Cultural and Political Agenda of The Family Voter Bloc

    The whole idea of salvation by grace denies perfection to each and every person.  We can not attain perfection.  To tell us to seek it sends us out on a wild goose chase.  Theologically the word teleios does mean perfect, in the sense of an unblemished sacrificial animal.  Philosophically, however, it means complete.  
    The complete person has all the attributes which he or she ought to have.  We like these people, and most of us strive to achieve that condition.  Incomplete people, on the other hand, can distress us.  Criminals, for example, lack compassion for the victims of their crimes.  People in Holy Orders consciously reject the feelings of sympheron, self interest, which figures in the behavioral motivation of most people.  As much as we may admire these Holy people, most of us don’t want to join their subculture.  

                                   Go on to Completeness

    Whereas theologians save the unsaved, Christian philosophers can implement the option of completing the incomplete.  Not all Christian philosophers will want to devote their energies to that goal, but some of us will, especially if we can find legitimization for that organizing principle in The New Testament’s text.  

     The policy statement in these verses includes a catalog of elements of the elementary logos of Christ, which we shall leave.  These elements include repentance from dead, or past behavior, faith toward God, ablutions, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment.  This catalog explicitly includes the important elements of theology, and implicitly includes all else which pertains to theology.  It explicitly includes faith toward God.  We shall leave it when we go on to completeness.  
    The Greek word teleioteta, English completeness, informs us that when we have become complete, as Jesus commands in Matthew 5:48, we shall have left faith in God.  When the believing Christian goes on to completeness, he or she becomes an atheist.  
    To get a better idea of what complete means here, we turn to Dio Chrysostom’s Alexandrian Discourse, the Thirty-Second, delivered to the people of Alexandria during the reign of Trajan.  Dio lived from 40 AD to 120 AD.  The foremost public speaker of New Testament times, he gave Discourses to many of the Empire’s eastern cities, often to admonish them to reform their foolish ways.  
    The New Testament exactly parallels the value system and morality which Dio proclaimed in those Discourses.  This exact concordance in thematic content suffices to prove that Dio set up a theological frame and weaved into it the value system and morality that accounts for The New Testament's continuing success. 
    In the Alexandrian Dio said (Loeb Volume III, page 185):
    You are acquainted no doubt with the prophetic utterances of Apis here, in neighbouring Memphis, and you know that lads at play announce the purpose of the god, and that this form of divination has proved to be free from falsehood.  But your deity I believe, being more complete, intends to profit you  thru men rather than boys, and with urgency, not thru a few words, but with strong and full tiding and clear logos, teaching about the most important things, if you persist, with purpose and suasiveness.
    Many, including even businessmen, believed that the utterances of boys at play in the temple of Apis had prophetic significance for them.  Dio tells his audience to abandon that theological belief, listening instead to a more complete deity who speaks thru strong and full tiding, and clear logos.  In view of what Dio repeatedly says in his other Discourses, we know that he instructs his audience here to change from theology, represented by the boys at play, to philosophy, represented by full tiding and clear logos.  
    In the Family Voter Bloc Newsletter for January 28, 2006, I join the several others who have reviewed the massively many parallels between Dio’s Discourses and The New Testament.  I draw the obvious conclusion that during his exile he headed the conspiracy which produced it.  
    I consider the Alexandrian parallel the most important of them all because it clarifies what borne on to completeness means in Hebrews 6:1-3.  It means that the complete Christian jettisons theology, but retains the philosophy which he or she learned in the course of sometimes endless hours of Sunday School and Church.  
    Christian philosophy attracts a lot of attention.    A Google search for Christian philosophy (5/18/07) yielded 33,600,000 hits.  Atheist philosophy, in contrast,  yielded 1,240,000 hits.  New Testament philosophy yielded 1,400,000 hits, while New Testament atheist philosophy yielded 807,000 hits.  Christians in general, and New Testament scholars in particular, have not neglected philosophy.  

