Typhon is Jesus Christ. Nephthys represents the Kingdom of God on the earth. “Typhon lured Osiris in to the ark of destruction.” Christ cast down Lucifer. “[Typhon] undoes all good things and inevitably presages ruin.” All the machinations and lies of Lucifer and his followers inevitably come to naught; their conspiring works exposed and decimated. “He is the power of the physical universe which is constantly seeking to destroy the spiritual values locked within its substances.” The Light of Christ, the conscience imbued within the soul of every human born on this earth, constantly seeks to persuade mankind to forgo pride for empathy; guides to overcome the temptations of evil spirits, to which all flesh is prone.
At a later point, Mr. Hall introduces a critical concept while elaborating on the writings of Synesius concerning the ceremony of Osiris’ election (emphasis added):
“… Osiris receives from his father an elaborate dissertation in the Platonic temper concerning the relative power of good and evil in which he is fully warned against the machinations of Typhon. Possibly the most important sentence in Synesius’s treatise occurs during this dissertation. The father of Osiris is made to say to his son: “You also have been initiated in those Mysteries in which there are two pair of eyes, and it is requisite that the pair which are beneath should be closed when the pair that are above them perceive, and when the pair above are closed, those which are beneath should be opened.””
The “two pairs of eyes” represents incorporating two completely different personas or mindsets – one is for the public, for the outside world, for the “profane” to witness; the other is strictly private, for the esoteric realm, the world of mystery school initiates.
“The pair which are beneath should be closed when the pair that are above them perceive” refers to the initiate psychologically shutting out anything and everything which harkens back to the esoteric realm while in the “profane” public world. The profane must never glimpse nor suspect that there is anything beyond the public persona one presents to them. The initiate must convince all others, even close friends and relatives, that this public persona is everything there is to know about him.
The mythology of Osiris, Isis and Horus is the core doctrine at the heart of all the mystery schools. It is the essence of their symbology, fraternal theology and worship. Everything is traced back to the arcane and occult of Egypt. Their modern beliefs, rites and worship all relate to this. Egyptian and Greek symbolic and mythological themes occur repeatedly in the modern mystery schools, and are incorporated in their priestcrafts and rites.
Realize that all of this is the inverse of true Christianity, the fullness of the Gospel. In the core doctrine of the mystery schools, everything “good,”especially the human intellect, is either embodied in or emanates from Lucifer. Everything they describe as “good” is sin by Christian standards, and all of mankind’s blessings are credited to Lucifer. That which the mystery schools describe as “evil” (and all that which is truly evil) is credited to Jesus Christ – as well as anything that glorifies Him. See Isaiah 5:20 – “Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!”
For those of us who have a testimony of Christ – and who understand correct, plain and precious, uncorrupted doctrine – it is possible to increasingly discern that that which lies beneath the multiple layers of exoteric symbology is nothing more than an inversion of Christ’s Gospel. It is a rewrite of celestial events, pitting Lucifer as a betrayed, unjustly imprisoned deity – seeking merely to raise all of mankind from the lowliness of ignorant peasantry to the pinnacle that the dormant intellect of man can achieve – against a malevolent, suppressive Jehovah, who permits the existence of squalor, ignorance, stupidity, anarchy and every form of unadulterated evil – who is (supposedly) willing to indefinitely condemn all but the few who submit their will and intellect to Him.
This is what lies at the very heart of all non-truly-Christian theologies. All other religions on earth – including all fraternities and secular creeds – have perpetuated, disseminated or branched off from the ancient mystery schools.
There is a definite line of demarcation of that which is visible/accessible to the general public (non-initiates, or “the profane” as they refer to us). All knowledge, symbolic meanings, as well as buildings and structures accessible to the “profane” are above this line. All such is considered exoteric – the exoteric realm. All that resides below the exoteric realm, below the line of demarcation, is the esoteric realm – that which much be kept secret and the “profane” barred from entering, from experiencing, even from knowing about. Recall the following concept covered in the previous chapter:
“You also have been initiated in those Mysteries in which there are two pair of eyes, and it is requisite that the pair which are beneath should be closed when the pair that are above them perceive, and when the pair above are closed, those which are beneath should be opened.”
The “pair of eyes that are above” refers to the public persona of the initiate. This is what is presented to the outside/exoteric world, while “the pair of eyes beneath” – the esoteric persona of the initiate – is shut off. Once in private, or upon setting foot in an esoteric environment, the “eyes above” can be shut (i.e. the public persona dismissed) and the “eyes beneath” can open (i.e. the true nature/personality of the initiate can come forth).
