According to Rumi, one's words should pass through three gates: 1. Is it true? 2. Is it necessary? 3. Is it kind?
"Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?" The internet widely attributes this quote to Groucho Marx, but the gist of the joke is that the line was spoken by Chico Marx, while dressed as Groucho. In a movie (Duck Soup, 1933). In other words, you cannot trust what you see or... Continue Reading →
25 January 2017 “Good morning, Ted. I missed you yesterday.” “Yeah, I got here late, around 11:00. I had a bad night. Do you want to hear something funny? Friday night a guy came by and asked me if I wanted a flat screen TV. I said, ‘Sure!’ He said, ‘Are you going to… via TRUMP... Continue Reading →
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON THE NOW DEFUNCT BERNIEBLOG.ORG. On Monday, September 14, 2015, Senator Bernie Sanders spoke to the students of Jerry Falwell's Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia, a stalwart conservative Republican soapbox since Reagan’s speech in October, 1980. Make no mistake: this is a monumental event and one that exemplifies the "Bernie brand" for the... Continue Reading →
McCloud, Sean. American Possessions: Fighting Demons in the Contemporary United States. New York: Oxford University Press, 2015. A tome with the ritualistic repetition of a grimoire, Dr. McCloud's American Possessions is haunted by a singular truth, the barest mystery of which possesses the reader until the final moment, when the specter of "neoliberalism" reveals its... Continue Reading →
This is a series on the relationship between Greek philosophy and gnostic literature. To start with the first post, please go here. Here are my concluding thoughts on the extent to which Platonism influenced gnosticism and, secondarily, whether Judaism is actually the more likely origin. Famed Jewish historian Gershom Scholem argued for a link between early... Continue Reading →
Philo's work is somewhat enigmatic. For instance, he uses Plato's theory of Ideas in De specialibus legibus I.329 to explain how the Hebrew God made the cosmos: "God created the universe, but without being personally involved in this task, because he, being perfectly blessed, could not enter into contract with indefinite and confused matter. He made use of... Continue Reading →
This is a series on the relationship between Greek philosophy and gnostic literature. To start with the first post, please go here. This post looks at Plato, Middle Platonism and the influence of other Greek philosophies on Middle Platonism regarding negative theology and the concept of an ineffable deity, drawing largely from Deirdre Carabine's book on... Continue Reading →
In the previous post, I provided an overview of this series, in which I will look at Platonic thought, Philo of Alexandria and the gnostic text Apocryphon of John in order to argue that gnostic thought, although it may have utilized philosophical terms to explain its concepts, was not a philosophical system based on Greek philosophy. In this... Continue Reading →
Let me tell you then why the creator made this world of generation. He was good, and the good can never have any jealousy of anything. And being free from jealousy, he desired that all things should be as like himself as they could be. This is in the truest sense the origin of creation... Continue Reading →
This is the conclusion to a series on Valentinus, the early Christian condemned by Irenaeus as a "heretic" by association with the Gnostikoi, a designation perpetuated by modern scholars of religious history. I have attempted to rehabilitate his biography and use Valentinus as an example of how the binary dichotomy of "orthodoxy vs. heresy" has... Continue Reading →
Pass Three Gates 