Hamartia, what does "Sin" actually mean?

People outside The Faith will often look at passages like Romans 3 saying "All have Sinned" and that we are all Sinners as being a very misanthropic sentiment, and some Christians do also treat it that way including myself in the past when I was a more cynical person then I am now.  However the problem is that the harshness of what "Sin" has come to mean to English speakers is no longer a good translation of the Greek or Hebrew concepts being referenced.

The Greek word that Paul and others are using in The New Testament is Hamartia and other forms of that word.  Hamartia is in origin it seems an Archery term, most literally meaning "to miss the mark".  Saying we are all Sinners is just Paul's way of saying nobody's perfect.  Hence "come short of the glory of God".  Now in just these early chapters of Romans it sounds like the consequences of merely being imperfect are pretty harsh, but this is in the context of him arguing agaisnt people way more judgmental then he is as he ultimately argues God has no intention of casting off even the worst of us.

When you look into literary analysis people talk about the concept of a "tragic flaw" that goes back to Aristotle's writings on the subject.  That two word phrase is a translation of one word Aristotle used, Hamartia, I use Hamartia in this literary sense on another blog in my recent School Days analysis, but I wrote that already planning to write this and will probably go back and add links to this post.  It amuses me how rarely this connection is made.

Red of OverlySarcasticProductions in her video on Tragedies says that a character's "Tragic Flaw" can also be the same as their virtue in a different context.  And indeed I'd argue many of the best Superman stories involve the villain trying make a weakness of the very thing that makes him a Hero, and the same thing sometimes happens in Magical Girl Anime.  Now many Christians may have trouble with the idea of this being applicable to The Bible's use of Hamartia, but remember when Paul called himself the Chief of Sinners in 1 Timothy 1:15?  Well the Sin he means is confirmed by what he said earlier in the chapter to be his former status as a persecutor of the Church, and I would argue the very character traits that made Paul a dangerous enemy of The Gospel are what later made him a powerful advocate for it.

However I also think to a large extent the Jewish writers of The New Testament are using Hamartia to translate the Hebrew Bible's concept of Chet'/Chatta'/Chatta'ah, which is also frequently translated Sin and is the word used to name the Sin Offering of the Levitical Sacrificial system.  When 2 Corinthians 5:21 says Jesus was made Sin for us, it's defining Him as a Sin Offering as the Hebrew of those Torah passages usually don't feature a word for offering as a separate word.

The Sin offering is defined as being offered to atone for violations of the Torah committed in Ignorance, the Trespass offering is for violations that were "high handed" (I've seen that suggested as the best translation), but neither is sufficient for actual capital offenses.

Hebrew Roots people will take 1 John 3:4's statement that "Sin is transgression of the Law" to prove that "yes The Torah does still apply no matter how often Paul appears to say otherwise".  However that ignores how in The Torah not all transgressions of The Law are what the word "Sin" refers to.

On The Cross Jesus said "Father forgive them for they know not what they do", he defined their actions as Sins committed in ignorance even though by any normal standard they clearly aren't.  Matthew 9:10-13 tells us to think of Sin as an illness that needs treatment, not a crime that needs punishment.  Which is why many theologians see that statement from The Cross as ultimately applying to all the wrongdoings of all Mankind.

Related to this is the issue of cleanness and uncleanness in the Torah.  People keep assuming those passages are about some mystical spiritual uncleanness, but they aren't, they are just literal hygiene laws.

Like how some people keep citing the verse saying Women are "unclean" when they menstruate as some proof of The Bible's horrible sexism.  The Torah is imperfect (Hebrew 7) so I'm not going to claim there is nothing patriarchal about it.  But that exact same chapter of Leviticus says the same about Male Ejaculate and the bodily waste everyone produces regardless of gender.  It's just a passage telling us to wash our hands and shower.

"What about the incident where Jesus refused to wash his hands and then clearly moral uncleanness".  The thing about that incident is that I'm wiling to bet Jesus had washed His hands, just not in the specific public ritual customary to that group of Pharisees.  What He said there was in response to that they were thinking of spiritual cleanness because Hellenistic ideas were already infecting 1st Century Judaism.

The Ten Planks of The Communist Manifesto are NOT the definition of Communism.

Taking the 10 Planks out of their context is where the basis of defining Socialism as "when the Government does stuff" comes from.

