Aphorism of the Day, October 31, 2018
Halloween can be seen as the church's evangelism. Reverence and interaction with the faithful departed is found in many cultures, when the church went to places with such customs it was able to offer All Hallows' Eve, All Saints' Day and All Souls' day as a way to add the church's resurrection teaching into the understanding of the afterlife.
Aphorism of the Day, October 30, 2018
In the history of sacrifice, the understanding of the death of Jesus on the cross had profound implications. When Abraham was allowed to substitute a ram in the place of his son Isaac, one can see an instantiation of the change from the notion of God requiring actual human sacrifice to an animal being an acceptable replacement. After the resurrection of Christ, the cross was interpreted as the final blood sacrifice of animals or humans. The new sacrifice was to be the living sacrifice instantiated in the deeds of people's lives offered as "sacrificed egos checked at the door" in living for God and each other.
Aphorism of the Day, October 29, 2018
In affirming the living of the Summary of the Law as the way to understand the kingdom of heaven and stating that such sacrificial living is preferred to the religious performance of ritual sacrifice, Jesus was proposing a more integration of living and faith life. Ritual behavior can easily become a practice that is not connected with actual life circumstances, standing alone as what one does in special time isolated from actual life. What good is my ritual sacrifice if I am defrauding my neighbor?
Aphorism of the Day, October 28, 2018
The assault upon the lives of Jews in America when they gathered to pray is an assault upon the very spirit on which our country was founded. The spirit of our American ideals has always ask of us further perfection in becoming our better selves and both systemic injustice and individual acts of killing should frighten us to seek our better angels. And one of our better Angels, would be inspired by Michael the Archangel who would be a vigilant protector of God's people. Our better angels include those of kindness and peace but also angels of actuarial wisdom to act in preventative protection for all of our citizenry, especially those who are most vulnerable.
Aphorism of the Day, October 27, 2018
For people, like Job, who are subject to the "impaired" option of freedom, namely, suffering without knowing cause, Job never understands the mystery of why things happen in the way that they do but he achieved the meaning of his suffering when he made the decision of pray for his friends. Intercession means one comes to place of accepting that one's sufferings (and joys) are in solidarity with other people and they attain personal redemption when one can be a person of empathy with those who need the value of "someone who has been there."
Aphorism of the Day, October 26, 2018
Melchizedek was the "King of Salem" to whom Abraham gave tithe and tribute. He, not Levite, was the Priest who was the model for the priesthood of Jesus. It was not Aaron, the original "high priest." Abraham was the "pre-Jewish" person on whom St. Paul wrote the justification of Gentile faith. Melchizedek was the "pre-Levitical" priest on whom the priesthood of Jesus was founded. New Testament writers delved into pre-Israel (Jacob) figures to justify the inclusion of the Gentiles into the genealogy of salvation.
Aphorism of the Day, October 25, 2018
"Go, your faith has made you well." Being well, or health, is a synonym for "salvation." Faith is the current activation of life responses inspired by hope's possibilities, even when hope includes lots of "not yet" actualities. Faith is how we live healthy lives, not assuming Murphy's Law as the guiding future principle (if something can go wrong, it probably will), but assuming Hope's vision will ultimately triumph in some way and for all.
Aphorism of the Day, October 24, 2018
Jesus was not a Levite and he did not offer sacrifices in the temple; in short, he was not a priest in the sense of being one who performed appointed rituals. He is called a High Priest because his entire life is regarded to be God's Intercession on behalf of humanity. Too often the priesthood in the church has been regarded to be so separate from the lay church in its distinction, the church has unwittingly seemed to be comprised to serve the "priests." The church has priests to remind the church that her very nature is priestly in that all are called to live intercessory lives for the reconciliation of our world.
Aphorism of the Day, October 23, 2018
In the story of Job, it is noted that Job's life made a turn when he prayed for his friends, the same ones who had victimized him as deserving of all of his suffering. Suffering can lead us to a perpetual pity party shocked that we are not exempt from some of the things that can happen to anyone, or suffering can be shared, a filling up of afflictions in solidarity with all who suffer and there can occur a cutting groove in the soul that can be known as empathy and ministry to others who suffer. Intercession is a solidarity which can bring us to the wisdom of empathy rather than leave us in the pity of bitterness.
Aphorism of the Day, October 22, 2018
In biblical rhetoric, what does it mean to "see God?" It does not mean that one has the capacity to comprehend Plenitude. It can mean to accept that one is totally dwarfed by Plenitude and that one humbly accepts some insights within temporality about what is truly meaningful in the practical transformation of one's life toward excellence. It was said that Job confessed to see God after his ordeal. His seeing involved the 20/20 hindsight where the passing of time made sense of the former things that had happened to him. Seeing God is to know the Surpassing Subsequency over everything previous.
