Chapter Eighteen: Christian Sects

Christianity encompasses both ancient and relatively modern sects. Christians refer to a sect as a “church.” In the Old Testament, the term “church” was applied to the congregation of the Israelites, particularly when they gathered in the presence of God. In the New Testament, as described in the Acts of the Apostles, it refers to a group that has assembled in response to a divine call to hear God’s message, constituting a spiritual and heavenly family of the Lord. The visible church is a representation of the invisible church, whose members’ names are already inscribed in heaven.

Initially, Christian religious assemblies, like Jewish ones, were called “synagogues” (from the Aramaic term meaning “assembly” or “place of gathering”). Paul, who distinguished Christianity from Judaism, later designated these assemblies as “churches.”

The major Christian sects are Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant.

The Catholic Church

The Catholic sect, rooted in traditional and ancient Christianity, has over 2.3 billion adherents today, making it the largest religious group globally, with Catholicism being the foremost religion in terms of followers. Their leader is called the Pope (meaning “father”).

The term “Catholic,” derived from Greek, means “universal.” Some interpret it as “general” or “global.” Until the second century, Catholicism was considered the sole Christian church and sect, combating heretics such as Gnostics and Marcionites. It emphasized two principles: first, establishing a clear, pure, and correct system of religious tenets called Orthodoxy (pure faith); second, creating a religious leadership structure and training priests committed to the church’s mission and universality, responsible for interpreting sacred and mystical texts.

Prohibition of Religious Icons

With the expansion of Islam, Muslims criticized Christians for the presence of images and icons in churches, equating them with idolatry. Consequently, Emperor Leo III (685–741 CE), ruler of Byzantium and the Eastern Roman Empire (717–741 CE), banned the installation of images in churches and the veneration of religious icons, ordering their destruction. However, Pope Gregory II in the West (Rome) convened church councils and issued a decree to honor sacred images and icons, declaring anyone who violated this ruling to be outside the faith, deserving excommunication, and labeled a heretic. He excommunicated Emperor Leo.

In retaliation, the Emperor confiscated Sicily (southern Italy), a critical economic stronghold for the papacy, transferring it to the jurisdiction of the Patriarch of Constantinople. The Pope, economically dependent, sought assistance from Charles Martel (686–741 CE), the victor of the Battle of Tours against Muslims (732 CE).

Pepin the Short (714–768 CE), Charles’s son, marched to Italy, recaptured Sicily, and granted the vast region of Ravenna to the Pope. From this time, with a forged document, the Pope was established as an emperor, marking the formation of the first ecclesiastical empire.

Sanctification of the Roman Empire

Charlemagne (742–814 CE), Pepin’s son, achieved numerous conquests and placed extensive territories under papal authority. The Pope crowned him Emperor of Rome, and from Christmas Day 800 CE, the Roman Emperor was deemed holy. However, the Roman Empire lacked the cultural, religious, and ethnic diversity of the Persian Empire to be truly considered an empire, nor did it possess divine charisma or sanctity. Moreover, the empire was in such decline that, for instance, fifteen Roman emperors collectively ruled for no more than thirty years (240–270 CE).

Charlemagne was canonized by Antipope Paschal III. He is regarded as the father of modern Europe. His empire coincided with the caliphate of Harun al-Rashid (763–809 CE), the fifth Abbasid caliph. Charlemagne saw himself as the guardian of Western Christianity, a mission he believed was divinely ordained.

Later, the Eastern Roman Emperor (Constantinople) confirmed this sacred status for Charlemagne, and the Roman Empire was divided into Eastern and Western parts.

The Filioque Principle

Concurrently, Christian theologians added the principle of “the procession of the Holy Spirit equally from the Father and the Son” to their doctrines, known as “Filioque” (meaning “and from the Son”). This posits that the Holy Spirit originates from both the Father and the Son. However, Eastern Church theologians argued that this principle negates the absolute origin of divinity from God’s essence, effectively denying complete divine power. They maintained that the Holy Spirit proceeds solely from the Father.

The Holy Spirit, meaning the pure spirit, is the third person of the Trinity, also called the Spirit of Wisdom, symbolized by a white dove or tongues of fire.

Eastern and Western Churches

In 876 CE, a council of clergy in Constantinople declared the Pope errant due to his political activities and support for the Filioque principle, denying him absolute authority. The Pope of Rome labeled the Patriarch of Constantinople a heretic, resulting in the formation of the Western (Catholic) and Eastern (Orthodox) churches.

The Western Church, or Catholic, ascribed human reverence to sacred images and venerated Mary as a virgin mother with maternal and compassionate qualities. They upheld the universal authority of the bishop, considered the Pope infallible, and recognized seven sacraments: baptism, confirmation, the Eucharist, confession, belief in the hierarchy of church sanctity, ordination, marriage, and the anointing of the sick.

The Catholic Church adheres to dogmatic beliefs, viewing its truths as immutable and beyond critique. It does not subject its doctrines to scrutiny with advancing knowledge, considering faith always valid without the intervention of rational logic or experience, standing in opposition to liberal Christianity.

Papal Infallibility

In 1870, the Catholic Church officially and dogmatically declared the Pope infallible in his decrees, mandating that the church follow Aquinas in matters of faith and doctrine.

The Roman Catholic Church claims that God has made the church a credible and infallible teacher, entrusting it with all written and unwritten revelations. The Holy Spirit perpetually resides in the church, safeguarding it from error, with the Pope as the spokesperson of the Holy Spirit, issuing infallible judgments.

