As I see it, Pan, it doesn't have to be that black & white, i.e., classical theism is wrong (or unhelpful) and panentheism is right (or helpful).  But that may be because I understand worship, rather than philosophical or theological models, to be primary in life. Whatever we may conceive ourselves to be, we remain Homo liturgicus.

Worship forms existentially, and so it is pre-explanatory and pre-reflective. In that sense, it is more "open" than a doctrinal statement or a conceptual model, and so a person can engage in worship without dotting all of the i's and crossing all of the t's.

Still, worship itself has to be shaped by clear theological options, or else it can't form hearts and minds in the tradition which it purports to mediate to the believers it seeks to engage. And yet, those options exist precisely to establish the primacy of worship!  That, as I see it, is the 'whole point' of classical theism. Conscious, active participation in its liturgies requires the unreserved acceptance of ourselves as the beloved subjects of a transcendent God. To authentically function within that symbolic world requires making worship the central mode of our existence. Everything else automatically becomes peripheral to that core. Orthodoxy is only about getting worship right, so that the rest of existence falls into place around that core.

But such engagement in traditional worship doesn't demand that the horizon of our thinking be restricted to the confines of classical theism. (Consider John Macquarrie's "dialectical theism" as an alternative to that kind of either/or thinking.)  It only requires that we have the inner freedom to open ourselves to that one supreme Thou, who is, in truth, even now seeking to be in holy communion with us. Paradoxically, conscious, active liturgical participation in that truth is what enables us to develop such freedom. And that freedom encourages us to reflect on other possible symbolic worlds, which might well involve different views of the nature of God and human nature (e.g. your version of process theology, my understanding of Buddhist thought, etc.). It even compells us to do such reflection because it has made us care about how we represent God. At the same time, however, authentic participation in worship inevitably heightens awareness of our need for radical commitment to God, which prevents us from simply dabbling in a variety of theological systems without ever caring enough to pay the price of complete engagement.

good grief guys, can you dumb down those last two posts for me a bit??

i swear its written in english, but i didn't understand anything....

Theological contortionism - The art of using many words, quite a few of them long ones, to make the irrational appear almost rational.

Oh come on you people that cannot approach the larger unknowns ... warped linguistics is necessary because much of the darker form of creation just doesn't wish to know so the thought (rational) is inserted unconsciously (irrationaly, complex, or just unreal) to most of the observer. Sentient type?

Some imagination required to get beyond (myth) yourself. Did you ever find your self wandering there ... like getting beyond the spiritual (emotional self) into the intellect; that's out-there mon! Research intellect in Webster ... sort of a networking experience in the unknown dark sea ... word?

Consider this empiric:

• The unknown is out there ...
• The soul, mind, psyche of man is out there ...
• God is virtually unknown to the isolated (m'n) ...

All being unknown, are they empiric, equal, or justly myth, that is to say beyond a mortal ... so as to allow the unknown to play with a mortal mind as if it were the tempter coming between the isolated bits ... of all-that-is. Causes the alien beyond to shimmer in RIP'les and giggles ... like babell'n wadis ... whets a dry gulch ... the desert region of mankind as born here ... knowing nothing ... an altruistic emotional state ... that will suffer alteration in the collision with free space. Its a moving experience when you think you're institutionalized. Results in a superficial state ... demands being placed in the subliminal ... or internalized state of folded, bent and mutilated ... recessive Jinns (sometimes spelled gynes)? ITs a pseudo Gnome ... dark thing hated by the vastly illiterate ...

Consider the broom man in One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest ... the silent, indu escapee? He worked in the mire long enough to know something ... one must get over themselves ... to find something else ... that's alternate mind ... the other's ID! The emotional kind never did know much. Consider what mortals know of the infinite; the most brutal sorts think they know it all, and they have no concept of nothing ... a humble god beneath their feet ... a logical metaphor for those that miss the point of pseudonymphs completely as dark areas at the foot of the tree ... a crossing place for light entering the mortal realm ... ID'll go in time like all Icons that must change to accommodate mortals that don't wish to know ... except in the Afar stretch ... Complex Psyche ... draws on the internal imagination? Authorities despise such one upmanship in the wadis hip down metaphor ...

Such is a Maas of entanglement theosis created by mortals ... you have to dig your way out ... unravelling history as mostly corrupted by physical winners ... little do they know of what hidden in-verse code ... and many even say there is no secret code of hieros gammas. I am here to demonstrate that most know nothing of this dark state of literacy ... the secret root of salvation in the dark can speak to you. It does require certain strange properties ... metaphicially a character in a masque ... covenented? The vast coverup of the common thiinking and caring beast ... defeated by physical emotions that are somewhat brutish. The rest of the story ... that' saw whole different dimension... sort of an alternate space ... to get there one must get a clew into the unknown ... not the absolutes ... provides for abstract creation Eire tendancies ... commonly known as prayful thinking that the vast mortal sea would get a grip on the story as ... well something else than what it appears! It is a learning factor ... we should be thankful for that pæn phile dim age ... it's dark too ...

