FredP

Oh and thanks for resurrecting my thread, Jerry. It's interesting to come back and see how my ideas have and have not changed over the past year. I'm still affirming the divinity of Jesus Christ in a Trinitarian context -- that is, G-d actually takes on physical form in the issuing forth of the cosmos, and not just creates it like a craftsman. In other words, my theology is thoroughly incarnational. It's also thoroughly kenotic -- meaning that G-d emptied himself of all knowledge and power pertaining to the Divine Being; desiring instead that, in the fullness of time, the seed of enlightenment buried in the cosmos from the beginning (John 1) would come to fruition. G-d apparently considers this awakening such a supreme good, that it's worth all the frustration, pain, and suffering the cosmos can dish out on the Cross. So, in response to Borg's question: Do I read the gospels as "history remembered," or "history metaphorized?" I read them as metaphysics mythologized.

Nope, they go to one of the UMC's.

You haven't given the impression that God isn't real, just extremely limited in fundamental knowledge and power, compared to a more traditional view (which, again, puts you in fairly good company in the TCPC). In this sense, I said your proposal had a strong process flavor to it. I do happen to think there are other theological systems which recognize limitations on God's creative activity in the Cosmos, without limiting God's essential nature the way process thought does -- yet at the same time, offering an alternative to "the traditional Christian sin and salvation story." Notably, there is a growing movement among theologian-scientists called kenosis theology that you might be interested in checking out. Sorry, what is the OP?

This is dead on, soma! You've perfectly summarized the meaning of I John 4:19: "We love, because He first loved us." When Paul repeatedly says that there is nothing good in us except what comes from God, this isn't neurotic self-loathing -- it's a recognition that everything that exists participates in the being of God. Yet this knowledge -- the experiential knowledge, the gnosis, not the conceptual idea of it -- is veiled from us so that we may seek it and find. And having found it, live fully in the One and in the Many... Thanks for this post.

Soma, nice take on Trinitarianism that doesn't have anything to do with divine babies. Anyway, jerry, fortunately there is enough mystery for the soul, and consistency for the mind, for all of us. The tension is where all the fun stuff happens.

Excellent observation -- especially the idea that to really eliminate evil from a situation requires a deep understanding of it that goes far beyond "common sense." It makes me think of the Taoist idea of understanding one's enemy well enough to make him essentially defeat himself -- which I take to be one of the many meanings of the Cross. Also, and this ties into my original thoughts on the parable, a deep understanding of one's enemy always involves a deep understanding of oneself -- many times they are one and the same. I think our attempt at eliminating terror has been so miserable precisely because, as a society, we utterly lack this kind of deep, spiritual self-understanding. I'm not saying that terrorists are simply victims of socio-economic injustice and everything is our own fault, or something stupid and reductionistic like that. But on a deeper level, the repression and denial of evil in ourselves does create an inner split that manifests itself as polarization in the global community, and differentiation and self-identification of people into roles of good/us and bad/them. Surface "common sense" ideas about guilt and blame are utterly hopeless to diagnose such realities....

That des, she's a clever one. That's a helpful way of looking at it. Even the shaman is intuiting something correct, even though he would explain it in a superstitious way. To these views, I would of course add the metaphysical view -- I should say, one metaphysical view -- the world as we experience it exists in a state of ignorance and separation from its true Source, which manifests itself in the limitations, frustrations, and lacks inherent in all the different views of the situation. (It's the metaview of all the other views!) I don't think it's a matter of schmartz, so much as of what you've immersed yourself in. I just happen to have a bizarre obsession with this stuff, so I inflict it on everyone else.

Actually I heard myself saying this in my best Bones voice: "Dammit Jim, I'm a country doctor..."

Not for this, you don't.

Yeah, knocking out the clots is what causes dry sockets -- which is what I have now. It's really miserable, but I just went to the oral surg. to have some dressings put in, so it should be under control. I also had my bottom gum line dropped so my dentist can get in and see if there's any decay to worry about... so that isn't helping matters any. See what you get for putting this stuff off for 15 years?

Des, we're talking about two completely different things here. You're talking about how to diagnose and treat mental and physical illnesses, and I'm trying to ground the reality of illness, suffering, etc. within a consistent metaphysical framework of good and evil. I'm a philosopher and a theologian, not a doctor. I'm not saying to bring in a priest to cure schizophrenia, anymore than I'd say to bring in a priest to split a neutron. Sorry if I've bred too much misunderstanding about where I'm coming from...

