I think you are confusing Greece with India. Every time I go to reply to your post I realize that I actually can’t understand what your point was. Not to say that you don’t have one. Perhaps I’m just thick or something, I don;t know.
Your friend,
Sufjon
Classical Greece and India share a common ancestor and as such the many schools and philosophies and religious practices end up having similar characteristics, strengths and weaknesses.
What is Parmedian One but if not the post-Vedic Brahman?
I apologize if this comes across as completely equivocating two wonderful and wonderfully complex civilizations. That is not my intention. I have found, after reading Hindu literature and discussing this issue with others, that due to this commonality, ancient Greece is a type of ‘rosetta stone’ for comparing Christian thought with Hindu thought. They are not the same, and again I apologize if I make it seem that way; but on a public board where many people are unfamiliar with Hinduism, I have found the comparison useful in the past.
And it suffers the same problems when confronted with the historic fact of the Passion and Resurrection of Christ.
All religious practices and order are based off of a sacrifice. All sacrifices up until Christ hid a violent element that helped produce that order. A passive Godhead like the Parmedian One is rather passive, a pantheistic notion which leaves man to his own devices. It says (by advocating metempsychosis) that the boundaries between life and death aren’t all that important, all is “united” and it ultimately follows that we should all resign ourselves to this “truth.”
But following that to its logical conclusion produces a world where man is encouraged in his violence to bring order to his communities by separating and excluding whether by sword or by shunning. The good and evil seems to derive from this godhead is an illusion because what is considered good and evil are contingently determined by the originally violent and and excluding actions themselves [albeit, when an order is established the original violent act is often substituted with other rituals that can and do “hold” for a very long time.] This aspect is downplayed and hidden by downplaying the notion that we are both body and soul fully. For if we were simply soul passing through vessels, how bad could evil actions be? It is the only explanation for why Socrates willingly drinks the hemlock: it is a resignation to death that is found in the “wisdom” of the world.
A Christian must disagree with this because we claim a revelation, first shown to the Jews and fulfilled by Jesus Christ, that the events of our lives are singularities, especially birth and death, and we are commended by God to choose life. The violence we bring does not appease God, and death in all its forms and manifestations is to be abhorred to the fullest extent. Because of Christ, we have a hopeful faith that his victory over death will bless us, and we will share in his resurrection with our own resurrection of the flesh in a life of the world to come- a gift from God.
.