Category Archives: Pantheism

Albert Einstein's religious views have been widely studied and often misunderstood.[1] Albert Einstein stated "I believe in Spinozas God".[2] He did not believe in a personal God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings, a view which he described as naive.[3] He clarified however that, "I am not an atheist",[4] preferring to call himself an agnostic,[5] or a "religious nonbeliever."[3] Einstein also stated he did not believe in life after death, adding "one life is enough for me."[6] He was closely involved in his lifetime with several humanist groups.[7][8]

Einstein used many labels to describe his religious views, including "agnostic",[5] "religious nonbeliever"[3] and a "pantheistic"[9] believer in "Spinoza's God".[2] Einstein believed the problem of God was the "most difficult in the world"a question that could not be answered "simply with yes or no". He conceded that "the problem involved is too vast for our limited minds".[10]

Einstein explained his view on the relationship between science, philosophy and religion in his lectures of 1939 and 1941:Science can only be created by those who are thoroughly imbued with the aspiration towards truth and understanding. This source of feeling, however, springs from the sphere of religion, because knowledge of what is does not open the door directly to what should be the goal of our human aspirations. All the aspirations exist in a healthy society as powerful traditions which come into being not through demonstration but through revelation, through the medium of powerful personalities. One must not attempt to justify them, but rather to sense their nature simply and clearly. The highest principles for our aspirations and judgments are given to us in the Jewish-Christian religious tradition.[11]

Einstein was raised by secular Jewish parents and attended a local Catholic public elementary school in Munich.[12] In his Autobiographical Notes, Einstein wrote that he had gradually lost his faith early in childhood:

... I camethough the child of entirely irreligious (Jewish) parentsto a deep religiousness, which, however, reached an abrupt end at the age of twelve. Through the reading of popular scientific books I soon reached the conviction that much in the stories of the Bible could not be true. The consequence was a positively fanatic orgy of freethinking coupled with the impression that youth is intentionally being deceived by the state through lies; it was a crushing impression. Mistrust of every kind of authority grew out of this experience, a skeptical attitude toward the convictions that were alive in any specific social environmentan attitude that has never again left me, even though, later on, it has been tempered by a better insight into the causal connections.

It is quite clear to me that the religious paradise of youth, which was thus lost, was a first attempt to free myself from the chains of the 'merely personal,' from an existence dominated by wishes, hopes, and primitive feelings. Out yonder there was this huge world, which exists independently of us human beings and which stands before us like a great, eternal riddle, at least partially accessible to our inspection and thinking. The contemplation of this world beckoned as a liberation, and I soon noticed that many a man whom I had learned to esteem and to admire had found inner freedom and security in its pursuit. The mental grasp of this extra-personal world within the frame of our capabilities presented itself to my mind, half consciously, half unconsciously, as a supreme goal. Similarly motivated men of the present and of the past, as well as the insights they had achieved, were the friends who could not be lost. The road to this paradise was not as comfortable and alluring as the road to the religious paradise; but it has shown itself reliable, and I have never regretted having chosen it.[13]

Einstein expressed his skepticism regarding the existence of an anthropomorphic god, such as the God of Abrahamic religions, often describing this view as "nave"[3] and "childlike".[14] In a 1947 letter he stated that "It seems to me that the idea of a personal God is an anthropological concept which I cannot take seriously."[15] In a letter to Beatrice Frohlich on 17 December 1952, Einstein stated, "The idea of a personal God is quite alien to me and seems even nave."[16]

Prompted by his colleague L. E. J. Brouwer, Einstein read the philosopher Eric Gutkind's book Choose Life,[17] a discussion of the relationship between Jewish revelation and the modern world. On January 3, 1954, Einstein sent the following reply to Gutkind: "The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. .... For me the Jewish religion like all other religions is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions."[18][19][20] In 2018 his letter to Gutkind was sold for $2.9 million.[21]

On 22 March 1954, Einstein received a letter from Joseph Dispentiere, an Italian immigrant who had worked as an experimental machinist in New Jersey. Dispentiere had declared himself an atheist and was disappointed by a news report which had cast Einstein as conventionally religious. Einstein replied on 24 March 1954:

It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.[22]

In his book Ideas and Opinions (1954) Einstein stated, "In their struggle for the ethical good, teachers of religion must have the stature to give up the doctrine of a personal God, that is, give up that source of fear and hope which in the past placed such vast power in the hands of priests."[3] In December 1922 Einstein said the following on the idea of a saviour, "Denominational traditions I can only consider historically and psychologically; they have no other significance for me.[9]

Einstein had explored the idea that humans could not understand the nature of God. In an interview published in George Sylvester Viereck's book Glimpses of the Great (1930), Einstein responded to a question about whether or not he defined himself as a pantheist. He explained:

Your question is the most difficult in the world. It is not a question I can answer simply with yes or no. I am not an Atheist. I do not know if I can define myself as a Pantheist. The problem involved is too vast for our limited minds. May I not reply with a parable? The human mind, no matter how highly trained, cannot grasp the universe. We are in the position of a little child, entering a huge library whose walls are covered to the ceiling with books in many different tongues. The child knows that someone must have written those books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books, a mysterious order, which it does not comprehend, but only dimly suspects. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of the human mind, even the greatest and most cultured, toward God. We see a universe marvelously arranged, obeying certain laws, but we understand the laws only dimly. Our limited minds cannot grasp the mysterious force that sways the constellations. I am fascinated by Spinoza's Pantheism. I admire even more his contributions to modern thought. Spinoza is the greatest of modern philosophers, because he is the first philosopher who deals with the soul and the body as one, not as two separate things.[23]

Einstein stated, "My views are near those of Spinoza: admiration for the beauty of and belief in the logical simplicity of the order which we can grasp humbly and only imperfectly. I believe that we have to content ourselves with our imperfect knowledge and understanding and treat values and moral obligations as a purely human problemthe most important of all human problems."[24]

On 24 April 1929, Einstein cabled Rabbi Herbert S. Goldstein in German: "I believe in Spinoza's God, who reveals himself in the harmony of all that exists, not in a God who concerns himself with the fate and the doings of mankind."[25] He expanded on this in answers he gave to the Japanese magazine Kaiz in 1923:

Scientific research can reduce superstition by encouraging people to think and view things in terms of cause and effect. Certain it is that a conviction, akin to religious feeling, of the rationality and intelligibility of the world lies behind all scientific work of a higher order. [...] This firm belief, a belief bound up with a deep feeling, in a superior mind that reveals itself in the world of experience, represents my conception of God. In common parlance this may be described as "pantheistic" (Spinoza).[26]

Einstein said people can call him an agnostic rather than an atheist, stating: "I have repeatedly said that in my opinion the idea of a personal god is a childlike one. You may call me an agnostic, but I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist whose fervor is mostly due to a painful act of liberation from the fetters of religious indoctrination received in youth. I prefer an attitude of humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of nature and of our own being."[14] In an interview published by the German poet George Sylvester Viereck, Einstein stated, "I am not an Atheist."[10] According to Prince Hubertus, Einstein said, "In view of such harmony in the cosmos which I, with my limited human mind, am able to recognize, there are yet people who say there is no God. But what really makes me angry is that they quote me for the support of such views."[27]

In 1945 Guy Raner, Jr. wrote a letter to Einstein, asking him if it was true that a Jesuit priest had caused Einstein to convert from atheism. Einstein replied, "I have never talked to a Jesuit priest in my life and I am astonished by the audacity to tell such lies about me. From the viewpoint of a Jesuit priest I am, of course, and have always been an atheist. ... It is always misleading to use anthropomorphical concepts in dealing with things outside the human spherechildish analogies. We have to admire in humility the beautiful harmony of the structure of this worldas far as we can grasp it, and that is all."[28]

In a 1950 letter to M. Berkowitz, Einstein stated that "My position concerning God is that of an agnostic. I am convinced that a vivid consciousness of the primary importance of moral principles for the betterment and ennoblement of life does not need the idea of a law-giver, especially a law-giver who works on the basis of reward and punishment."[5]

According to biographer Walter Isaacson, Einstein was more inclined to denigrate atheists than religious people.[29] Einstein said in correspondence, "[T]he fanatical atheists...are like slaves who are still feeling the weight of their chains which they have thrown off after hard struggle. They are creatures whoin their grudge against the traditional 'opium of the people'cannot hear the music of the spheres."[29][30] Although he did not believe in a personal God, he indicated that he would never seek to combat such belief because "such a belief seems to me preferable to the lack of any transcendental outlook."[31]

Einstein, in a one-and-a-half-page hand-written German-language letter to philosopher Eric Gutkind, dated Princeton, New Jersey, 3 January 1954, a year and three and a half months before his death, wrote: "The word God is for me nothing but the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of venerable but still rather primitive legends. No interpretation, no matter how subtle, can (for me) change anything about this. [...] For me the Jewish religion like all other religions is an incarnation of the most childish superstition. [...] I cannot see anything 'chosen' about them [the Jewish people]."[32][33]

On 17 July 1953 a woman who was a licensed Baptist pastor sent Einstein a letter asking if he had felt assured about attaining everlasting life with the Creator. Einstein replied, "I do not believe in immortality of the individual, and I consider ethics to be an exclusively human concern with no superhuman authority behind it."[34] This sentiment was also expressed in Einstein's book The World as I See It (1935), "I cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes his creatures, or has a will of the type of which we are conscious in ourselves. An individual who should survive his physical death is also beyond my comprehension, nor do I wish it otherwise; such notions are for the fears or absurd egoism of feeble souls. Enough for me the mystery of the eternity of life, and the inkling of the marvellous structure of reality, together with the single-hearted endeavour to comprehend a portion, be it ever so tiny, of the reason that manifests itself in nature."[35]

Einstein was averse to the Abrahamic conception of Heaven and Hell, particularly as it pertained to a system of everlasting reward and punishment. In a 1915 letter to the Swiss physicist Edgar Meyer, Einstein wrote, "I see only with deep regret that God punishes so many of His children for their numerous stupidities, for which only He Himself can be held responsible; in my opinion, only His nonexistence could excuse Him."[36] He also stated, "I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotisms."[37]

Part of Einstein's tension with the Abrahamic afterlife was his belief in determinism and his rejection of free will. Einstein stated, "The man who is thoroughly convinced of the universal operation of the law of causation cannot for a moment entertain the idea of a being who interferes in the course of events that is, if he takes the hypothesis of causality really seriously. He has no use for the religion of fear and equally little for social or moral religion. A God who rewards and punishes is inconceivable to him for the simple reason that a man's actions are determined by necessity, external and internal, so that in God's eyes he cannot be responsible, any more than an inanimate object is responsible for the motions it goes through."[38]

In 1930 Einstein published a widely discussed essay in The New York Times Magazine about his beliefs.[38] With the title "Religion and Science," Einstein distinguished three human impulses which develop religious belief: fear, social or moral concerns, and a cosmic religious feeling. A primitive understanding of causality causes fear, and the fearful invent supernatural beings analogous to themselves. The desire for love and support create a social and moral need for a supreme being; both these styles have an anthropomorphic concept of God. The third style, which Einstein deemed most mature, originates in a deep sense of awe and mystery. He said, the individual feels "the sublimity and marvelous order which reveal themselves in nature ... and he wants to experience the universe as a single significant whole." Einstein saw science as an antagonist of the first two styles of religious belief, but as a partner in the third.[38] He maintained, "even though the realms of religion and science in themselves are clearly marked off from each other" there are "strong reciprocal relationships and dependencies" as aspirations for truth derive from the religious sphere. He continued:

A person who is religiously enlightened appears to me to be one who has, to the best of his ability, liberated himself from the fetters of his selfish desires and is preoccupied with thoughts, feelings and aspirations to which he clings because of their super-personal value. It seems to me that what is important is the force of this superpersonal content ... regardless of whether any attempt is made to unite this content with a Divine Being, for otherwise it would not be possible to count Buddha and Spinoza as religious personalities. Accordingly a religious person is devout in the sense that he has no doubt of the significance of those super-personal objects and goals which neither require nor are capable of rational foundation ... In this sense religion is the age-old endeavor of mankind to become clearly and completely conscious of these values and goals and constantly to strengthen and extend their effect. If one conceives of religion and science according to these definitions then a conflict between them appears impossible. For science can only ascertain what is, but not what should be...[38]

An understanding of causality was fundamental to Einstein's ethical beliefs. In Einstein's view, "the doctrine of a personal God interfering with natural events could never be refuted, in the real sense, by science," for religion can always take refuge in areas that science can not yet explain. It was Einstein's belief that in the "struggle for the ethical good, teachers of religion must have the stature to give up the doctrine of a personal God, that is, give up that source of fear and hope" and cultivate the "Good, the True, and the Beautiful in humanity itself."[38]

In his 1934 book The World as I See It, Einstein expanded on his religiosity, "A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, of the manifestations of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which are only accessible to our reason in their most elementary forms it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute the truly religious attitude; in this sense, and in this alone, I am a deeply religious man."[39]

In 1936 Einstein received a letter from a young girl in the sixth grade. She had asked him, with the encouragement of her teacher, if scientists pray. Einstein replied in the most elementary way he could:

Scientific research is based on the idea that everything that takes place is determined by laws of nature, and therefore this holds for the actions of people. For this reason, a research scientist will hardly be inclined to believe that events could be influenced by a prayer, i.e. by a wish addressed to a supernatural being. However, it must be admitted that our actual knowledge of these laws is only imperfect and fragmentary, so that, actually, the belief in the existence of basic all-embracing laws in nature also rests on a sort of faith. All the same this faith has been largely justified so far by the success of scientific research. But, on the other hand, everyone who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of the universea spirit vastly superior to that of man, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble. In this way the pursuit of science leads to a religious feeling of a special sort, which is indeed quite different from the religiosity of someone more naive.[40]

Einstein characterized himself as "devoutly religious" in the following sense, "The most beautiful emotion we can experience is the mystical. It is the power of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead. To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their most primitive formsthis knowledge, this feeling, is at the center of true religiousness. In this sense, and in this sense only, I belong to the rank of devoutly religious men."[37]

In December 1952, he commented on what inspires his religiosity, "My feeling is religious insofar as I am imbued with the insufficiency of the human mind to understand more deeply the harmony of the universe which we try to formulate as 'laws of nature.'"[41] In a letter to Maurice Solovine Einstein spoke about his reasons for using the word "religious" to describe his spiritual feelings, "I can understand your aversion to the use of the term 'religion' to describe an emotional and psychological attitude which shows itself most clearly in Spinoza. (But) I have not found a better expression than 'religious' for the trust in the rational nature of reality that is, at least to a certain extent, accessible to human reason."[42]

Einstein frequently referred to his belief system as "cosmic religion" and authored an eponymous article on the subject in 1954, which later became his book Ideas and Opinions in 1955.[43] The belief system recognized a "miraculous order which manifests itself in all of nature as well as in the world of ideas," devoid of a personal God who rewards and punishes individuals based on their behavior. It rejected a conflict between science and religion, and held that cosmic religion was necessary for science.[43] For Einstein, "science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind."[44][45] He told William Hermanns in an interview that "God is a mystery. But a comprehensible mystery. I have nothing but awe when I observe the laws of nature. There are not laws without a lawgiver, but how does this lawgiver look? Certainly not like a man magnified."[46] He added with a smile "some centuries ago I would have been burned or hanged. Nonetheless, I would have been in good company."[46] Einstein devised a theology for the cosmic religion, wherein the rational discovery of the secrets of nature is a religious act.[45] His religion and his philosophy were integral parts of the same package as his scientific discoveries.[45]

