or Back to that old Gnosticism problem

[Mark Kohut]

wikipedia sez:
Much of the debate hinged on the difference between being "born" or "created" 
and being "begotten". Arians saw these as essentially the same; followers of 
Alexander did not. The exact meaning of many of the words used in the debates at 
Nicea were still unclear to speakers of other languages. Greek words like 
"essence" (ousia), "substance" (hypostasis), "nature" (physis), "person" 
(prosopon) bore a variety of meanings drawn from pre-Christian philosophers, 
which could not but entail misunderstandings until they were cleared up. The 
word homoousia, in particular, was initially disliked by many bishops because of 
its associations with Gnostic heretics (who used it in their theology), and 
because it had been condemned at the 264–268 Synods of Antioch.

Started with: since JC was a son of The Father, what mean that? other sons were 
not divine, was he and how? 




----- Original Message ----
From: Michael Bailey <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com>
To: P-list <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Sun, April 10, 2011 8:28:51 PM
Subject: Re: TRTR(1) Eye Goddesses Wearing Dipthongs

Jed Kelestron wrote:
> The absurdity of the schisms and self/other inflicted punishments
> stemming from unverifiable assertions is highlighted by Gaddis in the
> passage cited and what follows it on p. 10.
>

drawing an unverifiable parallel to physics, was the Nicene insistence
on a single substance something like a quest for a unified field
theory?

the other thing, even more unjustified, is, you know how the
Heisenberg paradox says you can't know the position and velocity of a
particle?

I always figured you could get around that by assigning 2 different
teams, one to watch each characteristic --

similarly, maybe there are both homoousian and homoiousian
characteristics to the Deity that for some reason can't be appreciated
at the same time, and so the division of the Church allowed the
development of the different teams...

the fact that their strivings devolved into self-abuse might be
measured against the background of the violent and primitive society
they existed in:
that is,

a) those dudes in caves and cells, perhaps might've done even worse in
the larger society - back then there were a lot of lives that were
pretty miserable, lead miners, galley slaves (for DeMille, young
fur-henchmen...), etc etc

b) not only that, but perhaps their violence, self-directed at the
behest of a gnarly theology, would've been outer-directed otherwise
and therefore worse...

c) and perhaps we must allow for the possibility that certain moments
of genuine gratuitous grace were granted them, in their "carcel
triste"


but enough of my rather lukewarm apologetics - my sense is that there
is sarcasm aplenty in the book, and justifiied certainly.  But nobody
would write a book just to be sarcastic --- well, maybe they would,
but my sense is that there's this mind-of-Gaddis that accumulated all
these arcana because there was a certain amount of joy in so doing,
and wrote these beautiful sentences (though in a way, writing (not to
mention reading) is a solitary discipline not so far removed from the
painful dreams of the immured monks) to express the beauty of his soul
and reflect the glories of the world - abuses, stupidities, fraud and
forgeries exist, sure, but hey, nobody's perfect! - and succeeded.