Tu Es Diaboli Ianua: Christianity, The Johannine Weltanschauung, And Presencing The Numinous

Description

Given that the religion termed Christianity has, for over six centuries, been inf l uential in respect of the ethos and spirituality of the culture of the West -often to the extent of having been described as manifesting that ethos and that spirituality - one of the metaphysical questions I have saught to answer over the past forty years is whether that religion is, given our thousands of years old human culture of pathei-mathos, a suitable presencing of the numinous. If it is not, then could that religion be reformed, by developing a Johannine Weltanschauung given that the Gospel According to John - τὸ κατὰ Ἰωάννην εὐαγγέλιον - arguably presents a somewhat dif f erent perspective on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth than the three other synoptic Gospels. Would such a reformation be a suitable presencing of the numinous, and if not, then what non-Christian alternatives - such as a paganus metaphysics - exist, and what is the foundation of such an alternative? This essay presents my answers to such questions and thus compliments my book Classical Paganism And The Christian Ethos. As in that book, I have made extensive use of my translations of certain classical authors and of various hermetic texts as well as the Gospel of John, and given that those translations are currently quite accessible I have not except on a few occasions explained my interpretations of certain Greek or Latin terms since those interpretations are explained in the associated commentaries. As noted elsewhere, I prefer the term paganus - a transliteration of the classical Latin, denoting as it does connection to Nature, to the natural, more rural, world - in preference to 'pagan' since paganus is, in my view and in respect of the Greco-Roman ethos, more accurate given what the term 'pagan' now often denotes. The title of the essay, Tu Es Diaboli Ianua - "You Are The Nexion Of The Deofel", literally, "You are nexion Diabolos " - is taken from Tertullian's De Monogamia, written at the beginning of the second century AD. David Myatt Winter Solstice 2017