George B Nevison
ABSTRACT "The Quest - A Poet's Search for Meaning in the Age of Science" was begun on 1 January 1996, while I was assisting Professor Chris Freeman, the head of Biogeochemistry at Bangor University, who led the research and wrote the papers which I co-authored and which appear on this page. "The Quest" was a philosophical analysis of the proper place of the mind -- along with an intuitive recognition of its limits, proper to poetic expression -- in the individual's experience (especially mine) of trying to make sense of life. Making a New Year resolution to embark on a work of philosophical poetry, written in a scientific setting, was a new line in experimentation that neither of us had foreseen in the summer of 1995 -- and it led to an equally unforeseeable outcome. Despite the apparent incongruity between the poetic and dialectical methods (intuition and reason) and between writing poetry and using the HPLC in Chris's lab to assay peat samples, I had sought cogent answers to three existential questions, "What is Truth?", "What is Man?" and "Who am I?". This answer-seeking was to be on a sliding scale, as I worked painstakingly through my arguments, from the most abstract to the most personal -- all the while keeping in view the scientific and empirical perspective and the laboratory and field setting of a lowly data-collector. The culmination of this year-long project appears, in retrospect, to have been nothing more than a vindication of the healing tactic of poetic and philosophical expression for overturning the despairing nihilistic assumptions with which I had begun and for rediscovering my original reasons for faith (see footnote *). It left me at the start of 1997 with stronger proof of the absolute nature of truth (especially moral and spiritual truth), of God's existence and of the pure Gospel, than I had before -- proof that no amount of blind dogmatism can now overthrow, because I had at least tried to build up my own philosophy from the leftover bits of truths that I still felt were unquestionable. I have uploaded the most accessible poems to an interactive website at www.amesquest.info, which benefits from marginal notes. Since the longer poems also served as vehicles for presenting complex philosophical and scientific arguments and their counter-arguments, they became insufferably obscure and verbose, and will deservedly be shunned by poetry lovers. 'Ames' was my pseudonym.......................................................................................................................................................................... * I am interested in hearing and learning from anyone who is keen to restore the original Doctrine of Salvation -- anyone who has read Wallace and Rusk's, "Moral Transformation - The Original Christian Paradigm of Salvation" - or who would accept the scriptural premisses of my two Google-promoted videos, the first entitled "De Satisfactione Christi ch.10 - Penal Atonement's Pagan Roots?", the second "Nicaea and Constantinian Shift - A Platonic Christ Politicized", which can be found here (https://vimeo.com/232373664) and here (https://vimeo.com/231751997). I used to have a Facebook page, "Restoring NT Christianity", which I abandoned, because I was unable to stir up thoughtful discussion among Christians wishing to return to Apostolic Christianity, or at least to sift the scriptural wheat from the chaff of compromise, theological muddle and syncretism. Like Robert Frost, "I chose the path less travelled by" - both in my life and in my theological convictions as a Christian with Anabaptist sympathies. On the rewards of "thinking things through" the poet, John Milton wrote: "There is no learned man but will confess that he hath much profited by reading controversies -- his senses awakened, his judgement sharpened, and the truth which he holds more firmly established. All controversy being permitted, falsehood will appear more false, and truth the more true."
Address: Deiniolen,
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North Wales,
United Kingdom
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Papers by George B Nevison
Guilt-projection is the psychological process whereby an unacceptable part of oneself, for example, impious thoughts or apostate tendencies, are disowned and transferred to someone else. Religious projections were the blind spots that Jesus referred to when he cautioned—
'Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye' (Matthew 7:3-5, NIV).
When we engage in this mindless blame-shifting, we are wide open to victimisation—as the subsequent narrative of Christ's persecution and martyrdom proved.
The anthropological precursor is human sacrifice, especially in antiquity, as Hugo Grotius demonstrated in ch. 10 of his 'Defence of the Catholic Faith Concerning the Satisfaction of Christ'. On page 211, Massilian sacrifices to Apollo manifested as blame-dumping, a projection of their own repressed aggression against lowlifes and 'offscourings' (κάθαρμα, catharma):
'It has been specially handed down of the Massilians that whenever they were afflicted with a pestilence they were accustomed to maintain a poor man at the public expense, who, adorned with sacred bows and clothed with sacred garments, was led through the city with execrations, that upon him all the evils of the state might fall, and so was immolated to the immortal gods.' — Hugo Grotius, Defensio Fidei Catholicae De Satisfactione Christi, ch. 10, p. 211.
This would today be recognised as a craven and grossly unethical rationalisation to appease the crowd. Very few, however, will be aware that John Calvin used it, in his Commentary on Romans 8:3, as God's own rationale to torture His own Son to death at Calvary:
'Even for sin, etc.
I have already said that this is explained by some as the cause or the end for which God sent his own Son, that is, to give satisfaction for sin. Chrysostom and many after him understood it in a still harsher sense, even that sin was condemned for sin, and for this reason, because it assailed Christ unjustly and beyond what was right. I indeed allow that though he was just and innocent, he yet underwent punishment for sinners, and that the price of redemption was thus paid; but I cannot be brought to think that the word sin is put here in any other sense than that of an expiatory sacrifice, which is called אשם, ashem, in Hebrew, 242 and so the Greeks call a sacrifice to which a curse is annexed κάθαρμα, catharma.
The same thing is declared by Paul in 2 Corinthians 5:21, when he says, that
“Christ, who knew no sin, was made sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in him.”'
https://www.ccel.org/ccel/calvin/calcom38.xii.i.html
Apparently, Calvin's integration of Pauline theology (viz. 2 Co 5:21) and the anthropology and psychology of human sacrifice, particularly as they relate to Apollo's worship, is not appreciated enough in Evangelical circles. I intend to make amends for this oversight.
ABSTRACT
(The following critique of the Penal Satisfaction Theory appears in my video description at vimeo.com/232373664. It has been condensed into the obligatory 5,000 characters.
Circuitous reasoning is exemplified on the video scan of p.200 (half-way down) of Hugo Grotius' 'Defensio Fidae Catholicae De Satisfactione Christi' and in footnote 7 of the video description. Footnotes 5 and 7 have many more pages of exegesis in my support.
Thirteen examples (the number symbolism is significant) of scriptures taken out of context to justify the Penal Satisfaction Theory are in the last sentence of the video description. Not only are these PST workhorses done to death in the full sight of the Lord with whom Calvinists must give an account (Heb 4:13), but the honest workman, who places these same scriptures back in context—as I have assiduously done in the previous lines, again in the full sight of God (2 Corinthians 4:2; 2 Timothy 2:15)—is also doing it under the nose of seekers. For the benefit of these questing Bereans (Ac 17:11), my 'username' to follow is the only one they would want to follow, viz. 'Pr 30:6; 2Co 4:2; 11:3 ⇄ 2Th 2:9'.
