Landscape Overview
Orthodox Christianity, when correctly understood and practiced, has fostered the rise of Western society’s modern democracy and its personal liberties because Christian Orthodoxy overcomes humanity’s group-based factions and emphasizes the free conferment of eternal liberty to individuals: an appropriate understanding of Christian orthodoxy observes the reality that no individual, creed, group-practice, or religious work can encompass God’s holiness and eternal liberty because everyone is imperfect and therefore everyone’s self-interests will conflict; therefore, an appreciation for eternal liberty through faith is a free conferment that is not the result of a person’s race, kindred relation, societal standing, religious work, and male or female sex. Christian Orthodoxy holds that Lord Jesus’ resurrection affirms that holiness, righteousness, and justice stand beyond the human condition and its shortcomings. Likewise, the indiscriminate election of the saints by grace through faith unto Lord Jesus’ body (that is, humankind’s salvation unto the eternal righteousness) affirms this truth.
The effect of Protestant Christians’ approximating Orthodoxy in a manner that cultivated the progressive culture that enabled the rise of modern democracy is as follows: modern democracy, in the form of representative government, stands upon its ability to secure its sovereignty by guaranteeing the rights and healthful vitality of the individual over the people’s group-based allegiances. Because the commercial economy cannot guarantee the equal distribution of wealth and resources, the people naturally seek security in factions that have competing interests that often undermine the democratic process. Orthodox Christian doctrine, as practiced by Christian Protestants, marries individuals’ faiths that value the eternal liberty, transcending their imperfect religious works and the other discriminating characteristics that define their factional affiliation. Like so, the indiscriminate election by faith, despite human volition, empowers individuals to brook the temporary setbacks of life for the eternal wealth. Also, the indiscriminate election by faith empowered individuals not to discriminate against their neighbor’s belief system, since the individual’s faith is a free gift and not something acquired by his or her religious works. As a consequence, Protestants’ appreciation of the indiscriminate election by faith held the progressive capacity to accept differing beliefs under a secular government.
Because of a progressive Protestant Christian culture, approximating Christian Orthodoxy, the framers of the United States Government could consign the United States Constitution to recognize individual merit and personal liberty over clanship and sectarian duties. The United States of America then led the vanguard of modern government by recognizing and safeguarding individual liberty and personal volition.
For example, the doctrinal treatise, the Landscape of Truth, describes how contemporary thinkers define how modernity recognizes the liberty of the individual as follows: “Secular thinkers roughly conceive modernity to be the era in which the general populace enjoys constitutional rights of private property and protection from the arbitrary seizure of property or the arbitrary seizure of one’s person for forced labor. Furthermore, secular thinkers conceive modernity to be the era in which law enforcement, health care, economy, and social policy stand upon scientific investigation rather than religious doctrine . . . . [Secular thinkers understand that in the modern state] an individual’s welfare depends upon the individual’s execution of the individual’s contractual rights of employment rather than the individual’s being subject to a lifetime of vassalage under a rapacious overlord or clergyman. [Landscape, Chapter 7, page 550.]”
In summary, unlike all other faiths, Christianity centers upon the free conferment of a person’s individual liberty under God: Lord Jesus the Christ’s death, resurrection, and free election of the saints recognizes God’s conferment of righteousness, despite race, male or female sex, creed, social class, or religious work; since these social divisions people use to undermine one another’s liberty as everyone seeks his or her own economic gain. As we shall briefly describe below, other belief systems that require religious rites, works, and practices, which amount to self-justification, alienate and disenfranchise those who do not adhere to the respective belief systems.
The effect of Protestant Christians’ approximating Orthodoxy in a manner that cultivated the progressive culture that enabled the rise of modern democracy is as follows: modern democracy, in the form of representative government, stands upon its ability to secure its sovereignty by guaranteeing the rights and healthful vitality of the individual over the people’s group-based allegiances. Because the commercial economy cannot guarantee the equal distribution of wealth and resources, the people naturally seek security in factions that have competing interests that often undermine the democratic process. Orthodox Christian doctrine, as practiced by Christian Protestants, marries individuals’ faiths that value the eternal liberty, transcending their imperfect religious works and the other discriminating characteristics that define their factional affiliation. Like so, the indiscriminate election by faith, despite human volition, empowers individuals to brook the temporary setbacks of life for the eternal wealth. Also, the indiscriminate election by faith empowered individuals not to discriminate against their neighbor’s belief system, since the individual’s faith is a free gift and not something acquired by his or her religious works. As a consequence, Protestants’ appreciation of the indiscriminate election by faith held the progressive capacity to accept differing beliefs under a secular government.
