I am Jesuit trained and grew up in a Catholic family in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The death of Jimmy Carter reminded me that I met candidate Jimmy Carter when he visited Marquette University in the late 1970’s.
In an interview, someone asked him if he was a Baptist. His response was “My religion is Southern Baptist but I consider myself a humanist.”
The metaphysical cosmos of Christianity, Buddhism, Judaism, art, beauty, religion or science is the universality of human health and social science.
What is the commonality that unifies all of us? It is our responsibility as competent adults to protect the young, old, sick, disabled and dying.
What separates us from all other species? It is our ability to acquire language in order to communicate with other members of our tribe.
For example, I am competent in my ability to speak, read, and write English. I am completely and fully disabled and incompetent in any other spoken in the world.
Unconcious bias is a fatal flaw of this conversation between English speaking highly intelligent men.
Why is suicide and homicide the leading cause of death in children and young adults from 12-35 years of age?
Because corporate medical-science administered by political leaders and venture capitalists, put profits over people.
There is no question that there needs to be a paradigm shift. Men have created a social society of pain, anger, hate, and violence.
But consciousness thought is binary. Thus, morality is a choice between yes and no, right and wrong, love or hate. Jesus and all the philosophers BC or AD were there before Christ or Jimmy Carter.
What are we missing? We are missing what makes us human.
Here is a binary choice that simplifies this angst about Christianity:
There are 2 doors.
One door has a question mark on it.
The second door has a room full of children, disabled, and dying humans from all the tribes of the world.
In the middle of the room is a pile of assault rifles and mobile phones that can trigger a nuclear bomb.
The man or woman, Christian or Jew, can chose to pick up a rifle or mobile phone and go through the door with the question mark.
OR
The man or woman can choose to not pick up an assault rifle or mobile phone and be with the young, old, disabled, sick, and dying.
The man or woman can own multiple guns and mobile devices but to be a human being is to be with the humans who need those of us who are strong and competent to fulfill our responsibilities to society which is to use our rational thought to choose right from wrong.
Jimmy Carter was radical like Jesus NOT radical for Jesus. Mahatma Ghandi, Mother Teresa, Nelson Mandela, and Joe Biden did not try to teach God anything. They are human beings who taught us how to be better humans.
I keep seeing this idea of Christ evolving, and I wonder: How much voice and direction do you think we humans have, in this act of divine evolving? It’s an interactive and inter-affecting process, yes, but do you see a line in the sand beyond which it isn’t up to us to define Gd? Or can we just say, “Thanks for the memories; from now on Christianity will be THIS?” (Half of me wants to accomplish the evolution all at once, preferably by my own decrees, but the other half wants to preserve Gd’s freedom to become in any way Gd wants.)
The richness honesty and depth of this conversation was more than extraordinary. Thank you both.
But I want/need to give context to the Mangione moment. First in a more perfect world the execution of the executive would be a black and white scar. But here is the larger broader context….Nat Turner and John Brown for starters both took lives because of a grave moral wrong that was only partially rectified with America’s Civil War. World War I was a failure of Christian nations. The Warsaw Ghetto uprising…the attempted assassination of Hitler…
You both talk eloquently about justice and the democratic legal system as an outpouring from our Christian heritage. But here is where Mangione really has to connected. The tobacco businesses that knew their products were addictive and lethal thought just win all the legal battles. And when they finally after many many years lost the only thing that happened was a monetary settlement. The oil industry knew from in house funded research in the 1970’s that they were creating global warming. Their response was to create a propaganda machine to doubt science. Think of all the death and destruction from storms and fires that should have been prevented. And then you have the Sackler family.
Our justice system failed us in every one of those situations but not in putting low level criminals in jail.
And here’s the question you have to ask: if there was a pattern of real accountability for these greed spurred immoral anti Christian offenses to our common good would Mangione have felt the execution necessary?
Thank you for hearing me out. I cry inside for the injustices that these corporate criminals get away with. So that’s why I think so many feel one of these immoral persons didn’t get away with it. Definitely vigilante justice but so was Nat Turner and John Brown. The government has failed us…many many times and Mangione cried out “
I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore”
Going further into what I began in yesterday's post, it seems from the discussion that both of you agreed that "Natural Christology" allows for, or even makes inevitable, miracles such as the "immaculate conception" and the resurrection, in the context of forming a meta-modern post-Christianity reconstruction of Christ.
