There is nothing modest about our search for perfection. A "modest plea for Christian perfectionism" is a bit lacking in humility, but it's the official game of Christians who are trying to redeem their faults, mostly those of being humans…

The following paragraphs are thus full of well-structured circular nonsense, the same tricks that dictators, psychopaths and sociopaths use with different premises to enter your brains. The ideas of Anthony D. Baker (Clinton S. Quin Professor of Systematic Theology at the Seminary of the Southwest) are lacking in reality and are meaningless, in regard to perfection. He concludes:

Gradually, after the close of the classical and scholastic eras (though the change is already at work in the debates on poverty among the friars) we come to think of existence as individuated — which is to say, I lose any sense that I am who I am due to the way that I share in another, even in God, let alone any sense that my perfection itself may consist in a sharing of gifts.

At the same time, Aristotle’s metaphysics of causality, in which a change is set in motion in an ultimate way by its final cause, slims down to a bare physics of efficient causes. Now a thing is what it is not on account of what summons it from beyond itself, but solely in light of the history that has given birth to its present. I am who I am not only in isolation from any sharing, but also in isolation from any creaturely telos that is particularised in me. Only a series of past contingencies and choices make me what I am — a present-future event, like resurrection and adoption as God’s heir, can have no bearing on my current identity.

Taken together, these changes mean that perfection is no longer the actualisation of given potential — or, in the case of humans, of a given desire that goes beyond our potential — but rather a scale that judges each present performance or appearance based on whether it could have been better.

Read more:
https://www.abc.net.au/religion/modest-plea-for-christian-perfectionism/...


Gus: Better sandals? As Gus does not believe in god and cannot — because the idea of god and his minions having structured hierarchical status around an original nonsense is stupid (non-representative of where we live) — we have to ask a few questions:

Are angels lesser perfect gods? What are their angelic limits? Do they have none? Is this why such an entity as the Devil entered the equation of god and spoiled His (god is a male) own perfection, becoming the anti-good? Is this notion total crap or not, on a hot summer day?

As the author of Diagonal Advance: Perfection in Christian Theology and Shakespeare, Theology and the Unstaged God, Baker deludes himself with amusing relationships and funny relative values.

"Why is there the need for an account of what summons it from beyond itself? Why do we lose the idea of a common human project set in metaphysical motion by a summons that exceeds any individual, tribe or culture, by rejecting the idea of perfection?”

Excuse me? Do we reject perfection? As mentioned many times on this site, Perfect perfection is changeless, motionless, lifeless. It has to be by definition. Perfection has no other value than itself. Relative perfection is another notion entirely — in which nothing is perfect because everything changes, but relative perfection can be achieved within the limits of a relative situation. Even then, when relative perfection is achieved, it is finished, dead as changing it would mean that the original perfection was imperfect. 

The universe changes. Unless we dream of a point like a "big perfection status" — a point before the Big Bang destroyed the point and created the less than perfect universe. Even then, was the balance of particles/anti-particles perfect in order to maintain the status quo in the big perfection status? Or were they vacillating without going outside the balanced "perfection”? What item(s) unbalanced and stuffed up the perfection status? is this when the devil comes in, stage right? 

Are quarks, atoms and molecules the hierarchy of the universe with other bits in between trying to hold them together like Clag, while the anti-particles are trying to destroy them?

Is the universe perfect? Is the earth the imperfect planet to think about perfection? Is our concept of perfection absolutely perfect? What is perfection?… Is nature perfect? Does a fractal become perfection when it reaches the infinitesimal point it cannot reach? Is there a situation when the perfection of an expanding fractal simply becomes a square? Are atoms perfect particles? Why did the Cathars think of achieving perfection through reincarnation? 

Cathars believed in reincarnation, that the soul had to reincarnate into this world, to improve spiritual refinements and purification each time, till it was deemed perfect “enough" to return to God, through Christ and the Holy Spirit. Catharism had a certain element of Buddhism, though buddhism has no god, but perfection being the goal, in becoming one with the universal perfection. Boy Am I glad I’m perfect as relatively as I am in my little imperfect corner!

The Cathar Parfaits (Perfects) were ordinary members of society who had become excellent at teaching and aiding other ordinary members to achieve pure belief and practice. All genders could become Perfect. Such a person was seen by the Catholic Church — that at the time, believed mostly in cash, glory and war in the name of the almighty — as the "perfect heretic". As Bonhommes and Bonnefemmes (goodmen and goodwomen), Perfects followed extreme austerity and renunciation of the world — which in the cathar belief had been created by the devil himself — abstaining from eating meat and avoiding all sexual contact. Blimey! By these abstinential virtues they were recognised as trans-material angels by their followers, the Credentes (ordinary believers in the Cathar lingo). We see a lot of these, possibly escaping tombs like zombies in movies, including Doctor Who… Perfects were drawn from all walks of life — aristocrats, merchants and peasants alike. Female Perfects were known as Parfaites.