The '91 texts' in the title is the product of 7, the perfect number, and 13, the demonic number. The eisegetes, who take scriptures out of context, are exposed as false teachers in the aforementioned thirteen proof-texts and so are logically excluded from the titular 91 correctly exegeted texts. These scriptures are supported by well-sourced PDF and videos to validate all the facts.
I have resorted to humour, word-play and metre (para. 1), I believe, for justifiable reasons.)
Guilt-projection, condemning another to justify oneself (Ezk 18:20; Mi 6:6-8: kvisit.com/PQ/4v4B), was the impetus to human sacrifice (youtube.com/watch?v=lNJq6BlVyhM). The Church had not forsworn this parallel with its own scapegoating practices (kvisit.com/PQ/ve0B; docdro.id/19ep9B1) but adopted it in its defence of Christ's 'satisfaction' [above]. Proxy measures for quenching the gods' expiatory* wrath [ibid.] persisted in oblational frames of reference—hostia (victim), hostīre (recompense, requite) (kvisit.com/PQ/lZEC)—fostering a syncretic, reified* idea of balancing a penal ledger: youtube.com/watch?v=8ta-D-hdcFg, kvisit.com/PQ/0YAC. But obedience outstrips a whole host of sacrifices (1 S 15:22). The latter stultified guilt (kvisit.com/PQ/y5AC: Ps 51:16,17), the former foreshadowed the gospel of Christ (Mk 1:15; Rm 5:1,10,19; 2 Co 5:18-21; Col 1:21-24; 1 Jn 2:1-6) and solidarity with him (kvisit.com/PQ/55sC: Lk 14:25-35; Jn 12:25,26; Ga 2:20; Ep 5:1,2; Ph 3:10; 1 Th 5:9,10; 1 P 1:3-21; 2:4-8,19-25; 3:16-18; 4:1,13; 2 P 1:2-11). So the eisegete's* work is a creature of instinct (2 P 2:12), so roundly confirmed is a God-cursèd Christ: docdro.id/b4y1o11. God-breathed words are diamond-bright and clear (Mk 4:21-25). We colour them (Mt 23:10; Ac 20:25-31; 1 Co 3:10-23; 2 Tm 3:4-17; 2 Jn 9; Jude 3—kvisit.com/PQ/4-0B).¹
Christ's Passover (1 Co 5:7,8: view.publitas.com/p222-13028) and vindicatory resurrection were crunch time for fakes (Gn 3:15; Mt 7:13-29). To sully God's deputy, inflicting pain and disgrace (Is 53:3,8-12; Mt 7:4; 21:33-46; Jn 5:41-44: kvisit.com/PQ/xPQB) by scapegoating him (Ex 23:7; Jn 11:50), or by recidivism (Heb 5:7–6:6), is fatal (Jn 3:13-21; 6:41-71; Ac 5:28-32; Rm 2:1-9; 8:5-17; 2 Co 5:21; 1 Jn 1:5-9).²
'Save yourselves from this corrupt generation' (Ac 2:40; cf. Is 53:6, KJV, iniquity, from עוה, âvôn, perversity). Traduced and cursed by apostates (Is 53:4-6; Jn 7:14-30; 8:42-59; 10:1-21; Ga 3:13), Jesus was martyred (Jn 15:18-27; 16:9; 18:37; Rv 19:13), subject to God's redemptive purpose (Rv 1:5-7) to put sin (not him) to death (Rm 6:1-23; Ga 6:8; 1 Jn 3:4-9), breathing life into the rightwised³ (Rm 4:25; 10:6-10: kvisit.com/PQ/woAC).
Evidence of a natural link with propitiatory rites [p.199, l.8; 3 min 44 s, youtube.com/watch?v=Mnk4FGtbphgs] discredits the Church's case (1 Co 2:14). If Satisfaction Theory⁴ looks like a rehash of old terrain [p.200, l.17; p.206, l.24], blame eisegetes [p.200, l.11], not a ritualophilic Providence [p.199, l.9]. The tone of YHWH's retribution against ritual murder (Dt 12:31) was set early: Moloch's fire pit would be the future deterrent to evil (Is 30:33; Jr 19; Mk 9:48). Jesus' fictive (kvisit.com/PQ/5fUB) Descent into Hell entailed a midden-delve: docdro.id/z5Tep7j.
Eisegetes breed like ichneumons, turning hosts into maggot nurseries. The parasitised status of Rm 8:3, 90 s. into youtube.com/watch?v=fK-g9cYer0AA, is a typical, grubby slant on 'God condemned sin in Christ's flesh'. God issued an ultimatum in Christ's flesh to quash sin, thus condemning it (Rm 8:1-4,10; Tt 3:4-8). Luther begged the question* of vicarious punishment by eisegeting docdro.id/sONUGgC (2 Tm 4:2-4). Since Jesus must feel, by default, the singe of God's rebuke (kvisit.com/PQ/hvUB),⁵ Calvin cooked up a Greek dish in Rm 8:3 (kvisit.com/PQ/hYUC; kvisit.com/PQ/0IAC) where anathematising victims was an Apollonian delicacy [p.211].⁶ The facile fictionalising of Mt 27:46 (cf. Ps 22:24; Jn 8:29) was a curse, dished out.