If you don't understand this perhaps there's something here that you should know and don't ... a common flaw ... like a freek'n rift ... where the Dead "C" ode was buried at the north end ... Lucei being found as an old woman at the souðurn end ... many millenium old ... mire Icon that few do not believe if they think the emotional state started in October 4004 BC ... a common error being entangled in the convolution! It'isle all come out in the wash like Bathesheba and David ... or that hard shuol'd Irish washer woman ... mole isk entire! Silently gathering your deepest treasures ... so the next generation can do it their selves ... dis harmonious proces of har Monis Sing'n an Dan's in institutionalized setting when you just begin to approach the edge ... what in process engineering we call Wahl or fringe effect ... involves eddy states ... that's a stir of the sentient! Sometime makes the totally isolated blush ... like Eros ...

Sentient? That's indellible (permanent th' inque 'n) like unchangable to a mortal that doesn't believe in a thinking essence ... sort of like a dark geist that creeps upon you in the dark ... like a Shadow in a Kole Bin ... a freek'n myst Ur ah? And roun dan round we go ... searching what's already there if you give ID some reverence ... wait until it hits yah ... there'll be lights under the bridge ... jokes from heir powers ... that Oz in Hebrew, similar to Jude in muons ... quantum particles ... some proto Nick, some eclectic, like dialexis that's a tome ... deep and dark book for those that didn't wish to jnow the understanding side!

What else can we do when told to go and teach and the medium didn't wish to for they were too mean (brutal) to learn? Sound a bit Roman ante ish ... a paen full start? It is often uncommon to know the devil or the god in the story protagynist verses the antagonist IC sorts where one must singularly separate the chin'phesh from the goads ... finding you own pathe thro ... the wooly sight ... sort of haze if you look closely ... intuit!

Hi-- I have to go along with sighs---  and Chansen post.-----------------------------------------------Sighsnootles Wrote------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Is there anything written in that Holy Tome about learning the tongues of all mankind?

Perhaps that should have been circumcised, carved about, too?

Isn't that an odd command, or just infinite X-pan-Zion-ism? Spacey drift ...

Consider those first projections in the Gospel of John; about word and de light, and God all-there-is to IT and we know nothing ... speaking for myself ... there are others here that appear for more authoritative in the mortal realm!

If God's children don't wish to know ... so be IT ... make it very convoluted. There are those that delight in the enigma ... learning of the soul entity as a great bust, bo Zoom! It's dark about us ...

So many times here, we see people saying they reject supernatural claims about God just as much as I do, and then spinning their belief system to include God again, even if this new definition of "God" is more commonly referred to as "nature", and even tying it all back to the bible, which is the source of the supernatural claims in the first place!

To me, it just looks like obvious attempts to make Christianity appear less insane, and possibly appeal to more people.

Their problem, is in the marketing.  When you need an entire page to describe your basic beliefs, which are apparently almost indescribable, you're going to lose half your audience in the first paragraph, and most of those with the stamina to read it all (like sighsnootles) are going to respond with an emphatic "WTF?"

Sorry.  But I can't convey the same meaning in simpler thoughts.  Maybe someone else can, though. In any case, there is nothing there that is essential for salvation.

Well that's no help.  There is nothing anywhere that is essential for salvation.

You just gave me the BEST idea for a child's birthday party.

You don't have to "believe in god" to pray. It's a soul sense, as listening is to hearing, as looking is to seeing, as savouring is to smelling… 

It's a way of being attentive.

rishi I understood your point and we really are on the same page -The difference maybe that I see classical supernatural theism to be a negative in our attempt to wed worship and action.   AN Whitehead suggested our God needed to be worthy of worship - thus the model is crucial. As an aside (Consider John Macquarrie's "dialectical theism" as an alternative to that kind of either/or thinking.) is also consided a form of panentheism.  Worship is the way we create a particular type of identity.  Good worship connects us to good service. As you said, though, theology in the end does underpin worship and liturgy.  Worship connects theology and action.

As one who cut his eye teeth on orthopraxis - schooled and nurtured in the great time of social justice as the way to make the faith relevant, ate at the table of the secular city, I had two epiphanies that expanded my vision to say that worship and action need one another, and in fact without worship the motivation for action slowly dies. And I also realized that our search for relevance actually did tell people what we did was irrelevant and a walk in the woods was sufficient. I remember suggesting that a picnic was the same as communion, which I realized robbed both of their beauty and meaning and efficacious nature. Worship was the most irrelevant relevance for it tied us to the center of open space - God- and called into question, at the same time,a dead world by showing the efficacious realm of transcendent beauty located in this world. My process thought moved me from a liberation motif, and kept it but refined it, to see how the lure of God needs location and specific speech so that the community knows who they are and to whom they belong. Worship - the mass- by its very strange form, by its nonlocal location, by its irrelevant relevance- its opening space for more to slide in- for beauty to speak to us, is crucial. The pastoral and pastorate, and the leadership of being set aside apart, reminds us of our essential relatedness in the mystery of the open space that God sets apart for visions and action.

So another insight is that as the UCC slowly demythologized the the ordained set apart, made us just like others, we depowered worship and made the ministry of the laity in the world an option, or more precisely, the world was not the place of lay ministry it was the church. We lost the feeding of the sheep ( which can be a bad metaphor) so they can live in the wilds of life. We disconnected sunday from monday when we made all special, or thus ordinary by implication-

My first epiphany was sitting in St Andrew Wesley in Vancouver, with my wild irish poet friend, drinking in the light, refracted through the beautiful windows, being transfixed and experiencing the transcendence when two friends in the poverty network sat down next to us. And they said:" just think of the food that could be bought with those windows." True but a sad comment, as if the poor did not need beauty too. And sad for does not beauty energize us for the wilderness of life, the deep encounters needed to change our reality. Does not beauty, I said to myself, remind us that God desires beauty for all. Does not beauty inspire us to hang in - worship became central again.

