wikipedia:WikiProject Christianity/Anabaptist work group -- Sub-project of WikiProject Christianity
Wikipedia - Wikipedia:WikiProject Christianity/Christianity in China work group -- Sub-project of WikiProject Christianity
Wikipedia - Wikipedia:WikiProject Christianity/Methodism work group -- Sub-project of WikiProject Christianity
Wikipedia - Women in Christianity -- Women in Christianity
Wikipedia - Xueta Christianity -- Syncretic religion on the island of Majorca, Spain followed by the Xueta people
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https://atheism.wikia.org/wiki/Category:Christianity
https://atheism.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity
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https://familypedia.wikia.org/wiki/Category:1000s_in_Christianity
https://familypedia.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity
https://familypedia.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_the_United_States
https://familypedia.wikia.org/wiki/Orthodox_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Ablution_in_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Afterlife#Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Aggressive_Christianity_Missionary_Training_Corps
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Anti-Judaism#Early_Christianity_and_the_Judaizers
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Asceticism#Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Atonement_in_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Biblical_law_in_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Biblical_law_in_Christianity#Church_of_England
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Biblical_law_in_Christianity#Council_of_Jerusalem
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Biblical_law_in_Christianity#Dispensationalism
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Biblical_law_in_Christianity#External_links
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Biblical_law_in_Christianity#Further_reading
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Biblical_law_in_Christianity#General
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Biblical_law_in_Christianity#Hellenism
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Biblical_law_in_Christianity#Historical_background
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Biblical_law_in_Christianity#Law-related_passages_with_disputed_interpretation
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Biblical_law_in_Christianity#Lutheran_Church
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Biblical_law_in_Christianity#Marcion
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Biblical_law_in_Christianity#New_Perspective_on_Paul
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Biblical_law_in_Christianity#Other_views
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Biblical_law_in_Christianity#Recent_scholarship
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Biblical_law_in_Christianity#References
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Biblical_law_in_Christianity#Reformed_or_Covenant_Theology
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Biblical_law_in_Christianity#See_also
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Biblical_law_in_Christianity#The_New_Covenant_Theology_view
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Biblical_law_in_Christianity#The_Roman_Catholic_view
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Biblical_law_in_Christianity#The_Torah_Submissive_view
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Blessed_salt_in_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Book_of_Job#In_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Bosom_of_Abraham#in_early_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Cafeteria_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Cafeteria_Christianity#Cafeteria_Catholicism
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Candle#Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:10th-century_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:11th-century_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:12th-century_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:13th-century_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:14th-century_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:15th-century_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:16th-century_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:17th-century_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:18th-century_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:19th-century_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:1st-century_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:20th-century_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:21st-century_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:2nd-century_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:3rd-century_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:4th-century_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:5th-century_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:7th-century_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:8th-century_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:Ancient_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:Ancient_Roman_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:Angels_in_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:Anti-Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:Atonement_in_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:Charismatic_and_Pentecostal_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:Christianity_and_antisemitism
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:Christianity_and_Judaism
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:Christianity_and_other_religions
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:Christianity_and_the_Greco-Roman_world
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:Christianity_and_women
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:Christianity_by_location
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:Christianity_in_Albania
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:Christianity_in_Asia
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:Christianity_in_Azerbaijan
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:Christianity_in_China
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:Christianity_in_Egypt
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:Christianity_in_Europe
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:Christianity_in_France
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:Christianity_in_India
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:Christianity_in_Israel
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:Christianity_in_Jerusalem
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:Christianity_in_Mongolia
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:Christianity_in_Poland
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:Christianity_in_Russia
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:Christianity_in_the_United_Kingdom
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:Christianity_in_the_United_Kingdom_by_denomination
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:Christianity_in_Turkey
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:Christianity_of_the_Middle_Ages
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:Christianity_portal
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:Christianity_Portal_pages
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:Christianity_portals
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:Christianity-related_controversies
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:Christianity-related_lists
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:Christianity_stubs
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:Constantine_I_and_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:Conversion_to_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:Converts_to_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:Converts_to_Orthodox_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:Converts_to_Orthodox_Christianity_from_Roman_Catholicism
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:Criticism_of_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:Demons_in_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:Early_Christianity_and_Gnosticism
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:Early_Christianity_and_Judaism
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:Eastern_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:Eastern_Christianity_in_Canada
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:Eastern_Christianity_liturgy,_rites,_and_worship
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:Eastern_Christianity_portal
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:Eastern_Christianity_templates
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:Esoteric_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:God_in_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:Hellenism_and_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:Heresy_in_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:History_of_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:History_of_Eastern_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:Intro_to_Orthodox_Christianity_series
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:Marriage_in_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:Non-denominational_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:Paganism_and_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:Prophets_in_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:Schisms_in_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:Science_and_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:Syriac_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category_talk:19th-century_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category_talk:1st-century_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category_talk:Angels_in_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category_talk:Anti-Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category_talk:Charismatic_and_Pentecostal_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category_talk:Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category_talk:Christianity_and_other_religions
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category_talk:Christianity_by_location
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category_talk:Christianity_in_Albania
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category_talk:Christianity_in_Azerbaijan
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category_talk:Christianity_in_China
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category_talk:Christianity_in_Egypt
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category_talk:Christianity_in_Europe
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category_talk:Christianity_in_France
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category_talk:Christianity_in_Israel
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category_talk:Christianity_in_Jerusalem
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category_talk:Christianity_in_Mongolia
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category_talk:Christianity_in_Poland
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category_talk:Christianity_of_the_Middle_Ages
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category_talk:Christianity_Portal_pages
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category_talk:Christianity_portals