Calvin's appropriation undermined the exemplary paradigm of redemption (1 Co 1:18-31; Heb 2:9-18; 12:2,3; 13:11-14: kvisit.com/PQ/mZQC) via incentives to parrot prooftexts* in support of hostīre theory. Confirmation bias* (Lk 6:39: kvisit.com/PQ/nZsC) is overt [kvisit.com/PQ/0I4C; p.206].⁷
The Mercy Seat sin-offering⁸ ⁹ symbolised a nation bound by vows of purity (Lv 16:21,30: kvisit.com/PQ/_ewB), prefiguring Jesus (Tt 2:11-14; Heb 9:5,14,22,28; 10:5,9-16,22; 1 Jn 3:3)—not eisegesis, which turns equity (Ep 2:3,15; Col 2:14) into hostīre, payback (Rm 3:25,26; cf. Jb 35:6; Ac 17:30). 'Pouring out justice', kvisit.com/PQ/koQC, is doublespeak.*
Origen's 'propitiation' and Augustine's 'retribution' (kvisit.com/PQ/n_YB; kvisit.com/PQ/qe0B) gave no support to the Marcionite 'vengeful God' libel (kvisit.com/PQ/pIEC)—till the wine of His wrath poured full strength into Jesus' chalice.¹ Mulled wine, it wasn't (Mk 10:39; Ac 12:2). Mythic* rage in substitutionary atonement, yes—as eisegetes, decontextualising Is 53:6, Mt 27:46, Rm 3:25, 6:23, 8:3, 2 Co 5:21, Ga 3:13, Col 2:14, Ep 2:3, 1 Th 5:9, Heb 9:22, 1 P 2:24 and 3:18, hatch from the palsied host.⁵ ⁷ ¹º
* Defined: docdro.id/nvyTJPz
¹ kvisit.com/PQ/sJAC; Quora: kvisit.com/PQ/hO0B
² 5-8 min, youtube.com/watch?v=vSlaBT9ayZ4
³ ¶37, docdro.id/pjb4j4N
⁴ kvisit.com/PQ/m_gB
⁵ kvisit.com/PQ/gIsC
⁶ kvisit.com/PQ/_OwB
⁷ kvisit.com/PQ/_ooC
⁸ youtube.com/watch?v=LmFXvFlbYAY
⁹ ¶40, docdro.id/pjb4j4N
¹º kvisit.com/PQ/xJAC
The church's doctrine was based on the Westminster Confession of Faith, drawn up by Puritan and Presbyterian theologians at Westminster Abbey in 1646/47. This was a systematic exposition of Calvinism, written from a Puritan perspective. Though I had been a staunch defender and devotee of the Puritans, I began to feel that the Calvinist Penal Substitutionary Atonement marked a departure from the biblical perspective as well as from basic moral principles. The attempt by the church elders to put a cap on my speculation with respect to the Atonement led to my worsening attendance, until a crisis of faith in 1991 abandoned me to my residual and resurgent Atheism.
"The Quest - A Poet's Search for Meaning in the Age of Science" (which I have scanned and uploaded below) was begun on 1 January 1996, while I was assisting Professor Chris Freeman, the head of Biogeochemistry at Bangor University. "The Quest" was a philosophical analysis of the proper place of the mind (along with an intuitive recognition of its limits, proper to poetic expression) in the individual's experience (especially mine) of trying to make sense of life.
Though I had tried to relieve its ponderousness with jaunty verse rhythms and by resorting to Keatsian whimsy, the dialectical method, when translated into verse, proved unavoidably tortuous and prolix. It became so difficult even for me to follow my arguments that I felt constrained, over a decade later, to produce an online version with explanatory marginal notes. You will find it here: www.amesquest.info
"Ames" was my pseudonym.
Making a New Year resolution to embark on a work of philosophical poetry, written in a scientific setting, was a new line in experimentation that neither of us had foreseen in the summer of 1995 -- and it led to an equally unforeseeable outcome. Despite the apparent incongruity between the poetic and dialectical methods (intuition and reason) and between writing poetry and using the High Pressure Liquid Chromatograph in Chris's lab to assay peat samples, I had sought cogent answers to three existential questions, "What is Truth?", "What is Man?" and "Who am I?". This answer-seeking was to be on a sliding scale, as I worked painstakingly through my arguments, from the most abstract to the most personal -- all the while keeping in view the scientific and empirical perspective and the laboratory and field setting of a lowly data-collector. The culmination of this year-long project appears, in retrospect, to have been nothing more than a vindication of the healing tactic of poetic and philosophical expression for overturning the despairing nihilistic assumptions with which I had begun and for rediscovering my original reasons for faith. It left me at the start of 1997 with stronger proof of the absolute nature of truth (especially moral and spiritual truth), of God's existence and of the pure Gospel, than I had before -- proof that no amount of blind dogmatism can now overthrow, because I had at least tried to build up my own philosophy from the leftover bits of truths that I still felt were unquestionable.
Thus I returned to the Evangelical church briefly in 1998. But I soon found myself trying to convince the elders of the implicit paganism of the Calvinistic atonement. Failing in that undertaking, I remained unchurched for the next 15 years, before returning to the fold and its Stasi-like surveillance of dissenters in 2013, to make one last attempt at theological persuasion. Their advocacy of the principles of sola scriptura and exegetical rigour notwithstanding, the elders refused yet again to listen to my arguments; and so, in the late Summer of 2014, I left the church and prepared to go online with my objections.
The following Abstract is actually my preamble to a personal document file (PDF), entitled "Word Study: Propitiation", which I had uploaded early in 2016 to the Worldwide Web and which I had search-engine optimized, along with other PDFs and a video (the links to most of which are provided in the Abstract), in order to secure first-page representation in any enquirer's search results. These webpages are presently off-line, to avoid the ongoing cost of optimization.
"My Challenge to the Penal Satisfaction Theory Implicit in the Evangelical Movement of Wales' Statement of Doctrinal Belief" was written in October 2014 as part of my application to work in Bangor Christian Bookshop and my correspondence with the EMW (who own and run the bookshop) explaining why I felt I could not sign the Statement of Faith, as required. The wording of "My Challenge" remains unchanged.
The Abstract that follows was not originally written for "My Challenge", as I said before, but constituted the preamble to my later online PDF, "Word Study: Propitiation". It reads as follows:
"There are five reasons to believe that it offends God for us to suppose that His forgiveness required Him to be appeased by Christ's agonized death. The roots of Satisfaction Theory are:
A. Wishful thinking
(1) Grotius's 'Defence of the Catholic Faith Regarding the Satisfaction of Christ' drew support from pagan sacrifice.
Please see my video and read carefully the introduction, which can be found at www.vimeo.com/124438117,
(2) The syncretized, politically pragmatic faith (Dt 12:30) that became the Roman model after Nicaea.
For more, please go to www.scribd.com/doc/286811256.
B. A borrowed theology
(1) The God-appeasing premise of the Holy Sacrament that Calvin adopted wholesale.
For more information, please visit www.scribd.com/doc/267006515,
(2) "Imputation" in Reformed Theology, which is Erasmus's corruption
(Mt 12:32) of the correct Latin term for reckoned, "reputatum".
For more, go to www.scribd.com/doc/294732919,
(3) Penitentialism (www.scribd.com/doc/295799982).