                       Hebrian Rebirth and The Family Voter Bloc

    By Hebrian Rebirth I mean either of two morphôsies in a person.  First, a believing Christian can jettison theology, while retaining an uncompromised commitment to New Testament philosophy.  Second, a person who has only a weak commitment to the Christian faith, if even that, can accept and internalize New Testament philosophy directly, without the intermediation of a believing phase.  Either way, we call this person a Hebrian.
    A person who has gone thru Hebrian rebirth from within a traditional Christian denomination soon understands that the denominational experience includes more than theological and philosophical teachings.  This person shares interactive experience and shared definity, or identity, with others in the local organization and in the sect at large.  To attract and hold Hebrians, an organization which offers those same benefits of social interaction and definity must exist.  
    The organization called the Family Voter Bloc has the social structure of a mainline Protestant denomination.  The acronym FVB abbreviates the phrase, Family Voter Bloc.  This acronym invites pronunciation as Phoebe.  I mostly use Phoebe to name our organization.  We consider ourselfs a Protestant denomination of Christianity.  
    Stephanie Haydu, my then caregiver, put it this way, Instead of learning Bible stories, I would learn how I should live my life. 
     Bible stories, of course, have a heavy philosophical content, and in learning them we learn a Way of Life.  Phoebe, however, teaches a Way of Life directly, without the intermediation of Bible stories.  We differ from other Christian denominations not only in our philosophical thrust, having abandoned theology, but we replace traditional missionary Evangelism with political activism.  
    This activism reinforces our own personal commitment to the Way of Life which we extract out of The New Testament, and protects it from the ravages which Liberal political forces presently impose upon it.  This Way of Life shares major elements with the value systems which the Evangelicals and other Christian values groups proclaim and urge.  
    We differ from these values groups in two ways.  First, we intend to have a strong, ongoing presence in the Republican Party.  That presence requires political sophistication at the highest possible level.  This sophistication contrasts decisively with single issue pressure groups, such as opposition to Abortion, or the handwringing which I complained about in our April 7 newsletter. 
    We will take a stand on every issue which voters feel strongly about or which, in our opinion, they should feel strongly about.  We adhere to an economics imperative which mandates that the economy provide jobs which pay breadwinner’s wages.  We insist, furthermore, that entreps offer these jobs to the market, as opposed to the government subsidizing them. 
    Phoebe has an education policy which freezes the Federal government at all levels, the President, the Congress, and the Courts, out of any involvement whatsoever in the local classroom.  Advocates of different policies, for example the teaching of Creationism in a local Public School system, or its exclusion from the curriculum, will argue their viewpoints before the voters, as opposed to arguing those viewpoints in the courtroom before a judge. 
    Our political arm will generally promote our Way of Life.  We will certainly not tolerate the kind of attack on the family, for example, which Public School routinely makes. 
    This activism requires that we promote a coherent agenda which appeals to a majority of the voters.  Phoebe requires to attain a significant numerical strength, on one hand, and that we appeal to others, not Phoebans, not members of the Family Voter Bloc, on the other.  This political imperative means that we respect theological viewpoints.  In this detail we differ exceedingly from the militant atheists of the Wall Street Journal article. 
    In order to achieve the numerical strength we want, we require to offer a Way of Life which appeals to a large population.  We require to know what specific economic policies both promote our overemployment job system and appeal to voters.  We require to know what elements of our family dynamics doctrine both work pragmatically, and appeal to a large number of people who will live our Way of Life in their families, as well as in the workplace and in society at large. 

