AletheiaRivers

That's what I thought we were discussing ...

I'm already looking forward to getting Peck's other books as well. Welcome to the board Maggie!

I've always applied the terms "thesis, antethesis, synthesis" to everything: substances, procedures and processes, matter and spirit, but then, I've never read Hegel. I assume from your comment that "his" dialectic focused more on the material? Am I understanding you correctly? (I have a feeling I'm not. )

Universal Dialectic - "The infinite, essential, and fundamental principle of evolutionary and/or progressive creation/change which actualizes all potential states of being through the self-organizing integration of complementary existential polarities. The process of Becoming, or existence." "The term itself gives evidence of what it is intended to mean - in all things there is a dialectic (a pairing of opposites), but this dialectic is itself universal (singular and infinite in scope)." "The majority of metaphysical systems throughout history have found themselves forced to affirm the reality of one dualistic aspect at the expense of considering the other illusionary or ill-conceived. Some traditional ontologies (those of Indian and Oriental origin in particular) favor Oneness, considering the unity to be the 'real reality,' and duality to be 'maya' or illusion. Others consider the world of duality the only reality and reject any talk of unity or Oneness as metaphysical abstraction. The concept of Universal Dialectic shows that both positions settle for a half-truth. The solution offered is the recognition that unity is experienced as duality. There is no unity which does not manifest as duality, and there is no duality which does not reduce to unity." The Universal Dialectic I still don't agree with everything the website says (after all, they are atheist), but it's amazing that their view of "ultimate reality" describes a view which I thought I came up with all on my own (only in my view the Unity that all duality is reducible to is God). The writer of the article said "For me, this is evidence that thought which is focused alongs these lines tends to proceed in a logical, sequential manner to arrive at certain eventual conclusions." I agree.

That was my first thought too!

ROFLMAO! Sorry, but that was TOO FUNNY. I couldn't help myself.

I've never tried this before and I don't know if it's going to work, so cross your fingers! Christian Hybrid Discussion Heart of Christianity Discussion Heart of Christianity 2 Hopefully those links will go directly to three posts I made back in March 2005. PS - Whoo hoo, it worked! (With lots of editing.) My beliefs and views towards Christianity have changed so much this past year (I was more "pagan" then), but my overall ontological view is still pretty much the same. I appreciate so much that after a year the "dialectic" idea/discussion has come back around. Fred's comment about the magnet made me think of my old post.

If they still have Michael Murray's "Encyclopedia of Natural Medicine", I highly recommend it.

I belonged for a while. Perhaps the selection has gotten better in the last couple of years, but when I was a member it was bad. Month after month I struggled to find a book I was willing to pay full price (plus shippng) for, in order to meet my obligation. They do have a decent selection of Buddhist and New Age books, but not so much in the Christian department. If you are into "natural healing" they have a great selection of herb, yoga, vitamin and cooking books.

I'm not a bit Freke fan. I bought "Jesus and the Lost Goddess" and "The Pagan Jesus" a few years back, but ended up returning them after the first few chapters. I find it ironic that "The Laughing Jesus" is about literalism and the scriptures? One of the reasons I returned Freke's books was because I thought he was treating the stories in the gnostic gospels as literal happenings and I just couldn't swallow the whole "Sophia and her consort Christ" scenario. Perhaps the end of the books would have discussed gnosticism from a more metaphorical standpoint, but I couldn't make myself wade thru the rest of the books to get there. I returned the books and bought "Inner Christianity" and "The Heart of Christianity" instead. Both good books. "Inner Christianity", I thought, did a better job of discussing gnostic and esoteric Christianity. For a book dealing with legalism and literalism and the church, I think I'd recommend "Stealing Jesus."

Boring Prophet: "There shall in that time be rumors of things going astray, erm, and there shall be a great confusion as to where things really are, and nobody will really know where lieth those little things with the sort of raffia-work base, that has an attachment. At that time, a friend shall lose his friend's hammer, and the young shall not know where lieth the things possessed by their fathers that their fathers put there only just the night before, about eight O'clock."

Don't know why, but I had a flash on Monty Python as I read that. Could have been a great scene in The Life of Brian.

I googled "List of Heresies" yesterday, figuring it would give me an alphabetical list of "official church heresies" and I found this page: Course on Heresies It has quite a bit of interesting info. For example: I never knew Augustine followed Mani for a while, or that Origen had one foot slightly over the line into the heretic camp. Cool stuff.

My mom makes a fruitcake that doesn't involve candied fruit in any way whatsoever. It is a basic zucchini style bread, with peaches, pineapple, apples and cranberries. It's amazingly good.

No problem. I think I will ask my Dr about the klonipin though. It would make sense that it would help with migraine if it's for seizure disorders.

You read the Urantia book Cynthia? Seriously, the whole thing? I'm impressed if you did. That thing is HUGE.

