Here is an unusual....and I would guess unique...image of the Christian God from a 1950's Dutch Catholic church.
It's not the personnel, the three Persons of the Trinity, but their placement. I have never seen a depiction of this uniquely Christian dogma where the Holy Spirit-as-Dove hovers over both the Son and the Father in this posture and attitude.
People probably get much or most of their religious attitudes and half-thought through convictions from images rather than concepts. Especially for iconic faiths like Roman or Orthodox Christianity. Hinduism and Buddhism, too.
Made me wonder what effect it would have had were the dominant images of God the Father in the Warrior-King mode rather than the Senex, and if the Holy Spirit had been depicted as fire rather than, as B puts it, The Bird.
And don't get me started on all those androgynous Jesuses.
The Trinity is Christian doctrine in a nutshell. And rationalists, of course, find it scandalously absurd. Making images of it has proven, well, interesting:
It's not the personnel, the three Persons of the Trinity, but their placement. I have never seen a depiction of this uniquely Christian dogma where the Holy Spirit-as-Dove hovers over both the Son and the Father in this posture and attitude.
People probably get much or most of their religious attitudes and half-thought through convictions from images rather than concepts. Especially for iconic faiths like Roman or Orthodox Christianity. Hinduism and Buddhism, too.
Made me wonder what effect it would have had were the dominant images of God the Father in the Warrior-King mode rather than the Senex, and if the Holy Spirit had been depicted as fire rather than, as B puts it, The Bird.
And don't get me started on all those androgynous Jesuses.
The Trinity is Christian doctrine in a nutshell. And rationalists, of course, find it scandalously absurd. Making images of it has proven, well, interesting:
the wisely chaste allegorical approach
of Byzantium:
Abraham's hospitality
at the Oaks of Mamre.
of Byzantium:
Abraham's hospitality
at the Oaks of Mamre.
The North European medieval concrete version.
As fancifully literal as Hindu statuary can be.
11 comments:
The 15th-century Boulbon Altarpiece shows in the Son's eyes a strong suggestion of paranoia suitable for a Son who understands his binding by the Father. The Spirit dove hovers in a pentacle of bright lines proceeding from the mouth of the Father and the mouth of the Son: filioque. The Father in the window or letter He has a double furrow'd brow above his nose and the Son a single furrow: the wings of the dove constitute the other furrow, I guess.
The serenely zap'd 'Aryan' Father and Son in the 1950s Dutch Treat Atonement Church seem to suppose that the reckoning of the Binding or Crucifixion can be indefinitely foregotten or defer'd. ...
P.S. If the Father were his own true Warrior-King, he could dispense with Fatherhood, couldn't he?
Dutch Treat, I meant, as replacing sacred marriage in our aiôn. Not even rising to the stature of engagedness -- "engaged" Buddhsm etc, as in engaged but never truly marry'd.
Also no doubt 'hooking up' (with 'hooks' referring to the nails of the Cross, as in the old oath Gadzooks, God's hooks; and sc Gad as impersonal fortune, not personal Ego sum quis ego sum).
Re the double-furrow'd brow in the Boulbon altarpiece: cf the double testes leading unto the Dutch Father's erect right thumb [right hand is Christ], and the Son seems to have only one teste on the left hand [left hand is Spirit?] although perhaps also a second smaller thumb and teste on the lower part of his left palm. ... In both the Boulbon and the Dutch image, the dove has only one eye: doesn't provide depth perception unless complemented by another eye.
Since there is the oddity that the sole sin from which one can't be forgiven is to blaspheme against the Holy Spirit, perhaps it is really the most important and should go on top.
--Nathan
One wonders really whether "forgiveness" for sin and blasphemy is a desideratum, in the aiôn of desublimation or any other. ... If blasphemy is speaking truth to power in a way that eternally despises God or the things of God )makes an aiôn of despising the things of God( then reducing the Ego sum quis ego sum to the "humbleness" of value-neutralness is quite the blasphemy.