This was reinforced when I was on the national worship committee and we remembered the comments of church full of the "rich" and their response that we had robbed them of the spiritual urge by our social justice narrowness and thus they saw no reason to change - they needed the mystery of the mass to help let go of their captivity to commodification and they knew that, yet the church failed to help them with worship that forced them to be open to the open space God calls us to, so we can turn around, and turn around again.

Finally, a student said to me, when he explained his need for high liturgy, the UCC gives a turkey in the pulpit, and at least the Anglicans gave a dressed and stuffed turkey- that slight difference made worship possible - so worship had to be more than stripped down coffee and tea, just us good old folks, sitting around singing folk songs and smoking up - it had to have an element of transcendence, because that was he was yearning for... color to a monochrome world - we in the UCC in our desire to be hip gave monochrome reality.
_________________

Oh come on. It's mostly just a negative in your attempt to be taken seriously.

Which, as I've pointed out before, the Judeo-Christian God is not worthy of worship, thus your attempts to distance yourself from Him.

No, it doesn't.  There are plenty of good services provided by people who do not worship.  There is no reason to assume that worship drives good actions.  As I've asked in the past, if the most giving Christians read Hitchens and Dawkins and were persueded by the arguments, does anybody really believe these giving people would suddenly turn into selfish twits?

I like the part where an epiphany came to you while you were drinking with an Irishman.  That happens to a lot of us.

so, my question regarding how a cloistered contemplative nun who does nothing more than sit in a room and pray can possibly be helping the poor is just too difficult to answer, then??

or my request to you for an example of how helping someone can mean you have to do what you think is best for them, rather than what they actually want or need simply can't be given in words that i actually understand?!?!?!

wow. 

they seem like pretty simple questions....

I'm all for a little color over a whole lot of monochrome...

(from Amadeus)

(from Kafka)

I have met a number of contemplative Nuns in my contact with a group of Theologians in an extension School group.

They do spend time in quiet solitude. However when I find the number of hot spots in the world these women has served it makes my weak body cringe. No wonder they need time to contemplate, reflect and refresh the desire to go when the next need calls.

I did a bit of the same, and couldn't deal with the rejection that came when you attempted to help educate about a better way to do it. If there was no profit involved for some executive level ... it was deemed no good.

Sort of reminds me of  CBC commentary this morning on pension plan changes. The average person gets matching dollars 1:1! The speaker commented on the federal pension plan for representatives that had at least  a 5 fold contribution made to the MP's plan for every $ the member put in. This in some cases amounted to a 35:1 factor ... approaching some corporate payouts ... that come from where ... the mean taxpayer? Who sees the commonor as mean ... the blind GUIs at the top of the cloudy zone? Reminds me of Classic Greek Myth and Sissyphus falling off the mountain as he couldn't see the edge coming for the Mos' on hies Ais ... beware of the green monster! Yet we keep vote'n them in without an alteration of conditions ...

Now are mortals an odd bunch when following the mor aL pool, or is that just phul-ish? We keep repeating our selves to support the business-like system ... a vast grab for the wrong side of the indeterminate line ... sort of a Fatal veil ... step too far one side or the other and you lose objective balance ... out of Mica's sense of humble justice in a God ... dreamy idealism in the real world?

if they need time to reconnect with god after watching evil walk the earth and trying to help those who were destroyed by it, i get that.  i always have to take a break to reconnect with myself and my family after fostering as well.  you have to take care of yourself, otherwise you are no good to anyone else.

what i DON'T get is those who simply pray, day in day out, with no outside contact.  i remember learning about one particular saint in the catholic faith who they claimed prayed so deeply, flies would walk on his eyes and he wouldn't notice.  and i just couldn't get WHY that was something to be so awe struck over...

how is that helping anyone??   do we REALLY worship a god who requires us to massage his ego in every waking moment by telling him how great he is?!!?   god knows she is great.  and god knows that i am thankful and think she is great, too.  for her to require me to keep telling him that all the time seems just odd.... that makes no sense to me.

it makes sense if you look at it as god knows what is in our hearts, and therefore our prayers thanking her are for our own spiritual renewal.  you are just in a better frame of mind when you think about what you are thankful for, rather than always focusing on the bad shit all the time...

Sighs ...

You stated:

"it makes sense if you look at it as god knows what is in our hearts, and therefore our prayers thanking her are for our own spiritual renewal.  you are just in a better frame of mind when you think about what you are thankful for, rather than always focusing on the bad shit all the time..."

What if this is only the mortal view of something far greater, that scene that we think we have control of, but really have no control whatsoever ... although we may have an almost negligible impact on that vast pool? Teaching of extenuating thought is something else ... there are painful things to be learned of the consequence of our existence ...

I believe that there are people out there that would like to help others in their particular field of expertise, but powers deny that assistance. Such is the realm of the contemplative ... those who may do nothing but contribute to a realm that realists say doesn't exist. Consider that stroke of genius we call "mind" the eclectic storm in the brae ... the pipes of soul! It has connections to a far greater network than a confined mortal can know ... crazy? Dr. Phil show focussed on this a while ago ... shook up his beliefs in psycho active phenomena ... rare or ethereal cases?