In a letter to Eric Gutkind dated 3 January 1954, Einstein wrote in German, "For me the Jewish religion like all others is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions. And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people. As far as my experience goes, they are also no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything 'chosen' about them."[18][19][20]

In 1938, Einstein discussed the hatred of the Jews by those who shun popular enlightenment. More than anything else in the world, they fear the influence of men of intellectual independence. I see in this the essential cause for the savage hatred of Jews raging in present-day Germany. To the Nazi group the Jews are not merely a means for turning the resentment of the people away from themselves, the oppressors; they see the Jews as a nonassimilable element that cannot be driven into uncritical acceptance of dogma, and that, therefore as long as it exists at allthreatens their authority because of its insistence on popular enlightenment of the masses.[47]

In an interview published by Time magazine with George Sylvester Viereck, Einstein spoke of his feelings about Christianity.[29] Born in Germany, Viereck supported National Socialism but he was not anti-semitic.[48] And like Einstein he was a pacifist.[49][50] At the time of the interview Einstein was informed that Viereck was not Jewish,[51] but stated that Viereck had "the psychic adaptability of the Jew," making it possible for Einstein to talk to him "without barrier."[51] Viereck began by asking Einstein if he considered himself a German or a Jew, to which Einstein responded, "It's possible to be both." Viereck moved along in the interview to ask Einstein if Jews should try to assimilate, to which Einstein replied "We Jews have been too eager to sacrifice our idiosyncrasies in order to conform."[29] Einstein was then asked to what extent he was influenced by Christianity. "As a child I received instruction both in the Bible and in the Talmud. I am a Jew, but I am enthralled by the luminous figure of the Nazarene."[29] Einstein was then asked if he accepted the historical existence of Jesus, to which he replied, "Unquestionably! No one can read the Gospels without feeling the actual presence of Jesus. His personality pulsates in every word. No myth is filled with such life."[29]

In a conversation with the Dutch poet Willem Frederik Hermans Einstein stressed that, "I seriously doubt that Jesus himself said that he was God, for he was too much a Jew to violate that great commandment: Hear O Israel, the Eternal is our God and He is one!' and not two or three."[52] Einstein lamented, "Sometimes I think it would have been better if Jesus had never lived. No name was so abused for the sake of power!"[52] In his 1934 book The World as I See It he expressed his belief that "if one purges the Judaism of the Prophets and Christianity as Jesus Christ taught it of all subsequent additions, especially those of the priests, one is left with a teaching which is capable of curing all the social ills of humanity."[53] Later in a 1943 interview Einstein added, "It is quite possible that we can do greater things than Jesus, for what is written in the Bible about him is poetically embellished."[54]

Einstein interpreted the concept of a Kingdom of God as referring to the best people. "I have always believed that Jesus meant by the Kingdom of God the small group scattered all through time of intellectually and ethically valuable people."[citation needed]

In the last year of his life he said "If I were not a Jew I would be a Quaker."[55]

The only Jewish school in Munich had been closed in 1872 for want of students, and in the absence of an alternative Einstein attended a Catholic elementary school.[56] He also received Jewish religious education at home, but he did not see a division between the two faiths, as he perceived the "sameness of all religions".[57] Einstein was equally impressed by the stories of the Hebrew Bible and the Passion of Jesus.[57] According to biographer Walter Isaacson, Einstein immensely enjoyed the Catholic religion courses which he received at the school.[29] The teachers at his school were liberal and generally made no distinction among students' religions, though some harbored an innate but mild antisemitism.[58] Einstein later recalled an incident involving a teacher who particularly liked him, "One day that teacher brought a long nail to the lesson and told the students that with such nails Christ had been nailed to the Cross by the Jews" and that "Among the children at the elementary school anti-Semitism was prevalent...Physical attacks and insults on the way home from school were frequent, but for the most part not too vicious."[58] Einstein noted, "That was at a Catholic school; how much worse the antisemitism must be in other Prussian schools, one can only imagine."[59] He would later in life recall that "The religion of the fathers, as I encountered it in Munich during religious instruction and in the synagogue, repelled rather than attracted me."[60]

Einstein met several times and collaborated with the Belgian priest scientist Georges Lematre, of the Catholic University of Leuven. Fr Lemaitre is known as the first proponent of the big bang theory of the origins of the cosmos and pioneer in applying Einstein's theory of general relativity to cosmology. Einstein proposed Lemaitre for the 1934 Francqui Prize, which he received from the Belgian King.[61]

In 1940 Time magazine quoted Einstein lauding the Catholic Church for its role in opposing the Nazis:

Only the Church stood squarely across the path of Hitler's campaign for suppressing truth. I never had any special interest in the Church before, but now I feel a great affection and admiration because the Church alone has had the courage and persistence to stand for intellectual truth and moral freedom. I am forced thus to confess that what I once despised I now praise unreservedly.[62]

The quotation has since been repeatedly cited by defenders of Pope Pius XII.[63] An investigation of the quotation by mathematician William C. Waterhouse and Barbara Wolff of the Einstein Archives in Jerusalem found that the statement was mentioned in an unpublished letter from 1947. In the letter to Count Montgelas, Einstein explained that the original comment was a casual one made to a journalist regarding the support of "a few churchmen" for individual rights and intellectual freedom during the early rule of Hitler and that, according to Einstein, the comment had been drastically exaggerated.[63]

On 11 November 1950 the Rev. Cornelius Greenway of Brooklyn wrote a letter to Einstein which had also quoted his alleged remarks about the Church. Einstein responded, "I am, however, a little embarrassed. The wording of the statement you have quoted is not my own. Shortly after Hitler came to power in Germany I had an oral conversation with a newspaper man about these matters. Since then my remarks have been elaborated and exaggerated nearly beyond recognition. I cannot in good conscience write down the statement you sent me as my own. The matter is all the more embarrassing to me because I, like yourself, I am predominantly critical concerning the activities, and especially the political activities, through history of the official clergy. Thus, my former statement, even if reduced to my actual words (which I do not remember in detail) gives a wrong impression of my general attitude."[64]

In 2008 the Antiques Roadshow television program aired a manuscript expert, Catherine Williamson, authenticating a 1943 letter from Einstein in which he confirms that he "made a statement which corresponds approximately" to Time magazine's quotation of him. However, Einstein continued, "I made this statement during the first years of the Nazi regimemuch earlier than 1940and my expressions were a little more moderate."[65]

Einstein's conversations with William Hermanns were recorded over a 34-year correspondence. In the conversations Einstein makes various statements about the Christian Churches in general and the Catholic Church in particular: "When you learn the history of the Catholic Church, you wouldn't trust the Center Party. Hasn't Hitler promised to smash the Bolsheviks in Russia? The Church will bless its Catholic soldiers to march alongside the Nazis" (March 1930).[59] "I predict that the Vatican will support Hitler if he comes to power. The Church since Constantine has always favoured the authoritarian State, as long as the State allows the Church to baptize and instruct the masses" (March 1930).[66] "So often in history the Jews have been the instigators of justice and reform whether in Spain, Germany or Russia. But no sooner have they done their job than their 'friends', often blessed by the Church, spit in their faces" (August 1943).[67]

"But what makes me shudder is that the Catholic Church is silent. One doesn't need to be a prophet to say, 'The Catholic Church will pay for this silence...I do not say that the unspeakable crimes of the Church for 2,000 years had always the blessing of the Vatican, but it vaccinated its believers with the idea: We have the true God, and the Jews have crucified Him.' The Church sowed hate instead of love, though the ten commandments state: Thou shalt not kill" (August 1943).[68] "With a few exceptions, the Roman Catholic Church has stressed the value of dogma and ritual, conveying the idea theirs is the only way to reach heaven. I don't need to go to Church to hear if I'm good or bad; my heart tells me this" (August 1943).[69] "I don't like to implant in youth the Church's doctrine of a personal God, because that Church has behaved so inhumanly in the past 2,000 years... Consider the hate the Church manifested against the Jews and then against the Muslims, the Crusades with their crimes, the burning stakes of the inquisition, the tacit consent of Hitler's actions while the Jews and the Poles dug their own graves and were slaughtered. And Hitler is said to have been an altar boy!" (August 1943).[69]

"Yes" Einstein replied vehemently, "It is indeed human, as proved by Cardinal Pacelli (the future Pope Pius XII), who was behind the Concordat with Hitler. Since when can one make a pact with Christ and Satan at the same time?" (August 1943).[69] "The Church has always sold itself to those in power, and agreed to any bargain in return for immunity." (August 1943)[70] "If I were allowed to give advice to the Churches," Einstein continued, "I would tell them to begin with a conversion among themselves, and to stop playing power politics. Consider what mass misery they have produced in Spain, South America and Russia." (September 1948).[71]

In response to a Catholic convert who asked "Didn't you state that the Church was the only opponent of Communism?" Einstein replied, "I don't have to emphasise that the Church [sic] at last became a strong opponent of National Socialism, as well." Einstein's secretary Helen Dukas added, "Dr. Einstein didn't mean only the Catholic church, but all churches."[72] When the convert mentioned that family members had been gassed by the Nazis, Einstein replied that "he also felt guiltyadding that the whole Church, beginning with the Vatican, should feel guilt." (September 1948)[72]

When asked for more precise responses in 1954, Einstein replied: "About God, I cannot accept any concept based on the authority of the Church. [...] As long as I can remember, I have resented mass indoctrination. I do not believe in the fear of life, in the fear of death, in blind faith. I cannot prove to you that there is no personal God, but if I were to speak of him, I would be a liar. I do not believe in the God of theology who rewards good and punishes evil. My God created laws that take care of that. His universe is not ruled by wishful thinking but by immutable laws."[73] William Miller of Life Magazine who was present at this meeting described Einstein as looking like a "living saint" and speaking with "angelic indifference."[74][75]

From a young age he had an interest in philosophy. Einstein said about himself: "As a young man I preferred books whose content concerned a whole world view and, in particular, philosophical ones. Schopenhauer, David Hume, Mach, to some extent Kant, Plato, Aristotle."[76]

Einstein believed that when trying to understand nature one should engage in both philosophical enquiry and enquiry through the natural sciences.[77]

Einstein believed that epistemology and science "are dependent upon each other. Epistemology without contact with science becomes an empty scheme. Science without epistemology isinsofar as it is thinkable at allprimitive and muddled."[78]

Like Spinoza, Einstein was a strict determinist who believed that human behavior was completely determined by causal laws. For that reason, he refused the chance aspect of quantum theory, famously telling Niels Bohr: "God does not play dice with the universe."[79] In letters sent to physicist Max Born, Einstein revealed his belief in causal relationships:

You believe in a God who plays dice, and I in complete law and order in a world which objectively exists, and which I in a wildly speculative way, am trying to capture. I firmly believe, but I hope that someone will discover a more realistic way, or rather a more tangible basis than it has been my lot to find. Even the great initial success of the quantum theory does not make me believe in the fundamental dice game, although I am well aware that some of our younger colleagues interpret this as a consequence of senility.[80]

Einstein's emphasis on 'belief' and how it connected with determinism was illustrated in a letter of condolence responding to news of the death of Michele Besso, one of his lifelong friends. Einstein wrote to the family: "Now he has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That signifies nothing. For us believing physicists the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion."[81]

Einstein had admitted to a fascination with philosopher Spinoza's deterministic version of pantheism. American philosopher Charles Hartshorne, in seeking to distinguish deterministic views with his own belief of free will panentheism, coined the distinct typology "Classical pantheism" to distinguish the views of those who hold similar positions to Spinoza's deterministic version of pantheism.[82]

He was also an incompatibilist; in 1932 he said:

I do not believe in free will. Schopenhauer's words: 'Man can do what he wants, but he cannot will what he wills,' accompany me in all situations throughout my life and reconcile me with the actions of others, even if they are rather painful to me. This awareness of the lack of free will keeps me from taking myself and my fellow men too seriously as acting and deciding individuals, and from losing my temper.[83][84]

And yet, Einstein maintains that whether or not a particular human life is meaningful depends on how the individual conceives of his or her own life with respect to the lives of fellow human beings. A primitive human being in this regard is one whose life is entirely devoted to the gratification of instinctual needs. Whereas Einstein accepts that the gratification of basic needs is a legitimate and indispensable goal, he regards it nevertheless as an elementary goal. The transition of the human mind from its initial and infantile state of disconnectedness (selfishness) to a state of unity with the universe, according to Einstein, requires the exercise of four types of freedoms: freedom from self, freedom of expression, freedom from time, and freedom of independence.[84][85]

Einstein was a secular humanist and a supporter of the Ethical Culture movement. He served on the advisory board of the First Humanist Society of New York.[7] For the seventy-fifth anniversary of the New York Society for Ethical Culture, he stated that the idea of Ethical Culture embodied his personal conception of what is most valuable and enduring in religious idealism. He observed, "Without 'ethical culture' there is no salvation for humanity."[8] He was an honorary associate of the British humanist organization the Rationalist Press Association.[86]

With regard to punishment by God, Einstein stated, "I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotisms."[87] "A God who rewards and punishes is inconceivable to him for the simple reason that a man's actions are determined by necessity, external and internal, so that in God's eyes he cannot be responsible, any more than an inanimate object is responsible for the motions it undergoes. Science has therefore been charged with undermining morality, but the charge is unjust. A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hopes of reward after death. It is therefore easy to see why the churches have always fought science and persecuted its devotees."[88]

On the importance of ethics he wrote, "The most important human endeavor is the striving for morality in our actions. Our inner balance and even our very existence depend on it. Only morality in our actions can give beauty and dignity to life. To make this a living force and bring it to clear consciousness is perhaps the foremost task of education. The foundation of morality should not be made dependent on myth nor tied to any authority lest doubt about the myth or about the legitimacy of the authority imperil the foundation of sound judgment and action."[89] "I do not believe that a man should be restrained in his daily actions by being afraid of punishment after death or that he should do things only because in this way he will be rewarded after he dies. This does not make sense. The proper guidance during the life of a man should be the weight that he puts upon ethics and the amount of consideration that he has for others."[90] "I cannot conceive of a personal God who would directly influence the actions of individuals, or would directly sit in judgment on creatures of his own creation. I cannot do this in spite of the fact that mechanistic causality has, to a certain extent, been placed in doubt by modern science. My religiosity consists in a humble admiration of the infinitely superior spirit that reveals itself in the little that we, with our weak and transitory understanding, can comprehend of reality. Morality is of the highest importancebut for us, not for God."[91]

In a conversation with Ugo Onufri in 1955, with regards to nature's purpose he said, "I have never imputed to Nature a purpose or goal, or anything that could be understood as anthropomorphic."[77] In a 1947 letter he stated, "I feel also not able to imagine some will or goal outside the human sphere."[15]

Einstein believed nave realism was "relatively simple" to disprove. He agreed with Bertrand Russell that humans observe the effects objects have on them (greenness, coldness, hardness, etc.) and not the actual objects themselves.[77]

Einstein declared that he was no positivist,[92] and maintained that we use with a certain right concepts to which there is no access from the materials of sensory experience.[93]

