Tuesday, May 26, 2009

post 105. father Kennedy-: A neo-Arian?

Dear Timotheus utahensis, greetings.
Our research in "gensferreria' is a good form of occupational therapy as it invites us to meditate on how our anscestors did survive even worse odds than the ones facing us to-day or that shall certainly face us tomorrow. That is why I love you Mormons being "past-conscious ".
Being Past-conscious is not snobbery, and we should become fully aware of this lack of snobbery, thus removing yet another possible cause of anxiety about possibly being snobs. We all have a problem induced by the bullshit claims of a Democracy gone mad. NO, WE ARE NOT ALL EQUAL ALTHOUGH AS CHRISTIANS WE NEED EQUAL OPPORTUNITIES ACCORDING TO GRACE AND CAPACITY. No, meditation and contemplation are not reserved to R.C. Monks, but belong to every Christian. Amen!
I have to write a Post about an Australian R.C. Priest called Father Peter Kennedy who has been finally been sacked by the ArchBishop for refusing to stop preaching Arianism. I, we all may have doubts about the Full Divinity of Jesus. My first tenet is that we Christian must not sacrifice our intrinsic UNITY for theological differences, especially when confronting modern world's globality and the resurgent power of Islam which is really, bottom-line Arianism.
I have been declared an EBIONITE when my Christology was examined for entrance to Master years ago. I do not mind and do not complain. It is a Badge to me. At least I am something more than an R.C. and a Christian apart from believing I am principally a chosen Melchezedekian.
One of my most favourite sayings of St. Paul is the one in Romans about the duty of a Christian once she/he may have begun believing in Jesus, to act daily in transforming 'the body of death' ( not of sin any longer as Jesus' resurrection removed the sting of sin from death) into 'the body of glory '. To me this is an up and down crescendo progression of failures and successes, but even finances/stock-exchange curves are so. It is natural and we are part of nature as well as of the divine. I believe God shall integrate the whole curve produced in my lifetime if you understand what I mean and allow for the entropy he allowed in Creation.
So, I too and you also............are all acting toward our personal body of glory, since/because we believe in Jesus.
Yet Jesus, even if he were to be considered in the Arian
( Moslem) way, as fully human only, and had he even had ritualistic relations with Mary Magdalene ( as the Catharists/Albigensians/Ebionites believed) for the sake of procreation and of the Sang Real in which we "gensferreria" and others of course may be sharing ( remember the promise of God to Abraham about the stars of firmament being as numerous as David's progeny), this does not have to mean Jesus was equal to any or even all of us and Democracy had not yet been adopted by the Gentiles or the Jews, in Jesus' time, as it is not even now, to-day God's Political Credo, as God is a Supreme Autocratic Absolute Ruler. Jesus of Nazareth, may in fact have benefited from a greater participation into the divine blessing of a Body of Glory in his own lifetime, greater than any human participation so far experienced by any human person who ever lived since Homo Adamiticus Sapiens Sapiens.
Perhaps in this sense ( in relation to the 'body of glory' ), one can remain a Roman Catholic or even a Moslem or an Arian and accept Jesus’ simultaneous full divinity and humanity.
I am a Bachelor of Theology and have written Essays in Christology for my entrance to Master, before being declared an Ebionite by some nitwit who still salivates and gloats on the Mystery so one can keep on writing more and more idiocies about it and keep on salivating and gloating until the Kingdom’s coming.
Since no one has yet been able to explain in an acceptable, rational human language the Mystery of the simultaneous FULL divinity and humanity of Jesus, it should be permissible to try to express possible solutions at less exalted, more useful levels of understanding, aimig to facilitate christian praxis ( i.e., the avoidance of blood-shedding ).
There are two possible major errors in this attempt, namely, either believing in a Jesus fully and only human, equal to everyone else in a democratic way,
a glorified Angel, or believing principally and essentially in a Jesus fully and only divine, a human puppet. I am not going to enumerate and label all the possible errors laying in between these extremes, already made by theologians trying to solve the Mystery or Dogma through the ages of Church History.
I cannot see why participation in an act of procreation ( as practiced among the Essenes) should make Jesus less worthy of the ' body of glory ' of which St. Paul writes about, as being attainable by every practicing believer.
On the other hand, I wish to stress that modern democratic human kind may have gone far too far in their sexual/materialistic obsessions that are making human kind lower than animals. ( proof ot what I am saying are to be found in the general western toleration of pornography, distorted sexual practices and even BESTIALITY [ I have not heard Priests, Ministers or Pastors preach openly and constantly about these obscene practices which are worse than anything even practiced by the Pagans of Greece, Assyria or Babylon ].
This appears to go together with the modern resurgent preoccupations of some members of the Christian Churches who are seeking favour and popularity with the masses of guilt-ridden devotees seeking unattainable justification for their materialistic excesses, when wishing to focus on a Jesus fully and essentially only human. The error here is in forgetting to qualify Jesus’ unique and distinctive humanity in a non-democratic way, by stressing the rigorous self-discipline of Jesus as a member of an Essene community and the need for so called Christians to practice Christianity by renunciation rather than self-fulfilment beyond any reasonable call to moderation and the sacredness of sexual practices which should not be seen as the means to seek pleasure/satisfaction. The need to act in such a way daily to attain the Body of Glory which Jesus possessed in his lifetime, should be daily stressed. Sacramental props should remain props ad not subsituttes for actual action and behaviour. Sorry!

