OI said:
Also, Bill, I’m planning on coming back with a piece about postmodernism and the Emergent Church movement, cause something about hitching that wagon to postmodernism seems like a huge mistake. I’ve seen people talk about how MacLaren and others are backing off using postmodernism as a crutch, but can’t remember where. Do you have any leads on that?

Although I can imagine what using postmodernism as a crutch for Emergent Church would be, I’m not sure what you intend “crutch” to mean here.
The only reference I can find is in A Generous Orthodoxy, where McLaren corrects those who simplistically read his use of historical epochs (prehistoric, ancient, medieval, modern, and postmodern) as requiring a clean break between them, saying: “However, in my understanding, each epoch embraces, enfolds, integrates, and consolidates the gains of the previous ones and then extends those gains into new territories, like a ring on a tree.”

Although I’m no expert on the Emergent movement nor do I know a lot about the people involved, I have read some of McLaren’s books and regularly read some Emergent type blogs. My take is that Brian McLaren is in another class. He’s not a hero of mine, but he’s obviously done his homework and he understands the big picture as much as anybody. However, there are way too many people in the church industry who’ve jumped on the Emergent bandwagon ’cause it’s the newest game in town. They seem to think that a laptop with WiFi, an iPod, some body art and candles will Emergence make.

In other words, those who’ve missed the point on Emergent will also, perhaps more so, misunderstand what postmodern is.

“But for the present age, which prefers the sign to the thing signified, the copy to the original, representation to reality, appearance to essence . . . truth is considered profane, and only illusion is sacred. Sacredness is in fact held to be enhanced in proportion as truth decreases and illusion increases, so that the highest degree of illusion comes to be the highest degree of sacredness.”

—Feuerbach, Preface to the second edition of The Essence of Christianity (quote stolen from Guy Debord’s Society of the Spectacle

Sorry for the quote, but it appears to me to be somewhat in line with your thought train, the ideal over what is material. Also, bringing that up allows me to continue onto a few other things which may be the smallest bit relevant (or of interest).
Feuerbach was an influence on Max Stirner, the man behind what most would label Individualist Anarchism (Robert Anton Wilson is considered one in wikipedia’s entry). Stirner was critical of Christianity (and in general, subservience) a number of decades before Nietzsche was, and with a similar ferocity in his writings. One must wonder what those two would have thought of Christian Anarchism, something I believe to be pretty neat. The concept, somewhat like Luther’s, that nobody should be your intermediary to God.

“Did Jesus fuck?” - your phrasing of this is excellent. But, for real now, if God needs a female to give birth to a son, what makes one think that His Son (er, He) too will not have similar relations with a lady?
Anyhow, if there’s one thing to be learned from Christianity, it’s that no matter how old one gets, deflowering virgins is a Godly act.

Also, Bill, I’m planning on coming back with a piece about postmodernism and the Emergent Church movement, cause something about hitching that wagon to postmodernism seems like a huge mistake. I’ve seen people talk about how MacLaren and others are backing off using postmodernism as a crutch, but can’t remember where. Do you have any leads on that?

Doesn’t it seem that Aristotelian philosophy, the philosophy of science, was actually taking over by the time of the Enlightenment? I can see your argument that “faith only” is Platonic but Aristotle is the Father of Science, after all, and the Enlightenment was about science and facts.

I’ve heard arguments that postmodernism is the resurgence of Platonism at the expense of Aristotelianism.

Great points Bill. Let me sit on this for a while longer.

>Only the body is real, only matter “matters”. This can lead to a society of >hedonists, who don’t believe in intellect or the power of morals, ethics or >anything else derived from the mind or soul.

This seems to be a consistant theme or policy there — postured as a ‘backlash’ against the “Howard Stern” mentality — with a pretense to ‘conservatism’ by way of nonclamature.

Those dudes have a whole ‘magick’ school too — as I was told by a kid who got a bit sloppy with his ’secrecy doctrine’ (and reminded thereof by my friend) — “timeline progression” being a component thereof. Don’t forget the snake handlers and strichnine drinkers.

Our friends in the Vatican City are alleged to have the best occult collection in the world in their basement.

It’s all one cult/clan/tribe (earth vs. me) expressing itself in typical darwinian alpha male terms I hate to say…

What’s funny is this dude my best friend became as a monk, wandering across the country, wound up hooked up with some real intense group of baptists that indoctrinated him, made him burn all his stuff, shaved his hair, etc.

I guess he escaped on his own and wound up becoming a Catholic.

His brother (great friend of mine) told me he didn’t know why that happened because I guess for a time we were all into those Chick Corea comics and stuff, the Catholic kids supposedly threw rocks at the plate glass window in the xian book store we used to ride our bikes to.

I opined that they probably some catholic church in LA or something (probably NorCali) just took him in and gave him a meal and some clothes.

On the other hand:

>withdrawing from human society. This might be acceptable if only a few >people in your society do it, but what if such practices became routine? You >can’t have a coherent society made up of people who withdraw from it.

This does sound like my whole generation x — a bunch of people who don’t even know their fuckin’ neighbors, but that’s ok, sitting around alone watching cable TV after work, just waiting for the phone to ring..

I’m more pessimistic on this thread, ie I see aids and other conspiracies as directly causing results for a particular economic flow/thread to be unbroken and keep status quo. Who fuckin’ cares if the sheep live in separate berths in a stable or in one flock outside?

Tim, you wrote a great article here.

I do get a vibe of “old aeon” “age of aquarius/horus/whatever” competition, perhaps compartmentalized and categorized as a didactic between catholic (IT/UK) and protestant but there are so many dualities to itemize there it boggles. It’s original spark of creation (big bang/Logos/what have you) echoing like Coleridges’ ch. XIII of Biographia Literaria. Also this “spaciotemporal construct” is broken IMO by “progressive churches” emulating the American ‘reform’ temples of Judaeism, so that you still get a few bucks in the plate, gotta pander to the masses a bit, I guess, if you want to eat every day.

-tc

“I found out I got a cancer… Too many television rays, anyway…”
-Blues Traveler

“When a leader speaks that leader dies”
Cult of Personality
-Living Color

http://www.freeessays.cc/db/35/prz246.shtml

Hume is one of my favorites, because his very postulations seem mad upon the surface. However, it’s hard to argue with his logic and reasoning.

Doesn’t it seem that Aristotelian philosophy, the philosophy of science, was actually taking over by the time of the Enlightenment? I can see your argument that “faith only” is Platonic but Aristotle is the Father of Science, after all, and the Enlightenment was about science and facts.

I’ve heard arguments that postmodernism is the resurgence of Platonism at the expense of Aristotelianism. But my unqualified opinion is that we’re seeing something more like the Socratic approach of questioning popular assumptions.

In final analysis, I’m still confused but I like this post and I’ll go ponder it some more.

It will please academics to boot too! lol