This is something I can agree is a possibility. Among the Orthodox I've found a few people who think that the western Marian apparitions, at least the one's whose "messages" appear to denigrate "Orthodoxy", may be demons masquerading as the Theotokos (I offer no opinion of my own on that one).
I also have no opinion, but I'd add that *demons* seems to be going a little far. I think of djinni as like desert faerie; there's a range of spiritual entities known to be not evil per se, but volatile and michievious.
I've agreed with you before as to the possibility of spiritual beings who are neither of Heaven nor Hell. But the fruit of Gabriel's "revelation" seems to be well beyond the merely mischievous. IMO, it has a scent of Hell about it.
Well of course I am monotheistic, but I don’t know that I agree that the god worshipped by our Islamic brothers is the same god Christians worship. Maybe He is. I’ve never thought much about it.
If the God worshipped by Muslims exists at all, and if there is only one God, then of course it must be the same God. Otherwise, either there are multiple gods, and we, their adherents are fighting Team Our God against Team Their God, or, they are worshipping a nonexistent nonentity. You have thought about it -- you told us that Maronite Catholics open their prayers in veneration of the Virgin Mary in Arabic with Ya Oum al-Lah. There is no other word for God in Arabic. (There are also no capital letters, a Sunni friend pointed out, but there are in English usage.)
They are worshipping a nonexistent nonentity. Allah is the opposite of the Christian God. He is not engendered and does not engender. He has no Son. He is One, not Three.
That the word allah means god in Arabic means that Arabic-speaking Christians refer to God as allah. Of course, just as Spanish-speakers refer to Him as Dios. It does not mean that when a Christian Arab says allah he means what a Muslim means when he says Allah.
The Muslim image of god is, as the French historian Alain Besançon once wrote, the idolatry of the Jewish god.
Well, English "god", or that matter, Greek "theos" started out referencing pagan gods and I'm pretty sure those are non-existent beings, at least as gods (some are anthropomorphic representations of natural or civilizational powers which do exist)
The great French historian Alain Besançon once wrote that Allah, the god of the Muslims, is the idolatrous version of the god of the Jews. Ponder that.
Allah is the opposite of the Triune God. He cannot engender, and is not engendered. He is One, not Three.
Jon, by the time Jesus came on the scene, influences within Judaism, along with Hellenism to some degree, had Jews talking about something like "a second person" that was somehow divine or connected to the LORD in some divine fashion. This discussion was going on for +/- a century before and after Jesus. Not only N.T. Wright and other Protestants have called attention to this, but Jewish scholars as well. Also, there is good academic work at the site marquette.edu/maqom/ (Jewish Roots of Eastern Christian Mysticism) regarding this. That site was started and compiled by a post-grad studying under +Alexander (Golitzin) when he was a professor at Marquette. It has been updated in the intervening years with whatever "the latest" on the subject has been published. Not all the authors are Christians, but it is all rigorous research. Jewish thought had space to entertain the idea of something like "the trinity".
As Fr Tom Hopko has said, he has asked Jewish scholars if, on the basis of their understanding of the Hebrew Scriptures, God could ever be without his Word or his Spirit. Evidently, he never received a "yes" to that question.
Allah is simply the arabic word for "God" (technically "the God" as Arabic requires the article in many places English does not). My Antiochian Orthodox church uses snippets of Arabic in its liturgy. When we sing "Qudsun Illah..." ("Holy God...") we are no more referencing a "different god" then when we also sing in Greek "Hagios ho Theos...".
Allah is God, just as Batihah is Watermelon, khubbas is bread, and Min Fadlak is Please. You can say that Islam has a totally mistaken view of who God is, but you can't say that Allah does not mean God, without sounding totally ignorant. Jon is absolutely correct here. Praising God in Arabic, regardless of religion, will mean praising Allah. Now, asking for yogurt in the Arab world can sound a little different, depending on what country you're in, Leban, min fadlak, wala Haleeb, min fadlak . . .
I can accept that Islam was a heresy inspired by demonic forces, to prevent Christianity from spreading far and wide-- and setting it on the path to being a chauvinistic faith of Europeans. But God is still God.
They are not the same God. This is blasphemous. The one true Triune God has nothing to do with the false god of Islam. God demands repentance and belief in His Son Jesus as Lord and Savior. He enters into a loving eternal relationship with us who believe but exacts eternal damnation on those who reject Him. Allah is not triune and does not offer a free gift of salvation to all who believe. How can you say these two deities are the same? Islam is rooted in a theft and twisting of Christianity into a religion of works-based salvation. Satan is always trying to twist the gospel into being something that is works-based. I’ve long thought he tried to copy his success with Islam in the eastern world here in the west with the invention of Mormonism, but that he was not as successful. They both had leaders who claimed new revelation was given to them by angels, most likely Satan himself, in my opinion. But Mormonism was peaceful whereas Islam conquered by the sword.
Yet more reason for me to believe that women are some of the best evangelists. Thank you, Mary. Thank you for saying unbashfully things which must be said but which I can't be confident I know any Christian male besides me would say. ( I can be confident I would because I have. Provoking people to rage and disgust with me isn't temperamentally innate to me, but proclaiming Truth is exhilarating, isn't it? And there are enough of my own personal qualities which will provoke them to rage and disgust with me, anyway.
I'm especially grateful for your words about Mormonism. Haven't they gotten even more deceitful in recent years with their churchofjesuschrist.org ?
There are well meaning people associated with this Substack who list LDS along with genuinely Christian groups, and every time I see it, metaphorically I rend my garments.
Well, I couldn't say it (except maybe the part about some demoniac entity masquerading as Gabriel) because it's irrational and illogical. Yes, I'm the first to affirm that reason alone cannot lead us to Divine Truth. But we also cannot toss reason away in the ditch.
I can say simply that Islam (and Judaism, and the Mormons too) are in error, without positing that those errors somehow create other gods.
They don't create "other Gods," but in positing a God who is not the actual God, they are doing the work of demons, and according to the Bible, leading people to damnation. Remember the New Testament warning against "other Jesuses."
All this celebrating of converted pagans with moonbeams in their eyes is deeply charming, but if it weakens our commitment to propositional truth, it's diabolical.
I agree with this approach interpersonally (as I alluded to above).
In my interior spiritual life, though, I took a big step forward when I accepted Jesus as historical fact (at least I think it was a big step forward). This step has simultaneously made it harder and easier to accept my friends from other faiths. Harder in that I can't help but think "that's not true" when my LDS friend talks of Christ. Easier in that I can let it go and believe with certainty that God will guide them to the historical Jesus I now know.
There is too much in the Bible which militates against that idea. Consider only the verse which refers to people who didn't have a love for the truth, which prevented their being able to discern truth when they heard it preached. A person does have to want to know God before he can. The Bible is not complimentary to humanity: we've all gone "out of the way." There is no one who naturally wants to know truth.