The layer of hierarchy directly below the line of demarcation consists of the secret societies / combinations that covertly lead, manipulate, infiltrate, and/or direct the accompanying exoteric organizations. Those who initiate into these groups take unmistakable blood oaths that bind their service and loyalty to them, as well as absolute secrecy on penalty of death. Some initiations require shedding innocent blood (i.e. taking the life of an innocent human being, often a child), and often requires consumption of the blood and/or flesh of the victim as part of their binding oath. The majority of these initiates have little to no information regarding the managing layer directly succeeding them, as signified in the diagram’s “Buffer of Awareness.” All such initiates are only instructed or informed on a need-to-know basis by their leaders. Such leaders are usually the only ones connected to the successive layer of hierarchy, or who know anything about it.
The final division of hierarchy is the separation between the physical realm on this earth (i.e. all that we are able to process and know of through our five senses), and the realm of spirits where Lucifer and his minions reside. He provides revelation, guidance and direction to those who make up the hierarchic levels at the pinnacle of his kingdom.
Demons (the third that followed Satan and were cast down to Earth where they have no body of flesh and bone, but can enter portals into human bodies that have succumbed to evil – see Satanism) need the strong energy created in blood rituals in order to materialize. But once the ritual ends, they must go. More stable contact can only be achieved through portals. Permanent portals are the main objective of Satanists (they like to be called children of Lucifér, with stress in the last syllable). According to Mastral, there are 90 of them, and 72 have been opened by the turn of the century. Nine more had been opened by 2006 and the last the last nine were apparently in 2013. The exact conditions for the openings of these portals are known only to few witches of the highest rank. We can expect that they require huge amounts of human sacrifice and psychic energy. A great honor given to a Satanists is to be able to pass through one of these portals and meet demonic powers in their “home turf”. In this process, there is a temporal shift, with minutes on Earth meaning hours in the other plane (much like what happens in “alien” abductions). Satan’s hope is that with the opening of the last portals, powerful demons from lower dimensions will be able to come to earth and eventually, interact with humankind. They will not present themselves as demons, but as benevolent aliens and evolved spirits of light.
In Revelations 9:1-2, John witnesses Satan turn the key to unleash the very powers of hell on an unsuspecting world. Satan’s intent is to destroy the earth, and so too those that serve him. Previously, God has overmastered the plagues through his destroying angels, but Satan is permitted to direct operations from this point bringing the misery that fuels hell to the surface of the earth. The Greek for the KJV phrase “the key to the bottomless pit” literally translates to “the key to the shaft of the abyss,” the shaft, or portal, that leads to hell.
Corruption of Christianity
A significant portion of rumors concerning secret societies within the Catholic Church center upon the Jesuits, who are purported to function as an elite enforcement and espionage of group.
“The Society of Jesus is a Christian male religious order that follows the teachings of the Catholic Church. The members are called Jesuits and are also known colloquially as “God’s Marines” and as “The Company”, these being references to founder Ignatius of Loyola’s military background and members’ willingness to accept orders anywhere in the world and live in extreme conditions…. “The Jesuits today form the largest single religious order of priests and brothers in the Catholic Church….
“Opus Dei has been described as the most controversial force within the Catholic Church. According to several journalists who researched Opus Dei separately, most of the criticisms against Opus Dei are mere myths created by its opponents, and Opus Dei is considered a sign of contradiction. Several popes and other Catholic leaders have endorsed what they see as its innovative teaching on the sanctifying value of work, and its fidelity to Catholic beliefs. In 2002, Pope John Paul II canonized Escrivá [the founder of Opus Dei], and called him “the saint of ordinary life.”
“Controversies about Opus Dei have centered on criticisms of its alleged secretiveness, its recruiting methods, the alleged strict rules governing members, the practice by celibate members of mortification of the flesh, its alleged elitism and misogyny, the alleged right-leaning politics of most of its members, and the alleged participation by some in authoritarian or extreme right-wing governments, especially the Francoist Government of Spain until 1978. Within the Catholic Church, Opus Dei is also criticized for allegedly seeking independence and more influence….
“Much public attention has focused on Opus Dei’s practice of mortification — the voluntary offering up of discomfort or pain to God, this includes fasting, or in some circumstances self inflicted pain such as self flagellation. Mortification has a long history in many world religions, including the Catholic Church…. Additionally, Opus Dei celibate members practice “corporal mortifications” such as sleeping without a pillow or sleeping on the floor, fasting or remaining silent for certain hours during the day…. Critics state that self-mortification is a “startling,” “extreme,” and “questionable” practice — one that borders on masochism.””
