The problems of the material world are integral with human reflection. And often the solutions have spiritual elements despite the formulas and graphs. Dialectics. Invisible hands. Nagel's direction of Nature. These problems are more than practical, they compete for our time, energy and devotion with the spiritual. The New Testament is filled with disturbing choices Christ asks His followers to consider.
Early Christians developed a number of solutions to the problem of work, property and the material world that Christ so carefully counter-pointed with the spiritual world. Early and influential was a communist Christian heretic in the late 12th-century, the Calabrian abbot and hermit, Joachim of Fiore. Joachim, who almost managed to convert three popes to his heresy, adopted the thesis that there are destined to be in history, not just two Ages (pre- and post-Christian) as orthodox Christians believe, but a Third Age aborning, of which he was the prophet. The pre-Christian era was the age of the Father, of the Old Testament; the Christian era the age of the Son, the New Testament. Arriving was the third apocalyptic age of the Holy Spirit, to be ushered in during the next half-century, an age of pure love and freedom, in which history was to come to an end. The Church, the Bible, and the State would be swept away, and man would live in a free, communist community without work or property. Father. Son Holy Spirit. Very poetic and symmetrical.
Joachim dispensed with the problem of production and allocation under this communism very neatly and effectively, more so than any communist successor. In the Third Age, he declared, man's material body will disappear, and man will be pure spirit, free to spend all of his days in mystical ecstasy chanting praises to God for a thousand years until the Day of Judgment. Without physical bodies, there is of course precious little need for production.
Joachim was of the apocalyptic tradition of John, perhaps second in importance only to him. He offered a view of Revelations distinct from Augustine and his symbolic translations: He saw events in the context of Revelation literally. The sixth head of the seven-headed Dragon of Revelations he thought was Saladin. He was very influential--especially for a hermit--and was consulted by King Richard the Lion Hearted on his way to the Third Crusade.
A drawing of Joachim, the Dragon of Revelations
Early Christians developed a number of solutions to the problem of work, property and the material world that Christ so carefully counter-pointed with the spiritual world. Early and influential was a communist Christian heretic in the late 12th-century, the Calabrian abbot and hermit, Joachim of Fiore. Joachim, who almost managed to convert three popes to his heresy, adopted the thesis that there are destined to be in history, not just two Ages (pre- and post-Christian) as orthodox Christians believe, but a Third Age aborning, of which he was the prophet. The pre-Christian era was the age of the Father, of the Old Testament; the Christian era the age of the Son, the New Testament. Arriving was the third apocalyptic age of the Holy Spirit, to be ushered in during the next half-century, an age of pure love and freedom, in which history was to come to an end. The Church, the Bible, and the State would be swept away, and man would live in a free, communist community without work or property. Father. Son Holy Spirit. Very poetic and symmetrical.
Joachim dispensed with the problem of production and allocation under this communism very neatly and effectively, more so than any communist successor. In the Third Age, he declared, man's material body will disappear, and man will be pure spirit, free to spend all of his days in mystical ecstasy chanting praises to God for a thousand years until the Day of Judgment. Without physical bodies, there is of course precious little need for production.
Joachim was of the apocalyptic tradition of John, perhaps second in importance only to him. He offered a view of Revelations distinct from Augustine and his symbolic translations: He saw events in the context of Revelation literally. The sixth head of the seven-headed Dragon of Revelations he thought was Saladin. He was very influential--especially for a hermit--and was consulted by King Richard the Lion Hearted on his way to the Third Crusade.
A drawing of Joachim, the Dragon of Revelations
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