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How Long Before the Unrealized Potential of Christianity is Realized?

2/28/2022

In a recent post on his From the Narrow Desert blog, William James Tychonievich explores the question, What if there is no beginning? The post focuses specifically on whether beings have always existed in time or whether being had a definite beginning. It's an interesting post, and I encourage everyone to have a look at it.

Within the context of his post, William touches upon the implications of eternally existing beings and the unrealized potential of Christianity:

Central to Christianity is the idea that we have the potential to become like God, but that at present we are obviously very, very far from having realized that potential.

How long will it take us to realize our divine potential? A billion years?

This is an important question that deserves serious consideration, but I am unsure if the question of time or beginning is the key factor here.

At the risk of oversimplifying the matter, I posit that the central Christian idea of having the potential to become like God is barely older than Christianity itself. More to the point, the central idea is rooted in Jesus, which means it is about two thousand years old.

Two thousand years is, undeniably, a lot of time -- certainly enough to realize the potential to become like God, especially when we consider that Jesus Himself serves as our guide.

So, why haven't we realized our divine potential yet? Moreover, how much longer will it take?

I am of the view that we should have realized our divine potential at some point in the past two or three centuries but missed the opportunity to do so. I am also of the view that this missed opportunity does not negate present and future possibilities to realize our divine potential, but recognizing present and future possibilities depends more on a change in consciousness than it does on time factors. If the shift in consciousness happened en masse tomorrow, the divine potential would be fulfilled.

Does this mean I believe in a shift in mass consciousness in the very near term? No. Unfortunately, not. Nevertheless, I do believe shifts in consciousness will occur at the level of the individual in the very near future (decades), and that these individual shifts will, eventually, expand to the larger group level (centuries). Concerning exact time frames, well, I couldn't tell you. All I can tell you is that if it doesn't happen soon, the central idea of Christianity may very well remain in the category of unrealized potential.

Among other things, this change in consciousness requires a renewed understanding of freedom and its relation to the dignity and divine potential of man.

It's no accident that the global totalitarianism we are currently experiencing is a direct assault on both. It's also no accident that traditional Christian doctrine cannot supply the means the shift in consciousness requires.

The renewed understanding of freedom and the divine potential of man is still, largely, uncharted territory in need of a revelation. What has complicated matters the most thus far is the incomprehension that the much-needed revelation will not emanate from God -- but from man.

Atheists and most traditional Christians alike scoff at the suggestion of man's unrealized divine potential, and it is exactly there, within this scoffing, that the core of the problem lies, a problem the Christian existentialist philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev dedicated the bulk of his work to reveal, a bulk of work I generally consider to be on point when it comes the central ideal of Christianity:

Christianity has always taught of the weakness and fall of man, of the sinfulness and weakness of human nature. At the same time, Christian anthropology recognizes the absolute and royal significance of man, since it teaches the incarnation of God and the divine possibilities in man, the mutual inter-penetration of divine and human natures. But for some deep reason, hidden in the secret of times and seasons, Christianity never revealed in its fullest what one might venture to call a Christology of man, that is the secret of man's divine nature, a dogma of man, analogous to the dogma of Christ. Christianity has revealed the nature of the Holy Trinity and the nature of Christ, but very little of the nature of man. ... And yet in Christian revelation the truth about man's divine nature is really only the reverse of the medal of truth about Christ's human nature. The Christology of man is inseparable from that of the Son of God: Christ's self-consciousness is inseparable from that of man. The Christological revelation is also an anthropological revelation. And the task of humanity's religious consciousness is to reveal the Christological consciousness of man.

- The Meaning of the Creative Act

Religious discussion centers upon the possibility of new revelation and a new spiritual epoch. All other questions are secondary. The new revelation is not at all a new religion, distinct from Christianity, but rather the fulfilment and completion of the Christian revelation, bringing it to a true universality. This we do not have as yet. But we cannot simply wait for the revelation of the spirit. It depends upon man's creative activity as well. It is not to be understood as only a new revelation of God to man: it is also the revelation of man to God. This means that it will be a divine-human revelation. In the Spirit, the divisions and contradictions of the divine and the human will be overcome, while the distinction between them will be maintained. This will be the crowning of the mystical dialectic of the divine and the human.
- The Divine and The Human

