Apokatastasis and healing

[tariki]

An eye catching thread title, perhaps particularly ideal for those suffering from insomnia. But for anyone interested, the word "apokatastasis" is used within the Christian Religion for Universalism, the hope for the restoration of ALL things, for all people, for all creation.

This is not something that has arisen over the past few centuries, preached by those who have "fallen away" from "what the Church has always taught", an attempt to "corrupt the plain meaning of scripture." In fact it was a belief, a teaching, very prevalent in the Early Church, taught by several of the Early Church Fathers, taught throughout the Christian centuries, and now gathering pace among many whose fidelity to Christ is unquestionable. Names?

Origen, Macrina, Gregory of Nyssa, Isaac of Nineveh, Maximos the Confessor, Silouan the Athonite, and later, George MacDonald and the boldest minds of our era, Sergius Bulgakov, Robert W. Jenson, Thomas Talbott, Ilaria Ramelli, David Bentley Hart, John Behr.

Even the oft stated claim that the doctrine was declared heretical at one time is now called into question by reputable scholars of the Christian Church.

Does any of this matter? Well, that depends upon each of us. I am a non-theist, and have little interest (or belief) in transcendent Beings, creators, any fall of humankind, and therefore of any restoration. The Dharma (Buddhism) avoids beginnings and conclusions, seeing allegiance to such things as being antithetical to the actual living of the "holy life", the path to the end of suffering.

Yet I have great regard for what is called a fully "incarnational" Christanity, of "Christ in us". It really goes without saying that if, in our mind/hearts, we have faith in the eventual restoration of "all things", every last one of us, then our own lives will begin to mirror, to reflect, the Reality of Healing that we trust is in us and around us. This as opposed to believing that eventually creation will be solidified into a two tier system, of "sheep" and "goats", lost and saved, heaven and hell - does it take much imagination to recognise just how a mind/heart will develop that sees things in such a way?

Being a non-theist I bring healing to my mind/heart in other ways. To be honest I find that belief in God is cloying and claustrophobic, and given in many ways a weak mind, easily led, the loud voices of the "believers" becomes discordant, a chorus of noise with little meaning, each voice convinced of its own pictures of Reality.

I've asked before about the "dividing line" between theism and non-theism, and in truth I think there isn't one. That said, some images of God are fairly remote to me. It seems pretty obvious that there will be no time when I am "here" and God is "there" - God is more the ground of Reality in which we "live and move and have our being". Yet I have heard a very well known Christian evangelist say that when "we walk into heaven the only difference we shall see between God the Father and God the Son will be the nail-prints in the Son's hands." This is crass, ridiculous, and yet points to the very literalist way every word in the Bible is interpreted - the word as text, rather than the Living Word. (Obviously, such a literalist grasp of certain things does not necessarily preclude any mind/heart from bringing forth the fruits of the spirit)

From my own perspective "Buddha nature" points to the immanence, the liberative potential, in the ground of the earth, as well as in the inner, psychological ground of being, "ever ready to spring forth and benefit beings. It speaks of and represents the fertility of the earth itself and the wondrous, healing, natural power of Reality, or the phenomenal world."

The Dharma at best, combines soteriology, epistemology and ontology. As someone else has said:- Zen Buddhism developed and cannot be fully understood outside of a worldview that sees reality itself as a vital, ephemeral agent of awareness and healing.

As I see it we all move forward with our mental maps of the world, and within this mental map there are things we think are good, useful, or valuable, such as flowers, and there are other things we think are bad, useless, or worthless, such as weeds. Usually we take it for granted that the fabricated picture of the world in our minds is the world itself. Nothing really wrong with this, and yet our "maps" can become solid, set in concrete, used to "justify" ourselves, projected onto God, who then is deemed to judge the whole earth according to our dictates. This is tragic.

We are more a constant becoming - as Dogen says:-

"Flowers fade even though we love them, weeds grow even though we hate them."

As finite beings we simply can never really know, in a world of becoming, just which are flowers and which are weeds, and grasping at one and shunning the other, we can lock ourselves into a world that maybe can seem like heaven at times and yet is hell. Letting go of our conclusions and beliefs can be liberating, leaving the mind/heart to find ever greater intimacy with Reality - and to experience it (no matter how much "evidence" to the contrary) as truly healing, life-giving, and fulfilling.

And hopefully we ourselves can mirror Reality, reflect it, be a source of healing to others.

[PaulS]

Maybe this is a minor distraction from your post, but I don't understand how you say "I am a non-theist, and have little interest (or belief) in transcendent Beings, creators, any fall of humankind, and therefore of any restoration", but then say that "It really goes without saying that if, in our mind/hearts, we have faith in the eventual restoration of "all things", every last one of us, then our own lives will begin to mirror, to reflect, the Reality of Healing that we trust is in us and around us."

It would seem to me that any belief in some form of 'restoration' holds a misdirected hope that there is something 'wrong' with our existence.  Certainly I get why we might want to reduce our suffering (i.e. it feels better), but to think suffering is anything different in existence to say happiness, holds a false hope that somehow things "should be different".  

