Hybrid spirituality and the Christ

[kamishinkan]

AHH! I see your point. One thought to keep in mind, logic would determine that there is only ONE TRUE GOD. Then that same reasoning would determine that the other takes on GOD must be false. Not saying that Christians have ALL of the truth, nor am I saying that the information in these other religions are completely false (that would go against reason, since there is far too many divisions on trivial matters in Christianity), but in the end when you stand before God, all of the false information may leave you defenseless! The bottom line is to have the Messiah as your advocate, "saves" you from judgement!
The thread started with the similar teachings of the Messiah and the "other" religions. It goes without saying that some spiritual and moral teachings of the other known religions out there are going to be the same, the differences are the ones that can get you into eternal trouble!

 

[heretic888]

AHH! I see your point. One thought to keep in mind, logic would determine that there is only ONE TRUE GOD. Then that same reasoning would determine that the other takes on GOD must be false.

Perhaps, but to quote American philosopher Ken Wilber:

"Prior to Kant, the philosophers were not only trying to deduce scientific facts --- which we saw was impossible --- they were also trying to deduce contemplative or spiritual truths, which is just as impossible but twice as dangerous. Both secular and religious philosophers were making all sorts of rational statements which they claimed were about ultimate realities and ultimate truths. Thus, Thomas Aquinas had put forth rational 'proofs' for the existence of God; so had Descartes --- and Aristotle and Anselm and others. Their common mistake lay in trying to prove with the eye of reason that which can only be seen with the eye of contemplation. And somebody, sooner or later, was bound to find it out.

This was Kant's brilliance. He himself did indeed believe in God, in a Transcendent Ultimate, in noumenon. And he correctly believed that it was transempirical, transsensory. But he demonstrated that anytime we attempt to reason about this transempirical reality, we find that we can create arguments for either of two completely contradictory views with equal plausibility --- and that plainly shows that such reasoning is futile (or, at any rate, does not carry near the weight it had so generously given itself under the title of 'metaphysics'). But here were all these philosophers and theologians cranking out rational statements about God (or Buddha or Tao) and about ultimate reality as if they were speaking directly and actually of the Real itself, whereas in fact, as Kant demonstrated, they were speaking nonsense. Pure reason is simply incapable of grasping transcendent realities, and when it tries, it finds that its contradictory can be put with equal plausibility. (This insight was by no means confined to the West. Almost fifteen hundred years before Kant, the Buddhist genius Nagarjuna --- founder of Madhyamika Buddhism --- arrived at virtually the same conclusion, a conclusion echoed and amplified in succeeding generations by every major school of Eastern philosophy and psychology: Reason cannot grasp the essence of absolute reality, and when it tries, it generates only dualistic incompatibilities.)

One of the reasons for this --- if I may speak poetically --- is that, as disclosed by contemplation, the Ultimate is a 'coincidence of opposites' (Nicolas de Cusa) or as Hinduism and Buddhism put it, advaita or advaya, which means 'nondual' or 'not-two,' a fact that cannot be pictured in logic. You cannot, for instance, picture a thing being itself and not being itself at the same time. You cannot see it raining and not raining at the same time in the same spot. You cannot picture nor reason accurately about nonduality, about ultimate reality. If you attempt to translate nondual Reality into dualistic reason, then you will create two opposites where there are in fact none, and therefore each of these opposites can be rationally argued with absolutely equal plausibility --- and that, to return to Kant, shows why reason only generates paradox when it tries to grasp God or the Absolute. To indulge in metaphysical speculation (solely with the eye of pure reason) is thus to indulge in nonsense. To say 'Reality is absolute subject' is not false, it is nonsensical, it is meaningless, it is neither true nor false but empty, because its opposite can be put with equal force: 'Reality is absolute object.' In the East, the same nonsense would exist ('Reality is Atman' verus 'Reality is Anatman') until totally dismantled by Nagarjuna in precisely the same way followed by Kant.

What Kant demonstrated was that --- as Wittgenstein would later put it --- most metaphysicsl problems are not false, they are nonsensical. Not that the answer is bad, but that the question is silly.... It is supported by a category error: The eye of pure reason is trying to see into Heaven. Now I don't mean to imply that Kant was enlightened (i.e., that his eye of contemplation was fully opened). Clearly, he was not. An excellent way to grasp Kant's position is by studying the aforementioned Buddhist genius, Nagarjuna, because Nagarjuna applies the same critical philosophy to reason, but he does so not just to show the limitations of reason but to push further and help open the eye of contemplation (prajna), which knows the Ultimate directly, nonconceptually, and immediately. Kant doesn't really know about prajna or contemplation, but since he does know that God is hidden to sense and reason, the thinks God is therefore forever hidden to direct awareness. Soon Schopenhauer would point out just that shortcoming in Kant."

