Incompatible Truths - How Inept Modeling by Elites Subverted Western Religion and Culture

Introduction

And knowing their thoughts he said unto them, Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation; and every city or house divided against itself shall not stand: and if Satan casteth out Satan, he is divided against himself; how then shall his kingdom stand?

Matthew 12:25

I don’t care what you did or who you saved, you are a constant curse on my family, Harry Potter.

Draco Malfoy

J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter is a tale about magic, both good and evil, good sorcerers against evil sorcerers. Some have speculated that the story has overtones derived from Jewish legend. Some have seen in Harry Potter a Christ-like figure. Without doubt the story has clear religious and mystical elements.

However, few if any have noticed odd similarities to an ancient Jewish document called the Toledot Yeshu, an account of Christ’s life derived from the Jewish Talmud. In that story Jesus Christ, like Draco Malfoy of Potter, is a renegade wizard who has disobeyed and broken the rules set by his instructors, the Pharisees. Being rather precocious, Jesus disobediently uses his magic in public, healing people and performing miracles. For this he, like Malfoy, gained a following of renegade disciples. Jesus, according to Talmudic legend, was convicted as a heretical trouble maker, and sentenced to death by stoning and crucifixion.

Even the physical likenesses of Malfoy and the Talmudic Christ are similar, both being depicted as blond haired, blue eyed trouble makers.

One could easily argue that underneath Harry Potter was an older story, an allegory of hidden meaning. Did Rowling use the Toledot Yeshu as a model for her story? If so, was it purposeful or an accident? If it was purposeful, what was the intent?

Making analogies to George Orwell’s 1984 is perhaps the most over used metaphor in writing. So allow me to make another one. I think most have missed the point.

The story is about a fictional fascist dictatorship, and the plight of Winston Smith as he struggles to free himself from it. Smith detected that history was being rewritten daily to match the current government agenda. His revelation began when one day he noticed subtle inconsistencies in the news, how the truths of one day became the lies of the next. Eventually he realized the news was being orchestrated by Big Brother. Yet to question Big Brother was a thoughtcrime. Eventually Winston realized that the facts were being manipulated to destroy the people’s faith in the truth.

Many assumed Orwell was writing about the future. Many others thought the book was about Nazi Germany. Either could be true, but I believe Orwell was posing a more introspective question. If you found yourself in the midst of a very cleverly designed world made almost entirely of propaganda, would you be smart enough to see through it? And if so, would you have the guts to fight back? Or would you just go along?

While most people focus on the atrocities of Big Brother, and are quick to compare bad rulers to him, I think that is the wrong focus. It is not Big Brother that is the most disturbing, it is all the people who complacently went along even when the clues were all there.

The main point is this: if we were deceived, truly deceived, ’gas lighted’ as it is often called, in a way where reality was so cleverly and thoroughly deconstructed in every detail, how would we know it? In 1984, Big Brother was powerful enough to change almost all the details. Yet, it is hard to tell a lie and keep it consistent over time. Somewhere, at some point, an inconsistency is bound to show up. When it does, and it surely will, do you react, do you question, or do you just look the other way?

We might assume that a complete, consistent re-orchestration of society would be a near impossible task. To change all of reality and keep it all consistent, like Big Brother had, would be a practical impossibility. So we assume we are safe. Yet, what if I would say there is a relatively easy way? A way where you only have to change one thing?

Winston realized that it is in the inconsistencies that the fiendish plot is revealed. But what if we were to subvert our expectations of consistency? What if we were taught that truth itself was contradiction, or that to judge was morally unacceptable? What if our faculty to detect inconsistencies had atrophied from lack of use? Or because we had never been taught how to reason in the first place? You wouldn’t need to change all of reality. You wouldn’t even have to keep it consistent because society would no longer have the expectation of consistency, of unity of truth. Yet, I believe this is precisely what has happened. And you, unlike Winston, haven’t noticed. Need proof?

Part of this book will be precisely this, exposing minutiae that had you been thinking clearly you would have looked up, you would have verified for yourself. In exposing these ‘minutiae’ you will see a pattern, that the essence of ‘truth’ has indeed been subverted and your senses dulled. The minutiae I speak of is hidden in plain sight, it is basic stuff we’ve all been taught, stuff we assumed to be true… but wasn’t.