For a lot of people this small piece of the Manifesto is the only Marxist material they've ever been exposed to.  Which frankly would be like claiming to understand Christianity if your knowledge of The Gospel narrative ended on Good Friday.  I long ago used to think these were the entirety of the Manifesto from how people like Kent Hovind presented it, but the truth is they occur at the end of chapter 2 of a 4 chapter manifesto almost as an after thought.

The Definition of Communism is a Moneyless, Classless, Stateless Society.  The definition of Socialism is collective ownership of the means of production.  Most politically educated people know that the core disagreement between Anarchists and Marxists is on the transitional state.  However Marxism actually has two transitional states, Lower Phase Communism (which Lenin called Socialism) is itself the product of a prior transitional period.  Lenin on the eve of his death still did not believe Russia was Socialist yet but only almsot ready for it, and remember for Lenin Socialism referred specifically to the Lower Phase.  The 10 Planks are still State Capitalism even when genuine Communists are doing them.

The problem with someone like Casual Historian thinking they can critique how "Communist" America is by going down these planks and measuring how much they apply like some sort of Political Compass test is that Marxists do not support these measures inherently for their own sake.  They are the measures Revolutionaries are supposed to take after a Revolution.  A State doing these things is only even mildly Communist if it's a truly Proletarian State, if it's far more actually Democratic then The United States has ever been.  Or at the very least a State controlled by unapologetic Socialists, not merely mildly socially progressive Liberals who the Conservatives will call Socialists no matter what.

I am a Communist who does not in fact fully agree with these planks even in their proper context, but that's besides the point of this post.  Even to the most enthusiastic apologists of these planks, they are not themselves what Communism is.

The thing about the 2nd Plank, the Income Tax plank.  Is that even in a proper revolutionary context it is not compatible with an income tax on hourly wages.  In the context of what Marxist ideology is, it's obvious that Profits or Surplus is the income meant here, however the Manifesto didn't feel the need to explain that since I don't think the idea of taxing hourly wages was even proposed yet back then.  

Unfortunately in the modern U.S. the Taxation discussion has become so poisoned that everyone now thinks calling for any kind of Tax cuts much less abolition is inherently right wing.  But the truth is there is nothing Socialist about taxing wages, Marxist ideology is founded on the belief that wage laborers already aren't getting nearly the compensation they deserve even before they are Taxed. Liberal progressives and even many Social Democrats have convinced themselves that "paying taxes is how I contribute to society", but if it's only Corporate Profits being Taxed those Profits are still generated by the labor of the workers, it's still a contribution you are truly responsible for.  It's not greedy or selfish to want the Government to stop stealing from the already minimal compensation you were forced to accept.

After the Paris Commune Marx and Engels actually said that the 10 planks of the Manifesto should be rewritten to clarify that the Communists can't simply co-opt the existing state institutions, they are fundamentally Capitalist institutions at their core, so the Revolution needs to tare those down and rebuild them from scratch.

That leads me to Plank 5, the Central Bank.  The problem with saying The Federal Reserve can be a fulfilment of this plank is that in addition to all the context I provided above, a truly Socialist Central Bank would be actually Publicly owned not privately owned with alleged Government oversight.  A lot of supporters of our current monetary status quo really want to dismiss the Private nature of the Federal Reserve, saying it's only privately owned in the most technical sense. And yes I know a lot of the Anti-Federal Reserve rhetoric out there comes from a Right Wing conspiracy theorist world view, but that doesn't change that Socialists should also oppose such an institution.  The Fed being run by presidential appointments means nothing when the shareholders of the Fed are the same super rich people financing both major parties.

It's not always just Anti-Communists who misuse the Manifesto in this way.  Plank 8 for example is why there is any leftist opposition to The Basic Income.  And  I've also seen Leftists argue that we should ban Home Schooling by pointing to the 10th Plank.

Now Plank 10 is the one I most disagree with even in it's proper context, I'm agaisnt Public Education as a concept.  But regardless the current Prussian Model Public School system is a fundamentally Capitalist institution who's goal is to indoctrinate not educate, to create passive industrial wage laborers.  It's become long outdated even within the framework of Liberal Capitalism as society is now deindustrializing.  So it's certainly not something The Left should defend just because there is talk of Public Education in an 1848 Manifesto.

