Aphorism of the Day, June 30, 2019
"No one who puts his hand on the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God." This saying of Jesus means that hope is the constitution of those who understand God. It means we look to surpassing ourselves in a future state rather than wallow in nostalgia for the good 'ol days.
Aphorism of the Day, June 29, 2019
Regarding the fruits of the Spirit, Paul wrote, "There is no law against such things." This is the assertion of the positive law of what we can do full throttle and excessively; the negative law of prohibition is stated in the negative "thou shalt not!" The negative law is "realistically" based upon knowing human tendency in knowing that the energies of our lives are going to make us habitually do bad things. The positive law is based upon the Spirit, who inspires and energizes toward the very best expression of virtues which can be done excessively without prohibition. One cannot even imagine a negative law of the Spirit: Thou shalt not love, be peaceful, know joy, have self control, be gentle, be good, be faithful and patience? The fruits of the Spirit invite unbridled and unending excess.
Aphorism of the Day, June 28, 2019
Jesus actually discouraged someone from "literally" following him, since he traveled so light with no guaranteed place to sleep. The call of Christ does not need to be radical physical relocation; it should begin and remain as interwoven with one's life situation in the gradual process of repentance, i.e., becoming better today than yesterday.
Aphorism of the Day, June 27, 2019
We usually associate the call of Christ as being a call to leave and go somewhere else and change what one is doing with one's life. The more challenging and perhaps valid notion of the call of Christ is to understand it as being interwoven with the lives we currently now live. Being called away is "only a temporary phase" of learning new discipline but such discipline should be geared toward understanding the call of Christ as interwoven with one's natural and normal everyday life.
Aphorism of the Day, June 26, 2019
"Leaving all" to follow Christ as in being ordained to the "full time ministry," actually may be the right to get paid for appearing in religious roles while criticizing those who aren't always in church with inconsistent attendance. If someone is not learning how to weave the call of Christ into the all of the intermittent events which occur in the pre-ordained life, then they will also fail to make the call of Christ genuine in their "ordained" life.
Aphorism of the Day, June 25, 2019
I will wait for a more opportune time to respond to the call of Christ, like after I have buried all the older members of my family or when I've finished saying farewell to my families. Farewells and funerals will always be happening in the unplanned intermittent ways that they occur. The call of Christ is interwoven with the intermittent events of ordinary family life. Don't use waiting for death or farewells as an excuse for not responding to the call of Christ.
Aphorism of the Day, June 24, 2019
The perspective of Jesus on the call to follow him has to do with understanding that it is interwoven with everything else that might happen to one within the particular contexts and circumstances of one's life. One cannot "escape" life to follow Christ.
Aphorism of the Day, June 23, 2019
St. Paul refers to the ultimate mystical process of "transitioning." He wrote to be clothed with Christ means there is no male or female. Being in Christ as the primary identity means that how we manifest any other identity is to be a shape of how our ministry is to be articulated. If Christ is our primary identity, we need to commit our other identities as ways to promote our primary identity with Christ.
Aphorism of the Day, June 22, 2019
The semantics of the Law versus faith in the vocabulary of St. Paul is crucial to the definitions that governed the breakdown between the synagogue and the church. The issue was instigated by the fact that the Jesus Movement became a "Spirit" movement when Gentiles could receive inward verification of favor with God without complying to all of the precepts of the Judaic Law. How could people consider themselves within the tradition of Judaism without complying to the basic precepts which heretofore had defined observant Judaism? One can see the verbal gymnastics that Paul had to generate to explain the new paradigm of faith within the Jesus Movement. Did any truly observant Jew believe that the loving kindness of God's forgiveness did not co-exist with the goal of keeping the recommended behaviors of the Torah? Was it a false assumption of Paul to assume that believing in God's loving kindness did not co-exist with the efforts to observe the law? One can assume that Paul had written a paper tiger version expressing his own former practice of Judaism vis a vis the Jesus Movement so as to view the difference as a battle of Law or Faith. One can see the same sort of argument arise again in the Luther dichotomy of works vs. grace. It is true that because their are people who live the worst case caricatures of Law only or grace only that such oppositional theologies get generated.
Aphorism of the Day, June 21, 2019
St. Paul believed in the interior battle with principalities and powers and forces of evil. This cosmic clash was instantiated in the presentation of the life of Jesus as one who cast out the forces of interior darkness and uncleanness from the lives of people as the ultimate People Whisperer. His inner authority was so obvious that the inner authorities harassing the lives of people had to obey his exorcisms.
Aphorism of the Day, June 20. 2019
"daimon" as a negative controlling impulses has correspondences in every age and culture, whether it is a whole range of mental illnesses, developmental and experientially originated or physiologically/genetically "caused." Ancient diagnostic practice could account for a wide range of maladies under the guise of "demons," and such certainty of unseen causes persisted for many illnesses. Joseph Lister with his sanitary practices exorcised the "demons" of hidden germs so that germs lost their "demonic" etiology. Mental illness and the incredible chemical restructuring of the brain which takes over in addiction to prescribed and unprescribed drugs can manifest behaviors with seeming unseen causes, which in the old days would have fit under the encompassing diagnosis of demonic, or in the Purity Code designation as "unclean" and therefore feared and shunned for public safety. Jesus as People Whisperer would not let such people diagnosed as those with "unclean innards" be isolated from contact to comforting, supporting resources of people. Jesus the People Whisper crossed the quarantine boundary without fear of being infected by the persons victimized by the classification of being "unclean" in their inner being.
