The Resistance to Christianity : The Heresies at the Origins of the 18th Century

Bibliographical References
Bibliographical References Aegerter, E., Joachim de Flore. L’Evangile eternal, Paris, 1928. Aeneas Silvius, Piccolomini (Pius II), De hortu et historia Bohemorum, in Omnia Opera, Basle, 1551. Aland, Kurt, Bibliographie zur Geschicte des Pietismus, Berlin-New York, 1972. — , Augustin und der Montanismus in Kirchengeschichtliche Entwuerfe, Guetersloh, 1960. Albert le Grand, Determinatio de novo spiritu; in Haupt (see below). Alexandrian, Histoire de la philosophie occulte, Paris, 1983. Alfaric, P., Le probleme de Jesus, Paris, 1965. Allier, R., “Les freres du libre-esprit,” in Religions et Societes, Paris, 1905. Alphandery, P., De quelques faits de prophetisme dans les sec... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Chapter 48 : The End of the Divine Right
Chapter 48: The End of the Divine Right In the profusion of its diverse tendencies, the triumph of Protestantism — in which the economic mechanisms that chaotically governed historical evolution burst the skin of the God that had clothed them in his myth — put an end to the notion of repressive orthodoxy and, consequently, the existence of “heresy.” The sects gave the [Greek] word hairesis the neutral meanings of “choice” and “option.” They entered into the currents of opinions that soon claimed, with Destutt of Tracy and Benjamin Constant, the name “ideologies.” The decapitation of Louis XVI, monarch of divine right, removed from God the ecclesiastical head at which — like a monstrous cephalopod — were articulated the secular arms that were tasked with imposing his writs of mandamus. The jubilation that, around the end of the [Eighteenth] century, brought down the churches... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Chapter 47 : Pietists, Visionaries and Quietists
Chapter 47: Pietists, Visionaries and Quietists The Pietists Born from the preaching of the Lutherian pastor Philippe-Jacob Spener (1635–1705), Pietism proceeded from the tradition of Johannes Denck, for whom faith — or its absence, because only private conviction was important — did not bother with sacraments, priests or pastors, nor even with the allegedly sacred texts. Under German and English Pietism, there also smoldered the thought of Jacob Boehme (1575–1624), the shoemaker from Gorlitz (in Silesia), whose doctrine was part of the Hermetic tradition and the subtle alchemy of individual experience. Without entering into an analysis of a rich and dense conception, it is possible to emphasize the point at which Pietism’s God, dissolved into nature, more perfectly annihilated the idea of God than atheism, which was content to reduce God to a social function presented everywhere in the exercise of power and aut... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Chapter 46 : The Jansenists
Chapter 46: The Jansenists While Holland and England, both of which acclimated themselves to the formal freedoms of the bourgeois revolution, engendered a multitude of sects whose language — still taking on theological artifices — less and less dissimulated their ideological texture, the Catholic countries, which were prey to the distraction of the Counter-Reformation, once again found in monarchal and pontifical absolutism the guarantee of a Catholicism that was restored to its temporal and spiritual powers. Indulging in the Constantinian parody of the divine right, Louis XIV persisted in dissimulating — under the pomp of a Church in which Bossuet enjoyed Lully — the pusillanimities of a tormented nature, corroded by the sourness of prestige. The sun, with which (in the manner of the mediocre ones) he claimed to crown himself, only dispensed its light upon the courtiers of literature and the arts, apt to dilute their genius... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Chapter 45 : Levellers, Diggers and Ranters
Chapter 45: Levelers, Diggers and Ranters By decapitating King Charles , the English Revolution removed God from public affairs. Cromwell’s instauration of a new republic, which was profitable for the interests of the small landowners and the bourgeoisie, revived (with the breath of freedom) the fire of working-class insurrection that had not ceased to smolder since the days of John Ball. More than anywhere else, the legends of Robin Hood and the beloved brigand had, in England, illustrated the idea — widely held, all things considered — that robbing the rich so as to soften the misfortunes of the poor restored the natural obligations of solidarity. The development of Protestantism as the ideology of emerging modern capitalism broke the old structure of the religious myth, at the same time that the barriers and walls raised everywhere by feudalism and the predominance of the agrarian economy ceded place to the free circulation of commodi... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

The Vaudois and the Adepts of Voluntary Poverty
Chapter 30: The Vaudois and the Adepts of Voluntary Poverty The Vaudois movement illustrates the occasion lost by Rome in its struggles against the Cathars and the subversive effects of the urban pauperization exploited by the “apostolic” reformers. Few records exist that clarify the figure of the movement’s founder, a rich merchant from Lyon named Pierre Valdo or Valdes, perhaps de la Vallee [of the valley]. Legend has it that he received a warning from heaven while hearing the Complaint of Saint Alexis. He made gifts of all his belongings to devote himself to voluntary poverty and evangelism, such as they were prescribed by a canonical text attributed to Matthew: “If you want to be perfect, sell your goods, give th... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Arianism and the Church of Rome
Chapter 19: Arianism and the Church of Rome The Council of Nicaea, convened on the orders of Constantine in 325, marks the birth of orthodoxy and, consequently, heresy. The tortuous line of the dogma that would take centuries to make its immutable truths precise arrogated for itself the privilege of a rectitude that people like Eusebius, Epiphanius, Augustine, Jerome and their cohorts would extend back into the past and to Jesus, the chosen founder of the Catholic invariance. The Church would push cynicism to the point of claiming for itself a Christianity that would condemn the following manifestations as heresies: Nazarenism, Elchasaitism, Marcionism, anti-Marcionism, Christian Gnosticism and the New Prophecy. In the Third Century, the no... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Foreword On the shore where two thousand years of the Christian era have washed up, the rising tide of the commodity has not left standing a single traditional value of the past. By ruining the mass ideologies that had prematurely celebrated the collapse of the religious edifice, this tide — at a time when the State plays God in the conduct of [terrestrial] affairs — can it not ineluctably push towards the annihilation of the remains of a Church whose mysteries were socialized by The Council of the Vatican II? The indifference that one today feels towards the beliefs governed by rituals performed by the Party or the ecclesiastical bureaucracy awakens, from the inside out, an interest that no longer supports an obsolete worry, no... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Tatian and the Fabrication of the New Testament
Chapter 16: Tatian and the Fabrication of the New Testament Born in Syria around 120, Tatian posthumously became one of the founders of the Church due to his extremism in matters of asceticism. Irenaeus attacked him because, “like Marcion and Satornil, he called marriage a corruption and debauchery. He maintained that Adam was not saved.” Converted to Christianity, and a disciple of Justin in Rome, Tatian was exposed to the attacks of Crescentius, Justin’s accuser. Teaching Christianity in Rome around 172–173, he professed the anti-Marcionism of his master and transmitted it to his disciple, Rhodon. Then he left for the East and founded schools while the New Prophecy took off. One supposes that he died at the end of ... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Philosophy Against the Church
Chapter 28: Philosophy against the Church The elaboration of a theological system that reviewed the diverse privileges of the Church was nourished by Greek philosophy, from which Justin, Valentine, and Clement of Alexandria solicited aid in re-founding the monotheism of the Hebrew creator God upon rationality. Although interminable theological controversies had germinated, over the course of the centuries, on the uniquely Catholic dunghill of the trinity, predestination, free will, grace and occasional accusations of heresy — as in the cases of Abelard and Gilbert de la Porree — , these quarrels did not exceed the framework of othodoxy and, in any case, hardly threatened the foundations of the faith propagated under Rome’s... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)