(Eye to Eye: The Quest for the New Paradigm, pp. 16-18)

The thread started with the similar teachings of the Messiah and the "other" religions. It goes without saying that some spiritual and moral teachings of the other known religions out there are going to be the same, the differences are the ones that can get you into eternal trouble!

See above. Also, another Wilber quote from my signature:

"They are indeed still trapped in hell, as were their predecessors, but postmythic men and women have at least, and finally, thrown off their childish images of deity as a protective parent sniveling over their every move, listening to their every wish-fulfillment, catering to their every immortality project, dancing to their every prayer of magic. Postmythic men and women did not get thrown out of Eden; they grew up and walked out, and, in now assuming rational and personal responsibility for a measure of their own lives, stand preparatory for the next great transformation: the God within, not the Father without."

(A Sociable God: Toward a New Understanding of Religion, p. 118)

Laterz.

 

[Carol]

Your debate is with The Living GOD, not with man.

That can apply to nearly every theological argument then, yes? That one's debate is ultimately with the Almighty, and not with mankind.

 

[kamishinkan]

That is one HUGE argument, heretic.....
Seems like a likely argument to the well, I can't beat the argument so I will make the argument of no-account! The bottom line is not whether insugnificant spiritual arguments are just that - insugnificant. the argument is whether you can apply that argument to the ULTIMATE.
It is not NONSENSICAL to study the spiritual nature of God, that stand-point does not hold weight in the light of the eternal significance of the statements of Jesus. There is only ONE WAY to the Father, through the Son. And others like this that leads a person to accept the truth of the scriptures AS INTERPRETED BY THE MESSIAH or not. This is not nonsensical, this is reasonable since as the Messiah states, your eternal destiny hangs in the balance of your decision!

 

[OnlyAnEgg]

Both kamishinkan's and heretic's arguments have merit; however, it seems to be devolving into an apples vs. oranges discussion. It's difficult, at best, to apply logic to spirituality or vice versa.

Perhaps a gentle nudge in the direction of the similar aspects of various philosophies and belief systems would do us all a bit of good

 

[heretic888]

That is one HUGE argument, heretic.....

Yeah. Sorry about that, but it was necessary to get the point across.

The bottom line is not whether insugnificant spiritual arguments are just that - insugnificant. the argument is whether you can apply that argument to the ULTIMATE.

I would argue that you cannot. To paraphrase the Christian mystic Meister Eckhart, the very idea of God is one's final barrier to knowing God.

Wilber quoted a Christian mystic, Nicolas de Cusa, as describing the divine as the "unification of opposites". Other Christian mystics and sages --- St. Dionysius, St. John of the Cross, St. Gregory of Nyssa --- have all referred to God as the "dazzling darkness" or the "luminous night". In the Dionysius quotation I cited in my original post, the specific translation is "the Darkness that is also Light".

From the point of view of Aristotlean logic, A cannot be both A and not-A. It simply doesn't make sense. That is exactly why all this petty bickering about who has the "true doctrine" or the "right belief" concerning God is so utterly silly. At its very best, transcendental truths come across as paradox when expressed verbally.

In all honesty, trying to "figure out" the transrational using formal logic is like trying to "figure out" the Pythagorean Theorem without using geometry. It ain't gonna happen.

It is not NONSENSICAL to study the spiritual nature of God [....]

Perhaps not, but that was not what Wilber was saying. If you will actually re-read the quotation, you will find that he is saying that trying to pass off one's egoic-rational arguments as direct statements about spiritual realities is, indeed, nonsensical.

The reason they are nonsensical, once again, is that you could make two contradictory statements with equal force and plausibility. Within the paradigm of formal logic, this simply does not work.

There is only ONE WAY to the Father, through the Son. And others like this that leads a person to accept the truth of the scriptures AS INTERPRETED BY THE MESSIAH or not. This is not nonsensical, this is reasonable since as the Messiah states, your eternal destiny hangs in the balance of your decision!

Assuming "Jesus of Nazareth" truly did expound the aforementioned doctrine, it is not "reasonable" nor "logical" nor "rational" to believe something because some authority told you to. This is a non-sequiter Appeal To Authority. It is dogmatic, not "reasonable".

Now, don't get me wrong. You are perfectly free to believe such dogma and, in the end, it may indeed turn out to be true. The problem, however, is that your nor anybody else alive --- despite all the huffing-and-puffing --- knows if it is true or not. You cannot experimentally verify or reject the hypothesis for yourself. It is to be accepted merely on somebody else's say-so.

The problem being, of course, that we don't know who that "somebody else" is. Very few Biblical scholars accept the premise that the Synoptics are firsthand accounts, and even the Vatican has stated the Gospels were not actually authored by apostles whose names are attached to them.

"Reasonable", your proposition is not.

Laterz.