Aphorism of the Day, October 21, 2018
It is important to know that the New Testament was written well after the post-resurrection appearances of the Risen Christ. The Gospels came to their textual form when the theology of the early churches was already founded upon the mystagogy of the presence of the Risen Christ being known in the lives of people through the Holy Spirit. The Gospels were then teaching manuals that give a progression of the disciples and any disciple in training coming to a fuller knowledge of Christ. The messianic secret in the Gospels represents the unveiling that has to have occurred in a person to perceive the identity of Jesus. The message of the Gospel and of human history is that many did not have the mystical experiences of the resurrected Christ. The New Testament tries to deal with reality of some having had the mystical experience and many who did not.
Aphorism of the Day, October 20, 2018
When presenting the life of Jesus, how do the Gospel writers who have seen the growing success of the church of the Risen Christ and the arc of history turning to its further success, how do they write about Jesus in his own time and "pretend" they don't know about the eventual success of proliferating Risen Christ experiences for many people? Scholar cite a "messianic" secret in the presentation of Jesus of Nazareth. The contemporaries of Jesus and even his own disciples are presented as those who don't fully comprehend the meaning of the "Messiah" as it came to be understood in the church of the Risen Christ. The "messianic secret" was so secret that those who remained in synagogue never understood or embraced the secret, even while the disciples are presented as those who are in the revelatory learning process of having the "messianic secret" unveiled and revealed to them.
Aphorism of the Day, October 19, 2018
Stephen Hawking died saying that he did not believe in God. But did he die saying that he did not believe in language and poetry? Did he die saying that he did not believe in what might come to language as language creates the basis for knowing human existence and experience? By assigning words, his scientific words to reality whether mathematical formula or nano-entities, he was anthropomorphizing reality which is really not a human person. Why? As a person using language he could not help but anthropomorphize Nature and thus giving it a sort of personality by virtue of having been named. When one uses any discourse, there is allowed a certain humility about the function, purpose and limits of one's discourse, whether scientific, poetic, or discourses of faith such as one finds in the "Holy Books." One can be a scientist and a poet at the same time; the problems arise when religionists try to say their poetry is science and when scientists say poetic truth is inferior or infantile truth. One might pity Mr. Hawking if he never had the experience of weeping in the presence of the Sublime being evoked in an artistic event. To try to dismiss the event of the Sublime as being irrelevant to science because such "emotion" would "cloud" scientific observation is to limit science and make it a final discursive practice of humanity in the appraisal of truth. Surely the Wholly Negligible Mystery has discursive relevance in any practice of discourse.
Aphorism of the Day, October 18, 2018
Anselm in his ontological argument for God's existence uses the Psalm phrase: "The fool has said in his heart that there is no God." Why is this phrase incoherent, inconsistent and lacking in comprehensiveness? The "fool" is tricked into using the word, "God." And if definitionally God means "that which none greater can be conceived," then by definition the greatest would imply existence. So the fool argues wrongly.
Aphorism of the Day, October 17, 2018
The disciples who experienced the post-resurrection appearances went on to lead faithful and even heroic lives in service of the Gospel Mission. But the Gospel writers presented the lives of the disciples in training and walking with Jesus as those who did not understand the full significance of the life of Jesus. They are presented as those who are mainly interested in positions in the Kingdom of Christ when he comes and rules the earth. The fact that the church embraced "the reign of Christ" even while clearly the Caesars held political sway meant that the Gospel writers presented Jesus of Nazareth as one who was realistic about his life as a "suffering servant," and so too his disciples would be subject to the vale of tears and not live in kingly palaces.
Aphorism of the Day, October 16, 2018
In a world where slavery has thankfully become exposed as the inhumanity of inhumanities, the ancient words of Jesus seem rather shocking: "whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all." Jesus regarded himself as one who was a servant of all. What are the metrics of greatness in any community? Certainly meritocratic performance of tasks which gain the respect and affirmation of one's community would the greatness as the kind of excellence that one seeks. Finding one's occupation as something which truly adds value to the lives of people and to put it at the disposal of the community for the well-being of all is a humble service. Jesus and the early church noticed that the competitive pride for power for power's sake would be an attitude which would not instantiate the kind of values which could create the conditions for a stealthy Christian community to survive and thrive in the conditions of the urbanization taking place in the cities of the Roman Empire. Household communities which welcomed and help consolidate a city newcomer became the model of service which silently grew the church, to sadly the position of social power when the service aspect often became forgotten. It remains that the "service principle" is still winsome for the sorts of people who want to continue to instantiate Christly values, even when the church has compromised with the quest for power.
