On Christianity and Tradition [split]

[Ginnungagap]

Originally Posted by M.R.

There are no "European" religion before Christianity, there is no 'Europe' before Christianity. At least not in the way we know it today.

Europe is Catholic concept, it's roots are pagan, it's spirituality is Christian.

How can you claim there was no European religion before Christianity, but then make note of pagan roots? Indo-European religion was firmly established long before Judaism, and variants of it might have even had an influence on the latter. Hint: Zoroaster. You may be quiveling over using the word Europe to describe the broad lands and cultures associated with the word, but established religious traditions were already in place before the introduction of Christianity. I understand if you see the revival of such religions as a difficult endeavor, but claiming they never existed is ignorant and destructive behavior which your more ancient ancestors would view with shame.

[Marulus]

Originally Posted by Ginnungagap

I think where Christianity began to conflict with other religions was in a political aspect. When Christianity became part of the Roman Empire, and then began exerting its influence on Europe, it didn't leave any room for the pagan traditions to survive. We can thank the medieval Christians for putting some of the old myths into writing, but they did so with a Christian veneer over them.

Those old traditions survived and were incorporated into the Christianity.

But don't forget another thing: before Christianity triumphed in the Roman Empire as the both official religion and the faith of the majority, there was another philosophical/intellectual movement, with some religious overtones, reigning in the Roman Empire. It was Neoplatonism. A philosophy somewhat similar to Christianity, which had absorbed somehow all the previous philosophical currents of the Greco-Roman world, as well as some Egyptian and Mesopotamian traditions. It absorbed Paganism to a certain extent, or different wings of paganism (whereby names of earlier pagan gods started to have symbolical significance). It was a highly spiritual doctrine, even more spiritual than Christianity (it scorned to a ceratin extent matter, while in the Christian teaching matter is also good), with universal claims. Then you had Christian heretics, Gnostics, who professed a doctrine of the radical rejection of matter (some kind of mix between Christianity and Neoplatonism). Further there was a widepsread Mithraic cult. So the conflict was not between Christianity and paganism, but the picture is more complex.

Besides, speaking of paganism per se: there was never one single paganism, but many different paganisms springing from various local traditions (Roman, Greek, Celtic, Germanic etc.)

Julian the Apostate (361-363) tried to turn the wheel of history back and he rejected Christianity as state religion. But he did not favour a return to the paganism of yore, but to the synthetic philosophy/religion of the late Roman Empire, dominated by Neoplatonism. And in his attempts to revive this old culture he tried to imitate some Christian habits, for example he instituted "pagan" monatseries, orphanages, system of almsgiving etc. Christianity had changed the Roman Empire so much that a return to the old ways in the fullest sense of the word was virtually impossible. Let alone today...

As strange as it may seem, it appears that Neoplatonism, the major rival of Christianity in its early life, somehow paved the way for Christianity to be widely accepted in the Roman Empire, especially among the elites. Nevertheless, many of the converts to Christianity from Neoplatonism in the 4th century were reluctant to accept some tenets of Christianity, which were not in accordance with their previous religious sensibilities. For example, Synesius of Cyrene could not accept the resurrection of the flesh, because for Neoplatonists matter was unclean and destined for decay.

Originally Posted by Ginnungagap

We must not forget, though, that the blame does not soley rest on the Christians; pagan Romans essentially destroyed the religion of the Celts long before Christianity reached them.

As far as I know, Romans curbed the influence of Druids in Britain, slaughtering many of them. The reason for that was political, the opposition of some Druids to the Roman rule. But I don't think that Romans destroyed the Celtic religion in its entirety.

Originally Posted by Ginnungagap

As for neopaganism, just as Marulus described scientific superstition, it is yet another offspring of corrupted Christian ideas but this time trying to connect with ancient traditions. Neopagan groups are overwhelmingly egalitarian, individualistic, and globalist. They have no real connection to the old ways, and not even a good understanding of it. I think it might have been one of you guys that posted Evola's essay about Neopaganism and I think he basically summed it up.

It is clearly an impossibility to resurrect all those ancient religious forms. It can only be something utterly distorted.

Originally Posted by Ginnungagap

What I don't understand though is why so many European nationalists cling so heavily to Christianity when it is essentially an imported religion.

Your qeustion or dilemma is bit unclear. What did you want to ask: why are many European nationalists Christian believers, as individuals; or why are nationalist movements influenced by Christianity?