 

[kamishinkan]

I will say this and no more on this thread, I agree the thread was initially for the comparisons not the differences......
There is plenty of scientific proof of the truth of the Hebrew scriptures and the Messiah. I believe one book on the subject is called the "the case for Christ". Although I have not read it, I am under the assumption that it deals with the proof of Christianity, not the faith issue or believing other people's "say so". I have not read it because I have way too much "personal proof" to need anything else. Again, no point in continuing, the book may be a good read for you.

 

[heretic888]

I will say this and no more on this thread, I agree the thread was initially for the comparisons not the differences......
There is plenty of scientific proof of the truth of the Hebrew scriptures and the Messiah. I believe one book on the subject is called the "the case for Christ". Although I have not read it, I am under the assumption that it deals with the proof of Christianity, not the faith issue or believing other people's "say so". I have not read it because I have way too much "personal proof" to need anything else. Again, no point in continuing, the book may be a good read for you.

I may have come off as more antagonistic in my last post than I intended to be. If so, I apologize for that.

That being said....

1) In my opinion, it is rather disingenuous to suggest concern for spiritual "similarities" when the apparent basis for one's worldview is that anyone who holds different beliefs than you will be punished for eternity. No matter how you dress up or sugarcoat such a paradigm, it is fundamentally intolerant in nature.

2) I have read Lee Strobel's The Case for Christ, and I wasn't impressed. Despite all this posturing to the contrary, there is actually very little in the way of "scientific proof" in regards to Sciptural content:

a) One of the principal issues is that the dating for many of these documents is, at best, a very gray area. We have no copies of the Torah (or Old Testament) that predate 3,000 years or so (long after many of the so-called "prophecies" were supposedly fulfilled). We have no extant copies of any New Testamental works that do not predate the 400's CE (about a century after the Council of Nicea, which established Catholic orthodoxy). We don't even have any non-dubious references to "Jesus Christ" himself in external sources prior to 110 CE or so.

b) Outside of the issue of the dating of texts, there is the further problem of both the internal and external consistencies of the texts. In the New Testament alone, we have a mass of problems. The Gospels of Matthew and Luke give different patrilineal lineages for Jesus of Nazareth, diverging as early back as Joseph's own father. The author of the Gospel of Mark, as I have demonstrated in other threads, is seemingly ignorant of both local Palestinian geography and marital laws of the time (lending credence to the claim that the author was not from Judea). The Synoptics give different places regarding where Jesus was supposed to have appeared to the apostles after the Resurrection, just prior to his Ascension. Then there's pretty basic historical stuff, such as having the census of Quirinus taking place while King Herod was still alive (hint: it didn't happen).

3) I should point out that all of the above is only a problem if you treat the Scriptures as literal writings of history. I do not. I should also point out that in both traditional Jewish theology (a la midrash), and the majority of pre-Nicene Christian writers and philosophers (a la Dionysius, Theophilus of Antioch, Minucius Felix, Valentinus, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, etc), the various Scriptures and Gospels are not interpreted literally outside of a basic initiatory stage of interpretation.

4) The issue of "personal proof" is somewhat interesting, in that assumes the self-reification that is so common amongst our species. Many people have yet to figure out that their experiences are filtered through largely unconscious background contexts (from stuff as basic as the language you speak) that constrain what they can and cannot "see". This is why, in science, a positivistic observation does not "prove" itself, and instead must be consistently validated by like-minded peers via replication. This is also why, in science, it is generally accepted that knowledge proceeds via logical inference, not through "direct" observation.

5) The above issue, on Point 4, assumes of course that one is actually talking about authentic peak experiences or mystical experiences of some kind (which are actually fairly well-documented in the psychological literature). In all likelihood, what is being referred to is the common staple of "personal proof" among popular religion, that of some vague, non-descript feeling or sentimentality in lieu of genuine experiences of transcendence.

Laterz.

 

[heretic888]

Perennial Philosophy

Christianity and the Perennial Philosophy

Ah! I can't believe I missed this one....

Christianity and the Perennial Philosophy II

This article is interesting, in that it helps to reconcile a more traditionalist attitude about Christianity with that of Huxley's Perennial orientation. I especially like the following, as they pertain to our present discussion:

"Outwardly the doctrines of the world’s religions are clearly different, even contradictory, as can be seen in their theologies. The Hindu tradition, for example, includes many Gods, Judaism insists there is only one God, and Buddhism declares the question of God to be moot. Or again, Christianity believes that God is a Trinity and that the divine Son was incarnate as Jesus Christ, beliefs explicitly rejected by Islam. According to the perennial philosophy, however, such outwardly divergent teachings, providentially adapted to the spiritual, psychological, and cultural needs of different peoples at different stages of history, can be inwardly reconciled by those who are sensitive to their metaphysical and symbolic meanings and prepared to follow the golden thread of the dogmatic letter to its deeper spiritual meaning. It is for this reason that one finds such a remarkable consensus among the greatest mystics and sages, such as Shankara in Hinduism, Ibn Arabi in Islam, and Meister Eckhart in Christianity."