Aphorism of the Day, October 15, 2018
The Spirit as breath or wind was the metaphor for God's creating force in the creation story. In the Book of Job, the voice of God is manifested in the moving, cylindrical column of wind known as the whirlwind. A whirlwind is not controlled by the one who experiences it and even though it is not a tornado it does bespeak of a certain "wildness" of freedom from which the voice of God comes to Job. The unknowable and unpredictability of God was part of the greatness that baffled Job because Job did not know what was going on "behind the scene", namely, in the wholly negligible occasions (a bet between God and Satan in the prologue) which ended up determining events in Job's life. Come weal or woe or simply the quotidian drudgery, one cannot ever know the negligible effects that contribute to what happens to us. The best we can do is live with wise probability living as we seek to live with faith inspired by hope. Short of that, we must damn the consequences and not presume that we are in charge of most things in life.
Aphorism of the Day, October 14, 2018
It is sometimes easy to regard the unfolding of human understandings about God to be what God is actually like and this implies that God becomes what God is like in the eyes of the beholder. With the appearance of Jesus, does that change who God is? In Process Theology, God is regarded as "Pure Creativity and Pure Freedom and Pure and Omni-Becoming." This means God does become and continuously surpasses the former Divine Self with a Greater Divine Self. The implication of this for human freedom is that human freedom is real and genuinely contributes to the subsequent states of all that is. God does not change in being the greatest of all since God has no rival in encompassing greatness and God does not know the future as actual, but as possible. In the question of free will and determination and God's love, power and innocent suffering in our world, the Process Theological understanding of God is perhaps the one which exhibits the most comprehensive, coherent and consistent understanding in the problem of theodicy, viz., the justification of God in face of innocent suffering in our world.
Aphorism of the Day, October 13, 2018
For St. Paul the notion of salvation by grace through faith and not through works was important in his theological understanding? How was this notion presented in the narrative of the life of Jesus, who in his own time had not yet completed the salvatory acts on which the early Christians hung their faith? The life of Jesus is presented in an anticipatory way, not falling into "blatant anachronism" but with the seeds of later Christian theology. The young rich man who wanted Jesus to affirm his proud keeping of the law was told to sell everything, and Jesus said it was difficult for the wealthy to enter the kingdom of God, but with God the impossible is possible. In this punchline one find the anticipation of salvation by grace not based upon human good works. Grace is the what is humanly impossible because it is God's work in the offering of the ultimate forgiveness which makes us whole.
Aphorism of the Day, October 12, 2018
One can note the differences in the experiences of Jesus, Paul and Peter in the contours of topics of the New Testament. Paul was a Jew but a Roman citizen too who was not from Palestine. He went to Jerusalem and became "more" Jewish than Peter in persecuting the followers of Jesus but then had a conversion and became more Gentile than either Peter or Jesus. Peter was from the area where Jesus was raised and he had a "fuller" experience in that he saw the historical Jesus, but also had the mystical experience of the Risen Christ, one which had closer empirical verification accounts than the singular mystical experience of Paul on the road to Damascus. The success of Christianity has been for many people to have these mystical experiences of the Risen Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit and these experiences authenticate an identity that did not require the special ritual purity identity of observant Jews. How does one write the normalcy of the mystical experience of the Risen Christ into the account of Jesus who was mostly a "Torah abiding" rabbi in his own time in a way which anticipates what was "going" to happen in the Gentile mission? Pondering the above can give insights into the dynamic which governed the composition of the New Testament writings.
Aphorism of the Day, October 11, 2018
One can be so certain of one's righteous behaviors that one can be blinded by pride. The wealthy young man who approached Jesus with certainty about his "keeping of the law," certainly was blind about "loving his neighbor as himself" and he found this out when Jesus asked him to liquidate his wealth and give it to the poor. The impossibility of wealthy people inheriting the kingdom of God happens when they treat their wealth as their own and do not regard themselves as temporary stewards of what belongs to God.
Aphorism of the Day, October 10, 2018
Why was it regarded as near impossible for rich people to enter the kingdom of God? Perhaps it is because they have such favorable conditions in their lives, why would they see the need for belonging to another realm? Rich people can be independent financial agents not needing anyone and apparently not needing God either. As independent financial agents they can buy everything they need for their existence and they can buy religious leaders to tell them that they'll be okay in their afterlives as well. God, for the wealthy might be treated as simply another agent whose services they can have a contract for.
Aphorism of the Day, October 9, 2018
One can see the notion of God in the Scriptures being used to designate the One who encompasses both the good and bad experiences of Fate. When things go well, there is derived a theology of blessing and when things go badly, there is a theology of theodicy or the justification of the One who resides beyond good and evil and yet is present within all of the conditions which humans face. Those who are in position of writing are ever at the task of trying to explicate their relationship to the Great One who resides within and beyond all fate. God must encompass everything that happens or God could not be defined as the one about whom nothing greater can be conceived. God, in how God can actually be conceived for humanity has to be the field of all encompassing Language or Word, since any statement of Totality is a Statement in Language. And even if we imply the One who is referred to, we still use language to state, "The One who is referred to." In confessing God, one cannot escape being a language user.