Saint Thomas Aquinas

Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274 CE), known as the Heavenly Sage, sought to demonstrate that faith and reason are not in conflict. A member of the Catholic Church, his realistic theological philosophy, blending Aristotelian philosophy with Christian theology, was the official philosophy of the Catholic Church from 1879 to the mid-1960s. He viewed theology and religion as distinct from science and philosophy, with the latter complementing theology in pursuit of truth, serving religion. Theology draws inspiration from divine revelation, which oversees the pinnacle of knowledge. God is the eternal and ever-present governor of nature, not merely its initial creator who then abandons it to operate autonomously.

Aquinas accepted both reason and natural theology while maintaining that revealed theology is beyond debate, ensuring that dogmatic church doctrines like the Trinity and Incarnation, which are neither provable nor fully comprehensible by reason, remain unquestioned and accepted without scrutiny. He argued that revelation is indispensable, as the most critical divine truths, such as the Trinity and Incarnation, are conveyed through revelation and inaccessible to reason.

It is said that a fool throws a stone into a well that a hundred wise men cannot retrieve. This proverb applies to Saint Paul, who engineered Christianity in such a way that Western philosophers, despite their rationality, cannot render it philosophically justifiable or transform it into knowledge. Later, we will explore the efforts of other thinkers in the Reformation movement to rationalize Saint Paul’s religious framework.

Divine Knowledge as a Gift

Later, Karl Barth (1886–1968 CE) argued that focus should be on the living God rather than historical investigations of faith. The Bible is not a collection of ancient documents for critical analysis but a testimony to the living God. Knowledge of God is a divine gift made possible through Christ. God possesses an infinite qualitative distinction from humanity, and the Gospels are a medium for God’s encounter with humanity, through which God reveals Himself.

Thus, if Jesus is not historically verified and the issue is explained through mystical revelation or inner experience, the entire structure of faith and the divine organization of the church loses credibility and collapses.

Medieval Christianity, Crusades, and Inquisition

During the Middle Ages, no prominent philosopher or rationalist emerged from the church, despite education being monopolized by the church, which wielded authoritarian faith and enduring wealth. The church taught that God became human through Jesus, proclaiming both God’s unity (a single, indivisible divine essence, the most significant truth of the Old Testament, continued in the New Testament) and the sacred Trinity, understood through divine revelation in Christ. The one God comprises three distinct persons, and the Trinity embodies unity.

The term “hypostasis” (acnum), from Syriac (an Aramaic language related to Arabic), means person, essence, or substance.

Christianity’s historical Middle Ages, termed the Dark Ages, era of ignorance, and time of church superstitions, produced no critical scholars from its society. The West plunged into a profound decline in reason, culture, compassion, and spirituality. The Middle Ages, rooted in the early church’s teachings, extended to the Renaissance.

Despite the Catholic Church’s insistence on understanding written traditions through their inner truths and faith, it weakened its social and doctrinal foundation through the Crusades, Inquisition courts, obsession with superstitions, resistance to burgeoning science, and rampant corruption by Catholic authorities. This rendered Christianity superficial, lacking substance, and promoted a nominal, hollow Christianity.

The church takes pride in representing over 2.3 billion people who superficially adhere to Christianity, not in fostering individuals who, by turning inward, become God-seeking or God-possessing, sacrificing everything for God, triumphantly bearing their cross in pursuit of truth, purity, and sanctity, following the path of Jesus, the true Christian centered on righteousness, living God’s will.

Notably, during the Crusades (1095–1250 CE, spanning about 150 years), the Roman Church aimed to dominate the strategic region of Jerusalem, controlled by the Eastern Roman Empire, but ultimately failed. However, Christian theology forcibly encountered Muslim ideas, used as political tools by rulers like Muawiya and the Abbasid caliphs. Islamic science and civilization reached Europe, leading to the Protestant movement, protests against the medieval church’s dominance, the Inquisition, and the burning of dissenters. This scientific encounter also resulted in British colonialism during the Renaissance, with England’s rapid industrialization, driven by Henry VIII’s (1491–1547 CE) timely opposition to the church, his exploitation of women, greed for church wealth, and the tireless work ethic of the English people. Henry VIII claimed the divine right of kings to counter papal authority.

The Orthodox Church (Eastern)

Orthodox, meaning “right belief” or “follower of truth,” adopted this name in the late fifth century. They adhere strictly to the literal texts of the Old and New Testaments, opposing heretical beliefs.

The Orthodox Church considers sacred images to possess divine nature and spirit, venerating Mary as the Mother of God, a superhuman figure in whose womb humanity and divinity merged in the form of a human embryo.

Orthodox Christians oppose the supreme authority of a bishop over the entire Christian church community, rejecting the sanctity and infallibility of the Pope. They believe the apostles received spiritual power equally from Jesus, with Peter as their leader, and the Bishop of Rome as his successor.

Their seven sacraments are baptism, chrismation, the Eucharist, confession, acceptance of the hierarchy of church sanctity (bishop as Christ’s representative in a specific region, priest as the bishop’s deputy, and deacon who preaches God’s word and aids the needy), marriage, and anointing the sick for healing. The Eastern Church’s language is Greek, while the Catholic Church uses Latin.

The Assyrian Church of the East

Christianity entered Iran in the early first century CE, with episcopal centers established during the Sasanian Empire (224–651 CE). The spread of Christianity accelerated after Shapur’s victory over the Romans, with Christian Roman prisoners settled in Iran and granted land freely.

Nestorius (386–451 CE), Patriarch of Constantinople in the fifth century, held that Christ possessed two distinct natures and personalities—human and divine—and that his mother should be called the mother of Christ, not the Mother of God. In 431 CE, a church council opposed his heresy, proclaiming Jesus as both God and human with a single nature. Conversely, the Sasanian king supported and strengthened Nestorian refugees, and the Nestorian Church and Eastern Christians established branches across many regions of Iran.