First of all, what is the necessity to resurrect two unsubstantiated stories about which even the early Christians debated and were not universally accepted?
Furthermore, both of these "events" are only relevant and make sense if Jesus is The Son, but if "only" A Son, there is no reason to ascribe these miraculous and supernatural events to his life, especially in the context of a meta-modern post-Christianity reconstruction. Transfiguration and transubstantiation actually sound more reasonable in a Whitehead/quantum meta-modern world, as well as a deep personal experience.
As an aside, Raimon Panikkar has an entire book about the uniqueness of the Christ even for Eastern religions, but I haven't read it.
That said, those "events" as myth and metaphor can be very powerful even without believing in their historicity simply because they point to the moon, to something beyond, and connect us to things deep in the collective unconscious, and personal connection to those depths seem like a prerequisite for any meaningful meta-modern religion/spirituality. Jung did seem to say that personal growth as he saw and described it is the only way forward for humankind.
As for the philosopher of centuries in the future, I personally have no doubt they will look back in amazement and shock that people ever believed these stories literally, but the deeper meanings of those stories will be their lived experience.
“True Christianity and "gentility of the heart" or natural cordiality are one and the same thing; it is the Christ consciousness growing as an inner force in the individual human being.”
Even if we say that the "Christ Event" was there in potentia at the very beginning, and that when certain circumstances arose, it became inevitable, that still does not make any miracles inevitable, specifically the so-called, "immaculate conception," or the resurrection.
Furthermore, there were several other ancient traditions before Christianity that had stories of a Divine Child and/or of resurrection regarding their heroes or leaders, so they are not specific or even inherent to the Christ Event, which would seem to be mainly the Incarnation, the "I and the Father are One, which is of course itself also not specifically Christian, as "I AM THAT," and, "Aham Brahmasmi," well attest to. Alan Watts says frequently that the original Greek texts of the New Testament referred to Jesus as A Son of God, and only later scribe changed it to, THE Son of God.
Point is, if WE ARE IT, we have always been IT from the very beginning, evolving along with the earliest atoms and stars, etc., and the "Christ Event" would then be only the breaking through of this awareness into the consciousness of a specific culture, the cradle of Western Culture, where until then - and sadly still today - God was seen as a separate Being.
And that leads into another point - Royce's "universal community," "beloved community." In a sense, this idea is a development out of the "special" and chosen community that the Jewish people saw themselves to be. Jewish tradition speaks about the universality of humankind and of the universal love and peace that will reign in the future, but there was no practical place for that for a small and insignificant people among great nations and empires, so the necessary belief in being a special people having a special God. A universal God, a "God" of I AM THAT would not do. Unfortunately, historical events only led to an ever-deeper ingraining of this sense of specialness, which today is manifested in very unproductive ways, spiritually speaking and otherwise.
But from this special people, this special community, beloved community, eventually developed the community of the Church, which took for itself to be the new Congregation of Israel, the universal community that would spread beyond the Jewish blood community, but as we know, the Church, too, took this literally, as is manifested in various dysfunctional ways.
As an aside, you both agreed that Christianity is just beginning, and I seem to remember that Jung actually said this explicitly, though I can't recall where, but it may
The Jewish religion was for a specific people. Christianity, as Jesus spoke, was meant for all people but succumbed to the same problem and became an institutionalized religion, where the Body of Christ only consists of those people within the walls of the institution. What’s coming is perhaps the final and most necessary step in the evolution of consciousness - a cosmic religion which applies equally to all, the universe entire.
According to Jewish tradition, the Torah was offered to each of the nations, and they all refused it except for one - the one who de facto became the "chosen ones," though also according to tradition, their ancestors had been already chosen, and their descendants inherited that chosenness. If one does not accept every word of the tradition literally, one has to question how much of that was retroactive rewriting.
The Jewish religion was once in contest (not necessarily actively) with Christianity for acceptance throughout the Roman empire, and there is no inherent reason why that could not have come about.