The world is passing through three epochs of divine revelation: the revelation of the law (the Father), the revelation of redemption (the Son) and the revelation of creativity (the Spirit). These epochs correspond to certain signs in the heavens. It is not given us to know the definite chronological limits of these three epochs: they are all co-existent. Today we have not fully lived out the law, and redemption from sin has not yet been completed, although the world is entering a new religious epoch. ... The three epochs of divine revelation in the world are the three epochs of the revelation about man. In the first epoch man's sin is brought to light and a natural divine force is revealed; in the second epoch man is made a son of God and redemption from sin appears; in the third epoch the divinity of man's creative nature is finally revealed and divine power becomes human power. ... The final mystery is hidden in this, that the divine mystery and the human mystery are one, that in God there is hidden the mystery of man and in man the mystery of God. God is born in man and man is born in God. The ultimate revelation of man means the revelation of God.

- The Meaning of The Creative Act

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Creation is Freedom From Reaction

2/27/2022

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It's no secret that the powers-that-should-not-be invest a great deal of time and energy into conditioning people to react to the external world in prescribed and predetermined ways. Lightly scratch away at the surface of our societies and you quickly discover that practically all aspects of human life -- from politics to marketing -- are ruled by this sort of external conditioning.

The end goal of this external conditioning appears to be the eclipsing of the divine self with the external world via consciousness. To put it another way, conditioning people to believe in nothing but the external world focuses consciousness exclusively on that "perceived" reality.

Consciousness disconnects from the divine self and concentrates exclusively with responding to the various stimuli and forces of the external world. Through this process, consciousness internalizes the external world and displaces the divine self, thereby displacing the only force that can "creatively penetrate", resist, and transform the external forces of the world by thinking and acting in ways that transcend reactive conditioning.

Now, there is no denying that humans have inherent natures. There's also no denying the "nurture" influence of culture, traditions, beliefs, etc. Both of these present obvious limits to our powers, but it seems to me that Christianity offers a path by which individuals can move beyond the nature and nurture paradigm -- if nothing else, at least intermittently. This path depends entirely on our connection to what is divine within us and the understanding that the divine within us, not the external world, is the true source of our freedom and agency.

Jesus provides the ultimate example of non-reaction to the external world. He lived in the world and interacted with it within the context of his inherent nature blending with external factors such as culture and history, but He never allowed Himself to be conditioned by any of it. Instead, it was He who conditioned the external world with the inner workings of his divine self.

Jesus never responded to the external world in the way it expected Him to respond. On the contrary, guided by his divine self -- that vast ocean of inner freedom with which his consciousness was fully aligned, and which, in turn, was fully aligned with God -- Jesus acted and thought in ways that not only dumbfounded the external world, but also inspired it to reconsider its own assumptions about "reality". This is evident in both Jesus' teachings and in the details of His thoughts and actions on earth.

Christians need to rediscover this positive source of creation. The simplest and clearest way to begin this sort of creative activity is to practice thinking and acting in ways that go beyond the glaring external conditioning as well as the nature/nurture aspects inherent in our own "natural" human selves, all while keeping in mind that the creative thinking and action must emanate primarily from what is divine within us as individuals rather than from some source external to us.

It is through this that people can begin the process of "introducing something new into Creation" rather than merely reacting to some external aspect of the "given world" of conditioning.

This approach immediately raises concerns. For example, how is this any different from the faux "I gotta be me" attitude of egoistic, hedonistic liberalism? Similarly, how can creative thinking be distinguished from thoughts and activities that are unaligned with God?

The answer lies in consciousness. If consciousness directs the divine self properly, the free, creative response to the external world will find itself in harmony with the God and with Creation, which will work to support and expand the creative act.

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Message to Belial: A Finger on the Apocalyptic Pulse

2/27/2022

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A few days ago I reported on the death of Sadies guitarist and singer, Dallas Good, who was also the band's chief lyricist. The lyrics Dallas wrote tended to be bleak, and he often wove all sorts of religious and apocalyptic imagery into his songs. I'm not sure if Dallas was a Christian, but his lyrics often features Christian themes and concepts. For example, Tell Her What I Said -- which happens to be among my favorite Sadies tracks -- includes the following lines:

We all thought we'd be someone
When a man's promise means nothing
Against the will of his god
You can't serve two masters
No matter the cost

We all thought we were someone
Will you take redemption
Or watch me fall down from grace
I've seen all seven devils
And I am not afraid

Granted, the inclusion of Christian terms and ideas in song lyrics does not immediately make one a Christian. On the contrary, non-Christians and anti-Christians often infuse all sorts of religious imagery into songs purely for the purpose of inversion. I don't know if this was the case with Dallas Good. As I mentioned in my earlier post, I didn't really "know" the man.