As to the first question: individual faith is a matter of individual conviction and there is no "objective" criterion to determine why someone should or should not be a Christian believer. If you intended to ask the second question, then the answer would probably be: what else? Christianity has been European religion for two thousand years, there is really no other spirituality to cling to. Neopaganism being an impossibility, the only alternative would be secular/atheist humanism. And it is basically a castrated form of Christianity (Christian worldview minus the supernatural component). I personally despise castrated ideologies. People in the nationalist movements also need some ultimate meaning, some spiritual background. Not all of them, I am sure that there are some irreligious nationalists, but it cannot be avoided that those movements be - to certain degree - influenced by Christianity.

However, the European tradition has been division between the temporal and the spiritual sphere, for centuries. So the fact that there is some Christian influence on certain nationalist movements does not mean that they advocate theorcracy (in fact, there was rarely a therocracy in the history of Christendom, it is rather an Islamic concept).

Originally Posted by Ginnungagap

Europeans have definitely made Christianity into a religion of their own but that does not change its roots.

For a believer, roots of religion and/or faith are in God. The fact that it came through the intermediary of this or that tribe or people is of secondary importance. When seen through spiritual glasses, those things look differently.

Furthermore, Christianity only in part comes from the ancient Israelites. Greek philosophy also influenced thereupon, some Zoroastrian teachings etc.

Originally Posted by Ginnungagap

We have more ancient traditions which created the great empires and cultures of our ancestors. Christianity usurped those civilizations, but some element of the older traditions did manage to shine through, especially during the middle ages.

I wouldn't say that Christianity usurped those traditions, but a fruitful synthesis came about.

Originally Posted by Ginnungagap

Christianity was the blue print for later secularized movements that essentially culminate in egalitarianism, multiculturalism, and liberalism.

I was also talking about that: all these things you mention are distortions of the original Christian message. It fits in with the idea of Antichrist, who does not overtly oppose Christ, but in a way mocks it by perverting its message. But - in my opinion at least - that does not prove that Christianity in itself is wrong, but that some people (philosophers, religious leaders etc.) distorted it and turned into some purely mundane ideology. It speaks against them and not against Christianity. A true Christian should be able to separate the wheat from the chaff...

Originally Posted by Ginnungagap

Isn't it then, quite antithetical to those who believe in the autonomy of a nation and its culture as important?

Isn't it also signifiant that it was in the area of Christendom that individual nations and national cultures sprang up and Christendom did not remain a monolithical entity like, for example, the non-Christian China? The idea of universal message to all people of the earth and of some sort of particularism co-exist in Christianity, it is a matter of finding a nice balance between them.

Originally Posted by Ginnungagap

Anyone who values hierarchy, heroism, and life-affirming will would be hardpressed to find their home in the Christian faith.

I think that modern man of the mass, the vulgar member of the modern society, who scorns any hierarchy and heroism, lacks one important Christian virtue, which is humility. It has been ousted in the name of egalitarianism (a distortion of the Christian message of the equality of all men before God). As for heroism, there is plenty of it in Christianity. What about martyrs? Medieval knights?

[M.R.]

Originally Posted by Ginnungagap

How can you claim there was no European religion before Christianity, but then make note of pagan roots? Indo-European religion was firmly established long before Judaism, and variants of it might have even had an influence on the latter. Hint: Zoroaster. You may be quiveling over using the word Europe to describe the broad lands and cultures associated with the word, but established religious traditions were already in place before the introduction of Christianity. I understand if you see the revival of such religions as a difficult endeavor, but claiming they never existed is ignorant and destructive behavior which your more ancient ancestors would view with shame.

I heard you're American.

Yeah, Jesus was a Jew, Christianity is destroying White people and it's a Jewish invention, Whites must return to their pagan roots! ODIN! SIEG HEIL!

[Errigal]

Two quick thoughts on the "Jesus was a Jew" argument:

1)
He and the Apostles were Hellenized Jews. "I am the Word" (or Logos/Reason) is key to His teachings.

2)
The Jews of 0-33 AD were likely quite different from the Jews of only a few centuries later, let alone the Jews of the modern era.
Like a military officer joked to me about his career: "the first ten years in the army are character forming and the next ten years are character deforming". The first 2,000 years of Jewish history appear to have been character forming and the last 2,000 years have been character deforming.

[Ginnungagap]

Originally Posted by M.R.

I heard you're American.

Yeah, Jesus was a Jew, Christianity is destroying White people and it's a Jewish invention, Whites must return to their pagan roots! ODIN! SIEG HEIL!

Nice attempt, but you'll have a rough time pigeon-holing me into the very vocal minority of race-aware Americans who resort to binary racism and anti-Semitism. I think Abrahamic religion is fine, for Semitic cultures. Where I object is when this model has been placed onto other cultures and created a subversive movement of globalism and a rising of the mercantile caste over warrior aristocracies and priesthoods.

I understand that when Christianity is interpreted intelligently it can be quite a fine and noble religion, but we rarely see this in practice; especially in the modern age.