I'm not a Calvinist because I cannot imagine anything less glorifying to God than determinism, but it's undeniable that The Holy Spirit must crack a person open before the person can want to know truth.
Wow! So, everyone who doesn’t believe the exact same things as you is diabolical and damned. This is the kind of perspective that leads to things like the Inquisition and religious wars. And a perspective that is greatly at odds with Jesus’s teachings.
Well, of course, that's nonsense, but nonsense which every faithful Christian has thrown at him. First, the exact same things? You really don't know Christianity at all. Our enemies like to point to the several big divisions among Christians, Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant. Why do these divisions exist? Because the people in each of them believe significantly different things about the practice of Christianity. But all of them believe that salvation is only through Jesus Christ. All of them believe in the cardinal doctrines of the Christian faith.
For example, there is no such thing as a genuine Christian who doesn't believe that Jesus was born of a virgin, that He died for us, that He was raised from the dead, and that He is coming again. These things I've told you are not MY insistences. They're every Christian's insistences.
There is no getting around the exclusive claim of Christianity: all Christians believe that Jesus is the fullness of the revelation of God, God Incarnate, that He fulfilled the law of God on our behalf and died to make atonement for our sins, and that no one comes to the Father but by Him.
You say that what I've written is greatly at odds with Jesus’ teaching. Really? Find me a passage in the New Testament about Jesus' ministry in which He does not at some point proclaim Himself as the only begotten Son of God and the only way to the Father. It's also likely if you read through the particular event, you'll find that He will tell his enemies that they are dead in trespasses and sins. Himself and how others relate to Him is essentially all he does talk about! Jesus is either the most depraved narcissist in history or the only begotten Son of God.
Human errors of theology do not create alternate gods! That's modernist subjectivism, raised to a high power.
Islam is (I believe) in severe error by not recognizing Jesus as God incarnate and Messiah. And also in not recognizing the Holy Trinity. But those are the same exact errors the Jews make too.
Are the Jews worshiping a "different God". You cannot logically maintain the one without also affirming the other.
"Human errors of theology do not create alternate gods!"
I'd add that the muslims 100% believe Allah is the same God of Abraham and Christ that Christians and Jews worship. This is a helpful thing to hold on to when one tries to understand their faith.
What I am saying is if someone insists the Muslims worship a different God because of their theological errors, then the Jews too must worship a different God because they have the same errors.
Thanks - that’s more clear. I agree with you. And highlight the absurdity of that perspsective, since Jesus worshipped the Jewish God, and his teaching were all about how to be closer to that God.
These days, I almost don't even feel like hearing about the thing called "Christianity". There's just Jesus and His Gospel, standing as an anarchist sign of contradiction of the Kingdom against this world, just as much in the Year of Our Lord 2024 as it did in Year 30. And yes, the Gospel is the fulfillment of all paganism and legend and myth, from Odin hanging on a tree for nine days to gain wisdom for his people to Orpheus descending into Hell in search of his true love. A dimensional shift where the dream became reality. The Gospel is true because of poetry, and because it is the one point where poetry intersected fully with history.
I feel that you sometimes qualify these things more than necessary, or feel intellectually threatened by a more porous border between "pagan" and "Christian". And at some point, who cares if Orthodoxy is the "truest" form of the faith?—and I say that as a Maronite as you once were, and likely to go Orthodox sooner than later. What's most true is a phenomenological and not ecclesiological matter: it is where He comes most to life for any given person, in His full enchanting power. The Holy Ghost blows where He will, and the likes of us don't get to tell Him where He goes or doesn't.
Well, "truest" in the sense that its doctrinal judgments are accurate, and it tells us the surest "way" to God. But I of course don't believe that God/Jesus is not present in other forms. That said, it is not the case that the Christianity taught by, say, the Yale Divinity School, has much at all to do with the real thing. There is a reason it's called "Orthodoxy" (= right belief). I do think the boundaries are porous. I forget who said it, but we can identify where the Church is, but it is harder to say where it is not.
That's fair. And well, I guess in some cases, it's pretty easy to tell where the Church is not. I sent a photo to my Orthodox friend of some church on the UT Austin campus that had rainbow-colored doors spelling out, "Our doors are open to everyone." And she said, "That's such a waste of perfectly good doors." For my part, I made the sign of the Cross on instinct while passing it—for protection. Who knows what could be lurking behind those doors?
IMO< one must reject tribalism, which can lead to an abattoir. It suffices to say certain groups with whom we disagree are in error-- one need not say they are wicked because of that. We are all in error in some ways.
Certainly there could be people in there who are seeking God to the best of their current understanding. But as I've said before, I consider that kind of signaling to reflect allegiance to an altogether anti-Christian ideological cult. We're probably not gonna agree on that point.
For my part I don't find myself competent to judge what's in people's hearts, save perhaps a little by their deeds. The happy-clappy stuff is often quite infertile-- it yields no viable fruit at all, but that's not the same as yielding poison fruit.
"What's most true is a phenomenological and not ecclesiological matter"
The Fathers would disagree with you here; the two are inextricably related. To think otherwise is to be a Protestant, with Luther's invention of the "invisible church."
Sure—I guess I'm a heretic like that. I would just suggest that your own view is also based on a phenomenological judgment (i.e. something in your life experience led you to take *this* seriously as authority), so that gets into an irresolvable disagreement at an axiomatic level.
In a sense that's correct, but then it's true about everything, and thus uninteresting. It's like Van Til's "all reasoning is circular." It's true as far as it goes, but not helpful.
Yes, but then I'm saying I don't appeal first to the Fathers; I'm more inclined to appeal to Magdalene's first witness to the Resurrection, which I believe is still available to us all. And that's an independent phenomenological basis of direct verification of what the faith is. So you may call that a sort of Protestant, if you want, or something I think the Protestants got right.
Actually it's not independent, because without the Fathers we'd have no record of Mary Magdalene's witness, or the Holy Spirit's explanation of it. The Scriptures are the Church's book -- they weren't delivered to individual believers in isolation.
I believe the nexus of revelation itself is unconditioned and independent, operating in a vertical dimension that has no need of historical transmission. But would we know wiithout any historical or cultural context that what we see is the risen Jesus, or that Magdalene saw Him first?—of course not. Those are two separate questions. But I think the original thing in itself—the event—is antecedent of any institution in this world that calls itself the Church. In a way, they claim an awful lot of authority for just delivering a newspaper.
Rob, I'm not a theologian, and I hope at least one person who is will drop by to say substantially what I can say only primitively:
Luther didn't "invent" the invisible Church. The Church is invisible. Throughout The New Testament, we are presented with references to "those who went out from among us because they were not of us." These apostates had given every appearance of being Christian. No doubt they had professed faith, been baptized, taken communion, but they were not genuine. Other Christians had thought they were brothers or sisters in Christ. They had mastered what Francis Schaeffer called "godtalk," ecclesiastical word salad.
