Pagan Theology

Salvation, arguably the most fundamental aspect of Christianity, is both metaphysically contradictory and incoherent in Christian cosmogony due to the nature of God (mainly omniscient and omnipotent). If you can't follow basic logical statements (like Aquinas and Augustine), you're a brainlet
>...basically a Christian
no such thing, you're either Christian or not
>Nietsche straight up described him as peddling
Ok, and I describe Nietzsche as having been a pious Christian monk. Guess that settles it.
>Plato and Aristotle just laid the framework for Christian or General monotheistic Abrahamism
Both Plato and Aristotle would've took a massive shit on Abrahamism. They're filled with useless nonsense and say absolutely nothing new, be it about idealism or empiricism.

Neoplatonics and traditionalists.

>Neoplatonics
Plotinus was a monist you dumb turd.

>any of those thinkers were polytheists
Kek, by that standard Christians are polytheists too.
Actually, forget Christians, Jews are polytheists, with their "Angels" and whatnot, if those are your standards.

What you just said makes no sense at all.

How does monism contradict paganism or polytheism?

Christians seems to think pagans did not even consider the problem of the one and the many.

Brainlet, please. The Theos in monotheism is nowhere near being of the same order as the "theoi" pagans believe in. Monotheists can believe in beings of the very same order as your "theoi", and this is no contradiction to monotheism whatsoever.

The only substantial difference between paganism and abrahamism is primacy of aesthetics vs primacy of ethics. All non-dualistic religions are monotheistic.

...

weak troll
>All non-dualistic religions are monotheistic.
Then why is Christianity considered monotheistic?

Start with the Greeks! Even Judaism did!
;-)

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nobody is "behind" monotheism, numb-nuts, it just happened. most polytheistic religions were the results of multiple monotheistic traditions coming in contact and choosing to live alongside one another -- this is what the evolution of the Greek pantheon was based on.

>between paganism
You're simply not using the word "paganism" in the sense it is commonly used, if you are referring to a monotheistic phenomenon. I agree with you otherwise.
Nords, Slavs, most of classical antiquity, and Varg-tier LARPers are not "pagan" in the same sense.

Weak brain

Seems like a pretty far fetched, but fun theory

>you're either Christian or not
well then Kant is a Christian lol

Kant believed the Earth is 6k years old and demons exist? Never thought I'd learn something new on 4channel

Is there a worse creature than a pr*testant atheist?

>Then why is Christianity considered monotheistic?
Christians (and jews before them) needed an excuse for their iconoclasm against pagan hierophanies. Protestants did exactly the same thing to catholics.

Wrong. I'm a platonic idealist, and while many of my thinking lines intersect with Christian idealism, the fact remains that its cosmogony and anthropocentric ethics are a huge pile of shit.
I admire Christianity aesthetically speaking.
youtube.com/watch?v=5DZuH943ye0

Kant was privately a Christian, still, his philosophy is incompatible with Christianity, in both its theoretical and practical application. A good Christian cannot be a Kantian, since they would have to a) deny any knowledge regarding the existence and being of God and b) abide to an authority that is different from God (the moral law is not seen as a divine command, rather it is seen as the autonomous determination of one's own will through an objective and universal practical principle, which would mantain its dignity even in the absence of God).

Klages

Bump

Thanks lad I'll check it out

> Plato wrote that there was one supreme god, whom he called the "Form of the Good", and which he believed was the emanation of perfection in the universe. Plato's disciple, Aristotle, also disagreed that polytheistic deities existed, because he could not find enough empirical evidence for it. He believed in a Prime Mover, which had set creation going, but was not connected to or interested in the universe.
H O W M A N Y T I M E S D O I
N E E D T O E X P L A I N

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>who're the equivalent for Paganism and Polytheism?
Shankara is the Plato/Plotinus of India and his writings are just as phenomenal as theirs, sometimes even better on occasion I would add

estudantedavedanta.net/Eight-Upanisads-Vol-1.pdf
estudantedavedanta.net/Eight-Upanisads-vol2.pdf

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>implying there is a strict dichotomy between monotheism and polytheism
Plato believed in both a supreme God and the Olympian godds.

Paganism is a living organic religion. It's not a book religion meant for controlling your mind. Go sacrifice nigger babies to Wotan, stop worrying about what books you need to read

Paganism is not an intellectual doctrine and so its only philosophers that can be cited don't talk about polytheism and rather talk more about a single god. For polytheism in general you'd have to look to the East.

>Shankara is the Plato/Plotinus of India
Not really, he's more like the St Augustine. The authors of the early Upanishads and philosophical sutras are closer analogies to Plato and Plotinus.

Obviously read the eddas. I'd recommend "Summoning the Gods" by colin Cleary as a next step. Any of the sagas are good as well. You could also read Saxo Grammaticus, or kveldulf gundarsson.

