Date: Mon, 04 Nov 2002 13:43:43 -0600
From: James Jordan 
Subject: RE: (urth) Gnostic Wolfe

At 12:22 PM 11/4/2002, Dan'l wrote:
>Nutria,
>
>It's good to hear your comments, and to the very large extent
>that we seem to be in agreement I take this as a point in
>favor of what I've been saying -- not merely because you are,
>as always, astute, but because you are this list's other
>vocally professing Christian; I think that our agreement
>suggests that what we are seeing may well be close to what
>Wolfe, also a vocally professing Christian, intends, in that
>we're coming from a similar world view to his.

Thanks. Just a couple of quickies.

>Pythagoras and Plato, certainly; I'm not as sure about
>Aristotle, who leaned almost to empiricism at times, or
>at least this is the impression I get from my limited
>reading of his work (lecture notes, whatever you want
>to call it).

         To be sure. But I dimly recall from college days that Aristotle 
replied to a letter from one of his former students, who expressed concern, 
that none of the really deep and esoteric stuff had been put down in his 
lecture notes. All that good stuff had been preserved for the inner circle. 
But I'm going from ancient memory here.

>I think this is too sweeping a statement ... or, perhaps,
>one that depends on a specific interpretation of "baptizing,"
>different from what many writers mean when they say that,
>e.g., Christmas "baptises" the Saturnalia. It does not, in
>the sense that it does not simply take the Saturnalia and
>substitute Christian names and concepts and otherwise keep
>the Saturnalia intact. It does, in the sense that baptism
>is in part an act of exoricism,

         Okay. I was not thinking in that particular sense, but in the 
popular and milder view of what "baptizing something" means. Point granted.


>There is _so_ much "point of view" to be taken into account
>here ... if you take the point of view of someone like Graves
>or Campbell, you find all manner of similarity, and uncover
>the Deep Psychic Structures of "all" religions. If you take
>the point of view of someone like Lewis, you perceive that
>they are quite different in orientation -- that the Nordic
>myths, for example, are deeply pessimistic in a way that
>neither the Greek nor the Middle-eastern myths are.

         Right. My bad. Should have left the Nordics out of it.

Thanks.

Nutria


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