In my opinion Communists should themselves be doing Homeschooling and not subjecting our children to this broken and evil system.  If that comes with allowing Conservative Evangelicals to do their Right Wing home schooling then so be it.  Even Conservative Home Schooling is better then the existing School System which doesn't have a single redeeming quality.

The Marxist definition of Utopianism.

One of the things that annoys me about Marxists is how they create definitions of words but then treat those definition as the somehow true definitions.

They are most inclined to acknowledge other definitions exist when referring to the "Anarchist definition of The State" when addressing their disagreements with Anarchists.  Thing is the Anarchist Definition is also the objective definition, even pro-State conservatives and liberals can't really object to it.  It's only Marxists that use a different definition, yet they keep trying to frame the debate as if the Anarchist are the ones who fabricated a biased definition.

However the worst Marxist definition is their definition of Utopianism.  Whenever someone accuses Marx of Utopianism instead of engaging with that actual criticism they go "Ugh Marx invented criticizing Utopian Socialists so you clearly don't understand Marxism".  But the Marxist definition of Utopian is in fact not even close to being a valid definition.  At least with The State their definition is a reasonable alternate explanation for the same phenomena, but what Marxists mean when they say "Utopian Socialists" is not even related to what the root word "Utopia" means.

The reason I can say that so strongly is because I also know exactly what word they should be using instead, Idealist/Idealistic.  What Marxists keep saying is wrong with Utopianism is that it's a belief that a Platonic Ideal of Socialism already exists in the Platonic world of forms, and the way to finally make it work in the material world is to make a less imperfect copy of this predetermined form.  Anyone who actually is thinking that way I would disagree with, as rejecting Plato is one of the overarching storylines of this blog.

But I don't think everyone Marxists call Utopian are truly guilty of that, I have my doubts any really are.  My point is that's what their definition is, and their continually saying "Utopian" when they mean "Idealist" is simply bad use of language, period.

They sometimes call Anarchists "Utopian", but Anarchists in fact do just as much Material Class Analysis as they do, they simply come to different conclusions on issues like Economic Determinism.  But even with the writers most uncontroversial to describe as Utopian Socialists, I feel like maybe their critics are just taking them a little too literally.

If I wrote a work of fiction in which I depicted a Socialist society and included a lot of world building details on how it functions.  I would take it for granted that no one would assume I'm saying real world Socialism needs to match that exactly.  It's just a hypothetical idea I threw out to get people thinking.  Maybe Charles Fourier and Saint-Simon were simply doing the same in a non fiction format?  I don't know since I haven't and don't plan to actually read them.

However it's Moses Hess and Flora Tristan I most object to dismissing the way Marxists like to dismiss everyone before Marx as "Utopian".  Their approaches were just as Materialist as Marx and Bakunin, but Marxists are invested in a belief that no one was doing material Analysis before Marx.  So for the most part their very existence gets ignored.

In ContraPoints recent Video on Envy which I thought was pretty darn great even though I don't agree with everything, she calls Marxism "Utopian" because of it's deterministic belief in the inevitability of the fall of Capitalism to Socialism.  I don't think that's a great use of the word "Utopian" either, but it's still a valid criticism, as the idea is a comparison to the perceived ramifications of Christian belief in an inevitable Second Coming.  Which is a comparison that has been made before, just usually not using that word.

Marxists tend to insist they're more Optimistic then other Leftists precisely because of this belief in it's inevitability.  But no, Optimism is the Belief that you can Win and Pessimism the belief that you can't.  Believing victory is inevitable is a way to be Optimistic, but arguably not the most pragmatic way.  I think it's important to believe we can win, but we won't if we don't actually do anything but vote for Democrats.

Okay so enough with rambling about what Utopian doesn't mean. 

The Definition of Communism, a Moneyless, Classless, Stateless Society, is a Utopia, period.  Secular Leftists not liking the quasi religious connotations the word often has doesn't change that.  The word "Utopia" was being used to describe that idea long before the word "Communism" was, in fact the original hypothetical society the word was coined to describe was a Communist one.

Because the word has become so negatively connotated in the last century, among Leftists it keeps in some way being used a description of how to get there, they make it a Verb instead of a Noun.  I however say we reject the negative connotations and start calling ourselves Utopians as a badge of honor.

God and The Universe

The more I've thought about the issues I first discussed in Semi-Arianism and the Second Ecumenical Council the more I've come to think that the Homoousion controversy became a distraction from the actual point of the Arian Heresy.  But that's not me saying Homoousionism is wrong, per se.

