The Creation of God - Jacob Hartmann (readict TXT) 📗

with his half-Grecian ideas, whose mind was permeated with Grecian philosophy, used it largely in his argumentations, theologico-philosophic, and in his epistolary correspondence to enlighten and instruct his disciples.

The Israelites or Jews up to the time of Christ were not by any means a spiritual nation. They had a god of the flesh; a sort of cannibal god; a politico-religious god, in whose name every kind of horror and brutality was committed. This was not Paul’s God. The garb of Socratic and Platonic philosophy adorns the spiritual phase of Paul’s idea. The dual existence is distinctly set forth (Cor. xv, 44): “There is a natural body and there is a spiritual body.” “For the spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God” (Rom. viii, 16). “Likewise the spirit helpeth our infirmities” (26). “For if ye live after the flesh ye shall die” (13). “For as many as are led by the spirit of God, they are the sons of God” (14). The notion of Paul throughout his epistles of what he terms flesh and spirit, separating them as two distinct parts of the body, and as having a dual existence, on one side the spiritual, the godly, on the other the fleshy, the sinful, the earthly—is due to the educational doctrines that then were in vogue. The anatomical knowledge was limited, and the physiological workings of the nervous system, the functions of the brain, were entirely unknown. The flesh and spirit were the representatives of the muscular and nervous tissue, flesh of the muscular, spirit of the nervous. One of the most mysterious or hidden secrets was this function of the brain. The absence of any positive knowledge of the nervous system until recent times, caused many errors to creep in, and many false impressions were received by mistake; and these blunders through ignorance have remained to a very considerable extent fixed and unaltered.

Grecian philosophers who were attempting to give a reason, or account, for the various mental phenomena, came to conclusions which are to-day seen to be contrary to scientific truth. He, Paul, embodied in his writings all the speculative philosophy known at his time. This dual existence had been taught among the Greeks for several centuries. When Paul wrote to the Romans he was in Corinth, and when he wrote to the Corinthians he was at Philippi, Macedonia. The rest of his epistles were written partly from Greece, but mostly from Rome or Italy.

Nowhere in the Old Testament is mention made of spirit and flesh after the manner of Paul. They had no knowledge of Grecian philosophy. Of course the mental condition had undergone some changes from the time of Ezra to Christ. Numerous sects had paved the way, and the ideas of various nations had been exchanged. A wonderful metamorphosis had taken place in the God during the one thousand five hundred years that passed between Moses and Paul. The ideal of Moses was a barbarous, cruel God—a determined, imperative, imperious God, that had a purpose in view, a nation to form, a country to conquer. The prince of Egypt, the successful general of a victorious army, talks; every word is a peremptory command. The strong, powerful will of an energetic man stands behind Jehova. There is no philosophy, but all action. No ideality, but muscular force. No humbleness, meekness, or mildness, but the stern exercise of a power that never flinches in any undertaking; regardless of consequences; pitiless in battle; fearless in the struggle, once determined must reach success. There is no display of imagination, no spiritual reflection, no refinement, but there is only the coarse, vulgar, savage God of Chaldean-Egyptian modification.

The God had undergone changes in the mental agitation of the times, and Paul had accepted the God as he conceived him, through teachings then prevalent. An orator for a reformation, the cause of Christ he had embraced, coupled with the learning of the Grecian literature, his imagination led him to portray his God in the abstract—a refined ethereal being—in truth, a gentleman of a God.

Paul was the real founder of the past and modern church system, the giver of ideas, the furnisher of numerous themes that gave impulse to any number of shades of the various sects now in existence, the promulgator of modification, the pleader of a cause, the moralizer, the humble adviser and counselor of the lowly, ignorant, and poor. He was very earnest and sincere in the cause he had espoused, and, if anything, proud of it—“For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek” (Rom. i, 16). Next to Jew he was Greek. No wonder that his mind was tainted with Grecianism. His God was an alloy of Greek and Jew Gods. The Greek philosophy helped to refine and eliminate the barbarism and brutality out of the Mosaic God.

Our modern mountebank preachers have nothing new to agitate and talk about in their fashionable decorated kindergartens of Christianity. They are ever spinning round the same circle. They are sensational, mouthing and gesticulating before a crowd they wish to entertain, and for this they are very handsomely housed, fed, and otherwise recompensed. They are the greedy theological leeches of humanity. They suck the blood, but give nothing in return. Have they advanced the cause of humanity? Is humanity any wiser to-day than these poor ignorant creatures were at the time Paul was trying to get a new idea into their untutored brain?