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category_talk:Christianity-related_controversies
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category_talk:Christianity-related_lists
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category_talk:Criticism_of_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category_talk:Demons_in_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category_talk:Eastern_Christianity_liturgy,_rites,_and_worship
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category_talk:Heresy_in_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category_talk:Prophets_in_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedia:Books_on_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:WikiProject_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church#Early_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Chalcedonian_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Cherub#Middle_Ages_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Cherub#Middle_ages_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Chosen_people#Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity/About
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https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity/About#Authority_and_different_parts_of_the_Bible
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity/About#Beliefs
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity/About#Controversies
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity/About#Crucifixion_and_Resurrection
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity/About#Denominations_of_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity/About#Differences_in_beliefs
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity/About#History_and_denominations
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity/About#History_and_origins
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity/About#Holidays
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity/About#Holy_Trinity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity/About#Interpretation
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity/About#Jesus_as_God_and_Man
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity/About#Messiah
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity/About#Monotheism
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity/About#Nicene_Creed
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity/About#Other_books_held_sacred
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity/About#Persecution
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity/About#Salvation
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity/About#Scriptures
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity/About#Second_Coming
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity/About#See_also
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity/About#Symbols
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity/About#Weekly_worship_services
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity/About#Worship_and_practices
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity#Afterlife_and_Eschaton
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_among_the_Mongols
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_and_alcohol
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_and_alcohol#Current_views
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_and_fringed_garments
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_and_fringed_garments#External_links
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_and_fringed_garments#In_practice
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_and_fringed_garments#In_Scripture
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_and_fringed_garments#Liturgical_use
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_and_fringed_garments#See_also
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_and_Islam
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_and_Judaism
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_and_Judaism#Abortion
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_and_Judaism#Capital_punishment
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_and_Judaism#Catholic_views
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_and_Judaism#Common_Christian_views_of_Judaism
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_and_Judaism#Common_Jewish_views_of_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_and_Judaism#Concepts_of_God
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_and_Judaism#Eastern_Orthodox_views
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_and_Judaism#External_links
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_and_Judaism#Faith_versus_good_deeds
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_and_Judaism#Further_reading
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_and_Judaism#Heaven_and_Hell
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_and_Judaism#Inter-relationship
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_and_Judaism#Judgment
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_and_Judaism#Love
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_and_Judaism#Mutual_views
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_and_Judaism#National_versus_universal
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_and_Judaism#Notes
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_and_Judaism#Proselytizing
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_and_Judaism#Right_action
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_and_Judaism#Sacred_texts
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_and_Judaism#Salvation
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_and_Judaism#Self-identification
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_and_Judaism#Shituf
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_and_Judaism#Sin
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_and_Judaism#Taboo_food_and_drink
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_and_Judaism#The_Messiah
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_and_Judaism#War.2C_violence_and_pacifism
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_and_other_religions
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_and_the_6th_Commandment
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_and_the_Internet
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity#Beliefs
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity#Catholic_and_Orthodox_interpretations
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity#Catholic_Church
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity#Christianity_in_the_Modern_Era
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity#Creeds
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity#Death_and_resurrection_of_Jesus
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity#Demographics
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity#Doctrine
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity#Early_Church_and_Christological_Councils
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity#Early_Middle_Ages
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity#Ecumenism
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity#Endnotes
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity/Forum
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity#High_and_Late_Middle_Ages
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity#History_and_origins
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_Asia
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_Australia
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_Bahrain
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_India
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_Japan
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_New_Zealand
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_painting_and_art
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_Pakistan
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_Tajikistan
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_Thailand
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_the_1st_century
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_the_1st_century#Acts_of_the_Apostles
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_the_1st_century#Apostolic_Age:_Post-Jesus_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_the_1st_century#Apostolic_Fathers
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_the_1st_century#Arabian_Peninsula
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_the_1st_century#Clement_of_Rome
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_the_1st_century#Composition_dates_of_the_Gospels_and_Acts
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_the_1st_century#Defining_scripture
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_the_1st_century#Early_Christianity_and_Judaism
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_the_1st_century#Epistles
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_the_1st_century#External_links
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_the_1st_century#Further_reading
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_the_1st_century#Gospel_and_Acts_authorship
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_the_1st_century#Gospels_and_Acts
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_the_1st_century#India
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_the_1st_century#Jerusalem_in_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_the_1st_century#Jewish_Christians
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_the_1st_century#Jewish_continuity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_the_1st_century#Judaism_and_Messianism
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_the_1st_century#Life_and_Ministry_of_Jesus
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_the_1st_century#New_Testament
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_the_1st_century#Old_Testament_canon
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_the_1st_century#Other_sees_today_called_Patriarchal
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_the_1st_century#Persecutions
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_the_1st_century#Peter_and_the_Twelve
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_the_1st_century#References
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_the_1st_century#Rome
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_the_1st_century#See_also
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_the_1st_century#Split_with_Judaism
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_the_1st_century#Spread_of_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_the_1st_century#The_Didache
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_the_1st_century#Worship_Liturgy
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_the_1st_century#Worship_of_Jesus
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_the_2nd_century
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_the_2nd_century#Apologetists
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_the_2nd_century#Apostolic_Fathers
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_the_2nd_century#Arabian_Peninsula
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_the_2nd_century#Athenagoras
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_the_2nd_century#Church_of_Antioch
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_the_2nd_century#Church_structure
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_the_2nd_century#Clement
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_the_2nd_century#Early_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_the_2nd_century#Early_Christian_worship
