The two Christian saints who are the Buddha

You're still doing the exact same thing. "Eastern ideas" is a leaky set and faulty abstraction. You have pointed to no actual bounded idea or ideology within that set. You proceed to attribute two ideas--the illusory self and non-theism--to that set, again without referent to anything.

>Am I wrong to claim that the ideas I listed are associated with the east? Does the undoubted fact that there are hundreds of eastern religions and philosophies undermine the claim?

You're wrong to claim that association is in any way relevant to what I've written. If I said "Christianity believes that Jesus visited North America" it would be rightly seen as the words of someone who had so little understanding and charity to the concept and diversity of Christianity that it would fall into the "not even wrong" category.

>Do you agree with my point that Christianity "was persecuted for three centuries precisely because it refused to be syncretic -- the Romans were happy to tolerate additions to their pantheon but couldn't abide Christianity's claims to exclusivity"?

I do contest that -- specifically because proto-Rabbinic Judaism was specifically categorized as a monotheistic religion that was largely recognized and exempted from Roman suppression because of its connection with temple Judaism. That Christians were persecuted by the Romans was not solely due to their monotheistic (or rather anti-polytheistic) beliefs, but that it was rapidly becoming expressly a gentile and proselytizing religion.

In any case, you first argue (wrongly) that "eastern ideas" can't be syncretic to Christianity because of a lack of personal deity, then you argue that Christianity is unique and was persecuted specifically because it denied personal deities.

In one breath, you treat theism as the relevant dividing line between Christianity and “eastern ideas”; in the next, you treat religious exclusivity as the relevant dividing line between Christianity and Rome. But those are entirely different axes, and neither establishes anything about the historical provenance of the ideas under discussion.

I would really like to continue to be charitable to and engage with you, but you have a continued fixation on the Roman attitudes of 1st century CE as evidence of an argument based on what was happening in the Mediterranean world in the 2nd century BCE--again, entirely reasonable from someone catechized within the Church--and the ability for you to even provisionally evaluate my argument on its own terms seems insurmountable. You've a priori stated more than once "Christianity is not 'a syncretic import from the east'" which already shows that this isn't really a dialogue.

I think you presume that I am ignorant of Catholicism and the history of orthodoxy. I'm not. I was raised by a traditionalist father who ran around with SSPX back in the 80s and then the FSSP. I ceased being Catholic for the same reason Cardinal Newman said "To be deep in history is to cease being protestant." Well, it turns out that history is much, much deeper than Newman supposed and doesn't end with Polycarp, Clement, and Ignatius.

If you honestly want to seriously engage with my position, here are the questions that would help clarify where we actually disagree. You obviously don't need to answer all of them if you don't want to (and there's a non-trivial possibility you won't even have read this far before noping out), but these are the substantive points I don't think you've addressed:

Where is your evidence that the Buddhist traditions relevant to this discussion posit that “the self is an illusion” in the undifferentiated sense you're invoking? Which Buddhist school, which period, and which text or tradition are you talking about? If you're going to use that proposition as evidence that Christianity could not have incorporated Buddhist material, you need to establish what Buddhist position you're actually comparing it to.

Likewise, what do you mean by “Buddhism denies that God is personal”? Which Buddhist traditions, which period, and which conception of God are you referring to? Why should the theological position of those particular traditions be treated as representative of “eastern ideas” generally?

How do you explain the independent emergence of a gender-inclusive monastic tradition in Christianity that so strongly resembles the general form of Buddhist monasticism found throughout its various sects, especially given that we have evidence of Buddhist missionary activity in the region predating the emergence of Christianity? If you think the resemblance is coincidental, what is your positive account of the parallel development? What historical mechanism do you propose produced the same unusual institutional configuration independently?

What is your explanation for the specific structural and narrative parallels between Christian ascetic literature and Buddhist material that predate or are plausibly independent of the Christian tradition? It appears you might have inferred that I was speaking about the content of Mark 7 and MN 55, but I wasn't. I was speaking specifically about the recurring structure found in both. I'm not asking whether Christianity ultimately gives those narratives a different theological interpretation. I'm asking what you think accounts for the historical similarities.