Perhaps, been there done that ... I wander unfathomably ... what's next? Then I am told by confining powers to not go there ... the realm of contemplation is dangerous! To whom I might ask? It is a matter I like to explore and I seem to be able to do this only in exclusion of earthy desires ... another kind of Dark Side ... or just the pits to those that don't like those that wonder beyond what is acceptable to them ... consider Galileo, Columbus, Da Vinci, etc. they even rouse the ire of the confined yet today ...

Look at the religious reaction to Da Vinci's Code ... mere thought ... and yet many of the Nun's and a few priests I know read it before it being "indexed" ...

You know in much of the church thinking outside the box is cubital disaster, could eat up your spirit ... lead you into something greater!

I was sent a clip from Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor's address on entering the realm of mind ... it reveals something of a phenomena that some people experience on a daily basis ... and the institutionalized calls them crazy ...

Regards, WB

PS: search ted.com for the subject

again, waterbuoy... having a heckuva time understanding you here...

are you saying that in your opinion, prayer moves energy around, and by praying, contemplatives are using supernatural energy to assist those who are actually on the front lines???

Our problem is that you refuse to have any other understanding of God except the classic supernatural one.  And you seem incapable of understanding other philosophical attempts to speak of how process - coming into being - is true of all reality - that what is real is a product of relationships - that influence in the information system is a system, information flows in many directions, and one bit of information influences other bits of information - that reality is truely relational and what is is a product of relationships of many individual relaties, and there is mutual influence of the parts on other parts.  It is like the human body - many cells creating one body and the cells influencing each other, and that the mind influences the movement of cells, and that there outside influences on the cells, and the mind,  Self consconsciousness is totality relational.

Given that one can offer a model of God who is supremely related and is also a reality. That reality influences only by persuasion, and is also influenced by other real things,  One does not have to accept this model but at least deal with it and show how it is wrong.

By the way I never said those who do not worship do not do good works, they do!!!!  The discussion is about whether worship can value up and sustain those who base their good works on a religious value - and my point is yes.  The next question is empircal- are those who work out of a religious vision more able to sustain their actions.  And the empircial evidence from sociology is yes.  The counter is some other forms of value systems, like a political vision can work in the same way.   Further, there is the negative impact of bad ideologies and religions to do damage.  The point, then, what one believes has impact for both good and evil - it matters what the belief system is, and that is why one must always test by action and reason the belief system and be open to revision,

  The answer is prayer is efficacious by nature - praying for others strengthens them.  Ask any one who is on the front lines whether others praying for their work matters, and the answer is yes.  Of course this the heart of the matter - does prayer matter and does it have an effect on how the world becomes.  If one does not believe that then prayer is only talking to oneself, but the religious tradtiion suggest it is efficacious.

If you don't believe prayer is efficacious then of course it is a waste of time.  And prayer is not a getting of what one wants as if God is a great big vending machine - what God offers is an aim toward justice and compassion, and prayer can join us in that task.  And collectively when we pray for justice and compassion we set out in the system of information that added value - it making critical mass toward the good.

chansen"

No, it doesn't.  There are plenty of good services provided by people who do not worship.  There is no reason to assume that worship drives good actions.  As I've asked in the past, if the most giving Christians read Hitchens and Dawkins and were persueded by the arguments, does anybody really believe these giving people would suddenly turn into selfish twits?"

Again an illustration of not being able to follow an idea - both are true - good people are good people and for some worship gives them more energy. Others find other means of energy-  the point is that one assumes that good worship leads to good actions - that is the argument - follow that if you want to reject by showing it is false - this empircal.

No reading Dawkins and finding him persuasive does not turn them into selfish twits - again no one is arguing this - follow the bounching ball. 

Chansen _"

Which, as I've pointed out before, the Judeo-Christian God is not worthy of worship, thus your attempts to distance yourself from Him."

It is not an attempt to distance but to point out the premise is false that you use for only allow the supernatural theism - which is a modern concept - to be the only concept - that is why the model is crucial and one can construct a model worthy of worship.

I usually find much of what you write chansen to be of value, but when you continue to use the supernatural model as the defautl position and then argue against any other model to be not up to your usual standards.   It is called in philosophy misplaced concreteness or a category error.

Jesus Farking Christ, Pan.  Do you ever listen to yourself?  First, it's impossible to differentiate that from babbling.  Second, I already acknowledged your attempts to tie God to nature, but now you want to compare God to the Internet.  I live in suspense for what you'll say God is next, but somehow, I know it will come back to the bible.  It has to, because you're unwilling to give up Christianity.  You'll bend over backwards in your attempts to breathe new life into a dead book.

Got it.  God is also like the human body, in addition to nature and the Internet.

Show how it is wrong?  No one can fucking understand a word of it.  At least WaterBuoy is artistic with his words.  You're compressing what appears to be an insignificant amount of definition into a large number of words.

If you tested religions by reason, there wouldn't be religions.  And just how open is the bible for revision?  There are plenty of evil bits in the bible - I'm sure you can think of more than I can.  So, let's revise it.  What?  Not everybody is going to follow along?