Such people weren't limited to that first generation. I know someone like that. I'm sure many others do, as well.
There's always been the belief that the Church has an invisible component, but Luther was the first to argue that the Church was primarily/fundamentally invisible. Bill Tighe has discussed this quite a few times on here.
Whether it was an invention or a revelation, we will only know for sure after we get to the other side. I expect we will all be surprised, and God will be merciful that none of us really got it right, because, how could we?
There is a middle ground: the Church is the visible institution, but we have no idea how many apparent members are outside or apparent non-members are inside.
I think this type of Paganism is appealing to many as a reaction to the Gnosticism of modern Protestantism in the West. Men don’t want to sing love songs to Jesus and be lectured to about being nice winsome fellows whose greatest battle is being a parking lot attendant at the local mega church.
Part of the appeal of the Orthodox Church to me is the emphasis that yes, the world is enchanted and we are actually at war, but not with our fellow humans, but with the powers and principalities of the world, i.e. the demons. Christ calls us to be warriors in that battle against them.
But I have to ask. Doesn't the film "The Northman" and do series like "Vikings" portray a world in which people were more aware of enchantment than it seems like most Christians, at least Western Christians, ever were? Wasn't that the draw of the film? That was why my comment ending "I've heard God in the thunder" was about. And I think we should hear Him in the thunder. (maybe not in a 100 percent literal sense, but in a significant sense).
I could be off in my perspective - maybe there was a time most Christians thought this way. Yes? No? And of course I agree with you that at one time Christians did inhabit., as they saw it, a much more enchanted world and can't wait for your book on it.
(Oh, and just wait until you make it to Iceland where a large number of people believe in the Huldefolk, and some will tell you of seeing them as children.)
I think that medieval Christians were immersed in a natural world bursting with symbols that pointed back to God. St. Francis of Assisi, author of "The Canticle of the Sun" is a good example. But he didn't love animals for their own sake but as signifiers: every lamb was like the Lamb of God.
A beautiful book showing how that operated in Anglo-Saxon society is Winters in the World by Eleanor Parker, who blogs at A Clerk of Oxford.
"Folk religion" with European roots preserved such attitudes, mixed with a lot of superstition and magic. For a pure and orthodox sensitivity to heaven's touch in the world, see Victorian Catholic poet Francis Thompson's "Kingdom of God:"
It's maybe hard to convey what I'm asking. Yes, I agree, Francis and the Franciscans were exceptions. I was asking about most. I guess some medieval people did think lightening was caused by evil spirits, which is a superstition. When it comes to superstition, I've always thought Christians less superstitious than pagans. Maybe that belief is weighing on me here even regarding actual enchantment. I am not really sure.
St. Francis was just an easy example to cite. Pre-Reformation Catholics did live in a world where plants, animals, the weather, the seasons could carry religious significance. Ronald Hutton's The Stations of the Sun shows how this worked in the English ritual year but there were parallels all across Europe. Celebrating Italy, a cookbook by Carol Field, covers contemporary survivals in seasonal festivals, some of which look more than a little pagan. A weariness with the excessive materiality of late medieval religion contributed to the Reformation.
I don't know how one would quantify degrees of "superstitiousness" but pre-modern cultures are generally superstitious. Then this erodes as examined in Religion and the Decline f Magic by Keith Thomas.
If you'e using the word figuratively, sure. If you mean it literally, then no. The path of bloodshed is never consonant with Christian virtue. I should also add that there is of course a struggle to be aged within us., all of us. I mentioned Mother Teresa above. For her that struggle against a barren inner darkness within took the form of heroic charity without. There are other paths too: while not popular at all today, asceticism like the way of St. Anthony of the Great or st. Seraphim of Sarov.
I don't wish to speak for Jon F., and I'm not even formally a Christian, but...
Healers are warriors of the spirit, and warriors of the spirit are warriors. Not metaphorically. The martial virtues are demanded, and fighting that was makes them flourish.
Not Gnosticism as much as being at ease in Sodom. A wish not to be thought weird and fanatical. And this pathology in the American psyche has cast a terrible pall on our witness.
It's natural men, that is, the unconverted, who don't want to sing love songs to Jesus. What are most of the Psalms if not love songs to Jesus? I understand what you mean, and you know I am giving you a bit of a hard time. We both despise banality, sappiness, treacle. But the great hymns, like the Psalms, arouse the instinctive disgust of the unredeemed. Let's be careful with that thar language, son. It's loaded.
I've never not been a Protestant, and the other men in my church would join me in snickering at your caricature of us. Your experience of Protestant churchgoing may have been limited to mainlining, and mainlining can certainly kill a Christian life.
I do object to your scorn for church parking lot attendants. It's disrespect to brothers in Christ who have that unglamorous but indispensable spiritual gift without which in its multiple forms, the worshipping Church could not continue to worship together, the gift of helps. It's a cheap, easy, and thoroughly unspiritual shot to make slighting remarks about such people. The tenor of the things which Jesus said and the Apostles wrote inclines me to suspect that church parking lot attendants and others of their prosaic appearing status will be among the most richly rewarded Christians in Eternity. Hey, I am in favor of all Christians selling their cars and buying horses, instead. It would certainly bring us closer to the Christianity of centuries ago. Still, there would always be a need for someone to hold the horses during the service.
I was raised a Baptist but have spent most of my adult life in Evangelical non-denomination churches. All of the worship in the latter involved pop-rock praise bands with emotional women on stage singing with their hands raised to Jesus like he is some teenage heart throb. Psalms they are not.
And it’s not that I have scorn for parking lot attendants, it’s just that for many men it’s seen as the most masculine thing you can do at church. I get it, someone has to carry the chairs and I’m sure quite a few young ladies have been courted by their future husbands through those types of “acts of service”, but that’s not all men are wired to do.
Just to be contrarian. Psalm 118:24 has been put to music in a beautiful, pop manner which at times I can't seem to get out of my head. I'm not sure which protestant put it to this particular melody, but I am very grateful they did.
I think when Jesus returns, He will cast the memory of "praise music" into the Lake of Fire. Most of what my church sings are Psalms which have been refashioned into prose and set to music, some of it new, all of it having dignity. The rest of what we sing are hymns, many if not most of which were written by and for traditional Anglicans.
We have ad hoc musical accompaniment. In a lot of the kinds of churches you allude to, our pastor would also be "the worship leader." He plays guitar and sings quite well. We generally have a pianist. One of the pastor's sons is attracted to instruments few sane people want to learn, such as tuba and bagpipes. Usually, he stands with the little ad hoc band, adding tuba fills where appropriate. We have a member who is learning guitar. Occasionally, he stands in. And we have a percussionist, a young black man who is so post race conscious that he doesn't hesitate to refer to himself as "your little drummer boy."
