Gateway-philosophies to Christianity
It is foolish to do away with what is good in other systems of thinking. As a Christian I believe that Christ is the fulfillment of truth. However, I really believe that there are other systems of thought that predate the church can pull one towards Christ if the individual lets himself. What follows is a brief list:
Heraclitus
Platonism
Pythagoreanism
Aristotelianism
Stoicism
Confucianism
Daoism
Buddhism
Vedantism
Nyaya
Zoroastrianism
Sapiential Books of the Bible (Psalms, Proverbs, Sirach, Wisdom, Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes)
Hillel the Elder
And editions to this list would be interesting to hear.
Heraclitus
Platonism
Pythagoreanism
Aristotelianism
Stoicism
Confucianism
Daoism
Buddhism
Vedantism
Nyaya
Zoroastrianism
Sapiential Books of the Bible (Psalms, Proverbs, Sirach, Wisdom, Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes)
Hillel the Elder
And editions to this list would be interesting to hear.
Comments (55)
I think other books outside the ones you mention could potentially pull towards Christianity. Book of Daniel for instance references a "son of man" but the translation is of course contentious. Christians sometimes cite Jeremiah as referencing the coming of Christ. I believe Jeremiah 31:31.
Interesting how Sirach didn't make the cut for the Jewish canon. I haven't read it but I'd be interested to see how it compares to Proverbs.
Christianity was influenced by and borrowed extensively from virtually every philosophy and religion popular in the Roman Empire. I would think Neo-Platonism influenced it more than Platonism at least early on, and would add some Cynicism to the mix, as well as some of the beliefs of the Gnostic sects and the Hermetic tradition.
I'm not sure what you mean by "pull one towards Christ."
Proselytizing thread.
That all roads lead to Christ I suppose. Shouldn't be a shocking conclusion based upon:
Quoting Dermot Griffin
I guess the "pull" may be a reference to "fishers of men" but if so, I don't think of the systems of thought listed as being in the nature of bait for that purpose.
Primarily through the ethical teachings. The Four Noble Truths and Eightfold Path provide a similar moral framework to that of Christianity. I am also going to point to the figure of Maitreya, the Buddhist messiah. Who’s to say it isn’t Christ? Again, just my opinion.
Just curious: Why would you come to a philosophy forum to preach your religion?
SUBTOPIC:
?? emancipate; et al,
I agree. Most of the time, the Westerners don't understand it at all.
Depending on who you listen to, you might get a story like this:
The idea "probably" being that if you follow the Saints (canonized) you come closer to the ascended.
Most Respectfully,
R
Not “preaching” anything. Simply interested in exploring the connections between classical philosophy and Christianity is all. Idc what religion anyone is.
Wasn’t thinking of an analogy like that but it’s interesting. In short I think that the concept of Logos applied to God becoming Jesus, in a Kierkegaardian sense, is interesting. That’s why I see all the aforementioned schools of thought as pointers to Christianity but that’s just an opinion. One could study Stoicism and become Buddhist. One could study Platonism and find himself a practicing Hindu and so on.
If all roads point to Rome then its quite possible Rome is pointing to these roads.
Therefore it shouldn't be hard to see one can discard the location and the roads, can one do it? Break the box? The God box or the Atheist Box? Let's say the box of any/all beliefs?
That is true. Socrates could be seen as a pre-Christian martyr, for example. But let's not get carried away. Early Christian thought and theology was heavily influenced by texts and philosophies that already existed. It's perhaps not surprising that the New Testament is packed with fulfillments of ancient prophecies. Christianity is not alone in this. Newton stood on the shoulders of giants. It's not so amazing that Copernicus and Kepler foreshadowed Newton or that Archimedes came within a whisker of inventing calculus, missing the mark by only a couple of thousand years.
Preach on brother.
Quoting Dermot Griffin
Quoting Jackson
Disguising pejoratives by calling it "curiosity" doesn't make it any less evident. Anything wrong with your attitude here? Who the heck are you to question his intents or his right to post here or any other forum he so pleases. For a 5 month old account you talk big. How many accounts you have in this forum? Where does your authority to talk to him like this or to censor him come from? And how did you come to the conclusion one cannot include religion in discussions of philosophy? Perhaps you might consider working on releasing whatever is stuck inside you, or chances are someone may take it out for you.