One must give Jews credit for their honest or culturally respectable way of confessing that they make of yhwh who brings the shadow Self a vain proxy or idol, sc that they never speak the name yhwh. In a shadow sort of way, silence on yhwh that confesses that one makes of yhwh a vain thing or idol could constitute the beginning of a substantive use of the name of yhwh. ... We Gentiles go around singing of Jehovah or, in V2 era hymns, Yahweh pronounced yahway for convenience in rhyming jingles, as if this name is only a pagan deity used in the J text tradition conceived by Wellhausen.
Much less defensible seems to me the desublimation-era Jewish practice of writing G-d as though the routine God me could somehow not begin as a vain thing. Or perhaps the meaning is that Elohim and yhwh are interchangeable designations, because yhwh is only nontheistic Zionists' traditional tribal name for God, Elohim, Theos, Dieu, etc. ("It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a Gamaliel rich in moral idealism progress etc to enter the kingdom of God with his selfing." Matthew 19:24. But this too maybe is no objection if one wishes only a non-self to leave the kingdom of God with.)
Of course read right-to-left, G-d could indicate d-G sc Canaan as God ego sum quis ego sum, which is accurate enough. Socrates' oath was "By the dog," wasn't it? The Dog Star in Canis Major is the brightest star in the sky. Sirius, supposedly greek Seirios, scorcher, worship'd as Seth by the Egyptians? but sc root js8327-30. ShRSh + wav, and = chain js8331 how one builds a great chain o' being etc.
I recall that Pangle proposed that Socrates swore by the Dog because if there's no Gods the dog is man's only friend. But as a symbol (Symposium 191d) re-interpreted after the Christ event, sc the dog canaan (obedient 'me' greek negated 'me'd' in Japhethic will-to-power) becomes God, ego sum quis ego sum. ... Dag fish DAL with - as horizontal arabic aleph js1709 and Dagon with - as horizontal nun js1712 is also suggested in G-d.
Or-and perhaps Gad, fortuna, the deity of Straussian machiavellian Selfs.
Hi! It’s me again. Are you familiar with the artwork of Stephen Sawyer? He depicts Jesus Christ as a bad-ass. I think it’s kitschy, sexy, and fun. Talk about my sweet Lord!
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Speaking of bringing the Shadow, Tim Wise argues that evil in the American era can be outbred and indeed is being outbred by good persons, namely POCs and whites who are pro-LGBT etc and hostile to white privilege. »An Open Letter to the White Right, On the Occasion of Your Recent, Successful Temper Tantrum« November 3, 2010
You know Tim Wise -- the anti-zionist Jewish activist who re-focuses the civil rights movement away from the advancement of POCs by whatever means help (if self-reliance, then self-reliance; if government programmes, then government programmes etc) and narcissistically on the oppressiveness of white privilege, karmically insinuating a link between the small-change of white privilege today with slavery, lynchings, etc. I mean what's more important? helping blacks et al advance in the American Dream or pushing whites to the guilt wall in panic and intensify'd rage.
(In one essay, Explaining White Privilege to the Deniers and the Haters, September 18, 2008, Wise argues that whites must have their housing and economic situation in general harm'd in order to give better housing and economic improvement to blacks. Which is quite contrary to the arguments of Thomas Sowell that blacks' improvement in economic and familial ethics would promote increased general American prosperity: no need to diminish white prosperity to increase black prosperity. But Sowell's approach doesn't congrue with low-class white ressentiment and demographic panic. Which is unfortunate, because Wise well articulates many realities and has a strong command of statistics.)
Anyway, it's an interesting thesis. The birth dearth among whites, even if much more among liberal progressive whites than among the 'white right' shadow whom Wise excoriates as the cause of everything evil in American history, indicates for Wise that the white right or shadow will soon be totally excluded from political power in democratic institutions: »folks of color, and even a decent size minority of us white folks will be able to crush you, election after election, from the Presidency on down to the 8th grade student council«.
This means the suppression and eventual dissolution of the political force that imposed -- these are Wise's examples -- slavery, indentured servitude, child labour, environmental damage, the subjection of women, lynching, and hostility to judicial activism [e.g. the busing system that now means any parent of whatever colour who can afford private education for their children won't have anything to do with public schools re-engineer'd by busing], the subversion of Reconstruction.