As you're so fond of pointing out, order/stability is one (necessary) pole in a dynamic tension that exists within all complex processes. The disorder/instability pole would be constantly ripping everything apart otherwise. Within Christianity, Orthodoxy and Gnostcism represent a kind of chaotic tension within which Western spirituality and philosophy play out. Orthodoxy doesn't recognize Gn. as a valid form of Christianity, of course, but neither does the ego recognize the shadow as its disowned self. Right, various forms of structure had to be in place over time, in order to develop the various pieces of the puzzle which lead to an integrated view of reality. See, we have the same basic understanding of the scientific process.

I'm on drugs, that's my excuse. Anyway, I'm not denouncing the scientific process, on this or any other thread. In fact I'm far more skeptical than you might expect. I'm merely challenging naturalism's reduction of everything to what can be counted and measured.

It's such an incredible tapestry of images and ideas, far richer -- and much more subversive -- than the flat scientific reductionism that characterizes so much "liberal" Christianity. At the same time, there is no canonical "Gnostic View," which can be frustrating if you're looking for something to attack.

But see, there is no "religious" domain as opposed to a "scientific" or "medical" domain -- that was the whole point of my codeine-induced attempt at explaining my view of spiritual metaphysics, which is that awareness and agency are part of the very structure of the universe itself. If they're not, then either consciousness is an illusion, and we are nothing more than biochemical machines; or consciousness is an anomaly, and we are aliens in an otherwise completely inert universe. Ironically, most folks who are "into" angels and demons and spirits, tend toward this "anomaly" view, which is both pseudo-spiritual and pseudo-scientific. If Occam's razor is your preferred approach, I find it most coherent to conclude that humans experience consciousness, purpose, intention, etc. simply because these are fundamental structural features of the cosmos itself -- just like scientific lawfulness and predictability and all of that. There's nothing magical about it. If we can accept this conclusion, even tentatively, perhaps we can begin to see more going on in the workings of nature than we previously thought.

You're on the right board, Dave. Your position has a strong humanistic and process flavor, to me. I think you'll find a lot of support for that around here. I'm inclined to think that we often get ourselves into conceptual trouble when we talk about G-d's knowledge and power with respect to the Cosmos. Infinite and finite modes of knowledge and power differ by kind as well as by degree. While G-d's knowledge of and power over the finite realm is necessarily self-limited, in order for the universe to exist in any separate sense at all, this doesn't imply any kind of inherent limitation in the Divine Being itself.

That's alright, I've read a lot of Flow's posts, and I'm still genuinely confused by a lot of them.

I usually refer to IHOP as IHOO, since I almost always get omelettes. So you're officially in Rockford eh? My wife's sister and her family are there. We live in Algonquin, about 40 miles away. Is there any Swedish connection to Rockford, or are they just trying to sell pancakes?

I think there is a difference between the superstitious types of belief in evil spirits as devils, and the metaphysical belief that everything that happens in the universe is intentional, and therefore spiritual, whether benevolent or malignant, in nature. Clearly, both these types of views are in diametric oppositon to the reigning scientific belief that nothing in the universe happens for any reason at all; but these two types of "spiritual" beliefs are as different from each other as night and day, and many people simply reduce them all to superstition out of a fear of being "anti-scientific." If all forms of being and agency in the Cosmos are modes of God's being and agency, however limited, then everything in the universe is a spiritual reality. So, for example, on this view the medieval understanding of body as the outward form of the soul -- recently popularized by Thomas Moore -- would be much closer to the truth than the modern scientific view that spirits or souls (including human ones) are just ancient and naive ways of describing what are essentially nothing more than complex electrochemical processes. Furthermore, on this view there is no inconsistency between speaking of physical and mental illnesses, and speaking of maligant spiritual forces, because the phenomena can analyzed from either perspective, according to the scientific laws appropriate to that level of description, without having to deny the existence of the other perspectives. Scientific naturalism, on the other hand, denies the existence of all other perspectives, and reduces them all to its own limited categories. Anyway, I haven't tried to present an argument here, everyone is free to believe whatever they like about it. I'm just opening up the possibility of a genuine metaphysical spirituality that isn't based on superstition, but is able to coherently account for illness, suggesstion, and great spiritual evil alike.

Happy Birthday Jerry! I've flipped through that book quite a bit, and will probably pick it up eventually. The gnosis.org site is actually mostly Hoeller's articles anyway. He has also written a book called The Gnostic Jung. It should be fairly obvious from my original post on this topic that I'm a big Jung fan.