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_the_2nd_century#Early_Heresies
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_the_2nd_century#Early_writings:_Apologetists_and_Church_Fathers
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_the_2nd_century#External_links
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_the_2nd_century#Further_reading
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_the_2nd_century#Great_Schism_Origins
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_the_2nd_century#Greek_Fathers
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_the_2nd_century#Heresies_and_the_Biblical_canon
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_the_2nd_century#Ignatius
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_the_2nd_century#Irenaeus
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_the_2nd_century#Justin_Martyr
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_the_2nd_century#Latin_Fathers
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_the_2nd_century#Origin_and_Expansion_of_the_Church_of_the_East
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_the_2nd_century#Parthian_and_Persian_Empires
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_the_2nd_century#Polycarp
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_the_2nd_century#References
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_the_2nd_century#Relationship_with_bishops_of_other_cities
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_the_2nd_century#See_also
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_the_2nd_century#Spread_of_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_the_2nd_century#Structure_and_the_episcopacy
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_the_2nd_century#Tatian
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_the_2nd_century#Tertullian
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_the_2nd_century#The_role_of_the_bishop
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_the_2nd_century#The_Shepherd_of_Hermas
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_the_3rd_century
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_the_3rd_century#Ante-Nicene_Fathers
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_the_3rd_century#Bishop_of_Rome
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_the_3rd_century#Bishops_East_and_West
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_the_3rd_century#Callixtus_I
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_the_3rd_century#Clement_of_Alexandria
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_the_3rd_century#Cornelius
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_the_3rd_century#Cyprian_of_Carthage
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_the_3rd_century#Defining_scripture
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_the_3rd_century#Early_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_the_3rd_century#Early_Heresies
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_the_3rd_century#Early_iconography
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_the_3rd_century#External_links
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_the_3rd_century#Further_reading
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_the_3rd_century#Goths
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_the_3rd_century#Greek_Fathers
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_the_3rd_century#Latin_Fathers
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_the_3rd_century#Monasticism
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_the_3rd_century#Origen_of_Alexandria
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_the_3rd_century#References
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_the_3rd_century#See_also
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_the_3rd_century#See_also_2
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_the_3rd_century#Spread_of_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_the_3rd_century#Stephen_I
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_the_3rd_century#Tertullian
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_the_Maldives
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_Vietnam
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_Yemen
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity#Jesus_Christ
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity#Liturgical_calendar
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity#Main_grouping_of_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity#Non-trinitarians
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity#Orthodox_churches
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity#Other
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity#Protestant_interpretation
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity#Protestantism
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity#Protestant_Reformation_and_Counter-Reformation
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity#References
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity#Sacraments
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity#Salvation
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity#Scriptures
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity#See_also
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity#Symbols
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity:_The_First_Two_Thousand_Years
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity_Today
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity#Trinitarians
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity#Trinity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity#Worship
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianity#Worship_and_practices
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christianization#Early_Christianity_.28pre-Nicaean.29
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christian_monasticism#Early_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christian_morality#Christianity_and_Slavery
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Circumcision_controversy_in_early_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Circumcision_controversy_in_early_Christianity#Circumcision_controversy
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Circumcision_controversy_in_early_Christianity#Circumcision_of_Jesus
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Circumcision_controversy_in_early_Christianity#Council_of_Jerusalem
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Circumcision_controversy_in_early_Christianity#External_links
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Circumcision_controversy_in_early_Christianity#Jewish_background
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Circumcision_controversy_in_early_Christianity#Later_views
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Circumcision_controversy_in_early_Christianity#References
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Circumcision_controversy_in_early_Christianity#See_also
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Circumcision_controversy_in_early_Christianity#Teaching_of_Paul
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Coming_of_age#Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Comparing_Christianity_and_Islam_(JBJ)
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Conscience#Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Conservative_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Conservative_Christianity#Conservative_Roman_Catholicism
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Constantinople#Christianity_in_the_Byzantine_Empire_.5B391_AD.5D
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Conversion_to_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Coptic_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Creator_deity#Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Christianity#Apologetic
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Christianity#Atonement
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Christianity#Biblical_criticism
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Christianity#Bigotry
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Christianity#Christianity_and_politics
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Christianity#Christianity_and_violence
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Christianity#Christianity_and_women
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Christianity#Compatibility_with_science
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Christianity#Criticism_of_Christians
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Christianity#Debates
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Christianity#Defending_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Christianity#Doctrine
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Christianity#Ethics
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Christianity#External_links
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Christianity#From_other_religions
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Christianity#Further_reading
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Christianity#General
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Christianity#Hell_and_damnation
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Christianity#Hypocrisy
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Christianity#Incarnation
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Christianity#Inconsistency_with_Old_Testament_conception_of_the_afterlife
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Christianity#Limbo
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Christianity#Materialism
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Christianity#Miracles
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Christianity#Mistranslation
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Christianity#Negative_attitudes_in_the_United_States
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Christianity#Origins
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Christianity#Persecution_by_Christians
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Christianity#References
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Christianity#Response_of_apologists
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Christianity#Scripture
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Christianity#Sectarianism
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Christianity#See_also
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Christianity#Selective_interpretation
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Christianity#Skeptical
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Christianity#Skeptical_of_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Christianity#Slavery
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Christianity#Textual_corruption
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Christianity#The_Second_Coming
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Christianity#Unfulfilled_Prophecy
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Judaism#Criticism_from_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Cult_image#Cult_images_in_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Damnation#Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Dean_(Christianity)
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Demonic_possession#Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Demon#In_the_New_Testament_and_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Development_of_the_New_Testament_canon#Early_Christianity_.28c.30-325.29
