Posted on 11/10/2008 11:37:17 AM PST by betty boop
What fascinating insights from both Heraclitus and Bergson and how closely they match!
It is easy to discern the man who thinks he is Napoleon is tragically cut off from the Great Hierarchy of Being, living in a Second Reality of his own imagining - but truly, the man closed to God is likewise deformed.
Thank you for sharing your insights.
Indeed. This is the theme of the great myth of the divine puppet-master in Plato's Laws. We humans are as if suspended in an "in-between" reality that subjects us to the competing pulls of the divine "golden cord," or the variety of pulls that come from "below," from our instinctual, animal, emotional nature.
LOLOL, but I just recollected Katherine Hepburn's famous line from the African Queen: "Human nature is that which we are supposed to rise above."
Again we get back to your donkey/rider metaphor. Plato described man as "psyche in soma," of soul or spirit incarnated in a body. Moreoever, man naturally possesses nous, mind, or reason, whether or not he chooses to develop it. The "pulls" of the divine puppet-master of the myth are the "pulls" of the divine Nous; since man has nous also, communication is possible.
Of course, this is all Greek to me! LOLOL!
In man, the neshama (Genesis 2) is the breath of God which tugs him to the divine. And the nephesh (Genesis 1) is the animal soul which tugs him to the earthy.
The ruach (Old Testament) is the pivot, the man's soul which chooses whether to be focused on the divine or on the earthy. In the great debate, Plato is focused on the divine and Aristotle on the earthy.
Paul in Romans 8 speaks to these two aspects (carnal or fleshy man versus the spiritual man) - or to use hosepipe's metaphor, the donkey versus the rider.
Christians are secured because we have have more than the breath of God (neshama) - we actually have the indwelling Spirit, Spirit of God, Spirit of Christ. We must follow the Spirit, ruach Elohim which means Spirit of God.
For they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh; but they that are after the Spirit the things of the Spirit. For to be carnally minded [is] death; but to be spiritually minded [is] life and peace. Because the carnal mind [is] enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God.
But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his. – Romans 8:1-9
I have long ceased to be amazed by the key correspondences that exist in the symbols that man has developed down the ages, seemingly almost regardless of the cultural contexts in which they arise. Certain themes never seem to go away. The Old Testament account of man and his relations — with God and the other partners in the great hierarchy of being — the classical philosophical, and the Christian all see the same thing, and articulate it in remarkably similar language. This tells me there is a "seam" of God's Truth that perennially runs through the world; and noetically and spiritually sensitive people of all times and places notice things like that.
C. S. Lewis has a great appendix (in The Abolition of Man) that provides further details of this phenomenon.
To God be the Glory!
bookmark to read fully
I am troubled by the notion that Christianity is a religion of ethics.
The presence of Christ in my life did not occur out of some ethical series of behaviors or any sense of goodness on my part. He is alive in me because he saved me from the oblivion of my self. I am bought by His blood, not by ethics. This seems to me to be a cosmological and not an epistological event. The only theory of knowledge necessary is to recognize the nature of reality, a simple and essentially primitive act.
The distinction may simply be between the experience of religion as a human construct and the experience of God. One need not, after all, be religious to know God.
Thank you Betty, for a most relevant article. I struggled through it several days ago and am just now re4ading the thread.
We are most certainly beseiged by the rule of godlessness in our highest government offices. The days to come will be dramatic and powerful and will almost certainly determine the future of our republic as a constitutional nation under God.
I am humbled that we have patriots of depth and wisdom among us. They will be sorely needed.
But I will add by way of corroboration: To reduce Christianity to a religion of ethics is to miss the entire point of the Sacrifice of Christ and His Living Presence in our lives. And I agree that "One need not, after all, be religious to know God." Certainly Plato wasn't "religious" in any sense we readily recognize nowadays; but he sensed the divine Presence in his life. He identified it as Nous, "divine mind." What he couldn't do, before the coming of Christ, was draw the connection between "Mind" and the actual Person whose Mind was "present" in his own spiritual life.
Thank you ever so much for your beautiful essay/post!
And possibly sorely tested in what is to come, if my worst imaginings come true.
May God ever bless you, Amos, and all your loved ones! And may He continue to bless America!
Thus have we chosen a new slave owner. If the man (0) were black he would have a soul. He is the son of soulless slavers, not the son of soulful slaves.
The greeks developed religious play acting to an art.. d;-)..
Because that is what pagan religion is.. a play..
A delicious or tragic acting out of a myth..
All done with expensive artifacts and impressive masks..
Which some christian and jewish troups steal from..
Not to speak of psuedo-christian(cultic) artisans..
Some artisans become Superstars and everything..
And the LORD said unto me, Cast it unto the potter: a goodly price that I was prised at of them. And I took the thirty [pieces] of silver, and cast them to the potter in the house of the LORD. - Zech 11:12-13
Then Judas, which had betrayed him, when he saw that he was condemned, repented himself, and brought again the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders, Saying, I have sinned in that I have betrayed the innocent blood. And they said, What [is that] to us? see thou [to that].
And he cast down the pieces of silver in the temple, and departed, and went and hanged himself.
And the chief priests took the silver pieces, and said, It is not lawful for to put them into the treasury, because it is the price of blood. And they took counsel, and bought with them the potter's field, to bury strangers in. - Matthew 27:3-7
Eric Vöegelin's consciousness of man and its relation to the "divine ground of being". He is in essence a mystic. His conclusions are rationally derived from his initial mysteries and are therefore mysteries themselves. He begins with an opinion and after torturing the languages of classical philosophy and theology, he ends with an opinion. At best it can be said that his works produce hypotheses, but not true knowledge. After all of his rationalization, he still doesn't know if he knows anything, he simply "feels' that he knows something. For instance, his first reality could simply be a biologically evolved coping mechanism. In other words, Vöegelin's philosophy "works" whether his "first reality" is real or only imagined. He built his philosophical house upon the sand.
You have illustrated the problem with most philosophy. Although your assertion may be absolutely correct, you haven't demonstrated that it is. Please understand that this isn't a criticism of you personally, but of philosophy generally.
Science does have much to say about mind and the world and reality. (Psyche and spirit could be described as part of mind and world and reality). What it says, however, isn't satisfying to mystics, so they reject it out of hand thereby creating a "first reality".
LOLOL!!!! That's for sure!
Polemics is something I'm really trying to avoid these days. It's hard. Plus I find that fewer people want to talk with me when I'm NOT being "polemical!"
You still haven't told me what you think his "article of faith" is. Or which of his 30+ books you've read. Sounds to me like you made a quick stop at Wikipedia; and the article about Vöegelin over there was obviously written by someone suffering from a profound case of anoia.
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