I am by far the worst singer in a congregation filled with good to excellent singers. ( I cannot include the dear lady who is tone deaf as one of our singers for the same reason you can't say that a disabled person is a poor athlete. )
I think that one of the great failings of American churches is in "talent scouting," for lack of a less vulgar term. Elders should be persistent in trying to elicit from members whether there is anything the members think they could contribute to the life of the church. Each believer is supposed to "stir up the gift" which is in him, and it certainly helps to have church leaders who encourage believers and try to guide them in it.
The church I have been a member of for a decade has failed utterly to do this with me. I understand why this is so, but am disappointed in them nonetheless. And I go ahead and do what I know I am supposed to do.
My son is about to turn 14. I have enormously appreciated the men of this community as much as I’ve appreciated the men at our church for telling it like it is with boys.
He’s (in his mind) going to be a major league ice hockey player and in the off-season race Formula 1. In fact at dinner tonight, we all had a good laugh that he wants to dedicate a mass to Max VonSteppern (something or other too tired to look it up, races for Red Bull, I’m fairly certain). We told him, if he’s got $10 and is willing to go to the parish secretary, go for it. He kinda wants to in his contrary little mind. We loved it! Way to be contrary!
I’m SO much more calm about it now.
I draw the line at jumping out of a perfectly good airplane, but, I’m so much more relaxed and able to encourage him.
The men in our parish are great! He’s told to stand up straight, get your hands out of his pockets, stop picking at himself, stand still, and it’s SO VITAL that it’s not coming from me!
As soon as I really started experiencing the proper way of men, I’ve kinda told myself, I (somewhat - it’s not over, ever, as a parent) did my job and delivered him to men to teach him how to be.
The other half I still have to work on is civilizing him enough to get a girl so she can complete the job. We have a joke in our house when he’s being particularly teenage “someday, some girl”. When he complains about us, we just tell him that someday he can have the privilege of embarrassing his own kids and regale him with stories of stuff we’re still living down.
Re: In most cases it seems there was no making peace with the Vikings
Historically there was. Alfred the Great (who was "Great" for more reasons than just his military victories) insisted on the Danes he defeated converting to Christianity and while it took a generation or two that generally did the trick. Likewise on the Continent: Charles the Simple (I think that's who was king of Francia) gave Normandy to the Vikings, but also demanded they convert-- and voila! the Normans. Who kept their military prowess but were less into wanton pillage and rapine.
Modern neo-paganism seems to me, from the outside, to be closest to the sort mystery cult that was prevalent in the Roman Empire: an individualist religion, not so much a communal one.
They surrendered land (Danelaw) in order to be left alone. That sounds like conquest to me, even if it did eventually come with conversion. It counts as making peace as the losing side.
But the Danes came back in the form of Sweyn Forkbeard & Son. Canute made England a part of his Danish empire. Even though Edward the Confessor was once again an “Anglo-Saxon” king, his mother was a Norman, whose second marriage was to Canute. The Normans were Danish, too. In the end, England was in fact conquered utterly by the Danes.
Canute was a Christian monarch, well thought of by his contemporaries, including the Pope whom he visited on pilgrimage in Rome. He was definitely a huge improvement over the feckless Ethelred the Unready. It was Ethelred who provoked the war with Canute's father Sweyn by ordering a a general massacre of Danes in England. Happily his order was not carried out very thoroughly; unhappily its victims included Sweyn's sister and her children.
He united England. He didn't reunite England, as it had never been united.
In addition, the Danes mostly settled in Anglian territories, and were in fact very closely related to the Angles, probably closer than the latter were to Saxons like Alfred. The thing is that this was all a war between cousins, and the Danes were referred to as "the Great Heathen Army"; the distinction was their religion, not their ethnicity.
In addition, Denmark converted to Christianity quite early, round about 1000, much earlier than the 12th century that Rod quotes, which was the Swedes.
The Danes assimilated to Englishness-- they lost their language, their pagan religion and many of their customs. and yes, Alfred and his heirs insisted they recognize the kingship of the king of Wessex, which as Derek says below became the monarchy of all England.
All true. But the Normans ended up with the lot, and they were Danes, regardless of religion or language. The remaining Anglo-Saxons ended up out back feeding the pigs.
That there remained some Anglo-Saxon elites and that there were—as any society has—Normans on the lower end of the pecking order hardly dents the directional reality that the Normans were Danes and that 1066 was the last Viking assault, effectively.
This is a good reminder that multiculturalism is rubbish along with the idea that all religions are good and should “coexist” as that vapid bumper sticker says.
Oh it’s fine but not much . Why would you brag about it? If you’re unwilling to coexist with people you don’t agree with , that is a bad thing.What are you going to do , murder them? Unfortunately that where the human race often goes.
A left-wing Quaker in my community sports a COEXIST bumper sticker. Obviously I'm not going to kill him and I would treat him respectfully if I ever met him. But I'm not in a hurry to meet him. The silly man is a member of the Democratic Central Committee in our 79 % Trump county. He's got an uphill fight politically.
Is it, though?
Well, you can't be a monotheist and posit there are different gods.
There is one God and countless gods. For my part, I believe that Muhammed's "Gibreel" was a djinn and not the angel.
This is something I can agree is a possibility. Among the Orthodox I've found a few people who think that the western Marian apparitions, at least the one's whose "messages" appear to denigrate "Orthodoxy", may be demons masquerading as the Theotokos (I offer no opinion of my own on that one).
I also have no opinion, but I'd add that *demons* seems to be going a little far. I think of djinni as like desert faerie; there's a range of spiritual entities known to be not evil per se, but volatile and michievious.
I've agreed with you before as to the possibility of spiritual beings who are neither of Heaven nor Hell. But the fruit of Gabriel's "revelation" seems to be well beyond the merely mischievous. IMO, it has a scent of Hell about it.
Well of course I am monotheistic, but I don’t know that I agree that the god worshipped by our Islamic brothers is the same god Christians worship. Maybe He is. I’ve never thought much about it.
Well, anyone can just *say* things.
If the God worshipped by Muslims exists at all, and if there is only one God, then of course it must be the same God. Otherwise, either there are multiple gods, and we, their adherents are fighting Team Our God against Team Their God, or, they are worshipping a nonexistent nonentity. You have thought about it -- you told us that Maronite Catholics open their prayers in veneration of the Virgin Mary in Arabic with Ya Oum al-Lah. There is no other word for God in Arabic. (There are also no capital letters, a Sunni friend pointed out, but there are in English usage.)
They are worshipping a nonexistent nonentity. Allah is the opposite of the Christian God. He is not engendered and does not engender. He has no Son. He is One, not Three.
