Monday, December 12, 2011

Obama's Progressive Re-Shaping of Christmas

Apparently, it's time for the Obama family to go to church.  So they did.

Obama also made some remarks.

the [Christmas] story has filled our hearts and inspired our lives. It moves us to love one another, to help and serve those less fortunate, to forgive, to draw close to our families, to be grateful for all that has been given to us. To keep faith, and to hold on to an enduring hope in humanity."

For actual Christians, it's an enduring hope in God (for salvation.)

For Obama, that's not really a slip of the tongue.  Progressivism--whatever else it may be--is based on a "hope in humanity" which suggests exactly the Government Obama would like:  elitist/Statist.

In brief, his theology is horizontal, not vertical.

Another look at the modernity to which Obama subscribes (and its parallel to Mohammedanism) can be found here.

9 comments:

Adrienne said...

Let's not forget during the homily the preacher (priest?) said people should not pick on poor itty-bitty Obama. How weird is that???

neomom said...

So they are Creasters, who only attend twice per year Todd Gilman. That doesn't make them faithful, nor that war on religion any less real.

Dad29 said...

And the Episcopal preacher got about half the story right re: the reason for a Messiah.

Granted, the Israelites were looking for one--but for the wrong reasons. The Redemption was not about smashing Rome.

Same error Obozo articulated in his remarks.

Grim said...

That last link points not just to a split between modernity and the scholastics, but to the basic divide in the ancient Greeks themselves. The fundamental question over which the ancients divided is whether it is more important that everything is, or that it is one. Aristotle followed the sense that particular things are what is real, with any higher forms arising from the things (i.e., the particular things are more real than the forms that unite them). Plato and those who followed his school believed that it was the unity of things that was more important: the Form of the Good is more real than any particular good act, because it is eternal and unites all good things. It is why good things are good; it is why we can recognize them as such.

It's not just the Muslims that were interested in this, then; and it's not the real dividing point between the modern and the ancient, because it's always been around.

Nor is the answer very obvious (although I fall into the neoplatonic camp). The syllogism, for example, suggests that the one-ness of things is primary to logic. A classical syllogism just shows you that things you thought were separate turn out to be members of one single class:

'All As are Bs.
'All Bs are Cs.
'Therefore, all As are Cs.'

But while the form is valid, you have to go to the actual things to find out if it's true. 'All birds have wings; all winged-things can fly; therefore, all birds can fly.' Well, no, there are penguins.

J. Strupp said...

I don't have a problem with the wording. Hope in humanity suggests personal responsibility while hope in God suggests that some magical power will determine the outcome for you.

Dad29 said...

Grim, TA was heavy on "distinguish" for a reason.

Struppster, your remark is beneath you. Besides its logical fallacy ('humanity' is NOT 'personal',) the gratuitous "magic" thing is just silly.

Jim said...

that war on religion any less real.

What war on religion?

Al said...

Obama's comments were pure feel-good relativism.

Tim Morrissey said...

"War on Religion". Right.