From: Kevin Perez (juan825diego@yahoo.com)
Date: Tue Sep 06 2005 - 03:17:45 BST
Anthony wrote,
> What I would be interested in knowing is if - as someone recently confirmed in
> an orthodox Christian tradition - is whether you were taught (in your
> confirmation classes) the supposed "late medieval understanding of
> Christianity" as per Northrop (quoted below) or the supposed "mainstream
> orthodox position" that Sam holds (which supposedly emphasises the "mystic
> path")?
I had to read the quote below several times. And I'm sure I still don't
understand the first two paragraphs. But as best I can make out Northrop is
attempting to explain a key difference between Christianity and Oriental
religion; the presence and absence of "divine prophets." I can tell you that
nothing like this has ever come up in my Christian education.
I'd like to help you with the second part of your query - whether my RCIA
education (Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults) is in sync with what Sam
practices - but I'd be speculating. But from what I know about the Aglican
Communion, if Sam is a priest in a Church recognized by the Anglican Communion
(the Church of England?), then I'd say that, with the exception of the real
presence of Christ in the Eucharist and the recognition of various Saints (e.g.,
St. Thomas More), I'd say Sam's theology and mine are in sync. I suspect we
both affirm the Nicene Creed.
> You see, at best, I suspect that the average "customer" of Christianity is
> given a different spiritual "product" from the more refined (i.e. mystical)
> position that Christian theologians supposedly hold.
In more than 20 years of active participation in Christian communities this has
never been an issue for me. In fact quite the opposite is true.
> "The divine object in the West is an unseen God the Father. This means that He
> cannot be known by the aesthetic intuition after the manner of the divine
> being of the Orient. Christ tells us that His kingdom is not of this world.
> St. Paul asserts that the things that are seen are temporal and that it is
> only the things which are unseen which are eternal. All the theistic religions
> affirm in addition that the determinate personality is immortal. Certainly
> this is not true of the self given with immediacy in the aesthetic intuition.
> As Plato, Hume and Kant in the West and the Hinayanistic Buddhists in the East
> have noted, and as is evident to common sense, all immediately apprehended
> personalities pass away. Thus it is obvious that if a religion is going to
> affirm the doctrine of the immortality of the determinate personality the real
> in knowledge must be identified not with the self given with immediacy in the
> aesthetic intuition but with a self inferred from the immediately apprehended
> self. Similarly, there is no immediately apprehended form in nature as a
> whole, which is immortal. Thus if the divine is to be a determinate being
> embracing more than man it is with a determinate factor inferred from the
> immediately apprehended and not with the immediately apprehended alone that
> the divine must be identified."
>
> "Let us call the immediately apprehended factor in knowledge and reality the
> aesthetic component, and the unseen inferred factor, the theoretic component.
> Oriental religion then becomes defined as one which identifies the divine with
> the timeless factor in the aesthetic component. Western religion becomes
> similarly defined as one which identifies the divine with the timeless or
> invariant factor in the theoretic component."
>
> "This explains why the Far Eastern religions do not need a religious prophet
> if the divine is to be revealed to man, and why the Western religions must
> have one. If the divine is given with immediacy then it is here in the world
> of immediate intuition already without the mediation of a divinely inspired
> representative. Thus all that religious sages in the Orient have to do is to
> direct one's attention to the factor given with immediacy with which the
> divine is identified. If, however, the divine is identified with an unseen
> factor in the nature of things, then obviously the only way in which man can
> know God with the immediacy of the aesthetic intuition is by a divinely
> inspired being representing God coming into the world of immediacy. Hence the
> religious prophet without whom man in the theistic religions cannot be saved,
> becomes essential..."
>
> (F.S.C. Northrop, "The Logic of the Sciences & Humanities", 1947, pages 376 to
> 377)
Hope this helps.
Kevin Perez
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