{"id":12471,"date":"2012-02-14T17:59:26","date_gmt":"2012-02-14T22:59:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/watchwomanonthewall\/?p=12471"},"modified":"2012-02-18T19:53:39","modified_gmt":"2012-02-19T00:53:39","slug":"how-civilizations-die-%e2%80%93-how-this-all-relates-to-christianity-the-west-islam-judaism-israel-america-europe-and-you-today-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/watchwomanonthewall\/2012\/02\/how-civilizations-die-%e2%80%93-how-this-all-relates-to-christianity-the-west-islam-judaism-israel-america-europe-and-you-today-part-2.html","title":{"rendered":"How Civilizations Die \u2013 How this all relates to Christianity, the West, Islam, Judaism, Israel, America, Europe and YOU today! (Part 2)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Part 2 <\/strong>– How Civilizations Die<\/strong><\/h1>\n

________________________________________________<\/p>\n

Watchwoman<\/span>:<\/strong> Yesterday I began a series about not only how civilizations die, but a comparison between Jewishness, Christianity and Islam and how those religions and their worldviews affect the growth of the death of civilization.\u00a0 The text is relevant to us today, to all of us in America, to the Jews here and in Israel, to the Muslims in all of the Arab lands, to Europe and foreign lands, to the Christian Church of all the believers in the One Holy and True God of the Holy Bible.\u00a0 Most of all, I believe each one reading this will find it intensely relevant to their situation, their family and their faith today, right where each of you sit!\u00a0 May the One, True Triune God of Love, Creator of the Universe and all things in it, open your eyes and hearts to receive His Love for you, through the wooing of the Holy Spirit, in the Name of Jesus Christ.\u00a0 May you be blessed and may this lead you into truth to encounter in a personal and real way all the Love God has for you. Amen and Amen. \u25ac Donna Calvin<\/strong><\/p>\n

[King James Version – 1 John 4:16]\u00a0 And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

HOW CIVILIZATIONS DIE
\n(And Why Islam is Dying Too)<\/strong><\/p>\n

By David P. Goldman
\nOnline Columnist \u201cSpengler\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0Chapter 10, Pages 137-155
\n(Posted at Watchwoman on the Wall in a Series)
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

You\u2019ve heart about the Death of the West.\u00a0 But the Muslim world is on the brink of an even greater collapse.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Will we go down in the implosion?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

ISLAM: THE ARABS AS CHOSEN PEOPLE<\/strong><\/p>\n

141<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0the faithful actually believe, we must understand its theology both objectively \u2014 as a statement about God and the world-and also existentially, that is, as the members of the religion live it in ordinary life.<\/p>\n

In chapter 6 we reviewed Islam\u2019s deep roots in tribal society. Unlike Judaism and Christianity, in which every individual participates directly in the covenant with God, Islam retains the hierarchy of pre-biblical traditional society, in which the head of a family is a miniature head of state. If the Muslim womb is closing because of a failure of faith, we must look more deeply at the faith that has failed in its encounter with modernity.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Judaism and its daughter-religion Christianity sought to distinguish themselves from paganism. But what does \u201cpaganism\u201d actually mean? In Franz Rosenzweig\u2019s sociology of religion, the animal ties of common ancestry define the pagan order. Individuality in the Judeo-Christian sense is inconceivable, for every member of society must bear the same identity of blood and soil as every other member, and the single member of society can be nothing other than an expression of collective blood and collective will. For this reason every institution of pagan society, emphatically including family and clan, must collapse into the totality. Here is how Rosenzweig\u2019s described the absence of individuality in pre-modern society:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In the thoroughly organized State, the State and the individual do not stand in the relation of a whole to a part. Instead, the state is the All, from which the power flows through the limbs of the individual. Everyone has his determined place, and, to the extent that he fulfills it, belongs to the All of the State…. The individual of antiquity does not lose himself in society in order to find himself, but rather in order to construct it; he himself disappears. The well-known difference between the ancient and all modern concepts of democracy rightly arise from this. It is clear from this why antiquity never developed the concept of representative democracy. Only a body can have organs; a building has only parts. 5<\/sup><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

142<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

As we have seen, the family is a miniature clan, the clan is a miniature tribe, and the tribe is a miniature nation. All the layers of society stand in relation to each other like nested Russian dolls, identical except for their size.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Ancient Israel, and later Christianity, constituted an alternative to pagan social order. The covenant between Abraham and the biblical God applies not only to the Hebrew nation but to every individual member of that nation. Through his covenant, God establishes the rights of every individual \u2014 emphatically including the weakest members of society \u2014 beyond the claims of tribe and clan, and provides laws, judgments, and ordinances which stand above the whim of any human magistrate or chieftain. No longer can the Roman paterfamilias command the death of his own children in the little empire of his home; the covenant protects every member of society directly. And no longer can a husband be justified in beating his wife because he acts with the legal authority of a head of state in miniature, as in Sura 4:34.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