That the word allah means god in Arabic means that Arabic-speaking Christians refer to God as allah. Of course, just as Spanish-speakers refer to Him as Dios. It does not mean that when a Christian Arab says allah he means what a Muslim means when he says Allah.
The Muslim image of god is, as the French historian Alain Besançon once wrote, the idolatry of the Jewish god.
Are you saying that Jesus's father (the Jewish God) is an idolatrous image?
Does a Baptist mean the same thing as a Copt when he says "God"? The theologies of the two groups do differ too. And again, what about the Jews?
Well, English "god", or that matter, Greek "theos" started out referencing pagan gods and I'm pretty sure those are non-existent beings, at least as gods (some are anthropomorphic representations of natural or civilizational powers which do exist)
The great French historian Alain Besançon once wrote that Allah, the god of the Muslims, is the idolatrous version of the god of the Jews. Ponder that.
Allah is the opposite of the Triune God. He cannot engender, and is not engendered. He is One, not Three.
True, but then the same must be said of the God of the Jews. At that point we are n the road to Marcionism. Or maybe even Gnosticism.
Jon, by the time Jesus came on the scene, influences within Judaism, along with Hellenism to some degree, had Jews talking about something like "a second person" that was somehow divine or connected to the LORD in some divine fashion. This discussion was going on for +/- a century before and after Jesus. Not only N.T. Wright and other Protestants have called attention to this, but Jewish scholars as well. Also, there is good academic work at the site marquette.edu/maqom/ (Jewish Roots of Eastern Christian Mysticism) regarding this. That site was started and compiled by a post-grad studying under +Alexander (Golitzin) when he was a professor at Marquette. It has been updated in the intervening years with whatever "the latest" on the subject has been published. Not all the authors are Christians, but it is all rigorous research. Jewish thought had space to entertain the idea of something like "the trinity".
As Fr Tom Hopko has said, he has asked Jewish scholars if, on the basis of their understanding of the Hebrew Scriptures, God could ever be without his Word or his Spirit. Evidently, he never received a "yes" to that question.
Dana
No, Nora, Allah is not God. Islam is a demonic blasphemy.
Allah is simply the arabic word for "God" (technically "the God" as Arabic requires the article in many places English does not). My Antiochian Orthodox church uses snippets of Arabic in its liturgy. When we sing "Qudsun Illah..." ("Holy God...") we are no more referencing a "different god" then when we also sing in Greek "Hagios ho Theos...".
It does not matter what it is the word for God makes it clear who He is. And it is not the stuff pushed by Mohammed.
Allah is God, just as Batihah is Watermelon, khubbas is bread, and Min Fadlak is Please. You can say that Islam has a totally mistaken view of who God is, but you can't say that Allah does not mean God, without sounding totally ignorant. Jon is absolutely correct here. Praising God in Arabic, regardless of religion, will mean praising Allah. Now, asking for yogurt in the Arab world can sound a little different, depending on what country you're in, Leban, min fadlak, wala Haleeb, min fadlak . . .
No, he is not. He is a demonic heresy. At least what Muslims observe.
Keep telling yourself that...
I can accept that Islam was a heresy inspired by demonic forces, to prevent Christianity from spreading far and wide-- and setting it on the path to being a chauvinistic faith of Europeans. But God is still God.
They are not the same God. This is blasphemous. The one true Triune God has nothing to do with the false god of Islam. God demands repentance and belief in His Son Jesus as Lord and Savior. He enters into a loving eternal relationship with us who believe but exacts eternal damnation on those who reject Him. Allah is not triune and does not offer a free gift of salvation to all who believe. How can you say these two deities are the same? Islam is rooted in a theft and twisting of Christianity into a religion of works-based salvation. Satan is always trying to twist the gospel into being something that is works-based. I’ve long thought he tried to copy his success with Islam in the eastern world here in the west with the invention of Mormonism, but that he was not as successful. They both had leaders who claimed new revelation was given to them by angels, most likely Satan himself, in my opinion. But Mormonism was peaceful whereas Islam conquered by the sword.
Yet more reason for me to believe that women are some of the best evangelists. Thank you, Mary. Thank you for saying unbashfully things which must be said but which I can't be confident I know any Christian male besides me would say. ( I can be confident I would because I have. Provoking people to rage and disgust with me isn't temperamentally innate to me, but proclaiming Truth is exhilarating, isn't it? And there are enough of my own personal qualities which will provoke them to rage and disgust with me, anyway.
I'm especially grateful for your words about Mormonism. Haven't they gotten even more deceitful in recent years with their churchofjesuschrist.org ?
There are well meaning people associated with this Substack who list LDS along with genuinely Christian groups, and every time I see it, metaphorically I rend my garments.
Well, I couldn't say it (except maybe the part about some demoniac entity masquerading as Gabriel) because it's irrational and illogical. Yes, I'm the first to affirm that reason alone cannot lead us to Divine Truth. But we also cannot toss reason away in the ditch.
I can say simply that Islam (and Judaism, and the Mormons too) are in error, without positing that those errors somehow create other gods.
They don't create "other Gods," but in positing a God who is not the actual God, they are doing the work of demons, and according to the Bible, leading people to damnation. Remember the New Testament warning against "other Jesuses."
All this celebrating of converted pagans with moonbeams in their eyes is deeply charming, but if it weakens our commitment to propositional truth, it's diabolical.
Its much easier for me to believe that humans are all stumbling around in the dark trying to find the truth, and all of us coming up short.
I agree with this approach interpersonally (as I alluded to above).
In my interior spiritual life, though, I took a big step forward when I accepted Jesus as historical fact (at least I think it was a big step forward). This step has simultaneously made it harder and easier to accept my friends from other faiths. Harder in that I can't help but think "that's not true" when my LDS friend talks of Christ. Easier in that I can let it go and believe with certainty that God will guide them to the historical Jesus I now know.
There is too much in the Bible which militates against that idea. Consider only the verse which refers to people who didn't have a love for the truth, which prevented their being able to discern truth when they heard it preached. A person does have to want to know God before he can. The Bible is not complimentary to humanity: we've all gone "out of the way." There is no one who naturally wants to know truth.
I'm not a Calvinist because I cannot imagine anything less glorifying to God than determinism, but it's undeniable that The Holy Spirit must crack a person open before the person can want to know truth.
Wow! So, everyone who doesn’t believe the exact same things as you is diabolical and damned. This is the kind of perspective that leads to things like the Inquisition and religious wars. And a perspective that is greatly at odds with Jesus’s teachings.
Well, of course, that's nonsense, but nonsense which every faithful Christian has thrown at him. First, the exact same things? You really don't know Christianity at all. Our enemies like to point to the several big divisions among Christians, Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant. Why do these divisions exist? Because the people in each of them believe significantly different things about the practice of Christianity. But all of them believe that salvation is only through Jesus Christ. All of them believe in the cardinal doctrines of the Christian faith.