How do you account for the presence of Indian philosophical material in the Hellenistic world independently of Christianity? In particular, what do you make of the evidence concerning Pyrrho and the Greek encounters with Indian philosophers? If you reject the possibility of influence on early Christian intellectual culture, what is your explanation for why those demonstrable pre-Christian channels of transmission are irrelevant to the hypothesis?

If your position is that these similarities are insufficient to establish influence, what evidence would you regard as sufficient to establish influence in principle? And, applying that standard consistently, which of the existing pieces of evidence fail it, and why?

> You're still doing the exact same thing. "Eastern ideas" is a leaky set and faulty abstraction. You have pointed to no actual bounded idea or ideology within that set. You proceed to attribute two ideas--the illusory self and non-theism--to that set, again without referent to anything.

You wrote:

>>>>> The problem is that there is almost 2,000 years of culture and the metaphysical beliefs of well-more than half of the human population predicated upon their beliefs being entirely unique and an off-shoot of Judaism and not a fundamentally different syncretic import *from the east*.

This claim is predicated on the term "east" (in its philosophical sense) refering to something real. If it's impossible to associate concepts with 'the east', then your own assertion is as meaningless as mine.

In any case, the word 'east' (in this sense) can't be accurate in the way 'grass' or 'human being' can be accurate. It has multiple meanings, unlike them. But it doesn't follow from this that it has no meaning. One can assert things of 'the east', in the way that one can assert things of 'communism' or 'protestantism' or 'long-haul flight' -- other terms where one could argue over the meaning. If we can't assert things of the east, then we can't assert things of those terms either.

But we can assert things of these terms. There is a common agreement about what they mean that's sufficient for meaning to be shared. We can say 'Protestantism teaches salvation by faith alone', or 'Communism calls for the abolition of private property', or 'transatlantic flights are long haul', even though there may be some examples of all of these where the predications are wrong.

It's the same for the term under discussion. Most if not all of the meanings of 'the east' used in discourse today[0] contain the ideas I asserted (illusory self, etc). Therefore your argument -- that my assertion that certain ideas are 'eastern' is meaningless -- fails. Had it succeeded, it would have fatally undermined your main assertion.

>> Am I wrong to claim that the ideas I listed are associated with the east? Does the undoubted fact that there are hundreds of eastern religions and philosophies undermine the claim?

> You're wrong to claim that association is in any way relevant to what I've written.

Re-read your words I just quoted, which is what I object to, and which I keep trying to come back to. Is the association really "not relevant"? I have asserted that a) certain ideas are commonly and correctly associated with 'the east'; that b) said ideas are anathema to Christianity, in fundamental ways, and therefore c) your claim that Christianity is a 'syncretic import from the east' is false. That is pretty much my whole argument[1]. If you can show that either of my premises is wrong, you nullify my objection to your statement. It's not only relevant, it's central.

> If I said "Christianity believes that Jesus visited North America" it would be rightly seen as the words of someone who had so little understanding and charity to the concept and diversity of Christianity that it would fall into the "not even wrong" category.

I could easily deny that though. Only one tiny and very new sect believes it. You can't claim that about my assertions, you've merely claimed they're not relevant.

> You've a priori stated more than once "Christianity is not 'a syncretic import from the east'" which already shows that this isn't really a dialogue

I was responding to your point where you stated the opposite. The disagreement, or the dialogue, is over which belief is true.

> If your position is that these similarities are insufficient to establish influence, what evidence would you regard as sufficient to establish influence in principle? And, applying that standard consistently, which of the existing pieces of evidence fail it, and why?

There is influence in a certain sense, clearly. But your statement is much stronger. You asserted that Christianity is a syncretic import from the east, not that it was influenced by it in some sense, which is obviously true.

[0] Remembering that words exist by convention!

[1] This includes my statement about the Roman persecutions. My point when bringing this up was to show that Christianity considered itself the only way for everybody, which also undermines your assertion that it's syncretic, and is also a major difference from the east. My point was not that monotheism or anti-syncretism was the cause of the persecution. I'm neither asserting nor denying this: it's not relevant to the discussion.

(EDITED slightly to hopefully improve clarity a bit)