Appearing on Fox News the other day to talk about the
Declaration of Independence and our
Founding Fathers, conservative radio talk show host Mark Levin said that while
leftists look to the teachings of Karl Marx, people on the right “stand on the
shoulders” of Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, etc.
Of course, it was
Aristotle, the student of Plato, who said, “Knowing yourself is the beginning
of all wisdom.” Yeah, right.
A quick look at World
History for Dummies clues
the reader in on why the vast majority of Christianity adopts the Greeks’ allegorical approach to the Bible.
Under the heading Replacing Homer with the
Bible, it says, “Another reason why furious interpretations and
counter-interpretations marked Christianity from the beginning: Look at the
places where Christianity sprang up. Christianity filtered through a world
marked by Hellenistic (Greek-like) traditions, by the Greek teachings that
followed Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and Alexander the Great’s empire.
“Early centers of the Church included Alexandria,
Egypt, which was a capital of Greek scholarship, and Rome, where so many
Hellenistic philosophies rubbed up against one another for a long time. . . As
Greek thought shifted to Christian thought, the Bible took the place of Homer’s
poems and the Greek-Roman pantheon as a general context for philosophical
questioning.”
Jordan reminds, “Before the ink was dry on Paul’s
epistles, efforts were under way to syncretize the truth he taught with Greek
philosophy. The most influential school emphasizing this approach was
Alexandria, Egypt. It’s the place where almost all of the corruptions of the
Word of God available today originate from."
*****
The ancient Greeks were hyper-focused
on how to accomplish the “summum bonum” (the supreme good) in life, or what
they considered happiness, and in Acts 17:16, when Paul’s in Athens (the center
of the Greek world and the intellectual center of the world of his day), it
says “his spirit was stirred in him, when he saw the city wholly given to
idolatry.”
Acts 17:18 reads, “Then certain
philosophers of the Epicureans, and of the Stoicks, encountered him. And some
said, What will this babbler say? other some, He seemeth to be a setter forth
of strange gods: because he preached unto them Jesus, and the resurrection.”
Of the disciples of Epicurus (B.C.
342-271), C.I. Scofield says they “abandoned as hopeless the search by reason
for pure truth (cf John 18:38), seeking instead true pleasure by experience.”
Of the Stoics, the philosophy “was
founded on human self-sufficiency, inculcated stern self-repression, the
solidarity of the race, and the unity of Deity.”
*****
Jordan explains, “The Epicureans
and Stoics divided the apostolic world and were the two dominant thinkers and
culture-drivers of their day and the reason was there were two extremes on how
to solve the contentment issue.
“For the Epicureans it was getting,
acquiring, having, conquering, owning, achieving. They believed, ‘You get
enough stuff and you’ll be satisfied.’ That was a big thing in the Roman
Empire: ‘Go out and conquer, conquer, conquer and we’ll be satisfied.’ Of
course, that’s the dominant thinking of the Western world. Certainly, it’s the
way the West and America operates: ‘The more we can get, the bigger the better.’
“Now you know that doesn’t work
because what you’re looking for keeps moving; it’s elusive.
“The Stoics were the other way.
They said, ‘If you desire less and less, you can desire less and less until
nothing matters. Just get disconnected from things.’ Now, that’s the Eastern thinking;
the Buddhist mentality. ‘The way to get peace is to get less and less and be
detached until it just doesn’t matter.’
“The Stoics’ big illustration was
they’d take a valuable vase and break it and say, ‘It doesn’t matter.’ A child
would die and they’d say, ‘It doesn’t really matter. Doesn’t hurt.’ It was just a grin-and-bear-it kind of a thing. That way it can’t impact you.
“But that doesn’t work either, does
it? Somebody once said, ‘Stoics have made their heart a desert and called it
peace.’ You can’t do that because things DO matter! God put a conscience inside
of you and things do matter. Right and wrong does matter.
"In Chicago, a 12-year-old
gang member shoots an 11-year-old kid and the commentary about it is, ‘How can
you have children care nothing about life that they’re just willing to
murder each other?!’
"That’s the Stoic mentality.
You’re just more and more detached from anything that matters
until nothing matters and so there’s no value in anything. But that just makes
for more discontentment.
*****
“In Romans 13: 3-7, God gives
the pattern for how government’s supposed to work today.
“Paul reasons in Romans 13:3, ‘For rulers are not a
terror to good works, but to the evil. Wilt thou then not be afraid of the
power? do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise of the same.’
“Violators have to be restrained by fear of just retribution
from the duly constituted authority. The just administration and enforcement of
the laws by the government is what gives stability and is a terror to evil.
That’s why he says, ‘Wilt thou then not be afraid of the power?’
“That’s talking about natural law, common law. ‘We
hold these truths to be self-evident that man is endued with certain
inalienable rights.’ The Declaration of
Independence understood that passage.
“But there are some things that the Creator gives …
Government is designed NOT to produce the good works but to give praise to
the good works. Not to be the good worker, not to do the good work, not to
support the good work, not to produce them . . . we’re not talking about some
great monolithic government doing it all for you.
“It’s talking about providing a system in which the
good works can be accomplished and praise and honor built up.
“That’s why our forefathers said, ‘The government
which governs best is the government which governs least.’ It only steps in to
be a terror to the evil and provides an atmosphere of harmony so the good works
can prosper.
*****
“You always want to remember that Satan’s policy and
M.O. includes human good. His attempt is to ‘solve’ problems apart from God,
and every attempt at solving the problems of mankind apart from God’s Word, is
only a satanic delusion, whether it’s socialism, communism, internationalism,
capitalism, reformation, humanitarianism, welfare, government intervention,
government coercion, liberalism, conservativism, organized Christianity,
religion . . .
“Capitalism comes into play in Ecclesiastes 5:13
when Solomon observes, ‘There is a sore evil which I have seen under the sun,
namely, riches kept for the owners thereof to their hurt.’
“This is a great American philosophy. You know what
the basic principle of capitalism is? You got to have money to make money, and
to make money you’ve got to spend money; you can’t hoard it up. Solomon says if
you want to be wise and not hurt by money, don’t just keep it stored up.
“Ecclesiastes 6:2 says of socialism, ‘A man to whom
God hath given riches, wealth, and honour, so that he wanteth nothing for his
soul of all that he desireth, yet God giveth him not power to eat thereof, but
a stranger eateth it: this is vanity, and it is an evil disease.’ ”
(new article tomorrow)
No comments:
Post a Comment