Amazingly, there are no fewer than 132 official Catholic religious orders or societies in existence; of which the Jesuits and Opus Dei seemingly onlyscratch the surface.3 Compelling testimony from witnesses and victims claiming Jesuit involvement in horrendous crimes against humanity is covered in Part 5 of this book. Additionally, there is a document being circulated around the Internet which purports to be a valid transcript of a Jesuit oath, for those initiated into the Knights of Columbus. The source of this oath transcript is from the U.S. Congressional Record dated February 15th, 1913 on pages 3215 and 3216. However, it was entered into the record as part of a complaint by a candidate for public office, who insisted that it is a fabrication and hoax which was being widely circulated near the time of election by his opponent. This was done in an attempt to derail his campaign and generate fear in the populace because he is a Catholic. Therefore, despite this “oath” being in the Congressional Record, it’s veracity is wholly unverifiable. The likeliness of it being unreliable and erroneous is very high.
There is one historical figure who was connected to the Jesuits, whose evil works are tremendously relevant today: Adam Weishaupt, who founded the Order of the Bavarian Illuminati on May 1st, 1776. All in all, though, the external Roman Catholic Church (that the members and the rest of the world witness each and every day) functions not unlike a decoy, an attention diversion. It is a terrifically garish veneer among the divisions of Mystery Babylon. There are plenty of credible books and resources one can locate with extensive historical accounts of the pagan roots and atrocities committed by the Catholic Church and its clergy over the centuries (not to mention the pedophilia scandals that began surfacing in the 1980’s, later to explode in number from 2001 on, resulting in numerous lawsuits, all settled out of court5).
Infiltration and Corruption of the Early Christian Church
The primary forces which brought about the apostasy of the ancient Church and the rise of the Roman Catholic Church were the infiltration and overriding influence of initiates of a variety of mystery school groups, primarily the Mystics, the Gnostics, and the Greek Philosophers. The leaders of the ancient Church strenuously tried to keep heresies that were being introduced by such wolves-in-sheep’s-clothing from corrupting sound doctrine and being adapted by the general membership. As one reads Paul’s epistles in the New Testament, addressed to the various church bodies and leaders, one can get a sense of his exasperation in keeping such false doctrines from creeping in and taking hold.
However, by the fourth century, the situation was pretty much hopeless. The apostles were dead (with the exception of John the Beloved) and none were ordained in their place. The other leaders were disagreeing amongst themselves, and eventually local bishops were recognized as authoritative, to speak for and act in behalf of the remaining organization. Many of the gifts of the Spirit had been removed from the earth. It was in this condition that the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD commenced:
“The First Council of Nicaea was a council of Christian bishops convened in Nicaea in Bithynia (present-day İznik in Turkey) by the Roman Emperor Constantine I in AD 325. This first ecumenical council was the first effort to attain consensus in the church through an assembly representing all of Christendom.
“Its main accomplishments were settlement of the Christological issue of the nature of Jesus and his relationship to God the Father, the construction of the first part of the Creed of Nicaea, settling the calculation of the date of Easter, and promulgation of early canon law.
“The First Council of Nicaea is the first ecumenical council of the catholic Church. Most significantly, it resulted in the first, extra-biblical, uniform Christian doctrine, called the Creed of Nicaea. With the creation of the creed, a precedent was established for subsequent local and regional councils of Bishops (Synods) to create statements of belief and canons of doctrinal orthodoxy— the intent being to define unity of beliefs for the whole of Christendom.
“The council did not create the doctrine of the deity of Christ (as is sometimes claimed) but it did settle, to some degree, the debate within the Early Christian communities regarding the divinity of Christ. This idea of the divinity of Christ, along with the idea of Christ as a messenger from God (The Father), had long existed in various parts of the Roman empire. The divinity of Christ had also been widely endorsed by the Christian community in the otherwise pagan city of Rome.”