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Devil#Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Dionysus#Parallels_with_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Disciple_(Christianity)
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Divine_Grace#Grace_in_Eastern_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Divine_grace#Grace_in_Eastern_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Divine_Grace#History_of_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Dogs_in_religion#Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Early_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Early_Christianity_(~33
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Early_Christianity#Adoptionism
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Early_Christianity_and_Judaism
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Early_Christianity#Angels_and_Satan
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Early_Christianity#Antioch
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Early_Christianity#Apostolic_Fathers
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Early_Christianity#Arianism
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Early_Christianity#Baptism
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Early_Christianity#Beliefs
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Early_Christianity#Bibliography
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Early_Christianity#Christology
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Early_Christianity#Church_Community
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Early_Christianity#Cosmology
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Early_Christianity#Defining_scripture
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Early_Christianity#Divinity_of_Christ
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Early_Christianity#Divisions
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Early_Christianity#Ebionites
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https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Early_Christianity#Eucharist
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Early_Christianity#External_links
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Early_Christianity#Fathers_of_the_church
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Early_Christianity#Gnosticism
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https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Early_Christianity#History
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https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Early_Christianity#Imposition_of_hands
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Early_Christianity#Kingdom_of_God
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Early_Christianity#Later_epistles
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Early_Christianity#Marcionism
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Early_Christianity#Monasticism
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Early_Christianity#Montanism
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https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Early_Christianity#Paul.27s_epistles
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https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Early_Christianity#Revelation
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Early_Christianity#Rules_and_creeds
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Early_Christianity#Sacraments
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Early_Christianity#See_also
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https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Early_Christianity#Tradition
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Early_Christianity#Trinity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Early_Christianity#Western_Anatolia
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Early_Christianity#Worship
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Early_history_of_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Early_history_of_Christianity#Apostolic_Age
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Early_history_of_Christianity#Post-apostolic_period
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Eastern_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Eastern_Christianity#Assyrian_Church_of_the_East
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Eastern_Christianity#Catholic-Orthodox_ecumenism
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Eastern_Christianity#Dissenting_movements
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Eastern_Christianity#Eastern_Catholic_Churches
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Eastern_Christianity#Eastern_Orthodox_Churches
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Eastern_Christianity#External_links
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Eastern_Christianity#Families_of_churches
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Eastern_Christianity#Liturgy
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Eastern_Christianity#Notes
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Eastern_Christianity#Oriental_Orthodox_Churches
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Eastern_Christianity#Rejection_of_Uniatism
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Eastern_Christianity#Saint_Thomas_Christians
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Eastern_Christianity#See_also
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https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Economy_(Eastern_Christianity)
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Elder_(Christianity)
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Elder_(Christianity)#Lutheranism
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Emanation_(Eastern_Orthodox_Christianity)
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/End_time#Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Entheogen#Judaism_and_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Ephesus#Ephesus_and_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Esoteric_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Esoteric_Christianity#Ancient_roots
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Esoteric_Christianity#Christianity_as_a_mystery_religion
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Esoteric_Christianity#Early_modern_esotericism
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Esoteric_Christianity#External_links
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Esoteric_Christianity#Modern_forms_of_Esoteric_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Esoteric_Christianity#Notes
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Esoteric_Christianity#See_also
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Eternal_sin#Roman_Catholicism_and_Orthodox_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Eucharist#Eastern_Christianity:_true_sacrifice_and_objective_presence_but_pious_silence_on_the_particulars
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Excommunication#Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Faith_in_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Faith_in_Christianity#Lutheranism
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Fall_of_Man#Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/False_prophet#Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/File:ChristianityBranches.svg
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/File:Spread_of_Christianity_in_Europe_to_AD_600.png
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Fundamentalist_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Glorification#In_Orthodox_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/God_in_Abrahamic_religions#Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/God_in_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/God_in_Christianity#.22Father.2C_Son_and_Holy_Spirit.22
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/God_in_Christianity#Ambivalence_to_Trinitarian_doctrine
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/God_in_Christianity#Christology
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/God_in_Christianity#External_links
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/God_in_Christianity#God_as_Father
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/God_in_Christianity#God_as_Holy_Spirit
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/God_in_Christianity#God_as_Son
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/God_in_Christianity#Nontrinitarianism
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/God_in_Christianity#Nontrinitarians
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/God_in_Christianity#Notes
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/God_in_Christianity#See_also
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/God_in_Christianity#The_term_.22Trinity.22
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/God_in_Christianity#Trinitarian_doctrine
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/God_in_Christianity#Trinitarianism
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/God_the_Father#Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Good_news_(Christianity)
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Guardian_angel#Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Hades#Hades_in_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Heaven#Heaven_in_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Hermeticism#Esoteric_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Historical_Sects_of_Christianity_Index
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/History_of_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/History_of_Christianity#Apostolic_Church
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/History_of_Christianity#Early_Middle_Ages
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/History_of_Christianity#High_Middle_Ages_.28800.E2.80.931299.29
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/History_of_Christianity_in_Romania
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/History_of_Christianity_in_Ukraine
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/History_of_Christianity#Late_Middle_Ages_.281300.E2.80.931499.29
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/History_of_Christianity#The_Earliest_Church
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/History_of_Christian_theology#Liberal_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/History_of_Christian_theology#Postmodern_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/History_of_early_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/History_of_early_Christianity#Apostolic_Age
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/History_of_early_Christianity#Appellation
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/History_of_early_Christianity#Bar_Kokhba_Revolt
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/History_of_early_Christianity#Christian
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/History_of_early_Christianity#Church_of_Rome
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/History_of_early_Christianity#Diversity_vs._orthodoxy
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/History_of_early_Christianity#External_links
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/History_of_early_Christianity#Footnotes
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/History_of_early_Christianity#Further_reading
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/History_of_early_Christianity#Jewish_Christians
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/History_of_early_Christianity#Origins