> Some shit about Salvation
Yeah I'm hearing a lot of dickwaving but no actual argument. I'm open to hearing why it's contradictory tho.
> hurr durr there's literally no diversity in Christian thought its all a binary of Christian / non Christian
Eh hello Oof-department? Someone cue that Shrek snap meme
> muh Kant was [insert whatever my ideology is]
Nigga the categorical imp is straight up do unto others / golden rule and the TAG is commonly used by Christians
> Plato and Aristotle would have [said whatever I believe]
I mean regardless if they'd be Abrahamists they were certainly monotheistic:
"Plato wrote that there was one supreme god, whom he called the "Form of the Good", and which he believed was the emanation of perfection in the universe. Plato's disciple, Aristotle, also disagreed that polytheistic deities existed, because he could not find enough empirical evidence for it. He believed in a Prime Mover, which had set creation going, but was not connected to or interested in the universe."

U wot. Basically just what that other guy said. It's core to Neoplatonic thought that the monad, the one is central. You even have the trinity in neoplatonism plus Descartes was basically a neoplatonist and Christian
True
No argument
No evidence. Not on your description of Christians - that's accurate I know they do say that but you haven't provided any evidence that pagans do explain it.

Nahh, there's major substantial differences in a monotheistic conception of creation and the cosmos and a polytheistic one mate that's blatant. And yes the Greeks as well as Celts were polytheists. Hence why Plato and Aristotle insisted on debunking Polytheism

didn't Aristotle link the other planets with the gods or something or am I crazy

Sounds epic I'll give him a read. Any core concepts that are important? Like how would a follower of his respond to the Aristotelian insistence of the prime mover?
Any sauce on this? Sounds like bullshit to me considering the wiki page says Plato denounced polytheism. How can one believe in multiple equally powerful Gods and one supreme God?
So just grugism basically? Like you're admitting there's no actual truth or philosophy in it?
Same for what I said to the last guy but yeah so you're admitting that basically there's no such thing as Pagan Theology? Like Platonic and Aristotelian thought is inconsistent with Celtic or Ancient Greek gods.
Sounds good I'll check em out. As I said to the last Indian lad what would be there arguments against Aristotle?

>you're admitting there's no truth or philosophy in it
>only man made things can reflect truth or philosophy
Do you also need to write everything down for it to exist? Religions that rely on concrete tradition and spoken word are better for it.

Not sure. Mammon is a very real false god with powers.

They don't hold up after any kind of scrutiny tho. Like fair I think there's a Heideggerrian level to this where yeah ultimately yeah our being and existenz is fundamental and we virtually have to assume it to be true first and foremost before even rationalizing thought itself. But once you're past that we can make rational arguments, otherwise it just devolves into total total relativism which contradicts itself entirely

Chronologically yes, but point of comparison I was making that both Shankara and those two Greeks are some of the most prominent people in each tradition of thought who each made use of extensive logic discussions and dialectal examination of the truth vis a vis God, the One, death etc; this differs from the Upanishads which as anonymous scriptures dont explain their logic a like person writing a treatise would.
>Any core concepts that are important?
Understanding his works requires that you have a basic grasp of Hindu philosophical terminology, so if you dont have that than first read a short intro book to Hindu philosophy such as Hiriyanna's Essentials of Indian Philosophy
>Like how would a follower of his respond to the Aristotelian insistence of the prime mover?
He would conditionally agree with it but would specify that in the final analysis its not an accurate description of the absolute truth, Shankara used standard theological arguments in his attacks against the illogicality of other schools such as Samkhya and Buddhism such as when he pointed to their inability to account for the intricate order in existence under their respective cosmological schemes. Shankara and Advaita go a step further then the idea of the prime mover though, while they agree that everything leads back to one uncaused cause and God, Brahman, they disagree with the idea that it actually created or 'moved' anything to begin with and they attack this ideas as illogical for various reasons. Advaita holds the causation theory of 'Vivartavada', which means that creation is merely a category of thought and not something that exists in reality, it is apparent and not real; the unchanging blissful Godhead of pure Awareness alone is held to be the only thing that really exists; everything else being superimposed upon it as it were like a dream; this same superimposition stemming from the magician-like ability of maya (illusion/divine play) that Brahman uses to appear to create and sustain the universe while remaining in reality in His unchanging immutable existence as the One alone without anything else.

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Theological scrutiny is a product of civilization and too much free time. In a natural state of human existence writing some fucking gay shit down like some bitch ass nerd is going to get your cheeks busted, christ-boy.
Divine insights are not something that can be written and documented anyway. They need to be experienced. It's like trying to cast some complex object in some programming language to a string, it's not gonna return anything sensible. The Truth™ isn't a fucking array of characters.