Aphorism of the Day, October 8, 2018
Some times in our self promotion we tout our resume of achievements when we should be looking at the next goal. A young wealthy man bragged about his achievement of lawful living and Jesus gave him his "next" commandment, "Sell all you have and give it to poor." The main question for us is what we will put on our love and justice resumes next.
Aphorism of the Day, October 7, 2018
People disagree about the law and its application because of human selfishness about who has the power to protect the right of whom. Life can be the perpetual wrangling about who has the best practice of actuarial wisdom as appears and is promulgated in laws. The presence of laws take into account the tendency of human being to fail at charity and the law enforces the appearance of charity as justice when people do not "feel" charitable toward each other or act in charity. Jesus used the child as the figure onto which one can project the hidden innocence within each of us and if one can access that innocent aspect of personality then one can find the mystical experience to live beyond good and evil and live toward the normalcy of goodness, health and salvation.
Aphorism of the Day, October 6, 2018
St. Paul accepted the fact that he lived in the kingdom of the Caesar, and yet he believed that he had an experience of the Risen Christ and he had a mystical identity with Christ expressed as Christ being within him by the power of the Holy Spirit. How was this reality related to the church using a narrative of Jesus? When Jesus walked the earth, how could he be the Risen Christ residing within the lives of his followers? Jesus proclaimed a parallel kingdom of God that could be accessed by people who were born of the Spirit and this birth was accessing the original blessing and innocence such as is found in infant and children. When retelling the story of Jesus and spiritual experience of the early church, the early Gospel writers could not insert the spiritual experience of the Risen Christ into the Jesus narrative. What was in the narrative of Jesus was the "new birth," "becoming like a child," abundant life and kingdom of God/heaven metaphors.
Aphorism of the Day, October 5, 2018
The book of Job seems to be a book of wisdom in story form. The author(s) deal(s) with the boiler plate answers of the theology of success. If you are right with God, then it is evident in God's blessing your life and creating a fence of protection around you. Job is presented as the generally good guy who had really bad things happen to him. The theological arguments arise. Job has obviously offended God, even while Job cannot find a one to one correspondence with the things he might have done and resulting punishment. Actuarial wisdom in our life practice can prevent lots of experiences of "bad luck," and one might say the laws teach good actuarial wisdom. However, actuarial probability within the system of freedom where bad things can happen to anyone should help the person of faith refrain from transgressing the mystery of the freedom of what might happen to anyone. The presumption of knowing specific cause of bad things in all cases can result in blaming the victims of misfortune even when they need the most comfort and support.
Aphorism of the Day, October 4, 2018
Jesus came to people who were obsessed with a "world gone bad" and so legalism was a response to the fact that human failure had become normal. In response Jesus points to the child and indicates that the state of innocence close to our human birth should be the new birth and the normalcy for understanding the kingdom of God. One must access the power and energy of the state which exists before the knowledge of good and evil, the innocent state of childhood, in order to live goodness as what is normal to life.
Aphorism of the Day, October 3, 2018
How does one write about the past and shed oneself of everything of one's subsequent age when trying to do the impossible, namely, telling the story of the past solely from the perspective of people in the past who do not yet know what happened after them? This is the dynamic between the Risen Christ mysticism of the post resurrection Christ-communities and their efforts to "forget post-resurrection appearances of Christ" even as they write the Gospel story of Jesus of Nazareth walking and talking in his "own time" which is really the "literary time" created by the early church writers of the Gospel. One can find within the Gospels in narrative forms and in the presentation of the deeds and words of Jesus, the cryptic instantiation of most of the poetry of Risen Christ mysticism of the early church. The mysticism of the early church was hidden within the telling of story of Jesus. We who like to read things in a linear and chronological way are confused by the dynamic of post-resurrection appearance Christo-mysticism creating the presentation of Jesus of Nazareth.
Aphorism of the Day, October 2, 2018
While adult life can get so taken up with the knowledge of good and evil, it can mostly dwell upon evil or human failure as what is normal. With the example of the child, Jesus refocuses the attention beyond good and evil to innocence which is to return in the adult life as a holiness based upon recovering goodness as what is normal in life with sin and human failure being temporal deprivation of the normalcy of goodness.
Aphorism of the Day, October 1, 2018
In the argument about the permission for divorce one can cite the prohibition in the words of Jesus in one place and the "exception" that he allowed in another place. And we have the entire history of churches in dealing with divorce. What is probably missed in the entire issue is that human failure at charity does not overthrow the normalcy of love succeeding. Because people fail at love does not mean we cease to proclaim love succeeding as the norm and the ideal. So Jesus was saying, "Don't make divorce the norm; continue to make love the norm."