Because of a progressive Protestant Christian culture, approximating Christian Orthodoxy, the framers of the United States Government could consign the United States Constitution to recognize individual merit and personal liberty over clanship and sectarian duties. The United States of America then led the vanguard of modern government by recognizing and safeguarding individual liberty and personal volition.
For example, the doctrinal treatise, the Landscape of Truth, describes how contemporary thinkers define how modernity recognizes the liberty of the individual as follows: “Secular thinkers roughly conceive modernity to be the era in which the general populace enjoys constitutional rights of private property and protection from the arbitrary seizure of property or the arbitrary seizure of one’s person for forced labor. Furthermore, secular thinkers conceive modernity to be the era in which law enforcement, health care, economy, and social policy stand upon scientific investigation rather than religious doctrine . . . . [Secular thinkers understand that in the modern state] an individual’s welfare depends upon the individual’s execution of the individual’s contractual rights of employment rather than the individual’s being subject to a lifetime of vassalage under a rapacious overlord or clergyman. [Landscape, Chapter 7, page 550.]”
In summary, unlike all other faiths, Christianity centers upon the free conferment of a person’s individual liberty under God: Lord Jesus the Christ’s death, resurrection, and free election of the saints recognizes God’s conferment of righteousness, despite race, male or female sex, creed, social class, or religious work; since these social divisions people use to undermine one another’s liberty as everyone seeks his or her own economic gain. As we shall briefly describe below, other belief systems that require religious rites, works, and practices, which amount to self-justification, alienate and disenfranchise those who do not adhere to the respective belief systems.
The Landscape Goal:
The goal of thelandscapeoftruth.com is to observe the liberal forces of Western capitalism and social progressivism as capitalists and social progressives seek to integrate new markets and non-Western peoples. The goal is to observe how liberal markets and socialist governments increasingly become more centralized and autocratic as the liberal forces fail to confer Western traditions upon non-Western cultures, without acknowledging the vital Christian cultural synthesis that enabled the rise of modernity.
Referencing overviews from the doctrinal treatise the Landscape of Truth, thelandscapeoftruth.com produces monthly editorials, generating Landscape perspectives of Western Governmental Policy; the Global Economy; Science; Race Relations and Cultural Conflicts; the Church; and the Jewish Diaspora and Israel.
Referencing overviews from the doctrinal treatise the Landscape of Truth, thelandscapeoftruth.com produces monthly editorials, generating Landscape perspectives of Western Governmental Policy; the Global Economy; Science; Race Relations and Cultural Conflicts; the Church; and the Jewish Diaspora and Israel.
The Ongoing Challenges that the Market based Industrial Economy presents to the Modern State:
Western governments face the ongoing challenge of keeping all segments of society enfranchised, politically and economically, as the market economy continuously forces the general outlook upon laws and cultural norms to evolve. For most of human history, people lived under agrarian societies under which culture, law, and economy remained unchanged: in agrarian economies, patriarchs, kings, and aristocrats held a static understanding of law and custom, as they either ruled by divine right or traditionally held beliefs. Though often stifled by sectarian practices, prejudices, and superstitions, human civilization’s agrarian origins naturally facilitated commonly agreed upon social standards under which the ancients sought a communal sense of well-being. As the 19th Century British jurist Sir Henry Maine observed, modernity is therefore a shift from a social-status based civilization unto a social-contract based civilization: that is, a shift from a civilization that people organize around the significance of the communal group unto a civilization that representational governments organize around the significance of an individual’s constitutional rights.
The modern state essentially competes for its sovereignty over the kindred sentiments and prejudices of its people: the state competes against personal relationships in which people do not distinguish the propriety of civil law from the bindings of their religious rites, filial duties, and cultural tradition.
The modern state essentially competes for its sovereignty over the kindred sentiments and prejudices of its people: the state competes against personal relationships in which people do not distinguish the propriety of civil law from the bindings of their religious rites, filial duties, and cultural tradition.
The agrarian economies that existed throughout human history less often provoked a disturbance of cultural tradition, societal status, and familial relationships; however, todays market economies by nature invite perennial societal changes, as economic cycles indiscriminately provide either opportunities or hardship to varying segments of society, often regardless of one’s cultural background.