If everything was perfect, there would be no plots for hollywood movies… Could be a good thing...

Yes, such perfection demands that one rejects all the goodies on offer. We still die at the end nonetheless, though the hole in the ground for an ascetic is usually smaller than that for a fat bourgeois. In perfection, our shoes are our own feet, while the imperfect persons wear clogs or leather boots with steel caps, depending on their status… and one drinks to forget his/her own imperfection.

So there are so many questions! So little time! So much bullshit! And more a-coming! Especially from the blurb selling "Diagonal Advance":
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Diagonal Advance argues for a radical revision of Christian thinking about the purpose of human life. Perfection is neither a vertical drop from the divine, nor a horizontal progression through social and personal development. Rather, it is a diagonal advance into the divine perfections through the perfecting of material culture. This vision is, the author argues, in line with the account of human ends that emerges from the Greek and Hebrew background, in the New Testament and in the classical Christian era. When the late medieval and early modern writers of theology and literature begin to name the problem differently, the classical vision is distorted, so that human perfecting and the divine perfections have little to do with one another. Through a critical engagement with contemporary texts, concluding with a dramatic revision of the Prometheus mythology, the author argues for a renewed diagonalizing of Christian perfection.
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Prometheus? Diagonalizing? Oh boy… If there is imperfection in this search for perfection, it’s because … Ah, go away… Dismantle what is written and throw the bits in the toilet of philosophy… In the Northern hemisphere it will flush anti-clockwise and in the southern it will flush clockwise… That’s a given, though hurricane motion in the northern hemisphere is counter-clockwise and cyclones in the southern hemisphere rotate in a clockwise direction, the Coriolis effect on water in a flushed toilet is minuscule compared to the influence of a toilet bowl asymmetry.

So, the Author argues something which makes no sense, even if you believe in the “divine”. His Christian perfection is like a scud missile, landing painlessly by accident... Isn’t this placing a relative value on perfection? Is walking in the desert wearing sandals eating unleavened bread and water, part of perfection? So, why would Christ change water into wine? Who had more fun: the sad clown or the dictator?


Here comes Anthony D. Baker about The Bard:

While many scholars in Shakespeare and Religious Studies assume a secularist viewpoint in their interpretation of Shakespeare's works, there are others that allow for a theologically coherent reading. Located within the turn to religion in Shakespeare studies, this book goes beyond the claim that Shakespeare simply made artistic use of religious material in his drama. It argues that his plays inhabit a complex and rich theological atmosphere, individually, by genre and as a body of work.


The book begins by acknowledging that a plot-controlling God figure, or even a consistent theological dogma, is largely absent in the plays of Shakespeare [Gus bold]. However, it argues that this absence is not necessarily a sign of secularization, but functions in a theologically generative manner. It goes on to suggest that the plays reveal a consistent, if variant, attention to the theological possibility of a divine "presence" mediated through human wit, both in gracious and malicious forms. Without any prejudice for divine intervention, the plots actually gesture on many turns toward a hidden supernatural "actor", or God.


Making bold claims about the artistic and theological of Shakespeare's work, this book will be of interest to scholars of Theology and the Arts, Shakespeare and Literature more generally. 


Yep. The claims are bold and stupid. Shakespeare saw the madness of humanity in search of perfection: "To be or not to be…”. The only “divine” in Shakespeare’s characters is the uncertainty of the future and the misunderstanding of the past, while being emotionally deranged… Mad. The only god and devils are our own self misunderstandings of situations and our luck — good or bad.

We invented gods by our misunderstanding of ELEMENTAL CHANGES such as storms, lightnings, volcanoes and earthquakes. We thought we were guilty of something imperfect for being badly hit by nature. Yet “imperfection" is part of nature. The perfect plant that grows amongst other perfect plants will be less perfect unless there is a minimum distance to maintain the perfect rose, which as we all know (we all should) only last for an instant (of pleasures, let me be...). 

Accept this as much as trying to clean you kitchen by eliminating 99.9 per cent of the bugs for a perfect kitchen benchtop, with a spray that might kill you before getting rid of all the bugs… And the 0.1 per cent of bugs is the one you should worry about.

Now comes the coronavirus...

Achieve perfection in its relative value, through emotional and technical ability of your memory. Do not stress unnecessarily…

Perfection is monotone.

Gus’ analysis of perfection is of course imperfect by accident and by design… 

GL.

Picture at top by Gus Leonisky...