What you have, is a presciption for a very personal belief system, loosely based on Christianity, that few even understand, let alone believe.  I understand you value it, but you've either cleverly or not-so-cleverly defined it in such a way that I don't have to bother to show how it is wrong, because nobody can understand what it is in the first place.

Okay, read over the OP and some of the conversation. When I go to church (and I'm still on my sabbatical, BTW), I think this quote from the article sums up why I am there:

Now, for me, God may be a metaphor or placeholder. I might say that I want to connect with "The Cosmos" or with "the broader Divine existence", but the feeling is precisely what is conveyed here.

Social justice should arise naturally out of that desire for connection and I would expect a church that values connection to be participating in social action & justice. However, in the end, I should be living that justice in my daily life and I can participate in it through many organizations that are not the church. Amnesty or the local food bank or whatever advocacy and action groups I happen to associate with.

Church is where I go to explore and celebrate the connections and values that drive that urge for justice. It's where I go to "uphold what is worthy", i.e. worship. I go to church expecting spiritual renewal and sustenance, not a lecture on the ills of society, which I can learn about in so many other ways to the point of exhaustion. Church should help me see connection and help me be energized by that connection so that I can the act on the ills of society, not be beaten down by them. Churches that go too deep into the social action/justice at the expense of spiritual renewal and worship risk becoming part of the hammer.

Church, for me, is about worship which in turn is about realizing and actualizing our connections in hope of making ourselves stronger. From this, the social action can then arise.

Mendalla

Chansen,

Showing how it is wrong is indicating the shortfalls in the model ... the model is all we have to phoqah around with  in amortal context ... limited?

Then there is the other side a far stretch ... a lot to know and god's people didn't wish to? Is that pure satyr or what on the limited view we 've been given as a peek into something larger? That's learing Chansen what some mortals do when they've been given moor than they can handle in the emotional scheme of things without knowing much ... pip'n thomas ...

God as indeterminate has a great sense of humour ... like Pan? He toys with you to find what you're made of ... and you fell for it. It is the only way to draw the thinking devil out ... so we can learn about what's buried ... what private thoughts you have on the emotional side?

Sets the alien dimension in giggles ... RIP'eL sin time keeps the whole thing churning ... giving us whey out tho'T!

I agree with Mendalla,  I go to church to experience connection with God and community.

Connection, IMO, is the essence of faith.

For those of us that have faith this sense of connection it leads naturally to compassion and believing and working for justice for others.

(Having said that, I'm aware that this isn't the case for many fundamentalists of many faiths - which is precisely why,chansen, that your only concept of God as a supernatural God is offensive and false to many of us.)

However, one doesn't need faith to have this sense of connection and compassion.

It's simply that for those of us that do have faith, God is the instigator or driver of our compassion.........

I also have sympathy for Sigh's position.

Faith isn't just words or thoughts, a philsophy based on critical thinking - a cosy study for intellectual elites - but something that is open to us all.

When it isn't, something necessary is sadly lacking, IMO.

It's oem-thing you have to dig into Sigh I'M not beyond you but something basic ... an emotional realm cannot grasp in the inverse relationship of word playing about the sol' thing, foundation of the mind? takes some thing to drive it ... anything better'n emotions? Gotta stop and make yah think heh what was that all about ... and theis Torah goes on ... living?

Thank You PP or is that pip-pip ...

Communion is the bred of the soul ... getting there is something for the emotioanlly isolated ... a lrager power than we can imagine from the lower tiers ... an upside down world ... where the first shall be last and the later dais ain't where they'd like toby?

Just as well I'm an Aussie, WaterBuoy, I've observed that Canadians can be very sensitive when it comes to their names/avatars......

Hello sigh:

As you know, water buoys float on top, but are anchored at the bottom.

That which is above is as that which is below,

And that which is below is as that which is above,

In order to accomplish the miracle of the one thing. 

-Hermes Trismegistos

Like Daffy ... dark water boid ... or somewhat aquarian ... can plunge both ways ... some fear the soul and tuck it away not to be utilized. Is this a dangerous practice is one attempts to gain unity ... that's integral eh Arminious? Sort of like the f(rogue) ...

Did you see that Shadow go by?

Gulf of Aquaba, a space that Mo'ess passed over as thought ... floating words on a heated wind out of Africa (Sirocco)? Tells its own story if you listen to that right-hand brain! The spiritual people ... of the other kind don't like to think ... they are saving their soles from all that wandering ... don't like to go out ... agoraphobic? The rite side is abstract ... big soled ... some what mired in itself needs assistance ... like a stuck Buddha ... fat Shadow? Only the sun can move ID ... ID as Taurus ... can move through and about all things like the point of heis word .. cuts both ways ... ain't that the deux, or just divined satyr?

chansen I have not used the quote but let try once again.

The Bible:  The  bible is not to be read literally yet you seem to do that.  Of course fundamentalist do the same.  It is to be read as religious literature that reflects different time periods of writers who had a sense of God or the holy.  Because it is time bound one uses skills of anthropology to understand the different issues in each of the different time period.  For example some of the writing illustrates honor/shame and if one does not know that some of the stories are easily misunderstood.  Thus historical critical method of reading comes into play.  This is not different in kind from the way literature is read. The bible is particular genre - religious literature with some historical background but that history is told in mythological and poetic ways.

This means interpretation is crucial to understanding and literary tools are used.  It can be understood as inspired but not dictated by God.   It is a very human book.

