The Nature of Iniquity

[spauline]

I firmly believe the nature of iniquity is veiled in the beast and days of creation, so that the eight evenings of those days are the heads of the beast, and the eight mornings of those respective days are the eight great manifestations of Divine Redemption in history.

IOW, given an initial fall of the human race, the necessary path of human history is a constant alternation of darkness and light. That is, only in progressive, PUNCTUATED stages of light can God renew humanity. That is, God must allow the darkness to become great, then redeem it in light, then allow the darkness to come again in completion, then redeem it in light, then allow darkness to come again, etc.

And that if God is to respond to the darknesses in a manner in which, in the end, the greatest possible spiritual good shall be attained in human history, then the number of darknesses is intrinsically fixed to eight, five in the OT, and three in the new.

I will comment more later.

http://www.christiandiscussionforums.org/v/images/smilies/smile.gif

 

[spauline]

Now for the psychology of the stages.

Augustine and Methodious delineate five ages to the Old Law.

Augustine elaborates on the five:

I. From Adam to Noah
II. From Noah to Abraham
III. From Abraham to David
IV. From David to the Captivity
V. From the Captivity to Christ

these clearly lay out the five heads of the Beast, the five great darknesses, and their associated subsequent Redemptions:

I. The Fall and Wickedness of Noah’s Day / The Flood
II. The Tower of Babel / Confounding of Languages and Calling of Abraham
III. Egyptian Enslavement / The Exodus and OT Kingdom of Israel
IV. The Intermediate Jewish falling away / the Babylonian Captivity and Restoration to OT Cov
V. The Final Jewish Apostasy, OT Antichrist Antiochus / The First Coming of Christ

The first two ages, St. Augustine delineates as preeminent.

The latter three, Augustine calls a prophecy of the Gospel.

Ecclesaiastes states there are no new sins under the sun. Hence, all wickedness is summarized in the preeminent stages.

the preeminent stages are two, and I say the dragon’s ultimate lies in the fall are two.

heretics retain only two sacraments, Baptism and Marriage. I say that these two sacraments are NOT arbitrary but are in fact a calculated remnant of grace to heal the two primary lies of the dragon, so that the lie of the Fall is summarized by the twisting of the remnant signs of grace into the “ultimate heresy.”

the first lie of the dragon is the anti-Baptism: the total antithesis of faith and repentance and good will. In Baptism, the Catechumen renounces sin, vows to seek the Divine Will at all costs, and places faith in all that God has revealed, and realizes that God must both reveal and assist us for our redemption. The first and greatest lie of the dragon then assaults these foundational dispositions, without which salvation is not possible.

hence, the dragon would rather that all of humanity said, in anti-Baptism, “have no regard for what God has said, or any of His ‘presumed’ truth, and live as you wish, whatever it might be.”

The second lie of the dragon is like it: for if one no longer seeks the Divine as one’s ultimate eternal spouse, one necessarily becomes “joined” to the world in lust, that is, the whore.

A digression: the Creation is only an ICON of spiritual mystery. So many things of the Creation are signs and symbols of spiritual meaning and mystery. But we do not take the creation as an end in and of itself. It only points to the final end, which is God. The supreme sacramental sign of what shall be is Marriage. In the end, we shall marry God, in an eternal embrace of the Trinity.

therefore, the dragon, having totally disemboweled one’s striving for God and His Truth and Will through anti-Baptism, speaks unto humanity to fornicate with the creation, to take it, or rip it, from the tree of life, the tree of sacramental beauty and sign, and to worship it for its brute superficialities, to use the creation for one’s own arrogant selfish means, to make of it a god and oneself a god. This supreme second lie then is seen as anti-Marriage, the whore of the apocalypse: the most profound sign of eternal love between man and wife is debased into using and abusing, selfish passion, arrogant grasping of pleasure, pleasure as an end unto itself, the idol of fornication. IOW, the second lie of iniquity is anti-Marriage: anti-sacramental, utopian materialism.

These two primary lies of the dragon then form the basis for the preeminent stages of salvation history, as well as the basis of all subsequent iniquity.

And this is corroborated by the history and the choice of God of how to redeem these respective stages.

In the first preeminent age, the primary lie in the history is clearly anti-Baptism: the near totality of man in Noah’s day is wicked, which means simply that, man has no regard for what God has said, or even for what is evident about the truths of God, nor does man seek to live according to the divine will, but only according to their selfishness.

and God’s response is truly a Baptism of humanity: the Flood.