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/History_of_early_Christianity#Other_names
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/History_of_early_Christianity#Outside_the_Empire
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/History_of_early_Christianity#Post-apostolic_period
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/History_of_early_Christianity#References
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/History_of_early_Christianity#See_also
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https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/History_of_early_Christianity#Spread_of_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/History_of_early_Christianity#Within_the_Empire
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/History_of_Eastern_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/History_of_Eastern_Christianity_in_Asia
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Holy_Land#Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Holy_water_in_Eastern_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Hosanna#Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/How_can_you_tell_the_difference_between_Christianity_and_a_scam
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Hypostasis#Early_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Hypostasis_(philosophy)#Early_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Idolatry_and_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Idolatry_and_Christianity#Different_understandings_of_the_use_of_images
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Idolatry_and_Christianity#External_links
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Idolatry_and_Christianity#Hebrew_origins
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Idolatry_and_Christianity#Idolatry_in_the_New_Testament
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Idolatry_and_Christianity#Protestant_criticism_of_the_use_of_images
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Idolatry_and_Christianity#References_and_footnotes
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Idolatry_and_Christianity#References_and_notes
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Idolatry_and_Christianity#See_also
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Idolatry_and_Christianity#The_use_of_icons_and_symbols_in_Christian_worship
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Index_of_Eastern_Christianity-related_articles
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Index_of_Eastern_Christianity-related_articles#0.E2.80.939
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Index_of_Eastern_Christianity-related_articles#A
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Index_of_Eastern_Christianity-related_articles#B
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Index_of_Eastern_Christianity-related_articles#C
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Index_of_Eastern_Christianity-related_articles#D
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Index_of_Eastern_Christianity-related_articles#E
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Index_of_Eastern_Christianity-related_articles#F
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Index_of_Eastern_Christianity-related_articles#G
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Index_of_Eastern_Christianity-related_articles#H
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Index_of_Eastern_Christianity-related_articles#I
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Index_of_Eastern_Christianity-related_articles#J
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Index_of_Eastern_Christianity-related_articles#K
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Index_of_Eastern_Christianity-related_articles#L
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https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Index_of_Eastern_Christianity-related_articles#Y
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Index_of_Eastern_Christianity-related_articles#Z
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Introduction_to_Orthodox_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Jerusalem_in_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Jerusalem_in_Christianity#External_links
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Jerusalem_in_Christianity#Jerusalem_as_an_allegory_for_the_Church
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Jerusalem_in_Christianity#Jerusalem_in_the_Hebrew_Bible
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Jerusalem_in_Christianity#Jerusalem_in_the_New_Testament_and_early_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Jerusalem_in_Christianity#Medieval_traditions
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Jerusalem_in_Christianity#References
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Jerusalem_in_Christianity#See_also
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Jesus_and_Messianic_prophecy#Comparison_of_the_messianic_prophecies_in_Judaism_and_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Jewish_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Jewish_Christianity#Circumcision_controversy
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Jewish_Christianity#Contemporary_Jewish_Christians_and_Messianic_Jews
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Jewish_Christianity#External_links
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Jewish_Christianity#Jewish_origin_of_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Jewish_Christianity#References
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Jewish_Christianity#See_also
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Jewish_Christianity#Surviving_communities_whose_origins_reflect_both_Judaism_and_early_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Jewish_Christians#Jewish_origin_of_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Jewish_Christians#Surviving_communities_whose_origins_reflect_both_Judaism_and_early_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Judaism_and_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Judaism#Christianity_and_Judaism
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_God#Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Late_ancient_history_of_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Late_ancient_history_of_Christianity#Biblical_canon
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Late_ancient_history_of_Christianity#Christianity_legalised
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Late_ancient_history_of_Christianity#Constantine_commissions_Bibles
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Late_ancient_history_of_Christianity#Constantine_the_Great
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Late_ancient_history_of_Christianity#Council_of_Chalcedon_.28451.29
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Late_ancient_history_of_Christianity#Council_of_Constantinople_.28381.29
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Late_ancient_history_of_Christianity#Council_of_Ephesus_.28431.29
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Late_ancient_history_of_Christianity#Council_of_Nicaea_.28325.29
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Late_ancient_history_of_Christianity#Current_canon
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Late_ancient_history_of_Christianity#Dioceses
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Late_ancient_history_of_Christianity#Ecumenical_Councils
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Late_ancient_history_of_Christianity#Heresies
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Late_ancient_history_of_Christianity#Monasticism
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Late_ancient_history_of_Christianity#Nicene_and_Post-Nicene_Fathers
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Late_ancient_history_of_Christianity#Notes
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Late_ancient_history_of_Christianity#Papacy_and_primacy
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Late_ancient_history_of_Christianity#Print_resources
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Late_ancient_history_of_Christianity#See_also
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Late_ancient_history_of_Christianity#Structure
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Late_ancient_history_of_Christianity#Theology_and_heresy
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Late_ancient_history_of_Christianity#The_Pentarchy
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Leviathan#Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Liberal_Christianity/1
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/List_of_events_in_early_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/List_of_events_in_early_Christianity#First_century
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/List_of_events_in_early_Christianity#List_of_events_marking_changes_in_the_relations_between_Christians_and_Jews_in_early_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/List_of_events_in_early_Christianity#New_Testament
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/List_of_events_in_early_Christianity#Other_Sources
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/List_of_events_in_early_Christianity#References
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/List_of_events_in_early_Christianity#Second_century
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/List_of_events_in_early_Christianity#See_also
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Liturgy#Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Logos#Use_in_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Louisiana_Voodoo#Louisiana_Voodoo_and_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Mandala#In_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Martyr#Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Masonry#Christianity_and_Freemasonry
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Matins#Eastern_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Matins#Orthros_in_Eastern_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Medieval_history_of_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Medieval_history_of_Christianity#.3D_Spread_beyond_the_Roman_Empire
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Medieval_history_of_Christianity#Anglo-Saxons.2C_English
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Medieval_history_of_Christianity#Carolingian_Renaissance
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Medieval_history_of_Christianity#C.C3.AEteaux
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Medieval_history_of_Christianity#Cluny
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Medieval_history_of_Christianity#Constantinople_falls_to_the_Ottoman_Empire
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Medieval_history_of_Christianity#Conversion_of_East_and_South_Slavs
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Medieval_history_of_Christianity#Conversion_of_the_Rus.27
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Medieval_history_of_Christianity#Conversion_of_the_Scandinavians
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Medieval_history_of_Christianity#Conversion_of_the_Serbs_and_Bulgarians
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Medieval_history_of_Christianity#Crusades
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Medieval_history_of_Christianity#Early_Medieval_Papacy
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Medieval_history_of_Christianity#Early_Middle_Ages_.28476.E2.80.93799.29
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Medieval_history_of_Christianity#East-West_Schism