Having uncovered the roots of Satisfactionism, I will introduce Vincent's Word Study on Propitiation with an extract from Barnes's Notes on the Bible:
"Galatians 2:21
I do not frustrate the grace of God - The word rendered "frustrate" (ἀθετῶ athetō) means properly to displace, abrogate, abolish; then to make void, to render null; Mark 7:9; Luke 7:30; 1 Corinthians 1:19. The phrase "the grace of God," here refers to the favor of God manifested in the plan of salvation by the gospel, and is another name for the gospel. The sense is, that Paul would not take any measures or pursue any course that would render that vain or inefficacious. Neither by his own life, by a course of conduct which would show that it had no influence over the heart and conduct, nor by the observance of Jewish rites and customs, would he do anything to render that ineffective.
The design is to show that he regarded it as a great principle that the gospel was efficacious in renewing and saving man, and he would do nothing that would tend to prevent that impression on mankind. A life of sin, of open depravity and licentiousness, would do that. And in like manner a conformity to the rites of Moses as a ground of justification would tend to frustrate the grace of God, or to render the method of salvation solely by the Redeemer nugatory. This is to be regarded, therefore as at the same time a reproof of Peter for complying with customs which tended to frustrate the plan of the gospel, and a declaration that he intended that his own course of life should be such as to confirm the plan, and show its efficacy in pardoning the sinner and rendering him alive in the service of God.
For if righteousness come by the law - If justification can be secured by the observance of any law - ceremonial or moral - then there was no need of the death of Christ as an atonement. This is plain. If man by conformity to any law could be justified before God, what need was there of an atonement? The work would then have been wholly in his own power, and the merit would have been his. It follows from this, that man cannot be justified by his own morality, or his alms-deeds, or his forms of religion, or his honesty and integrity. If he can, he needs no Savior; he can save himself.
It follows also that when people depend on their own amiability and good works, they would feel no need of a Savior; and this is the true reason why the mass of people reject the Lord Jesus. They suppose they do not deserve to be sent to hell. They have no deep sense of guilt. They confide in their own integrity and feel that God ought to save them. Hence, they feel no need of a Savior; for why should a person in health employ a physician? And confiding in their own righteousness, they reject the grace of God.
To feel the need of a Savior it is necessary to feel that we are lost and ruined sinners; that we have no merit upon which we can rely; and that we are entirely dependent on the mercy of God for salvation. Thus feeling, we shall receive the salvation of the gospel with thankfulness and joy, and show that in regard to us Christ is not 'dead in vain'."
It was not presumed that “The Truth About Easter” would profoundly grab the attention of either interest group — but the best way to challenge heresy is at the grassroots level, to build up credibility (as the Anabaptists tried to do) among ordinary people, without presuming to claim any superiority for theological scholars (Matthew 23:8-12) — still less wishing to join them and be recognized as an authority (John 10:7-14). The quote of Albert Einstein's, with which I conclude my Preface to The Truth About Easter, is as valid today as it ever was: ”Unthinking respect for authority is truth's greatest enemy”.
It is curious how a deist like Einstein, without any evangelical grounding, can still suggest a better rendering of the scriptural passages I have just quoted than experts, such as this annotator to Matthew 23:8-12 in the ESV Student Study Bible, who wrote that Jesus was here just prohibiting his disciples from using titles such as “teacher”, “doctor”, or “father” “in the way the Pharisees used them, wrongly praising leaders and thus encouraging human pride.” Yet it is surely not the danger of stoking pride by using honorific religious titles, but the leaven of false teaching (cf. Matthew 16:6,11), that Christ was warning against in the seven-fold indictment of the scribes and Pharisees that follows. Their example of hypocrisy and lawlessness always had the same outcome in the past — wounds were inflicted on those whom God sent to admonish their forebears, inviting their own nemesis at length after he himself would be murdered (Matthew 23:32). For any Calvinists who care to note, their supposition that Israel's spurned Messiah was actually bearing God's judicial wrath at Calvary hardly fits the narrative of martyrdom; and the fact that Jesus leaves them with a coded warning of the impending fall and destruction of Jerusalem (v.39) as a graphic demonstration of how the final resolution of religious haughtiness will be utter ruin (vv.12,33-36), places that wrath where it belongs — on its morally most fitting object, false teachers and their dupes. (For more on this, please go to https://vimeo.com/232373664.) But I digress.
The approach of giving out my PDF bore little fruit, however. So in June 2017 I saw the usefulness of an arrangement whereby my thoughts regarding theology and Church history could be put before the public using the online graphic appeal of YouTube and Vimeo, but targeted to particular keyword enquiries using Google's search engines, Video Discovery for YouTube, and Google Ads for Vimeo.
My YouTube video is entitled, “The Antichrist was Gnosticism/Neoplatonism and Constantine's Apotheosis was Caligulan”, and can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XX6UwPQhEKo.
My two videos on Vimeo are entitled, “Did the Mercy Seat Prefigure Christ Paying God Reparation For Our Sins or Getting Martyred? The H-Word, Syncretism and the Facts” (https://vimeo.com/232373664)“ and "Nicaea and Constantinian Shift: Reinventing Christ Through Plato, Philo and Caligula’s Ego and Marking The Work With a Tick (☧)” (https://vimeo.com/231751997).
Google Ads appear at the top and bottom of search page results, together with their sitelink extensions (my ad's sitelinks are all Scribd downloadable PDF documents). So let's suppose that someone enters any of these wide-ranging search enquiries — "redemption through christ", "the finished work of christ", "jesus redemption", "why did jesus die", "sacrificial atonement", "romans 5 1-11", "john 16 9", "atoning death", "ransom theory", "nothing but the blood of jesus", "atonement scriptures", "moses brazen serpent", "blending of religions", "expiation", "syncretism" and "child sacrifice to molech" (there are over 300 pertinent search enquiries that can be made) — they will trigger my ad, "Why Did Christ Die? To Satisfy God's Justice, or That We May?" to appear at the top of the search results. Clicking on that title gives access to the Vimeo video, entitled, “Did the Mercy Seat Prefigure Christ Paying God Reparation For Our Sins or Getting Martyred?” at https://vimeo.com/232373664.
I have five other Google Ads besides, but these are presently paused.
My Youtube video title, "The Antichrist was Gnosticism/Neoplatonism and Constantine's Apotheosis was Caligulan” (which can be found here, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XX6UwPQhEKo) has a lengthy video description, which is actually a preface to the theologically weightier description of the Vimeo video, entitled “Nicaea and Constantinian Shift”, to which it links at the end.
If, as Solomon wrote, the truth is to be bought and not sold (Proverbs 23:23), it is sobering to reflect that I have to buy the truth (using Google Ads to promote my aforementioned Vimeo videos) not just for myself, but for everyone else. Such are the dark times that we are living in (Luke 18:8).