Halloween can be seen as the church's evangelism. Reverence and interaction with the faithful departed is found in many cultures, when the church went to places with such customs it was able to offer All Hallows' Eve, All Saints' Day and All Souls' day as a way to add the church's resurrection teaching into the understanding of the afterlife.
Aphorism of the Day, October 30, 2018
In the history of sacrifice, the understanding of the death of Jesus on the cross had profound implications. When Abraham was allowed to substitute a ram in the place of his son Isaac, one can see an instantiation of the change from the notion of God requiring actual human sacrifice to an animal being an acceptable replacement. After the resurrection of Christ, the cross was interpreted as the final blood sacrifice of animals or humans. The new sacrifice was to be the living sacrifice instantiated in the deeds of people's lives offered as "sacrificed egos checked at the door" in living for God and each other.
Aphorism of the Day, October 29, 2018
In affirming the living of the Summary of the Law as the way to understand the kingdom of heaven and stating that such sacrificial living is preferred to the religious performance of ritual sacrifice, Jesus was proposing a more integration of living and faith life. Ritual behavior can easily become a practice that is not connected with actual life circumstances, standing alone as what one does in special time isolated from actual life. What good is my ritual sacrifice if I am defrauding my neighbor?
Aphorism of the Day, October 28, 2018
The assault upon the lives of Jews in America when they gathered to pray is an assault upon the very spirit on which our country was founded. The spirit of our American ideals has always ask of us further perfection in becoming our better selves and both systemic injustice and individual acts of killing should frighten us to seek our better angels. And one of our better Angels, would be inspired by Michael the Archangel who would be a vigilant protector of God's people. Our better angels include those of kindness and peace but also angels of actuarial wisdom to act in preventative protection for all of our citizenry, especially those who are most vulnerable.
Aphorism of the Day, October 27, 2018
For people, like Job, who are subject to the "impaired" option of freedom, namely, suffering without knowing cause, Job never understands the mystery of why things happen in the way that they do but he achieved the meaning of his suffering when he made the decision of pray for his friends. Intercession means one comes to place of accepting that one's sufferings (and joys) are in solidarity with other people and they attain personal redemption when one can be a person of empathy with those who need the value of "someone who has been there."
Aphorism of the Day, October 26, 2018
Melchizedek was the "King of Salem" to whom Abraham gave tithe and tribute. He, not Levite, was the Priest who was the model for the priesthood of Jesus. It was not Aaron, the original "high priest." Abraham was the "pre-Jewish" person on whom St. Paul wrote the justification of Gentile faith. Melchizedek was the "pre-Levitical" priest on whom the priesthood of Jesus was founded. New Testament writers delved into pre-Israel (Jacob) figures to justify the inclusion of the Gentiles into the genealogy of salvation.
Aphorism of the Day, October 25, 2018
"Go, your faith has made you well." Being well, or health, is a synonym for "salvation." Faith is the current activation of life responses inspired by hope's possibilities, even when hope includes lots of "not yet" actualities. Faith is how we live healthy lives, not assuming Murphy's Law as the guiding future principle (if something can go wrong, it probably will), but assuming Hope's vision will ultimately triumph in some way and for all.
Aphorism of the Day, October 24, 2018
Jesus was not a Levite and he did not offer sacrifices in the temple; in short, he was not a priest in the sense of being one who performed appointed rituals. He is called a High Priest because his entire life is regarded to be God's Intercession on behalf of humanity. Too often the priesthood in the church has been regarded to be so separate from the lay church in its distinction, the church has unwittingly seemed to be comprised to serve the "priests." The church has priests to remind the church that her very nature is priestly in that all are called to live intercessory lives for the reconciliation of our world.
Aphorism of the Day, October 23, 2018
In the story of Job, it is noted that Job's life made a turn when he prayed for his friends, the same ones who had victimized him as deserving of all of his suffering. Suffering can lead us to a perpetual pity party shocked that we are not exempt from some of the things that can happen to anyone, or suffering can be shared, a filling up of afflictions in solidarity with all who suffer and there can occur a cutting groove in the soul that can be known as empathy and ministry to others who suffer. Intercession is a solidarity which can bring us to the wisdom of empathy rather than leave us in the pity of bitterness.
Aphorism of the Day, October 22, 2018
In biblical rhetoric, what does it mean to "see God?" It does not mean that one has the capacity to comprehend Plenitude. It can mean to accept that one is totally dwarfed by Plenitude and that one humbly accepts some insights within temporality about what is truly meaningful in the practical transformation of one's life toward excellence. It was said that Job confessed to see God after his ordeal. His seeing involved the 20/20 hindsight where the passing of time made sense of the former things that had happened to him. Seeing God is to know the Surpassing Subsequency over everything previous.