I think I can understand a 'Reality of Healing' not as something that sits separate to us that can be reached if only we open ourselves to it, but rather I think a better approach might be to recognise that there is no 'restoration' to go back to, and indeed no restoration required, and no 'Reality of Healing' to be reached, but rather we can however live a more pleasurable or meaningful existence for now and generations to come if we simply practised more mindfulness and cared more about each other.

[tariki]

12 hours ago, PaulS said:

Maybe this is a minor distraction from your post.....

Hi Paul, well I don't mind minor distractions, its full blown arguments that rub me up the wrong way......😀

Maybe I was unclear, but I was contrasting two ways of understanding Christianity, one that sees the end result as the final restoration of all things, and one where the end result is an eternal division between the lost and the saved. I was saying that those who look to the former would be more likely to begin to mirror and reflect back a life of healing.

As I have said, I actually subscribe to neither one nor the other. 

On this subject, this was the one disagreement between Merton and Suzuki in their dialogue "Wisdom in Emptiness". Suzuki spoke of an "eschatology of the present moment" while Merton saw such as not final but needed the final handing over of "all things to Christ" in some sublime reality beyond us now to conceive.

Basically I am with Suzuki. Absolute beginnings and final ends are not part of the Dharma, such things (speculation) being antithetical to the actual living of the "holy life". Again, it is avidya, ignorance, that is the problem, not "sin" (against a Supreme Being)

Just to add, pure acceptance is, paradoxically, the catalyst of genuine transformation (healing) and therefore I see us as on the same page. ("Transformation" would be on-going)

PS. Just as an edit, here is Merton in his own words where he speaks of some final reality:-

This is the real dimension of Christianity, the eschatalogical dimension which is peculiar to it, and which has no parallel in Buddhism. The world was created without man, but the new creation which is the true Kingdom of God is to be the work of God in and through man. It is to be the great, mysterious, theandric work of the Mystical Christ, the New Adam, in whom all men as “one Person” or one “Son of God” will transfigure the cosmos and offer it resplendent to the Father. Here, in this transfiguration, will take place the apocalyptic marriage between God and His creation, the final and perfect consummation of which no mortal mysticism is able to dream and which is barely foreshadowed in the symbols and images of the last pages of the Apocalypse.

 

 

Edited June 6, 2023 by tariki

[PaulS]

10 hours ago, tariki said:

Maybe I was unclear, but I was contrasting two ways of understanding Christianity, one that sees the end result as the final restoration of all things, and one where the end result is an eternal division between the lost and the saved. I was saying that those who look to the former would be more likely to begin to mirror and reflect back a life of healing.

As I have said, I actually subscribe to neither one nor the other. 

Thanks for explaining.  I agree with you that the former may be more inclined to mirror and reflect back a life of healing (not, that I like that word, as I'll explain).  Then again, one of the key messages of Jesus WAS that certain people would (and should) be denied the Kingdom of Heaven, so I do wonder if that element still sits there for most Christians, even if it is just as an 'acceptance' of that's how restoration will be and how they trust that it must be 'okay' because that's God's plan.

10 hours ago, tariki said:

Just to add, pure acceptance is, paradoxically, the catalyst of genuine transformation (healing) and therefore I see us as on the same page. ("Transformation" would be on-going).

I guess for me, the term 'healing' implies that something is not as it should be - it needs to be 'fixed'.  Maybe I just prefer 'pure acceptance' and 'tools' to deal with that which we don't like, rather than the term healing.  For me any 'transformation' is that to a creature that knows how to use various tools to manage life.

[tariki]

7 hours ago, PaulS said:

 

I guess for me, the term 'healing' implies that something is not as it should be - it needs to be 'fixed'.  Maybe I just prefer 'pure acceptance' and 'tools' to deal with that which we don't like, rather than the term healing.  For me any 'transformation' is that to a creature that knows how to use various tools to manage life.

Yes, thanks, you make a good point. Words can be very powerful and suggestive. Maybe "healing" will fade from my mind!

[PaulS]

59 minutes ago, tariki said:

Yes, thanks, you make a good point. Words can be very powerful and suggestive. Maybe "healing" will fade from my mind!

Maybe you'll be healed from using the term healing!

[JosephM]

On 6/6/2023 at 7:08 AM, tariki said:

Again, it is avidya, ignorance, that is the problem, not "sin" (against a Supreme Being)

Well said. Christianity is heard to say sin is a trangression against God or Law. Yet, it also says where there is no Law, there can be no violation (sin imputed), and to be condemed there must a Law, an accuser and a judge. If Christ (as in the annointing or meshing together with our creator) has made a free from the Law and knowlege keeps us from judging ourself through our absence of accusation of others, such a concept as sin is dead. And in Christ there is therefore no condemnation because with that knowledge, our ignorance  is absent.

Just my 2 cents

Joseph

[romansh]

On 6/6/2023 at 4:08 AM, tariki said:

Again, it is avidya, ignorance, that is the problem, not "sin" (against a Supreme Being)

I have not read the whole thread but picked up on Joseph's quote. As a fairly devout agnostic, ignorance is not a problem but a way of life.