Here is a partial list of Paul’s complaints (Rom. i, 29, 30, 31): Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity, whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, without understanding, covenant-breakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful. For nineteen hundred years these Christian saints have been trying to convert the world—Jews included, for indeed they needed it—and what has been accomplished? Does your kindergarten church teach aught that corrects the above evils? Have you made them all into saints?

Paul’s argument about circumcision is very ingenious. He proposes an inward circumcision for the outward—heart and spirit (Rom. ii, 29), circumcision through faith. His doctrine, the wages of sin is death but the gift of God is eternal life (Rom. vi, 23), is very mischievous. It leads men to give their flesh a full swing and leads them to a satiety of pleasure and satisfaction of earthly bliss—lust or licentiousness, and they let the godly or spiritual part take care of itself. This is not education, but stupefaction. Yet our civilized spiritual purveyors of the soul are still chewing the same theological cud of nineteen hundred years ago. Every transgression against ourselves, against our own body, is a transgression against the law of nature, and the body must pay the penalty. Paul (Rom. xiii, 13) says, “Let us walk honestly, as in the day; not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and annoying.” Paul was a great believer in spiritual gifts. Cor. xii—this chapter has given rise to more crazes, frauds, and cheats than Paul ever dreamed of. Verse 4: “Now these are diversities of gifts, but the same spirit.” Verse 7: “But the manifestation of spirit is given to every man,” etc. Then he enumerates the gifts—faith-healing, miracles, prophecy, discerning spirits, speaking divers kinds of tongues, interpretation of tongues, etc. (Cor. xii, 9, 10). This of course opens a wide field for imposition and charlatanism. Paul being an authority, cranks and “fakes” are not slow in taking advantage of it. A very large percentage of the masses are ignorant, easily made superstitious and bigoted. Any nonsensical idea is swiftly impressed. They are satisfied with anything they are told—content with a filled stomach and salvation hereafter. This heavenly promise is an immense thing, an ecclesiastical bonanza. For thousands of years, it has been an extraordinary source of income. Hundreds of thousands have lived in ease and luxury, have enjoyed heaven on earth, and let their poor ignorant dupes enjoy the hereafter.

Paul also gives the Catholic church a right to use the anathema. Cor. xvi, 22: “If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be Anathema, maranatha”—”Let him be accursed.” The Roman Catholic church has made good use of it. From the time the Nicean Council was held every one of their canons—as their rules are termed—is accompanied by an anathema for every man that does not think, say, or believe as the church or its priests dictate. The church institution is so well organized and the system so well regulated, that they possess the means of squeezing the last cent out of poor ignorant parishioners. They have so many trapdoors to catch the weary simpleton, that if the money does not come through mass, it will come through indulgence, or unction, or sacrament, or anything and everything. They dispose of their spiritual wares at all prices—anywhere, everywhere, and at all times. Here is an instructive example of teaching:

“What is the blessed Eucharist? Ans. The body and blood, soul and divinity of Jesus Christ, under the appearance of bread and wine,” etc.

The immense amount of evil done by this church is something enormous to contemplate. If a papal medal in honor of the massacre of St. Bartholomew’s could be found and put up at auction, it would fetch a small fortune. Literature was almost completely suppressed by this church, by laws published under the seal of the supreme pontiff. How few at the present day know anything of the history of the Catholic church. Their past, their terrible black past, with their God, their Jesus Christ, their Holy Ghost, their Holy Virgin, and their saints—what arrogance, ambition, pride, selfishness, greed, tyranny, licentiousness, terror and torture of the Inquisition, bloody crimes and massacres, they were guilty of! Reflection on these many diabolical outrages makes one’s flesh creep, and one wonders why such an institution has not been swept from the face of the earth centuries ago. Have they done any good upon earth? From the time of Moses until after the time of Luther, yes, up to the present time even, they have been continuously thrusting their idea of God into the minds of man with the sword, through blood and slaughter, with what result? Has humanity improved? Paul has much to say about the frailties of human nature (2 Tim. iv, 2, 3, 4): “For men shall be lovers of their own self, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, truce-breakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers, traitors, heady, high-minded, lovers of pleasure,” etc. The quarrels, dissensions, and protestations of the present day among the teachers and preachers of Christianity are a topic of entertainment in our daily press. Heresy, blasphemy, money disputes, Briggs, Smith, Corrigan, Wigger, etc.—what is it all about that will benefit humanity? Priest and preacher, the modern teachers of the theological kindergarten, have not advanced any in their methods. The civil law holds them in check and keeps them within the bounds of their vocation. Women, the decorations and attractions, the most numerous supporters of all church enterprises, are not held in very high estimation by Paul. 1 Tim. ii, 9: “In like manner also, that women adorn themselves in modest apparel, with shame-facedness and sobriety; not with braided hair, or gold, or pearls, or costly array.” Verse 11: “Let