Regardless, Dallas had a knack for including Christian themes in his lyrics. He also seemed to have his finger on the pulse of the End Times unfolding before our eyes, as revealed by the very last single the Sadies released -- an apocalyptic/demonic vision called Message to Belial:

Rise! Rise! The dawn of creation.
Lucifer, Lucifer, what have you done?
Fall! Fall! Last chance for salvation.
End of all nations, the darkest of ages has come
from one too many ways to go wrong.

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Freedom is the Means; God and Man Is the End

2/26/2022

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Traditional Christianity defines freedom as a means, but reserves the end for God, who is the infinite alpha and omega.

Secular enlightened liberalism regards freedom as both a means and an end for man and man alone.

Our current anti-God, anti-human System vehemently opposes the reality of both freedom and God and works diligently toward an end that involves enslaving all of humanity against God.

I myself am interested in a form of Christianity that recognizes freedom as a means, but expands the end to include both humanity and God through the simple understanding that man and God working together creatively is a far greater end than any end man or God could possibly achieve alone.

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Birdbox: No Supernatural Good to Counter Supernatural Evil

2/26/2022

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Spoiler alert: The following post may contain spoilers about the 2018 film Birdbox based on the 2014 Josh Malerman novel of the same title – those who haven’t watched the film but might want to are advised to skip this post.

The basic premise of Birdbox is terrifying in its simplicity. The sudden appearance of mysterious, invisible entities causes people who look the entities to kill themselves tout de suite, resulting in spontaneous worldwide mass suicide.

The film’s main characters – who have sought sanctuary in the posh home of a cantankerous California lawyer -- quickly recognize and accept the supernatural and demonic nature of the entities. They also understand the demonic entities to be signifiers of the end times.

Once this understanding is in place, the characters mutter a few words about eschatology and refer to various apocalyptic myths and beliefs. After that, they do what any good modern secular atheist would do – hunker down and go into survival mode.

The Birdox characters figure out that staying alive entails not looking at the invisible entities, so they cover all the windows in the house and blindfold themselves whenever they need to venture outside.

They also learn that inherently evil people do not kill themselves after looking at the entities, but instead become the entities’ human servants -- free to roam the doomed world without blindfolds, driven by the motivation to force everyone else to look at the entities and commit suicide.

With human civilization effectively over, the main Birdbox characters sit around the house, bicker with each other, have sex in the laundry room, and make occasional supply runs in the apocalyptic landscape the world has become.

The only long-term hope for any of them involves reaching a safe place up the river, but this possibility only becomes apparent to a few of the characters several years after the initial catastrophe.

After the other characters are dead, the Sandra Bullock character takes the two children under her care and embarks on a journey up a river to find the aforementioned safe place.

Following a series of challenges and difficulties, the Bullock character and the kids make it to the safe place, which turns out to be a small community of people holed up in what was once an institute for the blind. Once the characters nestle into this veritable human oasis of peace and security, the film crashes to an abrupt end.

As I watched the film, I was singularly impressed by the characters’ utter lack of awareness or interest in the possibility of any kind of supernatural good that might be able to counter the obvious supernatural evil plaguing the world.

No one spoke of God. No one considered the primacy of the spiritual. No one repented. No one entertained any notions of heaven or life after death and with the exception of a three-second clip in which the John Malkovich character crosses himself, no one gave any thought to appealing to Jesus or to the Holy Spirit.

No, the only thing that mattered to any of them was physical survival. Granted, there wasn't much left to survive for, but what difference does that make? Moreover, even within the sanctuary of the institute of the blind, long-term survival was at best, dubious.

Yet within the context of the film, none of that seemed to matter. What did matter was that the Sandra Bullock character and the kids had made it to the safe place that was fated to fail – inevitably and ultimately – in some way or other, but hey. Roll credits, please.