As Zoroastrian Magi succumbed to superficiality, legalism, and strictness, Christianity, with its message of love and equality, gained widespread acceptance in the East, including Iran, by the sixth century CE. Iran gradually developed an independent church, akin to the Roman Church, governing missionary activities in its regions. The Assyrian Church amassed significant wealth, achieving such power, influence, and popularity that it supplanted Zoroastrianism in Iran before Islam’s arrival.

The Council of Dadisho in 424 CE, which appointed Dadisho as Catholicos, decreed that the Iranian Church would not be subject to the Roman Church, establishing it as a national Iranian church with the Catholicos wielding extensive authority. However, the Iranian king, who controlled Zoroastrianism’s fate, also dominated the church.

The Nestorian Church, plagued by internal corruption, exploitation of women, wealth accumulation, and usury, faced persecution after the Manichaeans by Kartir and later encountered Arab invasions, restrictive Islamic laws (notably execution for apostasy), and Mongol invasions under Genghis Khan, leading to its decline. Initially, caliphal Islam and later Twelver Shi’ism, centered on the wise and esoteric scholar Sheikh Baha’i, who brought glory to Isfahan, fully replaced Christianity and other prominent religions in Iran. However, Isfahan represents the last bastion of Iran’s enlightened thought, and after Sheikh Baha’i, Iran’s cultural vitality progressively waned.

Saint Augustine and the Rational Engineering of Christian Theology

Augustine (354–430 CE), an illuminative and Neoplatonic sage, was influenced by Manichaean and Gnostic (Hellenized Christian) teachings.

For Augustine, a Christian theologian, nothing was more important than the Word and faith. He viewed illuminative reason as the faculty through which God imparts true knowledge to humanity, with reason as a divine light serving faith and understanding the Bible. He believed that without faith in Christ (not the church’s teachings), one cannot attain truth. Ordinary reason, logic, and science, under the aegis of illuminative divine reason, can reach absolute truth. Only God can protect humanity from sin and evil, granting access to Himself; otherwise, humans lack the freedom or ability to perform good deeds and reach God through righteous actions. God is known only through illuminative reason, not deductive logic.

In Augustine’s view, God’s most significant attribute is the unity of His essence, neither divisible nor composite. Thus, in the Trinity, all three persons share a unified essence, lest three distinct gods result, leading to polytheism. The Nicene Creed states:

“The only Son, begotten of God, eternally begotten of the Father, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten not made, of one essence with the Father.”

The Quran addresses these notions in Surah Al-Ikhlas (The Sincerity):

In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. Say, “He is Allah, [who is] One, Allah, the Eternal Refuge. He neither begets nor is born, nor is there to Him any equivalent.” (Al-Ikhlas: 1–4)

Since God is absolute and full, without void or deficiency, and exists in absolute simplicity, He has no partner, equal, or counterpart, nor does He accept a son.

John Harwood Hick (1922–2012 CE), co-author of The Myth of God Incarnate, states:

“It is highly unreasonable to assume that the historical Jesus thought this way or taught such things.”

God is absolute existence. Given God’s absolute nature and personal essence, which is complete, God must possess a singular and independent essence. Christ and the Holy Spirit can only be manifestations of Him, neither created nor begotten by Him. Not only John Hick but a significant and widespread group of Christian theologians have rejected the divinity of Jesus, the teachings of Paul, and the Nicene Creed.

Augustine is quoted as saying:

“If it were not for the honor of the Catholic Church, I would not believe in the Gospel.”

Nevertheless, Augustine maintained that illuminative reason is unattainable without faith in the real and historical Christ. John Hick also believed that Jesus’s life was grounded in a divine truth, but the doctrines of the Trinity, Incarnation, and atonement in Christianity are products of human thought and myth, not metaphysical or divine realities. He writes:

“I see the man from Nazareth as a figure with profound and extraordinary awareness of the truth of God. He was a man of God who lived in the unseen presence of God. He knew God more than any of his contemporaries and obeyed Him more sincerely. Jesus’s profound awareness of God and the spiritual authority it conferred, along with his influence as the Lord and giver of new spiritual life, necessitated a suitable language for his disciples to speak of their master. His Jewish followers called him their Messiah. This meaning transformed in the church of Jews and Gentiles, taking on connotations of divinity. Michael Goulder in his article ‘The Two Roots of the Christian Myth’ and Frances Young in ‘The Christian Myth: Two Roots or a Tangled Mass’ have shown that in the ancient world, the idea of a god incarnated in human form was so widespread that the deification of Jesus in that cultural context was hardly surprising. The language of exaltation and hyperbole used by the early church for Jesus was part of the Jewish heritage.”

The Protestant Church (Reformers)

After the Crusades and the fall of Constantinople in the 15th century, many scholars migrated to Italy, bringing ancient Greek texts to Rome. The Renaissance movement aligned Christian clergy with its ideals, giving rise to Protestantism.

Pre-Protestantism

Social and economic conditions changed, with people transitioning from labor-intensive lives to middle-class existence. Dissatisfaction arose over heavy taxes paid to the church for repentance. John Wycliffe (1320–1384 CE), a Catholic priest and theology professor at Oxford University, dismissed for criticizing the church, banned paying taxes to the church, initiating pre-Protestantism with the Lollard movement.

Jan Hus (1369–1415 CE), another priest and professor at Prague University in the Czech Republic, incited people against the church, particularly its priests’ wealth accumulation and sale of indulgences. The church purchased people’s sins, attributed them to Jesus, and used the proceeds for itself. Hus called the Pope an antichrist and belief in papal infallibility blasphemy.

The church council excommunicated him, condemning him to death by burning, and he was burned alive.