So first we need to ask the question of why even did the full Arians (and even many Semi-Arians) object to the Homoousion formula so strongly?  It was not relevant to Arius's original explanation of his Theology at all.  And Arians did believe Jesus was the Son of God.  Aren't most children made from the Substance of their parents?

It's because of how by this time the Pythagorean and Platonic understanding of The Divine had influenced all schools of thought in the Greco-Roman world.  To them no Created Being could be described as being of the same Substance as the True Original God.  The Demiurge of Timaeus could be considered in some sense Homousian with the matter it was merely rearranging, but even the Demiurge was not Homousian with the True God (at least during this later post Numenius of Apamea period of Platonism and Pythagoreanism).  And the Arians were essentially Platonists who identified The Logos/Jesus with the Demiurge not the ultimate Supreme Being.  However what the Arians and Athanasians and Trinitarians who were iffy on Homoousianism like Eusebius of Caesarea all agreed on was that Creation itself is not Homousian with The Father.

I am making this post to suggest that this assumption everyone at Nicaea agreed on is actually something that The Bible maybe doesn't agree with.

I know that many Christians are used to thinking God must be completely outside The Universe in order to be it's Creator.  But if you know what you're doing, you can construct a circular wall in such a way that you are within it when you are done making it.  And maybe the Substance of God is Infinite enough that He could create the Universe from His own Substance without lessening Himself at all?

When The Bible says that The Heavens are His Throne and The Earth His Footstool, that imagery tells me He's within The Universe not outside of it.  Remember both the Ancient Hebrew and Greek words for "Heaven" at their core just meant The Sky and what we would call Outer Space.  I already made a post arguing that the Light that lightened the Universe before the Sun, Moon and Stars were created was the same Light that Jesus is identified with.  And then there is the fact that Adam became a Living Soul when God Breathed Life into him.  Breath in that verse is also a word for Spirit.  To me that is pretty strong support for at least our Spirits and/or Souls being homousian with The Holy Spirit.

InspiringPhilosophy in his video on Panentheism said there is supposed to be a strong distinction between Creator and Creation, but the only verse he cited was what Paul said in Romans 1.  First of all that verse was only about what we're supposed to Worship and nothing else.  And also Romans 1:18-32 is Paul quoting the beliefs of the Platonic Hellenized Jews of Rome he spent the rest of the Epistle refuting.  In Romans 11 Paul tells us what God is doing in grafting Gentiles into Israel is "Para phusis" thus utterly destroying the world view of Romans 1 where being "Para Phusis" is presented as inherently evil.

Materialism is often assumed to be inherently Atheistic.  However the Theology of the Ancient Stoics was a Materialist Monotheism.  (IP for some reason defined Soticism completely wrong in the Panentheism video), and so was the Theology of Dutch Jewish Philosopher Spinoza.

God being in The Universe doesn't mean He would be in it in a way that our currently limited ablity to perceive it could detect.  We now know there are at least 10 dimensions but we live in or perceive only 4 of them, the 3 spatial dimensions and time.  "Dark matter" is just a term for matter scientists are pretty sure exists but we are not currently capable of detecting with any of our 5 senses, and it's estimated to make up 85% of all matter.  The 6 colors our eyes can see are only a small piece of the Electromagnetic Spectrum, and it's the same with the other senses.

In other words No I'm not arguing that God and His Angels simply live on a Planet orbiting Polaris that we could fly a space ship to.

[Update November: See this post which is kind of a follow up.]

[The below digression into Stoicism I am more iffy on now, I don't want to erase it, it should have maybe always been a separate post.]

Divine Impassability and Divine Immutability

Are two doctrines that I had mistakenly conflated with each other in some of my past posts mentioning Divine Impassability on this blog. But they are related.

Divine Impassibility is the position that God did not suffer when Jesus was on Th Cross, it doesn't deny the Divinity of Christ, but holds that it was only in His Humanity that He Suffered.  Divine Immutability is the position that God doesn't change.  They tend to go together because Suffering is often both the cause and effect of some kind of Change.