Aphorism of the Day, October 21, 2018
It is important to know that the New Testament was written well after the post-resurrection appearances of the Risen Christ. The Gospels came to their textual form when the theology of the early churches was already founded upon the mystagogy of the presence of the Risen Christ being known in the lives of people through the Holy Spirit. The Gospels were then teaching manuals that give a progression of the disciples and any disciple in training coming to a fuller knowledge of Christ. The messianic secret in the Gospels represents the unveiling that has to have occurred in a person to perceive the identity of Jesus. The message of the Gospel and of human history is that many did not have the mystical experiences of the resurrected Christ. The New Testament tries to deal with reality of some having had the mystical experience and many who did not.
Aphorism of the Day, October 20, 2018
When presenting the life of Jesus, how do the Gospel writers who have seen the growing success of the church of the Risen Christ and the arc of history turning to its further success, how do they write about Jesus in his own time and "pretend" they don't know about the eventual success of proliferating Risen Christ experiences for many people? Scholar cite a "messianic" secret in the presentation of Jesus of Nazareth. The contemporaries of Jesus and even his own disciples are presented as those who don't fully comprehend the meaning of the "Messiah" as it came to be understood in the church of the Risen Christ. The "messianic secret" was so secret that those who remained in synagogue never understood or embraced the secret, even while the disciples are presented as those who are in the revelatory learning process of having the "messianic secret" unveiled and revealed to them.
Aphorism of the Day, October 19, 2018
Stephen Hawking died saying that he did not believe in God. But did he die saying that he did not believe in language and poetry? Did he die saying that he did not believe in what might come to language as language creates the basis for knowing human existence and experience? By assigning words, his scientific words to reality whether mathematical formula or nano-entities, he was anthropomorphizing reality which is really not a human person. Why? As a person using language he could not help but anthropomorphize Nature and thus giving it a sort of personality by virtue of having been named. When one uses any discourse, there is allowed a certain humility about the function, purpose and limits of one's discourse, whether scientific, poetic, or discourses of faith such as one finds in the "Holy Books." One can be a scientist and a poet at the same time; the problems arise when religionists try to say their poetry is science and when scientists say poetic truth is inferior or infantile truth. One might pity Mr. Hawking if he never had the experience of weeping in the presence of the Sublime being evoked in an artistic event. To try to dismiss the event of the Sublime as being irrelevant to science because such "emotion" would "cloud" scientific observation is to limit science and make it a final discursive practice of humanity in the appraisal of truth. Surely the Wholly Negligible Mystery has discursive relevance in any practice of discourse.
Aphorism of the Day, October 18, 2018
Anselm in his ontological argument for God's existence uses the Psalm phrase: "The fool has said in his heart that there is no God." Why is this phrase incoherent, inconsistent and lacking in comprehensiveness? The "fool" is tricked into using the word, "God." And if definitionally God means "that which none greater can be conceived," then by definition the greatest would imply existence. So the fool argues wrongly.
Aphorism of the Day, October 17, 2018
The disciples who experienced the post-resurrection appearances went on to lead faithful and even heroic lives in service of the Gospel Mission. But the Gospel writers presented the lives of the disciples in training and walking with Jesus as those who did not understand the full significance of the life of Jesus. They are presented as those who are mainly interested in positions in the Kingdom of Christ when he comes and rules the earth. The fact that the church embraced "the reign of Christ" even while clearly the Caesars held political sway meant that the Gospel writers presented Jesus of Nazareth as one who was realistic about his life as a "suffering servant," and so too his disciples would be subject to the vale of tears and not live in kingly palaces.
Aphorism of the Day, October 16, 2018
In a world where slavery has thankfully become exposed as the inhumanity of inhumanities, the ancient words of Jesus seem rather shocking: "whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all." Jesus regarded himself as one who was a servant of all. What are the metrics of greatness in any community? Certainly meritocratic performance of tasks which gain the respect and affirmation of one's community would the greatness as the kind of excellence that one seeks. Finding one's occupation as something which truly adds value to the lives of people and to put it at the disposal of the community for the well-being of all is a humble service. Jesus and the early church noticed that the competitive pride for power for power's sake would be an attitude which would not instantiate the kind of values which could create the conditions for a stealthy Christian community to survive and thrive in the conditions of the urbanization taking place in the cities of the Roman Empire. Household communities which welcomed and help consolidate a city newcomer became the model of service which silently grew the church, to sadly the position of social power when the service aspect often became forgotten. It remains that the "service principle" is still winsome for the sorts of people who want to continue to instantiate Christly values, even when the church has compromised with the quest for power.
