The theologians nuance the invisible structure and the visible church, the broader Church of Christ or People of God and the Catholic Church per se, the former subsisting in the latter. Catholicism is LARGELY inclusivistic. Only Hinduism is moreso.

pax,
jb

Boom, the pitch for Christianity in general followed by the upper cut for the Catholic Church in particular.

What a fun way to wind up this discussion!

Is that you, Brad?

Is that you, Brad?

Yes, and I think JB is taking his hiatus because he's upset about having to play the straight man.

Come on back, JB. You can play Lou if you want and I'll play Bud. Sheesh...

quote:

Originally posted by johnboy:
[qb] There are two ways to live your life.
One is as though nothing is a miracle.
The other is as though everything is a miracle.

Now, THAT is an analogical imagination!

It belonged to Albert Einstein.

pax,
jb [/qb]

Actually, for a true analogical imagination, wouldn't it be:
"There is one way to live your life:
as though nothing is a miracle
and
as though everything is a miracle."


~Christine

I read some of this discussion with great interest, letting it sit for a while and comparing it John Donne's (1572--born Roman Catholic) often painful struggle with the dialectical God. He converted to the Church of England during the reformation, partly to secure himself a career, social acceptence, and a need to support his children. The struggle with analogical vs. dialectical God forms much of the tension within Donne's poems...As I myself wrestle with this idea of an analogical God, the following questions come to mind.

1)Who can interpret scripture, who can interpret the world and their own lives?
2) Why should we deem that inspiration comes from a divine source and then chastise others religions for extracting other/alternative meaning from outer events. The analogical God seems like a dangerous God, in other words, unless we live in perpetual doubt, knowing that we only see through "dark glass." Does this perpetual doubt in the source of inspiration make me agnostic? The dialectical God is ineffectual, divorced from life, other, absorbed in himself--so I'll have no part in Him, as He wants no part in me. Why give inspiration anything significance, except insomuch as it reveals beauty, strength, joy and trust. Why name that and attibute it to an image, to a configuration that is comfortable. I feel this discomfort as despair, but despair must lead to something besides destruction.

Hang in there, Asher. Your search is ever-more authentic because of the depth and sincerity of your questioning and probing.

I'm not sure I can adequately respond, as the kind of philosophical approach taken by JB here is not my usual manner of proceeding. What I can say is that, when it comes to interpreting Scripture, the key is to get in touch with what the author intended. This provides something of an "objective" interpretation that helps to contextualize one's subjective responses.

The subjective side of the encounter is more meaningful, of course, as this is what differentiates Scripture from philosophical writings. Through these words, stories, prayers, etc., we are sometimes given to encounter the One to Whom they refer in a personal, meaningful way. This is the graced aspect of the spiritual life -- that we are encountered by an-Other who communicates with us. Consequentially, we are awakened to faith, and grow in faith as we continue the encounters. As this relationship develops, this darkness and doubt diminishes, displaced by faith, trust and communion with God.

I don't know how helpful it is, really, to approach God philosophically. For one deeply established in faith as JB is, these kinds of philosophical excursions can be a way of exploring the dimensions of faith, and, in his case, of enabling dialogue with others.

I will contact JB and encourage him to reply to your post as well. Meanwhile, consider what I've written as another way of approaching scripture.

To add to Phil's comments on an objective interpretation of scripture, I might say that there are various criterion for proper interpretation. The first and most crucial is the role of the Holy Spirit. If one accepts that scripture is divinely inspired then the Spirit's role is carried on from inspiration to interpretation. It's as if the Spirit opens up the word, throwing light on meaning and providing understanding. Paul is continually praying for a Spririt filled understanding amongst his flock and the more one is in communion with God through prayer, fellowship etc, the more the Spirit is able to convey scriptural meaning.

Then of course there is teaching and prophecy. Both are gifts of the Spirit and form a bedrock for proper understanding. The problem for us is to differentiate between false and true teachers and this would seem to involve the spiritual gift of discernment. But we are certainly given teachers to help us in our understanding and it is up to us to acknowledge their gifts and open our hearts and minds to what they have to say.

I think too that a knowledge of the whole of scripture is essential as one part often throws light on another, the particular is understood in light of the general and vice versa.

As for the discussion on analogical versus dialectical, my simple, layman's understanding would be that God is able to be involved and withdraw at the same time or at different times in accordance with his perfect will. I can only draw on my own experience where I observe a God who is actively involved in my own life, even when He least appears to be. He moves in mysterious ways. I see the poverty in this statement of course, it leaves a lot of questions/doubts unanswered. But then again scripture is quite simple in its assertion that "He is not far from any one of us".

I always quite liked the old Jewish Cabalists view that when God created the world He left an exact replica of His own nature in that creation before personally withdrawing from it. For me, God is always present and active even in the most horrendous circumstances where His interference seems minimal.

Let me respond without attempting to directly answer any questions.

See if the following distinctions generate any new questions or insights for anyone:

Doubt is not the opposite of faith.[1]

Secular is not the opposite of religious.[2]

Incomprehensible is not the same as unknowable.[3]

Knowing is not the same as proving.[4]

Both the literal and the metaphorical can evoke appropriate responses to reality, which is to say they can both increase our modeling power of reality.[5]

Certain disparate propositions that contradict one another can still be logically consistent, internally coherent and externally congruent, which is to say, for instance, that two contradictory positions can both be reasonable.[6]

Littera gesta docet; quid credas allegoria, moralis quid agas, quid speres anagogia ; which is to say that, when approaching Scripture, we must critically interpret whether the author(s) was speaking (writing):
a) literally, teaching facts
b) allegorically, conveying what we are to believe
c) morally, suggesting what we are to do
d) anagogically, sharing what we are to hope for.[7]

Communal discernment is a redundancy.[8]

Footnotes:

1) Faith and doubt are part of a single polar reality.