The real world may not be Birdbox, but it is Birdemicbox. The demons are out there doing their thing as we speak.

Think and act accordingly.

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Perfect Fear That Cast Out Love; The Massive Spiritual Defeat of Churches in 2020

2/25/2022

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If the 2020 global totalitarian coup and its birdemic have taught me anything, it is this – modern people are ruled by fear.

Nikolai Berdyaev reminds us that fear is never a good counselor. On the contrary, he considered victory over fear to be “the first spiritual duty of man.”

To say that modern man has neglected this first spiritual duty is an immense understatement. It is closer to the truth to say that modern man no longer recognizes victory over fear as a duty of any kind, let alone a spiritual duty.

Duty connotes responsibility, commitment, faithfulness, and allegiance. Spiritual duty implies the same things, but a much deeper and “more real” level. Modern man has severed all connections to this deeper, “more real” level. Consequently, modern man’s only sense of duty is to react to external forces that exert pressure on him. If the external world informs modern man that he must fear, then he feels it is his duty to be afraid. When the external world offers modern man ways to alleviate the fear, he will consider it his duty to engage in those ways in an effort to ameliorate fear.

Rarely, if ever, does it occur to modern man that the problem of fear is internal rather than external. On the contrary, he appears convinced that the same external forces that generate fear can package and sell victory over fear. He applies this logic to all aspects of human life. Everything must come to him from outside; nothing can arise from within.

The pervasiveness of fear in our time and place is evidence of mass despirualization. By denying the existence of the spiritual, contemporary people deny the existence of their own spiritual nature - a spiritual nature that is utterly inseparable from and indispensable to what it means to be human. By rejecting the reality of God and their own divine selves, modern people reject the sources from which all positive human qualities, values, and dignity emanate.

Humans who deny that they are spiritual beings also deny the meaning, purpose, and ultimately, reality of the human experience in which they are immersed. Their core reality as spiritual beings cannot fully engage in the human experience they are having because the "human" aspect of the experience has been overly distorted, inverted, and muddied. They sink to the level of push-button automatons, incapable of much beyond the reacting to threat or pleasure stimuli derived from the external world.

Though many atheists believe otherwise, Christianity is not a push-button automaton religion. On the contrary, it is a religion of freedom and love, which implies that it must be a religion of victory over fear because the presence of fear hinders both freedom and love. Perhaps this is what Berdyaev alludes to when he insists upon victory over fear as the first spiritual duty of man.

I imagine Berdyaev’s victory over fear declaration draws upon Jesus’ teaching in John 4:18: “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love.”

The message is a clear one: Victory over fear can only be won through love. Fear is punishment because any person who lives in fear has not been perfected in love. Thus, Berdyaev’s injunction of man’s first spiritual duty amounts to an injunction for love because the victory over fear can only be achieved through love.

I wonder if the reverse could also be true. Can victory over love be achieved through fear? Can perfect fear cast out love? That certainly seems to be the motivation fueling the 2020 global totalitarian coup, which succeeded primarily because it was able to generate something approximating “perfect fear” via the birdemic. The satanic elite was sure to infuse all sorts of altruistic, none are safe until all are safe statements of “love” into its “perfect fear” campaign, but even the most cursory of evaluations quickly reveal that these statements were flagrant inversions of Jesus’ teaching the Fourth Gospel. The “love” the satanic elite offer does not cast out fear – it exacerbates it.

Yet it is with this campaign of perfect fear that nearly all forms of organized Christianity willfully aligned in 2020 and remain committed to even now in 2022. Like the satanic elite, churchmen the world over rationalized their submission to the perfect fear campaign by claiming they were acting in the spirit of Christian love.

Some invoked the decree of neighborly love. Others turned to the “thou shalt not kill” edict of the Ten Commandments. Whatever the case, they were all fervent in their insistence that their actions sprang from love, not fear. At the same time, they showed no interest or inclination in banishing the fear. Instead, they actively stoked the fires of fear the satanic elite had lit around the world by shutting down churches and cancelling sacraments, all in the name of “safety” and Christian love.

Berdyaev’s instruction regarding the victory over fear as man’s first spiritual duty involves the victory of internal love over external fear. Christian churches abandoned this first spiritual duty in 2020, and they continue to neglect it, even today.

