Anthony66 wrote: ↑Mon Apr 22, 2024 1:24 pmI don't necessarily have these atomistic and anthropomorphic conceptions of the nature of the Divine as revealed in scripture, but some people do in popular culture, and what you guys speak of is at tension with their understanding, so therefore it is unhelpful to put new wine in old wineskins through redefining terms that are in active usage.AshvinP wrote: ↑Sun Apr 21, 2024 2:55 pmAnthony66 wrote: ↑Sun Apr 21, 2024 2:07 pm Again, this is all well and good if by Lord one has in view the ground of reality which Christian theology, particularly classical theism eventually landed on. But in popular piety, Lord is the OT figure who had a keen interest in the status of flesh on penises, the mixing of fabrics, slaughtering Canaanites, taking delight in the smell of burnt sacrifices, and the like. He is a god with personality - likes and dislikes, strengths and weaknesses, virtues and imperfections. I guess we can view this all as a progression in humanity's understanding of the divine - tribal deity to omni-god to foundational intuitive structure. But the differences between the Lord of those early apprehensions to the one you are proposing is very great indeed.
Anthony,
Can you just say a few words on what significance this has for you? If there is a progressive transformation in humanity's understanding and relationship with the Divine, which I would say could not be made more plain for anyone who examines the whole corpus of OT and NT without modern prejudice, and this fact is at tension with "popular piety" as you understand it (which may be overestimating your ability to speak for the understanding of many others, but we can leave that aside), what relevance does this have to any practical pursuit of truthful understanding in the here and now?
Put another way, I am asking you to fill in the blank - "I don't necessarily have these atomistic and anthropomorphic conceptions of the nature of the Divine as revealed in scripture, but some people do in popular culture, and what you guys speak of is at tension with their understanding, so therefore [fill in the blank]."
You have witnessed how many complaints there have been in the other direction - we use too many new and unfamiliar terms that 'make no sense', for ex. 'intuitive structure'. I feel it's mostly a waste of time to consider and address these complaints, because those who cannot be flexible in their thinking and try to sense the inner meaning for which the various terms are only anchors, will never be satisfied with the terminology, old or new. It is time for people to start swimming with their spiritual activity, to start doing the 'field work' and investigating how everything manifest in nature and culture is but a parable for inner first-person flow of experience. It doesn't matter if we are speaking of the flow of a river, the growth of a plant, the creeds of the church, the models of quantum mechanics, or what have you - they are all symbols for objective inner realities that can be unveiled through enlivened and strengthened cognition. Through the latter, we can learn to flexibly and imaginatively use the symbols of nature and culture as tools in different contexts according to whom we are speaking and what aspect of inner experience we are trying to highlight.
A greater concern I continue to work is the continuity/discontinuity between spiritual science and the old faith. Is SS, as I hope is the case, a spiritual stream that reveals a true deeper meaning? Or is there no continuity with the faith once delivered by the apostolic witness ("Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves", "Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’")?
Right, and we have discussed this concern many times and in many ways. The main problem is that the old can never discern the continuity with the new when it remains confined within its own standpoint. We are back to PoF 101 here.
PoF wrote:But can we not then make the old a measure for the new? Is not every man compelled to measure the products of his moral imagination by the standard of traditional moral doctrines? For something that should reveal itself as morally productive, this would be just as absurd as to want to measure a new form in nature by an old one and say that, because reptiles do not conform to the proto-amniotes, they are an unjustifiable (pathological) form.
Ethical individualism, then, is not in opposition to a rightly understood theory of evolution, but follows directly from it. Haeckel's genealogical tree, from protozoa up to man as an organic being, ought to be capable of being continued without an interruption of natural law and without a break in the uniformity of evolution, up to the individual as a being that is moral in a definite sense. But on no account could the nature of a descendant species be deduced from the nature of an ancestral one.
So the continuity of moral intuition discovered through intuitive thinking with the moral concepts of the 'old faith' won't be proven by some logical deductive argument, but can only be experienced as we traverse the intuitive thinking path ourselves. It is essentially the same continuity that we discover between our childhood ideas of ethical living drawn from external authorities (parents, teachers, etc.), and our adult sense of morality drawn from the most varied interactions and relationships with other people. Through the latter, we rediscover the former in a more inward way, we internalize the moral principles that we previously took on faith and understand how they actually contribute to the collective well-being, the harmonious functioning of the social organism. Then we are no longer only passive receivers of the faith but active participators in its establishment on Earth.
"Of whom we have many things to say, and hard to be uttered, seeing ye are dull of hearing. For when for the time ye ought to be teachers, ye have need that one teach you again which be the first principles of the oracles of God; and are become such as have need of milk, and not of strong meat. For every one that useth milk is unskilful in the word of righteousness: for he is a babe. But strong meat belongeth to them that are of full age, even those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil." (Heb 5)