Let’s begin with a somewhat inert fact. Contrary to what most are taught, Isaac Newton did not discover gravity. His own admission attests to this. His only explained the mathematics that describe gravity. Newton attributed the actual cause of gravity to God. No one knows what causes gravity to this day.

While Newton’s Laws of Motion undergird everything we do, they have been disputed ever since the Theory of Relativity. Relativity, as is commonly taught, is a principle of contradiction. Newton’s laws still work as far as science and engineering are concerned, however as for Relativity many would say they are obsolete. Like the Ten Commandments that have now become the ’Ten Suggestions,’ Newton’s Laws of Motion are now considered by many scientists as ‘habits,’ not laws at all. ¹

The Copernican System: The bottom passage is usually cut off in science text books. The section reads, [Hermes] Trismegistus calls it the ‘visible god’; Sophocles Electra, ‘that which gazes upon all thing.’ Image NASA ADS project, Harvard.

Let’s look at another assumed ‘fact.’ It is often taught Galileo was imprisoned by the Church for declaring that the Sun was the center of the Solar System, and that the Earth moves around it. Also that everyone believed the Earth was flat until Christopher Columbus proved it was round by not falling off the edge on his journey to America. Sure, some may had speculated on a round Earth, but they were punished by the Church because they threatened its power. Today, we see this as proof the Church is obsolete, foolish, and antiquated.

Yet, not only is none of this true, even to this day there is no clear way of proving that the Earth moves. Among the first to speculate that the Sun was in the center of the Solar System were Nicolas of Cusa and Copernicus, both Catholic priests. Indeed, even Newton was clergy in the Church of England. The belief that the Earth was round goes back at least to Aristotle, and perhaps to Parmenides, 500 BC. The Flat Earth story we were all taught is propaganda (you can easily look it up), yet most still believe it.

Newton also speculated on the ‘color wheel,’ a device artists and physicists have used for centuries. It is based on the belief that the primary colors (yellow, blue, and red) when appropriately mixed, can produce any other color. He derived the color wheel from the rainbows produced in his experiments with refracted light. This ‘truth’ is often taught to students in higher education. Yet, the manufacturers of color printers use an entirely different color wheel made of primary colors yellow, cyan, and magenta. They do this precisely because it is well known the traditional color wheel does not work, it cannot produce every color. In fact one of the primary colors, magenta, does not appear in the rainbow at all! Nor are there receptors in the eye that can process magenta. The color is an optical illusion produced by the eye’s inability to process red/blue light. The color exists in the mind only. Yet, we all see it and intuitively know it. Indeed, much of art and our apprehension of the world would be impossible without it.

Philosophers have argued for thousands of years ‘is the red in the rose, or only in the mind?’ Is your red the same as my red? Today it is usually taught that the red exists only in our mind, yet, unlike magenta, the eye does have receptors for red. One could argue that my red might be more yellow or blue than yours, but how does one argue magenta? It is formed in the mind, yet, without external evidence the mind could not have invented it. Yet, we all agree when we see it.

All these ‘myths’ are taught everyday in modern classrooms, often in science classes. Almost no one is aware that their was a political agenda behind these ‘white-lies.’ Are these details Winston Smith would have noticed?

While we consider the modern era the most advanced, the most educated, the most reasoned, the fact is the essence of modernity is the exact opposite. The essence of Modernism is not reason, it is paradox and contradiction. Most colleges today base their philosophy courses on one form or another of Existentialism, the basis of which is precisely this. The modern giants of philosophy and science have consistently advocated the rebellion against reason and the very knowability of truth. This trend began with the philosopher Descartes. By the nineteenth century science, religion, politics, and philosophy were all trying to conform to the new wisdom. The end was reached when Einstein’s Relativity ostensibly confirmed reality can’t be known, truth is subjective, and nature is paradoxical.

Yet, the very foundation of Western civilization began precisely with the exposure of this fallacy over 2500 years ago. The doctrine was called Logos, and it was to this doctrine of reason the Christian Church once claimed allegiance. It is only in the last century that the Church has abandoned this teaching and returned to the more ancient gods of desire, emotions, and mythology.