The kabbalah attempts to thread the "camel" of universality and universal ideals through the pinhole of Jewish specialness/chosenness and claim it all for itself.
Pr. Elliot Wolfson speaks about the paradox of anticipating a Messiah who will bring Jewish faith to all the nations, and then what...?
As for what Jesus said, I don't know the NT by heart, so I cannot vouch whether or not Jesus said what you claim, but there was clearly a division among the early disciples/followers between the "Jewish-Christians" who retained Jewish faith, practice, identity, and association, the group which Jesus' own brother belonged to, and others who followed Saul/Paul - who never met Jesus - that the "Old Covenant" had been obviated by the New one that was meant for all people, so maybe you can clarify exactly what quote you are referring to.
Besides all that, amen to your last sentence. It can't come soon enough, but as it seems, it may only come about in a cosmic timeframe.
I think there is a great opportunity here for philosophy that has yet to be realized because it has been eclipsed by the dogmatism of religion. Christianity, as commonly understood, and Judaism, especially its kabbalistic understanding, are based on fundamentally different ontologies.
As I see it, Judaism is fundamentally non-dualistic and Christianity is dualistic. In Judaism, a non-dualistic philosophy became the religion (for numerous reasons) of a specific people. In Christianity, a dualistic philosophy became the religion of a specific, institutionalized people. What I see coming is a truly non-dual philosophy for all - a cosmic religion which sees no separation between God and the cosmos, applicable to all.
Your conclusion is definitely the only way out. The problem is how to get there.
The God of ancient Israel was clearly not "non-dual," and this has been the case throughout history until today for the masses of people. The kabbalah attempts to reconcile non-duality with conventional Jewish practice, but it just doesn't work. It's the elephant in the room that those who have a stake in perpetuating the system (i.e., the clergy of all religions) do not want to talk about or acknowledge, and the unlearned masses have no idea what the discussion is even about. The belief in an eternal/infinite Creator-God Who desires to be served and worshipped and Who keeps a scorecard for every human being is a fossilized concept, or it should be. To say that such a God is not separate from the cosmos is ludicrous, but that's exactly what the kabbalah tries to do.
So the problem is that while there may be many progressive Jews and Christians out there who are into philosophies such as Whitehead's, the core of the fundamentalists is only digging their feet in deeper, and there seems to be no natural way in the world to cause them to open their minds. For heaven's sake! A holocaust didn't work!!
Furthermore, these ideas, such as non-duality, process theology, panentheism, are not easily grasped. Philosophizing in virtual and digital ivory towers will not change minds and hearts, and that's where the rubber (or the green alternative) needs to hit the road. To get over this chasm between the intelligentsia and the common wo/man requires people who can walk on air - not just water! The early hassidic masters bordered on non-dualism and intentionally mixed with the masses to convey the immediacy of Godliness in the world in the non-dual sense, but this too became institutionalized.
But even beyond the fundamental religious institutions, the masses of humanity, including all the financial and political institutions, need mass re-education, which will not happen anytime soon, or waiting for the next generation to be brought up properly educated and psychologically healthy, which will also not happen as long as the older generation is in power, so where is anything to begin? So it will take one individual after another to awaken while still young enough to have and raise their children properly, etc., which is why it seems that barring any non-existent miracles, this will not come about any time soon - unless there will be a "second coming" of some super-supra ultra-charismatic human being who will have the heart and the intelligence to bring this about.
But there's this joke: There's no messiah, but it's YOU!
So maybe we each have to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps - while pulling each other up as we go.
I couldn’t agree more! Those who understand this must band together, support one another, teach it, and most importantly, live it. There is no messiah coming from the line of David or on a white horse in the clouds to save us all. We are all Christs in potential, awaiting the actualization of our inherent nature, and this takes conscious, constant effort.
Moments in the discussion around 31:35 reminded me of what DB Hart gets at in Christ and Nothing — Christianity bears responsibility for tearing down the gods of old, and we’re left staring over the abyss.