Books by George B Nevison
ABSTRACT
"The Quest - A Poet's Search for Meaning in the Age of Science" was begun on 1 January 1996, while I was assisting Professor Chris Freeman, the head of Biogeochemistry at Bangor University, who led the research and wrote the papers which I co-authored and which appear on this page.
The Quest was a philosophical analysis of the proper place of the mind -- along with an intuitive recognition of its limits, proper to poetic expression -- in the individual's experience (especially mine) of trying to make sense of life.
Making a New Year resolution to embark on a work of philosophical poetry, written in a scientific setting, was a new line in experimentation that neither of us had foreseen in the summer of 1995 -- and it led to an equally unforeseeable outcome. Despite the apparent incongruity between the poetic and dialectical methods (intuition and reason) and between writing poetry and using the HPLC in Chris's lab to assay peat samples, I had sought cogent answers to three existential questions, "What is Truth?", "What is Man?" and "Who am I?". This answer-seeking was to be on a sliding scale, as I worked painstakingly through my arguments, from the most abstract to the most personal -- all the while keeping in view the scientific and empirical perspective and the laboratory and field setting of a lowly data-collector. The culmination of this year-long project appears, in retrospect, to have been nothing more than a vindication of the healing tactic of poetic and philosophical expression for overturning the despairing nihilistic assumptions with which I had begun and for rediscovering my original reasons for faith. It left me at the start of 1997 with stronger proof of the absolute nature of truth (especially moral and spiritual truth), of God's existence and of the pure Gospel, than I had before -- proof that no amount of blind dogmatism can now overthrow, because I had at least tried to build up my own philosophy from the leftover bits of truths that I still felt were unquestionable.
Guilt-projection is the psychological process whereby an unacceptable part of oneself, for example, impious thoughts or apostate tendencies, are disowned and transferred to someone else. Religious projections were the blind spots that Jesus referred to when he cautioned—
'Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye' (Matthew 7:3-5, NIV).
When we engage in this mindless blame-shifting, we are wide open to victimisation—as the subsequent narrative of Christ's persecution and martyrdom proved.
The anthropological precursor is human sacrifice, especially in antiquity, as Hugo Grotius demonstrated in ch. 10 of his 'Defence of the Catholic Faith Concerning the Satisfaction of Christ'. On page 211, Massilian sacrifices to Apollo manifested as blame-dumping, a projection of their own repressed aggression against lowlifes and 'offscourings' (κάθαρμα, catharma):
'It has been specially handed down of the Massilians that whenever they were afflicted with a pestilence they were accustomed to maintain a poor man at the public expense, who, adorned with sacred bows and clothed with sacred garments, was led through the city with execrations, that upon him all the evils of the state might fall, and so was immolated to the immortal gods.' — Hugo Grotius, Defensio Fidei Catholicae De Satisfactione Christi, ch. 10, p. 211.
This would today be recognised as a craven and grossly unethical rationalisation to appease the crowd. Very few, however, will be aware that John Calvin used it, in his Commentary on Romans 8:3, as God's own rationale to torture His own Son to death at Calvary:
'Even for sin, etc.
I have already said that this is explained by some as the cause or the end for which God sent his own Son, that is, to give satisfaction for sin. Chrysostom and many after him understood it in a still harsher sense, even that sin was condemned for sin, and for this reason, because it assailed Christ unjustly and beyond what was right. I indeed allow that though he was just and innocent, he yet underwent punishment for sinners, and that the price of redemption was thus paid; but I cannot be brought to think that the word sin is put here in any other sense than that of an expiatory sacrifice, which is called אשם, ashem, in Hebrew, 242 and so the Greeks call a sacrifice to which a curse is annexed κάθαρμα, catharma.
The same thing is declared by Paul in 2 Corinthians 5:21, when he says, that
“Christ, who knew no sin, was made sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in him.”'
https://www.ccel.org/ccel/calvin/calcom38.xii.i.html
Apparently, Calvin's integration of Pauline theology (viz. 2 Co 5:21) and the anthropology and psychology of human sacrifice, particularly as they relate to Apollo's worship, is not appreciated enough in Evangelical circles. I intend to make amends for this oversight.
ABSTRACT
(The following critique of the Penal Satisfaction Theory appears in my video description at vimeo.com/232373664. It has been condensed into the obligatory 5,000 characters.
Circuitous reasoning is exemplified on the video scan of p.200 (half-way down) of Hugo Grotius' 'Defensio Fidae Catholicae De Satisfactione Christi' and in footnote 7 of the video description. Footnotes 5 and 7 have many more pages of exegesis in my support.
Thirteen examples (the number symbolism is significant) of scriptures taken out of context to justify the Penal Satisfaction Theory are in the last sentence of the video description. Not only are these PST workhorses done to death in the full sight of the Lord with whom Calvinists must give an account (Heb 4:13), but the honest workman, who places these same scriptures back in context—as I have assiduously done in the previous lines, again in the full sight of God (2 Corinthians 4:2; 2 Timothy 2:15)—is also doing it under the nose of seekers. For the benefit of these questing Bereans (Ac 17:11), my 'username' to follow is the only one they would want to follow, viz. 'Pr 30:6; 2Co 4:2; 11:3 ⇄ 2Th 2:9'.
The '91 texts' in the title is the product of 7, the perfect number, and 13, the demonic number. The eisegetes, who take scriptures out of context, are exposed as false teachers in the aforementioned thirteen proof-texts and so are logically excluded from the titular 91 correctly exegeted texts. These scriptures are supported by well-sourced PDF and videos to validate all the facts.
I have resorted to humour, word-play and metre (para. 1), I believe, for justifiable reasons.)