In the second preeminent stage, the lie is clearly anti-Marriage, that is, anti-sacramental, utopian materialism. In effect, in the Tower of Babel, man attempts to “storm the gates of heaven”, but purely materialistically: man seeks his own selfish, arrogant, and immorally passionate glory through the exaltation of the creation above God, the fornication with the creation divorced from its life giving spirituality, and taken as its own end “let us build a tower to heaven…”].

This is the second lie of antichrist, the dragon say to humanity, that once they have cast aside God, they can build a utopia of fulfillment and prosperity purely from the creation alone, divorced from its spiritual and life giving meaning that God intended.

God’s response is also with a spiritual marriage. In order to forestall the arrogant passion of man to accomplish and unite under selfish, materialistic ambition, God divides humanity through a merciful intervention, the confounding of languages. But he doesn’t stop there.

Afterward, He chooses one nation among many to be His Spouse, the Jewish People, through Abraham. Hence, God redeems the preeminent stage of anti-Marriage with a spiritual marriage, the covenant with Abraham and the Hebrew People.

the subsequent three ages of the Jews are the way of the Catholic saint:

the Purgative, Illuminative, and Unitive ways,

the same path as the Church, the New People of God.

I will comment on these later.

 

[spauline]

the ages of the Jews, the OT Cov, and the Church, the NT Cov, are then the three stages of the Catholic saint:

The Purgative
The Illuminative
The Unitive.

hence, two preeminent stages, three ages for the Jews, and three for the Church, makes a total eight ages, the number of heads of the beast, and the number of days in the creation, that is, the REcreation of the world through its redemption.

The purgative way is Egypt (OT) and Pagan Rome (NT)

The Illuminative Way is the prophets of Old and kingdom of Israel (OT) and the Catholic doctrinal development and Christendom (NT)

the dark night of the soul is the pre-Babylonian Jewish unfaithfulness (OT) and the modern minor secular apostasy (NT)

The Unitive way is the Captivity and Restoration to Judah (OT) and the coming Minor Chastisement, Reunion of Christians and restoration of Catholic Christendom, and subsequent Age of Peace (NT)

Martyrdom is the Maccabbean antichrist-Antiochus struggle (OT) and the great apostasy and antichrist of the very end (NT)

the saint’s passing into heaven is the next age, First Coming of Christ (OT) and Second Coming of Christ (NT).

 

[spauline]

Addenduum, how do the Jews convert at the end?

is it not that they are able to see their complete three great ages of their journey in the OT relative to the prophets of Old fulfilled by the Gentiles in the NT relative to the Catholic Church?

think about it: Jesus prayed three times in the garden, only in the last one was He fully prepared to do the Will of the Father (only in the unitive phase of the saint are they fully prepared to endure whatever God wants).

Christ fell three times in the cross carrying, and in the third He could no longer raise himself by human nature (the third fall of the Gentiles is the great apostasy and antichrist, which we know is practically incurable spiriutally [that is why the world ends.])

Peter denied Christ three times, and three times was reconciled.

Jesus spoke to Mary Magd. three times at the Resurrection, and only in the third did she recognize Him.

and for three days and three nights, mary and Joseph looked for Jesus, and only after third did they find Him. (Did you not know I must be about my Father’s business? [for the three great ages of the Catholic Church, the Jews are looking for the Messiah, and only in the third time do they find Him?])

food for thought.

 

[spauline]

I would like to expand on the nature of iniquity more explicitly.

I see the fallen nature of man, or Original Sin [in Catholic dogma], as a spiritual force, if you will, that continually causes man to fall in subsequent, sequential sub-falls, or punctuated manifestations of the fallen nature, and that what partitions these sequential lesser falls of man are precisely the greater Redemptive Acts of God in Salvation History.

This, then, is the meaning veiled in the days of creation, which, as the ECFs see it, are the imagery of the process of the redemption of the world. Day begins with evening and ends with morning. First comes darkness, or a “fall”, or stage of spiritual darkness, and then comes the light, a stage of Divine action that redeems the darkness, and brings the light of a greater good than if God had not allowed the darkness to come as it must.

What i am then conjecturing is, IF God is to guide the punctuated stages of light and thereby respond to the successive darknesses according to His Plan in such a way that the greatest possible spiritual good is wrought in Salvation history, then, I am making the bold assertion that it intrinsically demands the eight day model of salvation history, five ages corresponding to the time before [and including ] the First Coming of Christ, and three ages for the Church [including the New Creation that is never ended].

To argue this, we need to theologically examine the implications of WHY God has done what he has done in the salvation history thus far, and why the Catholic mystics model of an intermediate apostasy and tribulation that reunites Christians and gives an age of peace prior to the final apostasy is the best scenario that reconciles fully to the eight age model, and not merely seven days with the pessimistic Augustinian model of only one apostasy.

will say more later about how i perceive the illuminative way of the NT to follow seven progressive subfalls in relation to the sources of Divine Truth.