The belief in God, particularly the God of Logos, began to dwindle in the late sixteenth century. Contrary to modern belief, this wasn’t because of science per se (science ‘per se’ had not been invented yet, nor the term ‘science’). Today we think of the scientist as a noble sage defiantly and objectively weighing facts in the pursuit of truth. This is seldom the case as they, like everyone else, have agendas and desires. Usually they are looking for proof of pre-conceived beliefs. Often their theories are religious philosophies dressed up with scientific terminology. Even Galileo’s Solar System didn’t begin as a scientific observation. It was first a pagan myth, a left-over remnant of a defunct Gnostic school called Hermeticism and their god Hermes Trismegistus. This was documented in Copernicus’ book On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres.

We assume that modern Christianity is failing because science has made God obsolete, that religion no longer meets the demands of reason. Yet, long before science declared war on religion there was a different kind of assault. Then Christianity was criticized precisely because it was too based on the reason, and not enough on faith.

Science began as Natural Philosophy, the seeking of truth by observing nature. Then, Christianity was hard-wired to the knowability of reality. This all began to change when Descartes insisted that Natural Philosophy had failed the primary test put on it by his philosophy. It failed prove that an observable external reality actually exists. In his despair, Descartes then attempted to prove truth by examining only his own thoughts. But looking inside and finding only himself, he never found the proof he desired of an external world. This is where what was to become modern science parted ways from Natural Philosophy. What remained is necessarily paradoxical. If philosophy and science had both concluded that an external reality was uncertain, who was Christianity to disagree? It was not Christianity that began the divorce from reality, it was academia.

The result were two domains, that of the senses, and that of the mind. Yet, science did not invent this paradox, it predates Christianity. It began with the Babylonians and the Two-Fold Truth. Science was almost two thousand years too late. If the Two-Fold Truth came first and science second, then we must ask, has religion followed science, or has science followed religion? Was science objectively weighing the evidence, or was it trying to vindicate an antiquated philosophy?

Before we go too far, we must understand something critical. The terms ‘belief’ and ‘faith’ do not mean today what they did anciently. In fact, the terms should almost be switched around. Today to ‘believe’ is not the ancient to think something is true because of the evidence, it is to think it is true despite the evidence. Such as, ‘belief in faeries.’ Similarly, ‘faith’ simply meant ‘desire,’ not to wish something to be true. Anciently, ‘faith’ was simply the act of sensing with no judgment of its truth. To ‘believe’ was a process of taking an item of faith, assess its veracity, then if it passed muster, commit to its truth. Thus, when we hear ‘by faith alone,’ we should hear ‘by desire alone’ or ‘by will alone.’ From the beginning, philosophy has wrestled with the interoperation of these two faculties of the mind. What is being argued is, ‘should reason be sovereign over desires,’ or ‘should desires be sovereign over reason?’ In brief, should we reason, or should we rationalize? Is Wisdom a search for Truth, or a denial of Truth?

It should be apparent by now Christianity is fighting a battle it can’t win. The cards are stacked against it. The solutions it uses don’t address the problem. It has tried to meet the demands of reason set by science, yet the highest wisdom of science are paradoxical, they aren’t reasonable at all. Nor has Christianity faced its true history. The solution has been to convert it into something it was never meant to be, a religion based on personal revelation alone. By avoiding the truth, it has become a boutique religion that risks nothing.

Strictly speaking, then, science as we know it today is not based on reason! Technically, science has become a way of mathematically overcoming its own doubt of reality. This is why the bizarre mathematical world physicists present to the public often has nothing to do with anything observable by humans. It is as if they delight in confounding common sense. Often they avoid the explanation that would make common sense.

Descartes was trying to find the foundation of all thought. He was trying to reduce it to its simplest form. Like Euclid, he was seeking the ‘point axiom’ on which thought is based. Along the way, he decided reality was too extravagant, unnecessary. To Descartes, reality was an enigma, he could have faith in it, but he couldn’t believe in it. He could believe in God, however. God was like a dream you can’t wake from. If it is all you know, it must be real. What resulted was his ‘trademark’ argument. Descartes could doubt reality, but he could not doubt his own thoughts.

If this all sounds confusing, it should, it literally is not reasonable…and it is suspiciously akin to certain forms of Eastern Mysticism. We will find much of modern thought is nothing but an ancient mystical religion in disguise, dressed up in Western scientific terms.

The implications of this are serious, particularly to Christianity. Christianity contends to be a revealed religion based on the reality of Christ. But of what purpose was the Incarnation and Crucifixion of Christ if Christianity was intended to be an idealized religion of the mind only?