Aphorism of the Day, October 15, 2018
The Spirit as breath or wind was the metaphor for God's creating force in the creation story. In the Book of Job, the voice of God is manifested in the moving, cylindrical column of wind known as the whirlwind. A whirlwind is not controlled by the one who experiences it and even though it is not a tornado it does bespeak of a certain "wildness" of freedom from which the voice of God comes to Job. The unknowable and unpredictability of God was part of the greatness that baffled Job because Job did not know what was going on "behind the scene", namely, in the wholly negligible occasions (a bet between God and Satan in the prologue) which ended up determining events in Job's life. Come weal or woe or simply the quotidian drudgery, one cannot ever know the negligible effects that contribute to what happens to us. The best we can do is live with wise probability living as we seek to live with faith inspired by hope. Short of that, we must damn the consequences and not presume that we are in charge of most things in life.
Aphorism of the Day, October 14, 2018
It is sometimes easy to regard the unfolding of human understandings about God to be what God is actually like and this implies that God becomes what God is like in the eyes of the beholder. With the appearance of Jesus, does that change who God is? In Process Theology, God is regarded as "Pure Creativity and Pure Freedom and Pure and Omni-Becoming." This means God does become and continuously surpasses the former Divine Self with a Greater Divine Self. The implication of this for human freedom is that human freedom is real and genuinely contributes to the subsequent states of all that is. God does not change in being the greatest of all since God has no rival in encompassing greatness and God does not know the future as actual, but as possible. In the question of free will and determination and God's love, power and innocent suffering in our world, the Process Theological understanding of God is perhaps the one which exhibits the most comprehensive, coherent and consistent understanding in the problem of theodicy, viz., the justification of God in face of innocent suffering in our world.
Aphorism of the Day, October 13, 2018
For St. Paul the notion of salvation by grace through faith and not through works was important in his theological understanding? How was this notion presented in the narrative of the life of Jesus, who in his own time had not yet completed the salvatory acts on which the early Christians hung their faith? The life of Jesus is presented in an anticipatory way, not falling into "blatant anachronism" but with the seeds of later Christian theology. The young rich man who wanted Jesus to affirm his proud keeping of the law was told to sell everything, and Jesus said it was difficult for the wealthy to enter the kingdom of God, but with God the impossible is possible. In this punchline one find the anticipation of salvation by grace not based upon human good works. Grace is the what is humanly impossible because it is God's work in the offering of the ultimate forgiveness which makes us whole.
Aphorism of the Day, October 12, 2018
One can note the differences in the experiences of Jesus, Paul and Peter in the contours of topics of the New Testament. Paul was a Jew but a Roman citizen too who was not from Palestine. He went to Jerusalem and became "more" Jewish than Peter in persecuting the followers of Jesus but then had a conversion and became more Gentile than either Peter or Jesus. Peter was from the area where Jesus was raised and he had a "fuller" experience in that he saw the historical Jesus, but also had the mystical experience of the Risen Christ, one which had closer empirical verification accounts than the singular mystical experience of Paul on the road to Damascus. The success of Christianity has been for many people to have these mystical experiences of the Risen Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit and these experiences authenticate an identity that did not require the special ritual purity identity of observant Jews. How does one write the normalcy of the mystical experience of the Risen Christ into the account of Jesus who was mostly a "Torah abiding" rabbi in his own time in a way which anticipates what was "going" to happen in the Gentile mission? Pondering the above can give insights into the dynamic which governed the composition of the New Testament writings.
Aphorism of the Day, October 11, 2018
One can be so certain of one's righteous behaviors that one can be blinded by pride. The wealthy young man who approached Jesus with certainty about his "keeping of the law," certainly was blind about "loving his neighbor as himself" and he found this out when Jesus asked him to liquidate his wealth and give it to the poor. The impossibility of wealthy people inheriting the kingdom of God happens when they treat their wealth as their own and do not regard themselves as temporary stewards of what belongs to God.
Aphorism of the Day, October 10, 2018
Why was it regarded as near impossible for rich people to enter the kingdom of God? Perhaps it is because they have such favorable conditions in their lives, why would they see the need for belonging to another realm? Rich people can be independent financial agents not needing anyone and apparently not needing God either. As independent financial agents they can buy everything they need for their existence and they can buy religious leaders to tell them that they'll be okay in their afterlives as well. God, for the wealthy might be treated as simply another agent whose services they can have a contract for.
Aphorism of the Day, October 9, 2018
One can see the notion of God in the Scriptures being used to designate the One who encompasses both the good and bad experiences of Fate. When things go well, there is derived a theology of blessing and when things go badly, there is a theology of theodicy or the justification of the One who resides beyond good and evil and yet is present within all of the conditions which humans face. Those who are in position of writing are ever at the task of trying to explicate their relationship to the Great One who resides within and beyond all fate. God must encompass everything that happens or God could not be defined as the one about whom nothing greater can be conceived. God, in how God can actually be conceived for humanity has to be the field of all encompassing Language or Word, since any statement of Totality is a Statement in Language. And even if we imply the One who is referred to, we still use language to state, "The One who is referred to." In confessing God, one cannot escape being a language user.