Gradually, enlightenment spread among the masses, prompting church reforms.

Renaissance and Revival

The 17th century marked the beginning of the Enlightenment, ignited by robust, acquired, and deductive reason, initiating fresh critiques of the church’s intellectual tyranny. It fostered courage to expose the obscurities of Christianity, medieval superstitions, and the boldness to use autonomous human rationality to understand religion and its true content. In this climate, Martin Luther launched the Protestant Reformation in 1519.

Luther’s article “On the Jews and Their Lies” (1543 CE) portrays Jews as self-serving, not godly, a cursed people for rejecting Christ. He wrote:

“The sun has never shone on a more bloodthirsty and vengeful people than the Jews, who imagine themselves God’s chosen people and must kill and destroy Gentiles. The most significant thing they expect from their Messiah is that he will slaughter the entire world with the sword.”

As noted earlier, the Old Testament, inherited from Jewish beliefs, constitutes about three-quarters of the Bible. The Torah, comprising five books, and oral traditions were later compiled by Ezra.

Criticism of Christianity during Protestantism led to protests against certain Catholic Church laws and religious reforms.

Martin Luther

Martin Luther (1483–1546 CE), a reformist monk and priest, wrote the Ninety-Five Theses, famously nailed to a church door, condemning the sale of indulgences, forgiveness of sins, and the church’s role as arbiter of the afterlife. By buying and selling sins, which should be seen as extortion and a deprivation of personal freedoms, the church provided illusory comfort to sinners while amassing wealth and enabling financial exploitation. Salvation, repentance, and even sin are contingent upon God’s will, requiring repentance and restitution to merit forgiveness. However, the church erroneously deemed the purchase of indulgences essential for absolution, fostering leniency, commodifying spiritual guidance, and enabling the wealthy to indulge in greater sins.

Luther viewed repentance as an internal matter between a person and a merciful God. Additionally, repentance is contingent, with each sin requiring specific conditions and contexts for forgiveness.

Luther’s beliefs, supported by like-minded clergy, gave rise to the Protestant sect (meaning “protesters” or “rebels”). Luther presented Protestantism as the true form of Christianity.

Luther believed that work on earth fulfills a divine heavenly calling, and salvation is achieved through serving people, feeding the hungry, meeting the needs of the disadvantaged, and adhering to the public good, not merely performing religious rituals.

Salvation

Later, Max Weber (1864–1920 CE), a German sociologist, considered integrity and professional commitment as the means to salvation, not religious rituals. He viewed religiosity and rituals as divine, predestined, and involuntary.

Weber deemed exploitation legitimate, viewing humans, like secularized Judaism, as machines for wealth accumulation. Thus, the capitalist became a sign of God’s blessing.

The Gene of Modernity

Before him, John Calvin (1509–1564 CE), a French theologian, stated that God chooses the righteous, and no one can alter this. Calvin envisioned societal reform through the application of sacred texts. He was burned alive for opposing the church. Weber, in his book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, exaggeratedly considered Calvin’s ideas the gene and foundation of modernity.

Protestant Beliefs

The Protestant Church opposes the divine and charismatic authority of the Pope. They have democratic structures, allowing non-clergy to vote in selecting priests and the Pope.

The basis of religious law and authority lies in the Bible, not religious figures or clergy.

The church believes that believers do not need clergy to connect with God but can access faith and religion through self-priesthood.

Priests can marry, and confession is not mandatory. Selfishness is the original sin, and salvation lies in avoiding personal motives. Hell does not exist, but the righteous attain bliss.

Of the seven sacraments, confession is not considered sacred. The seven rites or mysteries are religious duties through which God comes to humans, not humans to God.

Protestantism holds only Christ as sacred, placing him at the center of Christian theology, not Saint Paul, who institutionalized Christianity, nor the official, historical, and authoritarian church.

Critique of Pauline Trinity and Distinguishing Jesus of Faith from Historical Jesus

Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1727–1768 CE) critically examined Paul’s doctrines regarding the Christ of faith, Jesus’s identity, and the Pauline Trinity, portraying Jesus as a human messenger beloved and chosen by God for humanity’s salvation. If Jesus claimed to be the Son of God, he intended no more than this. This religious message was distorted by a Jewish conspiracy, the disciples’ actions, and the church’s fabricated myths, leading to a grave heresy and fundamental deviation, elevating Jesus to divinity seated at the right hand of God the Father. He never experienced resurrection or rose from the dead. Thus, instead of the Jesus of faith, the historical Jesus must be sought, as there is a fundamental difference between Jesus’s teachings and goals and the beliefs and intentions of the apostolic church.

Reimarus argued that if we do not accept the mythical and symbolic nature of the Gospels’ language in the context of Palestinian culture, we must conclude that their authors were either delusional or liars.

Father of Modern Protestant Theology

Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834 CE), a follower of Immanuel Kant (1724–1804 CE) in epistemology and human autonomy, is considered the father of modern Protestant theology. He viewed Jesus as a human whose distinction lay in his robust and continuous divine awareness. Humanly, Jesus is like all humans, but his constant sense of God’s presence sets him apart.

The sense of God’s presence equates to God’s actual existence. If only through Christ can human awareness of God transform into God’s presence within humanity, then he is the sole and unique means of God’s revelation in the world. Jesus’s greatness lies in his unique insights about God and his ability to impart them to others.

Jesus cannot be both a true human and a true God; rather, he is a human so close to God that one might say God is in him.

Jesus’s messianic and salvific role was to share with believers the sense of God’s presence he embodied. Through these efforts, he sought to provide a rational and divine basis for Christianity and faith in God in the modern world, rejecting the divinity attributed to nature by modernists.