We will find Christianity was intended to be the religion of reason. This is evidenced in the mistranslated term Logos at the beginning of John’s Gospel. Translators eager to translate the Bible into the vernacular have consistently translated Logos as ‘word.’ By the eighteenth century some Christians followed suit by rejecting Logos altogether as a Gnostic heresy. It was an attack on reason. It led to a new philosophical movement called Skepticism which found its supreme advocate in David Hume. Hume contested not only the knowability of God, but even the very nature of cause and effect in science. This put in doubt the very basis of both Newton’s Laws and Christian theology. With Hume a fork in the road was reached, a crisis of reason.

The result of all this was that by the nineteenth century what we call Common Sense became obsolete. To academia, the senses were something not trustworthy. With the verdict in, Western civilization began its long exodus back to the paradoxical principles of an ancient defunct mystery religion, Dualism.

Aristotle’s philosophy was once almost universally accepted. For millennia it undergirded all that one could consider knowledgeable and civilized. For over 2000 years it had yielded a remarkable advance of Western civilization. Yet, beginning with Descartes, it came under assault. Where Aristotle had assumed reality was undeniably real, the new moderns were certain it was undeniably an illusion. This created a huge problem. It created both a threat to the foundations of society, and an opportunity to those who sought to overthrow it. While the inertia of classical Western thought would carry on for centuries, without a basis in truth eventually all civil laws became arbitrary preferences manipulated by who ever happens to be in power.

Faced with this crisis, theorists of all persuasions raced to formulate ‘scientific’ societies not only to save order, but the order as each’s customs had come to know it. New methodologies such as Traditionalism, Capitalism, Marxism, Nihilism, and Fascism were formulated. They, each in their own way, tried to ‘scientifically’ encode into a secular scheme the essence of their customs minus the moral imperative of a reasonable God or a knowable reality. From then on, faith was sliced off from reason and assigned to religion, and ne’er the two shall meet.

Hume, a person of high society, felt that even in a society based on doubt, traditions should be maintained if only for the sake of moral order, hence Traditionalism. His close friend, Adam Smith a Scottish Calvinist, developed Capitalism, a mere secularized version of Calvinism. F.C Baur and Georg Hegel, influenced by Christian Gnosticism, developed the Tübingen School called Modernism. Moving into the nineteenth century we see Karl Marx, a former Jew, developing Marxism based on the Jewish Dialectic. Later on we see Sigmund Freud, influenced by Jewish Mysticism, develop the field of psychology. Carl Jung, Freud’s protégé, based his version of psychology on Gnostic Christian esotericism. Giovanni Gentile, a Roman Catholic, developed Classical Fascism based on his ideal of the Catholic family. Friedrich Nietzsche based his Nihilism on Dionysian Buddhism dressing it up with Western terms. What they feared was not only a collapse of moral order, but personal relevancy once society realized God was dead.

The list could go on. The important point is that all these philosophies were disguised attempts to salvage the moral order and customs. By inventing secular schemes as replacements for Christian Logos, the basis of Western civilization would be spared. For example, Adam Smith’s ‘invisible hand’ perhaps invoked a divine order, but it was a term palatable to the secular academia. Jung’s ‘collective unconscious’ was a scientific sounding term hiding the gnostic ‘god the One-Soul.’

Each of these schemes faced a dilemma. Denying the objective truth out of hand, each is an attempt to save their society by creating an almost arbitrary ‘first principle.’ They hid their agenda under the terminological bric-a-brac of religion, philosophy, and science to cloak their real belief, that truth was obsolete, at least as the West had come to know it. The result was a new belief system. Eastern Gnosticism, was brought to the West under the guise of science and philosophy. Like a Trojan Horse, it was a disguised way of sneaking in what otherwise would have been rejected by common sense.

Important to this discussion is what happened to Tradition. No longer seen as a faithful way of passing down truths from generation to generation, tradition was now seen as a scheme of hanging on to defunct, obsolete myths of the past. Progress alone was truth, and its fundamental truth was change for change sake. Progress became noble, tradition was bigoted for why else would you adhere to obsolete notions. Eventually, to even claim that ‘this is true,’ or ‘this is false’ was considered an act of a madman, a purposeful attempt to suppress the desires of your foe.