Einstein considered that Kants "denial of the objectivity of space can (...) hardly be taken seriously".[94] He also believed that "if Kant had known what is known to us today of the natural order, I am certain that he would have fundamentally revised his philosophical conclusions. Kant built his structure upon the foundations of the world outlook of Kepler and Newton. Now that the foundation has been undermined, the structure no longer stands."[77]

Einstein was an admirer of the philosophy of David Hume; in 1944 he said "If one reads Humes books, one is amazed that many and sometimes even highly esteemed philosophers after him have been able to write so much obscure stuff and even find grateful readers for it. Hume has permanently influenced the development of the best philosophers who came after him."[77]

Some sources maintain that Einstein read the three Critiques at the age of 16 and studied Kant as a teenager. However Philip Stamp states that this is contradicted by some of his own claims. In 1949, Einstein said that he "did not grow up in the Kantian tradition, but came to understand the truly valuable which is to be found in his doctrine, alongside of errors which today are quite obvious, only quite late."[77]

In one of Einstein's letters in 1918 to Max Born, Einstein said that he was starting to discover this "truly valuable" in Kant: "I am reading Kant's Prolegomena here, among other things, and I am beginning to comprehend the enormous suggestive power that emanated from the fellow, and still does. Once you concede to him merely the existence of synthetic a priori judgements, you are trapped. Anyway it is nice to read him, even if it is not as good as his predecessor Hume's work. Hume also had a far sounder instinct."[77]

Einstein explained the significance of Kant's philosophy as follows:

Hume saw that concepts which we must regard as essential, such as, for example, causal connection, cannot be gained from material given to us by the senses. This insight led him to a sceptical attitude as concerns knowledge of any kind. Man has an intense desire for assured knowledge. That is why Hume's clear message seems crushing: the sensory raw material, the only source of our knowledge, through habit may lead us to belief and expectation but not to the knowledge and still less to the understanding of lawful relations. Then Kant took the stage with an idea which, though certainly untenable in the form in which he put it, signified a step towards the solution of Hume's dilemma: if we have definitely assured knowledge, it must be grounded in reason itself.[77]

Schopenhauer's views on the independence of spatially separated systems influenced Einstein,[95] who called him a genius.[96] In their view it was a necessary assumption that the mere difference in location suffices to make two systems different, with each having its own real physical state, independent of the state of the other.[95]

In Einstein's Berlin study three figures hung on the wall: Faraday, Maxwell and Schopenhauer.[97] Einstein described, concerning the personal importance of Schopenhauer for him, Schopenhauer's words as "a continual consolation in the face of lifes hardships, my own and others, and an unfailing wellspring of tolerance."[98] Although Schopenhauer's works are known for their pessimism, Konrad Wachsmann remembered, "He often sat with one of the well-worn Schopenhauer volumes, and as he sat there, he seemed so pleased, as if he were engaged with a serene and cheerful work."[76]

Einstein liked Ernst Mach's scientific work, though not his philosophical work. He said "Mach was as good a scholar of mechanics as he was a deplorable philosopher".[77]

Einstein expressed his admiration for the Ancient Greek philosophers, pointing out that he has been far more interested in them than in science. He also noted; "The more I read the Greeks, the more I realize that nothing like them has ever appeared in the world since.[99]

Originally posted here:
Religious and philosophical views of Albert Einstein - Wikipedia

When we speak about the attributes of God, there are some things that the everyday believer can relate to, and indeed are intimately familiar to us. When we think of God being loving, merciful, or even jealous, his character is fairly easy to grasp. There are, however, attributes that we struggle to fathom. When we speak about Gods transcendence, omniscience, or his aseity, it can take some time to get our heads around them. These concepts are so far removed from us that even the words for them are strange. Its one such attribute that well consider in this article: Gods omnipresence.

God is completely unrestricted by any spatial limitations. He is present in all places simultaneously. We call this attribute his omnipresence. The psalmist recognises this when he asks where he can run from the presence of God (Psalm 139:7-12). No matter how high or deep or far he goes, Gods presence will still be there. Because God created space and matter, he isnt constrained by either. He is in every place, consistently.

However, omnipresence doesnt mean that God is in or a part of everything. Thats pantheism. Some people like to imagine that there is a part of the Creator in every part of creation. Others believe hes some kind of mystical force or energy, moving within all living creatures. This is not the God we meet in the Bible. I wont find a little piece of God in my dog anymore than Ill find him in a fire I make.

I wont find a little piece of God in my dog anymore than Ill find him in a fire.

In scripture we find people rebuked when they worship created things, even created things that they identify with the Lord. God is present throughout all of creation, but not because he is in, or part of creation (Deuteronomy 4:15-20). Even humans made in the image of God only resemble him. We are no more divine than anything else in creation.

Omnipresence also doesnt mean that Gods being is somehow divided, as if little parts of him are spread throughout the universe. God is fully aware of everything that happens. And he is fully able to act with all of his power, because he is fully present in all places (Jeremiah 23:24).

Its true that we dont experience his presence in the same way that the angels in heaven currently do. Its also true that our experience of him is unlike the experience of Israel at Mount Sinai (Exodus 19:11; 34:5), or the high priest in the Holy of Holies (Exodus 28:35; 1 Kings 8:11). Furthermore, our present experience of God pales in comparison with what we look forward to in the New Earth (Revelation 21:22-27). Just as it is true that the presence of the Lord through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit is unique to believers (1 Corinthians 6:19).

God is always fully able to act with all of his power, because he is fully present in all places.

These differing experiences, however, dont take away from the fact of Gods omnipresence. No, its just our awareness of it that differs. In other words, while God is present in all places, he can choose to reveal and manifest that presence in particular ways according to his purposes.

Wherever we are, the God who cannot be contained is fully present there with us.

In the past, hes chosen to appoint a particular place where people could come to meet with him. Today instead of building a temple for us to gather in, God says that we, his people, are the temple (1 Corinthians 6:19). This is because the Holy Spirit is given to all believers. Since he lives within us, we can expect to experience his presence wherever we are. This is especially true when we gather together in his name (Matthew 18:20).

While there is certainly some mystery, we can be confident in this fact: wherever we find ourselves, the God who cannot be contained by the heavens or the earth is fully present there with us.

See the original post:
God's Omnipresence: A Reassuring Reality to Rejoice In - TGC Africa - The Gospel Coalition Africa

by Massimo Introvigne

The 2009 James Cameron film Avatar will have a sequel in December, followed by three more installments. Meanwhile, audiences in several countries can watch again from September 22 a remastered edition of the first movie.

When it came out, I published an article in the daily newspaper owned by the Italian Catholic Bishops Conference, Avvenire, which was commented by several other media, where I compared the mythology of Avatar with the ideas of an Italian community, Damanhur. Since Damanhur had its anti-cult enemies, they immediately attacked my article calling it propaganda for the community (which it wasnt). Happily, they were largely ignored.

What was my point, exactly? James Camerons film combined an incredible technology, which can be only appreciated in 3D and on the big screen (much less in TV or on a computer), with an all-in-all very simple plot and New Age ideology. The Navi, the peaceful inhabitants of the planet Pandora, are attacked by mercenaries from Planet Earth hired by a multinational. The cute extraterrestrials are a transparent metaphor for all those who are different. The simple message is that those who look different may be better than usand show a superior respect for the environment.

What interested me in 2009 was that in the movie the moral superiority of the Navi was derived from their religion, which was presented as superior to those prevailing on Planet Earth. Navis religion unites rather than dividing, and is monistic rather than dualistic. It does not distinguish between Creator and creatures, and it venerates Eywa, the Mother or the All, a collective mind of the universe that reveals itself through an extremely dense network of interconnections. Everything is connected with everything else, and the Navi shamans perform miracles, including healings, because they are able to enter the lines of connection and attune themselves with Eywa.

Navi religion is pantheistic, but pantheism is revisited with an ecological and New Age flavor. The reference to New Age is obvious, and it is more convincing than the hypothesis that the Navi religion is a slightly modified variation of Hinduism, a comment that in 2009 made the front pages of several Indian daily newspapers. However, New Age is a generic expression. There are many different New Age authors, groups, and communities.

I was not the only scholar who, watching Avatar, cant help but notice that the New Age group that came closest to the Navis way of thinking was not in the United States or in Camerons native Canada. It was near Turin, Italy. It was Damanhur, the Aquarian center founded in 1976 in the Valchiusella valley by Oberto Airaudi (19502013), famous for its large underground temple. Despite how much its citizens, as they prefer to call themselves, dislike this label, Damanhur represents the largest New Age community in the world.

The hypothesis that Cameron could have been inspired by Damanhur was not so far-fetched. Books and videos about Damanhur in English were very common when he created his movie in the North American New Age circuit. The story of the underground temple that the community, quite incredibly, succeeded in keeping secret until 1992 had fascinated even large newspapers. The similarities were significant. Like the underground temple of Damanhur, the center of power and spirituality of the Navi is hiddeninside an enormous tree.

Like the Damanhurians, the Navi have their sacred language, and the use of it, both in Camerons film and at Damanhur in Valchiusella, helps to indicate the difference with those who are not part of the community. Both the Navi and the Damanhurian citizens emphasize the value of being part of a people, an identity that is not only ethnic but initiatic, and the outcome of a free choice, as the main character in the film demonstrates.

The Damanhurians greet each other, recognizing the deep communion that exists between them, with the words, Con te (With you), not with the usual Good morning. The Navi do the same by saying I see you. At Damanhur, every member of the community establishes a special bilateral connection with an animal or a plant (or both), taking on its name. Amongst the Navi, every warrior becomes a warrior by choosing a winged animal to ride, and by being chosen by it at the same time.

The Damanhurian citizens, wrote the founder Airaudi, become drops that are conscious of themselves and of all the other drops forming the sea of Being. The Navi would agree. Both the Navi and the Damanhurians believe pantheistically in a great All, where each manifestation of nature and life is in connection with all the others. Like the Navi, the Damanhurians attempt to interact with these connections, including through the use of special symbols, and claim to achieve results, including in the field of healing.

Obviously, I had no evidence that Cameron or somebody in his team knew about Damanhur. I was also aware that there were other communities and movements with similar ideas. Mine was just a hypothesis. Yet, I found the similarities somewhat significant.

Still in doubt? Check out Damanhur: An Esoteric Community Open to the World, edited by Stefania Palmisano and Nicola Pannofino and soon to be published by Palgrave Macmillan (I have a chapter in it but is about Damanhurs school, not Avatar). You will learn a lot more about Damanhur and the Damanhurians, and in the end will be able to answer the question about Avatar by yourself.

Here is the original post:
Avatar Is Back, and It Still Looks Like Damanhur - Bitter Winter

PART 3 GODS ABUNDANT LIFE

WHERE DOES GODS ABUNDANT LIFE COME FROM?

How does someone get this abundant life?

This is, for many, a very difficult question to answer. For those who dont believe in God and are controlled by the dictates of the sin nature, this spiritual reality has no awareness by them and doesnt reside within them. Many who dont know God might conclude that when they die, thats it; their existence is over. There are others who dont know God who might say something like if there is one, then Hell prepare a better place for all humans. As far as hell is concerned, it would probably be dismissed as being a fictitious place.

Acts 26:20 But shewed first unto them of Damascus, and at Jerusalem, and throughout all the coasts of Judaea, and then to the Gentiles, that they should repent and turn to God, and do works meet for repentance.

John 3:16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

If one of them were to be inclined to want to find God and see if He truly exists, what would be the spiritual remedy or prescription for satisfying their need? According to Scripture, this abundant or eternal life can only be received by them if they were to confess to God the Father that theyre a sinner and believe in His Son Jesus Christ as to who He is and what He has accomplished. If they were to respond as such a proclamation, then they would receive the indwelling Spirit along with additional benefits, one of which is eternal or abundant life. So, the answer to the first question is, how does someone get this abundant life; this is accomplished by responding to the gospel of Christ?

What about those who believe in God and are religious? Do they have Gods abundant life? These are difficult questions to answer. There are many people, who believe in God; however, their perspective as to how theyll get to heaven is not based on responding to the gospel of Christ but on one of these four avenues.

John 3:5 Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.

Acts 2:38 Then Peter said unto them, Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.

Some have been taught that if a person is sprinkled or baptized in water, then their sins are forgiven, and at the same time, with the arrival of the Holy Spirit, theyll receive a new heart and become a child of God. Ill admit that there are verses that appear to support this conjecture. I personally dont believe that any of us can perform any ritual to receive Gods favor.

Acts 15:1 And certain men which came down from Judaea taught the brethren, and said, Except ye be circumcised after the manner of Moses, ye cannot be saved.

Do you remember the Jewish Christians in the book of Acts who proclaimed that unless someone was circumcised, they couldnt be saved? If receiving abundant life was based on observing a ritual, then which ritual is the one that will cause a person to receive it?

2 Thessalonians 2:13 But we are bound to give thanks alway to God for you, brethren beloved of the Lord, because God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth:

Without getting into an extensive study about this here, this verse from 2 Thessalonians seems to provide a clear understanding of what constitutes the gospel of Christ and its ingredients of water and the Holy Spirit from John 3:3. The word water is synonymous with the belief of the truth. Its symbolic of responding to the gospel of repentance and belief. And the words sanctification of the Spirit refers to the receiving of the indwelling Spirit at this time.

Many believe that if they follow the tenets of their faith in respect to doing such and such that God will look favorably on them and grant them entrance into heaven when they die.

Do they have abundant life?

Remember what we said about what abundant life is all about. Gods abundant life is divine grace, peace, joy, rest, resurrection life, and a surplus of spiritual refreshment for oneself. At sporadic times, I would expect that if they have received this life, then they wouldve experienced it.

Ephesians 2:8-9 For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast.

I can remember attending an ecumenical Bible study years ago in which the discussion was about whether someone could get to know God in a personal way by responding to the gospel of Christ. One of the attendees, who had been involved in a particular faith, proclaimed that she knew God because she had been a member of her particular church for many years.

I proceeded to ask her if she had ever experienced Gods divine peace or joy in her life, and she said no. This was a foreign concept to her. It was pretty clear that salvation (going to heaven) in her mind was all about going to church and participating in the many community functions that they offered.

In other words, they believe that there are many different dogmas and gods that could get us to heaven. They would emphatically declare that the gospel of Christ is not the only way to get there. They would say that there are many varied truths pertaining to many different religious people, i.e., Buddha, Mohammed, Mary Baker Eddy, etc. They might also say that there are many different deities, i.e., Allah, Baalim, Woden, Zeus, etc.

Acts 4:12 Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.

Its true that there are other writings of a spiritual inclination that arent affiliated with the sixty-six books of the Bible. And they do offer some explanation as to how someone could get to a better place at death. But in most cases, what they offer is some type of works program that they claim will get them there. And one more thing. Theres little or no mention of the need for a Messiah/savior to pay a debt owed to God the Father due to disobedience in the Garden of Eden.

In this regard, the resurrection of Christ would have no meaning. And there would be no need to experience abundant life because good works performed in the name of some god will be the chief basis or requirement for entrance into a place of spiritual serenity. Those who aspire to this pathway, if asked where they would go at death, would say that they have a hope of a better place, but unfortunately not an assurance of going there.

John 14:6 Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.

