So since /lit/ is a Christian board, can anyone here explain

Christianity is an universalist, adaptable religion which readily incorporated Platonic and Aristotelian thought even though those authors predate it and do not belong to the cult(ure) of Judaism.

It's a project for eternity that claims to reveal the immortal Logos to all humankind, stop looking for excuses not to read the Bible when approaching Christian authors.

>>9333621
That said, Voegelin has a huge problem with religious and secular, theistic and non-theistic, groups of people that claim private access to an ultimate Truth and have anche Escathon to immanentize in this world.

He calls them all "Gnostics", even though they're from the last Century. Gnosis for the nazis and commies are the Aryan Volkgeist or class "consciousness", but it could very well be being "woke" for the Identity politics of today; the Escathon are the Third Reich or the communist utopia, but it could be a Marcuse's New World of Happiness.

Whereas Jesus' (and Voegelin's) Kingdom is in another world, and yet it is also already within you. Read the Bible.

You can find more about/by Voegelin in Voegelinview.

I just started reading secondary works about this guy and his intellectual history seems really interesting. I only know some biographical details about the guy but I'm definitely not qualified to talk about his ideas. I'd love to hear anyone's take on him, though. I'll probably burn through the first three volumes of Order and History this summer along with New Science of Politics as prep work.

On his faith, iirc he was a non-practicing Christian. I may be wrong, though.

>>9333681
>I'd love to hear anyone's take on him, though.
First, the understanding and scholarship of what the "Gnostics" were has changed with the Nag Hammadi library, etc. But I forgive Voegelin on this.

His scheme is more useful compared to simply calling things "ideology": recognize the equivalent for gnosis, the secret knowledge only a select few can possess, and the eschaton to immanentize, the utopia to realize in this world.

I simply apply his "identifying gnosticism" approach to mass movements and ideologies to Christianity as well. For example the epistles saying not to be yoked with unbelievers and Satan being the prince if not god of this world, Jesus saying he speaks in parables to commoners but explaining them separately to the apostles, as well as speaking of people that will get some form of "priority" in Heaven, thus creating a hierarchy, a separation on Earth, as well as in Heaven, etc. In particular Jesus' belief that the eschaton is coming soon would get generations upon generations of people to attempt to immanentize it.

I will admit, and appreciate, that Christianity has historically made certain attempts to avoid this, but it continues today with things like liberation theology, bizarre mergers of divine command and social activism, and the like.

I do not see mysticism, be it Christian, Platonist or whatnot, as a viable solution to demagoguery, idelogues and mass movements, i.e. Buddhism and WW2 era Japan. Infact the market of "mindfulness" even seemed to be the next mass ideology.

Voegelin's mysticism and self-introspection could conceivably work as a personal defense mechanism, but this guy is largely concerned with political philosophy, and I see a return to Christian thinking, mystical or otherwise, as simply unfeasible.

Religion, superstition, UFOs really look like they will outlive theism in the West. So do ideologues.

>faith
Voegelin is a baptized Lutheran and a Christian Platonist mystic (think Plotinus, Augustine, Eckhart)

>>9332305
https://voegelinview.com/eric-voegelin-mystical-philosopher-and-scientist-pt-1/

>In this practice of meditative philosophy, he pushed well beyond conventional understanding to insist that Reason (nous in Plato and Aristotle) is itself a revelation (not merely “natural”) and that the contemplative activity of rational inquiry emerges as a divine-human participation from questions that arise in the first place “because you have that divine kinesis in you that moves you to be interested.
https://voegelinview.com/carrying-coals-to-newcastle/

>>9332305
A Christian board?

I'm a Buddhist, brother.

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These are really great posts.

Christianity seems to me to be a legitimate way of coping with the age of ideology. I'm projecting, but the more I cheese-grater my thought processes the more I find myself agreeing with guys like Girard and Voegelin.

What I fixate on is this idea that there always has to be *some act,* some introduction of philosophy into politics and history, some immanentizing of the eschaton. The attraction to doing this never seems to go away. Hegel sees this in Napoleon, Marx in revolution, Heidegger in the Nazis. And then deconstruction after the war that is skeptical or despairing about all of these bloody failures...leading to today, where there is just a kind of paranoia, futility and despair about everything, and it comes back as anger and rage. Total mimeticism. Psychoanalysis has an important role in this climate: less production of The Truth, more analysis of ideological Truth-poisoning.

Zizek is the great hermeneutic master. He seems to have arrived at this point of a sort of perpetual torture, where everything is ideology and so there is this kind of desperate waiting for The Left to organize itself, reclaim democracy and so on. In the meantime however it seems that the culture of academic critique has created an environment so thin-skinned that we are now in this paranoid realm of needing to be maximally tolerant and open to everything for fear of offending or triggering anyone or creating a witch-hunt. Is that working? We wind up having witch-hunts purely out of the desire not to have witch-hunts.

The rallying cry for so many ideologies seems to me to be "Torch the miscreant, resanctify the community." Which is 100% Girardian scapegoating. Isn't this how ideology functions? Isn't there a gnostic aspect at the root of all ideology? Doesn't it always come back to some kind of purge or ritual destruction in the end, the double act of destroying the negative presence of the other and at the same time reaffirming or purifying the community?

>>9334093
>Voegelin's mysticism and self-introspection could conceivably work as a personal defense mechanism, but this guy is largely concerned with political philosophy, and I see a return to Christian thinking, mystical or otherwise, as simply unfeasible.
I agree with this and the rest of your excellent post. I find that idea of a personal defense mechanism actually pretty useful so that one does not project one's own needs for psychic security into the realm of political theatre.

The idea of a mass return *to anything* seems to me unfeasible as well. Certainly I don't want to be the guy arguing for that. To me I guess that's it these days. Postmodernity to me goes hand in glove with despair...and that despair does need a coping strategy. Less about doing the right thing and more about knowing when one is about to do the wrong thing, Enacting The Truth...

Just my dumb rambling thoughts.

>>9334093
Wasn't the Nag Hammadi discovered post-WW2, when Voegelin was still alive and writing Order and History, or was there no scholarly edition yet published? I'd love to see someone publish a book evaluating the texts of the Nag Hammadi library and Voegelin's writings on Gnosticism. Voegelin studies seems quite barren, though, compared to his other colleagues and friends.

Thanks for posting, anon. I definitely do see links between Gnostic heresies, like Marcionism, with violent modern political regimes.

>>9334156
Stoic of the orient, how disgusting.

>>9334256
>Just my dumb rambling thoughts.

we know, peter thiel

>>9332305
/lit/ is strictly a Catholic board, you fucking knob

>>9335231
>Wasn't the Nag Hammadi discovered post-WW2
1945. A facsimile begins to be published between '72 and '77, the earliest English translation was in 1977. A complete scholarly translation by a team of German historians and New Testament scholars was published only in 2001. These things take time.

The only way for Voegelin not to do it wrong, realistically, would have been him being some sort of coptologist and closely involved with the teams trying to figure out these ancient texts. He's not a Biblical scholar, the most he did was teaching himself Hebrew and Greek just to read the Bible in its original languages. He died in 1985.

>I'd love to see someone publish a book evaluating the texts of the Nag Hammadi library and Voegelin's writings on Gnosticism.
I found this article:
http://faculty.washington.edu/ewebb/EVgnost.pdf

>>9334156
>Voegelin
i think catholicism is, in the end, for manchildren but ill be damned if white buddhism isnt even worse.

>>9332305
>So since /lit/ is a Christian board
>So since Murca is the internet

You need to travel more.