The three way dispute between Chalcedonian, Nestorian and Miaphysite Christologies from the 5th and 6th Centuries is arguably pure semantics since all three were/are Nicene Trinitarians who view Christ as both Fully Divine and Fully Human.  The Nestorians held that Christ has two Natures, Divine and Human, that are not in any way mixed.  The Miaphysite position is that Christ has One Nature that is both Divine and Human.  The Chalcedonian position is that Christ had Two Natures, Divine and Human, that are mixed in the Incarnation.  The Bible doesn't directly address any of that, but my understanding of the Biblical Metanarrative leads me to favoring the Chalcedonian position, even if there are some details of the Chalcedonian Confession I don't like.

Thing is what makes these disputes a little less semantical are the other issues tied into them.  My greatest affinity with Nestorianism is that I don't like calling Mary Theotokos.  However since the technical accuracy of the term is not my issue with it, it's really irrelevant to the actual dispute Nestorius, Cyril and others were having 15 centuries ago.

While Divine Impassability is affirmed by theologians in all three camps, it was the Nestorians for whom it was the core of their position, and they alone who accused both other camps of rejecting Divine Impassability whether they would have self identified as doing so or not.  That is why in-spite of my respect for the Ancient Church of the East and how much I prefer the Antiochene School's approach to Scripture over the Alexandrian, I have to reject Nestorian Christology.

Thing is the Nestorians were not wrong to suggest that it's rather illogical to claim Divine Impassability if you believe the Divine and Human Natures were fully United in the Incarnation.  Cyril of Alexandria's attempts to justify himself on this involved a lot of Platonist Philosophical nonsense.  And that is why I unapologetically reject Divine Impassability.

But I still oppose misrepresenting Nestorius or the Ancient Church of The East, they did and still do believe Christ was one Person/Personality.  But the Miaphysites also get misrepresented, they were NOT Monophysites.

The Fifth Ecumenical Council affirmed the Theopaschite formula in it's 10th Canon.  And yet Impassability has still been affirmed by theologians belonging to Churches that nominally uphold that Council, thanks to Augustine's influence in the West and Cyril's in the East, so that canon gets ignored.  When the Fifth Council is brought up today it's only to debate what/who it did or did not condemn, never what it affirmed.  But getting the Theopaschite Formula affirmed was the whole point of the Council at the time, Justinian thought that would be the key to mending the Chalcedonian schism.

The fact that I agree with Justinian on the Theopaschite formula doesn't change that I despise him as a Ruler.  His obsession with trying to force everyone to agree only made them dig their heels in deeper.

Another issue related to the Divine Impassability v Theopaschite debate is Patripassianism, did The Father also suffer?  I would argue He Suffered in the way any Father watching His Son Suffer would Suffer, but that is distinct from feeling the Physical pain.

Augustine of Hippo used to be a Manichean Gnostic, and the whole reason he once held a Gnostic attitude towards the God of the Old Testament was because he was uncomfortable with the idea of God being so Emotional.  It was Ambrose telling he can just allegorize away all of those verses that finally enabled Augustine to abandon Gnosticism and become "Orthodox".  To me it is Augustine being someone who doesn't want an Emotional God that is the source of everything wrong with this Theology.

While strictly speaking the word Impassibility refers to is Suffering, to some this doctrine refers to God not feeling Pleasure as well.  To me this rejecting of God being an Emotional being at all is pure Platonic/Pythagorean heresy and utterly in conflict with The Hebrew Bible and The New Testament which teaches that God Is Love as the experience of Love tends to involve both Pleasure and Pain.

On the subject of Divine Immutability, it depends what you mean by it.  Malachi 3:6 is what most gets abused here as people keep quoting it while ignoring it's context.  That God keeps His Promises doesn't change, that He Is Love won't change, therefore He will NOT allow His People to be Consumed.  That Core aspect of Who God Is does not change.  It's the same with Hebrews 13:8 "Jesus Christ is the same Yesterday, Today and Forever" the context is about Grace and Jesus being a Sacrifice offered for us, it's about His essential character not some absolute declaration that nothing can ever change, as Romans 8:35 and it's context make clear.

But The Bible also refers to God Repenting (See Exodus 32:14 and Numbers 14:12-20; Jonah 3:10; Amos 7:3-9; Jeremiah 26:3), repent means to change one's mind.  And I feel the whole point of the Incarnation is that Humanity and Divinity are both permanently changed by being United in Christ.  The Hyper Immutability that is favored by Nestorius, Cyril and Augustine is again a heresy based on the Greek and Roman Churches' infatuation with Platonic and Pythagorean theology, not Scripture.

