Hello Jerry and thanks for the compliment, as undeserving as I feel of it.
— I can’t think of a single thing in the world that we come upon throughout life, that doesn’t meet this description, including how we interpret both the world and life itself. It’s all an inkblot test, omar.
O- Every thing that happens in our life is open to interpretation. We can agree. So why try to fix our eyes in only one? Everything, it seems, is open to interpretation, until some prophet hoist up a “correct†interpretation, and that is inevitably what religions do.
— I wouldn’t presume to deny other interpretations of Christianity.
O- I kinda doubt your neutrality. You go on to say: “If a literalist finds union with God then his interpretation has served its purpose.” If you left it at that then I would agree with your prior statement, but see how you go right into what I accuse religions of doing: "I would only suggest that if one is worshipping from afar, and believing out of fear, and praying out of guilt, then one is missing the true idea of union.
Oh yeah. There is that True bussiness to attend to. You don’t deny them, you only see them as false ideas? What an affirmation indeed! Jerry, please forgive my sarcasm. I have decided to leave it there in the post because it should express correctly my desperation that when I am promised something different, the same partiality, the same sanctimoniousness returns and I am afraid inevitably so, because that is the point of re-ligion to affirm one thing above others. The subjective, which is the breeding ground for all thyese re-ligions, is implacable and for true meaning to be achieved, error must be trimmed from the world. It means by the grace of what it denies and that is why, I believe, while the intention might truly be to be non-judgmental and tolerant, the end result does not vary because of the circumstances I have described.
— Is my interpretation something you should automatically accept? Well, no, and it wasn’t one I automatically accepted either. One comes to a point where one finds God (and one allows God to find) not very easily, at least in my case. It can be a long, winding, circuitous path, ultimately affirmed by a kind of direct awareness which is impossible to relate.
O- You presume that “union†was all along the idea behind it all. This presumption ignores the Israelite tradition up to Jesus and it’s intricacies, which might be problematic to this “union-with-God†perspective. Is Thomas representative of Jewish thought?
Let me explain. Suppose you are a listener of Jesus back in the 1st century. You have been educated as any 1st century Palestinian Jew. What will it mean, (you think), when Jesus is called the “Messiahâ€? Why did it provoke the Temple authorities so the rumors of the day? In that tradition, as it was known in their day, the Messianic hope was not one that sought “union†with God etc. Call them “carnalâ€, but one cannot deny the jewishness of Jesus. If one accepts that inheritance, then Jesus is understood in a totally different light, and his sayings as well. I understand that the picture that emerges is a failed picture and thus a new meaning is found to the story. This is tradition and occurs in ancient controversies over the role, if any, of Hesiod, and Homer as educators of the youth in Greece. Rather than discarding their teachings, those sentimentally attached, in my opinion, try to salvage what they can by looking for a hidden meaning which inserts into the ancient a modern message. I just disagree with the disregard for what the author’s intention might have been, as well as the inherent self-righteousness in that the new message is a superior understanding of what is. Call me a conservative, but can you put new wine in old skins?
One last thing before we proceed. I am not defending a literal view over a metaphorical view etc. it is not some either or controversy, settled in either extreme. Instead I fully defend that the Scriptures are both. At times literal, at times symbolic and it does not take much to dicern how and when. A strict literalist view is wrong, but so is a strict symbolic one.
— I think it’s interesting, though, to go beyond the Biblical literature, and here naturally is where a literalist would have a problem. But the sheer amount of life/death/rebirth motifs found throughout mythology from the ages is no less than stunning. At some point, one has to wonder just what is going on.
O- I actually welcome going beyond scripture. Perhaps we can use other arts than merely interpretation of scripture to discriminate the truth from error. So many cultures, so diverse and yet seemingly with the same recurring motif, how can we hope to explain it?!
Two paths.
First one assume that the similarity comes from an unconscious and yet objective experience into the Divine. That God reveals himself differently to different people, but it is still the same God, or that God is One and the same but that while the similarities reveal what is true about Him, what is diverse reflect our limited understanding and the powerful influence of culture in our appreciation of that public experience that is God.