Guilt-projection, condemning another to justify oneself (Ezk 18:20; Mi 6:6-8: kvisit.com/PQ/4v4B), was the impetus to human sacrifice (youtube.com/watch?v=lNJq6BlVyhM). The Church had not forsworn this parallel with its own scapegoating practices (kvisit.com/PQ/ve0B; docdro.id/19ep9B1) but adopted it in its defence of Christ's 'satisfaction' [above]. Proxy measures for quenching the gods' expiatory* wrath [ibid.] persisted in oblational frames of reference—hostia (victim), hostīre (recompense, requite) (kvisit.com/PQ/lZEC)—fostering a syncretic, reified* idea of balancing a penal ledger: youtube.com/watch?v=8ta-D-hdcFg, kvisit.com/PQ/0YAC. But obedience outstrips a whole host of sacrifices (1 S 15:22). The latter stultified guilt (kvisit.com/PQ/y5AC: Ps 51:16,17), the former foreshadowed the gospel of Christ (Mk 1:15; Rm 5:1,10,19; 2 Co 5:18-21; Col 1:21-24; 1 Jn 2:1-6) and solidarity with him (kvisit.com/PQ/55sC: Lk 14:25-35; Jn 12:25,26; Ga 2:20; Ep 5:1,2; Ph 3:10; 1 Th 5:9,10; 1 P 1:3-21; 2:4-8,19-25; 3:16-18; 4:1,13; 2 P 1:2-11). So the eisegete's* work is a creature of instinct (2 P 2:12), so roundly confirmed is a God-cursèd Christ: docdro.id/b4y1o11. God-breathed words are diamond-bright and clear (Mk 4:21-25). We colour them (Mt 23:10; Ac 20:25-31; 1 Co 3:10-23; 2 Tm 3:4-17; 2 Jn 9; Jude 3—kvisit.com/PQ/4-0B).¹
Christ's Passover (1 Co 5:7,8: view.publitas.com/p222-13028) and vindicatory resurrection were crunch time for fakes (Gn 3:15; Mt 7:13-29). To sully God's deputy, inflicting pain and disgrace (Is 53:3,8-12; Mt 7:4; 21:33-46; Jn 5:41-44: kvisit.com/PQ/xPQB) by scapegoating him (Ex 23:7; Jn 11:50), or by recidivism (Heb 5:7–6:6), is fatal (Jn 3:13-21; 6:41-71; Ac 5:28-32; Rm 2:1-9; 8:5-17; 2 Co 5:21; 1 Jn 1:5-9).²
'Save yourselves from this corrupt generation' (Ac 2:40; cf. Is 53:6, KJV, iniquity, from עוה, âvôn, perversity). Traduced and cursed by apostates (Is 53:4-6; Jn 7:14-30; 8:42-59; 10:1-21; Ga 3:13), Jesus was martyred (Jn 15:18-27; 16:9; 18:37; Rv 19:13), subject to God's redemptive purpose (Rv 1:5-7) to put sin (not him) to death (Rm 6:1-23; Ga 6:8; 1 Jn 3:4-9), breathing life into the rightwised³ (Rm 4:25; 10:6-10: kvisit.com/PQ/woAC).
Evidence of a natural link with propitiatory rites [p.199, l.8; 3 min 44 s, youtube.com/watch?v=Mnk4FGtbphgs] discredits the Church's case (1 Co 2:14). If Satisfaction Theory⁴ looks like a rehash of old terrain [p.200, l.17; p.206, l.24], blame eisegetes [p.200, l.11], not a ritualophilic Providence [p.199, l.9]. The tone of YHWH's retribution against ritual murder (Dt 12:31) was set early: Moloch's fire pit would be the future deterrent to evil (Is 30:33; Jr 19; Mk 9:48). Jesus' fictive (kvisit.com/PQ/5fUB) Descent into Hell entailed a midden-delve: docdro.id/z5Tep7j.
Eisegetes breed like ichneumons, turning hosts into maggot nurseries. The parasitised status of Rm 8:3, 90 s. into youtube.com/watch?v=fK-g9cYer0AA, is a typical, grubby slant on 'God condemned sin in Christ's flesh'. God issued an ultimatum in Christ's flesh to quash sin, thus condemning it (Rm 8:1-4,10; Tt 3:4-8). Luther begged the question* of vicarious punishment by eisegeting docdro.id/sONUGgC (2 Tm 4:2-4). Since Jesus must feel, by default, the singe of God's rebuke (kvisit.com/PQ/hvUB),⁵ Calvin cooked up a Greek dish in Rm 8:3 (kvisit.com/PQ/hYUC; kvisit.com/PQ/0IAC) where anathematising victims was an Apollonian delicacy [p.211].⁶ The facile fictionalising of Mt 27:46 (cf. Ps 22:24; Jn 8:29) was a curse, dished out.
Calvin's appropriation undermined the exemplary paradigm of redemption (1 Co 1:18-31; Heb 2:9-18; 12:2,3; 13:11-14: kvisit.com/PQ/mZQC) via incentives to parrot prooftexts* in support of hostīre theory. Confirmation bias* (Lk 6:39: kvisit.com/PQ/nZsC) is overt [kvisit.com/PQ/0I4C; p.206].⁷
The Mercy Seat sin-offering⁸ ⁹ symbolised a nation bound by vows of purity (Lv 16:21,30: kvisit.com/PQ/_ewB), prefiguring Jesus (Tt 2:11-14; Heb 9:5,14,22,28; 10:5,9-16,22; 1 Jn 3:3)—not eisegesis, which turns equity (Ep 2:3,15; Col 2:14) into hostīre, payback (Rm 3:25,26; cf. Jb 35:6; Ac 17:30). 'Pouring out justice', kvisit.com/PQ/koQC, is doublespeak.*
Origen's 'propitiation' and Augustine's 'retribution' (kvisit.com/PQ/n_YB; kvisit.com/PQ/qe0B) gave no support to the Marcionite 'vengeful God' libel (kvisit.com/PQ/pIEC)—till the wine of His wrath poured full strength into Jesus' chalice.¹ Mulled wine, it wasn't (Mk 10:39; Ac 12:2). Mythic* rage in substitutionary atonement, yes—as eisegetes, decontextualising Is 53:6, Mt 27:46, Rm 3:25, 6:23, 8:3, 2 Co 5:21, Ga 3:13, Col 2:14, Ep 2:3, 1 Th 5:9, Heb 9:22, 1 P 2:24 and 3:18, hatch from the palsied host.⁵ ⁷ ¹º
* Defined: docdro.id/nvyTJPz
¹ kvisit.com/PQ/sJAC; Quora: kvisit.com/PQ/hO0B
² 5-8 min, youtube.com/watch?v=vSlaBT9ayZ4
³ ¶37, docdro.id/pjb4j4N
⁴ kvisit.com/PQ/m_gB
⁵ kvisit.com/PQ/gIsC
⁶ kvisit.com/PQ/_OwB
⁷ kvisit.com/PQ/_ooC
⁸ youtube.com/watch?v=LmFXvFlbYAY
⁹ ¶40, docdro.id/pjb4j4N
¹º kvisit.com/PQ/xJAC
The church's doctrine was based on the Westminster Confession of Faith, drawn up by Puritan and Presbyterian theologians at Westminster Abbey in 1646/47. This was a systematic exposition of Calvinism, written from a Puritan perspective. Though I had been a staunch defender and devotee of the Puritans, I began to feel that the Calvinist Penal Substitutionary Atonement marked a departure from the biblical perspective as well as from basic moral principles. The attempt by the church elders to put a cap on my speculation with respect to the Atonement led to my worsening attendance, until a crisis of faith in 1991 abandoned me to my residual and resurgent Atheism.