Also, even more importantly:

"Christian perennialists conclude that it is a mistake to confuse the uniqueness of the only-begotten and eternal Son of God with the alleged singularity of his historical manifestation in first-century Palestine. Without denying that there is only one Son of God, or that he alone is the author of salvation, or that Jesus Christ is that Son, they contend that there are no Biblical or dogmatic grounds for supposing that this one Son has limited his saving work to his incarnate presence as Jesus. On the contrary, as St Athanasius and other early fathers insisted, though the Word 'became flesh and dwelt among us' (John 1:14), he was not confined by his body even during his earthly ministry.

It is sometimes objected that this line of reasoning drives a wedge between the two natures of Christ, diminishing the integrity and importance of the historical Jesus in favor of the Word or cosmic Christ. But this is to forget that a separate Jesus of history, understood as a particular man with a temporally conditioned psychology, is largely the invention of modern scholars, who are themselves often at odds with the very teachings that traditionalist Christians intend to safeguard. According to the fathers, especially those who interpreted the Council of Chalcedon (451) along the lines established by St Cyril of Alexandria, the Jesus of history [FONT=TimesNewRoman,Italic]is ​

the cosmic Christ, for there is no historical person to be conceived alongside or in addition to the eternal Person of the only Son. Of course, the humanity of Jesus cannot be denied. 'Like us in all things except for sin' (Definition of Chalcedon), he was truly born, truly crucified, and truly raised from the dead. But in encountering this humanity what one encounters is not an individual human being—not some 'man of Nazareth'—but human nature as such, assumed into God and thus divinized.

Once this subtle point has been grasped, a number of other scriptural teachings begin to take on a more encompassing meaning. One reads in a new and fresh way that Christ is 'the true light who enlightens every man that comes into the world' (John 1:9), that he has 'other sheep who are not of this fold' (John 10:16), and that 'God shows no partiality, but in every nation any one who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him' (Acts 10:34-35); and one notices that the events of Christ’s passion on Golgotha are the working out at a particular time and place of a strictly timeless salvation, for the Lamb of God, whose 'act of righteousness leads to acquittal and life for all men' (Rom. 5:18), is 'slain from the foundation of the world' (Rev. 13:8). Following the thread of such clues, one begins to sense that the Son or Word, far from being limited to a single religion, is the divine principle behind all revelation and the eternal source of salvation in every authentic tradition. Though truly incarnate as Jesus Christ in Christianity, he is salvifically operative in and through non-Christian religions as well. In some he is present in an equally personal way, as in Krishna and the other Hindu avatars, in whom he was also 'made man' (Nicene Creed), while in others he appears in an impersonal way, as in the Qur’an of Islam, where he made himself book.

The concern is often expressed that a perennialist interpretation of Christianity has the effect of demoting Christ, making him only one among a variety of competing saviors. But if 'by their fruits' (Matt. 7:20) one may discern whether religions are valid and if the good fruit of sanctity is often found growing along non-Christian paths, it will perhaps seem instead that the power and scope of the Son of God are actually much greater than Christians had been led to believe, and the perennial philosophy will itself appear as a kind of inclusivism, but with an inclusivity no longer centered on Christianity or the church or its sacraments, but on Jesus Christ, the saving Source of all wisdom."

Not that I agree with everything this author says, but I think he gets the basic point across well enough.

Laterz.​

[/FONT]

 

[kamishinkan]

At the risk of lying...since I said I would not post again, I will not debate these things on this thread for the reason I stated earlier. I will say this that the points you have made I have seen many times before and there are factual answers for them.
I read the excerpts from the book you posted, I disagree with his statements (for the most part).
My personal "proofs" are way beyond "emotional experiences". I have, and have been apart of miraculous healings, people being delivered from addictions to crack (which usually carries pretty severe withdrawls) without any symptoms, and many other unexplainable miracles confirmed by local doctors as "unexplainable". This coupled with other instances too numerous to get into, I will say that from the viewpoint of a sceptic (namely me), I now believe!
As far as God being intolerant, "punished for eternity"....I would say anyone who thinks that God, killed His own Son, to offer His blood as a sacrifice for all of mankind to fulfill His own commandment of a sacrifice, intolerant. Surely I would disagree. Now if you reject such a great sacrifice well you have made a choice, not God's fault.
Heretic, you are surely studied which shows me you REALLY want to know the truth. It is people just like you that God loves to get a hold of, Just as Rabbi Saul (Apostle Paul). Maybe God has a "Damascus Road" experience for you. You would certainly make a great debater FOR the faith!
Take Care