Divine Immutability doesn't begin with Plato or Pythagoras however but with Xenophanes.

There is also the matter of one of the most vital passages to defining God in all of scripture.  The famous "I Am that I am" statement, many scholars have argued a more accurate translation would be "I Am who I Am Becoming" or "I Will Be whom I Will Be", meanings that imply change even if in a paradoxical way due to God's knowing the future.  I personally have grown to like "I Am whom I Will Be", "Watashi wa watashi ga dare ni naru ka".

Update September 2022: I bought Robert C. Gregg and Dennis E. Groh's Early Arianism - a view of salvation for the purpose of research on the Arian controversy I'm doing for the sake of a possible future post.  But two things I didn't expect to learn were. 1. Arius had a fixation on Divine Impassability similar to the future Nestorians.  2. The Arians used Divine Immutability against the Nicenes by proving the changeability of The Son.  And this was kind of their greatest strength because Athanasius was unwilling to abandon Divine Immutability.

The Changeability the Arians the argued for The Son was for Improvability, which you may at first think doesn't correlate to the Changeability I am here arguing for The Godhead, but from a certain point of view it is.  God incarnating and becoming fully Human made Him a better God.  Hebrews stresses how Jesus faced all the Temptations normal humans face yet never sinned.  Not sinning is easy when you aren't even tempted, it is facing Temptation and beating it that is a true accomplishment.

The Pagan Greek Origins of Puritan Sexual Morality.

I wrote an Amazon Review for the book Plato or Paul?: The Origins of Western Homophobia by Theodore W. Jennings Jr.  [I recently learned that Jennings had passed away in 2020, may he Rest in Peace.]

I have also more recently obtained The Classical Origins of Modern Homophobia by Robert H. Allen.  I may also write an Amazon Review for it. 

I first learned about the Homophobia of Plato's The Laws however when I discovered this Website.

https://people.well.com/user/aquarius/

In it's article Plato: The Serpent in the Garden of Sexuality.  

My own past blog posts on this issue are a bit outdated now due to their references to things I've since changed my mind on, or at least now have a more informed opinion on.  Like how I had fallen into the trap of mistakenly thinking there was anything Communist or Socialist about either of Plato's proposed political systems.

Each of those three discussions of this issue have areas I disagree with.  None are as "Conservative" as I am about the origins of The Bible.  Only Jennings agrees with me that Paul is on our side, and Allen's agenda is not to exonerate The Bible of Homophobia at all, he alone of them agrees with the Homophobic reading of even the Leviticus verses.  Actually he cites a Saul Olyan that it's specifically referring to Male on Male Anal Penetration, which is close to my old position, but I now believe the "Wife's Bed" and "Abomination to Her" readings are the key to proving this is not a unilateral condemnation of any specific Sex act much less any type of relationship.

I think Jennings's theory on what Arsenokoites refers to (which is that it's essentially Rape) is probably most correct.  But I don't agree with his argument against it being in any way an allusion to the Leviticus verses, I simply think what he correctly argues Arsenkoites refers to, is what some people in Ancient Corinth and Ephesus thought those Leviticus verses were about.  His argument that Paul doesn't generally cite Leviticus to make moral arguments is irrelevant to the Vice Lists, because in those he was just using terms his audience would be familiar with, the vice lists are not themselves arguments against the behaviors listed.

I think Jennings's break down of Romans 1 is useful. but I still mainly side with Colby Martin's take on that in his Unclobber series.  Which is that Romans 1:18-32 is a rhetorical rant, that he's laying out the worldview the Epistle as a whole is written against, paraphrasing passages from Wisdom of Solomon and adding in Philo's usage of the "Para Phusis" concept introduced in The Laws, in order to spend the rest of the Epistle refuting that world view, in Romans 11 what God does is Para Phusis clearly rejecting the idea that being Para Phusis is immoral.

And Allen's cynical readings of The Bible lead to similar issues with extra-Biblical Church writers as well.  Clement of Alexandria was the first Christian to bring this "Para Phusis" Sexual Morality into the Church.  The crime of "corrupting youth" in works like the Didache is not Homosexuality or anything Sexual, just as it wasn't when Athens executed Socrates for that crime.  I likewise feel Allen is being unfair to both Justin Martyr and Tertullian.