"The Quest - A Poet's Search for Meaning in the Age of Science" (which I have scanned and uploaded below) was begun on 1 January 1996, while I was assisting Professor Chris Freeman, the head of Biogeochemistry at Bangor University. "The Quest" was a philosophical analysis of the proper place of the mind (along with an intuitive recognition of its limits, proper to poetic expression) in the individual's experience (especially mine) of trying to make sense of life.
Though I had tried to relieve its ponderousness with jaunty verse rhythms and by resorting to Keatsian whimsy, the dialectical method, when translated into verse, proved unavoidably tortuous and prolix. It became so difficult even for me to follow my arguments that I felt constrained, over a decade later, to produce an online version with explanatory marginal notes. You will find it here: www.amesquest.info
"Ames" was my pseudonym.
Making a New Year resolution to embark on a work of philosophical poetry, written in a scientific setting, was a new line in experimentation that neither of us had foreseen in the summer of 1995 -- and it led to an equally unforeseeable outcome. Despite the apparent incongruity between the poetic and dialectical methods (intuition and reason) and between writing poetry and using the High Pressure Liquid Chromatograph in Chris's lab to assay peat samples, I had sought cogent answers to three existential questions, "What is Truth?", "What is Man?" and "Who am I?". This answer-seeking was to be on a sliding scale, as I worked painstakingly through my arguments, from the most abstract to the most personal -- all the while keeping in view the scientific and empirical perspective and the laboratory and field setting of a lowly data-collector. The culmination of this year-long project appears, in retrospect, to have been nothing more than a vindication of the healing tactic of poetic and philosophical expression for overturning the despairing nihilistic assumptions with which I had begun and for rediscovering my original reasons for faith. It left me at the start of 1997 with stronger proof of the absolute nature of truth (especially moral and spiritual truth), of God's existence and of the pure Gospel, than I had before -- proof that no amount of blind dogmatism can now overthrow, because I had at least tried to build up my own philosophy from the leftover bits of truths that I still felt were unquestionable.
Thus I returned to the Evangelical church briefly in 1998. But I soon found myself trying to convince the elders of the implicit paganism of the Calvinistic atonement. Failing in that undertaking, I remained unchurched for the next 15 years, before returning to the fold and its Stasi-like surveillance of dissenters in 2013, to make one last attempt at theological persuasion. Their advocacy of the principles of sola scriptura and exegetical rigour notwithstanding, the elders refused yet again to listen to my arguments; and so, in the late Summer of 2014, I left the church and prepared to go online with my objections.
The following Abstract is actually my preamble to a personal document file (PDF), entitled "Word Study: Propitiation", which I had uploaded early in 2016 to the Worldwide Web and which I had search-engine optimized, along with other PDFs and a video (the links to most of which are provided in the Abstract), in order to secure first-page representation in any enquirer's search results. These webpages are presently off-line, to avoid the ongoing cost of optimization.
"My Challenge to the Penal Satisfaction Theory Implicit in the Evangelical Movement of Wales' Statement of Doctrinal Belief" was written in October 2014 as part of my application to work in Bangor Christian Bookshop and my correspondence with the EMW (who own and run the bookshop) explaining why I felt I could not sign the Statement of Faith, as required. The wording of "My Challenge" remains unchanged.
The Abstract that follows was not originally written for "My Challenge", as I said before, but constituted the preamble to my later online PDF, "Word Study: Propitiation". It reads as follows:
"There are five reasons to believe that it offends God for us to suppose that His forgiveness required Him to be appeased by Christ's agonized death. The roots of Satisfaction Theory are:
A. Wishful thinking
(1) Grotius's 'Defence of the Catholic Faith Regarding the Satisfaction of Christ' drew support from pagan sacrifice.
Please see my video and read carefully the introduction, which can be found at www.vimeo.com/124438117,
(2) The syncretized, politically pragmatic faith (Dt 12:30) that became the Roman model after Nicaea.
For more, please go to www.scribd.com/doc/286811256.
B. A borrowed theology
(1) The God-appeasing premise of the Holy Sacrament that Calvin adopted wholesale.
For more information, please visit www.scribd.com/doc/267006515,
(2) "Imputation" in Reformed Theology, which is Erasmus's corruption
(Mt 12:32) of the correct Latin term for reckoned, "reputatum".
For more, go to www.scribd.com/doc/294732919,
(3) Penitentialism (www.scribd.com/doc/295799982).
Having uncovered the roots of Satisfactionism, I will introduce Vincent's Word Study on Propitiation with an extract from Barnes's Notes on the Bible:
"Galatians 2:21
I do not frustrate the grace of God - The word rendered "frustrate" (ἀθετῶ athetō) means properly to displace, abrogate, abolish; then to make void, to render null; Mark 7:9; Luke 7:30; 1 Corinthians 1:19. The phrase "the grace of God," here refers to the favor of God manifested in the plan of salvation by the gospel, and is another name for the gospel. The sense is, that Paul would not take any measures or pursue any course that would render that vain or inefficacious. Neither by his own life, by a course of conduct which would show that it had no influence over the heart and conduct, nor by the observance of Jewish rites and customs, would he do anything to render that ineffective.
The design is to show that he regarded it as a great principle that the gospel was efficacious in renewing and saving man, and he would do nothing that would tend to prevent that impression on mankind. A life of sin, of open depravity and licentiousness, would do that. And in like manner a conformity to the rites of Moses as a ground of justification would tend to frustrate the grace of God, or to render the method of salvation solely by the Redeemer nugatory. This is to be regarded, therefore as at the same time a reproof of Peter for complying with customs which tended to frustrate the plan of the gospel, and a declaration that he intended that his own course of life should be such as to confirm the plan, and show its efficacy in pardoning the sinner and rendering him alive in the service of God.
For if righteousness come by the law - If justification can be secured by the observance of any law - ceremonial or moral - then there was no need of the death of Christ as an atonement. This is plain. If man by conformity to any law could be justified before God, what need was there of an atonement? The work would then have been wholly in his own power, and the merit would have been his. It follows from this, that man cannot be justified by his own morality, or his alms-deeds, or his forms of religion, or his honesty and integrity. If he can, he needs no Savior; he can save himself.