>So if Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Augustine and Kant are the main brain lads behind monotheism

nigga, you got it all wrong.

>Though possibly there had been parallel conceptions among other peoples-and Freud based an entire theory of Jewish history on the short-lived monotheism of Amenhotepllkhnaton of Egypt's Eighteenth Dynasty, whence he claimed the captive nation derived the idea-it was the Israelites who established monotheism in the spiritual geography of humankind. And with it came the terrible concomitants of intolerance and commandments to destroy the sacred items of others (Exodus 23:23- 24; 34:13-16) and to "utterly destroy" polytheistic peoples wherever encountered. Deuteronomy 7:16 commands the holy nation to "consume all the people which the LORD thy God shall deliver thee; thine eye shall have no pity upon them: neither shalt thou serve their gods. . . ." And Deuteronomy 13:16 goes so far as to specify that entire pagan cities must be offered up as burnt sacrifices to the one god, as odors pleasing to him. For polytheism is like imagery connected to nature in its concrete particulars and in its numina. It is for this reason that whatever savageries primitive peoples have visited upon one another, they have usually feared to desecrate idols and altars: there was felt to be too much power in these things, and besides, the gods of one people were quite often recognizable to their adversaries. This goes far to explain why the conception of genocide is foreign to polytheistic cultures. But the distinctions raised in the covenant between religion and idolatry are like some visitation of the khamsin to wilderness peoples as yet unsuspected, dark clouds over Africa, the Americas, the Far East, until finally even the remotest islands and jungle enclaves are struck by fire and sword and by the subtler weapon of conversion-by-ridicule (Deuteronomy 2:34; 7:2; 20:16-18, Joshua 6:17-21).

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Moreover, in a curious way the very oneness, the singularity, of this god emphasizes the separation from nature, for though he created the earth and claims all of it as his, yet he is not to be found everywhere in it: not in the primal chaos at its edges, nor in the cities of the idolators, nor in the deserts given over to demons. Light, truth, and holiness are to be enjoyed only where the god dwells, and he chooses to tabernacle exclusively in the camp of his people, thereby establishing a center of civilization beyond the boundaries of which lie darkness and death, a wilderness peopled with beasts, bestial pagans, and their theriomorphic deities. If the city in the ancient Near East is an oasis, the camp of these semi-nomads serves the same function and defines in the charged terms of religion the chasm between what lies within and what beyond. Thus in Leviticus 16:7-10, 20-22 are found the ritual prescriptions for sending the scapegoat bearing the tribal sins out of the god's camp into the wilderness, the territory of his adversary, Azazel. Thus too the charred corpses of the sons of Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, who unlawfully offered a fire of incense to the god and perished for it; they must be dumped outside the boundaries of the camp where all ritually polluted things are to be thrown (Leviticus 10:1,2,4,5; Numbers 5:1-4; Deuteronomy 23:10-14). And so, though the tribes are now traveling through the heart of the wilderness, they are not really in it but are instead insulated by the god against it. Under no circumstances are they to surrender to it or to its temptations. This, of course, is what they continually threaten to do, for the wilderness tempts to disobedience, to riot and rebellion with its hardships, its disorderliness, its radical naturalness.

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In his appropriate surroundings the god chooses to make known his essential character, emerging out there from the shadowy voice that prompted the patriarchs, and now revealed as a capricious war god (despite unending efforts at theodicy) whose weapons are those of natural disasters. He has already sent a flood that all but blotted out his entire creation, plagues of locusts and snakes, a famine, and an epidemic, and his hot breath has brought the dreaded desert wind, the khamsin, that blackened Egyptian skies with clouds of sand and dust. His words are volcanic eruptions, thunderstorms, and earthquakes. The cumulative effect of all this is to emphasize the destructive aspects of nature and to reinforce the anthropocentric, adversary attitude toward the natural world announced in the paradise myth. This is what we should expect, given the origin of the tribes and the temper of the lands through which they moved. Behind it lies the entire experience of the Near Eastern peoples in their long struggle with a marginal environment.

This antinature bias, as Baron, Weber, and Johannes Pedersen have pointed out, is reflected in the grand covenantal experience at Sinai, both in the specifically historical character of the religion there spelled out and in the monotheism that sets it apart from the nature-based polytheisms of all other peoples - indeed, not only apart but against them in a war to the death.

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The religion, then, from its formal announcement here is to be historically rather than mythologically oriented. It describes human existence as moving relentlessly forward to the achievement of a special destiny, and the supplications for renewal that lie close to the heart of archaic myth are now no longer necessary. For, as Pedersen observes:

"Yahweh was outside and above ordinary life, separated from nature, and it was not necessary for him to be radically renewed. Thus the creation in primeval ages does not become the mythical expression of what is annually repeated in the cult, it becomes an event in time, which once took place at its beginning. Herein we find the germ of a change in the old view of time."