Im sure that for some, what Ive just said is sacrilege. Belief in one God, existing in three persons, is not the pathway to heaven. This doesnt mean or imply that theres no Trinity. What Im saying is that theres only one of them who left heaven, was born of a virgin, and died on a cross as the substitute for all mankind. Hes the only way to get to heaven. And His name is Jesus.

With that said, here are the questions that Id like you to consider.

Do you want assurance of going to a better place when you die?

Would you like to receive Gods abundant life?

Well, here are the scriptural answers to these questions.

Acts 17:30 And the times of this ignorance God winked at; but now commandeth all men every where to repent:

Ephesians 1:12-13 That we should be to the praise of his glory, who first trusted in Christ. In whom ye also trusted, after that ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation: in whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that holy Spirit of promise,

1 John 5:11-13 And this is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life. These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal life, and that ye may believe on the name of the Son of God.

As mentioned earlier, two conditions need to be met in order to receive eternal life. Ill restate them again, albeit more fully. One has to do with repentance, and the other has to do with belief in a certain someone. Repentance has to do with acknowledgment of oneself as a sinner, and as such, a desire to want a change of heart, a new nature. Belief has to do with believing in a particular someone, this someone whose name happens to be Jesus Christ, as to whom He is and what He has accomplished.

Now, I present to you the most important decision that youll ever have to make in your life. This one, however, involves eternity. This cannot be earned. You cant be given a ticket to come in by your friend, relative, husband, or wife. Would you like to receive Gods abundant life right now? This is no gimmick.

The following prayer is set before you. If you recite it silently or out loud, God will hear you and respond by sending the Holy Spirit to come and live in your body along with giving you many blessings, one of which is abundant life. Are you ready to receive a new life and a new beginning?

God the Father, I acknowledge that Ive sinned in many areas such as: not telling the truth; slandering others; having sexual relations outside of marriage; being jealous; having participated in alcohol or drug abuse; having sex with others of the same gender; having committed adultery; taking money from others in a deceitful manner; having committed rape; having engaged in pedophilia; etc.

I dont want to continue in these mental, verbal, and overt sins anymore. I need a new nature, a spiritual nature.

I believe in you Jesus Christ as one of the members of the Trinity, who as God pre-existed time; came to the earth and took on the form of a man, being born of a virgin (no sin nature); lived a sinless life; listened to and obeyed the directives of his Father; went to the cross and paid for the penalty of and forgave the sins of the whole world; rose from the dead after three days never to die again, walked the earth in His resurrection body for forty days witnessing to over five hundred people; and ascended into heaven to be seated at the right hand of God the Father.

If youve said these words, Scripture tells us that the Holy Spirit has come into your life, and one of the blessings youve received is eternal (abundant) life. Congratulations, youve been made anew. You are now a child of God!

Suppose you remember what was said by Jesus about eternal life from the previous chapter, which was that His desire for His disciples or followers was that they not only would have eternal life but that they would have it more abundantly. That integrity or the elements of the Holy Spirits character would be developed in them. That the reality of this new life would become evident not only to ourselves but also to others.

This brings us to the next question that needs utmost consideration.

How can I experience Gods abundant life on a consistent basis?

This will involve a two-fold approach.

The first aspect will be to determine what it is that inhibits eternal, abundant, or zoe life from being cultivated. Well take a look at this in the next chapter. And the second will be to find out what major decisions will help us experience this new life.

But before we do, Id like to leave an article for you to read. We talked earlier in this chapter about the four ways that many people believe will cause them to go to heaven. One of them was that they believed there were many roads that would get them there. They intimate that this could be achieved allegedly by following a certain religious leader or by becoming a member of any faith. These ideas have always intrigued and yet puzzled me. Many roads? Many gods? Much confusion! Believe it or not, the following article takes these misperceptions and puts them in their proper place.

GOD QUESTION: DO ALL ROADS LEAD TO HEAVEN?

Are all religions equally valid?

Answer:[Theres] no doubt that the number of different religions in the world makes it a challenge to know which one is correct. First, lets consider some thoughts on the overall subject and then look at how one might approach the topic in a manner that can actually get to [the] right conclusion about God. The challenge of different answers to a particular issue is not unique to the topic of religion. For example, you can sit [a hundred] math students down, give them a complex problem to solve, and [its] likely that many will get the answer wrong. But does this mean that a correct answer [doesnt] exist? Not at all. Those who get the answer wrong simply need to be shown their error and know the techniques necessary to arrive at the correct answer.

How do we arrive at the truth about God? We use a systematic methodology that is designed to separate truth from error by using various tests for truth, with the end result being a set of right conclusions. Can you imagine the end results a scientist would arrive at if he went into the lab and just started mixing things together with no rhyme or reason? Or if a physician just started treating a patient with random medicines in the hope of making him well? Neither the scientist nor the physician takes this approach; instead, they use systematic methods that are methodical, logical, evidential, and proven to yield the right end result.

This being the case, why should theologythe study of Godbe any different? Why believe it can be approached in a haphazard and undisciplined way and still yield [the] right conclusions? Unfortunately, this is the approach many take, and this is one of the reasons why so many religions exist. That said, we now return to the question of how to reach truthful conclusions about God. What systematic approach should be used? First, we need to establish a framework for testing various truth claims, and then we need a roadmap to follow to reach [the] right conclusion. Here is a good framework to use:

The above framework, when applied to the topic of religion, will help lead one to [the] right view of God and will answer the four big questions of life:

But how does one go about applying this framework in the pursuit of God? A step-by-step question/answer approach is one of the best tactics to employ. Narrowing the list of possible questions down produces the following:

[First,] we need to know if absolute truth exists. If it [doesnt], then we really cannot be sure of anything (spiritual or not), and we end up either an agnostic, unsure if we can really know [anything] or a pluralist, accepting every position because [were] not sure which, if any, is right.

Absolute truth is defined as that which matches reality, that which corresponds to its object, telling it like it is. Some say [theres] no such thing as absolute [truth] but taking such a position becomes self-defeating. For example, the relativist says, All truth is relative, yet one must ask: is that statement absolutely true? If so, then absolute truth exists; if not, then why consider it? Postmodernism affirms no truth, yet it affirms at least one absolute truth: postmodernism is true. In the end, absolute truth becomes undeniable.

Further, absolute truth is naturally narrow and excludes its opposite. Two plus two equals four, with no other answer being possible. This point becomes critical as different belief systems and worldviews are compared. If one belief system has components that are proven true, then any competing belief system with contrary claims must be false. Also, we must keep in mind that absolute truth is not impacted by sincerity and desire. No matter how sincerely someone embraces a lie, [its] still a lie. And no desire in the world can make something true that is false.

The answer [to] question one is that absolute truth exists. This being the case, agnosticism, postmodernism, relativism, and skepticism are all false positions.

This leads us to the next question of whether reason/logic can be used in matters of religion. Some say this [isnt] possible, butwhy not? The truth is, logic is vital when examining spiritual claims because it helps us understand why some claims should be excluded and others embraced. Logic is absolutely critical in dismantling pluralism (which says that all truth claims, even those that oppose each other, are equal and valid).

For example, Islam and Judaism claim that Jesus is not God, whereas Christianity claims He is. One of the core laws of logic is the law of non-contradiction, which says something cannot be both A and non-A at the same time and in the same sense. Applying this law to the claims of Judaism, Islam, and Christianity means that one is right and the other two are wrong. Jesus cannot be both God and not God. Used properly, logic is a potent weapon against pluralism because it clearly demonstrates that contrary truth claims cannot both be true. This understanding topples the whole true for you but not for me mindset.

Logic also dispels the whole all roads lead to the top of the mountain analogy that pluralists use. Logic shows that each belief system has its own set of signs that point to radically different locations in the end. Logic shows that the proper illustration of a search for spiritual truth is more like a mazeone path makes it through to [the] truth, while all others arrive at dead ends. All faiths may have some surface similarities, but they differ in major ways in their core doctrines.

The conclusion is that you can use reason and logic in matters of religion. That being the case, pluralism (the belief that all truth claims are equally true and valid) is ruled out because [its] illogical and contradictory to believe that diametrically opposing truth claims can both be right.

Next comes the big question: does God exist? Atheists and naturalists (who [dont] accept anything beyond this physical world and universe) say [no]. While volumes have been written and debates have raged throughout history on this question, [its] actually not difficult to answer. To give it proper attention, you must first ask this question: Why do we have something rather than nothing at all? In other words, how did you and everything around you get here? The argument for God can be presented very simply:

Something exists.

You [dont] get something from nothing.

Therefore, a necessary and eternal Being exists.

You cannot deny you exist because you have to exist in order to deny your own existence (which is self-defeating), so the first premise above is true. No one has ever demonstrated that something can come from nothing unless they redefine what nothing is, so the second premise rings true. Therefore, the conclusion naturally followsan eternal Being is responsible for everything that exists.

This is a position no thinking atheist denies; they just claim that the universe is that eternal being. However, the problem with that stance is that all scientific evidence points to the fact that the universe had a beginning (the [big bang]). And everything that has a beginning must have a cause; therefore, the universe had a cause and is not eternal. Because the only two sources of eternality are an eternal universe (denied by all current empirical evidence) or an eternal Creator, the only logical conclusion is that God exists. [They, answering the question of Gods existence in the affirmative,] rules out atheism as a valid belief system.

Now, this conclusion says nothing about what kind of God exists, but amazingly enough, it does do one sweeping thingit rules out all pantheistic religions. All pantheistic worldviews say that the universe is God and is eternal. And this assertion is false. So, Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and all other pantheistic religions are ruled out as valid belief systems.

Further, we learn some interesting things about this God who created the universe. Hes:

This Being exhibits characteristics very similar to the God of Judaism, Islam, and [Christianity, which,] interestingly enough, are the only core faiths left standing after atheism and pantheism have been eliminated. Note also that one of the big questions in life (origins) is now answered: we know where we came from.

This leads to the next question: can we know God? At this point, the need for religion is replaced by something more importantthe need for revelation. If mankind is to know this God well, [its] up to God to reveal Himself to His creation. Judaism, Islam, and Christianity all claim to have a book that is Gods revelation to man, but the question is which (if any) is actually true? Pushing aside minor differences, the two core areas of dispute are 1) the New Testament of the Bible 2) the person of Jesus Christ. Islam and Judaism both claim the New Testament of the Bible is untrue in what it claims, and both deny that Jesus is God incarnate, while Christianity affirms both to be true.

[Theres] no faith on the planet that can match the mountains of evidence that exist for Christianity. From the voluminous number of ancient [manuscripts] to the very early dating of the documents written during the lifetime of the eyewitnesses (some only fifteen years after Christs death), to the multiplicity of the accounts (nine authors in twenty-seven books of the New Testament), to the archaeological evidencenone of which has ever contradicted a single claim the New Testament makesto the fact that the apostles went to their deaths claiming they had seen Jesus in action and that [Hed] come back from the dead, Christianity sets the bar in terms of providing the proof to back up its claims. The New Testaments historical authenticitythat it conveys a truthful account of the actual events as they occurredis the only right conclusion to reach once all the evidence has been examined.

When it comes to Jesus, one finds a very curious thing about HimHe claimed to be God in the flesh. Jesus own words (e.g., Before Abraham was born I AM), His actions (e.g., forgiving sins, accepting worship), His sinless and miraculous life (which He used to prove His truth claims over opposing claims), and His resurrection all support His claims to be God. The New Testament writers affirm this fact over and over again in their writings.

Now, if Jesus is God, then what He says must be true. And if Jesus said that the Bible is inerrant and true in everything it says (which He did), this must mean that the Bible is true in what it proclaims. As [weve] already learned, two competing truth claims cannot both be right. [So,] anything in the Islamic Koran or writings of Judaism that contradict the Bible cannot be true. In fact, both Islam and Judaism fail since they both say that Jesus is not God incarnate, while the evidence says otherwise. And because we can indeed know God (because He has revealed Himself in His written Word and in Christ), all forms of agnosticism are refuted. Lastly, another big question of life is answeredthat of ethicsas the Bible contains clear instructions on how mankind ought to live.

This same Bible proclaims that God cares deeply for mankind and wishes all to know Him intimately. In fact, He cares so much that He became a man to show His creation exactly what Hes like. There are many men who have sought to be God, but only one God who sought to be [a] man so He could save those He deeply loves from an eternity separated from Him. This fact demonstrates the existential relevancy of Christianity and also answers [the] last two big questions of lifemeaning and destiny. Each person has been designed by God for a purpose, and each has a destiny that awaits himone of eternal life with God or eternal separation from Him. This deduction (and the point of God becoming a man in Christ) also refutes Deism, which says God is not interested in the affairs of mankind.

In the end, we see that [the] ultimate truth about God can be found and the worldview maze successfully navigated by testing various truth claims and systematically pushing aside falsehoods so that only the truth remains. Using the tests of logical consistency, empirical adequacy, and existential relevancy, coupled with asking the right questions, yields truthful and reasonable conclusions about religion and God. Everyone should agree that the only reason to believe something is that [its] truenothing more. Sadly, true belief is a matter [of will], and no matter how much logical evidence is presented, some will still choose to deny the God who is there and miss the one true path to harmony with Him.29

Endnotes

29Ravi Zacharias. GOD QUESTION: "DO ALL ROADS LEAD TO HEAVEN? Calvary Chapel Fort Lauderdale 8 December 2021 <https://bit.ly/3pF9tP5>.

Amazon: https://amzn.to/2ITJ1wj

Website: http://bit.ly/1RQnYJ8

New Covenant Ministries - Ministerios NuevoPacto - Harbor Church, Block Island

Sunday & Thursday Worship - Domingo& Jueves7:00PM

Excerpt from:
PART 3 GOD'S ABUNDANT LIFE - Block Island Times

The New York Botanical Garden is a brilliant testament to the plant kingdom. Contrasting the city's concrete neighborhoods, the Garden is a cool and refreshing refuge. With thousands of species from all over the world, the Botanical Garden and its glassy structure are built upon 250 acres of forest. It is the largest of its kind in any city in the U.S. and is one of many highly-rated experiences in the NY area.

Visitors can spend an informative, relaxing, and stimulating afternoon exploring the diverse flora. This is a short guide on how to do it.

The Garden was founded in 1891 by the affluent botanist Nathaniel Lord Britton and his wife, Elizabeth. The socialite couple took a trip to London in 1888, where they visited the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew.

The beauty of the gardens inspired in them the ambition to transform New York into a world-class city. After all, in the view of history, a great city is defined by its capacity to host an accumulation of human greatness.

Therefore, the Botanical Garden an extensive collection of plants from the farthest corners of the world would catapult New York into a global and historical hub of human progress.

The Garden was built on the northern half of Bronx Park, which is naturally forested and supplied by the freshwater Bronx River. The land is fertile and raw and is therefore perfect for hosting a wide variety of flora.

Related: Creepy Crawly Carousel: A Unique Bronx Zoo Attraction

Those species of flora that cannot survive in the New York climate and soil are housed in the iconic Greenhouse Conservatory, which is architecturally inspired by European Royal Greenhouses of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

The New York Botanical Garden is a serious hub for education and research. The Garden employs over one hundred PHDs researching the various subsets of botanical science.

Spanning 250 acres of land, there is a lot of ground to cover. Visitors can pick and choose their favorite environments to customize the experience, as seeing everything could take multiple visits.

