From: Steve Peterson (speterson@fast.net)
Date: Tue Nov 05 2002 - 19:35:25 GMT
Sam writes:
> I'd like to take issue with your comment that 'it works for Christianity as
> well', ie that Christianity is compatible with the MoQ (I agree with much
> else of what you say, I just want to take issue with this element).
Steve writes:
My entire comment was...
"I think a case could be made that panENtheism, however, is consistent with
the moq. Panentheism is the view that all of these objects are in God and
doesnąt exclude anything else or any non-thing from being in God, either.
God is that which is in us within which we also are (Marcus Borg). Try
substituting Quality for God. I think it still works and I think it works
for Christianity as well."
What I meant was that I think Panentheism (not necessarily the moq) is a
concept of God that is consistent with Christianity. Do you disagree? And
also that Quality is a concept of God that is consistent with a
panentheistic conception but not a pantheistic conception.
You must have been reading my mind because I am also interested in
reconciling the moq and Christianity though I am not ready to argue that it
is possible. I hope you take it on in your next campaign.
I guess I'd rather not comment further unless you are ready to take it on,
and I think it's probably best for you to first conclude this campaign so we
know what it is we are comparing.
I'll read and think about your post (lots of good stuff!) and if you don't
bring it up again, I will.
Steve
> I wouldn't have been able to articulate this post very clearly before I
> started on my 'Sophocles not Socrates' campaign. That has crystallised much
> which I found dubious in the MoQ as commonly presented, but which I had
> never previously given enough attention to. I don't believe that it is an
> accident that I have the objections that I do: they stem from an attachment
> to a Christian scale of values, which contradict the MoQ scale of values, as
> I shall try to explain.
>
> And now a WARNING to anyone else 'listening in' on this thread. I'm going to
> indulge myself and freely use traditional Christian language, which I'm
> guessing Steve will have some familiarity with. If you find such language
> uncomfortable - or even incoherent - you'd best stop reading now. My
> criticisms of the MoQ in the Sophocles thread stand independently of my own
> religious commitments.
>
> So: I would say that the Christian scale of values is in conflict with the
> MoQ scale of values. Why? Principally that it presents the intellect as the
> highest good, and therefore, if the MoQ is compatible with Christianity,
> then Jesus is seen primarily as a teacher of intellectual truths which
> dynamically transform the understandings of those who accept them, and
> thereby they attain salvation; revelation is the communication of saving
> information. If you understand correctly, then you will be saved.
>
> This was quite a common belief in the societies in which the early church
> took shape. This understanding had a particular name: gnosticism. You were
> saved by your 'gnosis', your understanding of the hidden truths. These
> truths were obscured by the world of the flesh; the key to gnostic salvation
> was therefore repudiation of the earthly and fleshly, and embracing the
> intellectual. (Hence gnostic dualism). The gnostic gospels can be
> distinguished from the canonical gospels precisely because they abstract out
> Jesus' teachings from an account of his earthly life. After all, if it is
> the teachings that matter, of what relevance is the life?
>
> Christian fundamentalism is a modern variation of ancient gnosticism. There
> are certain fundamental truths (propositions) which you must accept in order
> to be saved. If your intellect is not ordered around those truths then you
> are damned. It is the intellectual assent which is given primacy.
>
> Gnosticism descends from middle period Platonism, in which the sufferings
> occasioned by existing in the world can be transcended through the
> cultivation of the intellect, and then intellectual contemplation of the
> eternal truths. The emotions are an obstacle to this right understanding.
> The standard account of the MoQ contains a residual Platonism of this sort
> in that it makes intellectual truth the highest known Quality.
>
> Gnosticism was rejected by the early church for very good reasons, largely
> that it rendered Jesus' life incoherent and denied the reality of the
> Incarnation. Or rather, those 'very good reasons' are very good from the
> viewpoint of mainstream Christian thinking, which centres on the claim that
> Jesus was fully divine and fully human.
>
> The language which the Church found to articulate this was the 'Logos'
> language. This is normally translated as 'Word' but of course, the meaning
> is much richer than this. It could be translated as 'purpose' without much
> diminution of sense. So John's gospel can be read as 'In the beginning was
> the purpose; the purpose was with God, the purpose was God; nothing was made
> without purpose' etc. [BTW I agree that you can substitute God for Quality,
> so the Johannine prologue can be rephrased as 'In the beginning was the
> purpose; the purpose had Quality and the purpose was Quality; nothing was
> made without Quality and all things were made through Quality'. That was in
> the back of my mind when I wrote my 'standard account' post last week.]
>
> Logos can also be understood through comparison with the 'Sophia' figure
> from the wisdom literature, who played at God's feet at the creation of the
> world. Jesus is the incarnation of that purpose or that wisdom, and it is
> important that this incarnation has _human_ form. So Jesus is the embodiment
> of wisdom. And this embodiment cannot be abstracted from his life: his
> teachings cannot be understood apart from his actual human existence, in all
> its biological and social vicissitudes. Crucially, the crucifixion is a real
> death. (The gnostic understandings, if they address the crucifixion at all,
> downplay its significance hugely. After all, how can contemplation of human
> suffering help to articulate intellectual truth?) Indeed, the whole language
> of embodiment (ie Incarnation) is incoherent from the gnostic perspective.
> The flesh cannot attain salvation. Which rules out the resurrection of the
> body, of course...
>
> So is the MoQ wholly incompatible with Christianity? I don't believe so, and
> in fact I think my 'eudaimonic' MoQ is really a way that I have found to
> render the two compatible (although I didn't start the 'campaign' with that
> conclusion in mind. It rather took me by surprise.)
>
> I wrote to Davor about my understandings of mysticism, and I shall recap
> that a little here, hopefully rendering it a little more clearly, and using
> the language of the MoQ, suitably amended. But on the question of mysticism,
> the emphasis on 'noetic quality' is also suspiciously redolent of gnostic
> perspectives.
>
> As I understand it, Jesus was the embodiment of Quality; more particularly,
> he embodies the quality which transcends level 3, in both static and dynamic
> aspects. Level 3 I understand as the realm of the Law; level 4 is the realm
> of Grace. The resurrection can be understood as the realisation by the
> disciples that although Jesus was condemned by society and crucified (Level
> 3 values) he embodied a higher quality, and was therefore vindicated by God
> (Level 4 values). The community which 'static latched' itself as a result of
> this understanding was the Church, or, more precisely, the Body of Christ.
> The 'church' was a social level institution, which has in many times and in
> many places simply offered a reshaping of level 3 values. The true Body of
> Christ is formed of all those who have been 'born again' into the fourth
> level. That fourth level is exemplified in the life of Jesus - a realm of
> forgiveness of sins (ie not absolutising the third level), compassion and
> solidarity with the weak and oppressed, and - crucially - human flourishing.
> As Jesus put it 'I have come that you might have life and have it in all its
> fullness'. Jesus shows us how to live at the fourth level - he is the way,
> the truth, and the life. If we just focus on the 'truth' - the intellectual
> understandings of his teachings - then we miss out on what I believe is most
> crucial and most central in Christian faith, which is (as I have discussed
> with Wim in another thread) about progressively realising the Kingdom of God
> in this world, not in the Platonic realm of forms.
>
> This has ended up being a more 'bitty' post than I originally intended, but
> I hope it's still clear. I'd be happy to discuss it all further. I'm really
> just starting down the road of combining the two - perhaps that'll be my
> next campaign!
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