For example, there is no such thing as a genuine Christian who doesn't believe that Jesus was born of a virgin, that He died for us, that He was raised from the dead, and that He is coming again. These things I've told you are not MY insistences. They're every Christian's insistences.
There is no getting around the exclusive claim of Christianity: all Christians believe that Jesus is the fullness of the revelation of God, God Incarnate, that He fulfilled the law of God on our behalf and died to make atonement for our sins, and that no one comes to the Father but by Him.
You say that what I've written is greatly at odds with Jesus’ teaching. Really? Find me a passage in the New Testament about Jesus' ministry in which He does not at some point proclaim Himself as the only begotten Son of God and the only way to the Father. It's also likely if you read through the particular event, you'll find that He will tell his enemies that they are dead in trespasses and sins. Himself and how others relate to Him is essentially all he does talk about! Jesus is either the most depraved narcissist in history or the only begotten Son of God.
Human errors of theology do not create alternate gods! That's modernist subjectivism, raised to a high power.
Islam is (I believe) in severe error by not recognizing Jesus as God incarnate and Messiah. And also in not recognizing the Holy Trinity. But those are the same exact errors the Jews make too.
Are the Jews worshiping a "different God". You cannot logically maintain the one without also affirming the other.
I think this is one of your smarter comments:
"Human errors of theology do not create alternate gods!"
I'd add that the muslims 100% believe Allah is the same God of Abraham and Christ that Christians and Jews worship. This is a helpful thing to hold on to when one tries to understand their faith.
I’m not clear on what you are saying. Are you saying Jews worship a different God than Christians?
I think Jesus might take issue with that, being Jewish and all.
What I am saying is if someone insists the Muslims worship a different God because of their theological errors, then the Jews too must worship a different God because they have the same errors.
Thanks - that’s more clear. I agree with you. And highlight the absurdity of that perspsective, since Jesus worshipped the Jewish God, and his teaching were all about how to be closer to that God.
This is the kind of thing that gives Christianity a bad name and drives so many people from the church.
These days, I almost don't even feel like hearing about the thing called "Christianity". There's just Jesus and His Gospel, standing as an anarchist sign of contradiction of the Kingdom against this world, just as much in the Year of Our Lord 2024 as it did in Year 30. And yes, the Gospel is the fulfillment of all paganism and legend and myth, from Odin hanging on a tree for nine days to gain wisdom for his people to Orpheus descending into Hell in search of his true love. A dimensional shift where the dream became reality. The Gospel is true because of poetry, and because it is the one point where poetry intersected fully with history.
I feel that you sometimes qualify these things more than necessary, or feel intellectually threatened by a more porous border between "pagan" and "Christian". And at some point, who cares if Orthodoxy is the "truest" form of the faith?—and I say that as a Maronite as you once were, and likely to go Orthodox sooner than later. What's most true is a phenomenological and not ecclesiological matter: it is where He comes most to life for any given person, in His full enchanting power. The Holy Ghost blows where He will, and the likes of us don't get to tell Him where He goes or doesn't.
Well, "truest" in the sense that its doctrinal judgments are accurate, and it tells us the surest "way" to God. But I of course don't believe that God/Jesus is not present in other forms. That said, it is not the case that the Christianity taught by, say, the Yale Divinity School, has much at all to do with the real thing. There is a reason it's called "Orthodoxy" (= right belief). I do think the boundaries are porous. I forget who said it, but we can identify where the Church is, but it is harder to say where it is not.
That's fair. And well, I guess in some cases, it's pretty easy to tell where the Church is not. I sent a photo to my Orthodox friend of some church on the UT Austin campus that had rainbow-colored doors spelling out, "Our doors are open to everyone." And she said, "That's such a waste of perfectly good doors." For my part, I made the sign of the Cross on instinct while passing it—for protection. Who knows what could be lurking behind those doors?
"God is in all places and filleth all things".
IMO< one must reject tribalism, which can lead to an abattoir. It suffices to say certain groups with whom we disagree are in error-- one need not say they are wicked because of that. We are all in error in some ways.
Certainly there could be people in there who are seeking God to the best of their current understanding. But as I've said before, I consider that kind of signaling to reflect allegiance to an altogether anti-Christian ideological cult. We're probably not gonna agree on that point.
For my part I don't find myself competent to judge what's in people's hearts, save perhaps a little by their deeds. The happy-clappy stuff is often quite infertile-- it yields no viable fruit at all, but that's not the same as yielding poison fruit.
Jon, a satanist flag is a clear sign. What else do you need?
I think that was Bishop Kallistos, riffing on Augustine's "How many wolves there are within, how many sheep without!"
There's also Karl Rahner with his notion of the anonymous Christian—a similar concept, but probably not that specific line.
"What's most true is a phenomenological and not ecclesiological matter"
The Fathers would disagree with you here; the two are inextricably related. To think otherwise is to be a Protestant, with Luther's invention of the "invisible church."
Sure—I guess I'm a heretic like that. I would just suggest that your own view is also based on a phenomenological judgment (i.e. something in your life experience led you to take *this* seriously as authority), so that gets into an irresolvable disagreement at an axiomatic level.
In a sense that's correct, but then it's true about everything, and thus uninteresting. It's like Van Til's "all reasoning is circular." It's true as far as it goes, but not helpful.
Yes, but then I'm saying I don't appeal first to the Fathers; I'm more inclined to appeal to Magdalene's first witness to the Resurrection, which I believe is still available to us all. And that's an independent phenomenological basis of direct verification of what the faith is. So you may call that a sort of Protestant, if you want, or something I think the Protestants got right.
Actually it's not independent, because without the Fathers we'd have no record of Mary Magdalene's witness, or the Holy Spirit's explanation of it. The Scriptures are the Church's book -- they weren't delivered to individual believers in isolation.
I believe the nexus of revelation itself is unconditioned and independent, operating in a vertical dimension that has no need of historical transmission. But would we know wiithout any historical or cultural context that what we see is the risen Jesus, or that Magdalene saw Him first?—of course not. Those are two separate questions. But I think the original thing in itself—the event—is antecedent of any institution in this world that calls itself the Church. In a way, they claim an awful lot of authority for just delivering a newspaper.
Rob, I'm not a theologian, and I hope at least one person who is will drop by to say substantially what I can say only primitively:
Luther didn't "invent" the invisible Church. The Church is invisible. Throughout The New Testament, we are presented with references to "those who went out from among us because they were not of us." These apostates had given every appearance of being Christian. No doubt they had professed faith, been baptized, taken communion, but they were not genuine. Other Christians had thought they were brothers or sisters in Christ. They had mastered what Francis Schaeffer called "godtalk," ecclesiastical word salad.
Such people weren't limited to that first generation. I know someone like that. I'm sure many others do, as well.