Schleiermacher’s famous definition of Christianity is:

“Christianity is a monotheistic religion belonging to the teleological type of religion, distinguished from other religions in that everything is related to salvation, achieved through Jesus of Nazareth.”

In this definition, Schleiermacher narrates a natural and ethical religion, goal-oriented, with its primary feature being salvation through Jesus’s mediation and divine grace, where Jesus triumphs over the propensity to sin and sacrifices himself for sinners.

A Christian feels the presence of God within through faith in Jesus. To understand Christianity and attain such emotional faith and absolute dependence on God, one must recognize Jesus’s central role, his clear and constant God-awareness, and God’s life within him.

Faith as Meaningless

Conversely, Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855 CE), a Dane, viewed faith and revelation as contrary to reason and logic, considering them contradictory. He described faith as meaningless and non-cognitive, a movement of passionate will without doubt toward bliss, where suffering is faith’s essence.

Distinction Between Jesus of Faith and Historical Jesus

David Friedrich Strauss (1808–1874 CE), a German theologian, philosopher, and Hegelian scholar, in his rationalist works The Life of Jesus, Christian Doctrine, and The Old and New Faith, critiqued the sanctity and divinity of Christ, denying his miracles and classifying them as myths, likening Jesus to a Jewish Socrates.

He argued that the myths of the New Testament emerged between Jesus’s death and the writing of the Gospels in the second century. The Gospels do not recount historical events but contain supernatural content reflecting the mythical interpretations of Jesus’s disciples, requiring reinterpretation. Thus, a distinction must be made between the real historical Jesus and the Jesus of the New Testament, faith, and church. This view became central to German thought on Christ.

Strauss considered studying the New Testament sufficient to conclude Christianity’s falsehood and invalidity. He ultimately turned away from Christianity, believing the Gospel narratives reflect an idealized early Christian community, false myths, and fervent beliefs, not history, objective truths, or philosophy. Religion’s validity must be grounded in historical realities, not ideology. However, he accepted the application of metaphysics and God’s spirit in the limited material world, viewing Jesus’s mythical status as not negating theology or metaphysics. He was expelled from German academia by the Inquisition.

Earlier, Hegel (1770–1831 CE), a philosopher best described as illuminative, believed that the historical deviation of Christianity from the true Christianity Jesus intended was orchestrated by the apostles.

Ernest Renan (1823–1892 CE), a French specialist in Semitic languages, philosopher, and orientalist, compiled German scholars’ findings on Christianity in his book The Life of Jesus (1863). With passionate prose, he presents a wholly human narrative of Jesus in the sublime setting of Jerusalem, devoid of any sacred, metaphysical, or inner essence.

Nature as All Truth

In contrast to Schleiermacher, Ludwig Feuerbach (1804–1872 CE), author of The Essence of Christianity, tragically viewed all truth as nature itself, considering the Christian God a natural human and humanity reliant on nature, with all divine attributes and divinity belonging to nature and matter.

No Need for Faith

Later, Charles Darwin’s (1809–1882 CE) theory of competition, evolution, and survival of the fittest shaped Western society’s complacent culture, suggesting humanity needs neither faith in God nor intervention in nature.

Religion as the Opiate of Society

Karl Marx (1818–1883 CE), following Feuerbach, called religion the opiate and narcotic of society, a false happiness. Humans achieve true happiness only by sacrificing religion. He sought to replace religion with dialectical and dynamic materialism, lacking logical justification or truth. Nonetheless, Christian faith and adherence to Jesus’s teachings, as institutionalized by the church, were rooted in a profound inner awareness that following Christ deepened. Those with this inner awareness remained unaffected by Renaissance events, retaining Christian beliefs at least mentally, though their practice weakened daily, unable to withstand scientific data contradicting the New Testament.

Nietzsche’s Antichrist

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900 CE), raised in a Lutheran Christian family, in his book Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for All and None (1883–1886), with literary, poetic, metaphorical, and sometimes commanding prose, identified religion’s greatest harm as self-deception and uniform religious values, obstructing creativity, authority, and greatness. Humans possess relative ranks and values, and one’s piety may be another’s sin. Each must create what aligns with their nature, a phenomenon with distinct positive and negative desires in a hierarchy of capability and will, ultimately manifesting a dominant force. Nietzsche asks, if all were equal, where would his love for the Übermensch go?

Christianity’s ultimate goal is sanctity and becoming holy, purifying oneself from evil and attaining purity that dedicates one to God’s will. God is holy, inherently possessing all perfections eternally. Sainthood is being chosen and appointed for God, achieving His pleasure. Holiness is gradational and intensifiable, not a simple quality at a single level. Religion is innate, not racial or acquired, and a religious person living freely in their disposition progresses toward natural perfection.

Zarathustra, the sage, conditioned governance on the ruler’s divine charisma, warning against wicked and uncharismatic rulers. In the Gathas, Yasna 49, verse 11, Zarathustra says:

“Thus, those under the command of wicked rulers, who are evil in deed, word, sight, and disposition, followers of falsehood, their souls will be received with vile sustenance, and they will be evident companions in the abode of falsehood.”

Nietzsche, in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, refers to these uncharismatic and morally corrupt rulers:

“I am Zarathustra, who once said: ‘What value do kings have now?’”

Today’s rulers lack charisma, value, and authority. A king’s worth and supreme perfection lie in his divine charisma and conscientious power, let alone a deceitful, uncharismatic ruler.

In Untimely Meditations (1876), Nietzsche viewed despair as the outcome of deterministic Christianity, which assumes a sealed fate, stifling individuals’ true selves and nature through rigid imitation and blind conformity. He believed it better for a fool to hold their own beliefs than for a scholar to blindly follow others. Christianity fosters a slave morality, suppressing natural desires like courage, honesty, aspiration, and genuine hope, producing a follower, not a creator, incapable of true love, which in Christian tradition is selflessness and complete disregard for oneself in service to others and God. Yet, a weak Christian, burdened by personal insecurities and deficiencies, cannot embody or express such love.