Aphorism of the Day, October 8, 2018
Some times in our self promotion we tout our resume of achievements when we should be looking at the next goal. A young wealthy man bragged about his achievement of lawful living and Jesus gave him his "next" commandment, "Sell all you have and give it to poor." The main question for us is what we will put on our love and justice resumes next.
Aphorism of the Day, October 7, 2018
People disagree about the law and its application because of human selfishness about who has the power to protect the right of whom. Life can be the perpetual wrangling about who has the best practice of actuarial wisdom as appears and is promulgated in laws. The presence of laws take into account the tendency of human being to fail at charity and the law enforces the appearance of charity as justice when people do not "feel" charitable toward each other or act in charity. Jesus used the child as the figure onto which one can project the hidden innocence within each of us and if one can access that innocent aspect of personality then one can find the mystical experience to live beyond good and evil and live toward the normalcy of goodness, health and salvation.
Aphorism of the Day, October 6, 2018
St. Paul accepted the fact that he lived in the kingdom of the Caesar, and yet he believed that he had an experience of the Risen Christ and he had a mystical identity with Christ expressed as Christ being within him by the power of the Holy Spirit. How was this reality related to the church using a narrative of Jesus? When Jesus walked the earth, how could he be the Risen Christ residing within the lives of his followers? Jesus proclaimed a parallel kingdom of God that could be accessed by people who were born of the Spirit and this birth was accessing the original blessing and innocence such as is found in infant and children. When retelling the story of Jesus and spiritual experience of the early church, the early Gospel writers could not insert the spiritual experience of the Risen Christ into the Jesus narrative. What was in the narrative of Jesus was the "new birth," "becoming like a child," abundant life and kingdom of God/heaven metaphors.
Aphorism of the Day, October 5, 2018
The book of Job seems to be a book of wisdom in story form. The author(s) deal(s) with the boiler plate answers of the theology of success. If you are right with God, then it is evident in God's blessing your life and creating a fence of protection around you. Job is presented as the generally good guy who had really bad things happen to him. The theological arguments arise. Job has obviously offended God, even while Job cannot find a one to one correspondence with the things he might have done and resulting punishment. Actuarial wisdom in our life practice can prevent lots of experiences of "bad luck," and one might say the laws teach good actuarial wisdom. However, actuarial probability within the system of freedom where bad things can happen to anyone should help the person of faith refrain from transgressing the mystery of the freedom of what might happen to anyone. The presumption of knowing specific cause of bad things in all cases can result in blaming the victims of misfortune even when they need the most comfort and support.
Aphorism of the Day, October 4, 2018
Jesus came to people who were obsessed with a "world gone bad" and so legalism was a response to the fact that human failure had become normal. In response Jesus points to the child and indicates that the state of innocence close to our human birth should be the new birth and the normalcy for understanding the kingdom of God. One must access the power and energy of the state which exists before the knowledge of good and evil, the innocent state of childhood, in order to live goodness as what is normal to life.
Aphorism of the Day, October 3, 2018
How does one write about the past and shed oneself of everything of one's subsequent age when trying to do the impossible, namely, telling the story of the past solely from the perspective of people in the past who do not yet know what happened after them? This is the dynamic between the Risen Christ mysticism of the post resurrection Christ-communities and their efforts to "forget post-resurrection appearances of Christ" even as they write the Gospel story of Jesus of Nazareth walking and talking in his "own time" which is really the "literary time" created by the early church writers of the Gospel. One can find within the Gospels in narrative forms and in the presentation of the deeds and words of Jesus, the cryptic instantiation of most of the poetry of Risen Christ mysticism of the early church. The mysticism of the early church was hidden within the telling of story of Jesus. We who like to read things in a linear and chronological way are confused by the dynamic of post-resurrection appearance Christo-mysticism creating the presentation of Jesus of Nazareth.
Aphorism of the Day, October 2, 2018
While adult life can get so taken up with the knowledge of good and evil, it can mostly dwell upon evil or human failure as what is normal. With the example of the child, Jesus refocuses the attention beyond good and evil to innocence which is to return in the adult life as a holiness based upon recovering goodness as what is normal in life with sin and human failure being temporal deprivation of the normalcy of goodness.
Aphorism of the Day, October 1, 2018
In the argument about the permission for divorce one can cite the prohibition in the words of Jesus in one place and the "exception" that he allowed in another place. And we have the entire history of churches in dealing with divorce. What is probably missed in the entire issue is that human failure at charity does not overthrow the normalcy of love succeeding. Because people fail at love does not mean we cease to proclaim love succeeding as the norm and the ideal. So Jesus was saying, "Don't make divorce the norm; continue to make love the norm."
