Angilbert (fl. ca. 840/50), On the Battle Which was Fought at Fontenoy

The Law of Christians is broken,
Blood by the hands of hell profusely shed like rain,
And the throat of Cerberus bellows songs of joy.

Angelbertus, Versus de Bella que fuit acta Fontaneto

Fracta est lex christianorum
Sanguinis proluvio, unde manus inferorum,
gaudet gula Cerberi.

Saturday, March 31, 2012

The International Community, Stoic Contributions

WHEN DIOGENES OF SINOPE WAS ASKED from whence he came, he answered, "I am a citizen of the world." The word he used when he uttered somewhere around 412 B.C. was kosmopolitēs, from which we obtain the word cosmopolitan. In the Greek milieu in which he answered--focused so much upon the individual city, the polis--Diogenes's concept transcended the conventional.

That concept was taken by the Stoics and expanded as a central them of their political philosophy. For example, the "grave and holy"** Hierocles (f. 2nd century A.D.) describes the Stoic cosmopolitanism as a series of concentric circles of community, from self, to nuclear family, to extended family, to local community, etc. extending more broadly until the outer circle of humanity itself. At this outer level was the cosmopolis. Each and every man was composed of a layered reality, and just as it was a false conception to focus only and self in disregard of outer layers, so likewise it was a false conception to focus on the most general layer--humanity--and neglect the interior core of self. Though the concept was Cynic in origin, it was embraced by the Stoic philosophers, and we find it in full flower with the Roman Stoics. For example, we find the notion peppered in the writings of Cicero.*** The Roman concept viewed the cosmopolis as an outermost community of men governed by natural law.


"Hierocles's Circle"


The early Church found an affinity between the moral teachings of Christ and the Stoic philosophers. For example, it found an allied philosophical thought in the Stoic notion of the natural law and the Stoic notion of the cosmopolis. However, the Church did not accept the Stoic philosophy wholesale, but adapted it, conformed it, and synthesized it with the truths of the Gospel. As the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy explains:

Nowhere was Stoic cosmopolitanism itself more influential than in early Christianity. Early Christians took the later Stoic recognition of two cities as independent sources of obligation and added a twist. For the Stoics, the citizens of the polis and the citizens of the cosmopolis do the same work: both aim to improve the lives of the citizens. The Christians respond to a different call: “Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's” (Matthew 22:21). On this view, the local city may have divine authority (John 19:11; cf. Romans 13:1,4,7), but the most important work for human goodness is removed from traditional politics, set aside in a sphere in which people of all nations can become “fellow-citizens with the saints” (Ephesians 2:20).†

It is therefore from this confluence of a biblical stream and the Stoic stream that the Church sees, at the outermost circle of our obligations, an obligation to humankind which it calls the "universal common good." This Stoic notion of men bound by one God and one universal moral law, and the compatible Scriptural notion of one God, one Redeemer, and one Golden Rule, is at the heart of its vision of the international order.

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*Diogenes Laertius, The Lives of Eminent Philosophers VI.63. (κοσμοπολίτης). The work κοσμοπολίτης is a word derived from world or universe or cosmos (Κόσμος) and city or state or polis (Πόλις). A citizen of the city was a πολίτης (politēs) Thus a κοσμοπολίτης is a citizen of the State.
**The description is from Aulus Gelius,
Attic Nights, ix.5.8. Hierocles of Alexandria wrote a book called Elements of Ethics and a book (of which only extracts survive) entitled On Appropriate Acts. It is from this latter text that the notion of the Hierocles's Circle is drawn. See Ilaria Ramelli, Hierocles the Stoic: Elements of Ethics, Fragments, and Excerpts (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2009), 123-27. (trans. David Konstan). The fragments are found in Stobaeus (Eclogai, 4.671-3, 11). Related to this is the doctrine of oikeiōsis which describes how these various levels interact and ought to accommodate to each other.
Each one of us is as it were entirely encompassed by many circles, some smaller, others larger, the latter enclosing the former on the basis of their different and unequal dispositions relative to each other. The first and closest circle is the one which a person has draws as though around a center, his own mind. This circle encloses the body and anything taken for the sake of the body. For it is virtually the smallest circle, and amost touches the center itself. Next, the second one further removed from the center but enclosing the first circle; this contains parents, siblings, wife, and children. The third one has in it uncles and aunts, grandparents, nephews, nieces, and cousins. The next circle includes the other relatives, and this is followed by the circle of local residents, then the circle of fellow tribesmen, next that of fellow citizens, and then in the same way the circle of people from neighboring towns, and then the circle of fellow-countrymen. The outermost and largest circle, which encompasses all the rest, is that of the whole human race. Once these have all been surveyed, it is the task of a well-tempered man, in his proper treatment of each group, to draw the circles together somehow towards the center, and to keep zealously transferring those from the enclosing circles into the enclosed ones. It is incumbent on us to respect people from the third circle as if they were those from the second, and again to respect our other relatives as if they were those from the third circle.
(A. Long & D. Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), §§ 53B, 57C-D, p. 349)
***Cicero,
De Natura Deorum (On the Nature of the Gods), II.78, 154; De finibus bonorum et malorum (On the Ends of Good and Evil) III.64, and Paradoxa Stoicorum (Paradoxes of the Stoics) 18. We might cite to De finibus for an example:
Again they hold that the universe is governed by divine will; it is a city or state of which both men and gods are members, and each one of us is a part of this universe; from which it is a natural consequence that we should prefer the common advantage to our own. For just as the laws set the safety of all above the safety of individuals, so a good, wise and law-abiding man, conscious of his duty to the state, studies the advantage of all more than that of himself or of any single individual. The traitor to his country does not deserve greater reprobation than the man who betrays the common advantage or security for the sake of his own advantage or security. This explains why praise is owed to one who dies for the commonwealth, because it becomes us to love our country more than ourselves.