Poetically, Nietzsche suggests that if the Christian God and today’s imitative human die—as they have, lacking transformative application in people’s lives—and if humanity discards the dead weight of belief in such a God (the Father in Christianity), who speaks opaquely, emerging courageously from the cave of religious illusions and superstitions to walk their solitary path, the Übermensch is born. Humanity reverts to childlike innocence, creativity, and elitism, finding the dancing sun of truth and existential status. He believes only in a God who is absolute being, deathless, and ceaselessly generous, never tiring of His eternal dance. Truth, never fully philosophical, rests in philosophers’ interpretations. Truth is life’s essence, served by science, reason, ethics, and religion.

I say the cosmic order and God’s instantaneous manifestation orchestrate a harmonious, eternal dance of existence, freedom, and unity, making faith in Him essential.

As Genesis states, God created humanity in His image, endowing humans with the authority to create the divine dance of creation.

Nietzsche viewed the Christian Jesus as a God-Son stunted by Christianity’s heavy illusions and irrational religious concepts, crucified in ignorance, far from reaching natural maturity or perfection as a superhuman whose value lies in this world, a singularly virtuous Übermensch. The concept of sacrifice and crucifixion, evoking pity, fosters weakness, keeping humanity in chains of inferiority. A human capable of changing their nature through free will and determination finds pity, stemming from psychological weakness, a barrier to true virtue, joy, and peace, achieved through purity, free from negativity, transcending good and evil, and embracing blissful existence.

Nietzsche’s worldview, his fifth Gospel and happiest proclamation, grants humanity sacred dance, selfless love, and acts without expectation of reward.

The church not only dominated individuals’ nature but also overshadowed state authority. Christianity’s rise marginalized state power, with archbishops wielding influence akin to governors. The church’s emergence stunted Rome’s natural growth and stability, plunging that empire of culture and order into darkness and death through this narcotic religion.

Nietzsche explicitly states that defeated Judea, through aggressive, hateful, and organized Christianity, exacted devastating revenge on victorious Rome—a domineering Christianity channeling the masses’ fury, rebellious spirit, and vengeful slave sentiments to serve Judea’s interests, a lethal wound to humanity.

Nietzsche clearly articulates the systematic influence of the Jewish state. In contrast, Luther, in his historic protest, declared the Bible the sole governing authority among Christians and the only valid criterion. The Old Testament deems Jews God’s chosen people, superior, with sacred lands divinely granted to them, legitimizing usury and Jewish banking. This principle sufficed for Jews to steer Protestantism, like early Christianity, to their advantage, shaping this intellectual movement with their religion and culture, obstructing a true understanding of religious realities and events.

In his final year of mental clarity (1888), reacting to Christianity’s deviant teachings and the church’s conduct, Nietzsche, in The Antichrist (an attempt to critique Christianity), pursued philosophically devout and rational religiosity with passionate, poetic prose, fiercely criticizing the church’s narratives about Jesus and Christianity. He called Christianity an anti-science, anti-transcendent human religion, oppressive and domineering, diminishing human dignity and instincts, accustoming people to slavery, submission, and humiliation. The cause of Nietzsche’s mental decline after this year remains unclear, and his bold, aggressive pen, intending another book to complement this anti-Christian work, fell silent.

In this book, comparing Buddhism, which begins with suffering, seeks emptiness, and removes desire, with prevailing Christianity, which starts with sin, fears knowledge, and demands subservience to insatiable, deceitful priests driven by power lust, Nietzsche finds Buddhism realistic and philosophical, expressing affinity for it. He describes Christianity as anti-human, irrational, and slave-oriented, fostering tyranny and violence due to ignorance, despite professing love.

Weak Christianity, as its historical and moral record shows, lacks ethics and is nihilistic, serving only hatred and violence, as evidenced by religious and Crusader wars.

However, Christianity employs the term kenosis, meaning emptying, with its highest manifestation in death. Christ not only lived sinlessly, free of error, but was entirely emptied. The voluntary, triumphant crucifixion, a hallmark of Christianity, signifies overcoming self, darkness, evil, and ego.

For Nietzsche, Christianity is a grave error, corruption, and curse that killed God and is responsible for His death. The church, with its absurd actions, has lost all utility. Nietzsche does not critique God’s divinity but targets Jesus’s divinity and Christianity’s historical institution. The true, historical Jesus, a free-spirited Übermensch, is the only true Christian, speaking of inner truths. His life, truth, or light reflects an internal reality. In the Gospel of John, Jesus says:

“I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.” (John 11:25)

“I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14:6)

Only this Christ—life, truth, light, and eternity—grants life through his inner authority. This bringer of good news, a human without divinity, possesses the power to grant life and forgive sins. He fell victim to Judea’s vengeful state. Facing malice and savagery, Jesus bore his cross without resentment, suppressed anger, or hatred, displaying patience, endurance, and resilience. Without resisting judges, guards, or enduring slander and mockery, and without blaming anyone, he loved even the wicked. With this profound, pure, selfless love, Christ was unique, crucified, and anyone lacking such singular authority, mistakenly deeming themselves Christian, suffers a psychological misunderstanding. Judea crucified Jesus and distorted his teachings, turning his Christianity into one contrary to his free-spirited practice.

Judea and its clergy drove Jesus’s religion to a dead end and failure through calculated actions. Jews who heard and understood Jesus’s heavenly message but refused to believe in him or his God to preserve their political and material interests condemned him to crucifixion.

