Virtues of the Twofold Path

Nietzsche believed that the classical ideal affirmed all the more important instincts and that Christian morals were anemic morals. The strengthening affirmations of life in Paganism, said Nietzsche, were impoverished with the denial of nature in Christianity.

In Christianity, the Involutionary Inward Path experience of beatitude (called Enlightenment in the East) allows not even a hint of the desires of the world (sin) because complete detachment from the world is required for this blissful experience. This necessarily puts the forces of life and the instincts under the ban of the Inward Path to beatitude.

How does the Twofold Path reconcile this duality between life and non-life? Not by rejecting religion as Nietzsche did, which led to all kinds of philosophical chaos. The Involutionary Inward Path is seen as the symbolic-experience (blissful as it is) of real Godhood reached through the Evolutionary Outward Path of material and supermaterial evolution.

The Pagan virtues (from the Greeks) of prudence, justice, courage and temperance were in any case introduced into the Christian virtues of faith, hope and charity, perhaps because they were necessary for living real life. But to bring nature and religion together more is needed. This means including the virtues required in our material and supermaterial evolution to real, not symbolic, Godhood. Improving the qualities of intelligence, beauty, and good character are needed. Higher consciousness and intelligence allow us to better advance in our upward evolution toward higher species of existence, and eventually to Godhood. The Twofold Path of theological materialism does this within the Ordered Evolution of tradition.