St. Augustine and the End of the Ancient Church of Christ
One of the greatest resources available that gives a thorough and concise historical synopsis of the erosion of the ancient Church which Christ and the original apostles founded is contained in the works of Hugh Nibley – specifically his book The World and the Prophets and his collection of radio lectures given in the early 1950’s, titled Time Vindicates the Prophets. In one particular chapter of The World and the Prophets, Nibley focuses on St. Augustine and his significant role in creating a formal dogma that melds together the teachings of Christ with the pagan beliefs and exoteric spiritual arguments of the Greek schools. The following are segments of this chapter (emphasis added):
“Catholic and Protestant authorities vie in proclaiming their incalculable debt to St. Augustine, the man “who laid the foundation of Western culture” (Seeberg), “who stands between the ancient world and the Middle Ages as the first great constructive thinker of the Western Church, and the father of medieval Catholicism” (Raby), “dominating like a pyramid antiquity and succeeding ages—among theologians he is undeniably the first, and such has been his influence that none of the Fathers, Scholastics or Reformers has surpassed it” (Schaff), “the greatest doctor of the Church” (Lot), “the true creator of Western theology” (Grabmann), “in whom, in a very real sense… medieval thought begins and ends” (Coulton). “His philosophic-historical work remains one of the most imposing creations of all time; it posits a capacity and originality of mind which none other possessed either in his own day or for a thousand years after,” wrote Eduard Norden.
“Far be it from us to pass judgment on such a man or his works: we shall consider not how St. Augustine acquitted himself in his great task, but only what that task was. From what we have already quoted, it would seem that St. Augustine’s great significance lies in the final fixing of a new orientation for the Church. “It was to him more than to any other single man,” says McGiffert, “that the spirit of classical antiquity gave way to the spirit of the Middle Ages.”
“”The Christian theology and philosophy of the Middle Ages,” according to Grabmann, perhaps the foremost authority on that subject, “is in form and content almost exclusively Augustinian until late in the 13th century,” and even then “the world-historical achievement of St. Thomas was the synthesis of Augustine and Aristotle.”
“For the medievalist Coulton, Augustine is “the man who closes ancient thought and begins medieval thought.”
“”It is he,” writes Ferdinand Lot, “who set the Church irresistibly on the course which she has followed to the modern era.”
“”Upon Augustine, Petrarch and the great masters of the Renascence [sic] formed themselves,” says Harnack, “and without him [Martin] Luther is not to be understood.
“Augustine, the founder of Roman Catholicism, is at the same time the only Father of the Church from whom Luther received any effective teaching, or whom the humanists honoured as a hero.”
“Many have called St. Augustine the first man of the modern world; the historian Troeltsch calls him the last man of the ancient. Apparently Augustine is to be respected before all things as that rarest of all humans, a founder and creator. Grabmann says he was “the true creator of the theology of the West, just as Origen8 was the founder of the speculative theology of the Orient.”
“Troeltsch also describes Augustine as continuing the work that Clement of Alexandria and Origen had undertaken two centuries before.
“The names of Origen and Augustine are often linked together, and with good reason. For each devoted his life to the same project, namely, the working out of a Christian theology which he personally could accept. We have already talked about Origen’s allegiance to the schools [of philosophy] and how it conditioned and inspired his whole effort to develop a theology that would be intellectually respectable. St. Augustine was, if anything, even more a child of the schools than Origen, who was a far more austere and independent character. For twenty years Augustine absolutely refused to accept the Christianity learned at his mother’s knee, however powerful his sentimental attachments to it, because, as he explains at great length in the Confessions, it simply could not stand up to the arguments of the schoolmen. He tells us how in his youth, after reading Cicero, he would laugh at the prophets, and how from the very first the pagan schools had taught him to abhor any suggestion that God might have a body—it was instruction like that, he says, that convinced him that the Christians could not possibly be right.
“And this is the significant point: Augustine never changed the ideas and attitudes he acquired in the schools. He did not turn away from them back to Christianity; rather he built them firmly and finally into the structure of Christianity before he would accept it. He never came around to accepting on the one hand the naive beliefs with which he charged the Christians, nor on the other hand did he ever swerve in his allegiance to the Platonists. According to Professor Grabmann, the whole explanation of Augustine’s “tremendous influence on the scholasticism and mysticism of the Middle Ages” lay in the single fact of his being “the greatest Christian Neoplatonist,” whose life’s work was “the christianizing of Neoplatonism.”
“Augustine has described as few others could the tension and agony of a twenty-year deadlock, “a struggle within his breast,” Grabmann calls it, between the teachings of the schools and the teachings of the Christians.In the end something had to give way—and it was the church. It was Augustine, in Lot’s words, who “set the Church irresistibly on the course” which she was to follow for the future: it was not the Church that drew Augustine into her orbit. Or rather let us say this is the classic problem of three bodies, in which the orbit of each alters and is altered by each and both of the others. Augustine, as our experts have declared, brought forth a new Christian theology when he solved the problem of which should prevail, the prophets or the philosophers, by deferring to both—uniting them into a new and wonderful synthesis which has been the object of endless scholarly panegyrics [i.e. formal or elaborate praise]. “Augustine,” wrote Reinhold Seeberg, “laid the foundation of Western culture when he fused Antique civilization and Christianity together once for all in a single mighty mold.”