By borrowing from past religions and myths and crafting the resurrection story, Judea deluded naive Christians with false promises of sin cleansing and effortless entry to paradise, pursuing its political and worldly ambitions, ensuring the survival and dominance of Judaism. By controlling Christianity’s fate, Judea destroyed the ancient Roman Empire and sustained its political and economic authority to this day.

For Nietzsche, the chief orchestrator of this fundamental distortion, transforming the historical Jesus into a mythical “God-man” for Judea’s and rabbis’ ambitions, was Saint Paul. With disdain for knowledge and reliance on hollow, ignorant, idealistic, and unrealistic faith, Paul rendered Christianity irrational, incorporating Jewish organizational influences into its religious framework, making the New Testament a blend of eclectic religious ideas with a Jewish foundation, yet an independent religion.

Christianity’s irrational God, an old, weak Father, regretted creating a bold human rival, compensating for His error by inflicting suffering through sin to instill weakness in human nature.

In the year Strauss proposed the mythical nature of Jesus’s miracles, Ferdinand Christian Baur (1792–1860 CE) argued that Paul, a Jew detached from Judaism, Judaized and Hellenized Christianity in ancient Greece. Thus, his teachings differ from Jesus’s and even the New Testament. He deemed most of Paul’s epistles inauthentic.

Nietzsche admired the historical Jesus’s true character and expressed interest in Islam as a center of two key human perfections: power and knowledge. However, understanding this genius philosopher’s complex thought has been likened to dancing in a tempest, a feat not for everyone.

Bertrand Russell’s Critiques

Among the 20th century’s prominent critics of the church and Christian beliefs is Bertrand Russell (1872–1970 CE), a renowned English philosopher.

Defining intuition as rational empathy and introspective insight, unverifiable for truth, Russell claimed intuition cannot replace deductive reasoning, philosophy, or science. Yet, intuition and revelation, as guides, can be translated into scientific language and become intersubjective with oversight from science. Intuition is not entirely personal and can be transmitted through a heart connected to the inner self. Body, soul, conceptual mental findings, and intuitive heart insights, when actualized, form the entirety of human consciousness, inseparable in validity.

In Why I Am Not a Christian, Russell pertinently notes:

“I am not speaking of the historical Jesus but of the Jesus introduced through the Gospel.”

Russell views Gospel-derived Christianity as an organized religion with coherent but truthless authorities. Sociologically, he attributes its appeal to fear of the future and afterlife uncertainties, seeking security through the support of a protective elder brother, Jesus the Son, who atones and forgives sins—a tragically successful narrative for stirring the masses’ emotions. The church’s oppressive actions and harsh punishments for heretics, fostering fear, must also be considered. Thus, the Christian church institution is not only a source of spiritual stagnation but also an obstacle to societal progress, including ethical development, its supposed responsibility, rendering it self-destructive, inconsistent, and paradoxical.

Russell rejects the immortality of the soul and eternal existence, foundational to the church. For him, the soul equates to the mind, and the mind to the body, ceasing at death. He writes:

“I believe that after death, I will decompose and not continue to live.”

Russell’s fundamental issue is his unresolved conception of God, faith, and affirmation of Him, trapped in agnosticism and lacking a framework to recognize humanity’s enduring dimension.

Agnosticism is a core problem in Christianity, which has failed to provide a scientific conception of God through a proper, inner path of God-seeking with a commitment to inquiry. Russell, in an interview, states that humans cannot know if God exists, admitting his agnosticism.

In Christianity, God’s existence is self-evident, with humans innately aware of Him. Philosophical proofs of God merely elaborate this innate knowledge descriptively. Thus, such proofs neither validate nor suffice for faith and religiosity.

Self-evident existence, with a complete conception, leads to affirmation and faith, but Christianity, especially with the Trinity, offers neither a logical, transparent God-seeking path nor an accessible route through the heart and conscience to affirm the Gospel’s God through innate religiosity.

Had Russell correctly pursued God’s conception and the path to Him through heart and inner intuition, free from rational dogmatism or philosophical absolutism, he would have affirmed God and faith, finding the key to resolving death and eternal life through God’s justice, not deeming it the irrational sacrifice of God’s Son, which lacks wisdom.

If we accept God’s existence, His wisdom and justice necessitate that humans possess an immortal dimension and that God and the cosmos include another realm where each faces punishment or reward commensurate with their conscious actions in this world’s field, reaping the harvest of their beliefs and deeds. Moreover, the greatest, most revered humans with profound perception have reported realms of retribution, and a rational person cannot ignore such critical news.

Russell considers the Christian concept of hell a tyrannical doctrine, questioning why sin’s punishment should be eternal fire.

Christianity’s issue is its impoverished knowledge and unwise theological foundations, with the church unable to elucidate the role of belief and knowledge in eternalizing and sustaining believers or deniers.

Humans are not limited to mind, thought, rational faculties, or sanity but also possess dimensions of wisdom, knowledge, belief, and salvation. Belief shapes human identity, granting enduring salvation or misery. The capacity for speech and thought underpins wisdom and belief, not belief itself, which stems from thought. Human essence lies in knowledge and belief and their defense. Civil systems ignoring human ideological needs may provide jobs, housing, welfare, freedom, and peaceful coexistence but fail to offer correct, logical beliefs. Love, sacrifice, self-restraint, and true harmony, forming humanity’s eternal identity, originate in belief, rooted in healthy, correct, and true conviction. To achieve ultimate perfection, shaping eternity, humans must hold the best and truest belief to ascend. Thought and earthly faculties manage worldly health, not salvation. Both believers and unbelievers possess thought, which does not determine their purity or impurity or eternal fate of paradise or hell. Belief distinguishes one as pure, deserving paradise, or impure, warranting hell’s fire. Russell overlooks humanity’s ideological dimension, denying it entirely.