On the question of theodicy, it seems to me we will never get a satisfying answer until we can intimately trace how the evil and suffering that surrounds us (not some hypothetical evil and suffering) stems from our own receded spiritual activity. In other words, first we intuitively resonate with how our personal psycho-physical suffering has been seeded by prior spiritual activity and the receded forms of that activity. Then we also realize (perhaps somewhat simultaneously) how the same disharmonious and unhealthy patterns have played out at the collective scale of human spiritual activity, seeding the large-scale conflict, diseases, disasters, etc. that surround us. Only in this way can we gradually stop resenting/blaming others or the Divine and take creative responsibility for the 'sins of the World' within ourselves. Both believers and skeptics alike tend to convince themselves there is no resentment of reality (however that is conceived) in their hearts, but that only stems from ignorance of what lives in the depths of our soul. Only through intuitive knowledge can we illuminate those depths and begin to modulate the otherwise shadowy currents of resentment.
Liked the concept of a post-Nietzchean Jesus, because it suggests that we need to experience nihility to be able to follow Jesus, as suggested by Japanese philosopher Keiji Nishitani.
For the last two decades I have been wrestling with the question, "Into what is Christianity evolving?" As I continue to work on my own answer to that question, I thoroughly enjoyed listening to the two of you share your ideas. Very insightful. Thank you for doing this! I hope you continue to do more around the topic.
Do the humanist aspects of European Christian thought and feeling owe more to Plato, or Aristotle? By most accounts, Aristotle was the more studied, the more thoroughly blended into the ethical stances of monkish scholarship. As the American founders knew well too, Aristotle advocated for democracy, where Plato favored the sort of conservative autocracy of the recent converts to fundamentalist Catholicism, with their explicit quest to end democracy and seat a most corrupted man as "Red Caesar."
I am Jesuit trained and grew up in a Catholic family in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The death of Jimmy Carter reminded me that I met candidate Jimmy Carter when he visited Marquette University in the late 1970’s.
In an interview, someone asked him if he was a Baptist. His response was “My religion is Southern Baptist but I consider myself a humanist.”
The metaphysical cosmos of Christianity, Buddhism, Judaism, art, beauty, religion or science is the universality of human health and social science.
What is the commonality that unifies all of us? It is our responsibility as competent adults to protect the young, old, sick, disabled and dying.
What separates us from all other species? It is our ability to acquire language in order to communicate with other members of our tribe.
For example, I am competent in my ability to speak, read, and write English. I am completely and fully disabled and incompetent in any other spoken in the world.
Unconcious bias is a fatal flaw of this conversation between English speaking highly intelligent men.
Why is suicide and homicide the leading cause of death in children and young adults from 12-35 years of age?
Because corporate medical-science administered by political leaders and venture capitalists, put profits over people.
There is no question that there needs to be a paradigm shift. Men have created a social society of pain, anger, hate, and violence.
But consciousness thought is binary. Thus, morality is a choice between yes and no, right and wrong, love or hate. Jesus and all the philosophers BC or AD were there before Christ or Jimmy Carter.
What are we missing? We are missing what makes us human.
Here is a binary choice that simplifies this angst about Christianity:
There are 2 doors.
One door has a question mark on it.
The second door has a room full of children, disabled, and dying humans from all the tribes of the world.
In the middle of the room is a pile of assault rifles and mobile phones that can trigger a nuclear bomb.
The man or woman, Christian or Jew, can chose to pick up a rifle or mobile phone and go through the door with the question mark.
OR
The man or woman can choose to not pick up an assault rifle or mobile phone and be with the young, old, disabled, sick, and dying.
The man or woman can own multiple guns and mobile devices but to be a human being is to be with the humans who need those of us who are strong and competent to fulfill our responsibilities to society which is to use our rational thought to choose right from wrong.
Jimmy Carter was radical like Jesus NOT radical for Jesus. Mahatma Ghandi, Mother Teresa, Nelson Mandela, and Joe Biden did not try to teach God anything. They are human beings who taught us how to be better humans.
I keep seeing this idea of Christ evolving, and I wonder: How much voice and direction do you think we humans have, in this act of divine evolving? It’s an interactive and inter-affecting process, yes, but do you see a line in the sand beyond which it isn’t up to us to define Gd? Or can we just say, “Thanks for the memories; from now on Christianity will be THIS?” (Half of me wants to accomplish the evolution all at once, preferably by my own decrees, but the other half wants to preserve Gd’s freedom to become in any way Gd wants.)
