Metaphysical Disclaimer
Building a hedge for my ramblings
Note: I am always writing from my particular perspective. I think it’s fully possible for cosmology to be radically different for different observers, but I’m not gonna be the one to explain how it all ‘actually works,’ I’m just giving the view from where I am.
So when I talk about Yahweh and Jesus, I will make bold claims like “all other gods are categorically subordinate.” I think that’s a fairly easy statement to make when comparing Him to, say, Zeus, who is powerful and all, but definitely does not just snap his finger and make universes. That claim might ruffle some feathers, but I’m not trying to ‘correct’ anyone who places Zeus at the center of their cosmology and doesn’t have the Christian God in their picture; I’m just reporting what I see. More feathers might be ruffled if I started making direct comparisons to Brahma, but that’s not really my lane, is kinda my point. I’m not gonna reconcile religious pluralism, and I’m not trying to denigrate any other spiritual tradition, I’m just hyping my own.
I can’t claim to present some objective ‘Christian worldview,’ I just have the worldview of me as a Christian who loves tradition and rebellion. What I want to talk about is the amazingly misunderstood treasure of orthodox (lowercase-o) Christianity, and the heterodox ideas I’ve come across while searching the Bible. (Because I’m me, I’m sure UPG will also leak in, but that’s not the goal. If it gets brought in for illustrative purposes I’ll be explicit about it, but of course I only have one mind and it believes a lot of weird shit, and so that does effect how I see everything.) I’ll also end up making a lot of claims about Second Temple Judaism, but I’m not trying to make generalizing statements about that entire diverse set of believers, but rather trying to make sense of the Jewish milieu Jesus was born into and lived through, and show how Judaism and Christianity were both very different back in Antiquity, in ways that still surprise me. The past truly is an alien world. I’m trying to paint a picture of that alien Judaism, but again, only one picture, from the POV of a partisan whose Incarnate God claimed to be the fulfillment of the Jewish Scriptures. So neither take this as representative of modern rabbinic Judaism nor as me saying anything about some imagined ‘real’ Judaism that doesn’t (and never did) exist anymore than a ‘the real Christianity’ has yet to emerge (pace Catholicism, among others). So, for example, I will probably, at some point, write the words, “Jews (and Christians) are strict monolatrists who use monotheistic rhetoric”; but I’m speaking about “the Jews of Jesus’s inherited culture,” not trying to make some statement about what modern Jews do or should believe.
If you react really strongly against any of my claims? Great! I’m not really trying to evangelize, except insofar as I’d like to show that there are frameworks for Christianity that can serve, for those called to it, as an excellent worldview. So, less proselytizing, more apologia — though I actually would reject that label, as that’s a well-established genre, and not very similar at all in several important respects.1 But in any event, there are lots of excellent worldviews out there that aren’t for me, and so I’m not interested in batting you over the head with stuff. I’m just offering you a perspective, one that I know is more interesting than most people expect from Christianity.
But I can seem preachy sometimes just because I’m trying to be emphatic with realities that, themselves, demand attention. A key one: “God is exceedingly, ridiculously good.” I’m not writing trying to be a neutral party, either. But I’m not shouting, “Know that God is good,” as much as, “Know that Christians feel God’s goodness this strongly, that for us, it is a physical fact as certain as the support of the ground below our feet and the air in our lungs.” If I come off as preachy, it’s because I assume that anyone coming to me is looking for a (heterodox) Christian perspective, and so that’s what I’m offering. I’m not going to distort everything by constantly hedging.
Finally, cosmology is complicated and slippery, root metaphors have poetic ambiguity, and so I will constantly have to make oversimplifications. If you find yourself taking any one sliver of my writing and running too far with it, consider that there’s never a shortage of nuance to add to the discussion. If it’s complicated enough, it’s probably come up multiple times. If it hasn’t, ask me about it! There’s no shortage of things to write about, I just don’t always have a good sense for what people need to hear. So let me know if I drop something you found juicy but I didn’t seem to follow up on!
Apologia, or ‘apologies/defenses’ (lit. ‘from-words’) were treatises written to counter those who tried to discredit Christianity. The genre was very interested in speaking to the elite of society and were very focused on defending Christianity in terms of the dominant worldview, with a particular focus on rationalism. I, on the other hand, mostly want to present Christianity as of interest, because most people think it’s just some boring stuffy relic when it’s in fact just as capable of strange beauty as any other spiritual tradition, even including your schizo oomf who’s really into egregores.