Many times I wonder if you can only see the bible in the same way fundamentalists do, and when that is so, of course one rejects it.

Models:  In science and theology and other human activity models are used to examine reality.  Theory is another name.  Then models are tested to see if they actually do represent reality,  Metaphors are also used to explain.

Metaphors for God can include systems analysis, the human body, nature.  The question is whether the metaphor or model does point to reality.  Further they can be examined rationally, reason and history of ideas are part of the testing method.

Spernaturalism is one such model and history has shown, as well as science, as well as some forms of theology that that model fails.

Theology:  Is the task of reconstructing the tradition of ideas around the idea that there is a God and that God effects history.  Some theologies do that better than others and process theology is a school of thought that is more than my perspective but influences my perspective.

Metaphysics:  This is the question of what is real or actual.  One testing is critical realism.  This weds realism, there is a real world outside our perception and critical in that our perceptions influence what is seen and described.

One metaphyiscal tradition spilts perceptive from the real world.  One result is some have followed observation tells us what is real. Everything else is imagination. It is like billard balls, the hit one another but have internal experience. Casuality is bumping into other other things and only push but doe not feel.

Another response is we create reality by our perception and that is what reality is.

The tradition I follow rejects both these traditions and begins in what is real is a process.  Actual things are a product of interaction, relationality is basic to what becomes.  Actual things influence other actual things - what becomes is a product of many relationships.  There is both interal and external influence when actual things

Philip Clayton has developed a richly nuanced version of panentheism throughout his writings, seeing it as the natural outgrowth of the theistic tradition as it is reconstructed in light of science. His panentheistic approach to divine action in nature agrees with Peacocke on seeing God at work in the emergence of new forms of life, though unlike Peacocke he finds quantum physics to be a fruitful avenue for exploring God’s immanent action in nature.

Barbour, too, adopts a panentheistic view of God and the world, though he develops it within a process perspective. God is a source of order and novelty, acting within the indeterminacies in each integrated physical and biological system as a top-down cause. Thus evolution is the product of law and chance within which God is continuously active, influencing events through persuasive love but not controlling them unilaterally. Following Hartshorne, he embeds the panentheistic mind-body analogy for God’s relation to the world within a social and ecological context, then adds to it an interpersonal perspective. God is “preeminent but not all-powerful,” the creative participant within the evolutionary community of beings. Through tenderness, patience and responsiveness, God nurtures the world towards unchanging goals without coercing it through a ubiquitous, detailed plan.

Charles Birch and John B. Cobb, Jr., argue that there is no clear-cut demarcation in nature between life and non-life although there are genuine levels of increasing complexity and an increasing capacity for conscious experience. God is immanent in the world as the “life-giving principle” and “the supreme and perfect exemplification of the ecological model of life.” Thus life is purposeful, not governed by sheer blind “ongoingness” but suffused with “the cosmic aim for value

Robert Wright provides an insight  panentheism can build on.  He quotes the
evolutionary biologist Steve Pinker who said: “There may
be a sense in which some moral statements aren’t just ... artifacts of a particular brain wiring but are part of the reality of the universe, even if you can’t touch them and weigh them.”  Comparing these moral truths to mathematical truths, he said that perhaps “they’re really true independent of our existence. I mean, they’re out there and in some sense — it’s very difficult to grasp — but we discover them, we don’t hallucinate them.

So what is being suggested is we live in a totally relational world and we use models. metaphors to describe.  Further to speak of God, God has to work in the same way all things work.  Thus persuasion is the power of God and the aim of God is toward justice and compassion.  To influence God is limited by what is and offers novelty to create more reality.  But God is dependent on being received and acted from that receptive experience.  God is in the world and the world is in God and the world has its own reality and God is more than the world.  They interact and influence one another in the same way all things are influenced in reality.  So God is not an exception to the metaphysical rule - process is relational and actual things result from relatonality, come into being and perish into the next moment.  Only God is eternal.

By what authority do you say that the bible is not to be read literally?  Where is that license given to the reader?  This is what you claim, but I have yet to find how yoou come to say this.

Would love to go further with this, but I gotta go drive for a couple of hours so I can freeze my ass off on the side of the escarpment above Collingwood tomorrow.

Chansen - a good question - the authority to read the bible in the way I suggest is both given by tradition - Early in church history, around 400 ad one the bishops ( early theologians( said the bible was not to be read literally.  Even within the scriptures themselves and in early Judaism there was a tradition of midrash which was intepretation of the text that was authoritive, in other words rejected what is a literal reading.

The history of the church is full of bishops and others warning against literal readings.  Further there was a shift in consciousness.  In the middle ages literal readings would not be understood because there was a sense of inspiration even in science.  Literal readings was foreign.  That way of reading the bible got questioned in the historical critical method influenced by mechanistic science.  Francis Bacon gave the method to both science and literature in his methodogy of what would be called the idea that by pure observation one got at the truth.

Later in the early 20 century was the rise of fundamentalism in reaction to the liberal reading of scripture, which used historical critical method, asked what was the theological point of the writers, and that the gospels had different agendas.

The liberal reading began in 1830's and is still the way scripture is read , even by some evangelicals and all main line churches, including the orthodox and catholics.

We are not as bad weather wise as you but it is damn cold.... our snow came yesterday.   Take care.