With the exception of the short mention of the Logos at the beginning of the Gospel ascribed to John, the last Gospel written, there's nothing connecting the Logos as defined by the ancient pagan philosophers with Jesus (I confess I haven't read Kierkegaard, who has always struck me as too distraught for my taste). I think it's likely its mention in that Gospel is part of a later development in the history of Christianity, along with its claim that belief in Christ is the exclusive means by which we can approach God.
No question. And another way some people look at this is to see Christianity as a derivative belief system that has cannibalized and borrowed from other religions and mystery cults to manufacture yet another faith system.
As I understand it, the exclusion of other views of the divine characterizes the Pauline version of Christianity.
So, the question of what might be seen as included has the problem of being cast out at the beginning..
I don't believe that Buddhists would agree there would be any soteriological benefit to them in revering Christ. In this verse from the Pali scriptures, the Buddha, after the Awakening, wonders to whom he owes 'reverence or deference'. However, he reflects, it would be 'for the sake of perfecting and unperfected aggregate of virtue' (rather an awkward translation, I admit) that he would revere or defer to another. But he sees no other brahman or contemplative 'more consummate in virtue', so concludes that the only thing which deserves reverence is 'this very dhamma' to which he has fully awakened.
[quote=Garava Sutta: Reverence; https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn06/sn06.002.than.html]I have heard that on one occasion, when the Blessed One [the Buddha] was newly Self-awakened, he was staying at Uruvela on the bank of the Nerañjara River, at the foot of the Goatherd's Banyan Tree. Then, while he was alone and in seclusion, this line of thinking arose in his awareness: "One suffers if dwelling without reverence or deference. Now on what brahman or contemplative can I dwell in dependence, honoring and respecting him?"
Then the thought occurred to him: "It would be for the sake of perfecting an unperfected aggregate of virtue that I would dwell in dependence on another brahman or contemplative, honoring and respecting him. However, in this world with its devas, Maras, & Brahmas, in this generation with its brahmans and contemplatives, its royalty and common-folk, I do not see another brahman or contemplative more consummate in virtue than I, on whom I could dwell in dependence, honoring and respecting him. ...
..."What if I were to dwell in dependence on this very Dhamma to which I have fully awakened, honoring and respecting it?"[/quote]
That's pretty generous.
Christianity actively demolished the philosophical schools of Athens and Alexandria, destroyed philosophical texts and persecuted teachers of philosophy. The detrimental impact of the Christin hegemony on intellectual life was not reversed for a thousand years. The classical texts were so utterly destroyed in Europe that they had to be "rediscovered" in the east, mostly from Islamic sources.
Quoting Dermot Griffin
Indeed.
Trashing that shit and corruption was for the good of humanity. Look at how much further we are ahead today, in our knowledge, than if we would have kept up the ancient Greek traditions.
I appreciate the defense. I think it’s crucial to examine connections between philosophy and religion (hence why I posted this topic in the “Philosophy of religion” section). It’s evident that “proselytizing” is not something that I’m for. In fact, I’m openly against. There’s a verse in the Old Testament regarding this (I think in Exodus and this gets restated again in the Prophets but I’ll have to look back). The morality behind proselytizing is a whole other discussion, though.
And personally I don’t know of all roads lead to Rome. When Christianity entered China one could say it was a union between Jerusalem and Khanbaliq (or rather “Beijing”). When it entered India there was a union between Jerusalem and Magadha. What’s interesting about Christianity is that it adopts whatever culture it mixes with, not destroying what is good.
Longing for the good old days of pervasive ableism, classism, misogyny, and pederasty? Those evil Christians! /s
If you ain't doing your basics right then you will get what is coming to you.
:100:
Yes, things haven't changed much since the fifth century C.E. monk Shenoute said "There is no crime for those who have Christ." Better get your mind right.
The absence of any appreciation of irony is impressive.
Just ask any of the indigenous peoples of the Americas. But perhaps there was nothing good there before the Christians arrived.