2) Secular simply means not overtly religious and even that which is not overtly religious can be sacred and immersed in (w)holiness.

3) We can apprehend parts of this or that reality even while not fully grasping the entirety or even essence of same.

4) There is much we know that we cannot formally prove, such as all we hold to be self-evident, such as those prephilosophical axioms that undergird the very possibility of reason itself.

5) This is as true in metaphysics and theology as it is in theoretical physics, the latter easier to falsify, to be sure, but the former certainly falsifiable in terms of orthopraxis (practice) authenticating orthodoxy (belief) --- which is just to say that the proof is in the pudding and try it you'll like it .

6) A logically valid argument is not the same as a logically sound argument, the latter requiring true premises in addition to being fallacy free.

7) Alternate interpretations of Scripture must yield to historical-critical method and communal discernment to have any public import, while any private inspirations remain just that --- only of private import as far as revelation goes.

8) Without some type of institutionalized teaching office (magisterium) and collective sense of authenticity (sensus fidelium) that is connected to the crucible of our collective life experiences (pastorally), discernment is reduced to private fantasy. This is not to suggest that there is only one way to institutionalize these essential elements.

Endnotes:

Analogies convey more dissimilarities between objects than they reveal similarities and thus may properly be considered to reveal only a very meager knowledge. A meager knowledge of someThing as large as God and of such tremendous existential import to each of us is, nonetheless, indispensable and critical. IOW, a meager knowledge of a large reality can still amount to quite a lot of knowledge, relatively speaking.

Once an analogy is established, a relationship is established, sometimes personal, sometimes impersonal. The establishment of a relationship is pivotal, critical all by itself. Revelation and testimony from down through the ages (tradition) invite us to explore the possibility of a personal relationship, this despite all appearances to the contrary that the deists may be indeed be correct (for that is where the dialectical imagination ultimately leads when extrapolated to its logical conclusion).

It takes a very highly nuanced theodicy (understanding of how God abides with and deals with evil) to transcend the temptation toward deism or even atheism. However, it also requires a more highly nuanced use of the analogical imagination to overcome the tendency toward outright fundamentalism, nunaces that best derive, in my view, from a broad and learned collective lived experience of humankind --- magisterially, pastorally and through a broad and depthful sense of the faithful.

Fundamentalists err by confusing their apprehension of God for a comprehension of God (with their overactive analogical imagination?).

Deists and agnostics err by thinking that God cannot be apprehended when the real case is, rather, that S/he cannot be comprehended (due to their overactive dialectical imagination?).

These are mistakes of the analogical and dialectical imaginations that can just as easily be made in particle physics with quarks, in speculative cosmology with multiverses, or in speculative cognitive science with the hard problem of consciousness. It is not to be unexpected, therefore, that such mistakes made in physics might not carry over into metaphysics and even theology. This isn't so much a matter of belief and unbelief as it is an exercise in critical thinking, nuance, predication and such.

Belief in truth, beauty, goodness, love, right and wrong, and God, is unconditional. It does not rise and fall based on life experiences --- such as the Holocaust or the Sudan, for instance. It cannot be proven even though it is reasonable. Natural theology proves nothing but does demonstrate reasonableness. Sometimes I pray: I don't know and don't need to know. I don't feel and don't need to feel. I love and need to forgive and nothing can convince me otherwise. Zero. Zip. Zilch. Nada.

My best,
jb

Thanks, JB and all. I'll be looking over these notes the next couple of weeks. I'm in a pretty strange place.

Best,

Asher

JB,

I read your notes, and agree with the illusory nature of binary opposites as ultimately subject to collapse. The construct may be necessary though in order to move to a new level of understanding. There is tension in binaries--our world/mind (for the most part) works in binaries, otherwise people would be where I'm at, which is sort of insane.

I have this idea in mind that thoughts belong to certain classes, that reflect a certain mode of being at a certain time. That if we believe, for instance in a dialectical God, we will live in a certain (necessaily) limited spectrum of consciouness. For some it will be quite natural because of genetics, culture etc.

The analogical/dialectic are not at odds, it would seem, judging from your remarks. They are only ad odds when they are contextualized for political and historical purposes. The schism between Catholic/Protestent seems only based on history, not on consciousness. That a dialectical God relates to a different cognitive process, call it Witnessing. The fact that such a God is seemingly apart is only a construct. The Witness is intimately connected to the analogical imagination, if I apply my own definitions. The paradigm you cited above is useful only in terms of criticim, not in terms of the experience/ or understanding of God on a personal level. That people like Donne, stuggled with such a conception more reflects the kind of model that is only a construct to purport a political agenda, to break down hierarchy, by establishing a supreme construct. I tend to think of dialectical/analogical as different cognitive processes that Grace works through--both arising from how we were made.

Why does one person choose a certain philosophy and another something else? I assume it relates to the spectum of consciousness which is most compatible with their biology/genetics. And yet, there are ways in which existentialism , intersects quite naturally with Christianity. That atheism is not so much a lack of belief, but either an inability to engage with the world, or a contradiction. For without believing in a construct, one would either die, or reach a level of understanding.

Anyway, rambling here...but seeing as I read more, how ideas are forces, that create ontology, and ways of relating. It is when 2 classes of thought interect that interesting conflict/engagement/metaphor result--and perhaps new levels of understanding are reached. If one is boxed in a certain understanding, they will never really engage the opposite, the opposite which provides force for a new level.