The two economic systems that govern todays market economies are capitalism and socialism. Both have caused profound societal good and harm. And both have a rationalizing effect upon society that renders an organic nature to law. The rationalizing effect renders government less personal and more bureaucratic, increasingly indifferent to the personal interests of the common citizen.
The two economic systems that govern todays market economies are capitalism and socialism. Both have caused profound societal good and harm. And both have a rationalizing effect upon society that renders an organic nature to law. The rationalizing effect renders government less personal and more bureaucratic, increasingly indifferent to the personal interests of the common citizen.
As Sir Henry Maine observed, a nation’s laws are at first complimentary with the cultural norms of the populace. The cycle of the law’s evolution begins as new economic and social realities present themselves, instantly disenfranchising segments of the population. Then the changes in the interpretation of the law comes into effect as cultural sensitivities evolve. Like so, many accepted practices that the actual written law does not cover become legal fictions that reinterpret the law’s original intent. Lastly, as jurists observe the schisms between cultural tradition and the actual practice of the law, the law makers interpret the laws based upon relative principles that may or may not coincide with the cultural norms of the populace that enjoined the government: increasingly, law makers apply the law under the circumstances of the contemporary market economy, while the law makers ignore the ancient agrarian principles that each ethnic background turns to for support during economic downturns. After this legislation solidifies whether the whole of the general populace agrees or not. In this way, western governments gradually become more autocratic and nihilistic and less representational of the general populace as each perspective peoples become antagonistic when the perspective peoples return their allegiances to their respective clans and sects.
How Multi-Culturalism gradually undermines Western Democracy:
The chasm between Western governments and Western people continues to grow as capitalist forces expand new markets, globally. The resulting immigration of non-Christian peoples into the West gradually undermines Western democracies because the non-Western traditions and actual religious doctrines retain elements that disenfranchise non-adherents. While various non-Christian cultures seem to coalesce successfully when any one of the cultures is not the gross majority, the lands from which the non-Christian immigrants come from have high levels of classism, persecution of religious minorities, and sectarianism. As a consequence of the non-Christian immigrants’ conflicting with established Christian culture, secular forces strengthen and consign all to observe superficial and relative notions of morality, which society fails to agree upon. The Landscape of Truth’s introduction records similar examples like the following, concerning the alienating religious doctrines of non-Protestant cultures that immigrate into the West:
- One major religious text enjoins adherents to hold non-adherents as second-class citizens or even cursed.
- Many religious texts require religious rituals that invest adherents with senses of self-righteousness; thereby lowering the esteem of non-adherents: classism and racism frequently result. Often non-adherents suffer from acts of violence and/or other persecution from those who esteem themselves because of their religious acts.
- Many religious texts esteem geographic places as holy places that require pilgrimages. The same religious texts deem the lineages descended from holy men as more blessed than others. Both these religious doctrines lesser the esteem of non-adherents.
- Some religious texts enjoin adherents to seek higher spiritual states that promise rebirth into higher states of being. These religious texts by nature accept the poor, the downcast, and even animals as being blameworthy for not having a heightened spiritual understanding in their past lives.
The Liberty of the Church:
Because of Europe’s experience of religious wars and Church corruption, secular progressives loud many aspects of pre-Christian, Greco-Roman civilization as the prototype to modernity. The Landscape of Truth observes how Greco-Roman civilization could not alone be the vital precursor to modernity because Greco-Roman civilization could not incorporate conquered peoples as equals to upper-class Romans: the Landscape observes how Rome stood upon conquered people and slaves, whom Romans ruled over by fear and intimidation: the Landscape’s seventh chapter describes how only Christianity incorporated the Germanic tribes. The Landscape describes that the Church became corrupt because it was the only international entity left, after Rome’s fall before the Germanic tribes that Rome failed to incorporate; therefore, exploiters flocked to the Church, coveting the Church’s cultural power: a power that many insincere Church leaders exploit today.