The second path is more skeptical. That voice, not a very popular one, but notheless, possible, says that underlying the similarity in religious tradition is a biological tract and part of what makes us human. This point is thoroughly examined in the book “The Creation of the Sacred†(can’t remember the author but I think it is Burkert). It is an echo of Ludwig Freuerbach, who reversed the order of creation from God then man to Man then God. It is then in man that the answer will be found, in his existential condition, rather in some beyond or some interpretation of what is beyond.
— Couple this idea with a belief in pantheism, throw in the sheer beauty of Christ’s message (the Sermon on the Mount, if nothing else), and the stretching of mysticism across Christianity becomes more justified all the time.
O- I am interested in this. Please, give me your mystical rendition of the Sermon on the Mount. Use Luke’s variant of it to make truly a challenge.
— At some point, for me, along the circuitous path previously mentioned, the idea began to resonate. This was no ivory tower discovery. This was prayer and meditation, along with philosophy and history. I have no interest really in arguing my path. I am merely suggesting that there is a point of view that marries all of these ideas together and that point of view is, essentially, Christian mysticism.
O- How can I argue with that? I commend your achievement, but I must only say that my comment in all of this is that what you’ve achieved is not that dramatic. It is like an opinion. You feel that you have achieved a union with God. How could I investigate the truth of such claims? It is enough that they be true to you, even if they are false in the eyes of every one else. Are you happy by the development? If so, then what more can one want?
Quote:
Why did Jesus have to die? To provide us with this example? A parable might have done the trick.
— I’m not entirely sure it wasn’t a parable.
O- Quite a statement Jerry. I’ll be thinking about it for a while before I hazard a response.
— And vice-verse. “The Kingdom of the Father is spread out upon the earth and men see it not†(The Gospel of Thomas). There’s your apocalyptic message.
O- Again, does Thomas represent Jesus mind set better than the others? Did it mean that for Ignatious and Polycarp? Or Paul and Peter? Why is the Kingdom also likened to a mustard seed. The Kigdom of God is the kingdom of David. Why then do people not see it? Because it has been brought low, but it is not gone. Just because the people suffer does not mean that their God has been overcome but that their God has allowed their humbling. This is Biblical, though I cannot say if it is true. The Kingdom does not come, does not descend, and does not need to because it was never destroyed, it never stop being. Says the Lord: “Your house and your kingdom will endure forever before me; your throne will be established foreverâ€.
In Jesus thriumphal entry the crowd shouts:â€Hosanna!â€
“Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lordâ€
“Blessed is the kingdom of our father David!â€
That makes sense in view of what God said to David and recorded in scripture.
I don’t want you to think that I am partial to a literal understanding, but that I understand what has been written better in that light rather than in some interpretation that what is meant all along is a mystical union of God and man. It does not follow the myth as told in the old testatment and seems to me as a later development, a later creation, which has taken the most sublime sayings and inserted within them their own agenda. I could be wrong, but based on a reading into the Books of the Bible and some like the Apocraphia and then reading the writings of the martyrs, which is what I have done, I have found that it makes a lot of sense to read such sayings of Jesus as reflective of a jewish tradition and less of a mystical tradition in which man becomes God.
— Again, I think you’re confusing the metaphor with the real. The virgin birth, for example, is another motif prominent throughout mythology. I’m not suggesting anything with respect to the historicity of these things. I’m only suggesting that the meaning behind them might go beyond the literal.
O- Don’t all things possess that extra meaning for the mind that seeks it? Does not mean that the meaning is real but within the mind that sees it. The Virgin Birth was used by Caesar, and Emperor, so what does that say about Jesus being just like us? It places Jesus less in our sphere and more in Caesar’s.
— Well one needs to be careful not to anthropomorphize. I’m not saying we can become a divine ruler sitting on a throne surveying all of Creation. We are manifestations of God and, in union with the divine, we can experience God, even be at one with God. We can, in a sense, be God. There are moments when man can be at one with the divine and the idea of separation falls away. “Loved one in the other fused as one.â€
O- So what is this “Godâ€? He is not a divine ruler, so what is He or should we say “Itâ€? Right now I am drawing a “nadaâ€: “We are manifestations of “Nada†and, in union with the divine, we can experience “Nadaâ€, even be at one with “Nadaâ€. We can, in a sense, be “Nadaâ€.