In another sense, this was a recognition that it is really not possible to have an understanding of the Bible that is identical to what the words of the text say, as if somehow the meanings could arise without ever having to pass through a human mind.  So even what is called a "literal" interpretation is an interpretation. It's not simply "the way it is" in the text, unaffected by the mind of the reader.

Back in the 4th century, Augustine realized that encountering the 'truth' of scripture depended on the purity of the mind that was doing the reading / speaking / hearing of it. So he came up with the rule that any interpretation that does not actually build up the twofold love of God and neighbor is necessarily "off."

So, what chansen has to say about the Bible, what Panentheism has to say about the Bible, and what I have to say about the Bible -- all have the common denominator of being interpretations.  The relative truth of these various interpretations will depend on the purity (in light of the O.P. dare I say 'piety') of the minds doing the interpreting.  And, if we follow Augustine's rule, we can avoid the need to have a personal piety pissing contest...  and instead determine the relative truthfulness of interpretations by the extent of the twofold love which they actually produce in our lives.

Nice Rishi. Now I would add  one thing to the important point of purity.  Interpretation has a history which means the use of literary and bilblical tropes, that have a history and tested in the community of scholars ( and those who learn from them) to check highly personal reads.... we test our personal reading by the history of community reading and that also allows us to get beyond personal pissing contest.

I think love does create in us a critical mind, that is reinforced by the love that flows through community and the community testing of ideas.

Another thought.  At one point in our collective history we had a view of enchanted reality.  The impact of Francis Bacon was to move to disenchantment - the indicative method ruled out the distranctions of emotions.  Thus in the 1800s there was a beginning of a reaction in the romantic area,the romantic poets like Blake and Woodsworth, who sought to reconnect to enchantment.  This is also the task of some modern scientists who see more than "Brute facts".

This shift to disenchantment makes it hard to have a conversation where there is also a need to speak of more than brute facts, the sense of something like love as a reality which is hard to measure.  If one is left with only measuring brute facts than poety and music disappear - some call that crass empirism.... where as there is a deep empiricism which wants to also take into consderation the enchantment factor of music and poetry.

Wittgenstein said: " You cannot think decently if you don't want to hurt yourself".  Why thinking matters and is hard work.

Omiga'wd Pan,

In the cool of the shadows man doesn't like to work at thinking? Le muel!

Perhaps that would explain why many theologins told me as I grew up that thinking was bad. Then there was that one that told me philosophy is evil (Webster's love of knowledge and wisdom out the window) like a chamber pot emptied ... who got this crap? Something appears to be desperately wrong .. human thinking as steered by authority ... role models? Then there's that old expression about authorities corrupting ... and on and on it goes in my humble confusion ... shiyr chaos ... a cry in the night in Hebrew myth that's very ambiguous ... perhaps why institutionalized people don't like old symbols of language ... you have to ponder them ... a sort of meditational thing that is described in the Thessaurus as thinking.   Jees that's bad ...

That was good Pan, but isn't Pan and old word for the devil? Keep stirring mon ... a good agitation will wake even the deepest pool ...

All you have, is an appeal to tradition?  All you've got in favour of a non-literal interpretation is a common fallacy?

I can understand people 1600 years figuring out that a literal reading of the bible is a dangerous thing.  We have some of the same dangerous ideas (based on literal interpretations) being proposed in threads at WC to this very day.  They're junk, they're hazardous to our survival, and I have no doubt that some people could see that in 400AD.  I'm sure that someone, probably by the name of Unsafetus, was nailing pieces of papyrus on community bulletin boards, telling of how praying the right way would cure you of illness.  Someone reading such a claim might have invented the first rolling of the eyes.

But surely, if the authors never intended their works to be read literally, then they would have provided that direction.  I mean, other than by simply writing stuff that is batshiat insane.

Instead, all we know is that there is evidence of ancient Christian leaders who had not completely suffocated the parts of their brains responsible for common sense, and were trying to steer people toward following this Jesus character, without being complete asshats about it.

I suppose the obvious next question is, where did these bishops get the authority to interpret the bible this way?  We're still talking 400 years after this supposed Jesus and 300 years after the bible was loosely compiled.  By this stage, Jesus is already long overdue for his triumphant return.  The bishops may have opted for a less literal translation because people were asking too many questions.

Jesus tries to teach Peter how to think in this text (Matthew 16), but Peter can't get it yet, because there is such a huge hole in his self-awareness:

21 From that time on, Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised. 22 And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, "God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you." 23 But he turned and said to Peter, "Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things." 24 Then Jesus told his disciples, "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. 25 For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. 26 For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life? Or what will they give in return for their life?

Chanen, I guess every empire needs a good court jester

Sorry, Pan, men never get beyond personal pissing contests.

(I can understand it's value when it comes to attracting we wonderful women, - but other than that................)

chansen,

You make a very good point - why weren't we informed not to read the Bible literally?

At the very least, it would have made things a lot clearer.

As it stands, the Bible could be described as subversive - there are so many contradictions contained within it's pages.

This leads us to either cherry pick verses that support our own understanding or interpret them in a manner that is concordant with our own point of view.

Like Pan, I favour the process model, because it seems to  confirm my life's experiences.

I don't see it as faith itself - but rather a model - or framework -  to explain my faith........