    When we go on to completeness, we retain all the philosophical commitments and prakteins we have learned in theologial Christianity.  Among these commitments, we retain and even expand upon the philosophical elaboration of specific texts selected from the Scriptures.  Since we have become Atheists, our selections and elaborations pertain to the real world. 
    No one lives in the real world with more dedication and competence than the person in business.  If that peson lacks this dedication and competence, he or she fails in business.  In The New Testament, the word emporos, translated as merchant in its five occurrences, symbolizes the person in business. 
    About the emporos (transliterated as emporon) we read, in Matthew 13:45-46, 
    Again, the kingdom of the heavens is like to an emporon seeking beautiful pearls.  And finding one valuable pearl, going away he sold all things what he had and bought it. 
    That he sold everything to buy the pearl informs us that this merchant took whatever risks, in the pursuit of his business, that seemed good to him.  Richard Cantillon comes to mind.  Richard Cantillon wrote the first modern economics treatise in his Essai of 1734 (Essai sur la Nature du Commerce in Général, Macmillan & Co., 1931, edited with an English translation and other material by Henry Higgs, C. B., reprinted by Frank Cass and Company, 1959).  In this Essai he introduced the word entrepreneur in its modern meaning.  About the enterepreneur he writes (Cantillon, Essai, page 47),
    The circulation and exchange of goods and merchandise as well as their production are carried on in Europe by Entrepreneurs, and at a risk.
    Cantillon’s entrepreneur, conveniently abbreviated as entrep, corresponds exactly to the emporon of The New Testament.  This correspondence provides a portal of entry to the fundamentals of Capitalism in The New Testament. 
    For example in Matthew 6:3-4 we read,
    But you doing alms do not let the left hand of you know what does the right of you, so that may be the alms of you in secret, and the Father of you, the one seeing in secret, will repay you. 
    Alms here become something given in the hope of payoff.  To the Hebrian, alms mean speculative investments made in the hope of a payoff.  Reinforcing this idea, in Luke 12:32-34 we read, 
    Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.  Sell your possessions, and give alms;  provide yourselves with purses that do not grow old, with a treasure in the heavens that does not fail, where no thief approaches and no moth destroys.  For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.
    Treasure in heaven becomes shares in an enterprise which pays dividends.  The final sentence proclaims that we respond to incentive, particularly to money incentive.  In other words, we gladly work for pay, or put effort into an enterprise which will, or at least may, produce a payoff. 
    One more example illustrates this Capitalistic cluster.  In Luke 6:38 we read,
    Give, and it will be given to you, beautiful metron, pressed down and shaken, running over, they will give into the bosom of you.  For in what metron you measure, it will be measured in return to you. 
    In New Testament times, metron, English measure, euphemistically referred to business praktein.  Jesus tells us here to take good care of your customers, and they will take good care of you. 
    The Capitalist consumer economy has emerged from Christian teachings.  Much else has likewise emerged from these teachings, especially modern science, and a vigorous family advocacy.  The Latin and Greek languages of New Testament times did not have words for what we call the family today.  While Christianity did not invent the family, it did invent the idea of the family as the foundation of a personal morality and value system. 
    In my forthcoming book, The Family Voter Bloc, I give much attention to these and other cultural innovations which originated in Christianity.  Phoebe will have a research and development division which gives all such innovations the attention that they deserve.
    In Matthew 13:45-46 Jesus makes the kingdom of heaven like the emporon.  he does not make the kingdom of heaven like a priest, or preacher, not even like a Fundamentalist preacher, but like an emporon, or entrep.  This ascription gives the person of business a considerably enhanced status, theologically the status of a Holy Man or Holy Woman, rather than making him or her a species of criminal.  
 

    Pheobe commits Phoebans to vibrant family dynamics, strong political activism, and personal competence in the world outside of family and politics, and to its own thriving as a voluntary membership institution.  To implement this commitment we require to make, to our members, recommendations that produce good outcomes when followed. 
    Many people offer advice and counseling on these topics.  The self help industry produces a torrent of articles and books focused on them.  Nevertheless, our high divorce rate and large numbers of people who get into personal trouble of various kinds, trouble that can get them put into jail and prison, shows that our culture does not prepare many of us for daily life in the real world in which we live. 
    Phoebe therefore commits a significant fraction of its resources to research on the living of daily life in the family, in the workplace, and in society at large.  We will have a decisive advantage over our competitors when we attain a threshold of numerical strength, because we can use the experience of our own members to monitor the outcomes of what we recommend. 
    The Wall Street Journal  for May 21, 2007, page A6, A Political Tool Goes Corporate, reports on the use of data mining by political groups, and increasingly by corporations.  Phoebe requires to use these techniques at the highest level of competence, for our own political and cultural activism. 
    To dump theology makes options like these open to Christian exploitation.  We will send regular newsletters to our people, and these will feature the latest from our Research and Development Division.  Our competitors and enemies will give these newsletters close reading.