It is common to speak loosely of \u201cthree Abrahamic religions\u201d and assume an underlying commonality among Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. But the defining experience of Judaism and Christianity is alien to Islam. That is the love of a personal God. The founding premise of Judaism is that God\u2019s love for Abraham, \u201cGod\u2019s lover;\u2019 extends by covenant to each and everyone of his descendants, as well as those who are adopted into Israel by conversion. Christianity proposes to extend this grace to all who believe in the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. Each morning, the observant Jew enacts a wedding ceremony with God, forming a wedding band with the leather strap of his phylacteries and reciting the words of Hosea: \u2018\u2018And I shall espouse you to Me eternally; I shall espouse you in mercy and lovingkindness, in righteousness and justice, and you shall know The Lord:\u2019 The personal God of Judaism who loves the faithful soul with the ardor of the Divine Lover in the Song of Songs is unimaginable in Islam, for Allah does not condescend to enter into a relationship of love with mere mortals. Allah cannot bind himself to covenants that he himself cannot alter out of love for his Chosen people, as the biblical God did with Abraham and his<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

143<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

descendants; much less can Allah become incarnate as a human being, as Christians believe God did, to offer salvation to all humankind.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Jews and Christians worship a God who cannot be like them, for their God is perfect and incapable of doing evil. For Christians, the incarnate God Jesus Christ is without sin. God is thus wholly Other, for we are imperfect: frail, mortal, and prone to sin. God does nothing without a reason, and his reasons always are good, even if they surpass our understanding.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Allah, by contrast, is beyond good and evil. His cosmic caprice determines everything, and if he so wishes he can make us commit acts of evil, even the ultimate evil of idolatry. Covenant is a concept alien to Islam. For by definition a God of covenants places a limit on his own power and enters into a partnership with a human society. Unlike YHWH of the Hebrews, the all-transcendent Allah does not stoop to make agreements with mere human beings.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Allah usually is described as \u201cabsolutely transcendent\u201d but in comparison to the God of the Bible, he is rather more like us. That is what Rosenzweig meant when he called Islam a pagan parody of Judaism and Christianity, and Allah the \u201ccolorful panoply of the pagan Olympus rolled up into one,\u201d that is, \u201ca monistic paganism.\u201d Rosenzweig\u2019s use of the term \u201cpaganism\u201d is not a reproach but a diagnosis. There is a pagan purpose to the reconfiguration of Christian and Jewish concepts in the Koran: the election of the Arabs in place of the Jews, as Professor Kalisch explains.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

A God of Love Is a God of Laws<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

What is it that unites Catholic Thomists and evangelical Biblicists \u2014 as well as observant Jews \u2014 but separates all of them from Muslims? It is the biblical belief that God loves his creatures. A loving God, the Bible asserts, places man in a world that he can comprehend, which is to say that God establishes order in the universe out of love for humankind. We live in a world sufficiently comprehensible for us to adapt nature to our needs.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Heavenly bodies do not act capriciously (either as pagan deities, or at Allah\u2019s<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

144 \u2013 Continued tomorrow: February 15, 2012<\/strong>
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Part 1 – How Civilizations Die – <\/strong>Posted February 13, 2012 – pps 137-140<\/strong>
\nhttp:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/watchwomanonthewall\/?p=12449<\/a><\/p>\n

Part 2 – How Civilizations Die –<\/strong>Posted February 14, 2012 – pps 141-143<\/strong>
\nhttp:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/watchwomanonthewall\/?p=12471<\/a><\/p>\n

Part 3 \u2013 <\/strong>How Civilizations Die \u2013 Posted February 15, 2012 \u2013 pps 143-146<\/strong>
\nhttp:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/watchwomanonthewall\/?p=12494<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Part 4 \u2013 <\/strong>How Civilizations Die \u2013 Posted February 16, 2012 \u2013 pps 147-150
\n<\/strong>http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/watchwomanonthewall\/?p=12507<\/a><\/p>\n

Part 5 \u2013 <\/strong>How Civilizations Die \u2013 Posted February 17, 2012 \u2013 pps 151-154
\n<\/strong>http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/watchwomanonthewall\/?p=12525<\/a>
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

Part 6 \u2013 How Civilizations Die \u2013 Posted February 18, 2012 \u2013 pps 154-155<\/strong><\/strong>
\nhttp:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/watchwomanonthewall\/?p=12536<\/a><\/p>\n


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