The richness honesty and depth of this conversation was more than extraordinary. Thank you both.
But I want/need to give context to the Mangione moment. First in a more perfect world the execution of the executive would be a black and white scar. But here is the larger broader context….Nat Turner and John Brown for starters both took lives because of a grave moral wrong that was only partially rectified with America’s Civil War. World War I was a failure of Christian nations. The Warsaw Ghetto uprising…the attempted assassination of Hitler…
You both talk eloquently about justice and the democratic legal system as an outpouring from our Christian heritage. But here is where Mangione really has to connected. The tobacco businesses that knew their products were addictive and lethal thought just win all the legal battles. And when they finally after many many years lost the only thing that happened was a monetary settlement. The oil industry knew from in house funded research in the 1970’s that they were creating global warming. Their response was to create a propaganda machine to doubt science. Think of all the death and destruction from storms and fires that should have been prevented. And then you have the Sackler family.
Our justice system failed us in every one of those situations but not in putting low level criminals in jail.
And here’s the question you have to ask: if there was a pattern of real accountability for these greed spurred immoral anti Christian offenses to our common good would Mangione have felt the execution necessary?
Thank you for hearing me out. I cry inside for the injustices that these corporate criminals get away with. So that’s why I think so many feel one of these immoral persons didn’t get away with it. Definitely vigilante justice but so was Nat Turner and John Brown. The government has failed us…many many times and Mangione cried out “
I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore”
With the compliments of:
William Wordsworth,
WB Yeats,
J. Milton,
R. Descartes,
Dante.
Earth is sick, and Heaven is weary with the hollow words, which states
and kingdoms utter when they talk of truth and justice.
Turning and turning in the widening gyre, the falcon cannot hear the
falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is
loosed upon the world.
So yet a nobler task awaits thy hand, for what can war but endless war
still breed till truth and right from violence be freed, and publick
faith clear'd from the shameful brand of publick fraud.
Throw out all your beliefs and start over!
For as I turned, there greeted mine likewise, what all behold who
contemplate aright, that's Heaven's revolution through the skies.
https://www.lavitanuova.org.uk
if you're serious about this project, you must not ignore René Girard's work.
www.violenceandreligion.com
Going further into what I began in yesterday's post, it seems from the discussion that both of you agreed that "Natural Christology" allows for, or even makes inevitable, miracles such as the "immaculate conception" and the resurrection, in the context of forming a meta-modern post-Christianity reconstruction of Christ.
First of all, what is the necessity to resurrect two unsubstantiated stories about which even the early Christians debated and were not universally accepted?
Furthermore, both of these "events" are only relevant and make sense if Jesus is The Son, but if "only" A Son, there is no reason to ascribe these miraculous and supernatural events to his life, especially in the context of a meta-modern post-Christianity reconstruction. Transfiguration and transubstantiation actually sound more reasonable in a Whitehead/quantum meta-modern world, as well as a deep personal experience.
As an aside, Raimon Panikkar has an entire book about the uniqueness of the Christ even for Eastern religions, but I haven't read it.
That said, those "events" as myth and metaphor can be very powerful even without believing in their historicity simply because they point to the moon, to something beyond, and connect us to things deep in the collective unconscious, and personal connection to those depths seem like a prerequisite for any meaningful meta-modern religion/spirituality. Jung did seem to say that personal growth as he saw and described it is the only way forward for humankind.
As for the philosopher of centuries in the future, I personally have no doubt they will look back in amazement and shock that people ever believed these stories literally, but the deeper meanings of those stories will be their lived experience.
“True Christianity and "gentility of the heart" or natural cordiality are one and the same thing; it is the Christ consciousness growing as an inner force in the individual human being.”
Martinus, danish mystic (1890-1981)
https://www.martinus.dk/en/online-library/ttt/index.php?mode=artikelopslag&art=650
Even if we say that the "Christ Event" was there in potentia at the very beginning, and that when certain circumstances arose, it became inevitable, that still does not make any miracles inevitable, specifically the so-called, "immaculate conception," or the resurrection.
