The Ostensible and the Real

Evangelists say all to whom they preach, and who obey them in silence are real Christians, but intelligent people with higher education are instruments of the devil.

Courtesy: brightok.net

(PASO ROBLES, Calif.) - Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary defines a Christian as "one who professes or is assumed to believe in Jesus Christ, and the truth as taught by him; a human being as distinguished from one of the lower animals; a decent, civilized, or presentable person." Jesus was the essential man necessary for transferring authority from a mortal nature to an Immortal Nature, and for advancing Christian Philosophy He was a Jew who embraced the Christian concept of One God for All Nations.

Jesus died as all men will, and the philosophy he espoused was that of his mentors who used Jesus [as Christ] to resurrect in his place the Immortal Nature and Institution of the Catholic Church. In keeping with the Platonic Ideal, Christians conceived of their Church, and founded their community, on the premise that it should be governed by philosophers - the Coterie first - and thereafter by the Holy See whose role is to guard Church dogma from any who would tamper with its presumed perfection. The claim of Infallibility came much later, continues as an ideal, but has been diminished by scientific enlightenment.

By design, before his death, Jesus vested in his disciples the authority that the Christian Coterie first vested in him. After Jesus' crucifixion, Peter, who first identified Jesus as the Christ, became the leader of the transitional "Body of Christ" whose Philosophy Peter and the others continued to preach guided by the Coterie. The Church is said to have been founded on the rock of St. Peter’s faith, and continues the job of Institution under the guise of the See of St. Peter using Plato’s Republic as its model.

Order was key to Plato's idealized REPUBLIC, and Christians adopted Plato's sense of absolute order as reflected in Calvinist Doctrine following the Reformation. Calvin took his cue from St. Augustine’s THE CITY OF GOD, written after Christianity was made the Religion of Empire in the 4th Century, in which St. Augustine wrote:

“Before [B.C. and A.D.] time . . . existed God [the Coterie] created all things in full knowledge of them and of what [it hoped] would be. Therefore His decree involved knowledge of the fall [from grace] and of the incarnation [preparation of the essential man]. The means He had chosen for executing the decree was faith in Jesus Christ which of His grace [the infinite love, mercy, favor, and goodwill shown to people of faith] He reputed to the elect [via the Elevation of the Host] and refused to the reprobate by denial of the Eucharist.

In 312 AD, Constantine won the decisive battle of Milvian Bridge that led to his becoming Emperor of most of the known world. It is said he fought under a banner provided by Christians that read, CONQUER WITH THIS, a tale magnified to suggest the motto was emblazoned on the heavens. Be that as it may, Constantine knew a good thing when he saw it. He stopped the persecution of Christians by his Edict of Milan that also provided freedom for all religions. By adding the Empire’s Sword to the Christian Word (the Sword of the Mouth) Plato's Ideal Community was fulfilled. The Holy Roman Empire was perfected by a combination of the Empire's might, and the Order of the Church with Constantine as guardian. He used the Church to compliment the power of State, and the Church responded to Constantine’s authority for as long as he lived.

Following the death of Constantine, the Roman See sought to enforce its Catholic Primacy over the entire Institution that resulted in the schisms from Orthodoxy in the 7th Century, and the loss of Protestants in the 18th Century whose Reformation struggle lasted three hundred years. Opposition to Rome’s Primacy exhibited to Rome all it presumed was evil as expressed by Isaiah: "For all that do these things are an abomination unto the Lord: and because of these abominations the Lord thy God doth drive them out before thee."

Rome’s opinion from the beginning, and as the See of St. Peter, was that it alone represented God’s Apostolic Authority, even though Constantine’s last years were lived among Orthodox Christians whose iconic-traditions he embraced. Nevertheless, Rome instigated a quarrel with its Orthodox Brothers to the East in what became known as the Iconoclastic Controversy, the purpose of which was to become the dominant force in all of Christianity. Failing that, Rome used the fraudulent Donation of Constantine that presumed to give to Rome the Primacy it sought [The Medieval World, by Norman F. Cantor, p. 131]. Schism inevitably followed. The “Reformation” suggests it was less a desire to quit Catholicism than to escape its methods that drove Protestants from the fold.

Historically, people to whom Church membership was offered or given, but who refused to join, became the embodiment of the dispossessed, the lost; the fallen; the damned, robbers and reprobates; the deaf, the lame, the blind, and the dead who were, or could be, healed or raised from the dead by membership in the Church. Jesus’ raising of Lazarus from the dead is the most obvious example, and even Billy Graham got it wrong.

For the truth of the matter is, most if not all of Jesus’ miracles were of persuasion.

Much of the Bible was written using miraculous metaphor, symbolic and poetic terms, that appeal more to the emotions of the masses than to their rationality. Exact meaning often is obscure and laced with confusion that invites exaggerated speculation. But extremism invites its own reaction, and when reduced to logic reveals truths that go beyond what is characterized by the Church or can be found in the Bible. Evangelist Rod Parsley of Ohio suffers from the delusion [a persistent false belief held in the face of strong contradictory evidence] that God wants “American-Christians” to destroy Islam. Pure nonsense; so what were we doing in Iraq?

"Nature,” according to St. Augustine, “is composed of the elements of community; the brethren who are members of Christ's body, regenerated [born again] of “intelligent wisdom” [here’s a switch] in silence, and [because of] . . . the True good sown in him by the Will of God, he will be good, the son of God, all in all, composed of all the powers,” [so long as they perform as expected].

Evangelists say all to whom they preach, and who obey them in silence are real Christians, but intelligent people with higher education are instruments of the devil. Salvation they associate with participation in the general-will of congregations against invasion from without, and the single-minded rationality of individuals from within whose thinking might lead “Christians” to test the legitimacy of their authority.

It is a take-off of the time when deviant priests and their congregations who participated in services not in absolute conformity with Catholic dogma were denounced as heretic, and accused of conducting a Black Mass, and in several instances the Church resorted to crusades to stop them. Modification might have been desirable, but the Holy See saw it not as a matter of substance but of Order.

Church viability had to be inviolate if it was to be legitimate, and in 1232 the Inquisition was instituted to dissuade “witches” [then a new definition] from seeking reforms. The Auto da Fé became the spectacle of choice where dissidents publicly were ridiculed, forced to recant, or, if tried and convicted by Canon Law, burned at the stake.

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Kenneth G. Ramey was a 79-year old "writer without a Website" who is generating excellent, provocative articles on the subject of religion and world affairs. We are pleased that Ken's "lone wolf" presence as a writer in the world has been replaced by a spot on our team of writers at Salem-News.com. Raised in Minnesota and California during the dark years of the Great American Depression, Ken is well suited to talk about the powerful forces in the world that give all of us hope and tragedy and everything in between. You can write to Ken at: kgramey@sbcglobal.net