To remain vital, Christianity ceased to be a religion of traditions. Without true tests of fact or fancy, it was seen as a mere social custom, something that could not be supported by historical evidence. Even ancient sacred texts, once seen as reliable testimonies, were recast by historical criticism as Gnostic mythologies.

By the nineteenth century science saw itself at war with Christianity and scholars decided to fabricate the evidence to prove it. The result was Conflict Theory. It introduced ‘facts,’ one of which was the Flat Earth Theory, designed to further discredit the Church. The education system taught it, and the public bought it. It was this that led to Fundamentalism when committed Christians were forced to choose between denying the ‘facts’ or giving up their faith. As we will see, Conflict Theory was a complete fabrication.

There is a remarkable synchronicity to all this. The timelines of the rise and fall of religions, science, philosophy, even civilization suspiciously parallel each other. So, where was this all coming from, the honest investigation of reality, or had the sages of Modernism all signed a pact with the father of lies? Was modern society really formed out of the honest despair over truth, or, was this despair over truth a feature of this new philosophy slipping in? (Hint: it’s the second answer)

This book contains an immense amount of research. My goal was never to create my own spin on Christianity. It is my firm belief that modern society, modern thought, had been derailed by something akin to a hoax. Like Winston Smith, there were too many misconstrued ‘facts,’ too many inconsistencies that did not fit what we were taught. Common sense didn’t fall out of favor, it had been purposely assaulted. It became my belief that ‘progress’ was a term devised to disguise an orchestrated attempt to undermine Western thought by confounding the very idea ‘truth.’

Too many simple ‘facts’ taught to grade school children didn’t hold up to scrutiny. Christopher Columbus had never proved the Earth was round nor was he the first to discover America. The Dark Ages were never actually ‘dark,’ the Inquisition had never actually killed millions of people. Darwin had not discovered the Theory of Evolution. Galileo was not first to speculate on Solar Centricity, on and on…

Likewise, many commonly accepted ‘facts’ had been purposely misportrayed and there was plenty of evidence for it. The supreme example was that Jesus Christ had actually lived, had been Crucified, and much of the evidence had been purposely hidden.

This all followed a modern Zeitgeist that could have only been devised by man. The underlying intent was this: most of the moral order had become based on Western civilization, the basis of which was Christianity. But, they believed that it was only a matter of time before Christianity was revealed as a fraud. Therefore a replacement was needed. The switch had to be stealthy. It was sex dressed up as political theory, marketing, psychology, and even theology.

The First Purpose: Just the Facts

Imagine trying to explain German/Polish relations in the early 1940s while purposely not mentioning that there was a World War going on. All the explanations would be convoluted and unnecessarily complex. Motives would become manufactured, the trivial would become exaggerated, and the important would become trivialized. This is precisely what has happened regarding first century Palestinian history. The most crucial of information has been trivialized, even purposely hidden from scrutiny. This has allowed Christianity to be trivialized so that it could be subverted to serve political motives.

The purpose of this book is actually two-fold. The first will show that significant episodes of first century Palestine have been purposely suppressed. The result is modern Christianity has philosophically switched camps. The camp most of Christianity is currently in is the very camp Christ sought to warn against, one that has abandoned reason and adhered to desire. The evidence for this is actually overwhelming.

This new camp has much in common with what in the past would have been known as the Occult. In fact, often the very same people revered by the modern Church appear in numerous Occult texts. Yet, the Church is either unaware, or is not concerned. This is not merely a philosophical problem, then. While much of the modern Church eschews tradition and dogma, it is often indoctrinating itself into a subversive esoteric tradition. This rejection of traditional doctrine at one time would have been a red flag. But few have noticed because it is often the leadership of the Church behind the switch.

Christianity often portrays first century Judaism as a religion whose time had run out. Christ represents the new, reformed face of Judaism. This view holds that the Jewish religion had become stuck in tradition. It was failing and had become burdened with minutiae in laws, customs, and politics. It had fallen into disputing factions, all at odds with each other. The result of this was that Judaism had completely lost its way and needed replacing with a more modern scheme.

Then came a Messiah, Jesus, the Reformer, who pointed out these failings. He showed that the Jews themselves were to blame, and sought to renovate the entire Jewish religious system into one more acceptable to God. For this Jesus became rejected, even crucified. Conveniently, Jesus is no mere mortal. Being both the Son of God and the Son of Man puts Him in a unique situation — He was the only one worthy of appeasing God’s anger, the atonement par excellence. Because of their sins, the Jewish faith was broken, their people dispersed, rejected by God for having committed deicide.