    Rather than explore the numerous options avaiable to him as a militant atheist, and therefore a direct competitor of traditional Christianity, Onfray focuses on plowing some already very well plowed ground.  Many writers before him have explored the numerous inconsistencies and internal contradicions in The Old Testament, The New Testament, and the Koran. 
    No modern writer, to my knowledge, has welcomed these inconsistencies and contradictions, and reached the obvious conclusion that the Book of a Book Religion requires to feature them.  Without the inconsistencies and contradictions the book would not succeed as the foundation of a World Religion.  The New Testament, however, also encodes a value system of aggressively pragmatic philosophy into its theological thematic frame. 
    Writing in New Testament times, Dio Chrysostom reveals an understanding of this dynamic in Eleventh, or Trojan Discourse.  He opens with the observation (Loeb Volume I page 447),
    I know indeed almost certainly that to teach humans is always difficult, but deceiving them is easy.  And they learn with difficulty, if they learn anything, from the few who know, but are deceived most quickly by the many who do not know, and not only by others, but also themselves by themselves. 
    Dio calls Homer the biggest liar in existence, and subjects the Epics to a devastating critique of their inconsistencies, contradictions, and absurdities.  He concludes that the Greeks lost the Trojan War.  A few modern scholars have concluded that it never occurred, but the archaeological evidence and historical analysis which supports that conclusion also supports the conclusion that the Greeks lost it. 
    We can say for sure, however, that Homer invented modern Book religion, raiding the Egyptian Book of the Dead for the idea, and wrote the model book which others have since closely followed.  Whether or not following in Dio’s footsteps, numerous more or less modern writers have given Judaism, Christianity,and Islam precisely the kind of analysis which Dio gives Homer, and Onfray has likewise adhered to that model.  He has produced nothing that Dio’s readers do not already know about Book Religion.
    To hear him tell it, nothing good has ever come out of Judaism, Christianity, or Islam.  I go along with him on Islam, but the combination of the Old and New Testaments has produced what we call Western Civilization today. 
    It seems to me, at least, that Onfray not only does not offer a Way of Life, but sneers at anyone who does.  The Family Voter Bloc most emphatically does offer a Way of Life based explicitly on New Testament teachings.  We consider ourselfs a Christian denomination.  Except for the detail of rejecting theology, we have nothing in common with the atheist subculture to which Onfray, and, for example the Humanists, consciously belong. 
 
     Separating New Testament Thematics from New Testament Theology

     The atheist industry makes a serious mistake in rejecting The New Testament.  Coded into its theological framework, it teaches the thematics, the fundamental organizing principles, of a Way of Life, a morality, a value system, that maximizes the satisfactions which a person can enjoy as the outcome of the behavior of daily life in the family, in the workplace, and in society at large.  New Testament thematics differ from philosophy, especially from the philosophy which the Academics teach their helpless students, in its commitment to life in the real world.  Like many other words which occur only once in the Scriptures, the word pragmateia (Second Timothy 2:4) has decisively important philosophical meaning.  It means reality in The New Testament, and retains that meaning in modern Greek. 
     The February 7, 2008 Newsletter, The Origin of The New Testament, devotes its 89, 8.5x11  pages to the sources and teaching of New Testament thematics.  It shows that Dio Chrysostom's Discourses teach exactly the same thematics, thus demonstrating it can stand on its own, independently of theological reference.  
     The Origin derives modern Judaeo Christian religion from a collaboration of three camps, the New Testment conspiracy in Alexandria, the Josephus camp in Rome, and the Old Testament camp in Jamnia.  It especially emphasizes the separation of New Testament thematics from New Testament theology. 
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