Furthermore, there were several other ancient traditions before Christianity that had stories of a Divine Child and/or of resurrection regarding their heroes or leaders, so they are not specific or even inherent to the Christ Event, which would seem to be mainly the Incarnation, the "I and the Father are One, which is of course itself also not specifically Christian, as "I AM THAT," and, "Aham Brahmasmi," well attest to. Alan Watts says frequently that the original Greek texts of the New Testament referred to Jesus as A Son of God, and only later scribe changed it to, THE Son of God.
Point is, if WE ARE IT, we have always been IT from the very beginning, evolving along with the earliest atoms and stars, etc., and the "Christ Event" would then be only the breaking through of this awareness into the consciousness of a specific culture, the cradle of Western Culture, where until then - and sadly still today - God was seen as a separate Being.
And that leads into another point - Royce's "universal community," "beloved community." In a sense, this idea is a development out of the "special" and chosen community that the Jewish people saw themselves to be. Jewish tradition speaks about the universality of humankind and of the universal love and peace that will reign in the future, but there was no practical place for that for a small and insignificant people among great nations and empires, so the necessary belief in being a special people having a special God. A universal God, a "God" of I AM THAT would not do. Unfortunately, historical events only led to an ever-deeper ingraining of this sense of specialness, which today is manifested in very unproductive ways, spiritually speaking and otherwise.
But from this special people, this special community, beloved community, eventually developed the community of the Church, which took for itself to be the new Congregation of Israel, the universal community that would spread beyond the Jewish blood community, but as we know, the Church, too, took this literally, as is manifested in various dysfunctional ways.
As an aside, you both agreed that Christianity is just beginning, and I seem to remember that Jung actually said this explicitly, though I can't recall where, but it may
be that I read from some other luminary.
The Jewish religion was for a specific people. Christianity, as Jesus spoke, was meant for all people but succumbed to the same problem and became an institutionalized religion, where the Body of Christ only consists of those people within the walls of the institution. What’s coming is perhaps the final and most necessary step in the evolution of consciousness - a cosmic religion which applies equally to all, the universe entire.
According to Jewish tradition, the Torah was offered to each of the nations, and they all refused it except for one - the one who de facto became the "chosen ones," though also according to tradition, their ancestors had been already chosen, and their descendants inherited that chosenness. If one does not accept every word of the tradition literally, one has to question how much of that was retroactive rewriting.
The Jewish religion was once in contest (not necessarily actively) with Christianity for acceptance throughout the Roman empire, and there is no inherent reason why that could not have come about.
The kabbalah attempts to thread the "camel" of universality and universal ideals through the pinhole of Jewish specialness/chosenness and claim it all for itself.
Pr. Elliot Wolfson speaks about the paradox of anticipating a Messiah who will bring Jewish faith to all the nations, and then what...?
As for what Jesus said, I don't know the NT by heart, so I cannot vouch whether or not Jesus said what you claim, but there was clearly a division among the early disciples/followers between the "Jewish-Christians" who retained Jewish faith, practice, identity, and association, the group which Jesus' own brother belonged to, and others who followed Saul/Paul - who never met Jesus - that the "Old Covenant" had been obviated by the New one that was meant for all people, so maybe you can clarify exactly what quote you are referring to.
Besides all that, amen to your last sentence. It can't come soon enough, but as it seems, it may only come about in a cosmic timeframe.
I think there is a great opportunity here for philosophy that has yet to be realized because it has been eclipsed by the dogmatism of religion. Christianity, as commonly understood, and Judaism, especially its kabbalistic understanding, are based on fundamentally different ontologies.
As I see it, Judaism is fundamentally non-dualistic and Christianity is dualistic. In Judaism, a non-dualistic philosophy became the religion (for numerous reasons) of a specific people. In Christianity, a dualistic philosophy became the religion of a specific, institutionalized people. What I see coming is a truly non-dual philosophy for all - a cosmic religion which sees no separation between God and the cosmos, applicable to all.
Your conclusion is definitely the only way out. The problem is how to get there.