Instead of drawing upon the source of love, they made fear their counselor and remain committed to the evil machinations of “perfect” external fear. This commitment to perfect fear demonstrates that organized Christianity is perfectly happy to live in fear. Moreover, Christian institutions want to convince the world that this state of living in fear is somehow analogous to living in love.

Individual Christians need not follow a similar path. Unlike churches, individual Christians can remain committed to their first spiritual duty to cast out fear through love – but this commitment must not rely on what is outwith, but must emanate from within.

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Freedom is a Means, Not an End; Or, Freedom is Only Good if the End It Aims For is Good

2/24/2022

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The following is an expansion of a comment I left on a timely post concerning freedom Dr. Charlton posted today over at his Notions blog.

One of the key takeaways from Dr. Charlton's post is the understanding that freedom is a means and not an end.

The observation should strike everyone obvious, yet over the past two or three centuries, freedom has morphed from being an unambiguous means toward something into an ambiguous end that is essentially a nebulous nothing.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________

The distinction between negative freedom (freedom from) and positive freedom (freedom for) is crucial, particularly regarding the understanding of freedom as a means to an end, but this does not negate the primary importance of freedom.

The problem with freedom is its seeming nebulousness -- as a means, it can be shaped or warped to meet practically any end. The "proper" use of freedom entails a clear understanding of a "proper" end.

Despite being a religion of freedom, Christianity has struggled with freedom since its beginnings. Traditional doctrines have always been suspicious of freedom and tend to blame Christianity's ills on the liberties people sought and continue to seek outside churches and doctrines. At the same time, freedom from strict adherence to traditional doctrine is crucial to the continued development of Christian consciousness.

Perhaps it would be helpful to classify negative freedom as "liberty" and positive freedom as "spiritual freedom" (the reality of Creation). In this sense, liberty is clearly separated as a rejecting sort of freedom exemplified by Enlightenment principles, the Statue of Liberty, liberalism, etc. This negative freedom is anchored in the external world and is pitted primarily against external forces. Conversely, spiritual freedom is more of an internal accepting and embracing spiritual force based on the underlying reality of Creation.

The "for" and "from" aspects of liberty are both rooted in the external. This was the inherent tragedy of the liberation from church consciousness (and liberalism in general). The rejection was solid, but liberty provided no spiritual end for consciousness to grasp onto beyond the external world. Thus, human consciousness found no end beyond the external and sank into materialism and the eventual rejection of God.

On the other hand, spiritual freedom -- the kind Jesus demonstrated -- does not rely or depend on externals at all. This is evident in Jesus' lack of interest in fulfilling his prophesied role as messiah. He did not aim to "liberate" people from the Roman empire or from the external pressures and forces of necessity using purely external "liberation" means.

Jesus' aim (or end) was not human liberty but human freedom. More specifically, the alignment of human freedom with divine freedom.

This alignment differs from the traditional understanding of lesser "created" human freedom submitting to the infinitely greater "uncreated" divine freedom of the Creator.

I imagine the alignment more as harmony between the divine in man and God, which can only be established when freedom is employed as a "medium" for higher spiritual purposes. Moreover, I don't believe God has much control over this freedom because I suspect it does not emanate from his being.

The freedom Jesus espoused was a big part of the cosmological change He initiated. In my humble opinion, this is the kind of freedom Christians need to rediscover, and the time to rediscover it has never been better.

The means are within us -- it's the end we need to rediscover -- and this end is spiritual. If we fail to clearly define this end, we'll know only negative freedom, which is, at best, a very limited form of freedom, the kind we see motivating the various birdemic protests around the world.

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Dallas Good of The Sadies Has Died

2/23/2022

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Dallas Good was the guitarist, singer, and co-founder of The Sadies, a Canadian alt-country-rock band that never made it big but were highly respected, toured relentlessly for two decades, and collaborated with many better known artists including Neil Young, Niko Case, Kurt Vile, and Gord Downie. I have featured some of their songs on this blog: here, and here.

Dallas and I attended the same high school. He was a couple of years younger than I, which meant we did not mix in the same groups of kids. We were "nodding" acquaintances rather than friends, but I still have vivid memories of him trudging through the halls in a leather jacket and cowboy boots, his guitar case banging off his bony knees with every step he took. On the weekends I occasionally caught sight of him playing in some garage band or other. Years later I was fortunate enough to attend some of the concerts he put on with The Sadies, the band he formed with his older brother Travis.

