>>19056
>This is just Hesoid's Golden Age, but in a Christian perspective
Of course, the idea of a 'Fall' can be found in almost every spiritual tradition. It would be a mistake to say that Hesiod was the inventor of this or anything, however.
>Christians are just anti-material and detest earthly life and see it inferior and unworthy of caring for compared to living in heaven
I disagree, this is a view that is not founded on the actual Christian sources. If we are to compare the worldviews of many pagans with that of the Christian / Jewish worldview, we are inevitably led to think that the Christian view is actually far more 'this-worldly' than the average pagan view of the past. If we examine the pagan sources, it is clear that they often ascribed to a strict form of mind-body dualism. The center-point of the human being, i.e. his essence, was his soul. They didn't
have a soul, but rather they
were soul. The pagan afterlife, most often, was conceived of in terms of disembodied bliss in the heavens, or being stuck in some sort of reincarnation trap until they reached liberation. One can just think of Orphism, Pythagoreanism, much of Platonic and Neo-Platonic thought, Vedic / Upanishadic ideas. The phrase "sōma sēma", or the body as a prison-house for the soul comes distinctly from pagan thought. This is not even to point to examples of ancient pagan pessimism such as the wisdom of Silenus, the writings of Hegesias of Cyrene, Buddhists, Jains, etc. According to the traditional Biblical view, it is clear that man is created in the image of the deity, and is an integral whole of spirit, body and soul, which itself can be seen as reflection of the Trinity. The entire body, one reads if they look at the Patristic sources, is created in the image of God, not just the soul as would those influenced by Platonic thought would say. And of course, the Bible says that everything in God's creation is to be thought of as being essentially 'good', namely Genesis 1:31 and 1 Timothy 4:4. Unlike the pagan traditions, what we see in the Christian framework is an idea where the universe has for an interim period entered a 'subnatural' state due to a shift from theocentrism to self-centeredness, but it will be restored, and man will be restored in body, soul and spirit upon the new heaven and earth to come. This strictly embodied aspect is unlike anything seen in pagan worldviews. The material can be sanctified. The Patristic view again is that mankind are mediators, priests of creation, leading us to a sort of sacramental cosmology.
>If anything, the story of Sodom and Gomorrah is just the jews setting their interpretations of what happens when you reject the jude God(s), and not a case against all that is urban.
It is a clear case of urban degeneracy. It is quite akin to the modern cities which are overflowing with homosexuals and other deviants. Interestingly as well, in the Book of Joshua when the Israelites finally move into the land being given to them by God as promised to Abraham, we read that these people are marked for extermination because they are degenerate, and have sunk into practices such as sacrificing their children to Moloch. So a non-settled culture is told to replace a settled, degenerating culture, and to settle among them. And interestingly, as soon as the Israelites settle in the land of the Canaanites, there is a massive uptick in degeneracy in books such as Judges, where gangs of men come around and demand that they may 'know' (fuck) a traveling man in Judges 19, and end up raping and murdering one of the traveler's concubine. Almost exactly like Sodom and Gomorrah, and it takes place after the Israelites settle and degenerate into worshiping Baal. One can see an extended polemic against urbanism in the Bible, and thought it may not be explicitly arguing that the city is inherently 'evil' (such would conflict with what I have previously said in this post), it is assuredly saying that the city quite easily leads to a denaturing and moral corruption of its inhabitants, which is something that we can see to this very day.
>I think Benoist either just hates Christianity and trying his hardest to counter-influence it or he's trying to appeal to his alt-right fanbase.
He's a Nietzchean, the book is really a misnomer.