“Reitzenstein declares that Augustine’s life-work was “the program of a reconciliation of Antique civilization and Christianity, whose synthesis still determines our culture.”
“This fusion of the classical and Christian heritages was the culmination of a long process. “All the Christian writers from Justin to Gregory of Nazianzus and from Minucius Felix to Jerome used the classics to explain, to enrich, and to defend Christianity,” wrote Father Combès in his valuable
study of Augustine’s education, and this fusion of classic and Christian “attained its perfection in the work of St. Augustine.”“Note that the trend begins with Justin and Minucius Felix, Christian converts who had been thoroughly indoctrinated by the schools before ever joining the Church, and who remained fiercely and unshakably loyal to the schools to the end of their lives, regarding themselves as the real or esoteric Christians and pooh-poohing the others as an uneducated and uncritical rabble. [Ed. note: Could there be any doubt today that worldly-regarded men such as these, who infiltrated the ancient Christian church and perverted the Gospel with the exoteric teachings of the Greek mystery schools, were precisely the kinds of wolves in sheep’s clothing that the Church leaders of the time were struggling against?] We have noted already how these men thought their fine heathen educations would be a great boon to the Church. This is the group to which Augustine belongs; Father Eggersdorfer has shown how he remained up to the end of his life completely a child of the schools.
“Augustine himself calls the adoption of pagan education “spoiling the Egyptians,” and in his famous de doctrina Christiana, written at the end of his life, he presents his program for sending the Church to school with the rhetoricians and philosophers. In making his perfect fusion of Christian and classic knowledge to produce a doctrinal system which he and his intellectual friends could accept, Augustine, to quote Combès, “uses the ancient theodicy, metaphysics, morality, and politics…. He often seems to reproach himself for doing this, to be sure; but the protests of his heart are silenced before the implacable dictates of his intellect. It is his desire to endow the Church with a doctrine so solidly constructed that she will never again have anything to fear from her enemies.”
“That is a remarkably revealing statement which deserves some examination. From the first quotation of Combès we learned that the idea of reconciling Christian with pagan ideas was one that had been current among the intellectuals of the Church for a long time—it was anything but the blinding flash of inspiration that some would make it out to be: it was in fact a creeping sickness in the Church. The idea of a supersynthesis had become an obsession in the schools, where work on encyclopedic summas of all knowledge had long since brought all original research to a complete halt. In his pre-Christian days Augustine had displayed a passion for this kind of activity, and it never left him. Next we learn from Combès that Augustine was not at all happy about what he was doing to the Church: “He often seems to reproach himself for this.” Why should he reproach himself unless he knew there was something
fundamentally wrong about his program? Monsignor Duchesne opens the third volume of his Early History of the Christian Church with the remark: “In uniting itself closely to the State, the Church under Theodosius was not making a good match: it was wedding a sick man, soon to become a dying one.”
“We might paraphrase the sentence to read: “In uniting itself closely to the learning of the state schools, the Church under Augustine was not making a good match: it was wedding a sick man, soon to become a dying one.” The two “weddings” are actually phases of the same movement, for Theodosius’ work of consolidation and Augustine’s were going on at exactly the same time. Classical learning was a very sick man in Augustine’s day, and he knew it. Many authorities have remarked how the saint constantly denounces the arts of the schools while constantly practicing them.
“This fatal inconsistency has been immortalized in the story of St. Jerome, St. Augustine’s great contemporary (they died but ten years apart), who in a dream was chastised by an angel with the awful accusation, “You are not a Christian, but a Ciceronian!” And after he awoke, Jerome went right on being a good Ciceronian, as did Augustine to the end of his days. In a recent study Marrou has shown Augustine’s own education to be that of a decadent age, and has pointed out that the only change St. Augustine made in introducing pagan education into the church officially was to make the courses even more simple, superficial, and streamlined than they had been, thus contributing to “that lowering of the general level of civilization which already, all around Augustine, announces the coming age of the barbarians.”