Many of the attractions are also seasonal, so getting the full experience may depend on the time of year. Luckily, there are some exhibits that are in bloom 365 days a year.

The Conifer Arboretum is an expansive mini-forest of pine trees. There is a tranquil walkway through the forest, which is a great way to get some shade and cool down. In the diverse thicket of conifers, each species is clearly labeled and marked.

Depending on the season, the pine needles can be verdant green or powdery blue. There are over 250 mature pine trees in the 37-acre forest, and species originate everywhere from the tall mountains of Japan to the boreal forests of Alaska to the alpine groves of the West Coast.

The Thain Family Forest is an original old forest. On the forest walk, visitors will trace the steps of Native American hunters, see the remnants of glaciers, and even recount moments from the Civil War. This part of the Botanical Garden is relatively untouched as it predates the Garden itself.

Nestled against the Family Forest is the three-acre Rock Garden. See the sculptural and textural variety of exotic stones and rocks from quarries far away.

The Rock Garden is a feast for the eyes, especially in the fall against the backdrop of colorful trees. It is all the more meditative as there is a perennial waterfall gently cascading down the rocks.

Right outside the main Conservatory, in the tropical pool, is a stunning collection of floating water lilies and lotuses. Many of these rare species have been appreciated and preserved by ancient religions such as Buddhism and Old Egypt Pantheism.

These floating florae bloom in the summer, making it a seasonal attraction.

Related: Insider Guide To NYC's Best Parks (That Aren't Central Park)

Romance abounds in the famous Rose Garden, one of the most popular attractions in the Garden. Over 650 species of roses bloom during the spring, summer, and fall. The air is heavily perfumed with fragrant flowers that come in a variety of colors, but none more iconic than blood-red.

Visit the Garden at any time of the year. There are seasonal events for every season, as some plants bloom in the winter, while others bloom in the spring.

The forests are especially beautiful in the fall, and the native flora section is quite pleasant in the winter, while the blooming aqua-flora are in full bloom during the balmy summer.

It takes around three hours to explore the Botanical Gardens. This is the ideal time frame for a visit as it is extensive without being exhaustive.

Of course, true aficionados will have no trouble spending entire days here without running out of plants to explore.

Here is the original post:
New York Botanical Garden In Three Hours: Here's What To See - TheTravel

As early as 1907, St. Pius X predicted in his encyclopedia feed that modernism would logically lead to a form of pantheism. from reconciliation document in our ageWe have seen an increasingly open expression of this principle.

Does God appear in some form in all religions, or does Christ represent Gods union with all mankind (as in happiness and hope and in John Paul II savior of man), can we still say that Christ represents the union of God with all creation?

in the encyclopedia laudato si 2017 There are several elements in this sense: The Father is the ultimate source of everything, the loving and communicative foundation of all that exists. The Son, who represents Him, and through whom everything is created, is included in this earth. It happened when he made it in Marys womb. The soul, the infinite bond of love, is present deep in the heart of the universe encouraging and stimulating new paths (n. 238).

For the Christian experience, all beings in the physical universe find their true meaning in the word incarnate, Because the Son of God has included in his person part of the physical universewhere it has introduced a germ of definite change (n. 235).

Christ has taken possession of this material world and now, having risen, dwells in the intimacy of every creature, surrounds it with His affection and penetrates it with His light (n. 221).

From such a point of view, if for the modernist, all religions are valid expressions of the vital incarnation of the divine in man, then idolatry is its most valid expression. Pope Francis had already illustrated this principle in his own way.

In his sermon on October 7, 2019, he asked: What is the difference between wearing feathers on your head and the tricorn worn by some officers in our decasters? In his common cruel language, the Pope expressed the idea of the indifference of various religious manifestations, of all manifestations of the universal spirit of the Divine inherent in man.

This commentary is an expression of a broader thought, which has been expressed at times, more appropriately, by modern eclecticism. But if, to speak of the universe as a divinity, Christianity should attempt to use the image of the Avatar and take it as a paradigm for something else, as Teilhard and laudato siThe ancient pagans do not need such a leap.

therefore lies in the repeated appreciation of tribal culture laudato si (cf. Numbers 146 and 179), for its exemplary union with the divine universe, and therefore the pleasant image of Amerindian culture, presented by the Synod to the Amazon.

a tool of labor (IL) presents the life of this synod with a biome of Indians as a complete model: not only because they respect nature, but because they live a spiritual concept that encapsulates them in the whole. allows fit.

The praise of such a concept is very clear and repeated: in n. 104 suggests recovering myths and updating community rites and ceremonies that contribute significantly to the process of ecological transformation.

In fact, indigenous rituals and ceremonies are essential to comprehensive health because they integrate the various cycles of human life and nature. They create harmony and balance between human beings and the universe. They protect life from the evils that cause it. Both can be caused by humans. and other living beings. They help to cure diseases that harm the environment, human life and other living beings (n. 87).

It would seem difficult to say more clearly that harmony with the universe is the result of the spiritual conception of the indigenous people and their rituals; But the text goes a long way. In then. 75 reads: beats in families cosmic experience, [] After all, it is in the family where we learn to live in harmony: between people, between generations, with nature, in dialogue with spirits,

God Himself, understood as the spirit of the Divine inherent in man and the universe, working in all of this, even embodying Himself in it (in the Telhardian manner): It is embodied for the Church. There is a great opportunity to discover the presence and of God: in the most diverse manifestations of creation; in the spirituality of the native peoples; in the manifestations of popular religiosity; in the various popular organizations that oppose large projects; and of a productive economy. In motion, sustainable and supportive that respects nature (IL No. 33).

The Church has a role to discover this presence of God and to incorporate it into its own institutions and dogmas, as God manifests Himself in this pantheistic presence and above all in the spirituality of paganism, so the modernists believe in God. Reveal what you think about it.

In light of this brief description, the participation of modern popes in actual pagan rites may no longer be surprising. We are not talking here about the sacraments authorized and conducted by the Pope in the eighty-six kinds of ecumenical meetings, but those in which he has personally attended.

Everyone knows the veneration of Pachamama by the Sovereign Pontiff and members of the Synod on Amazon in 2019; However, few people know that in the summer of 2017, on the occasion of the anniversary of diplomatic relations with Japan, a no theater performance was held in the Vatican with a classic play. hagoromo to which the element was associated NanbaiA Shinto ritual in which actors take on the role of deities dancing for peace and prosperity.

The Okina interpreter must purify himself before beginning. Among the sacrifices offered on the altar are menbkoa receptacle containing the masks used for the show and the masks used for Nanbai, It is therefore a true pagan ritual that took place many centuries ago in the palaces of the Apostles, on a Vatican hill cleansed from the martyrdom of St. Peter, the work of Constantine and St. Sylvester.

In July 2022, on the fourth day of his recent visit to Canada, a magician from the Huron-Wendet Nation performed ritual purification (ritual purification) as part of a scheduled reception.blurred out) in all four directions in front of the Pope, using sweet grass and animal feathers to disperse the sacred smoke lit in honor of the Great Spirit, Manitou.

The pontiff, having received turkey feathers and sweet grass, was then invited to participate in a spiritual circle from which a sacred fire could be conceived. The healer said that the holy fire unites everything that is in creation.

We will honor earth, air, water and fire, said the native in classical esoteric words. Were going to respect the mineral aspect, the vegetable aspect, and the human aspect.

To open the four directions, the magician whistled the bone instrument four times while reciting special invocation sutras. Arriving at the Western Gate, he said: I ask the Western Ancestor to grant us access to the Sacred Circle of Souls, to be united and strong with us.

All those present were asked to lay their hands on their hearts. Video footage shows the pope, along with bishops and cardinals, all performing the pagan ceremonial order given to them.

In 1984, John Paul II, in Canada, had already attended the same ceremony as Pope Francis: but back then he reminisced the assassination attempt, then more recently, dipped in rare essence and blood to disperse the smoke He was given the wing of an eagle. A description of this ritual, similar to the ritual celebrated with Pope Francis, was published in the cross of September 8/9, 1984.

All the pagan rituals that John Paul II participated in cannot be listed here in their entirety: in terms of severity and extent, we refer only to the prayer in the Sacred Forest of Togo, the invocation of spirits by a shaman. with, and a purification ritual with the active participation of the deceased pontiff (see osservatore romano 11 August 1985).

In 1986, in India, the Pope was received with the singing of Vedic hymns (hence pagan and openly pantheistic) and many celebrations of a very distinctly Hindu nature, even with the celebration of Mass. was also mixed.

Finally, on a picturesque note, Pope Paul VI was the first to wear an Indian feathered headdress, during an audience at Castel Gandolfo in September 1974.

Nothing new under papal modernism

Excerpt from:
Reconciliation Pope And Paganism - Nation World News

In 2010, a friend sent me a link to an essay by David Bentley Hart, a takedown of the so-called New Atheists. Hart caricatures Christopher Hitchenss arguments in God Is Not Great as syllogisms whose major premise has been omitted:

Major Premise: [omitted]Minor Premise: Timothy Dwight opposed smallpox vaccinations.Conclusion: There is no God.

But it was Harts conclusion that really won me over: The only really effective antidote to the dreariness of reading the New Atheists, it seems to me, is rereading Nietzsche. Here is a hint of the independence of thought that Harts readers prize: an Orthodox theologian laments atheisms decline from Nietzsches intellectual courage into historical errors, sententious moralism, glib sophistry.

I later reviewed a few of Harts books for various outlets, which eventually resulted in an email from him in 2016, and we have been corresponding ever since (as I note below, within a few weeks he was sending me ridiculous claims like Entwistle, Townshend, and Moon were each immeasurably better musicians than any member of the Stones). I just texted David to ask how he first became aware of me, whether from one of my reviews of his work or something else, and he said, Probably reading you in the New Yorker or somewhere, I dont exactly recall. I knew of you before any review from you. Recently, for no reason at all, we decided to record the following conversation held over Zoom. It has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Michael Robbins

David Bentley Hart: We should clarify whats going on here: that its entirely a conversation, not an interview, right? So, reciprocal disclosuresif I say anything embarrassing, youre morally obliged to say something humiliating about yourself.

Michael Robbins: Well, I dont recall that in our preliminary

DBH: I think that was in the contract. I think you havent checked the fine print. But, anywayso you are Michael Robbins, the esteemed poet, whose most recent book, Walkman, has been praised, but not given the awards it deserves by the philistines. And Im David Bentley Hart.

MR: And you are the author, most recently, of You Are Gods, Tradition and Apocalypse, and the Gnostic fantasy Kenogaia, which did win an awardwhich is not to say that you have won all the awards you deserve.

DBH: Well, yes, for Roland in Moonlight alone, which is my other recent book.

MR: Yes, I dont have a hard copy of that one here with me.

DBH: I have the three volumes of poetry that youve published, and with my typical genius in organizing books, because they just keep mounting up by several thousands, I dont know where your books are. I went looking for them last night, and to be honest I couldnt find them.

MR: It is a problem I fully understand. There are books that Ive ended up buying three times because I thought that I had lost a copy of it.

DBH: I think weve all had that experience; or youve just simply forgotten that you owned a copy. As I grow older and more forgetful, I forget that I just bought a copy last month. So tell me

MR: Well, before we get started with your question, I just want to point out that we began our correspondence, however many years ago now, with a dispute over the relative greatness of the Who and the Rolling Stonesyou a Whovian and I with sympathy for the devil. And I think both of us came to a greater appreciation of the others favorite band.

DBH: Yeah, yeah, well, actually, the Who were never my favorite band. Im afraid that Im that most sublunary of creatures

MR: The Beatles.

DBH: The Beatles, yeah, were always my favorite. Im a sucker for melody, and since they could generate melodies at a rate that Schubert couldnt have kept up withthat and chord progressions. I mean those chord progressions, getting richer and richer and richer. But I loved all of the British invasion bands as a kid. Still youre right, I had soured a bit on the Rolling Stones, mostly, I think, because they went on and on and on, past their great period, and this cast an unflattering light back upon their great period.

But I wanted to ask you what everyones been asking you since Walkman came out, and weve talked a bit about it. Of course, the cover and the title lead one to expect yet another iteration of the inimitable Robbins voice, which in the past I would have characterized asI dont knowmilitantly sardonic, terse, sarcasticbut formally very precise, using a certain sort of formal mastery in order to contain a fairly disruptive irony. In any case, the words that spring to ones lips immediately are not tender, lyrical. To be honest, I have to say, if I were asked for my normal reaction to your first two volumes of verse, it would be something like a bitter appreciative laugh.

But Walkman isnt formally rigidits formally accomplished, but in a more sprung way. Im not saying its sprung rhythm all the way through, but it is basically the case that its not in strict meter. Theres just a sort of lilting cadence through all the long poemsand most of the poems in the book are long. But also, I have to admit, I had not been prepared for the vulnerable Michael Robbins. Theres a quiet lyricism that goes with the rhythm of the verse and the images, without being lush and opulent in the way I would be, in my late-nineteenth-century perversity. But it has some lovely imagesI mean, somehow you make a Kinkos late at night, with cashiered copying machines, seem oddly atmospheric and invitingand the melancholy and the almost confessional tone running through it remain for me the most interesting changes. I was just hoping you might talk about that for a bit, because theres something going on there and I dont know if itll show up again in your next collection or not.

MR: Well, Ive actually been writing new poems fairly inspired by one of my favorite contemporary works, Chelsey Minniss Baby, I Dont Care.

DBH: Somehow I would expect you to like that.

MR: When Ive been asked this previously, I always say that I didnt want to stagnate, I got bored with what I was doing, and thats all true enough, but thats also an evasion of the question

DBH: I dont think, if that were all it were, you would just naturally switch to reflective melancholy, giving this sense of something wounded. Im not trying to overburden this with descriptions, but I mean it cant just be that you were trying out a new style.

MR: Right. Well, the impetus was reading James Schuyler. I read all of Schuyler while I was at a loss about where to go from the second book. And as I say in Walkman, the title poem, Schuyler was too tender / for me then, but now / he is just tender enough. And theres something about growing older. I was still in my thirties when I wrote Alien vs. Predator, and a couple of those poems are from my twenties. And growing older sucks

DBH: Yes, indeed.

MR: So lately Ive begun thinking about age, as Ive gotten back into Keats and Blake and Wordsworth, who were loves of my youth. When I was writing the poems in Alien vs. Predator, I was much more likely to be reading John Donne or Marvell, and not necessarily their very earnest poems, but their wittier, catchier poems. And I think about the change you refer to a little bit as the difference between Donne and Wordsworth, the difference between a sort of formal display of wit, not personalyou know, you dont get a sense of who John Donne is in his daily life. Whereas reading The Prelude or Tintern AbbeyWordsworth was twenty-eight when he wrote Tintern Abbey, but Wordsworth also turned fifty when he was around twenty-five. And then my anger at the ecological crisis, the crisis of capitalist society, it was easier to take a sardonic stance with that anger in my twenties and thirties. As I age, as the angel watches the past pile up before it as its blown into the future, it gets harder and harder to maintain a stance of militant humor rather than of militant despair. I wanted to write something that captured my increasing lack of hope. I guess you can do that in a nihilistic death-metal way, like the band Cattle Decapitation, or you can do it in a sort of Wordsworthian way.