Dallas died "unexpectedly" five days ago at the age of 48. The news made the mainstream media, which reported that he had died of "natural causes" due to a recently discovered "coronary ailment".

He will be missed.

My deepest condolences to his family and loved ones.

In the video below, Dallas is the one who introduces the band.

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Freedom is Alignment, Not Submission

2/22/2022

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“Instead of taking mastery of people's freedom, you increased it and burdened the spiritual kingdom of man with it forever.”

This line above is the accusation the grand inquisitor hurls at Jesus in The Legend of the Grand Inquisitor segment of Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov. The charge forms the basis of what the old cardinal outlines as the fatal error of Christ’s mission on earth – Jesus’ overestimation of humanity’s willingness and ability to embrace the “increased” freedom He offered them.

The old cardinal then outlines how his church had spent the previous fifteen hundred years correcting Jesus’ work through the three temptations Christ had resisted in the desert: miracle, mystery, and authority. The grand inquisitor and his church work to decrease human freedom and take mastery of it because – unlike Jesus – they do not think highly of man at all.

On the contrary, they profess to see humanity as it truly is – eternally depraved and eternally dishonorable. Weak, rebellious, slavish, – utterly incapable of freedom. Thus, the church’s corrective work aims to unburden humanity of the freedom Christ offers. Moreover, it actively presents people with the opportunity to surrender real freedom in exchange for the faux freedom of trembling submission to the external miracle, mystery, and authority of the church.

Dostoevsky’s The Legend of the Grand Inquisitor on the Nature Man is more than an incisive piece of fiction; it is a penetrating insight into the essence -- the what-it-is -- of Christianity.

To understand the what-it-is of Christianity is to understand the increased freedom Jesus offers, which, in my humble opinion, amounts to a completely new way of thinking about the nature of human freedom itself.

Jesus’s refusal to adopt miracle, mystery, and authority as means through which to draw men toward His offer of heaven and everlasting life reveals not only His deep love for and high esteem of humanity, but also His deep love for and high esteem of freedom. Within the context of the story, humanity and freedom are presented as inseparable. Any degradation of freedom is a degradation of humanity; and any degradation of humanity is a degradation of freedom.

Yet the grand inquisitor’s assessment of humanity as a rebellious, weak, slavish species that desires everything but freedom seems to strike much closer to the truth than Christ’s respect for humanity as beings capable of true freedom. Within the context of the story itself, humanity would rather dwell within the faux freedom of the inquisitor’s church than to dare obtain the increased freedom Christ offers – but this “reality” is not limited to the story!

Look at our world today. How many people really want to be free? How many would rather willingly enslave themselves to anything and everything external in exchange for the peace and worldly comfort of being unfree?

Speaking of peace and worldly comfort, the inquisitor insists his church provides both. Moreover, this provision proves that he and his church are more compassionate than Christ is. Rather than burden humanity with high expectations that can never be fulfilled, the “corrected work” seeks to meet men where they are and keep them there – in peace and comfort that leads nowhere but death.

Our current situation in the world is the fulfillment of the grand inquisitor’s vision of humanity: “Oh, we shall persuade them that they will only become free when they renounce their freedom for us and submit to us. And what does it matter whether we are right or whether, we are telling a lie?”

The “freedom” that comes with submission and renouncing freedom is the call of the satanic totalitarianism that engulfed the world in 2020.

The increased freedom Christ offers is the revelation of the innate divinity of man aligning with the divinity of God in freedom that is “created” by neither God nor man, but upon which both depend and through which both can create – together.

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Early Medieval England in Hungary

2/21/2022

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I recently began watching The Last Kingdom television series based on Bernard Cornwell's The Saxon Stories novels, which are set in ninth-century England. I won't say much about the series other than I have found it enjoyable for entertainment value alone; however, as I watched the episodes I often found myself wondering where exactly the series had been filmed.

Well lo and behold, it turns out most of the series has been shot in Hungary of all places. Although the lower production costs together with some ready-made sets in the small town of Etyek near Budapest were undoubtedly the primary incentives, I suspect the pastoral Hungarian countryside -- some parts of which still look as if they were back in the ninth century -- also held some appeal.

Ninth-century England in Hungary. Whodathunkit?

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