Back what Marulus said about martyrs and knights. Knights were born out of what has come to be called Männerbünde and a vital component of Feudal societies which exemplify the sense of Hierarchy pre-Christian European cultures had. These sorts of organizations were found all throughout Indo-European cultures, and persisted through Christian times. Just because Christianity happened to be the major religion of the medieval period doesn't make it responsible for these organizations coming about. Martyrs cannot always be taken as heroic figures. It really depends on what they are being martyr'd for. It is heroic to stick to your word and your beliefs, but generally in societies that encourage heroism.. to fight for your beliefs, rather than just submissively and fatalistically accept death, is of greater virtue.

[Errigal]

Originally Posted by Ginnungagap

....
I understand that when Christianity is interpreted intelligently it can be quite a fine and noble religion, but we rarely see this in practice; especially in the modern age.

...

I think this is the important point. Our civilization had its ups and downs but it never went as far off the path as it has in the modern age. It is before I was born, but I would even say the 1950s and most of the 1960s were still culturally healthy times before the Christian churches began their mass cultural suicide attempt.

[Savorgnan]

Originally Posted by Marulus

For a believer, roots of religion and/or faith are in God. The fact that it came through the intermediary of this or that tribe or people is of secondary importance. When seen through spiritual glasses, those things look differently.

Yes, the ethnic identity of the prism that relayed us the Divine light is less than secondary. Reason and Faith aren't Indo-European's exclusive property.

Originally Posted by Errigal

Two quick thoughts on the "Jesus was a Jew" argument:

1) He and the Apostles were Hellenized Jews. "I am the Word" (or Logos/Reason) is key to His teachings.

2) The Jews of 0-33 AD were likely quite different from the Jews of only a few centuries later, let alone the Jews of the modern era.
Like a military officer joked to me about his career: "the first ten years in the army are character forming and the next ten years are character deforming". The first 2,000 years of Jewish history appear to have been character forming and the last 2,000 years have been character deforming.

True. If we draw a simplistic line of the Abrahamic religions, Judaism is the rise, Christianism is the peak (I mean, the higher degree of Truth), and Islam is the fall...

Originally Posted by Errigal

It is before I was born, but I would even say the 1950s and most of the 1960s were still culturally healthy times before the Christian churches began their mass cultural suicide attempt.

You could have said it in three words, instead of four: Second Vatican Council.

[Errigal]

Originally Posted by Savorgnan

Yes, the ethnic identity of the prism that relayed us the Divine light is less than secondary. Reason and Faith aren't Indo-European's exclusive property.


True. If we draw a simplistic line of the Abrahamic religions, Judaism is the rise, Christianism is the peak (I mean, the higher degree of Truth), and Islam is the fall...


You could have said it in three words, instead of four: Second Vatican Council.

Perhaps true, but similar self-inflicted injuries were done to the Lutheran and Anglican Churches.

As well, the men whose job it was to preserve and protect secular cultural institutions got a great thrill tearing down the Greats. The professors of literature or art history who thought it would be fun to prove renaissance painter "A" was homosexual or poet "B" was racist. Childish rubbish like that didn't help anyone.

[Marulus]

Originally Posted by Ginnungagap

I think Abrahamic religion is fine, for Semitic cultures.

Define "Semitic cultures".

Originally Posted by Ginnungagap

Where I object is when this model has been placed onto other cultures and created a subversive movement of globalism and a rising of the mercantile caste over warrior aristocracies and priesthoods.

I understand that when Christianity is interpreted intelligently it can be quite a fine and noble religion, but we rarely see this in practice; especially in the modern age.

A similar kind of argument can be often heard from those dismissing any sort of nationalism or identity or partcularism, saying that it inevitably leads to hatred, eternal warfare etc.

Originally Posted by Ginnungagap

Back what Marulus said about martyrs and knights. Knights were born out of what has come to be called Männerbünde and a vital component of Feudal societies which exemplify the sense of Hierarchy pre-Christian European cultures had. These sorts of organizations were found all throughout Indo-European cultures, and persisted through Christian times. Just because Christianity happened to be the major religion of the medieval period doesn't make it responsible for these organizations coming about.

I heard that theory, namely that knghthood has its distant origins in old Germanic Männerbünde, and I don't say it is entirely implausible. There might be something to it. But there can be no doubt that Christianity shaped chivalry, to a certain extent, even though it may not have been an originally Christian concept. Like it took over many other things and put over them not only a Christian "veneer", but spirit. Because Christianity was born into a very concrete cultural context which it was not bent on destroying, but on taking useful elements from it.