The overt importance given to external ritual and signs by Roman Catholicism and other Religions can be compared to the overt reliance of the Pharisees on the outward observance of the Law. See Juan Luis Segundo S.J.’s volume III, " The Humanist Christology of Paul ” of the five volumes series
“ Jesus of Nazareth Yesterday and Today ”.
Let me quote briefly from pages 26,27-:
................................As a synonym for the creaturely condition, therefore, the term ‘flesh’ [i.e., the human being’s awareness of its creaturely condition] could have either a negative or positive meaning. It was negative when it turned into an element of secularisation, positive when it became an element of religiosity.
When we look at the term in the letters to the Galatians and Corinthians, however, we are surprised to find that it seems to refer to an excess of religiosity. We are forced to conclude that the human being’s deep awareness of its creaturely condition leads it to place religion above itself, to use the religious realm as an intermediary between the intangible transcendenton the one hand and the insecurity of its condition as a creature on the other. The creature tries to lay hold of the transcendent and use it for human purposes. For Paul, then, the term ‘Flesh’ means just the opposite of a tendency to secularisation.
It was Jesus’ criticism of the religion of the Pharisees that enabled Paul, an ex-Pharisee, to effect this revolution in the terminology of the Old Testament. Flesh now signifies that the creature is afraid to confront God with criteria ( ontological and epistemological premises )deriving from the human being.
Thus it is opposed to an authentically religious faith, seeking to use the religious realm ideologically and placing that realm under the enslavement ( and the mechnisms ) of Sin [ a compromise with injustice with a deterioration of human relations ].
It is important that we discover what this mechanism concertely comprises for human existence. Otherwise its anthropological antidote, Faith, as used in Paul’s text, will come across to us as a merely magical element [the ancient dictum of Martin Luther: sola fides ] with supernatural efficacy and without any connection to a transformation of the whole human being.
.............................................................................................
Unquote from Juan Luis Segundo S.J.]

So, in order to maintain this required tension toward the Body of Glory in all Members of the Christian Churches, and combat Arianism and Islamism, I believe that it is wiser to preach a Mystery of the Full Divinity and Humanity of Jesus on the ground that no one really knows the exact extent of Jesus’ sharing of or participating in the two realities/beings.
So, although Father Kennedy may have been well meaning, he has choosen the wrong approach and strategy about this issue for our present times which are global and as dangerous to Christianity and Western Unity as those that occurred during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance due to the problem of a resurging Islam and rampant Materialism. I fail him as a theologian and advise him to go back and study theology again, and especially History, if he really has or has ever had a capacity for these subjects.