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Medieval_history_of_Christianity#Franks
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Medieval_history_of_Christianity#Frisians_of_the_Low_Countries
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Medieval_history_of_Christianity#Growing_tensions_between_East_and_West
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Medieval_history_of_Christianity#Hesychast_Controversy
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Medieval_history_of_Christianity#High_Middle_Ages_.28800.E2.80.931499.29
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Medieval_history_of_Christianity#Iconoclasm
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Medieval_history_of_Christianity#Investiture_Controversy
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Medieval_history_of_Christianity#Irish_and_Irish_missionaries
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Medieval_history_of_Christianity#Italian_Renaissance
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Medieval_history_of_Christianity#Late_Middle_Ages_.281300.E2.80.931499.29
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Medieval_history_of_Christianity#Medieval_inquisition
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Medieval_history_of_Christianity#Mendicant_orders
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Medieval_history_of_Christianity#Mission_to_Great_Moravia
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Medieval_history_of_Christianity#Monastic_Reform
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Medieval_history_of_Christianity#Notes
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Medieval_history_of_Christianity#Photian_schism
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Medieval_history_of_Christianity#Print_resources
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Medieval_history_of_Christianity#Rise_of_universities
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Medieval_history_of_Christianity#See_also
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Medieval_history_of_Christianity#Western_Schism
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Mere_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Minister_(Christianity)
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Mithraic_mysteries#Mithraism_and_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Modern_history_of_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Modern_history_of_Christianity#Age_of_Enlightenment_.281640.E2.80.931740.29
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Modern_history_of_Christianity#Catholic_ecumenism
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Modern_history_of_Christianity#Corruption
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Modern_history_of_Christianity#Devshirmeh
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Modern_history_of_Christianity#Diaspora_emigration_to_the_West
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Modern_history_of_Christianity#Early_modern_history:_The_Reformation_.281520.E2.80.931640.29
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Modern_history_of_Christianity#Eastern_Orthodox_under_the_Ottoman_Empire
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Modern_history_of_Christianity#Eastern_Orthodoxy
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Modern_history_of_Christianity#Ecumenism
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Modern_history_of_Christianity#Ecumenism_within_Protestantism
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Modern_history_of_Christianity#English_Civil_War
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Modern_history_of_Christianity#Fall_of_Constantinople
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Modern_history_of_Christianity#Fascism
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Modern_history_of_Christianity#French_Revolution_and_worship_of_Reason
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Modern_history_of_Christianity#Fundamentalism
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Modern_history_of_Christianity#Great_Awakenings
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Modern_history_of_Christianity#Late_modern_history_.281848-present.29
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Modern_history_of_Christianity#Modern_Eastern_Orthodoxy
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Modern_history_of_Christianity#Modernism_and_liberal_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Modern_history_of_Christianity#Modern_trends_in_Christian_theology
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Modern_history_of_Christianity#Nazism
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Modern_history_of_Christianity#Notes
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Modern_history_of_Christianity#Print_resources
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Modern_history_of_Christianity#Puritan_movement
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Modern_history_of_Christianity#Restorationism
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Modern_history_of_Christianity#Revivalism_.281720.E2.80.931906.29
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Modern_history_of_Christianity#Roman_Catholic_missions
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Modern_history_of_Christianity#Russian_Orthodox_Church_in_the_Russian_Empire
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Modern_history_of_Christianity#Russian_Orthodox_Church_in_the_Soviet_Union
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Modern_history_of_Christianity#Russian_Orthodoxy
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Modern_history_of_Christianity#Russian_Orthodoxy_2
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Modern_history_of_Christianity#Second_Vatican_Council
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Modern_history_of_Christianity#See_also
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Monk/Monasticism_in_Eastern_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Monk#Monasticism_in_Eastern_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Monk/Monasticism_in_Western_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Monotheism#Monotheism_in_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Mormonism_and_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Mortification_of_the_flesh#Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Mortification_of_the_flesh#Protestant_Christianity.27s_view_and_use_of_mortification
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Names_of_God_in_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Nehushtan#Significance_in_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/New_Covenant#Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/New_Earth_(Christianity)
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Day_Feast#Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Nun#Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Off-shoots_of_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Off-shoots_of_Christianity_Index
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Ordination#Protestant_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Original_sin#Eastern_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Origins_of_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Orthodox_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Outline_of_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Outline_of_Christianity#Apostles
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Outline_of_Christianity#Branches_of_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Outline_of_Christianity#By_century
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Outline_of_Christianity#By_denomination
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Outline_of_Christianity#By_period
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Outline_of_Christianity#By_region
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Outline_of_Christianity#Celebrated_days
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Outline_of_Christianity#Christianity_and_other_beliefs
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Outline_of_Christianity#Christianity_and_society
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Outline_of_Christianity#Christianity_by_Location
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Outline_of_Christianity#Christian_people_and_personalities_by_type
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Outline_of_Christianity#Church_Fathers
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Outline_of_Christianity#Criticism
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Outline_of_Christianity#External_links
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Outline_of_Christianity#History_of_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Outline_of_Christianity#Jesus
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Outline_of_Christianity#Main_article
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Outline_of_Christianity#Martyrs
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Outline_of_Christianity#New_Testament_people
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Outline_of_Christianity#Popes_.26_Patriarchs
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Outline_of_Christianity#References
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Outline_of_Christianity#Related_lists
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Outline_of_Christianity#Saints
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Outline_of_Christianity#See_also
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Outline_of_Christianity#Texts
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Outline_of_Christianity#Theology
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Outline_of_Christianity#Titles_of_Christian_Leaders
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Outline_of_Christianity#Unorganized_articles_relating_to_Christianity_theology
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Passion_(Christianity)
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Passion_(Christianity)#Instruments_of_the_Passion
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Patriarch#Eastern_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Patriarch#Syriac_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Pauline_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Pauline_Christianity#Characteristics_of_.27Pauline_Christianity.27
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Pauline_Christianity#Criticism
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Pauline_Christianity#External_links
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Pauline_Christianity#Notes
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Pauline_Christianity#Other_Views
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Pauline_Christianity#Paul.27s_view_of_the_subject
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Pauline_Christianity#Political
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Pauline_Christianity#References
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Pauline_Christianity#See_also
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Pauline_Christianity#Theological
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Paul_of_Tarsus_and_Judaism#Pauline_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Pentarchy_(Christianity)
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Personal_god#Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Personal_god#Christianity_2
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Piscina#Eastern_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Portal:Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Portal:Christianity/Associated_Wikimedia
