The Blobb brothers: a transition to the next section of Chapter 6

[Joseph Tracy]

DIOCLETIAN AND AUGUSTINE BLOBB CONSIDERED AS SYMBOLIC VECTORS FOR STATE , CLASS AND IDEOLOGICAL POWER STRUGGLES AND FOR THE MYSTERIOUS EMERGENCE OF THE TRI(Y)STERO

So these are not obscure first names.  They are famous figures who appear in time  on either side of The Nicene Council ( Constantine) that redefined European and Mediterranean History for close to 2 millennia. 

Both  figures attempted to outline a kind of bureaucracy, one for the state and one for the church. In the center of this timeline  is Constantine who united church and state making Christianity the religion of the empire. The unity was always dubious and marked by power battles between church and state, but  each needed some version of the other. The secular rulers needed/wanted divine authority,  the church needed/wanted  the states  to conquer or forcibly convert  non-Christians and keep authoritarian governance in place. 

Diocletian tried to purge the empire of Christianity in a campaign of destruction, killing and torture and ultimately failed, being followed by Constantine. Augustine, the 1st major post-Nicea theologian  used a passage of Paul’s teachings on the role of the state to outline his extremely loose Just War theory.  ( neither idea has any reference to the teachings of Jesus presented in the Gospels ,or the Book of James, or the earliest church records, all of which present non-violent persuasion and non hierarchical sharing  as the methods  to initiate a new way. ) 

A narrow version of Augustine’s City of God, and Augustine’s sharp distinction between spirit and flesh can be found in the Scurvhamite ideas, and the ruthlessness  and practical organizing of Diocletian can be found in the wars within Christianity culminating in the end of the Holy Roman Empire. That battle is where OM’s historic  picture of the origins of the tristero comes from . And this is where my hosting section of Ch 6 begins. I thought this brief look at the Blobb brothers might be clarifying. Their amorphous last name recalls a classic 1958 paranoid movie about a carnivorous amoeba like blob from outer space, something we should all be concerned about, it was part of double feature with I Married a Monster from Outer Space, also a growing international problem.

I will try to have a summary and questions for the next section  posted  by  sometime this evening.