25 Cheshvan / 8 November, 2023

You feel like there is nothing more. No supernatural, other realm of God and angels. No divine beings to encounter. Any other spiritual realm, if it is there, is in a galaxy somewhere far, far away. Beyond your senses or ability to perceive it, let alone interact with it.

This is the overwhelming experience for the vast majority of people, whether they call themselves Jesus followers or have some some other religious perspective.

It’s like the strange staircase I once observed at my relatives’ house. They had constructed the ground floor of their brand new building. Since the upper floor had not yet been completed (that would be added later on) the future staircase to this future top floor ended temporarily in an abrupt, solid ceiling. This gave a bizarre sense that there was nothing above this solid barrier.

This image perfectly describes the split universe. We live out our lives on the bottom floor- the material and physical plane of our five senses and yet there is a solid wall above our heads. If there is a heavens where the Creator lives then perhaps he has wound up the universe like a gigantic clock and travelled to another universe to holiday in!

In chapter 2, James Thwaites does a magnificent job of charting the journey towards this post modern alienated existence from the divine.

The Platonic Virus takes over the early church

From the first followers of Jesus living with a thoroughly Hebrew and biblical mind the church is gradually captured by a virus more deadly than Covid.

As the early church fathers defended Christianity against pagan belief the tools they used were soaked in Platonic philosophy.

Thwaites argues that gradually spiritual life became centred on a removed realm, similar to Plato’s forms, with the philosopher kings of Plato now dressed up in sacred vestments and standing behind the fixed and immovable altar of the church building.

photo of virus: Wikimedia Commons

Next time: Aquinas becomes infected…

© Stephen Paul Jacob