My image of European civilization now is the old man standing on his porch yelling all the time at the kids, because all he remembers now is that hes angry about something.DBH: Theres an elegiac, not a polemical, tone in the bookits neither satire nor savage commentary, that is, but its definitely elegiac. It has a plangency to it. As you say, its partly your age, and youve mentioned going back to Wordsworth and Keats. We think of the Romantics as writing young mens poetry, but the truth is its also the poetry of reflective middle age. As you begin to grow old, you go back to it, and it has a completely different meaning for you now. And I too have been reading reams of Wordsworth and Keats in recent years, and both German and English Romanticism more and more, which I used to keep a certain distance from, to be honest, because I was corrupted by T. S. Eliot when I was young. And I shouldnt have been, because his critical essays say some incredibly stupid things about poets who arent either Metaphysicals or Moderns.

MR: I think thats right, and, you know, how could Keats write poems of reflective middle age? Well, partly because European civilization was in its reflective middle age at that time, and its now

DBH: in its gibbering senescence. In fact, my image of it now is the old man standing on his porch yelling all the time at the kids, because all he remembers now is that hes angry about something.

MR: Well, perhaps that provides a segue to my first question for you. I have, I think, identified three themes that are common to your latest work, Roland in Moonlight, You Are Gods, That All Shall Be Saved, and Tradition and Apocalypse. I would identify them as your preoccupations, and I wonder what you think or have to say about it. In descending order of complexity: first, the idea that thou art that, or that Atman is Brahman, which I take it for you is simply a way of expressing in a different conceptual grammar the proposition that you are gods. Second, the idea that it is logically impossible for persons ultimately to reject God, so far as it is constitutive of the rational will to seek him as its ultimate end. And third, how shall I put it? The increasing divergence between what Frederick Douglass called the Christianity of this land and the Christianity of Christ. Which is to say, if you were a Martian, and you came down to the United States and you wanted to deduce from the statements and behavior of its adherents, without access to the scriptures, what Christianity was, what the gospels taught, I think you would have to conclude that Jesus spent most of his time denouncing homosexuality, insisting on the inviolability of gender, counseling the acquisition of wealth, and railing against immigrants.

DBH: Youve left out guns. Its a curious thing, of course. Lets start there, then, rather than with the more metaphysically abstruse issues. So, every age of Christendom has been something of a jarring contradiction to the language of Christianity, as preserved in Scripture and liturgy; but I honestly believe that America uniquely is the land where Christianity went to die, and that the proof that it died here is that it could be so easily supplanted by a completely different religion called Christianity, and yet no one noticed the absurdity of it.

MR: Frederick Douglass noticed. John Brown noticed.

DBH: No, right, I mean right now. I dont mean that no one ever noticed, or that there are no Christians here. I always get attacked for thisHes saying there are no American Christians. No, theres no American Christianity. The Christians that are here, the ones who are still practicing actual Christianity, have their Christianity from elsewhere. But I mean whats native to America, the American religion, to use Harold Blooms phraseand he was actually quite good on that. He didnt get all of it right, but he was right in recognizing that the American Evangelical religion is simply not the thing called Christianity, either faithfully or unfaithfully, throughout Christian history.

If you were to go online and look at the sermons of, say, someone like Reverend Jeffress, one of the most popular Evangelical figures today, assuming you were that Martian you mentioned, and you took him as your guide to Christianity, and you listened faithfully to his sermons over a course of many months, you would come away believing that Christianity is a religion of salvation, freely given no matter what; but then otherwise its a creed about patriotism, about libertarian rightsmostly gun ownership, private propertyand a rather militant distaste for Muslims (which slips out from time to time), and generally the virtues of great wealth and military power. And that would be the whole religion. It would not be clear, either visually or from the content of what you were hearing, that the flag thats always right there next to the lectern or the pulpit and the cross in the backwell, it would be very difficult to discern which of those was meant to be the holy symbol of the faith.

As I say, Christians have always betrayed Christianity, and they have always misunderstood it. Theyve always in a casual way assumed that it was meant to affirm whatever it was they wanted to be valued. But I dont think that theres ever been another culture that could so sublimely corrupt and so sublimely efface the original Gospel and replace it with something elsewith a counterfeit thats not just a dissemblance, but almost a polar oppositein the way that American religious culture did. I dont know what else to say about America. Were the most religious country in the developed world, supposedly, but its definitely not Christianity that forms our religious consciousness.

MR: Yeah, thats the thing. From the time of Constantinopleahem, from the time of Constantine

DBH: The time of Constantine is, in fact, the time of Constantinople.

MR: Im dealing with my cat as we talk. From the time of Constantine, there has been an official religion called Christianity that one would would hesitate to fully identify with the Christianity of of the Gospels. But there is something new

DBH: At least there was a continuity. Just read some of the Church fathers who preached in Constantinople: you read John Chrysostom, for instance, and Bakunin seems like a tepid conservative. They were still very much proclaiming the Gospel of the poor. Christians are supposed to be looking after the poor; in fact, you have no right to the wealth you possess. It is an abomination that you claim this for yourself just because you got there first. Rhetoric of that sort. You find this language in Gregory of Nazianzus, Basil of Caesarea, John Chrysostom, and two of those were Patriarchs of Constantinople speaking to an imperial audience, as well as to the larger crowd. And right through the Middle Ages you can see that even when the values of the faith were corrupted or betrayed or somehow twisted in a way that would allow for, say, the execution of heretics, the actual knowledge of the content of the Gospel was not lost. I mean, it was still there. You know, St. Francis doesnt have to go looking for some lost truth. Hes still using the language that he hears in the liturgy and in readings and sermons. Thats something thats qualitatively very different from what we are talking about. Its as if, as soon as Europeans reached these shores, there was the possibility of reinventing the faith in this utterly odd, Orphic wayantinomian in some ways, and very legalistic in others.

The Great Awakening, you know, is a very curious phenomenon, one in which a new fervency is taking shape; but you can already see within the actual religious phenomena of the time an odd movement away from the moral core of the faith. Yet even that doesnt explain to me modern American Evangelicalism. And what I find especially curious is that its not just Evangelicalism we mean; theres something about America that has the power to transform everything. Orthodoxy in Americawhen I converted more than thirty-five years ago, when I joined the OCAwas still immersed in a Russo-Parisian, urbane, very cosmopolitan sort of cultureI mean, Schmemann and Meyendorff and figures like that. Its now been absolutely colonized by former Evangelicals, who didnt actually cease being Evangelicals in order to becoming Orthodox. Instead, they brought the ethos, the narrowness, the strange legalism and aridity of Evangelicalism into Orthodoxy; and the Orthodox, not being very good at knowing what the hell is going on around them as a rule, just let them pour in. And American Catholicism, too. I mean, rad-trad Catholicism may seem to be an emanation of the culture of Francos Spain, and you can see its roots in the European far Right; but here it has an especially American ferocity and fundamentalist tenor about it.

Were a special people, were a people apart.

MR: You probably dont want to get into the abstruse reactionary Catholic interpretations of Thomas that you refute in You Are Gods.

DBH: Well, maybe I do. I actually didnt want this to be a theological conversation predominantly, but I am willing to talk about that, because thats interesting.

MR: Well, I talk about poetry all the time.

DBH: This is like, you know, Groucho Marx and T. S. Eliot having dinner together. Eliot wanted to talk about Duck Soup and Groucho wanted to talk about The Waste Land. People make you talk about the things that they associate with youalthough Im going to point out that, of my published work, theology is only about 30 percent.

MR: I know, and Roland in Moonlight is a good entry point to some other issues I want to discuss. But I do want to say that I just reread Perry Miller on Jonathan Edwards, and I know that were not to take Millers account without a grain of salt, but it is just a masterful account of the milieu in which these ideas had their germination that weve been discussing. One of his great points is that the opponents of Edwards were as motivated as they were by anything by the desire to consolidate their business and land holdings.

DBH: This is true, and its always been the case. I mean, its the reason, you know, neither Gregory nor John stayed in the patriarchal see of Constantinople very long; its not a new phenomenon. There comes a point where even a Byzantine princess says, Is he talking about me? I think I just realized hes talking about me.

MR: Yeah, the history of the meddlesome priests. By the way, partly out of a cheeky desire to nettle you, I try as often as possible to point out your resemblance to certain aspects of the thought of Karl Barth. Obviously not American, but as recently as Barth, we hear again and again an emphasis on the striking breaches of the contemporary (and not only the contemporary) industrial and commercial and economic order. Hes talking about the Gospel, obviously, and he says, again, Above all we must take up again the question of [Jesus] relationship to the economic order and how he radically calls it in question. Thats just gone out the window.

DBH: Oh, well, I mean the curious thing, of course, is that Christian socialism was the default position of the more orthodox wings of Christian thought for much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Ive been attacked for talking about Christian socialism by people in this country, like the Pakaluks, whonever mind, Im trying to avoid personal abuse, especially when it involves fish in barrels. Literally, though, one of them wrote, No Christian can be a socialist. Its a good thing that Jesus was a Jew, because hed have been kicked out of the Church, apparently.

MR: Bonhoeffer, Thomas Mertonhow many people have said that in order to be a Christian, you have to be a socialist, or in fact a communist?

DBH: C.S. Lewis said it, for Gods sake. These people, you know, Americans who think they understand the InklingsIve actually had someone, I wont say wholets just say he was a younger fellow at the architectural school at Notre Damewho was shocked when I mentioned the somewhat radical politics of Tolkien and Lewis. Fellows like that love the Inklings, but they dont seem to understand, you know, that Tolkien was radically anti-capitalist, anti-industrialist. He praised people who wanted to blow up power plants for destroying the environment, thought that if you cut down trees you probably go to hell, described himself as an anarchist-monarchistmeaning he wanted a king, but with absolutely no power. He wanted a purely symbolic government that was powerless, so that otherwise society would function as a kind of radical subsidiarity. If you were actually to play that out, his politics seem pretty close to Kropotkins. And then C. S. Lewis just came out and said, you know, a Christian social order would be a socialist one. On politics, he would criticize both sides of government, but its well known that he he was very much in favor of the postwar British settlement that created the National Health Service, that provided milk subsidies, free glasses, and dentistry for children; he was on board with that as being a deep expression of an established Christian nations conscience. And hes in a long tradition there. You know, Charles Gore, the greatest Anglo-Catholic theologian of the turn of the century, and all the other Christian socialists at that time, they were basically in the mainstream of Christian social thought. Its that British Christian socialist tradition that probably had the greatest influence on me. But it never even occurred to me that this could possibly be controversial, at least in terms of the claim that it is grounded in Christian principles. That just seems so starkly obvious. And of course, it doesnt even fit within the the normal spectrum of what we in America call conservative or liberal. Ruskin, who was sort of the father of it in many ways, was also a Tory and a Royalist. R. H. Tawney, probably the greatest economic mind of that tradition in Britain, said that in many ways he was conservative; he wanted to conserve things that were small and fragile, and conserve community by looking after the least of these, remembering that were all one family.

Bonhoeffer, Thomas Mertonhow many people have said that in order to be a Christian, you have to be a socialist, or in fact a communist?MR: Yeah. Well, that tradition can and does veer into a kind of eco-fascism.

DBH: Oh, yeah, sure, if it becomes a matter of preserving the fragile and the local by denying the universal; but none of them was guilty of that, and certainly not Tawney. Theres a person who would do everything he couldwho foughtto see refugees welcomed into British society and protected. But this is always the danger, right? I mean socialism can be, in fact, so detached from our notion of right and left that it can be appropriated, obviously, as we know, by nationalist movements and eco-fascist movements.

MR: All this is why I rest on the anarcho-communist left, what Lenin denounced as the infantile disorder of left communism. But we should move on. I do want to mention Blake, whom we were talking about the other day, for whom the one worshipped by the names divine of Jesus and Jehovah is Satan. Obviously, you know, as a metaphor here.

DBH: Well, you know, truly, Satan, thou art but a dunce.

MR: But I said to someone just recently, you know, if the 80 percent of evangelicalsIm sorry, 80 percent of white Evangelicals

DBH: Thats another thing about American Christianity. Its the most segregated version of Christianity in the world.

MR: If the 80 percent of white Evangelicals who voted for Trump in the last, I think the last two electionsif they are Christians, then I must be a Satanist.

DBH: I would hesitate there, however. Dont go saying that too much. Someone might be listening. Hell try to convince you that well, you might as well go all inin for a penny, in for a pound.

MR: Yeah, well, I listen to a lot of black metal, so Im inured to Satanism.

DBH: And I listen to too much Wagner.

MR: Lets talk about Blake. I dont remember who it was who said if William Blake was a Christian, no other man ever was. And that was not intended to impugn his Christianity, but to express what Kierkegaard called the difficulty of being a Christian in Christendom.

DBH: No, I think Blake was very much, obviously, an idiosyncratic Christian, and hes been appropriated alsoI knew Harold Bloom, by the way

MR: Yeah, I noticed youre cited in his last books a few times.

DBH: Yeah, right, he mentions me a few times. Thats the fruit of the conversations we had about the New Testament. He was actually quite pleased to learn that the Apostle Paul really was not opposed to works of love as the way of sanctification. And there are other things about my translation of the New Testament he liked. Obviously it would appeal to him, because I keep bringing out all the archons and powers on high, and pointing out that Second Temple Judaisms angelology is crucial to understanding certain passages. But one of the last conversations we had was about Blake. And he asked at one point, Do you think Blake would be closer to a Christian of the first century? He was concerned for the poor, he cared about little children, he had a fierce sense of justice. He denounced any religion that is the religion of powerful and the hypocritical. Bloom was very interested in this question, because, of course, Blake was part of his, you know, his Gnostic pantheon for years and years. And in the conversations we had at the end, he was more and more open to thinking that maybe, actually, there was an aboriginal Christianity that he had misunderstood. He was very open-minded, I have to say, for a guy who published these gigantic books making huge claims all the time; he didnt seem to have any problem saying, Oh, I may have been wrong about that.

MR: You know, he was important to me as a young man. He became progressively less so over time, and then I found myself by the end absolutely opposed to to his thought.

DBH: He did help free me from the spell of T. S. Eliot, from the critical writings. He was the one who, when I was young, made me go back to the Romantics and see that there was a lot of absurdity in Eliot.

MR: Yeah, I took the opposite course. I began in the Romantics with Bloom, migrated to Eliot and the Metaphysicals, and then rejected both Bloom and Eliot. Theyre both so annoying. But I held on to the poets. Ive come back to the Romantics after a long time away, partly because my friend Anahid Nersessian recently published a tremendous book, Keatss Odes, and made me revisit a poet whom I hadnt thought about in twenty years.

But I wanted to say that Bloom wrote in some ways a very bad book called The Shadow of a Great Rock. Its great as a commonplace book of passages from the King James, comparing them to Geneva and to Tyndale. His generalizations are as sweeping as ever. But he gives really short shrift to the New Testamentand hes a Gnostic Jew, you know, who can blame him. But he simply has no patience for Paul, he basically accepts Nietzsches view of Paul. He doesnt seem to have read even E. P. Sanders.

DBH: Thats what I mean, thats what I found interesting about these last conversations. He got in touch with me after hed read the New Testament translation to talk about just that. The last time we corresponded was the night he died, actually, or the night before; I dont know if he died the next morning. But he had read That All Shall Be Saved. I couldnt believe it; I mean, why would that be of interest to him? He said he found it very moving, but he did not agree with it. Well, why would you agree, why would you have any opinion? You know, you dont have to say what is or is not plausible within the context of Christianity. And I was really fascinated by that. I wanted to know what he thought, but then he said, Im not feeling well today, so we will have to revisit it in future.