True, events repeat themselves, but the repetition is incremental in character and serves mainly to reinforce the sense of historical continuity. In this fundamental way the religion must stand in contrast and antagonism to all natural religions, which, to the extent that they are truly bound to the natural order and rhythm of things, must be deeply repetitive and ahistorical. And so in the course of their history the Israelites were to turn a razor-edged scorn and indeed a sharp sword against all naturebound cults that could neither look back to events that had happened once in historical time nor forward to prophesy those to come. One feels here again the impress of environment and occupation on this antinature, prohistorical bias, since for this people nature was not a power with which they could establish a celebratory, reverential relationship. It was a power, all right, but one they sought deliverance from rather than surrender to. Nature might not be exactly evil, but it did exercise a cruel power over these wanderers, and they sought emancipation from it. The people of the New Testament, far more divorced from myth and nature and lacking even the vital concept of a promised land, went further and sought to suppress the world of nature.

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Sounds perfectly pagan to me. But yeah sure he believed in YHWH and that salvation is from the Jews.

Christians can't grasp that pagan metaphysics actually went further than the demiurge, which is as far as the Hebrews ever went with their YHWH. So every time pagans speak of the One,r the Form of the Good or Brahman etc then Christians unfortunately connect it to their demiurge God because for them metaphysics stops there.

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Plato is the Rishis, Plotinus is Shankara and Aquinas is Vivekananda.

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so Parmenides was right after all

The Pre-Socratics obv

>I mean regardless if they'd be Abrahamists they were certainly monotheistic
What about Plato's Demiurge? The Demiurge is not the Good or the One, so there must be at least a couple gods here. The Demiurge may be a lesser god compared to the Good but he is still a god nonetheless.

>He believed in a Prime Mover, which had set creation going, but was not connected to or interested in the universe
How can you say Aristotle was a proto-Christian? God's taking a keen interest in human affairs is Christianity 101; if Aristotle didn't believe in that, he doesn't even make it to the starting line to be considered a Christian. You seem to think any form of monotheism is basically Christianity in embryo. That's a very questionable assumption.

Bump

One beloved in the Monad one in the demiurge. They are just as heretical consents as polytheisum tho.

That's pretty interesting stuff but it still sounds like he has a conception of the one there, or the ultimate single God. How does Polytheism come into his metaphysics?
Yeah that's fair just at the same time you need to have some rational foundation for the truth because otherwise it's just muh feelings and entirely subjective. Under that worldview anyone can identify as anything and you have no rational argument against it.

> Nigga you got it all wrong
Show me how then, your quote has nothing to do with that. Look at my pasta I've posted several times now from the wiki page on ancient Greek religion saying Plato and Aristotle weren't polytheists and believed in a divine one.
> Some rando quote about how pagans don't genocide each other and that's just part of the bigoted monotheistic thought
Alight

pagans are only polytheists on a mythological or practical level not metaphysically speaking the correct term is Henotheism

The Upanishads are no more polytheistic than Plato

Bump

>from the wiki page on ancient Greek religion
you've got to be trolling

>rational foundation for the truth
>implying truth is rational
>implyint truth has human qualities
Truth is beauty

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Have you forgotten where you are?

Greek traditions do not descend from the Rigveda. The Rigveda is a product of the Indo-Iranians, who, just as equally as the Greeks, culturally descend from the Proto-Indo-Europeans.

Varg Vikernes is the only serious thinker in paganism.

>Go sacrifice nigger babies to Wotan
*Baal Hammon

>So just grugism basically? Like you're admitting there's no actual truth or philosophy in it?
This is the plight of atheist zoomers trying their hardest to find a religion to pretend to believe in

>sTOP THINKING SO HARD NERD >:(

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>This goes far to explain why the conception of genocide is foreign to polytheistic cultures.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

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>BCE
Discarded

Bump

Not really. Even though he recognises that the weakness of the modern individual was amplified a lot by Christianity, he says that it started with the pagans.

Plato, Aristotle and Plotinus were all monotheists, brainlet.

This is retarded. Words can have the power to evoke things on the level of experience.

>Plato, Aristotle and Plotinus were all monotheists
Why must Christians subvert? They were polytheists and there is absolutely nothing you can do about that fact.

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Not all monotheism is Abrahamic. They were non-Abrahamic monotheists.

They demonstrably weren't

Not him, just a spectator, but are there any quotes from each of them that indicate that they weren't monotheists/were polytheists?

Who cares the demiurge and the Monad are just as dumb as the polytheisum

Yeah wut chu gon' do about it?

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Plato and Aristotle were pagan, you absolute moron.

This is literally what Hindus believe, Christians are tritheists.