In the ceremonial of conferring knighthood the Church shared, through the blessing of the sword, and by the virtue of this blessing chivalry assumed a religious character. In early Christianity, although Tertullian\'s teaching that Christianity and the profession of arms were incompatible was condemned as heretical, the military career was regarded with little favour. In chivalry, religion and the profession of arms were reconciled. This change in attitude on the part of the Church dates, according to some, from the Crusades, when Christian armies were for the first time devoted to a sacred purpose. Even prior to the Crusades, however, an anticipation of this attitude is found in the custom called the "Truce of God". It was then that the clergy seized upon the opportunity offered by these truces to exact from the rough warriors of feudal times a religious vow to use their weapons chiefly for the protection of the weak and defenseless, especially women and orphans, and of churches. Chivalry, in the new sense, rested on a vow; it was this vow which dignified the soldier, elevated him in his own esteem, and raised him almost to the level of the monk in medieval society. As if in return for this vow, the Church ordained a special blessing for the knight in the ceremony called in the Pontificale Romanum, "Benedictio novi militis." At first very simple in its form, this ritual gradually developed into an elaborate ceremony. Before the blessing of the sword on the altar, many preliminaries were required of the aspirant, such as confession, a vigil of prayer, fasting, a symbolical bath, and investiture with a white robe, for the purpose of impressing on the candidate the purity of soul with which he was to enter upon such a noble career. Kneeling, in the presence of the clergy, he pronounced the solemn vow of chivalry, at the same time often renewing the baptismal vow; the one chosen as godfather then struck him lightly on the neck with a sword (the dubbing) in the name of God and St. George, the patron of chivalry.

CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: Chivalry

Originally Posted by Ginnungagap

Martyrs cannot always be taken as heroic figures. It really depends on what they are being martyr'd for. It is heroic to stick to your word and your beliefs, but generally in societies that encourage heroism.. to fight for your beliefs, rather than just submissively and fatalistically accept death, is of greater virtue.

The principle of martyrdom starts when you are willing to dedicate yourself, to sacrifice yourself for some cause, the ultimate sacrifice, that is, martyrdom sensu stricto, being only one of the possible outcomes thereof. The sense of sacrifice lacking entirely, as it does in the modern world, people become obedient cowards and slaves of the system, not willing to do anything for any noble cause, not even for the defense of their own family.

[M.R.]

Originally Posted by Ginnungagap

Nice attempt, but you'll have a rough time pigeon-holing me into the very vocal minority of race-aware Americans who resort to binary racism and anti-Semitism. I think Abrahamic religion is fine, for Semitic cultures. Where I object is when this model has been placed onto other cultures and created a subversive movement of globalism and a rising of the mercantile caste over warrior aristocracies and priesthoods.

You're American, your opinion here is irrelevant and you don't have a clue about Europe or European. Further debate would be waste of my time.

[Taurin]

Originally Posted by M.R.

You're American, your opinion here is irrelevant and you don't have a clue about Europe or European. Further debate would be waste of my time.

His opinion is not different by any standards than those of Friedrich Nietzsche and Julius Evola. I couldn't conceive anything more European - at least, more so than the quaint characters who crowd the Holy Bible, which apparently delight so many "religious" folks overseas.

The honourable count de Maistre was used to say that the Gospel, outside the Church, is poison. Hegel acknowledged the historical role of Christianity in introducing the new, previously unheard-of universal concept of Man. It's true that even an assumed Catholic, like the aforementioned Joseph de Maistre, could be able to point out that "in the course of my life I have seen Frenchmen, Italians, Russians; I even know, thanks to Montesquieu, that one can be a Persian; but as for Man, I have never met; if one exists, he is unknown to me".

Anyway, when one continually hears from a supposedly conservative papacy new invitations to the "humane reception of migrants", when all one could expect from the political stance of the Church is an "intransigent" opposition to birth control methods in the Third World, thus contributing to the world demographic catastrophe - one wonders what could be accomplished by sticking to a compromised set of mind, whose very foundations (as it is manifest in the Holy Writing, as interpreted today even by the only legitimate institution supposedly authorized to do so) are diametrally opposed to what is required by the times.

Any instinctive admiration for the general ethos of feudal Europe, any wholehearted recognition of the immortal greatness of the Holy Roman Empire and the Crusades, doesn't and can't change this.

[M.R.]

What I'm saying is that he's American, it's a waste of time to argue with someone who writes

What I don't understand though is why so many European nationalists cling so heavily to Christianity when it is essentially an imported religion.

I could go explaining into details why, but then again what good would that do? Why would I explain to someone tausands of km away about Catholic tradition of Europe? Or whether Christianity is imported or not when he himself is imported into some other world that has nothing to do with Europe.

However I do agree at some level with him here..

Europeans have definitely made Christianity into a religion of their own but that does not change its roots. We have more ancient traditions which created the