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Portal:Christianity/DYK_Archive/Wednesday
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Portal:Christianity/Indices
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Portal:Christianity/News
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Portal:Christianity/Projects
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Portal:Christianity/Selected_picture/May_2009
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Portal:Christianity/Selected_scripture/May_2009
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Portal:Eastern_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Portal:Eastern_Christianity/Anniversaries
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Portal:Eastern_Christianity/Anniversaries/April
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Portal:Eastern_Christianity/Anniversaries/December
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Portal:Eastern_Christianity/Anniversaries/January
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Portal:Eastern_Christianity/Article_Archive
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Portal:Eastern_Christianity/Bio_Archive
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Portal:Eastern_Christianity/Categories
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Portal:Eastern_Christianity/Did_you_know/archive
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Portal:Eastern_Christianity/DYK/1
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Portal:Eastern_Christianity/DYK/2
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Portal:Eastern_Christianity/DYK/3
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Portal:Eastern_Christianity/DYK/4
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Portal:Eastern_Christianity/DYK/Layout/footer
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Portal:Eastern_Christianity/Intro
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Portal:Eastern_Christianity/Projects
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Portal:Eastern_Christianity/Related_portals
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Portal:Eastern_Christianity/Selected_article/5
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Portal:Eastern_Christianity/Selected_biography/2
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Portal:Eastern_Christianity/Selected_picture/2
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Portal:Eastern_Christianity/Selected_picture/Archive
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Portal:Eastern_Christianity/Things_You_Can_Do
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Portal:Eastern_Christianity/Topics
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Portal:Indian_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Portal:Orthodox_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Postmodern_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Postmodern_Christianity#Christian_existentialism
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Postmodern_Christianity#Continental_philosophical_theology
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Postmodern_Christianity#Hermeneutics_of_religion
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Postmodern_Christianity#Introduction
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Postmodern_Christianity#Liberal_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Postmodern_Christianity#Non-dogmatic_theology_.28also_known_as_Weak_theology.29
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Postmodern_Christianity#Radical_orthodoxy
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Prayer_in_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Predestination#Islam_and_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Predestination#Predestination_in_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Priest#In_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Primitive_Apostolic_Christianity_(Sabbatarian)
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Prophecy#Later_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Prophets_of_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Proselyte#Proselytes_in_early_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Reincarnation#Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Religion_and_drugs#Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Africa#Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Japan#Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Religious_conversion#Conversion_to_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Religious_cosmology#Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Religious_pluralism#Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Religious_use_of_incense#Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Religious_views_on_smoking#Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Resurrection_of_the_dead#Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Sabbath_in_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Sabbath_in_Christianity#Roman_Catholicism
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Salvation#Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Second_Death#Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Seven_Laws_of_Noah#Christianity_and_the_Noahide_Laws
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Sexual_abstinence#Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Sexuality_and_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Sol_Invictus#Sol_Invictus_and_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Special:Search/10th-century_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Special:Search/11th-century_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Special:Search/12th-century_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Special:Search/13th-century_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Special:Search/14th-century_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Special:Search/15th-century_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Special:Search/16th-century_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Special:Search/17th-century_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Special:Search/18th-century_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Special:Search/20th-century_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Special:Search/21st-century_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Special:Search/2nd-century_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Special:Search/3rd-century_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Special:Search/4th-century_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Special:Search/5th-century_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Special:Search/7th-century_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Special:Search/8th-century_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Special:Search/Ancient_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Special:Search/Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Special:Search/Christianity_portals
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Special:Search/Christianity-related_controversies
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Special:Search/Christianity-related_lists
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Special:Search/How_can_you_tell_the_difference_between_Christianity_and_a_scam
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Syriac_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Talk:Biblical_law_in_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Talk:Cafeteria_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Talk:Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Talk:Christianity/About
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Talk:Christianity_and_alcohol
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Talk:Christianity_and_fringed_garments
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Talk:Christianity_and_Judaism
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Talk:Christianity_and_the_6th_Commandment
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Talk:Christianity/Forum
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Talk:Christianity_in_the_1st_century
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Talk:Christianity_in_the_2nd_century
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Talk:Christianity_in_the_3rd_century
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Talk:Christianity:_The_First_Two_Thousand_Years
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Talk:Circumcision_controversy_in_early_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Talk:Criticism_of_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Talk:Early_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Talk:Eastern_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Talk:Esoteric_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Talk:God_in_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Talk:History_of_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Talk:History_of_early_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Talk:Idolatry_and_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Talk:Index_of_Eastern_Christianity-related_articles
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Talk:Jerusalem_in_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Talk:Jewish_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Talk:Late_ancient_history_of_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Talk:List_of_events_in_early_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Talk:Medieval_history_of_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Talk:Modern_history_of_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Talk:Outline_of_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Talk:Pauline_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Talk:Portal:Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Talk:Portal:Christianity/Indices
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Talk:Portal:Eastern_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Talk:Portal:Orthodox_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Talk:Postmodern_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Talk:Western_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Template:Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Template:Christianity_and_Judaism
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Template:Christianity_and_politics
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Template:Christianity_by_country
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Template:Christianityfooter
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Template:Christianity-stub
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Template:Eastern_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Template:GenderChristianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Template:Greek_Orthodox_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Template:Jewish_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Template:Portal:Christianity/Categories
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Template:Portal:Christianity/Intro
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Template:Portal:Christianity/Map
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Template:Portal:Christianity/Related_portals
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Template:Prophets_of_Christianity-nt
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Template_talk:Portal:Christianity/Related_portals
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/The_Diary_of_a_Japanese_Convert#Chapter_2._Introduction_to_Christianity.