There's always been the belief that the Church has an invisible component, but Luther was the first to argue that the Church was primarily/fundamentally invisible. Bill Tighe has discussed this quite a few times on here.
Naturally. Luther was challenging the legitimacy of the "visible" church.
True but immaterial. It was still an invention 1500+ years after the fact.
Whether it was an invention or a revelation, we will only know for sure after we get to the other side. I expect we will all be surprised, and God will be merciful that none of us really got it right, because, how could we?
There is a middle ground: the Church is the visible institution, but we have no idea how many apparent members are outside or apparent non-members are inside.
I think this type of Paganism is appealing to many as a reaction to the Gnosticism of modern Protestantism in the West. Men don’t want to sing love songs to Jesus and be lectured to about being nice winsome fellows whose greatest battle is being a parking lot attendant at the local mega church.
Part of the appeal of the Orthodox Church to me is the emphasis that yes, the world is enchanted and we are actually at war, but not with our fellow humans, but with the powers and principalities of the world, i.e. the demons. Christ calls us to be warriors in that battle against them.
I wish I could give this more than one like, or a gigantic “(highly usable word that begins with f) yeah!”
YES! THIS!
But I have to ask. Doesn't the film "The Northman" and do series like "Vikings" portray a world in which people were more aware of enchantment than it seems like most Christians, at least Western Christians, ever were? Wasn't that the draw of the film? That was why my comment ending "I've heard God in the thunder" was about. And I think we should hear Him in the thunder. (maybe not in a 100 percent literal sense, but in a significant sense).
I could be off in my perspective - maybe there was a time most Christians thought this way. Yes? No? And of course I agree with you that at one time Christians did inhabit., as they saw it, a much more enchanted world and can't wait for your book on it.
(Oh, and just wait until you make it to Iceland where a large number of people believe in the Huldefolk, and some will tell you of seeing them as children.)
I think that medieval Christians were immersed in a natural world bursting with symbols that pointed back to God. St. Francis of Assisi, author of "The Canticle of the Sun" is a good example. But he didn't love animals for their own sake but as signifiers: every lamb was like the Lamb of God.
A beautiful book showing how that operated in Anglo-Saxon society is Winters in the World by Eleanor Parker, who blogs at A Clerk of Oxford.
"Folk religion" with European roots preserved such attitudes, mixed with a lot of superstition and magic. For a pure and orthodox sensitivity to heaven's touch in the world, see Victorian Catholic poet Francis Thompson's "Kingdom of God:"
"O world invisible, we view thee,
O world intangible we touch thee. . . ."
It's maybe hard to convey what I'm asking. Yes, I agree, Francis and the Franciscans were exceptions. I was asking about most. I guess some medieval people did think lightening was caused by evil spirits, which is a superstition. When it comes to superstition, I've always thought Christians less superstitious than pagans. Maybe that belief is weighing on me here even regarding actual enchantment. I am not really sure.
St. Francis was just an easy example to cite. Pre-Reformation Catholics did live in a world where plants, animals, the weather, the seasons could carry religious significance. Ronald Hutton's The Stations of the Sun shows how this worked in the English ritual year but there were parallels all across Europe. Celebrating Italy, a cookbook by Carol Field, covers contemporary survivals in seasonal festivals, some of which look more than a little pagan. A weariness with the excessive materiality of late medieval religion contributed to the Reformation.
I don't know how one would quantify degrees of "superstitiousness" but pre-modern cultures are generally superstitious. Then this erodes as examined in Religion and the Decline f Magic by Keith Thomas.
I don't know
"Warrior" is a good metaphor but historically humans have tended to take that too far into some very dark places.
The world does not need any more warriors lest it lead down into an atrocity that would render all former horrors trivial.
The world need healers.
True Christian Warriors ARE healers Jon F.
If you'e using the word figuratively, sure. If you mean it literally, then no. The path of bloodshed is never consonant with Christian virtue. I should also add that there is of course a struggle to be aged within us., all of us. I mentioned Mother Teresa above. For her that struggle against a barren inner darkness within took the form of heroic charity without. There are other paths too: while not popular at all today, asceticism like the way of St. Anthony of the Great or st. Seraphim of Sarov.
I don't wish to speak for Jon F., and I'm not even formally a Christian, but...
Healers are warriors of the spirit, and warriors of the spirit are warriors. Not metaphorically. The martial virtues are demanded, and fighting that was makes them flourish.
And that war has casualties.
Perfect example of those casualties are the Blessed Martyrs.
Wish I could edit on my phone...
I meant speak for Leonore.
Awbnid , between auto correct and my lack of phone understanding on this blog , my comments end up in strange places …😂
Not Gnosticism as much as being at ease in Sodom. A wish not to be thought weird and fanatical. And this pathology in the American psyche has cast a terrible pall on our witness.
It's natural men, that is, the unconverted, who don't want to sing love songs to Jesus. What are most of the Psalms if not love songs to Jesus? I understand what you mean, and you know I am giving you a bit of a hard time. We both despise banality, sappiness, treacle. But the great hymns, like the Psalms, arouse the instinctive disgust of the unredeemed. Let's be careful with that thar language, son. It's loaded.
I've never not been a Protestant, and the other men in my church would join me in snickering at your caricature of us. Your experience of Protestant churchgoing may have been limited to mainlining, and mainlining can certainly kill a Christian life.
I do object to your scorn for church parking lot attendants. It's disrespect to brothers in Christ who have that unglamorous but indispensable spiritual gift without which in its multiple forms, the worshipping Church could not continue to worship together, the gift of helps. It's a cheap, easy, and thoroughly unspiritual shot to make slighting remarks about such people. The tenor of the things which Jesus said and the Apostles wrote inclines me to suspect that church parking lot attendants and others of their prosaic appearing status will be among the most richly rewarded Christians in Eternity. Hey, I am in favor of all Christians selling their cars and buying horses, instead. It would certainly bring us closer to the Christianity of centuries ago. Still, there would always be a need for someone to hold the horses during the service.
I was raised a Baptist but have spent most of my adult life in Evangelical non-denomination churches. All of the worship in the latter involved pop-rock praise bands with emotional women on stage singing with their hands raised to Jesus like he is some teenage heart throb. Psalms they are not.
And it’s not that I have scorn for parking lot attendants, it’s just that for many men it’s seen as the most masculine thing you can do at church. I get it, someone has to carry the chairs and I’m sure quite a few young ladies have been courted by their future husbands through those types of “acts of service”, but that’s not all men are wired to do.
Just to be contrarian. Psalm 118:24 has been put to music in a beautiful, pop manner which at times I can't seem to get out of my head. I'm not sure which protestant put it to this particular melody, but I am very grateful they did.
"Wired"? people aren't robots.
As a believer in intelligent design, I would argue that God programmed us to do the things he intended us to do.
He endowed us with moral freedom. We might have tendencies and inclinations, but not all of them are good or even, at times, appropriate.