MR: And, well, if you were right, then you can talk to him about it at some point.

DBH: Thats true. In fact, I fully expect that.

MR: But Blooms lack of concern about the Christian afterlife brings me to a very broad thing that I wanted to say. I wonder if there is a tension between the claims of the Christian faith and the broader theistic tradition, say, of Brahman or of the One, or what have you. And it hinges of course on the person of Christ. Youve been accused of pantheism. Youve been accused of not even being a Christian of late by various

DBH: Yeah, I know. What I think most funny is when it comes from Evangelicals, because Im always wondering exactly where they are getting their doctrinal authority from. Because if they think what they believe could just be taken from Scripturein fact, where are they getting their authority for believing that Scripture is revelation?

MR: And people have said similar things to me, and my response is always: thats fine. Im happy not to be a Christian, you know, Ill just be a follower of the Way. But there is a sticking point, where I hit a kind of apophatic wall, which is that if, as Ive certainly confessed many times in my life, Yeshua of Nazareth was God, then it becomes difficult to square the truth claims of Christianity with those of, say, Islam or Judaism or Hinduism, which I do believe are no less valid.

DBH: Were now getting into territory that can easily become a three-hour disquisition on on all sorts of things. I have also of late tried to convince people that the concept of religions, in the plural, is a modern anthropological concept that would not have been intelligible in either antiquity or the Middle Ages. Even in Thomas Aquinas religio is a singular, its a virtue that everyone practices; were all involved in the same practice, with obviously varying degrees of knowledge and varying degrees of a hope of salvation. So the first thing you have to do is step back from the modern context in which weve created this artificial category, you know. What would have been called cultus in the past have become something like separate propositional systems.

MR: So let me just see if Ive got this right. So the idea of the one true faith would not even be legible in the earlier conceptual grammar.

DBH: One true religion wouldnt have been, and even one true faith would have been problematic. Better to say faith with greater or lesser degrees of illumination. And not always in a purely consistent way. For Thomas Aquinas its clear that on certain aspects of the doctrine of God a Muslim like Ibn Sina might have got things right more than any of his contemporaries in the Christian world, and he has no problem saying this. You know, go and read Nicholas of Cusa on the true faith, and see what you discover; and read that alongside his Cribratio Alkorani, in which hes trying to discover how much revealed truth or wisdom and spiritual nourishment can be found in the Quran for Christians.

MR: Let me just point out that you have a chapter on Nicholas in You Are Gods.

DBH: Well, Nicholas is very important for me in a number of ways. There its because hes a phenomenological genius regarding the nature of rational desire, and why its only end can be infinite.

But you mentioned pantheism, which is one of those meaningless words, really, because you can interpret it in any way.

MR: Jonathan Edwards was accused of the same. Im just bringing all my Protestant heroes into this conversation.

DBH: Well, the problem with Jonathan Edwards is hes a metaphysical genius, but he preached a really abysmal faith; there you want to free his metaphysics

MR: Well stipulate that the Calvinist doctrine is barbaric in several respects.

DBH: Too many people remember him only as the preacher of Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, but the metaphysical system is extraordinary. It has traces of Cambridge Platonism in it, but not, it seems, through direct acquaintance; and Gregory of Nyssa, but I dont know how

MR: Theres no way he read Gregory of Nyssa, but hes there. And he got it from John Locke, as far as I can tell!

DBH: This is one of those curious facts of history. And he was, of course, a native genius. I mean, you just have to accept the fact that he just had a brilliant mind.

But anyway, there are ways of talking about the uniqueness of Jesus that make it a kind of catastrophic uniqueness. Thats my problem with the early Barth, the dialectical period, especially the first edition of Der Rmerbrief. There the uniqueness is so catastrophic that it doesnt have any analogical continuity in nature, history, or anything else. Its incoherent, its philosophically meaningless, for reasons that you can extrapolate from those places in You Are Gods where Im talking to Thomists about their understanding of nature and supernature. That is, you could from that extrapolate many of the same conclusions regarding the way grace and nature are configured in the Reformed tradition and in Barths early period, and through much of his work. And theres a whole school now that seems to have sprung out of Boston College of these young guys calling themselves Neo-Chalcedoninians; some very, very intelligent and gifted scholars, among them a fellow named Jordan Wood whos a very fine Maximus scholar. But the actual system, to my mind, is just as philosophically incoherent, again because theres this catastrophic uniqueness to the hypostasization of Christ. Anyway, the problems with it philosophically are so insurmountable, and theologically too, that its simply a dead end as a project.

It also comes with a sort of rejection of the analogical. You mentioned Brahman-Atman. Obviously, the sort of monism to which Im drawn is a metaphysical monism of a more Neoplatonic or Vedantic sort; so lets talk about that. Whats it saying? Thou art that. Not, that is, that your finite psychological personality is God; in fact, thats explicitly denied. What it says is that within you dwells, at the ground of your ability to be a person at all, sakshin, the perfect subject, but one who acts as well, who is atman, which literally means, like all words for spirit, breath, the wind. Like pneuma and pnoe in Greek, or neshama, nephesh, ruach in the Hebrew. And were told that Gods neshama, his breath or spirit, is what brings life to to Adam, right? Well, lets say on the one hand, then, that its true that, not in our empirical ego, not in our subjective psychology, but at the ground of our beings is that atman, that neshama, that pneuma breathed into us by Godthat spark, the Fnklein of Meister Eckhartand that to varying degrees the individual empirical selves that we are are transparent to or opaque to that ground. A holy person, a sannyasin or someone who is a saint, is someone in whom that divine image shines forth with peculiar clarity, right? Well, if theres onelets say just one for nowperson in whom that transparency is so perfect that there is nothing between the selfthe psychological personality, the finite empirical subject, the human being, the human natureand that divine ground, then thats God incarnate. But whats interesting about that is, on the one hand, its unique; but its a uniqueness of degree, because its also universal in its embrace, for whats true of him is true of us in nuce or in imperfect form. And thats why, you know, most of Christian doctrinal history has encompassed the notion that the purpose of the incarnation is the deification of human beings. Maximus actually speaks, just like Gregory of Nazianzus before him, of our becoming the equals of God, equals of Christ, and even becoming uncreated. So the very uniqueness of Christ becomes also the universal truth, the universal destiny of human beings. Well, if you start from that as your understanding of Christology, and you accept an analogical ontologyone that doesnt involve this catastrophist notion that in order to affirm the uniqueness of Christ you have to say that in Christ absolute contraries are united in some way, which somehow the dynamism of personality has the power to confect, and that this also determines who God is, and God becomes who he is, and his determination towards the man Jesus, and all this other rubbish from twentieth-century Lutheran thought and other sourcesand instead you realize that whats really splendid and magnificent about this more original understanding of deification is that Gods incarnation in Christ is also going on in everyone, everywhere, at all times, then that seems naturally to lead to a sort of universalization of the claims you can make for the faith. The beliefs of all the traditions as imperfect but nonetheless real participations in this union of creatures and God.

Gods incarnation in Christ is also going on in everyone, everywhere, at all times.MR: Theres the formulation thats always cited, its in Irenaeus, but I dont know if he was the first to formulate it, that the patristic tradition is concerned to show that God became a human so that humans could become God.

DBH: Well, in fact, all of Christian doctrinal historyduring, that is, what the Orthodox would consider the conciliar period, which ends with the Seventh Councilis premised entirely on that. That is the ground of all Christian doctrine. Again, Ive been attacked for pointing out what is simply historical fact about the Council of Nicaea: that the Nicene doctrine was arrived at not based on a long dogmatic tradition, which made its theology obviously more authoritative than the theology of those it was struggling against. Quite the opposite, in fact. At least, it was much more a creative and hermeneutical retrieval of the past and also a synthesis. But what gave it its strength was that it was the only adequate way of expressing a Trinitarian theologyand then a Christology, in the following councilsthat answered the aporias of the Arians, or the Eunomians, and then in time the various Christological factions or parties who were struggling with one another and against Nicaea. This was what carried the dayits only God who could join us to God.

MR: You bring that out very well in in Tradition and Apocalypse, that theres no way you can get to Nicaea directly from the New Testament. You do need that hermeneutical work.

DBH: The word homoousios isnt in the New Testament, but it is a brilliant theoretical formula for trying to express something that comes to the fore in say John chapter 20 or in other places in the New Testament; and its also part of the logic of the notion that in Christ humanity is really joined to God, not just to an intermediary.

MR: And I want to emphasize that when you speak of traditions as imperfect reflections, you include Christianity itself as also an imperfect reflection. Youre not doing the Catholic thing where you say, well, Christ participates mysteriously in other faiths.

DBH: No, quite the opposite. Im saying absolutely nothing of the sort. I am saying that doctrinal claims about Christ are not exclusive claims in the way that theyre understood to be. Whether I fully understand them in the way that Im expected to understand them is a different question, to be discussed sub rosa rather than in a public forum like this, for the simple reason that anything I would say without taking the time to sit down and write it down very carefullywell, actually, that doesnt work either. Id still get attacked for that. So I guess I might as well say anything. Hail Athena.

MR: I have been accused of practicing cafeteria Christianity, you know, picking and choosing.

DBH: Who doesnt?

MR: The truth is that there is no other way of practicing any faith.

See original here:
Only God could join us to God Catholic Outlook - Catholic Outlook

MR: Yeah. Well, that tradition can and does veer into a kind of eco-fascism.

DBH: Oh, yeah, sure, if it becomes a matter of preserving the fragile and the local by denying the universal; but none of them was guilty of that, and certainly not Tawney. Theres a person who would do everything he couldwho foughtto see refugees welcomed into British society and protected. But this is always the danger, right? I mean socialism can be, in fact, so detached from our notion of right and left that it can be appropriated, obviously, as we know, by nationalist movements and eco-fascist movements.

MR: All this is why I rest on the anarcho-communist left, what Lenin denounced as the infantile disorder of left communism. But we should move on. I do want to mention Blake, whom we were talking about the other day, for whom the one worshipped by the names divine of Jesus and Jehovah is Satan. Obviously, you know, as a metaphor here.

DBH: Well, you know, truly, Satan, thou art but a dunce.

MR: But I said to someone just recently, you know, if the 80 percent of evangelicalsIm sorry, 80 percent of white Evangelicals

DBH: Thats another thing about American Christianity. Its the most segregated version of Christianity in the world.

MR: If the 80 percent of white Evangelicals who voted for Trump in the last, I think the last two electionsif they are Christians, then I must be a Satanist.

DBH: I would hesitate there, however. Dont go saying that too much. Someone might be listening. Hell try to convince you that well, you might as well go all inin for a penny, in for a pound.

MR: Yeah, well, I listen to a lot of black metal, so Im inured to Satanism.

DBH: And I listen to too much Wagner.

MR: Lets talk about Blake. I dont remember who it was who said if William Blake was a Christian, no other man ever was. And that was not intended to impugn his Christianity, but to express what Kierkegaard called the difficulty of being a Christian in Christendom.

DBH: No, I think Blake was very much, obviously, an idiosyncratic Christian, and hes been appropriated alsoI knew Harold Bloom, by the way

MR: Yeah, I noticed youre cited in his last books a few times.

DBH: Yeah, right, he mentions me a few times. Thats the fruit of the conversations we had about the New Testament. He was actually quite pleased to learn that the Apostle Paul really was not opposed to works of love as the way of sanctification. And there are other things about my translation of the New Testament he liked. Obviously it would appeal to him, because I keep bringing out all the archons and powers on high, and pointing out that Second Temple Judaisms angelology is crucial to understanding certain passages. But one of the last conversations we had was about Blake. And he asked at one point, Do you think Blake would be closer to a Christian of the first century? He was concerned for the poor, he cared about little children, he had a fierce sense of justice. He denounced any religion that is the religion of powerful and the hypocritical. Bloom was very interested in this question, because, of course, Blake was part of his, you know, his Gnostic pantheon for years and years. And in the conversations we had at the end, he was more and more open to thinking that maybe, actually, there was an aboriginal Christianity that he had misunderstood. He was very open-minded, I have to say, for a guy who published these gigantic books making huge claims all the time; he didnt seem to have any problem saying, Oh, I may have been wrong about that.

MR: You know, he was important to me as a young man. He became progressively less so over time, and then I found myself by the end absolutely opposed to to his thought.

DBH: He did help free me from the spell of T. S. Eliot, from the critical writings. He was the one who, when I was young, made me go back to the Romantics and see that there was a lot of absurdity in Eliot.

MR: Yeah, I took the opposite course. I began in the Romantics with Bloom, migrated to Eliot and the Metaphysicals, and then rejected both Bloom and Eliot. Theyre both so annoying. But I held on to the poets. Ive come back to the Romantics after a long time away, partly because my friend Anahid Nersessian recently published a tremendous book, Keatss Odes, and made me revisit a poet whom I hadnt thought about in twenty years.

But I wanted to say that Bloom wrote in some ways a very bad book called The Shadow of a Great Rock. Its great as a commonplace book of passages from the King James, comparing them to Geneva and to Tyndale. His generalizations are as sweeping as ever. But he gives really short shrift to the New Testamentand hes a Gnostic Jew, you know, who can blame him. But he simply has no patience for Paul, he basically accepts Nietzsches view of Paul. He doesnt seem to have read even E. P. Sanders.

DBH: Thats what I mean, thats what I found interesting about these last conversations. He got in touch with me after hed read the New Testament translation to talk about just that. The last time we corresponded was the night he died, actually, or the night before; I dont know if he died the next morning. But he had read That All Shall Be Saved. I couldnt believe it; I mean, why would that be of interest to him? He said he found it very moving, but he did not agree with it. Well, why would you agree, why would you have any opinion? You know, you dont have to say what is or is not plausible within the context of Christianity. And I was really fascinated by that. I wanted to know what he thought, but then he said, Im not feeling well today, so we will have to revisit it in future.

MR: And, well, if you were right, then you can talk to him about it at some point.

DBH: Thats true. In fact, I fully expect that.

MR: But Blooms lack of concern about the Christian afterlife brings me to a very broad thing that I wanted to say. I wonder if there is a tension between the claims of the Christian faith and the broader theistic tradition, say, of Brahman or of the One, or what have you. And it hinges of course on the person of Christ. Youve been accused of pantheism. Youve been accused of not even being a Christian of late by various

DBH: Yeah, I know. What I think most funny is when it comes from Evangelicals, because Im always wondering exactly where they are getting their doctrinal authority from. Because if they think what they believe could just be taken from Scripture...in fact, where are they getting their authority for believing that Scripture is revelation?

MR: And people have said similar things to me, and my response is always: thats fine. Im happy not to be a Christian, you know, Ill just be a follower of the Way. But there is a sticking point, where I hit a kind of apophatic wall, which is that if, as Ive certainly confessed many times in my life, Yeshua of Nazareth was God, then it becomes difficult to square the truth claims of Christianity with those of, say, Islam or Judaism or Hinduism, which I do believe are no less valid.