The God of ancient Israel was clearly not "non-dual," and this has been the case throughout history until today for the masses of people. The kabbalah attempts to reconcile non-duality with conventional Jewish practice, but it just doesn't work. It's the elephant in the room that those who have a stake in perpetuating the system (i.e., the clergy of all religions) do not want to talk about or acknowledge, and the unlearned masses have no idea what the discussion is even about. The belief in an eternal/infinite Creator-God Who desires to be served and worshipped and Who keeps a scorecard for every human being is a fossilized concept, or it should be. To say that such a God is not separate from the cosmos is ludicrous, but that's exactly what the kabbalah tries to do.
So the problem is that while there may be many progressive Jews and Christians out there who are into philosophies such as Whitehead's, the core of the fundamentalists is only digging their feet in deeper, and there seems to be no natural way in the world to cause them to open their minds. For heaven's sake! A holocaust didn't work!!
Furthermore, these ideas, such as non-duality, process theology, panentheism, are not easily grasped. Philosophizing in virtual and digital ivory towers will not change minds and hearts, and that's where the rubber (or the green alternative) needs to hit the road. To get over this chasm between the intelligentsia and the common wo/man requires people who can walk on air - not just water! The early hassidic masters bordered on non-dualism and intentionally mixed with the masses to convey the immediacy of Godliness in the world in the non-dual sense, but this too became institutionalized.
But even beyond the fundamental religious institutions, the masses of humanity, including all the financial and political institutions, need mass re-education, which will not happen anytime soon, or waiting for the next generation to be brought up properly educated and psychologically healthy, which will also not happen as long as the older generation is in power, so where is anything to begin? So it will take one individual after another to awaken while still young enough to have and raise their children properly, etc., which is why it seems that barring any non-existent miracles, this will not come about any time soon - unless there will be a "second coming" of some super-supra ultra-charismatic human being who will have the heart and the intelligence to bring this about.
But there's this joke: There's no messiah, but it's YOU!
So maybe we each have to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps - while pulling each other up as we go.
I couldn’t agree more! Those who understand this must band together, support one another, teach it, and most importantly, live it. There is no messiah coming from the line of David or on a white horse in the clouds to save us all. We are all Christs in potential, awaiting the actualization of our inherent nature, and this takes conscious, constant effort.
Moments in the discussion around 31:35 reminded me of what DB Hart gets at in Christ and Nothing — Christianity bears responsibility for tearing down the gods of old, and we’re left staring over the abyss.
Great discussion!
On the question of theodicy, it seems to me we will never get a satisfying answer until we can intimately trace how the evil and suffering that surrounds us (not some hypothetical evil and suffering) stems from our own receded spiritual activity. In other words, first we intuitively resonate with how our personal psycho-physical suffering has been seeded by prior spiritual activity and the receded forms of that activity. Then we also realize (perhaps somewhat simultaneously) how the same disharmonious and unhealthy patterns have played out at the collective scale of human spiritual activity, seeding the large-scale conflict, diseases, disasters, etc. that surround us. Only in this way can we gradually stop resenting/blaming others or the Divine and take creative responsibility for the 'sins of the World' within ourselves. Both believers and skeptics alike tend to convince themselves there is no resentment of reality (however that is conceived) in their hearts, but that only stems from ignorance of what lives in the depths of our soul. Only through intuitive knowledge can we illuminate those depths and begin to modulate the otherwise shadowy currents of resentment.
Liked the concept of a post-Nietzchean Jesus, because it suggests that we need to experience nihility to be able to follow Jesus, as suggested by Japanese philosopher Keiji Nishitani.
For the last two decades I have been wrestling with the question, "Into what is Christianity evolving?" As I continue to work on my own answer to that question, I thoroughly enjoyed listening to the two of you share your ideas. Very insightful. Thank you for doing this! I hope you continue to do more around the topic.
Do the humanist aspects of European Christian thought and feeling owe more to Plato, or Aristotle? By most accounts, Aristotle was the more studied, the more thoroughly blended into the ethical stances of monkish scholarship. As the American founders knew well too, Aristotle advocated for democracy, where Plato favored the sort of conservative autocracy of the recent converts to fundamentalist Catholicism, with their explicit quest to end democracy and seat a most corrupted man as "Red Caesar."