I think when Jesus returns, He will cast the memory of "praise music" into the Lake of Fire. Most of what my church sings are Psalms which have been refashioned into prose and set to music, some of it new, all of it having dignity. The rest of what we sing are hymns, many if not most of which were written by and for traditional Anglicans.
We have ad hoc musical accompaniment. In a lot of the kinds of churches you allude to, our pastor would also be "the worship leader." He plays guitar and sings quite well. We generally have a pianist. One of the pastor's sons is attracted to instruments few sane people want to learn, such as tuba and bagpipes. Usually, he stands with the little ad hoc band, adding tuba fills where appropriate. We have a member who is learning guitar. Occasionally, he stands in. And we have a percussionist, a young black man who is so post race conscious that he doesn't hesitate to refer to himself as "your little drummer boy."
I am by far the worst singer in a congregation filled with good to excellent singers. ( I cannot include the dear lady who is tone deaf as one of our singers for the same reason you can't say that a disabled person is a poor athlete. )
I think that one of the great failings of American churches is in "talent scouting," for lack of a less vulgar term. Elders should be persistent in trying to elicit from members whether there is anything the members think they could contribute to the life of the church. Each believer is supposed to "stir up the gift" which is in him, and it certainly helps to have church leaders who encourage believers and try to guide them in it.
The church I have been a member of for a decade has failed utterly to do this with me. I understand why this is so, but am disappointed in them nonetheless. And I go ahead and do what I know I am supposed to do.
I'm with you about the parking attendants. The church-cleaners always get forgotten.
To me the way the members of a fellowship treat those who have humbler assignments is close to a test of just how good that church is.
My son is about to turn 14. I have enormously appreciated the men of this community as much as I’ve appreciated the men at our church for telling it like it is with boys.
He’s (in his mind) going to be a major league ice hockey player and in the off-season race Formula 1. In fact at dinner tonight, we all had a good laugh that he wants to dedicate a mass to Max VonSteppern (something or other too tired to look it up, races for Red Bull, I’m fairly certain). We told him, if he’s got $10 and is willing to go to the parish secretary, go for it. He kinda wants to in his contrary little mind. We loved it! Way to be contrary!
I’m SO much more calm about it now.
I draw the line at jumping out of a perfectly good airplane, but, I’m so much more relaxed and able to encourage him.
The men in our parish are great! He’s told to stand up straight, get your hands out of his pockets, stop picking at himself, stand still, and it’s SO VITAL that it’s not coming from me!
As soon as I really started experiencing the proper way of men, I’ve kinda told myself, I (somewhat - it’s not over, ever, as a parent) did my job and delivered him to men to teach him how to be.
The other half I still have to work on is civilizing him enough to get a girl so she can complete the job. We have a joke in our house when he’s being particularly teenage “someday, some girl”. When he complains about us, we just tell him that someday he can have the privilege of embarrassing his own kids and regale him with stories of stuff we’re still living down.
Re: In most cases it seems there was no making peace with the Vikings
Historically there was. Alfred the Great (who was "Great" for more reasons than just his military victories) insisted on the Danes he defeated converting to Christianity and while it took a generation or two that generally did the trick. Likewise on the Continent: Charles the Simple (I think that's who was king of Francia) gave Normandy to the Vikings, but also demanded they convert-- and voila! the Normans. Who kept their military prowess but were less into wanton pillage and rapine.
Modern neo-paganism seems to me, from the outside, to be closest to the sort mystery cult that was prevalent in the Roman Empire: an individualist religion, not so much a communal one.
They surrendered land (Danelaw) in order to be left alone. That sounds like conquest to me, even if it did eventually come with conversion. It counts as making peace as the losing side.
Alfred's grandson, Athelstan, ended up taking Danelaw and re-uniting England.
But the Danes came back in the form of Sweyn Forkbeard & Son. Canute made England a part of his Danish empire. Even though Edward the Confessor was once again an “Anglo-Saxon” king, his mother was a Norman, whose second marriage was to Canute. The Normans were Danish, too. In the end, England was in fact conquered utterly by the Danes.
True. Alfred, Edward Elder and Athelstan rejuvenated England. And it only took Ethelred the Unready and Edward the Confessor to lose it all.
Canute was a Christian monarch, well thought of by his contemporaries, including the Pope whom he visited on pilgrimage in Rome. He was definitely a huge improvement over the feckless Ethelred the Unready. It was Ethelred who provoked the war with Canute's father Sweyn by ordering a a general massacre of Danes in England. Happily his order was not carried out very thoroughly; unhappily its victims included Sweyn's sister and her children.
Atheistan, like a Pakistan for atheists?
He united England. He didn't reunite England, as it had never been united.
In addition, the Danes mostly settled in Anglian territories, and were in fact very closely related to the Angles, probably closer than the latter were to Saxons like Alfred. The thing is that this was all a war between cousins, and the Danes were referred to as "the Great Heathen Army"; the distinction was their religion, not their ethnicity.
In addition, Denmark converted to Christianity quite early, round about 1000, much earlier than the 12th century that Rod quotes, which was the Swedes.
Of course you are right. I wrote sloppily.
The Danes assimilated to Englishness-- they lost their language, their pagan religion and many of their customs. and yes, Alfred and his heirs insisted they recognize the kingship of the king of Wessex, which as Derek says below became the monarchy of all England.
All true. But the Normans ended up with the lot, and they were Danes, regardless of religion or language. The remaining Anglo-Saxons ended up out back feeding the pigs.
Ed West has a good couple of posts up about Anglosaxon and Norman names
That there remained some Anglo-Saxon elites and that there were—as any society has—Normans on the lower end of the pecking order hardly dents the directional reality that the Normans were Danes and that 1066 was the last Viking assault, effectively.
I still wonder whether had Harold Harefoot lived longer and had children England would have turned out much different. His death was tragic.
The Normans brought to England their own brand of French which was a great addition to the English language. It gave the English language depth.
Yes, beef/cow, mutton/sheep, pork/pig, etc. but they were still Danes.
This is a good reminder that multiculturalism is rubbish along with the idea that all religions are good and should “coexist” as that vapid bumper sticker says.
Those COEXIST bumper stickers are useful. They always tell you that the driver is a lefty.
"Coexist" is a pretty low bar. It doesn't sound loving or even hippie-dippie. A boring proposition.
Oh it’s fine but not much . Why would you brag about it? If you’re unwilling to coexist with people you don’t agree with , that is a bad thing.What are you going to do , murder them? Unfortunately that where the human race often goes.
A left-wing Quaker in my community sports a COEXIST bumper sticker. Obviously I'm not going to kill him and I would treat him respectfully if I ever met him. But I'm not in a hurry to meet him. The silly man is a member of the Democratic Central Committee in our 79 % Trump county. He's got an uphill fight politically.