The Power of Jesus

Protestants forget this, we'll get back to that:

The reason Chistianity, Catholicism has held such a tight grip on the metaphysichal need o humanity is one fantastic breakthrough in religious psychology: Passion, in the Aristotelian form of suffering, was included into the very genesis of metaphysics. This is almost unbeatable: what more transformative, REAL, than suffering? It seems to deserve a place in the very beginning of thought.

Protestants must be more passionate precicely because it robs Jesus of metaphysichal passion. It could never stand up on its own.

Jesus sacrificed, God sacrificed himself in passion for the sins, the madnesses of humanity. Specially passionate people like the Japanese were the most resistant to JesusGod.

Passion has a strong unifying effect.

What can philosophy do against this? Therefore so many betrayals.

Communism, it seems to me, has been an appropriate cure for this. Substituting God for Man, man now has no metaphysical obligation tu suffer more than a mortal, and can

breathe.

Yeah, passion. Definitely. And the 'being in on a secret' thing too. Christians have a special line right to God, it doesn't depend on one's society or culture or position or wealth or power or even on how intelligent or well-meaning you are. One can generally be a low intelligent person with not very good motivations or morals, very little self-knowledge, and still have this special connection. Nothing else matters but how you feel about it.

Access that feeling and you're "in". Everything else is secondary.

This was hugely true for early Christians who formed secret undercurrents of Roman society. They used special signs to identify themselves, they were totally beyond reach of the state. Pagans couldn't touch them, neither could the Jews. Jesus successfully fused Greco-Roman mythology within Judaism, finally impregnating Judaism with life. The deep logical-mathematical structure of Hebrew and its high belief-system of monotheism (reflecting an improvement in human subjectivity over polytheism, as Parodites notes) were wed with Greek aesthetics and reasoning, leading to the modern idea of love, and with Roman passion and pride, leading to the modern idea of freedom (of the will, soul.. collapse into a more concentrated self-valuing).

Right.

Communists are in on the secret of patriotism.

Capable wrote:

Yeah, passion. Definitely. And the 'being in on a secret' thing too. Christians have a special line right to God, it doesn't depend on one's society or culture or position or wealth or power or even on how intelligent or well-meaning you are. One can generally be a low intelligent person with not very good motivations or morals, very little self-knowledge, and still have this special connection. Nothing else matters but how you feel about it.

Access that feeling and you're "in". Everything else is secondary.

This was hugely true for early Christians who formed secret undercurrents of Roman society. They used special signs to identify themselves, they were totally beyond reach of the state. Pagans couldn't touch them, neither could the Jews. Jesus successfully fused Greco-Roman mythology within Judaism, finally impregnating Judaism with life. The deep logical-mathematical structure of Hebrew and its high belief-system of monotheism (reflecting an improvement in human subjectivity over polytheism, as Parodites notes) were wed with Greek aesthetics and reasoning, leading to the modern idea of love, and with Roman passion and pride, leading to the modern idea of freedom (of the will, soul.. collapse into a more concentrated self-valuing).

I am not sure how to qualify this perspective other than 'rich' or 'generous'. I also think it is sound, but it isn't the only thing that can reasonably said about the religion; it is however supremely potentiating, as it offers the religion a continuum, a path forward.

I think few Christians dare to think such things today. There are some, but they live in very old worlds.

This brings me back to the notion of politics; in the same way as Jesus was political (and I can personally not think of a geater political influence than Jesus')  bringing such perspective into the world is a deeply political act, rearranging perspectives around necessity, and yet it is not compromising the philosopher from whom it spawned.

In the same way and on the same ground as you, Capable, see politics and philosophy as fundamentally separate, I see them eventually happily wedded. But yes, it's unwise to wed immature creatures to each other.