Mundum autem censent regi numine deorum, eumque esse quasi communem urbem et civitatem hominum et deorum, et unum quemque nostrum eius mundi esse partem; ex quo illud natura consequi, ut communem utilitatem nostrae anteponamus. ut enim leges omnium salutem singulorum saluti anteponunt, sic vir bonus et sapiens et legibus parens et civilis officii non ignarus utilitati omnium plus quam unius alicuius aut suae consulit. nec magis est vituperandus proditor patriae quam communis utilitatis aut salutis desertor propter suam utilitatem aut salutem. ex quo fit, ut laudandus is sit, qui mortem oppetat pro re publica, quod deceat cariorem nobis esse patriam quam nosmet ipsos. quoniamque illa vox inhumana et scelerata ducitur eorum, qui negant se recusare quo minus ipsis mortuis terrarum omnium deflagratio consequatur (quod vulgari quodam versu Graeco pronuntiari solet), certe verum est etiam iis, qui aliquando futuri sint, esse propter ipsos consulendum.

†Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (s.v. "Cosmopolitanism").

6 comments:

  1. The Cynics and the Stoics mangled the transmission of the Natural law. The Natural Law had its beginnings with the Dorians on Crete and in Sparta. After Socrates left, the Cynics, first, rejected hierarchy and then the Stoics picked up on this. Yes, one Stoic in Roman times accepted hierarchy but the rest threw it away. It is wrong to call the Cynics or the Stoics 'philosophers'. They were Sophists. The Stoic movement started in a Semitic and commercial influenced area. The Stoics did NOT have the real original natural law; this means that they are not philo-sophiers for to reject hierarchy is to reject the Logos making them misologoi. The Stoics did NOT have the real original natural law.

    Yes, the egalitarian and Masonic ideas can be traced to the Stoics and their cosmopolitianism.

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  2. My harsh comments are due to the fact that the Church is supposed to be aware of error and correct it and to guide the faithful into truth. Is the Church doing that? NO.

    You wrote: To accuse the Compendium and the Church which issued it of heresy is a rather temerarious charge, and I wonder what favorable vantage point you have, and what insight and guidance you have, which the Church does not enjoy. ...But to accuse the Magisterium of heresy is to make oneself Pope.

    My allegiance is to the Truth. My Pope is the Truth. The criteria of Truth is the Deposit of Faith and the real original Natural Law, the Logos. My loyalty is to the totality of the Logos. My pope is the Logos.

    The Church is dropping the ball. We have no doctrinal issues that are attacking Christians to make them lose the faith other than the heresy of Protestantism. But what is affecting Christians right now is political correctness. The big error of the day is not theological but is the disregard of the Church for the other half of the Logos called the real original Natural Law. The Church is NOT doing its job.

    What the Compendium is doing is muddying the waters. You may not see what the Compendium is doing but in this modern world there is something called "double meaning" and the Compendium is pushing a double meaning. You and I are sophisticated enough not to be pulled in, but 90% of the others are not. This Compendium is about spreading One World government and deconstructing race regardless of your efforts to deny it. The simple fact, on its plain face, is doing just that. You might make distinctions after my critique, but the common man out there is not! That is why this is dangerous.

    The biggest error out there for the last two hundred years is not Fascism or national socialism but it is this cosmopolitianism found in Marxism, Fabian socialism, Communism, social democracy, democracy, liberalism, Free-thinking, Freemasonry, Talmud, Kabbalah, and in Roman Catholic Church documents. It is precisely an attack upon the Logos of the Natural Law! The Church nowhere condemns political correctness! If the Church nowhere condemns political correctness, then what it says in the Compendium will be taken in the context of political correctness and is therefore in error of heresy.

    We live in the End of Times. It's over. We live in the age of nihilism. We know that the Church will be corrupted in the end of ages. We know that there are traitors within our ranks. Where the Truth is, that is the magesterium. The Magesterium is alive and well, but is where the Truth resides and that is in complete obedience to the Logos in whatever mode of transmission either Divine Revelation or in the Natural law. When religious authority leaves the Truth, it loses authority. If the Vatican can't pull its head out of its a**, then it is up to us lowly commoners to do so.