I looked and looked and couldn't find a heresy of this sort that started with an M. Now it's driving me crazy. Gnosticism (I swear I'm not picking on it Fred!) is described that way. "Modalism" is considered a heresy, but that has to do with the Trinity. "Marcion" was a gnostic who lived circa 85-160 AD. His followers came to be known as "Marcionites". There was the Montanist heresy and Manichaeism (who was sorta gnostic). Are any of these what your were thinking of Cynthia? Fred, I hope you do know this. It'll bug me all day if you don't.

Thanks Cynthia.

And neither in an immanent sense and both in a transcendent sense. That is what makes everything one unified whole. "Both/And" above, Both/And below. "Neither/Nor" above, Neither/Nor below. In every possible way, there is balance. Yes, totally. That is what I meant by my earlier comment that this reality (physical) has one foot in heaven. If we are going to balance change and changeless, immanence and transcendence, then we must also have spirit and physicality (not as dualism, but as one unified whole).

Or pits?

Thanks OA. I don't take xanax for anxiety though. I take it for vestibular migraine. I've thought about klonipin however, because I've heard that is has helped some with vertigo where nothing else would. Valium is what is usually recommended, but it doesn't do squat.

One the one hand, I understand why classical philosophy taught that God had to be changeless to be perfect. Logically it makes sense (on the surface). How can something perfect ever be anything different than what it is at THIS EXACT moment? If it became different in any way, it wouldn't have been perfect in the first place. On the other hand, I think that thinking of God ONLY in this way, "limits" God and limits us in our ability to relate to him. Stretching our brains in both directions is a good thing (even though it might require the occasional advil ). I think God is a neverending "dance" of any possibility, as well as the opposite of any possibility. I don't think God WILL change. I think God IS change. (I really do have a hard time trying to explain what is right on the edge of my brain with this. ) Picturing God as a swirling dance of yin and yang, polar dualities that make up ONE BEING is the best metaphor I can think of. God is duality, but God is unity. God is changeless, but God changes. And it's the fact that I think we are the exact same way, both materially and psychologically that has me so in awe of Christ and theosis lately. PS - I have advil if you need some. I took a couple earlier myself. Thanks Fred!

Me too. I agree that God can't be too transcendent or too immanent IF the opposite is also true. For you and me it is. We see it similarly I think. For other groups though, not so much. God is totally "other" or totally here, but not totally both. Hehehehehe. You should talk to my husband about what I say when I tell him I'm not so sure Einstein had it completely correct. Flux and manyness and eternity and oneness. Dang if that doesn't sound like "duality in unity". Same/differentness. Change/Changeless. Yup, there it is again. God is anything we can imagine AND also the opposite of anything we can imagine. I think it is both. I think being both changeless and changing is what makes God perfect and what makes God transcendant. Like you said, change and changelessness are but ways of describing the difference between scenarios in flux between two moments. You can't have change unless you were first changeless. Movement isn't movement unless you were first still. Even when the change from changelessness isn't visible to the naked eye, it exists in the vibrations of atoms. I've used duality in unity, yin/yang and "the dance". I think we might be closer in our views than this last conversation may have implied.

Thanks Fred. I appreciate your view. Sometimes I think humans either make God TOO transcendent, TOO beyond (which is my "beef" with much of classical philosophy) or they make God TOO immanent (which is what I get hung up on with process philosophy). I guess my view is somewhere in between. God is transcendentally aware of the cosmos from afar, AS WELL AS immersed in it with us. I think reality IS part of the spiritual plane, but also that there is MORE. I think the archetype of the cross (vertical and horizontal as it is) represents this well. People talk about going to heaven. I think this reality has "one foot in" heaven right now. I appreciate Einsteinian physics, but I would never bind God to it's limitations (not that I'm saying you're doing that). I also think the steps that are being made into understanding quantum and string theory are going to force us to modify some of Einstein's theories a bit down the line. Anyway, I agree (but perhaps not in the way you mean it) that eternity isn't a "very long time." I agree that God just IS, but (and it's a big but) I'm of the mind that change is what God IS. It is a paradox isn't it and yet it seems to be right on the tip of my brain. I think so much of it goes back to mankind's believing that for a being to be perfect, for a being to be God, that is must not change. For if it changed, then how could it have been perfect before? I owe a debt to process philosophy and most especially to Taoism for helping me to appreciate that CHANGE is perfection and that our definition of perfection needs to change.

Hi Jerry! I decided to quote a few passages from the webpage that I linked to in the other thread. I think you'll appreciate them. The website owner (a Buddhist Catholic ) goes on to say that the various metaphors of Christ's relation to mankind are symbolic of Theosis. Such metaphors include: Children of God, Bride of Christ, Body of Christ, Light of the World, and Living Water. There are others as well. It's philosophical and theological ideas like kenosis and theosis that made me realize just how mystical traditional, orthodox Christianity truly is. I get frustrated when the words "orthodox" and "traditional" get interchanged with "fundamentalist" because the groups that use those labels don't look at scripture remotely the same way. I think the accepted canon of scripture is very "esoteric", but we have become conditioned to think that accepted canon is literal while the apocryphal writings are metaphorical. That's not to say that I don't think that the NT is historical. I do. I just think that, as Christ said, he spoke in parables (parables which we have come to view as literal history).