 

[spauline]

I would like to restate the seven sub-sub-falls of the age of Illumination in the NT walk of the People of God.

We have seen that Catholicism delineates five major sources of Divine Truth, from top to bottom:

I. The Trinity and Incarnation
II. Peter
III. The General Fathers and Oral Trad
IV. The Written Trad [Scripture]
V. Reason [natural, unaided human intellect]

Recall in other threads, I have delineated the seven trumpets according to these sources, comprising two for the GodHead and Bishops respectively, and the others merely one.

These, then, would be the seven *sub-falls *of the way of illumination, or, that is, the development of Church doctrine.

I then conjecture that just as the eight general ages of the whole of Salvation History are intrinsically necessary if God is to draw the greatest good, so then the seven spiritual subfalls of the last 1700 years are also intrinsically necessary given the nature and ranking of the five sources of Divine Truth.

The trumpets, then, are reiterated as follows:

I. The partial fall against the God-Head [initial Trinitarian and Christological heresies]

II. The supreme fall against the God-Head that yet retains the supernatural order [Islam, the form of infidelity that injures the God-head to the supreme degree, but that still retains necessity of supernatural revelation and assitance]

III. The fall against Peter [the Great Schism]

IV. The moral fall of the clergy [the severe moral laxity of late Middle Age clergy]

V. The fall against the Bishops and Oral Trad [Protestantism]

VI. The fall against Scripture and all Divine Redemption [the form of infidelity to the supreme degree, in that it is *supernaturally dead, on account of its rejection of any Divine Revelation or Intervention; the two primary forms of this are deists and rationalists]

VII. The supreme fall of the Illuminative Way: the Minor Apostasy [rejection of all Divine Sources, even reason, which was nevertheless retained in fall VI; primary forms are atheism and relativism, and the associated collapse of the moral order]

 

[spauline]

More elaboration:

the slaying of the heads of the beast are the great Divine Actions of Redemption in salvation history.

The healing of the wound to a head of the beast is the “resurrection” of the fallen nature again, that is, the setting of the sun in human history, which has occurred seven primary time sin in the whole salvation until now inclusive.

I would like to comment on the beast passage of Apoc 17:

“the beast you saw was and is not, and will be again.”

Meaning:

In the beginning, in the Fall, prior to the Flood, the fallen nature held dominion over humanity. God had not yet begun any significant Redemption of the world. The Flood changed that. The Flood began the renewal of humanity. So the fallen nature is “taking a back seat” to the Redemption of the world. Even more so was this true when St. John wrote this, for Christ had come, the full Revelation and grace is now available, and the Redemption, through the Catholic Church, is opening up the fountain of renewal to the whole world.

But this does not mean that the fallen nature does not continue to “rear its ugly head.” Hence, the remaining six heads of the beast are secondary punctuated manifestations of the fallen nature that follow the Flood and preceded the Millennium of rest, or coming age of peace. The current darkness is the seventh. Hence, the coming rising of the sun is the age of peace that is coming, if only after a chastisement.

But in the eighth darkness, the final apostasy, the beast “will be again”, for in the great apostasy at the end of the world, the Gentiles will be practically incurable spiritually, in irrevocable rebellion against God, and so the fallen nature will once again rule the world as it did in Noah’s day prior to the FLood. It is also the eighth day, which is the same as the first. Hence, again, the first day “was and is no longer”, but the first day will “be again”, in the eighth. Similarly, in the pure scale of a key, the eighth note is a minor descent is the same as the first note that started it. FOr example, in the key Em, to go Em to D to C, all the way down to… to G, to F#, to Em is eight steps, inclusive.

“Five have fallen”

Meaning:

FIve ages were the Old Law:
I. The Fall and Pre-Flood Corruption
II. The Tower of Babel
III. Egyptian Enslavement
IV. The pre-Exile Jewish Apostasy
V. Antiochus IV Epiphanies, the OT Antichrist [Maccabees]

“One is”

Meaning:

VI. Pagan Rome [persecutes Church]

“And the other has not yet come, and when he does, he must continue a short space.”

Meaning:

VII. The Current Minor Secular Apostasy

“and the beast which was and is not, even he is the eighth, and is of the seven, and goes into perdition”

Meaning:

See the introductory remarks. Also, the fallen nature, or Original Sin, is “of the seven”, because the fallen nature is both the beast itself and the source of all the stages of sin, all eight of them.

VIII. The Great apostasy