    The Compendium was not produced by a council or by bishops but by a committee of people. Can you vouch for the sanctity and orthodoxy of the people who produced the Compendium? Are the people who produced the Compendium free from political correctness or are they infused with this error that the Church has yet to condemn? Answer those questions first.

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  3. So that you may understand where I am coming from. I'm Greek Orthodox. In Orthodoxy, there is no Magesterium. The Faithful have just as much right as any clergyman to uphold and protect the Faith.

    My Roman Catholic teacher Archimandrite Boniface Luykx taught about the cultural differences that separate Roman Catholicsm from Eastern Orthodoxy. The Roman West is built on strict loyalty to authority whereas the Greek East has a different mentality; i.e. Obedience to Law, "I'm obedient to the Law but under no man". The Greek mentality is far from the Roman mentality. The two types operate under different types of culture. The Church started under Hellenism and in the West the Church grew up under Romanitas. It is the growing Latin/Roman influence that drove out the Greek character that Christianity is supposed to have.

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  4. Andrew, you wrote this "...so that something greater that these divisions exist to bring them together."

    Is there a **need** to ""bring them together""? I feel no need to bring together. Do not men and women already come together in dating and in matrimony? That quote from Galations is not about cosmopolitanism. It is being interpreted according to political correctness. This "there is no Jew nor Greek, nor male or female" is that many religions of the Roman Empire were race specific or gender specific. That is the context of that saying. St. Paul did not have in mind cosmopolitianism.

    Humanity exists as a universal. That is true. But the Universal is not the Telos, nor is it the grand objective. Neither is is the individual. Race/Culture is the Telos. There is NO need to "bring them together". By the use of this phrase "bring together" you make my point. On the other hand, the universal humanity is just that I treat women and people of different races with respect, but I don't need to live with them in order to be a Christian. I treat them with humanity but I don't "Bring together". That is not the purpose of Christ.

    Again, just like the Compendium, that verse in Galations is taken to prove and further political correctness and egalitarianism. Political Correctness is a new morality that is in contradistinction to Christianity and the real original Natural Law.

    There is NO need to "bring together".

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  5. How we gather around the Lord is unknown to me. I would have to split up in at least 16 different ways, in 16 different races and tribes, given my inheritance. I should not think heaven very pleasant if my body has to be chopped up into 16 parts to comply with your requirement that races, not men, gather around the Lord.

    This is why miscegenation is condemned in the Old Testament. Where is the Church? Would not the Natural Law condemn miscegenation as well? Where is the Church? Lost in outer space? Is the Church and the Magesterium readily defending the integrety of race? How many miscegenated marriage ceremonies does the Church that preach on the Natural Law perform?

    This is my point. If I spoke out against miscegenation in any Roman Catholic Church in America---I'd be thrown out!!!! The Roman Catholic Church is infected with political correctness and how can you have a 'sense of belonging' when you have the blood of 16 different nationalities in you and let me remind you that "American" is not a nationality. America is an ideological, Enlightenment construct. Are we dismantling the Natural Order thru political correctness? Is this not the basis of Masonic America? To dismantle the Natural Order.

    My duty, My Loyalty, My allegiance is to the Old Order, to the Natural Order, To Christendom. ---NOT to the Masonic Kabbala Stoic cosmopolitianism.

    My question: Where is the Church on miscegenation?

    There is your proof that the Church is incompetent and in error. It talks about the Natural law---but doesn't know it. It gives the Natural Law lip service.

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  6. What is the Natural Law?

    The Natural Law is those principles that operate the cosmos.

    One part of the cosmos is group dynamics. It operates in colony insects such as bees, ants, termites; in animal herds, wolve packs, lion prides, mer cats, gorillas, chimpanzees, etc; to humans. What is a Natural Law is what operates---across the board. It operates in the insect world, the animal world and the human world.

    What operates the dynamics in groups is "the sense of belonging" and "volkenhass". These two things are Laws of Nature or Natural Law or the Logos. These two things operate the group and maintain its cohesion and boundaries. They operated Metaphysical boundaries of the group. This is the Natural Law then. This is also the Natural Order. Race is part of the Natural Order. Even in the OT, it is forbidden to mix breeds together. Furthermore, the only persons not allowed in the Temple were 'mamzers', not bastards, but mixed race children were not allowed in the Temple. The OT backs up the teaching of the Natural Law.

    Political correctness is about dismantling the Natural Law of "sense of belonging" and "volkenhass".

    Does anybody in the whole of the Catholic Church understand this? Why hasn't the Catholic Church preach against political correctness when its goal is the dismantling of race which is an integral part of the Natural Order? To attack the Natural Order, which race is a part, is evil, unrighteousness.

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