Funny thing though, Dermot, almost every ex-Christian I've ever met or read was, by their own accounts, "pulled away" – liberated – from the Christianity of their upbringing / education by several of the pre-Christian traditions on your list. Some of my liberators (in the 10th-11th years of my 12 years of excellent Parochial school education) are indicated in bold above.
Yes, though the schools weren't formally closed by edict until Justinian. But things became especially bad for pagans--and of course Christians deemed to be heretics--starting with the reign of the first Theodosius.
I think that the Latin western part of the Empire and the Roman successor states there, and the medieval kingdoms of Western Europe, were especially "cleansed" of pagan knowledge and culture. I attribute that in large part to Augustine, who, after some waffling, condemned the pagan philosophers though they couldn't have known of Christ, and of course popularized the notion of original sin.
I'm not a Christian. I'm not here to defend all things Christian, but the more I look into ancient Greek culture and philosophy and literature the grosser it becomes.
It's like the opposite of the Judeo-Christian tradition; the Greeks on their surface look decent but dive in a little deeper and it's a hard pass. The bible looks terrible on its surface but dive in a little deeper and it becomes more palatable.
I'm not sure what you are saying is supported by history. But as you might know i have no skin in the religion-anti religion game so i will leave this subject alone. My concern is something else and i have mentioned it in the last para of my initial post.
For example?
Pervasive ableism and classism as I said before. Deeply entrenched in the culture and in their lit. I'm not your teacher, Jackson, go read the Odyssey or the Iliad or Plato or Aristotle.
EDIT: also forgot to mention sexual immorality with young boys.
I know more about Greeks than you. But, you refuse discussion, so we are done.
my response is commensurate on the effort that you give. so far you've given me nothing. the illiad and the odyssey were picked out by nietzsche as examples of "master morality" that idolizes nobility and the able-bodied and dismisses the weak. it just idolizes those who are strong and beautiful and denigrates those who aren't. the greeks held in poor regard those who had trouble speaking, they were considered cursed by the gods. diogenes slightly improves on this view by just calling the disabled deficient.
the odyssey is just about the great becoming greater. honor seeking. the poor were typically considered low.
more: Plato's doctrine of forms is inherently ableist in that it posits a single, perfect able-bodied standard of beauty. aristotle believed disabled infants should be left to die. what about the movie '300'? the noble fit western warriors lost and civilization collapsed because a disabled guy didn't know his place.
Yes, to be plunged into the dark ages was a very good thing. The problem is that when the principles of a culture are untrue, corrupted by falsity, or other forms of vice, and philosophers point out these problems, no one really listens. That's what happens in this forum, when I point out the falsities which are currently abundant in mathematics and physics. People here say, the principles serve their purposes, so unless I have something better to offer, forget about criticizing those conventions. But since the principles serve their purposes, no one is inclined to look for better ones. Therefore it is necessary to first recognize the principles as bad, and destroy the bad principles, thereby providing the necessary conditions for the development of better ones. The phoenix rises from the ashes.
Yes, but perhaps the Eastern Church, like the Eastern Roman Empire, kept some of them too for a time. I'm not sure. But the Latin Church never like those guys anyhow, and probably was happier to deal with Islam than heretical Christians.
Any good reason why "it" was called "the dark ages"?
Wikipedia says that this was a period of cultural, intellectual and economic decline in Europe and surely because of that civilization as we know it was delayed by, what?, a coupla friggin centuries.
However, I'd like to compare morbidity and mortality statistics, adjusted for confounding factors, of the so-called dark ages with those of other ages. It matters in my humble opinion, oui? Quite possibly the dark ages were a period of relative peace. Dunno!
What does destroying a bad principle look like? I understand skepticism. I get the idea that we live in our time of ideas. But what does destroying a bad principle look like?
It looks like forgetting something.
One of the earliest recognized (recorded) religions is Zoroastrianism. All regional practices from centuries before Christ, including Zoroastrianism and Sumerian religions became modified to suit a narrative that benefited their cultural context and comprehension of their own dogma. All these religions exhibit excessive syncretism, which charts a map or link to how they have diverged in various parts of the world.