While this may be a bit extreme, to some degree or another this belief is held by most Christians. Since the Holocaust, many have backed off the deicide part, but the rest is essentially what they believe, absurd as it is. It requires an angry God and a second merciful God that must be sacrificed one to the other as punishment.

The historical evidence of early Christianity as often taught today seems to support this story. But significant parts of known history have been left out, mainly because of the severe controversy they would produce.

The story we will find is not one of Jesus the reformer, but of Jesus the traditionalist. Jesus was trying to protect tradition from the reformers of the period, the ’separatists’ called the Pharisees. Influenced by Babylonian mysticism, they were seeking to make the traditional faith obsolete. In other words, Jesus was not trying to reform Judaism, He was trying to protect it from reform. Far from failing, the Pharisees did transform ancient Judaism into an entirely new religion based on a mysticism of paradoxical desire. This put Christianity into a very odd predicament: in order to save the essence of tradition, they were forced to also create a new religion.

Jesus’ intention was to bring the Faith forward in the only way possible, to open it up to all of Mankind.** It is not a story of God turning His back on the Jews, but one of placing under his wing the despised, the rejected of Mankind. The price of this was Jesus’ death on the Cross, a propitiation not to appease an angry God, but to introduce Mankind to a merciful one.

Jesus was not crucified by the ‘Jews,’ per se. Rather, the evidence will show that Jesus was crucified by the Pharisees because they believed Him to be a heretic. Today we might call Jesus a ‘whistleblower.’

It was these very misunderstandings that underly everything from the Inquisition to the Holocaust. The reason the true history has been suppressed is because it has become something of taboo. Left out is something known as the Blood Libel. Without it a true history of Western religion and civilization is unattainable. Without it key facts will not make sense.

The radical turn is this: it was the belief of early Christians that it was the Pharisees who had abandoned the faith and were developing a new religion. This religion rejected Logos, a concept that was latent in Judaism, but was beginning to emerge. Logos was the belief in an ordered reasonable cosmos. It was the core doctrine not only of Christianity, but the development of Western civilization. The Pharisaical scheme was developed precisely to confound Logos. It was based on a juridical technique called the Dialectic, that which Jesus referred to as hypocrisy. It was this very system that resurfaced in the modern era and threatens the very basis of Western civilization.

The Second Purpose: There cannot be two contradicting truths

The second purpose of this book will be to actually teach the Doctrine of Logos itself, sometimes called ‘The Unity of Truth.’ The core of this doctrine are two very simple universal principles: 1) that contradictories cannot both be true, and; 2) truth is ‘conformity of mind to reality.’ The broader principle is this: that for morality to have any meaning at all, truth must be ‘universal,’ (once known as ‘catholic’). The basic presuppositions of reason are not to be treated as boutique designer accessories, but as universal obligatory requirements of a civil society.

The precepts of natural moral law must be the same for all human beings, everywhere and at all times, if they are inherent in human nature and discoverable by understanding of what is really good and right for human beings to seek and to do… There cannot be a plurality of incompatible moral doctrines all prescriptively true, any more than there can be a plurality of incompatible religious orthodoxies, all factually true. ²

Mortimer Adler (philosopher and editor of the Encyclopaedia Britannica)

Before the 1960s, the Catholic Church’s core doctrine was the Philosophia Perennis (Perennial Philosophy), also known as Scholastic philosophy. It was this very doctrine of Truth referred to above. It was considered the Handmaid of Theology. Based on Greek philosophy, and completed by Jewish tradition, it became the Holy Wisdom of the Church of Christ, the Virgin Mary being its protector.

There were major texts dedicated to expounding this doctrine. Anciently were works by Boethius and St. John Damascene. St. Augustine drew from it. With the closing of the Middle Ages came Peter Lombard’s Book of Sentences, which was the primary academic text for centuries. Then came the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas including his Summa Theologica. More recently was the great work by Cardinal Mercier called A Manual of Modern Scholastic Philosophy. In the twentieth century were texts in English of Fr. A.C. Cotter, Msgr. Paul J. Glenn, and Fr. Celestine Bittle. Also are the works of Etienne Gilson, Jacques Maritain, and Anglicans John Henry Newman and Edward Pusey. Msgr. Paul Glenn wrote in 1943:

After the 13 th century, the philosophia perennis,–henceforth known as the Scholastic philosophy or the philosophy of the schoolmen,–moved through the years to our own day, often obscured, often ignored, often and for long periods despised as outmoded by those who knew little or nothing of its doctrines and their compelling evidence. Despite continued and recurring obstacles and obscurities, this philosophy has ever been coming into view, ever striving to assume and maintain its rightful place of pre-eminence and control. Today it challenges the attention of the best minds, and its influence widens hourly. ³

Msgr. Paul Glenn

These texts were not renegade philosophies or contrivances by speculators. Often they received the blessing by the Imprimatur, the ’signing off’ of a Bishop of the Holy Roman Catholic Church. The fact that the Church was so heavily invested in this doctrine, and then summarily dropped it almost overnight should be the topic of scandal itself. Yet, by the 1960s the doctrine was considered something of an embarrassment, even approaching heresy. Modern detractors held that the Church had for centuries incorporated a controversial pagan doctrine not supported by Biblical evidence. Yes, there were some veiled references in the Bible to ‘Logos,’ ‘Spirit of Truth,’ ‘I am… Truth,’ and a few statement in John and Paul’s Epistles. But even these were seen as strained dubious references and not something that could be said to rise to the level of a uniquely Christian philosophy, a ‘handmaid.’

By the twentieth century the Reformationist doctrine Sola Scriptura had taken hold in most all of Christianity. This meant that if it could not be found in the Bible it was not worthy of belief. The fact that one might seek something reasonable was considered a weakness in one’s faith, a sign that one wasn’t a believer and one’s soul could be in peril.

By the end of Vatican II the Philosophia Perennis had all but disappeared. The Church’s once official stance was what defined Man was his rationality. Psychology prior to the twentieth century was merely the study of the ‘life force,’ a faculty shared with other animals, plants, and even microorganisms. No one considered it the driving force of humankind. The psyche was simply associated with desire, it was desire that made Man and animal, not distinguished him from them. But by the 1960s, Man would be seen as merely a psychological animal. The psychologist’s couch replaced the confessional.

One would be hard-pressed to find a seminary or college in the last forty or so years that has taught the ‘true doctrine.’ It was replaced by Liberation Theology and the like. This agenda in the Church was paralleled in the schools with new math, revisionist history, and other socialized sciences.

Also, and oddly coincidental, came a new sexual revolution. Just as Aristotle began to be seen as intellectually stifling, the moral dogmas of Christianity were seen as sexually repressive. This repression was seen as having caused the very societal insanity it was supposed to have prevented. The Holocaust itself was blamed on the sexually repressive nature of Christian civilization. Hitler, being sexually unfulfilled, took his frustration out on the Jews. Moderns believed the cause was a flaw in Western civilization. Deeply imbedded within were the seeds of its own destruction, a false allegiance to Truth.

Now as to the two purposes. The first purpose, that the true story has been suppressed, is actually quite easy to show. The evidence is abundant but controversial. Not that it is not true, but that it has been hidden, often censored, precisely because of its incendiary nature.

The second purpose, that the doctrine of Truth is part of the Christian legacy will be shown, but not as easily. It requires a bit of a leap of its own. Often what is most taken for granted in any historical event is seldom referred to in the documentation of that event. This is because it is so familiar to everyone involved. While no one in the play West Side Story is referred to as Romeo or Juliet, it is clear to us the play was based on Shakespeare. Likewise the 1950s science-fiction spectacular Forbidden Planet was actually The Tempest in disguise. This is a regular practice of Hollywood screen play writers.

Well, ancient writers did the same thing, often to illustrate a contemporary event in terms of an ancient allegory. Today we do something very similar. Star Trek was not about the future. It was a commentary on current events disguised as the future so that the story could be told more provocatively.

In the very same way first century Jews familiar with the Greek play the Bacchae would have understood the underlying moral story in John’s Gospel. Today we are not familiar with the Bacchae, so it is hidden to us. It is this backstory that does precisely answer, ‘where is this philosophy of reason in Scripture?’ Once this is seen, I will produce other supporting texts saying the same thing. What will be seen is the milieu of the first century between two opposing theo-philosophies, one based on reason, the other on desire. This dispute does land directly on modern questions of morality, sexuality, and hypocrisy.