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/The_Diary_of_a_Japanese_Convert#Chapter_5._Out_into_the_World._-_Sentimental_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Theology#Religions_other_than_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Christianity#17th_century
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Christianity#18th_century
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Christianity#19th_century
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Christianity#20th_century
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Christianity#21st_century
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Christianity#Ante-Nicene_Period
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Christianity#Apostolic_Age
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Christianity#Early_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Christianity#Era_of_the_Apostles
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Christianity#First_Seven_Ecumenical_Councils
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Christianity#Middle_Ages
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Christianity#Reformation
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Christianity#Renaissance
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Christian_missions#Early_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Tonsure#Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Tree_of_life_(Judeo-Christian)#Eastern_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Tree_of_life_(Judeo-Christian)#Western_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Tree_of_the_knowledge_of_good_and_evil#In_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Veil#In_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Veneration_of_the_dead#Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Veneration_of_the_dead#Early_Christianity.27s_attitudes
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Virgin_birth_of_Jesus#Christianity_and_similar_traditions
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Visitation_(Christianity)
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/V:Special:Search/Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Western_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Western_Christianity#Easter.27s_date
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Western_Christianity#Features_of_Western_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Western_Christianity#Filioque_clause
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Western_Christianity#History_of_Western_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Western_Christianity#Original_sin
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Western_Christianity#References
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Western_Christianity#Western_denominations
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Women_as_theological_figures#Christianity
Kheper - mystic_Christianity -- 34
Kheper - Spinozism_and_Christianity -- 27
Kheper - Christianity_and_Buddhism -- 37
Kheper - Christianity -- 58
Integral World - Christianity: The Great Lie, Ray Harris
Integral World - Comment on Ray Harris' Christianity: The Great Lie, Imre von Soos
Esoteric Christianity: Two Kinds of Religion
Integral Christianity: Answering the Call to Evolve
Integral Christianity: Panentheism, Gratitude, and the Three Faces of God
selforum - sri aurobindo and christianity
selforum - unity church of christianity
selforum - christianity is based on lies and
selforum - christianity is dwindling in west
https://thoughtsandvisions-searle88.blogspot.com/2012/10/esoteric-christianity.html
https://esotericotherworlds.blogspot.com/2012/12/hyperreality-and-christianity.html
wiki.auroville - Christianity
Dharmapedia - Apostasy_in_Christianity
Dharmapedia - Buddhism_and_Christianity
Dharmapedia - Category:Books_critical_of_Christianity
Dharmapedia - Category:Christianity
Dharmapedia - Category:Christianity_in_India
Dharmapedia - Christianity
Dharmapedia - Christianity_and_colonialism
Dharmapedia - Christianity_and_homosexuality
Dharmapedia - Christianity_and_other_religions
Dharmapedia - Christianity_and_politics
Dharmapedia - Christianity_and_Theosophy
Dharmapedia - Christianity_and_violence
Dharmapedia - Christianity_in_India
Dharmapedia - Christianity_in_Pakistan
Dharmapedia - Comparison_of_Buddhism_and_Christianity
Dharmapedia - Criticism_of_Christianity
Dharmapedia - Expressions_of_Christianity,_With_a_focus_on_India
Dharmapedia - What_Every_Hindu_Should_Know_About_Christianity
Dharmapedia - Women_in_Christianity
Psychology Wiki - Christianity
Psychology Wiki - Meditation#Christianity
Occultopedia - christianity
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ArtisticLicenseTraditionalChristianity
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ChristianityIsCatholic
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/UsefulNotes/Christianity
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/UsefulNotes/OrthodoxChristianity
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Category:Christianity
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Category:Christianity_and_politics
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Category:Christianity_and_women
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Category:Criticism_of_Christianity
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Category:History_of_Christianity
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Christianity
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Christianity_and_colonialism
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Christianity_and_Hinduism
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Christianity_and_Islam
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Christianity_in_India
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Christianity_in_the_first_century
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Early_Christianity
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Essay_on_Christianity
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Eternal_life_(Christianity)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/File:Christianity-Jesus_Christ_Died_for_your_Sin.jpg
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One Nation Under God(2009) - Austin, Lawson, Michael, and Will are four college-aged Christians who have grown up in the bubble of Christianity. They realize that their faith is more religion and less relationship. Because they have been in the rut of mindless faith, they decide to expand their views on God, the world, and eter...
Travels Of Marco Polo(1972) - Explorer Marco Polo is assigned to accompany two priests on a mission to China, to try to convert the "pagan" Kublai Khan to Christianity. However, on a dangerous trek through the mountains, the priests decide they don't believe that China even exists, and when Marco tries to argue the point, they a...
Agora (2009) ::: 7.2/10 -- R | 2h 7min | Adventure, Biography, Drama | 9 October 2009 (Spain) -- A historical drama set in Roman Egypt, concerning a slave who turns to the rising tide of Christianity in the hope of pursuing freedom while falling in love with his mistress, the philosophy and mathematics professor Hypatia of Alexandria. Director: Alejandro Amenbar Writers:
Root of All Evil? (2006) ::: 8.2/10 -- 1h 30min | Documentary | TV Movie 9 January 2006 -- Richard Dawkins' highly critical documentary attacks the pulsing heart of all mainstream religion- faith; with special focus on Islam, Judaism, and Christianity. Contains repeated ... S Director: Russell Barnes Writer: Richard Dawkins Stars:
The Da Vinci Code (2006) ::: 6.6/10 -- PG-13 | 2h 29min | Mystery, Thriller | 19 May 2006 (USA) -- A murder inside the Louvre, and clues in Da Vinci paintings, lead to the discovery of a religious mystery protected by a secret society for two thousand years, which could shake the foundations of Christianity. Director: Ron Howard Writers:
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Saint☆Oniisan -- -- A-1 Pictures -- 2 eps -- Manga -- Comedy Seinen Slice of Life -- Saint☆Oniisan Saint☆Oniisan -- Jesus Christ and Gautama Buddha, the founders of Christianity and Buddhism, are living together as roommates in a Tokyo apartment while taking a vacation on Earth. The comedy often involves jokes about Christianity, Buddhism, and all things related, as well as the main characters' attempts to hide their identities and understand modern society in Japan. -- -- OVA - Dec 3, 2012 -- 76,787 7.50
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Ablution in Christianity
Aggressive Christianity Missionary Training Corps
A History of Christianity
A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years
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An Argument Against Abolishing Christianity
An History of the Corruptions of Christianity
Aniconism in Christianity
Anthropology of Christianity
Anti-Judaism in early Christianity
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Atheist Manifesto: The Case Against Christianity, Judaism, and Islam
Attributes of God in Christianity
Australian Centre for Christianity and Culture
Bible study (Christianity)
Bibliography of Christianity in China
Blessed salt in Christianity
Bonn Agreement (Christianity)
Buddhism and Christianity
Byzantine Rite Christianity in Canada
Cambridge Centre for Christianity Worldwide
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Celtic Christianity
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Centre for Public Christianity
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Chalcedonian Christianity
Charismatic Christianity
Christianity
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Christianity among the Mongols
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