It's analogous to the childhood game "telephone," in which one player passes a message to another until the message finally reaches the person who first whispered it. The message might be the same, but the phrasing might be different. Another possibility is that the message significantly changed.
More than 30,000 Christian sects separate into or coexist as a whole within the Christian faith.
Even the "brethren" who identify with Christianity contend with the messages/interpretations of the Scriptures due to translation issues, preferential issues, cultural practices, and the unreliable sources from which it arose, e.g., The Dead Sea Scrolls.
Many scholars believe that the Dead Sea Scrolls, which were found in eleven caverns between 1947 and 1956, came from the Essence (Jewish monastic and apocalyptic sect) compound in the Qumran desert.
Only twelve of the nine-hundred scrolls discovered by archaeologists were "most intact," although still in terrible condition; the remaining 25,000 fragments were considerably more damaged and less legible. Out of more than 100 scribes, only three wrote more than one Scroll.
What makes the Scrolls even more intriguing is that only 8–9 unpaid non–Jewish scholars had the initial approval to transcribe them. It wasn't until 1994 that the Scrolls became published.
Additionally, no names identify the most significant Biblical figures in the New Testament, but many academics believe they are encoded throughout the texts' writings.
Currently, more than 400,000+ religions worldwide, along with 30,000+ Christian sects, further divide the philosophy of religion. Whether you identify as Christian or otherwise, there is a 0.00025 percent chance that you will choose the "correct" religion (correct meaning heaven, paradise, reincarnation, etc.), and a 99.99974999... percent chance that you will choose the "wrong" religion (wrong meaning Hell, eternal suffering, destruction of souls, etc.).
All of us on this forum may as well pay the lottery if we're feeling that lucky.
I like the metaphor used to describe your position on the matter.
Maybe that shit which Banno referred to was the fire and brimstone of God's wrath.
I think a proper analysis would reveal to you that most of the killing which has occurred in the wars we have seen is materialist based, the desire for property, territory, land, rather than based in an ideological Holy Lie. But the killers might claim the name of God in an attempt to justify their materialistic greed.
Quoting 180 Proof
I wholly agree. I suppose this is the reason why most people agree that it is better to have faith in something than in nothing. However, they intend it to suggest that it is "helpful" in life. Like you said, their ignorance fuels the "US vs. THEM" attitude, which results in violence against those they perceive as their enemies, or rather, told are the enemies.
Even if that's true, given just a little thought, MU, the religious kill each other in the name of Holy Lies which command "thou shalt not kill" and "love each other" whereas the so-called "materialists" are not nearly as murderously – sacred-ends-justify-profane-means – hypocritical and dishonest about their motivations. Faith in (demonstable, hearsay) falsehoods facilitates vicious self-deceptions, as Voltaire points out
:fire:
I think what I said, or at least meant, is that the materialists kill for material gains, and they claim this killing to be in the name of God, i.e. for an ideological purpose. These are the ones who are "hypocritical and dishonest about their motivations". You may have observed, or heard about these people who kill for materialist purposes, and heard how thy claim to be killing for an ideological divinity, and wrongly concluded that they were hypocritically killing for that divinity, when in reality they were killing for material gains.
These people "the flock" are murdering for the purpose of material gain of the organization, as you state. That they are brainwashed fools, and think that they are murdering for some other purpose, is beside the point.
Quoting 180 Proof
But these people, the brainwashed fools, do not know that what they say is untrue, because they believe it. Lying is deceiving, i.e. knowing what one is saying is not the truth. These people believe it to be the truth, so they are not lying, and you cannot say it's "their respective Holy Lies". The lying is being done by those "High Priests" who are motivated by material gain rather than true religion (actually True Religion is a brand name). So they are not properly characterized as "Holy Lies", they are better called "materialist lies".
What I think often happens is that people don't see the similarities. I listened to a Catholic Priest talking about this. He said that Buddhism can in the beginning teach you important things but later on Buddhism won't be of that much help.
My understanding is that all religions speak of how there are more to being a human than focusing on the material world. The solutions are different!
Also, Buddhism rejects materialism, I think. I've yet to hear a Buddhist who likes Feuerbach.