If Heraclitus is a pantheist,as some have interpreted him,then there is no God that transcends the universe.Nature & God are then synonymous. As he says,”it rests by changing”,suggesting the Divine exists in (not ‘above’) the forms,the elements etc.
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Replying to @RightModernist @dill_irish
If there is no God, them Nature and God can not be synonymous, unless there be no Nature either. What we have of Heraclitus is so fragmentary that we have no way of knowing these things, but I suspect that Heraclitus held that the strife in nature comes from a single principle.
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Replying to @AnarchicEvolist @dill_irish
Yes, he’s all about the single divine principle. He often mentions God, but this is a God without a humanlike identity (neither male not female; not feeling nor wanting; not benevolent, simply ‘wise’), so in this he’s in agreement with Xenophanes.
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Replying to @AnarchicEvolist @dill_irish
But the Christian conception of God is one who is Father, loving (though also capable of anger, at least in the OT) & omnibenevolent. Theologians might posit something more abstract, but that isn’t the popular conception, which is what counts.
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Replying to @RightModernist @dill_irish
Haha the popular conception is what counts least, it will always be degenerate in some degree
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Replying to @AnarchicEvolist @dill_irish
It’s the one that counts because it’s the one that determines how the mass of believers (and non-believers,come to think of it) behave. In the end, the thought of Heraclitus is not compatible with Christianity. He claims there is no set purpose to human nature, thus no salvation.
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For Heraclitus, there is nothing to be saved from in any case. Things are what they are, & that’s all.
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Replying to @RightModernist @dill_irish
Heraclitus probably didn't write for the masses so his work is not even on the same domain as religion
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Replying to @AnarchicEvolist @dill_irish
Heraclitus does speak of impiety - for instance, in regard to how ‘poets have imputed to the gods everything that is a shame & reproach among men.’ Probably this was why he despised Homer.
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It seems that the degeneration of symbolism into "mythology" was already noticed at that time
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