It follows also that when people depend on their own amiability and good works, they would feel no need of a Savior; and this is the true reason why the mass of people reject the Lord Jesus. They suppose they do not deserve to be sent to hell. They have no deep sense of guilt. They confide in their own integrity and feel that God ought to save them. Hence, they feel no need of a Savior; for why should a person in health employ a physician? And confiding in their own righteousness, they reject the grace of God.
To feel the need of a Savior it is necessary to feel that we are lost and ruined sinners; that we have no merit upon which we can rely; and that we are entirely dependent on the mercy of God for salvation. Thus feeling, we shall receive the salvation of the gospel with thankfulness and joy, and show that in regard to us Christ is not 'dead in vain'."
It was not presumed that “The Truth About Easter” would profoundly grab the attention of either interest group — but the best way to challenge heresy is at the grassroots level, to build up credibility (as the Anabaptists tried to do) among ordinary people, without presuming to claim any superiority for theological scholars (Matthew 23:8-12) — still less wishing to join them and be recognized as an authority (John 10:7-14). The quote of Albert Einstein's, with which I conclude my Preface to The Truth About Easter, is as valid today as it ever was: ”Unthinking respect for authority is truth's greatest enemy”.
It is curious how a deist like Einstein, without any evangelical grounding, can still suggest a better rendering of the scriptural passages I have just quoted than experts, such as this annotator to Matthew 23:8-12 in the ESV Student Study Bible, who wrote that Jesus was here just prohibiting his disciples from using titles such as “teacher”, “doctor”, or “father” “in the way the Pharisees used them, wrongly praising leaders and thus encouraging human pride.” Yet it is surely not the danger of stoking pride by using honorific religious titles, but the leaven of false teaching (cf. Matthew 16:6,11), that Christ was warning against in the seven-fold indictment of the scribes and Pharisees that follows. Their example of hypocrisy and lawlessness always had the same outcome in the past — wounds were inflicted on those whom God sent to admonish their forebears, inviting their own nemesis at length after he himself would be murdered (Matthew 23:32). For any Calvinists who care to note, their supposition that Israel's spurned Messiah was actually bearing God's judicial wrath at Calvary hardly fits the narrative of martyrdom; and the fact that Jesus leaves them with a coded warning of the impending fall and destruction of Jerusalem (v.39) as a graphic demonstration of how the final resolution of religious haughtiness will be utter ruin (vv.12,33-36), places that wrath where it belongs — on its morally most fitting object, false teachers and their dupes. (For more on this, please go to https://vimeo.com/232373664.) But I digress.
The approach of giving out my PDF bore little fruit, however. So in June 2017 I saw the usefulness of an arrangement whereby my thoughts regarding theology and Church history could be put before the public using the online graphic appeal of YouTube and Vimeo, but targeted to particular keyword enquiries using Google's search engines, Video Discovery for YouTube, and Google Ads for Vimeo.
My YouTube video is entitled, “The Antichrist was Gnosticism/Neoplatonism and Constantine's Apotheosis was Caligulan”, and can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XX6UwPQhEKo.
My two videos on Vimeo are entitled, “Did the Mercy Seat Prefigure Christ Paying God Reparation For Our Sins or Getting Martyred? The H-Word, Syncretism and the Facts” (https://vimeo.com/232373664)“ and "Nicaea and Constantinian Shift: Reinventing Christ Through Plato, Philo and Caligula’s Ego and Marking The Work With a Tick (☧)” (https://vimeo.com/231751997).
Google Ads appear at the top and bottom of search page results, together with their sitelink extensions (my ad's sitelinks are all Scribd downloadable PDF documents). So let's suppose that someone enters any of these wide-ranging search enquiries — "redemption through christ", "the finished work of christ", "jesus redemption", "why did jesus die", "sacrificial atonement", "romans 5 1-11", "john 16 9", "atoning death", "ransom theory", "nothing but the blood of jesus", "atonement scriptures", "moses brazen serpent", "blending of religions", "expiation", "syncretism" and "child sacrifice to molech" (there are over 300 pertinent search enquiries that can be made) — they will trigger my ad, "Why Did Christ Die? To Satisfy God's Justice, or That We May?" to appear at the top of the search results. Clicking on that title gives access to the Vimeo video, entitled, “Did the Mercy Seat Prefigure Christ Paying God Reparation For Our Sins or Getting Martyred?” at https://vimeo.com/232373664.
I have five other Google Ads besides, but these are presently paused.
My Youtube video title, "The Antichrist was Gnosticism/Neoplatonism and Constantine's Apotheosis was Caligulan” (which can be found here, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XX6UwPQhEKo) has a lengthy video description, which is actually a preface to the theologically weightier description of the Vimeo video, entitled “Nicaea and Constantinian Shift”, to which it links at the end.
If, as Solomon wrote, the truth is to be bought and not sold (Proverbs 23:23), it is sobering to reflect that I have to buy the truth (using Google Ads to promote my aforementioned Vimeo videos) not just for myself, but for everyone else. Such are the dark times that we are living in (Luke 18:8).
ABSTRACT
"The Quest - A Poet's Search for Meaning in the Age of Science" was begun on 1 January 1996, while I was assisting Professor Chris Freeman, the head of Biogeochemistry at Bangor University, who led the research and wrote the papers which I co-authored and which appear on this page.
The Quest was a philosophical analysis of the proper place of the mind -- along with an intuitive recognition of its limits, proper to poetic expression -- in the individual's experience (especially mine) of trying to make sense of life.
Making a New Year resolution to embark on a work of philosophical poetry, written in a scientific setting, was a new line in experimentation that neither of us had foreseen in the summer of 1995 -- and it led to an equally unforeseeable outcome. Despite the apparent incongruity between the poetic and dialectical methods (intuition and reason) and between writing poetry and using the HPLC in Chris's lab to assay peat samples, I had sought cogent answers to three existential questions, "What is Truth?", "What is Man?" and "Who am I?". This answer-seeking was to be on a sliding scale, as I worked painstakingly through my arguments, from the most abstract to the most personal -- all the while keeping in view the scientific and empirical perspective and the laboratory and field setting of a lowly data-collector. The culmination of this year-long project appears, in retrospect, to have been nothing more than a vindication of the healing tactic of poetic and philosophical expression for overturning the despairing nihilistic assumptions with which I had begun and for rediscovering my original reasons for faith. It left me at the start of 1997 with stronger proof of the absolute nature of truth (especially moral and spiritual truth), of God's existence and of the pure Gospel, than I had before -- proof that no amount of blind dogmatism can now overthrow, because I had at least tried to build up my own philosophy from the leftover bits of truths that I still felt were unquestionable.