In many ways the Christian Church is on the verge of extinction. Because of this many churches have resorted to all sorts of novelties to retain membership. The core of the Faith was once Truth. The modern Church has resorted to novelties precisely because they avoid the doctrine of Truth. They find the Truth embarrassing, to them Modernism makes the Church more palatable. But Modernism isn’t based on reason, it is based on desire. I call it marketing. Our education system hasn’t faired any better. Similarly, they avoid teaching the Trivium, a well-established system of Truth taught for centuries. Can the Church really rebuild itself by marketing to a populace that rejects truth out-of-hand?

It is difficult enough to do research and come up with a fair, even-handed, conclusion. Yet, the task is compounded many fold when the subject is not only what happened, but of Truth itself. While logic will have much to do with the following discussion, the main analysis will be something closer to forensic analysis. All the facts will be introduced, even seemingly irrelevant ones, so that a conclusion can be reached. This conclusion will not just be historical, but one regarding Truth.

** A word of caution in this text. I fully understand modern society’s sensitivity in using words like ‘Man,’ and ‘Mankind.’ However, as I hope will be apparent, one cannot discuss ancient philosophical texts constrained by this modern usage. The constraints would be cumbersome, and incomprehensible for often the terms Man and Woman were used to designate broader principles. Therefore, the use of ‘Man’ and ‘Mankind’ etc., when capitalized represent ‘humanity’ and the like in a philosophical sense, as consistent with historical usage. This will be elaborated in the text as we go.

Bold letters and italics used for emphasis are my own and not part of the original text quoted.

1 Author and scientist Rupert Sheldrake ( Science Set Free ) has noted his amazement when he found out that physicists routinely look up the ever changing value of the gravitational constant, likening it to investors who daily look up daily stock quotes.

2 Truth in Religion: The Plurality of Religions and the Unity of Truth, Mortimer Adler, p.87

3 An Introduction to Philosophy, Right Rev. Paul J. Glenn, Herder Books, p.20

1

Is the ‘Golden Rule’ a Common Truth?

The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist.

Economist John Maynard Keynes

Hear what our Lord Jesus Christ saith.

THOU shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it; Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.

The Book of Common Prayer, 1928

A dispute over sin and how it is redeemed

Societies exist on rules and dogma. Rules, when they are just, exist not so much to control the people but to limit the power of their rulers. Likewise, dogma, when it is just, is built upon natural law, principles we are incumbent to follow because they proceed from the very ordering of the cosmos, the very mind of God. Dogma is the codifying of these simple principles into an organized system of thought. We know they are true because they are refinements of things we already grasp intuitionally, things we already knew but don’t fully realize.

Proper dogma exists not to burden society with arbitrary rules, but to clarify natural truths that would otherwise be abused. They provide a fabric upon which just rules of society can be laid. When they are just, they apply equally to everybody. When dogma becomes arbitrary it becomes unjust, it contradicts our intuitions. Likewise, when dogma asks us to accept rules that run counter to our intuitions, that only appeal to our desires, it is reason enough to be suspicious of them.

The Golden Rule is a type of dogma. Its intention is to express the essence of Jewish Law as Christ understood it as simply as possible. Its common sense simplicity appeals to our intuitions. In doing so, it conveys to our mind that the Golden Rule is not arbitrary, but is built upon Natural Law.

The Golden Rule is often considered the bed-rock of Christian morality. In a broad sense, it is often referred to as the Principle of Reciprocity because of its similarity to like rules in other cultures. ¹ Yet, the Golden Rule is not as simple as it seems, for it is, in fact, one solution to an ancient riddle.

Today we think of the word ‘economy’ as strictly having to do with fiscal matters. We think of the economist as a ‘numbers kind of guy’ who perhaps works for Wall Street. Wikipedia gives the not too helpful definition, economics is the social science that studies the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services.

More helpful is the definition given by the American Economic Association: "Economics can be defined in a few different ways. It’s the study of scarcity, the study of how people use resources and respond to incentives, or the study of decision-making. It often involves topics like wealth and finance, but it’s not all about money."

If we consider this broadened definition, it is apparent a lot of Christ’s parables are actually simple economic principles. They often include an aspect of how to properly handle money, but often they go far beyond by tying in ethics. They often, too, involve concepts of reciprocity.

Today when you look up a word in a dictionary it is common to get a quite lengthy definition. Look up the word ‘Man’