Well I'm currently home doped up on Extra Strength Vicodin after having my Wisdom Teeth out yesterday. I generally prefer to limit my pain med usage, but in this case the dizziness is preferable to feeling like my teeth are being slowly yanked out of my mouth throughout the course of the day. Hopefully this won't result in too large a diminishment of whatever wisdom I may or may not have had before.

Thanks for all the posts so far. I better get caught up before I fall too far behind. Flow: I am in fact just about finished with Pagels' Adam, Eve, and the Serpent. I was hoping it would get more into the "Gnostic improvisations" than it actually does; as it is, it's mostly an exploration of the evolution of ideas about sexuality and freedom -- conceived both socially and metaphysically. Rightly so, Augustine figures heavily in any discussion of these topics, and the more time goes by, I'm finding a rather large intersection between Augustine's and my own beliefs about freedom -- despite the fact that his whole mechanism of semen as the carrier of original sin, to say nothing of how that all plugs into his pessimism about sexuality, is wildly off the mark. Still, his view of Adam as a "corporate personality" in whom the human race sinned is actually quite metaphysically profound -- leading naturally to a view of Christ as a corporate (indeed cosmic) personality in whom the Cosmos is restored. As far as Star Wars goes, I have to respectfully disagree, and instead recommend The Matrix for that honor. Soma: I think your idea about sin being ultimately unreal to G-d in G-d's ultimate unity is exactly correct. I was seeing this same idea in Jim Marion's Putting on the Mind of Christ, for anyone who's seen or read this. (If not, think Ken Wilber meets Christian spirituality.) However, I think there still needs to be room for the distinction between blindly acting out of ignorance because one has not seen the truth, and willfully acting out of ignorance after one has seen the truth. While, etymologically, "sin" can refer generically to any kind of "missing the mark," I prefer to use it in the second case to denote a willful act in violation of what one knows to be true. I think this fits with what Flow was saying in his response.

I think the stock interpretation is: be careful casting out demons, lest they come back in greater force when you're not paying attention. Or in depth psychological terms, denying a habit of mind or behavior only pushes it into the subconscious where it can regroup, strategize, and surface stronger than before, or in other forms. I was really struck by the fact that the sayings about the divided house are interleaved with this story in the larger context of Luke 11. The juxtaposition of these two themes suggests to me that a "demon" is not a being that comes from the outside to inhabit a "house," but rather a split-off, suppressed aspect of the "house": in other words, a "house divided against itself." Denying the demon's existence avails nothing; it will always find a way to transform and assert itself. But the trick is that demon thrives on the darkness, on being hidden from the light of consciousness, which is why the name of Jesus is the only thing that can dissolve it.

Lately I've been trying to tackle Gnosticism -- not so much as an approach to spirituality, which probably wouldn't shock anyone around here too badly, but as an approach to metaphysics and cosmology. Whereas Liberalism and Literalism clash over the historical and scientific claims of Chrisitanity, Orthodoxy and Gnosticism clash over the metaphysical and epistemological foundations of Christianity -- and it's a much more interesting battle I think. Gnosticism takes most of the foundational narratives of the Bible and thoroughly inverts their ordinary meaning -- about as good an example of a Hegelian antithesis as you could ask for. This leads to some startling interpretations of the creation and fall stories in Genesis, to say the least. Anyway, I'm not so much interested in adopting it as a philosophy as it is, but I'm captivated by it as a photographic negative of Christian orthodoxy. It is in many fascinating ways the Jungian shadow of Christianity, preserving some important but partial truths in the language of myths and dreamlike images, until Christianity's orthodox "ego" is able to integrate them into its religious consciousness. One such important but partial truth, it seems to me of late, is that ignorance, suffering, and death are part of the Cosmos by design -- contrary to conservative Christianity, which sees them as the result of human sin -- and that they are malignant spiritual forces -- contrary to liberal Christianity, which sees them as merely neutral features of a lawful scientific universe. This is one of the aforementioned inversions of the ordinary meaning of a Christian (actually Jewish) teaching. When I attempt to synthesize the Orthodox and Gnostic views on this, what comes into view for me is the notion of a G-d whose love is so profound, that G-d literally divested Himself of all knowledge and power of the one true Source, issuing forth in a universe veiled in ignorance and suffering, in order to make genuine choice, love, and awakening possible. "For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him." (2 Corinthians 5:21) So that's where my brain waves have been lately. For more detailed discussions of gnostic views than I could possibly provide here, check out http://www.gnosis.org.

My antithesis of late has been Gnosticism. I'll go start a new thread under "Other Wisdom Traditions" for it though.