APPENDIX

The Desposyni in a Family-Based Society

    The previous chapters have proposed a radical paradigm for modern society. For the educated, the proposal of a family-based society smacks of the bourgeois that Marx warned against: the nemesis of the working class. Marx did not know his history. He was reacting against the institutions of the church and state of his day which were rooted in the power of the landed gentry and which extended its control over the great plantations of the colonial empires and the factories of the major corporations. He did not see or understand the principles of social justice in the Law of Moses, nor was he aware of the proletariat polemics of James and Jude, the principal Desposynic writers of the New Testament.

    The educated also recoil from the term "patriarchy" because of its association with the structures of domination in our civic and business institutions. "Domination" is something I associate with the phallic religion of pagan society and not the the family religion of Biblical society. I can only hope that a truly educated person is able to tell the difference. Patriarchy with an incomplete understanding of the Trinitarian model can only end in oppression. That is why I have found the feminine principle in the Holy Spirit, who is equally Divine within the Triune Godhead. It is that doctrine which is lacking in Christian theology and why I wouldn't trust traditional Christians with the task of reconstruction until they have grasped it.

    The tone of this study, Restoring the Foundations, is very Protestant, almost Anabaptist. It only slightly considers the role of the Desposyni as guardians of this family renaissance. It was written before the author took up the study of the Desposynic role, although he was aware of it.  Yet, the doctrine of the Desposyni pre-dates the doctrine of a Biblical patriarchalism.  Indeed, it is because of the Desposyni that such a doctrine exists. Thus, this author does not see any contradiction between the idea of father priests and the Desposynic episcopacy. The Desposyni make father priests possible.

   There are an immense number of house and family churches in the world today. Most of the fathers and leaders of these groups are sincere but in error.  They believe they have no need of a discipling ministry. They think they are smart and godly and they often have a contempt for organized religion. Perhaps they are right. But they are schismatics unless they are in unity with a visible representation of the Throne of Christ. Satan will pick them off one at a time.  I have seen it with my own eyes. 

   We cannot build a new structure until we have razed the one that's in the way. The current paradigm of church and state is the edifice this book has sought to dismantle to make way for a new paradigm. Please study material from the Cambrian Episcopal Church to understand how the houses churches of early Christianity worked. Using the itinerating ministry of the Apostles and the spiritual covering of the Desposyni, Christianity flourished in Palestine for a hundred years. Not until the genocide following the Bar Kochba revolt, did the Jerusalem Church suffer setbacks. If we want to get back to "New Testament" Christianity, it is not enough to read the first few chapters of Acts. Acts 15 is of critical importance; for it is there that we find the role of the Desposyni demonstrated.