The result envison'd by Wise is a public policy of untrammel'd progressivism. The whites who now resist progressivism contribute zilch of importance to the American economy: they only trade derivatives, do financial speculation, etc that "produce nothing of value" (sc I guess nothingness as parasitical plus oppressive evil, which as Augustine proves in the Confessions isn't real at all -- although Wise indignantly rejects biblical theodicy in »A God with Whom I am not Familiar« 9.2.05. -- which is necessary, since he holds that political evil, the Shadow, is being outbred and the future of democracy is pure progressivism lead by brown, black and progressive whites in America and around the world.
I read the other day that an anti-racism activist, a woman of colour, as I recall, condemn'd ?religious, ?cultural, ?educational, ?political references to "personal responsibility" as coded racism sc dog whistles (messages to pale Canaanite low-class japheth).
Ordinarily this would be rank 'racism' -- I mean, to suggest that public policy relevant to blacks must sort-of hold off on matters of personal responsibility. Prior to critical theory, didn't leftwing or progressive idealists propose "empowerment" of blacks?
But consider'd in terms of karmic responsibility, then, yes, obviously somehow the race meaning system exempts women and subaltern males of colour from responsibility for "shadow" stuff. ... This may be disempowering, patronizing, condescending, etc, but there it is.
Personal responsibility stands in ambiguous relationship to desublimators such as Marcuse that didn't want their rejection of middle-class morals and whatnot as re-imposed by Freud to have to involve a withdrawal into bohemia and thus a loss of cultural power. No, desublimation must be for the middle-class too.
Jesus' attack on middle-class religiosity of the Pharisees has proved useful to desublimation for the pale bourgeois: »Jesus associated with outcasts, therefore how can you ask for decent repress'd behaviour rather than give laisser-faire to Hugh Hefner and now a vast porno industry? How can you make a moral distinction between single parenthood family systems dependent upon welfare from Caesar-qua-Good-Samaritan and so-call'd moral two-parent family systems -- no matter how ruinous the results of Jesus' kerygma may be for the children?« (Somehow the possibility -- noted by Jewish authorities -- that Jesus' system of giving no thought to the morrow, dismissing one's family, living like a flower, turning one's back on the institutions of civil society might actually be harmful and mistaken? No meaningful difference between restrain'd anger and murder, between restrain'd lust and adultery, between keeping promises made under oath and simply not making any oaths, etc? (Matthew 5:21-22, 27-28) even Mennonites or religious orders dedicated to the evangelical counsels have never put such a moral system in practice.
But as I said, refusing all 'repression' and doing accordingly as a Self lists in desublimation should seem to require taking full responsibility for karma, rather than foisting the 'evil' 'immoral' part off onto the Ego [sum] as Marx demands (Tucker edition, p. 160).
Yet Marcuse would be styled a Marxist: the repressive forces of capitalism (robber barons, derivatives traders, thou shalt not commit adultery, etc) take the blame for bad karma as repressive desublimators.
Unfortunately, Christian morals can't be brought in again vs porno and desublimation and sex trade industry etc, because that would violate diversity and the separation of church and state, as John Jay remarks in Federalist #2.
As the president basically observes, "Who's to decide?" (Audacity of Hope, p. 258).
Quite against the president's own use of biblical revelation and his conversion to Christianity at a church named for the Trinity, the only hope seems to be shariah, since shariah doesn't have to recognize the separation of church and state: Islam doesn't have a doctrine of church or the assembly, and utterly rejects the western understanding of state from Machiavelli and Hobbes on up to Hegel and Nietzsche and Strauss.
Any diverseness within Islam won't impede a Caliph's traditionalist moral authority, whereas whenever Christian kings or queens such as Elizabeth 1 or Henri 4 consider'd to rule by dominion founded in grace they were immediately thwarted by the thought "Which Christianity? Whose version of the Bible?" and so on.
Hobbes too distinctly argues that the whole meaning of the Bible is too indeterminate, over-determined and polysemic to in any way inform a Sovereign of the tasks of rule.
With Islam it's different. No Bible, no Church, no State -- no problem! ... If there's a residual quanta of hostility to Jews, and even to Negroes (cf 1001 Nights) Tim Wise et al will be ready to say that the karmic blame belongs to the Crusaders, Creationists, Hitler, Bull Connors, et al, and not at all to the Caliph who as a POC no matter how light his skin may be can't bear negative karma.
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