Comments by "OscarTang" (@oscartang4587u3) on "The REAL Religion behind National Socialism" video.

  1. Edit: The word “literal belief” means interpreting the bible as literal statements, if Voegelin claimed that st. Augustine dismissed the literal belief in millennium from the Revelation as “ridiculous fables”, Voegelin was claiming St. Augustine dismissed the writing of Revelation as “ridiculous fables”. TIK didn’t misinterpret Voegelin at all. To be fair, Voegelin claimed the literal belief of the concept of the "New Millennium" was from the Book of John itself. Here is the related context just before the passage you quoted: “Nevertheless, the expectation of an imminent coming of the realm was stirred to white heat again and again by the suffering of the persecutions; and the most grandiose expression of eschatological pathos, the Revelation of St. John, was included in the canon in spite of misgivings about its compatibility with the idea of the church. The inclusion had fateful consequences, for with the Revelation was accepted the revolutionary annunciation of the millennium in which Christ would reign with his saints on this earth. Not only did the inclusion sanction the permanent effectiveness within Christianity of the broad mass of Jewish apocalyptic literature but it also raised the immediate question how chiliasm could be reconciled with idea and existence of the church. If Christianity consisted in the burning desire for deliverance from the world, if Christians lived in expectation of the end of unredeemed history, if their destiny could be fulfilled only by the realm in the sense of chapter 20 of Revelation, the church was reduced to an ephemeral community of men waiting for the great event and hoping that it would occur in their lifetime.”
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  2.  @ImagoMonad  Great insight about the history of Revelation 20 and Chiliasm. But seems irrelevant to your argument claiming TIK misinterpreted Voegelin. As the passage stated (or confidently implied) that Revelation ( at least for the early version) contained certain Chiliastic elements. “Nevertheless, the expectation of an imminent coming of the realm was stirred to white heat again and again by the suffering of the persecutions; and the most grandiose expression of eschatological pathos, the Revelation of St. John, was included in the canon in spite of misgivings about its compatibility with the idea of the church. The inclusion had fateful consequences, for with the Revelation was accepted the revolutionary annunciation of the millennium in which Christ would reign with his saints on this earth.” At most you are challenging the Voegelin’d narrative regarding the relationship between Chiliasm and Revelation 20. Even for that shouldn’t it better to quote some quote from Civitas Dei, that is written by St. Augustine, than some quote from Orthodox Study Bible, which is not written by St. Augustine, to prove that St. Augustine was just condemning Chilastic revisionism attaching on Revelation 20, like Barnacles stick on a ship, instead of the Chilasm inherent in the 4th century version of Revelation 20?
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  3. ⁠ @ImagoMonad  Revelation 20 literally states the second coming and other things will happen after “a thousand years”. If you interpret it literally without the modern Commentary, Revelation 20 is undoubtedly Chiliastic. Besides, it is not the argument made by TIK but by Voegelin. Given that 27 books were canonised in the Council of Hippo in 393. This was later affirmed in the council of Carthage in the years 397 and 419. At the same time, the Second Ecumenical Council took place in Constantinople in 381. As it was very unlikely the Second Ecumenical Council itself would be able to censor any chiliasm narratives from at least 10 years in the future, and to enforce the rule set by the Second Ecumenical Council after 381, there must be someone in the future to do something to refute, dismiss or censor any Christian chiliasm narrative from the time after the Second Ecumenical Council. If the fact is as claimed by Voegelin that “On the theoretical level, the problem could be solved only by the tour de force of interpretation which St. Augustine performed in the Civitas Dei.” St. Augustine would be the one who enforced the Second Ecumenical Council rule. Against the Chiliastic wording within Revelation with “the tour de force of interpretation onto Revelation in the Civitas Dei. If so St. Augustine did dismiss the old original Chiliastic narrative of Revelation 20 as “ridiculous fable” and tour de force his “correct” interpretation into Revelation 20. If we agree on the Voegelin narrative in the book, it seems your argument is trying to use the result of one action to dismiss the existence of that action. It is just like trying to suggest St. Augustine didn't re-interpret the Revelation because the literal narrative of Revelation has always been superseded with interpretation that was similar to the commentary from Civitas Dei. “The New Science of Politics” stated that St. Augustine “roundly dismissed the literal belief in the millennium (in Revelation) as “ridiculous fables””, Voegelin was suggesting St. Augustine “roundly dismissed the content of the Book Revelation”. TIK didn’t misinterpret Voegelin at all. TIK narratives here indeed deviate from the exact wording of Civitas Dei. Yet TIK only quoted “The New Science of Politics”, not “Civitas Dei”. As “The New Science of Politics” failed to mention St. Augustine just dismissed the content, not the Credibility of the Book of Revelation, though superseding the content of the book with his own interpretation, therefore, at worst, for TIK, he was just quoting a bad source and didn’t double check his indirect citation, not misinterpreting Voegelin.
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  4. "There are in this story several elements that are also known from the tradition of the Apocryphon of John, a basic source of second-century Gnosticism. One is the idea that Satan had sexual intercourse with Eve; another is his boasting that he is the only God. In the Apocryphon of John, the evil Demiurge says to his angels after the creation of the cosmos: "I am a jealous God, there is no other god beside me." 17 This exclamation is a combination of two basic texts of the religion of Israel: Exod. 20:5 (part of the Ten Commandments: "For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God") and Isa. 45:5 (the declaration of absolute monotheism, put into the mouth of God himself: "I am the Lord, there is no other; there is no god beside me"). The same tradition is found in two other Gnostic treatises found in the Nag Hammadi Codices,18 On the Origin of the World (NHC II. 103.12-13) and The Hypostasis of the Archons (NHC II.86.30). There, the creator exclaims: "I am God and there is other (God) beside me." 19 Here the word "jealous" has been omitted, but the structural parallel with the Apocryphon of John makes it clear that the first part of the exclamation derives from Exod. 20:5. In the Interrogatio Johannis we find this same combination of Old Testament texts, again with the omission of the word "jealous": ''I am God, there is no other God beside me."20 We know next to nothing about the direct sources of the Interrogatio, but this combination of two Old Testament texts put into the mouth of the evil creator is so typically Gnostic that we have to conclude that at this point the Interrogatio transmits a genuine Gnostic tradition that was already in circulation in the second century. It served to express one of the most characteristic views of Gnosticism, i.e., that our bad world had been created by an evil demiurge. The Bogomils, and in their wake the Cathars, recognized in this early Gnostic tradition an excellent expression of their own ideas, and therefore, as far as their dualism is concerned, we are entitled to call the Cathars Gnostics and their religion a medieval form of Gnosticism" (Gnosis and Hermeticism From Antiquity to Modern Times, page 92-93)
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