The Landscape’s chapter seven describes how the conversion of Germanic kings under a centralized paternal Church provided the legal fiction of a single kindred Christian people throughout Europe. The Landscape observes that only under this cultural synthesis could Europe’s economy, enlightened philosophy, and humanism arise. Specifically to describe how Christianity created the cultural synthesis that enabled the enlightened philosophers to envision the modern era’s social contract-based representational governments, the Landscape describes how the Protestant Reformation empowered common people to overcome kindred prejudices. The Landscape describes how the Church used the non-class based, agrarian principles from the Israelites’ Old Testament Laws, in order to reconcile the alienating traditions and customs of the Germanic tribes. Accordingly, the Landscape describes how the Church applied the universal principles of the New Testament to unify the Germanic kindred groups under the legal fiction of one kindred group of adopted sons and daughters of God through faith in Lord Jesus the Christ. More importantly, the Landscape’s chapter seven describes how the commoners overcame Church corruption by returning to the actual Pauline doctrines that the Apostle Paul used to establish the early Churches: the Landscape particularly demonstrates how the Pauline doctrines that the Reformation roughly approximated made modernity's upward social mobility of the working and middle-classes possible. The work describes how the Pauline doctrines inspired Christians of all classes to transcend kindred affinities for Christ’s enduring truth and brotherhood. Particularly, to champion the Church’s continued vital position that sustains freedom in the West, the Landscape of Truth’s chapter seven highlights the following:
- First, Lord Jesus’ resurrection and free gift of salvation through election of his saints by the gift of faith in his resurrection actually indicts any religious work as being insufficient. In this way, God indicts the religious works of all, even from the prostitute and murderer unto the priests, a reconciliation of all through faith.
- Second, the secular religion of morality falls apart, because any icon of morality possesses such human frailties that cloak his or her good deeds; therefore, from civilization’s moral icons, the populace never finds a gauge for moral aptitude. As a consequence, social morality degrades over time. For this purpose, Christ resurrection transcends our human frailties, embodying truth, justice, righteousness, being an eternal ensign to all.
- Third, election is indiscriminate, regardless of kindred relationship, race, class, male or female sex, or religious works. Therefore, election transcends factions, enabling an international brotherhood: a natural legal fiction.
- Fourth, election resist ecclesiastical authority—a professionalism that arrest the Gospel from the commoner, because one cannot work for one's spiritual anointing and ministry calling.
- Fifth, election demands compassion and the love for one’s neighbor, the unbeliever, and/or enemy. For even a saint’s dearest loved one may not be an elect of God through faith. Moreover, election through faith demands a respect for authority, because the true Kingdom is a gift that cannot be realized by humankind’s hands.
- Lastly, the Landscape correlates principles from the ancient Israelite’s agrarian law with the New Testament’s universal law of Lord Jesus’ eternal love that we see expressed in Lord Jesus’ redemption of faith from all the kindred families upon the earth.
General Overview of the Landscape of Truth: An Orthodox Understanding of the Biblical Testaments for the True Worshippers
(Published by the True Worshipper Ecclesiastical Association, Inc., in May 2014, ISBN: 978-0-9773714-2-6, LCCN: 2014938656):
- The Landscape of Truth recognizes the fact that when the Gospel of John declares that Lord Jesus came to save the world, the Gospel declares that Lord Jesus came to establish an eternal peace that we seek to secure through our families, government, economy, science, and religious institutes. The Landscape demonstrates how God issued the Old and New Testaments in a way that underscores how Lord Jesus the Christ overcomes the shortfalls of civilization throughout its evolution. The work finally demonstrates how Lord Jesus achieves a Holy Marriage of all peoples: a state of liberty and justice that human civilization fails to secure.
- The Landscape's introduction summarizes the key themes of each chapter, as a reference guide for the reader.
- Chapter 1 introduces how civilization encounters reflections of universal truth. Then the chapter introduces how the biblical Testaments uniquely address ongoing societal upheaval.
- Chapter 2 introduces the need for a systematic understanding of the biblical Testaments.
- Chapter 3 introduces the reader to classical and contemporary science. Also, the chapter demonstrates how Church theology has so far failed to address the concerns of contemporary scientists. As a response, the chapter then secures objective proof for God's three persons, as well as the human spirit and soul.
- Chapter 4 addresses the purpose, cause, and natures of evil and sin.
- Chapter 5 introduces the moral aptitude of humankind before and after Adam's fall.
- Chapter 6 introduces the reader to political science and philosophy, as well as the manner in which the biblical Testaments treat the progressions of civilization, from kindred group lower-level-civilizations to social contract-based higher-level-civilizations.
- Chapter 7 details a systematic understanding of the biblical Testaments by underscoring how the Testaments specifically address the shortfall of human civilization.