Jesus Is Still Hebrew

Let's clarify some things.

I've said that Western Civilization is inherently evil. I'm hardly the only one saying so. Most of the time, such comments point out the path of how we got here. We point to the mixture of classical Greco-Roman Civilization colliding with Germanic Tribal culture. To a large degree, the existing Church leadership attempted to shape the outcome by emphasizing certain bits from each of these. So, maybe we could say it's three primary ingredients: Greco-Roman Civilization, Germanic culture and Roman Church scholarship.

When we point to what's wrong with the West, we make much of the influence of Aristotle. By no means would we say that what we have now is the product of Aristotle's reasoning. Rather, what we have is the influence of his reasoning. Notice the subtle difference here. We don't have Aristotle; we have what others have made of him. His fundamental assumptions about reality are still visible in the process of western thinking. For example, he flatly denied the existence of a spiritual realm, insisting that this world is all we have. He denied human fallen nature, and instead cooked up an ideal based on fallen nature, so that man is the measure of all things.

That kind of thinking still dominates the West, not so much in how westerners cling to his ideals, but in how they never get very far from them. Certain doors have been closed, and the whole range of what western people think, do and say avoids those doors. By no means would I suggest that westerners are logical and reasonable, but that something about the resulting Western Civilization in its current state militates against the vigorous faith that can be found in the biblical Hebrew culture.

It's the same with the Hebrew people. They seldom rose to the potential offered by their own culture. The Hebrew people historically weren't very faithful, and often acted as if the fundamental assumptions of their culture were not true. To see the vast majority of people within any culture fail does not mean the culture does not have features that influence both the good and bad of what people do within that culture.

Our whole point is that people will always fail, no matter what standards you propose.

Now, I've also noted often that civilization itself is not very valuable. Nobody in their right mind points at the Hebrew culture and people and calls that a civilization. The problem with having a civilization is that it's just one more organizational factor that people can screw up. It's one more human aspiration that misses the point of our human existence.

Over the centuries of people looking at these things, there has been a minority trend of scholarship suggesting that civilization itself is a lie. Shooting for human greatness is a losing proposition before you even get started. That in itself is a matter of fundamental assumption about reality; it's an epistemological question. Scripture -- the combined totality of both Old and New Testaments -- takes us out of that question, in the sense that we are warned not to seek human organization on that level. If nothing else, seeking that kind of organization is a fundamental flaw that fed into the birth of the West.

Rather, we are told to regard our call to faith as a withdrawal from human ambition altogether. There is nothing eternal to gain from it. The Covenant is not pro-civilization nor anti-civilization. Civilization is not a factor in what we seek to do in this life. The Covenant calls us to focus on the eternal realm and just allow the mass of non-believing humanity to pursue their false dreams.

So important is this withdrawal that anyone who sticks their hands into that mess has by definition left the Covenant. To the degree you imagine that there is any hope for improving the human condition through human means, to that degree you are outside the Covenant boundaries. This is a covenant of hearts rooted in eternity. This world is going to Hell. That basic assumption pulls us out of the game altogether.

An awful lot of people who sense the call of faith in Christ still don't get this. As long as they don't get it, they will argue until they're blue in the face about our "Christian" duty to the world, and may argue defensively that the West isn't based on Aristotle, simply because it doesn't sufficiently manifest Aristotle. These people are trying to baptize Aristotle's teaching as somehow consistent with Christ. Aristotle is roasting in Hell, folks. He was aware of Hebrew mystical teaching and rejected it, asserting instead a wholly different approach to things.

Those who followed his teaching there in Athens were the first to reject the gospel message on the grounds that they rejected the possibility of resurrection. The conflict is obvious in 1 Corinthians 15. Athens is just a couple of day's walk from Corinth, and remained the single greatest intellectual influence over the Corinthian population through the First Century, at least.

To follow Christ includes clinging to the otherworldly assumptions of Hebrew thinking.