Conversely, based on Christian beliefs and religious accretions, Russell heard inaccurate reports about hell without scientific inquiry or a sound narrative to analyze it within the chain of belief in God, His wisdom, justice, enduring beliefs, and their role in shaping eternal human identity. He misunderstands God’s merciful system, assuming all sinners face hellfire, which he deems tyrannical. Had he a correct conception of hell, eternal fire, God’s retributive system, wisdom, justice, and true theology, he would have deemed the absence of hell tyrannical and unjust.

Based on the church’s historical record, Russell views it as perpetually and universally an enemy of societal progress and an opiate for the masses, continuing its sinister path and obstructing global ethical elevation. He states:

“I emphasize that the Christian religion, as practiced in the church, has been and will remain the primary enemy of moral progress in the world.”

Liberalism: A Protestant Achievement

A result of the Protestant movement was the formation of liberal culture. John Locke (1632–1704 CE), an English philosopher, is considered the father of liberalism and freedom protected by law. Libber means “free,” contrasting the religious term “orthodox.” His philosophy, emphasizing the separation of church and state, religion from politics, and freedom with specific laws, avoiding violence and promoting tolerance, is evident in the United States’ Declaration of Independence (1776), the first modern state founded on liberal principles. Their motto is life, liberty, and happiness, adapted in other countries to local cultures and political events.

The Republic of America was established with liberal and humanistic ideals, including eliminating the church and official religions from government and separating religion from worldly affairs.

Locke advised never to follow scientific, political, or religious authorities without independent thought, opposing the learning of sanctified traditional matters.

Parts of his writings appear verbatim in the Declaration of Independence, through which thirteen colonies declared independence from Great Britain.

The Declaration states that the government should not officially support any religion. Consequently, reading prayers and religious hymns in U.S. public schools is prohibited. This culture, through the spread of English as the language of empirical science and its globalization, fosters cultural dominance for Britain, ambitions for a lasting global empire for the U.S., and racial superiority for Jews.

Modern liberalism envisions society not as a collection of selfish individuals but as an organized whole where each person, freely and equitably, in a pluralistic, tolerant environment, contributes to the general good or beneficial enjoyment.

Deism and Denial of Revelation

A consequence of the Enlightenment and Protestantism was the emergence of Deism and natural religion. Deists view God as the creator, but human reason, knowledge, and religious life need no revelation or adherence to divine law to know God, necessary truths, or religious practice. They substituted rational religion and law for revealed religion. For them, any revelation must align fully with reason.

Mircea Eliade, in the Encyclopedia of Religion, defines Deism as based on natural reason, negating the need for Christ’s supernatural revelation or church teachings, bypassing Jesus’s mediation, as God does not reveal what humans cannot understand. God created the world, leaving it to operate by its laws, uninvolved in its good or evil.

David Hume (1711–1776 CE), an Enlightenment philosopher, authored Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. He argued that when humans act based on their strong sense of humanity, they need not rely on weaker justifications like ancient, historical, or biblical accounts, rife with contradictions. He considered reason the source of monotheism.

Prominent Deists include Voltaire (1694–1778 CE) and Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778 CE).

Though a theist, Voltaire was a French opponent of the Catholic Church and an advocate for religious freedom. The church banned religious burial rites for him.

Rousseau, a romantic and emotional philosopher, proposed a return to nature against excessive reliance on human reason. He believed the church’s existence leads to dual lawmakers, rulers, and homelands, forcing individuals to choose between religious faith and state loyalty. Thus, the church should be under state control. In his Confessions, he grapples with nihilism and identity crises without a resolution.

Victor Hugo (1802–1885 CE), founder of Romanticism and author of Les Misérables, adhered to natural religion. The church listed his book among prohibited works, denying publication permission.

Puritanism and Christian Zionism

Protestantism gave rise to Puritanism (English Judaism, non-Jewish support for Jews) and its offshoot, Christian Zionism.

Christian Zionism bases its doctrinal and ritual rulings on the worldly Torah, empowering capitalism. They argue that governance should be in the hands of those controlling the nation’s wealth—large landowners, the wealthy, and major traders. This birthed political capitalism and the U.S. Republican Party, a party of wealth, profiteering, and greed, transforming religious and spiritual essence into wealth accumulation.

Unlike Catholicism, Christian Zionism does not view Jews as Jesus’s killers but, by centering the Torah, holds them in special esteem as preservers of its culture and language. Note that Christian Zionism differs from Jewish Zionism, which has woven its wealth and influence into the U.S.’s fabric.

They believe Jews must return to the holy lands before Christ’s second coming, making Israel’s establishment in 1948 divinely ordained, biblically legitimate, and necessary to pave the way for Jesus’s return. Thus, U.S. support for Israel stems from this religious and ideological belief, aligning U.S. and Israeli national interests with their religious doctrine.

Christian Zionism, as a cultural spirit shaping U.S. civilization and identity, holds the nation under its ideological sway. “New Israel” was proposed over “New England” for naming America for this reason.

Christian-Zionist Religious Amalgam

Today, the U.S., as the dominant power alongside its cultural satellites, seeks to impose Christian-Zionist culture globally, replacing other religions. Where it cannot eradicate Islam, it transforms it into Christian-Zionist Islam, ensuring Islam’s functionality aligns with Christian-Zionist and Jewish values, avoiding conflict.

This policy secularizes religions, stripping them of sanctity—a process termed the engineering of religious mockery. This emerging amalgam, blending multiple religions, cultures, and colonial politics, warrants detailed discussion, examining the role and position of religious intellectuals in its execution.