DBH: Were now getting into territory that can easily become a three-hour disquisition on on all sorts of things. I have also of late tried to convince people that the concept of religions, in the plural, is a modern anthropological concept that would not have been intelligible in either antiquity or the Middle Ages. Even in Thomas Aquinas religio is a singular, its a virtue that everyone practices; were all involved in the same practice, with obviously varying degrees of knowledge and varying degrees of a hope of salvation. So the first thing you have to do is step back from the modern context in which weve created this artificial category, you know. What would have been called cultus in the past have become something like separate propositional systems.

MR: So let me just see if Ive got this right. So the idea of the one true faith would not even be legible in the earlier conceptual grammar.

DBH: One true religion wouldnt have been, and even one true faith would have been problematic. Better to say faith with greater or lesser degrees of illumination. And not always in a purely consistent way. For Thomas Aquinas its clear that on certain aspects of the doctrine of God a Muslim like Ibn Sina might have got things right more than any of his contemporaries in the Christian world, and he has no problem saying this. You know, go and read Nicholas of Cusa on the true faith, and see what you discover; and read that alongside his Cribratio Alkorani, in which hes trying to discover how much revealed truth or wisdom and spiritual nourishment can be found in the Quran for Christians.

MR: Let me just point out that you have a chapter on Nicholas in You Are Gods.

DBH: Well, Nicholas is very important for me in a number of ways. There its because hes a phenomenological genius regarding the nature of rational desire, and why its only end can be infinite.

But you mentioned pantheism, which is one of those meaningless words, really, because you can interpret it in any way.

MR: Jonathan Edwards was accused of the same. Im just bringing all my Protestant heroes into this conversation.

DBH: Well, the problem with Jonathan Edwards is hes a metaphysical genius, but he preached a really abysmal faith; there you want to free his metaphysics

MR: Well stipulate that the Calvinist doctrine is barbaric in several respects.

DBH: Too many people remember him only as the preacher of Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, but the metaphysical system is extraordinary. It has traces of Cambridge Platonism in it, but not, it seems, through direct acquaintance; and Gregory of Nyssa, but I dont know how

MR: Theres no way he read Gregory of Nyssa, but hes there. And he got it from John Locke, as far as I can tell!

DBH: This is one of those curious facts of history. And he was, of course, a native genius. I mean, you just have to accept the fact that he just had a brilliant mind.

But anyway, there are ways of talking about the uniqueness of Jesus that make it a kind of catastrophic uniqueness. Thats my problem with the early Barth, the dialectical period, especially the first edition of Der Rmerbrief. There the uniqueness is so catastrophic that it doesnt have any analogical continuity in nature, history, or anything else. Its incoherent, its philosophically meaningless, for reasons that you can extrapolate from those places in You Are Gods where Im talking to Thomists about their understanding of nature and supernature. That is, you could from that extrapolate many of the same conclusions regarding the way grace and nature are configured in the Reformed tradition and in Barths early period, and through much of his work. And theres a whole school now that seems to have sprung out of Boston College of these young guys calling themselves Neo-Chalcedoninians; some very, very intelligent and gifted scholars, among them a fellow named Jordan Wood whos a very fine Maximus scholar. But the actual system, to my mind, is just as philosophically incoherent, again because theres this catastrophic uniqueness to the hypostasization of Christ. Anyway, the problems with it philosophically are so insurmountable, and theologically too, that its simply a dead end as a project.

It also comes with a sort of rejection of the analogical. You mentioned Brahman-Atman. Obviously, the sort of monism to which Im drawn is a metaphysical monism of a more Neoplatonic or Vedantic sort; so lets talk about that. Whats it saying? Thou art that. Not, that is, that your finite psychological personality is God; in fact, thats explicitly denied. What it says is that within you dwells, at the ground of your ability to be a person at all, sakshin, the perfect subject, but one who acts as well, who is atman, which literally means, like all words for spirit, breath, the wind. Like pneuma and pnoe in Greek, or neshama, nephesh, ruach in the Hebrew. And were told that Gods neshama, his breath or spirit, is what brings life to to Adam, right? Well, lets say on the one hand, then, that its true that, not in our empirical ego, not in our subjective psychology, but at the ground of our beings is that atman, that neshama, that pneuma breathed into us by Godthat spark, the Fnklein of Meister Eckhartand that to varying degrees the individual empirical selves that we are are transparent to or opaque to that ground. A holy person, a sannyasin or someone who is a saint, is someone in whom that divine image shines forth with peculiar clarity, right? Well, if theres onelets say just one for nowperson in whom that transparency is so perfect that there is nothing between the selfthe psychological personality, the finite empirical subject, the human being, the human natureand that divine ground, then thats God incarnate. But whats interesting about that is, on the one hand, its unique; but its a uniqueness of degree, because its also universal in its embrace, for whats true of him is true of us in nuce or in imperfect form. And thats why, you know, most of Christian doctrinal history has encompassed the notion that the purpose of the incarnation is the deification of human beings. Maximus actually speaks, just like Gregory of Nazianzus before him, of our becoming the equals of God, equals of Christ, and even becoming uncreated. So the very uniqueness of Christ becomes also the universal truth, the universal destiny of human beings. Well, if you start from that as your understanding of Christology, and you accept an analogical ontologyone that doesnt involve this catastrophist notion that in order to affirm the uniqueness of Christ you have to say that in Christ absolute contraries are united in some way, which somehow the dynamism of personality has the power to confect, and that this also determines who God is, and God becomes who he is, and his determination towards the man Jesus, and all this other rubbish from twentieth-century Lutheran thought and other sourcesand instead you realize that whats really splendid and magnificent about this more original understanding of deification is that Gods incarnation in Christ is also going on in everyone, everywhere, at all times, then that seems naturally to lead to a sort of universalization of the claims you can make for the faith. The beliefs of all the traditions as imperfect but nonetheless real participations in this union of creatures and God.

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Only God Could Join Us to God - Commonweal

Jean Carlos is playing in Denvers City Park with his little black dog the size of a tea cup, I swear. Hes wayyyy more interested in his dog than an interview about the beginning of his academic career so today, hes a man of few words and prefers to interview in his native Spanish language. First, how old is the first grader?

Cinco.

Five. What does he do in school?

Escribir y leer.

Write and read. What does he like best about school?

Jugar con mis amigos Jess y Aarn.

Playing with his friends Jess and Aarn. Whats missing from school?

Cuidar perros.

Taking care of dogs I think we can all agree on that. Like Jean Carlos, students across Colorado are all back in school this week, with Denver Public Schools being the last major district to open its doors.

Many students seem happy to be back, especially after two and a half years of disruptions. Others not so much. Students across the state are eager to share what they like to learn about and what could be better about K-12 schools.

While Jean Carlos is just starting his scholastic journey, Amaryana is launching her senior year. The 17-year-old is excited about the classes at her Denver school, DSST Montview, and excited for her last year of playing volleyball. When asked if she has played all four years of high school, she answers with a polite, Yes, maam.

Amaryana said she likes the team bonding on the volleyball squad its like a family. On the team shes learned the nuances of good communication and knows that will help her in life. Shes also looking forward to her advanced placement classes this year. She doesnt really like reading but said the heavy reading and writing load gets her ready for college.

Im being prepared for that, she said.

What she and her friends dont like about school is the dress code. She said it's too strict, particularly for females. Jeans cant have rips. Shorts and tops cant be too short.

What they dont get is that a lot of us are trying to embrace ourselves, she said. If were told to cover up, were not really confident in ourselves anymore. Being able to wear what you want to wear helps us have that self-confidence in our bodies and our image.

One change students pressed for and Amaryana got to take advantage of is a personal finance class. She said shes grateful. She learned about things like taxes, loans, credit scores and savings.

I know when I first started working and I saw that theyre taxing me I was like, Why am I getting taxed for all these things? And so being able to have that class, they explained why and how theyre using (taxation). It really explained how money works in real life.

As a senior, Amaryana is thinking about whats next in real life. Shes thought about being a police officer, or perhaps a real estate agent.

Jobs where I can get enough money to be stable in my life, she said. Im still thinking about it.

Mason, 12, and his friend Anthem, 11, roam around gigantic slabs of marble at a tiny music festival in Marble during one of the last gasps of summer in Western Slopes Gunnison County.

I feel like summer wasnt long enough, said Mason, taking a break in a patch of grass. It also feels like its been forever since Ive been back in school.

Its that double-edged sword kind of thing. Mason is looking forward to seeing his friends again and "getting back to how it usually is." But he confesses:

I dont really like school.

He said a lot of kids would rather be doing other things. School feels too fill-in-the-box for him and kids dont like being told what to do.

His friend Anthem wants to be a car designer so he knows school is important. If he gets behind in math and science, he said his grandmother is on standby to keep him on top of things.

I definitely like learning, but if its with the wrong teacher, I hate it, he said. For me its just like their teaching strategy, whether its fun or strict. Anthem prefers fun. He also dislikes that some teachers didnt intervene last year when he was being bullied, he said.

Last year I left this school because of how I was being treated by kids, he said.

Mason switched to an online school but that didnt work out so hes going back to the first school.

Im a little bit nervous, he paused, as the music stopped playing, .. I dont know, Im just hoping it will be a better year than last year.

15-year-old Tanner initially had a hard time with other kids in school, too. But then he switched to a little school in Marble and now goes to an alternative high school that he loves Yampa Mountain High School in Glenwood Springs.

It gives me a lot of freedom to pick and choose what I want to learn, he said.

Hes jazzed to be back. He reads a lot on his own, does well in all subjects, but is excited to learn more about the humanities history, art, sociology.

Theres no right or wrong answers or less so than there is in math and stuff - theres more freedom to come to my own conclusions and come up with my own ideas.

Tanner is particularly interested in theology. He grew up Presbyterian but, Id say I have a more nuanced view of religion as a whole Im definitely not an atheist, but I definitely have a more pantheistic view.

A sophomore talking about pantheism on a hot summer day in the middle of Marble. Kids are amazing! He likes studying the commonalities in the worlds faith traditions.

They all have some of the same driving goals, theres fear of death, want of community, explaining moral codes, explaining natural phenomenon they all go back to the same things.

At his current pace, Tanner could theoretically graduate in his junior year. But he'd like to stay in high school so he can take college courses for free even graduate high school with an associates degree in tow. Tanner loves school and is quick to tell you why some kids dont like school its the reason he didnt like his old school.

A lot of regimentation, forcing kids to learn things, saying memorize this, not telling them why they need to learn it and not telling them the context in what theyre learning it. just saying memorize it and spit it out on a piece of paper. I think thats what turns a lot of kids off.

The more you talk to kids the more you understand when you can tap into their creativity, imagination and interests, the more they love learning. Interviewing kids, I learn a lot about their persistence too. Exiting a Target store one summer weekend, I bump into Esmeralda, 10, in a pink flowing dress. Shes entering fourth grade in a school in Aurora. Her favorite subjects are art and P.E.

I like art. I know how to paint, like galaxies and animals are things that I paint.

What she wants to get better at this year is math. Esmeralda has a complex relationship with math.

Because I like math but Im, like, not good. But I know math.

Her mom interjects and tells me Esmeralda was born prematurely at seven months. Learning has been a real struggle. But shes doing so much better now. Esmeralda said string stories are the hardest part of school, where students build complex stories. Esmeralda has big dreams. She wants to be a doctor, because I like to help people.

If theres one thing she could change about school its the start time. She wants it to be 9 a.m. instead of 7:50 a.m.

Because Im like a zombie when I wake up.because, like, Im sleeping still(I want to be) like a lot wake up, not just half of wake up, she laughed.

Two sisters in Grand Junction Olivia, 7, and her sister Juniper, 10 - dont have to worry about getting up late. Their elementary school is right across the street from their home. Commute time?

Usually like one minute! exclaimed Juniper.

Olive is excited to learn how to write better this year, especially perfecting her handwriting.

My teachers really, really nice and I like her and we got a student teacher which is really nice too, she said. I just love school.

Her older sisters goal this year is to learn and memorize prime numbers. Juniper also hopes to get a lot of reading in, like from the Harry Potter series her favorites so far are the second one or the fifth one.

Alongside participating in the great American ideals of public education creating a literate and productive citizenry the two sisters are getting to experience what public education perhaps does best: the chance to learn from and appreciate students who are different from themselves.

I like all the people in my class, said Juniper. I have somebody in my class and he has autism and hes really fun to play and talk toautism is where you see the world differently. Hes good at math and reading.hes really good at reading and I like having him in my class.

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Back to school: dogs, AP classes and alarm clocks. What Colorado students are looking forward to this school year and what they want changed -...

Warrior + Cyborg for Rush Duel; Salmon Monarch, and Kshatri-La + SPYRAL!

[RUSH DUEL] Warrior + Cyborg Deck

3 Yamiruler the Dark Delayer3 Kimeluna the Lunar Dark Raider1 Semeruler the Dark Summoner3 Valkyrian Sewkyrie2 Mezame the August Awakener3 Imaginary Actor3 Magic Juggler2 Serpainter2 Sword Dancer1 Snake Crown1 Gracesaurus3 Amazing Dealer

3 Fusion3 Star Restart2 Yamata-no-Tsurugi2 Magical Stone Exacavation1 Secret Sword Technique! Refined Ruler Render1 Imaginary Ark Tower1 Graceful Charity (LEGEND)

2 Metallion Asurastar2 Metallion Vritrastar2 Metallion Eraclestar2 Metallion Ladonstar2 Metallion Kingcobrastar2 Yamiterasu the Divine Delayer1 Semeterasu the Celestial Summoner2 Kimeterasu the Rising Luna

New Product Deck: Monarch Deck Featuring Infernalqueen Salmon

3 Infernalqueen Salmon3 Ehther the Heavenly Monarch1 Erebus the Underworld Monarch1 Mobius the Mega Monarch2 Terrorking Salmon2 Eidos the Underworld Squire3 Edea the Heavenly Squire2 Crystal Girl

3 Pantheism of the Monarchs3 Return of the Monarchs3 Tenacity of the Monarchs3 The Monarchs Stormforth3 Foolish Burial Goods2 Domain of the True Monarchs1 One for One

3 Fish Depth Charge2 Ice Barrier1 The Prime Monarch1 Escalation of the Monarchs

New Product Deck: Kshatri-La + SPYRAL Deck

3 Kshatri-La Unicorn3 Kshatri-La Fenrir3 Kshatri-La Ogre3 SPYRAL Super Agent1 SPYRAL Quik-Fix3 SPYRAL GEAR Drone1 SPYRAL Tough3 SPYRAL Master Plan1 SPYRAL Sleeper

1 SPYRAL GEAR Last Resort3 Kshatri-La Berth2 SPYRAL Resort3 SPYRAL GEAR Big Red1 Monster Reborn1 Harpies Feather Duster1 Terraforming1 One for One1 Reinforcement of the Army2 Sacred Sword of Seven Stars2 Where Arf Thou?

2 Kshatri-La Prepare2 SPYRAL MISSION Rescue

3 Kshatri-La Shangri-La2 Number 89: Diablosis the Mind Hacker2 SPYRAL Double Helix1 Number 42: Galaxy Tomahawk1 Number 11: Big Eye1 Black Luster Soldier Soldier of Chaos1 Knightmare Cerberus1 Knightmare Phoenix1 Knightmare Unicorn1 Steel Star Regulator1 Accesscode Talker

Originally posted here:
The Organization | [Deck Recipes] July 31st, 2022 - YGOrganization