*stunned expression*

What if....and let's just take a wild guess here...those who wrote and compiled the bible wanted you to take it literally?  Yes, they were quite likely aware that it was claptrap, even as they were writing it, but what if the reason there is no disclaimer about not reading it literally, is because you were meant to read it as if it were literal?

You're actually asking why the likely fraudsters of their time didn't suggest that the reader take their words with a grain of salt.  Frauds don't tell you they're lying - it's one of their trademarks.  You may as well ask why politicians don't tell you that most of their campaign promises won't be kept - it's because people won't follow them unless they say the right things.

While I can see why it would be handy to have a model to explain your faith, you still can't explain why your faith itself doesn't explain anything.  Remove the assumption of your God, and nothing changes.

Wanted me to take it literally???

Oh no, I'm shattered.........

Phew! It's okay - I've just remembered you're an athiest - and you don't take the Bible seriously, literally or in any form.

Now I get it - you're just having fun playing your favourite game of pissing on the Christians........

Ah well, boys will be boys! 

That's because faith is experienced - like love. I can't explain love either - but I know it exists.

Fe'th' ... is just a word ... like God it drifts ... like fog ... difficult to see through for the Shadow! Its hu m'n ... dark and dry until suffering the pain of whet'n ... sharp ais?

I am away for a couple of days but I want to answer chansen's important questions on thurs.

chansen asked some important questions on authority.

There is an important point to begin,  Two understandings of literal.  One is each word is dictated by God and is innerrant - without mistake.  This is a modern understanding that is not found in the bible.  Then there is anothe understanding of literal - that the bible is inspired not in each word but in the record of people who experienced some sense of the divine, and those experiences are many - for example Jesus and those who experienced him, and in the OT priests and prophets.   Thus the bible is a basic touchstone to the different religious outcomes, Judaism and Christianity.  It must be take seriously as not as a rule book but as a record of the aim of God which is always fresh, and seriously as spiritual literature.  It is basic but not the only spiritual writing.  It is to be interpretated, midrash is to be experienced and used. There are the basic books which call out for interpretation. We call those books the canon, and Jews have the Torah.  Both are not rule books nor the end of insipration but the beginning of study.  It is like Newton, important to the setting out of modern science but not the final word on science.  There are paradigm shifts both within the bible and external to it which influence our reading of the texts.  It is interpretation all the way down.

Within the bible itself there are warnings on not reading literally.  In 2 Timothy 3:17 the passage could  be read tha only some scripture is inspired.  This reading challenges any literalistc view of  inspiration or inerrancy.  By the way inerrancy is a modern invention and as such would not have been the world view of premodern and prescientific thinkers.

Another support of not reading literally is found in Job where the whole theological worldview is challenged and the world view is rejected.  It rejects earlier readings found in the bible.  Or Ecclesiates 7:15 dissenting from the standard doctrine. There are many illustrations of this in the first five books and in the new testament.

Also there are inconsistencies in both old and new testaments.  The very fact they are there in the text, suggests one should not read literally but that the stories represent theological understandings.  For example, there is imaginative history in the first 5 books of the OT.  This suggests some background or history that gets retold from theological issues of the time.  The basic point is Israel has been freed from slavery in Egypt, and the other history of a nation evolving in the middle east with a divine purpose.... The abraham story for example.  The point of these remembered history becomes the purpose of the nation.  Of course, that purpose is that nation is to be a healing presence in the world, a vocation of Justice and Compassion..  The OT is a record of failure, being called back, reaffirming the vocation.  So one has a witness to the importance of that vocation and the struggle to live it.

This points to how God is seen, and how the different times  make God a tribal god and then a move to a universal God, not tribalism.  So tension is part of the narrative.

To get at these readings one uses scholarship and there is authority of the craft to test the readings.  One has to know the anthrology of the different periods of the texts.... since that inlfuences meaning.  For example the role of honor/shame.  In other words the different writers are inlfuenced by what they experience.  Over time there are shifts as worldviews change.

The other point is we cannot judge a premodern prescientific reading from our tools.  It must be read in context.  Of course, that means we can reject readings that are really capitive to a premodern world view, or we can intepretate using tools of literary criticism, anthropology, language studies ( what did this hebrew or greek mean, and how would we be faithful in translating it now), theological understandings.  For example in Genesis there are 3 distinct and competing voices who are the authors of the remembered texts - they take a traditon and re do it.  This creates new traditions.

So what gives authority - it is accept the bible as a record of inspired people who are time bound.  This means the use of scholarship and the graft ( others) to test our present readings.  Of course, this means there are two competing authorities - a more liberal one and a more conservative one.  One must choose one or the other, and another test is does the reading chosen also address the insights of the one rejected?  My view is the liberal one does that - the model used carries with it the insights of the model rejected and does a better job of helping us read the texts.

I agree with this.

But, whilst I think learning all that we can about the cultural and time of that comparatively short time in history when the Bible was written is an interesting intellectual and scholastic exercise - I do wonder if it's really essential to understanding faith?

To me, understanding the Bible is not the same as understanding the nature of faith.

People have been faith inspired long before the Bible was written,  and are still being inspired to this very day.

I would like to see scholarship applied to questions such as  why do people of every generation experience faith?

Why do folks consistently through the ages - and despite scientific discoveries - experience a sense of a power beyond themselves and their own understanding?

Understanding the Bible - or any holy book - is like understanding the menu.

It gives a good description on what's on offer.

But, for me, the essence is the meal itself.............