The reason why I didn't put Plato in the title of this post is because Allen argues Pythagorean Philosophy and it's Dualism is the ultimate origin of this problem.  He argues Authentic Plato may have been at least partially influenced by Pythagoreanism, but also argues that The Laws as we have it is not an authentic work of Plato but a forgery produced and transmitted primarily by Pythagoreans.  And I think he might be correct on that.  Here is a YouTube video expressing similar ideas about the origins of Laws and how to interpret The Republic.

But still Authentic Plato or not the development of Platonic Schools of Philosophy was influenced by The Laws on these issues and others, which in turn influenced Roman Stoicism, Neopythagoreanism, Hellenistic Judaism, Gnosticism, The Alexandrian School of Christianity, and Neo-Platonism, which also all influenced each other in late Antiquity culminating in John Chrysostom, Cyril of Alexandria and Augustine of Hippo.  Allen also documents how across the board Pagan Roman Society was Homophobic having been influenced by Southern Italian Pythagoreanism long before they even came into contact with the Eastern Mediterranean.

However another theory on the perceived inconsistencies between The Laws and the seemingly more positive Sexual attitudes expressed in works like Symposium is that Plato changed over the course of his life, perhaps partly from Pythagorean influence.  The Laws is considered the very last book he wrote and Symposium one of the earliest.

But going back to more indisputably authentic Plato, the title character of Timaeus (who's still around during Critias) is inferred to be a Pythagorean in the text of that dialogue.  So what Timaeus says can reasonably be presumed to be at least what Plato thought the Pythagoreans believed.  And it's from Timaeus we get what's considered the Platonist Creation Myth including the The Demiurge.  What's up for debate is how much the author wants us to take the title character and his ideas seriously.

The Website I linked to up top also has interesting stuff on the "Born Eunuch" issue and other subjects.  But it's article The Historic Origins of Church Condemnation of Homosexuality I don't recommend.  I have found no other sources claiming Eusebius of Nicomedia was ever referred to as a Eunuch.  meanwhile the pro Nicene Emperor Constans was a known Homosexual, before Theodosius I it was the Arian Emperors who were far more oppressive to those who disagreed with them.  [Update: So the Eunuch he's talking isn't the Bishop of Nicomedia who died in 341 but a different Eusebius mentioned in Athanasius's History of The Arians during the "Papacy" of Liberius.  Still I feel it's wrong to say the Arian controversy is why The Church embraced this Pythagorean sexual morality.  There were clearly Homosexuals and Platonists on both sides, Arian theology wouldn't be possible without the Timaeus based distinction between the Demiurge and the Monad, though making that distinction arguably begins with Numenius of Apamea in the 2nd Century.]

It's not just Homophobia, condemning all Sex Outside Marriage has the same roots in The Laws attributed to Plato.  As well as the idea that Sex is only for Reproduction which 1 Corinthians 7 explicitly contradicts.  What's almost Prophetic about it is how it talks about using Religion to condition society to react to Same Sex love the same way they do Incest.  These people were never fully able to get the Greeks to believe such things about their Native gods, but once many Greeks started worshiping the God of Abraham without a proper understanding of Bronze Age Semitic culture, that was when this long term scheme to lie about God's attitude towards Sex was able to take off.

Here is another Article I found about Pythagorean Sexual Morality.  And here is one on Pythagoras and Celibacy.

And it's not just the Sexual Morality of The Laws either.  Some people accuse Plato of being Proto-Fascist just based on The Republic, but The Laws is even more indistinguishable from the actual definition of Fascism.  Allen argued that the Pythagorean movement was tied to Totalitarianism already even before Plato's time.  Meanwhile the Calvinist view of Election which derives from Augustine's Gnostic Predestinationism lends itself well to the in-group vs out-group mentality.

Connecting this Sexual Morality to Platonism is useful because of how many other Unbiblical Ideas to enter Christianity are also tied to Plato's both direct and indirect influence on Greco-Roman Church Writers, including ideas opposed by many Conservative Evangelicals today.  So maybe a good way to open some minds is to show how these Sexual attitudes are tied to other doctrines they don't like.