“Well might Augustine reproach himself for what he was doing; but he had no choice: “The protests of his heart are silenced before the implacable dictates of his intellect.” What are the implacable dictates that thus override desire? Combès continues, “to endow the Church with a doctrine so solidly constructed that she will never again have anything to fear from her enemies.” Never again? To be sure: in the past the philosophers could pick Christian doctrine to pieces—they could show you in black and white that God could never have a son, or that, since he was “the totally other,” nothing could possibly be in his image, etc. As Peter remarks in the Clementine Recognitions, Simon Magus could always give him a bad time
and usually win the argument—but that didn’t worry him. The ancient saints were not impressed by the pompous schoolmen, because they had their testimonies. It was because revelation had ceased that
Augustine was driven to come to an understanding with the philosophers, who were now feared and respected as possessing the only available key to knowledge. Whence this new attitude, yielding to “the implacable dictates of the intellect”?“The world of St. Augustine’s day was willing enough to become Christian, since the emperor’s approval and compulsion had made such a course both safe and popular. But the new Christian world community was not willing to fulfill the conditions necessary to receiving revelation—not by a long shot. We can best describe the situation by another quotation from Monsignor Duchesne: “Long distances separated them [the Christians of St. Augustine’s time] from the spiritual enthusiasm of the early Church…. Now everyone was Christian, or nearly everyone; and this implied that the profession involved but little sacrifice…. The mass of the community was Christian in the only way in which the mass could be, superficially and in name; the water of baptism had touched it, but the spirit of the Gospel had not penetrated its heart. Upon their entry into the Church, the faithful invariably renounced the pomps of Satan; but neither the theatres nor the games were deserted: it was a subject on which preachers uttered their most eloquent protests, and all to no purpose [Augustine himself has much to say on this theme]…. Was it really the Church which was overcoming the world? Was it not rather the world which was overcoming the Church?”
“Whoever was winning, in Augustine’s day the people of the church no longer had testimonies: from now on they insisted that the gospel be proved to them by intellectual arguments and clever demonstrations. Augustine himself says he wanted to be as sure of its truth as he was sure that four and three make seven; like Origen, he wanted to put the doctrine of the Church on an intellectual basis, which was the nearest thing to certainty that he could ever get. He was, says Arnold Lunn, the wellknown English Catholic, “the first of the Fathers to realise fully the necessity for a rational foundation of the faith.”
“And Professor Grabmann reminds us that in his theological explorations, Augustine “had almost no predecessors, and for the most part was the very first man to experience the intellectual difficulties of these questions.” “For four hundred years, during which the philosophers constantly made fun of them, the Christians had failed to realize that their faith should be founded on reason and speak the language of philosophy! Whence this astounding oversight? Why must Augustine be the first to see the light? Obviously, as we have often pointed out on other evidence, the early Christians had a revealed faith and were not interested in things reasoned out by man.
“Augustine wanted to endow the church with a solidly constructed doctrine, says Father Combès. Hadn’t Christ and the Apostles already done that? It was certainly not their intention to work out a system that would please the schoolmen. Just before he was put to death, the Lord told his disciples not to be afraid, because he had overcome the world. That was as far as the ancient saints would go: they made no attempt to win popularity with those who would not accept the gospel as it stood. The Apostles were instructed when the people would not accept their teachings, simply to depart and go to others—not to change those teachings under any circumstances into something the world would accept. But that is precisely what St. Augustine did. He, and not the Lord or the Apostles, is, in Grabmann’s words, “the true creator of the theology of the West.”
“What a comedown from the days of revelation! Let us summarize what Father Combès has told us: (1) Augustine found the Church without a solid doctrinal foundation; (2) he took it upon himself to steady the ark—but who gave him the necessary knowledge or authority to do it? Where did he go for his information? Combès tells us that (3) he went to the pagan schools—he took their theodicy, metaphysics, moral teachings, and politics and worked them into his system. Is that the proper source for Christian doctrine? (4) That question worried Augustine too, but (5) he had to go ahead with his project because the times required it urgently. And what was the world clamoring for? A theology that would appeal on rational grounds alone to a Christian world which was, as Duchesne puts it, Christian in name only, and which had forgotten the meaning of a testimony.
“The wedding of the sickly philosophy of the fourth century to Christian doctrine could take place only after Christianity had been once for all definitely divorced from the gift of prophecy and revelation. St. Augustine fully deserves his title of the man who changed the whole course of world history and of church history. He found himself in an intolerable situation, and he made the best of it. It is the situation, not the man, that teaches us what hard necessity and fateful decisions faced the Church once the gifts of revelation and prophecy were withdrawn.”
Continued on next page…