Not all Platonist Ideas to enter the Church became part of Mainstream Christian thought.  Gnosticism and Marcionism were condemned as Heretical, as well as the Pre-Existence of Souls doctrine often associated with Origen, and Arianism which was also influenced by the Theology of Timaeus.  Still those ideas are related to things that did become mainstream.  Most casual Christians do have a fairly Platonist Understanding of the Immortality of the Soul simply minus the Reincarnation and Pre-Existence (Pope Benedict XII's Benedictus Deus in 1336 basically canonized the After Life depicted in Gorgias for the Western Church.), which in turn helps lead to Full Preterism and any other Eschatology that denies a Literal Bodily Resurrection. 

Divine Impassability and Divine Immutability which I plan on making a separate post on are also tied to Platonist understandings of The Divine.  And a section in Gorgias definitely influenced the Traditional Judeo-Christian understanding of Hell and The Lake of Fire.

Evangelicals who don't like how more mainline denominations have been rejecting taking The Old Testament literally should know that not only is that a Platonist influence but the Allegorists are open about that.  In Brad Jersak's seminar on the subject he brags about how the Early Church Fathers decided to take the same approach to the Hebrew Bible that Plato and other Philosophers took to Homer and Hesiod.  He leaves out how the Antiochene School rejected that idea and were hyper-literalists.

Even Plato wasn't wrong on everything, he correctly concluded that the Earth was Round.  And that is why the most openly anti-Plato Christians on YouTube right now are the Flat Earthers.  So someone should explain to them how their Puritan Sexual morality has the same Platonist roots.  Still these Flat Earthers are unwittingly Pythagorean themselves with their Dome Cosmology resulting in a hard separation between the Divine and Earthly realms, and Rob Skiba even entertaining the view that we didn't have physical bodies before The Fall which is outright Gnostic.

One Pythagorean idea that was only ever accepted among some of the Full Blown Gnostics was Reincarnation, that one was especially impossible to make fit into The Bible.  But I do feel those who on Eschatology argue John The Baptist was the return of Elijah promised by Malachi's final verse are unwittingly planting a seed for it.

Over the course of the 2nd through 6th centuries Greco-Roman Christians increasingly took on Platonist Influences but in different ways.  Some seemed to be taking the Dialogue structure more so then any Metaphysics.  However when I look at Athenagoras of Athens who came a little before even Clement, it seems like the Sexual Morality of Laws was one of the first aspects of Platonism Christians embraced.  Maybe it's because even early on Paul's use of Para Phusis was easy to misunderstand.  Or maybe it's because this Minority religion mistakenly felt they should be rebelling agaisnt the Morals of mainstream Greek Society which it so happened was also what the Pythagoreans were doing.

Some similarities between Neoplatonism and Hellenic Judeo-Christians are the former being influenced by the latter, Numenius of Apamea definitely studied Jewish Platonists like Philo, and Ammonius Saccas was raised a Christian but then left the faith before becoming a teacher of Plotinus.  The puritanical Sexual Morality however definitely began with the Platonists not the Christians as this post has shown.

I'm neither Protestant, Catholic or Orthodox.

In spite of the things that are Protestant like about me, I have come to reject the Protestant understanding of "Justified by Faith not works".  Which is the one thing all branches of Protestantism have in common, Lutheran, Calvanist, Arminian, Wesleyan, and the Free Grace Eternal Security that was my original Soteriology when I started this blog.

Justification in Romans is NOT the same thing as Salvation, the true Soteriology of Paulian Theology is laid out in Romans 5 and 11 where Justification is no longer the focus at all.  And when Paul speaks of us being Saved By Grace through Faith in other Epistles, the Faith in question is of Jesus not us.

So does that make my view of Justification the same as the Catholic and Orthodox view?  Maybe, but must still be understood in the context of my firm belief in Universal Salvation.  

However what prevents me from simply going back and rejoining any Ancient Church is that I firmly reject Episcopal Polity and the Authority of all Church Councils besides the one attended by the Apostles themselves in Acts 15.  My position on Church Polity is Congregational first and foremost but with elements of Presbyterianism.

So many Catholic and Orthodox clerical arguments against Protestantism are founded on a belief there needs to be some tangible continuity between a valid modern Church and the Churches of antiquity  And I can't help but be reminded of the things Jesus said specifically to rebuke that way of thinking.

"From whom did John get his Authority to Baptize?"-Matthew 21:23-27

"Who isn't agaisnt us is with us"-Mark 9:40

The Church was never meant to be an Organized Religion but a decentralized association.