Aphorism of the Day, June 19, 2019
Spiritual disciplines and public health in the ancient practice of applied law in Israel, were more unified under the aegis of religious leaders who handled laws which pertained to "public health." Public health threats were classified into a a code of what was clean or unclean. What was unclean was regarded to be a threat to public health. An angry and violent person to self and others who was designated as having an "unclean spirit" or many "unclean spirits," had to be avoided to protect the public. This situation was devastating for family members of the oppressed person much like mental health disorders are distressing for families today. Jesus dared to interact with people who had been designated as those with "unclean spirits." He was able to bring a clean heart and renewed spirit to be who had been declared to be internally "unclean."
Aphorism of the Day, June 18, 2019
In certain locations where the Gospels were coming to textual form, the near universal diagnosis for manifold human maladies was demon possession, or those who were controlled by an "unclean spirit." In the purity code classification, something designated as unclean was to be shunned and isolated from the community, thus leaving one with such a public health quarantine, bereft and abandoned except perhaps by family members who still cared for them but were at their wit's end for some intervention. Jesus is presented as an "exorcist" in the Synoptic Gospels, even as John's Gospel does not recount any such ministry of Jesus. Hmm. Curious? Perhaps such "medical" treatment was not familiar to the community in which John's Gospel was written? One way to understand Jesus in this healing role is to understand him to be a "People Whisperer." He had such inward spiritual authority that he was able to dispel all of the inner accusing forces which had come to reside in people whose lives had become diminished by inner constituent forces of linguistic constellation that were so pronounced as to be able to control the body language of a person toward self harm. The great occupational lack in our world today is that there are not enough people whisperers who can befriend people in a way to dispel the inward controlling impulses in people toward their own harm and the harm of others. "O God, raise up more "people whisperers" in the tradition of Jesus, the Great People Whisperer."
Aphorism of the Day, June 17, 2019
Interesting to trace the "demonization" of daimon from the classic Greek era to the koine Greek era of the New Testament. A daimon was a spiritual guide or friend of someone like Socrates or daimon could refer to a "controlling impulse," which does seem to have some connection with the demons of the New Testament era, even though such daimons could be creative impulses and not just the notion of being out of control in a negative sense. In the New Testment era the demons had become fallen angels who were opposed to God's purposes in this world and showed their opposition by inhabiting people who probably were traumatized persons who were shocked into their alternate personalities (dissociately disordered ones) to shatter into becoming the expression for the multiple personalities, even to be named Legion. If a demon is a "diabol," opposite of an Angel Messenger "Symbol," the demon represent the maladjustment of the interior life with the external world such that the heebie jeebies drives one's life into chaotic clusterf***ing discord. Jesus, as the people whisperer, was the ultimate Sane Symbolic person who was able to resew the interior life of people with their exterior manifestation with the end result of the state of mind called "peace." In that peace a sane sense of significant order and control returned to one's life.
Aphorism of the Day, June 16, 2019
Time complicates everything by mystifying everything with a future, which from now is only possible and not actual. So, the Trinity is a mystery because the Trinity still has a future for human being in time. The nature of someOne everlasting means that their full meaning is not and cannot be fully known and understood by those who are not the SomeOne. As lesser beings we can humbly accept the adequacy of what we know about the Trinity without presuming infallible knowledge.
Aphorism of the Day, June 15, 2019
Did gravity exist before Newton? Did the Trinity exist before Jesus, before the New Testament, before the Council of Nicaea? Whitehead: "The laws of science are statistically approximate, not causatively absolute," meaning that to articulate a law or theory about some natural behavior does not "cause" it to happen. Articulating the "Trinity" does not "cause" the Trinity. Language itself is a continuous statistical approximating of all of the previous traces that are available to language users in contributing to a greater body of language events. Language about the Trinity derived from further language approximation of the traditions about God which existed in the Hebrew Scriptures and then attained new insights in how the relationship of Jesus with God was articulated in his remembered words and how his oracle words came to the New Testament writers. These tradition were further developed into the Credal formulas of the Council of Nicaea as it was deemed important to "standardize" teaching about God because of the perception of the need for political unity in the Empire.
Aphorism of the Day, June 14, 2019
Father and Son are parent-child relationship words. Spirit is a word metaphor for personal essential identity from the hidden but verified entities of breath or wind. Spirit is given credit for executing the conception of Jesus and birthing Christ in each person. The Trinitarian Persons have relationship reality, even as they get "deconstructed" in the notion of God as Word. In God as Word or Word as God, all becomes the One of Plenitude, a Plenitude that is not yet finished, temporally speaking.
Aphorism of the Day, June 13, 2019
The most developed references to members of the Trinity are found in the Gospel of John, a very late document when compared with writings of Paul and the other Gospels. The oracle words of Jesus which came to the Johannine author clarified how the Christians understood their relationship with God. Christian believed that in synchrony and/or in sequence they were knowing God as coming in their experience to be named in their language as Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Aphorism of the Day, June 12, 2019
The progression of Trinitarian understanding. Narrative language of Jesus regard his relationship to God. Credal formularies to teach in abbreviation the narrative form of the words of Jesus about the Father and the Holy Spirit. A philosophical theology about the necessity of what the Creeds stated about Father, Son and Holy Spirit in order to standardize church teaching in churches which had grown and had open disagreement about their teaching about the nature of God. The end result of the Nicaean statements about the Trinity declared the excommunication of more than half of the Christians in the world. The Trinity as an expression of Church Administration was not immediately received by those who disagreed.
Aphorism of the Day, June 11, 2019
Part of the problem of understanding the Trinity has to do with the Hellenization of theology that was evident in the results of the official documents of the Council of Nicaea. Might be better just to deal with how Jesus is presented in the Gospel in his self understanding of God and his use of Father and the Spirit.
Aphorism of the Day, June 10, 2019
The Trinity became the "logical" explanation for the early church to describe the success as Christ experience continued to be replicated in mystical experience.
Aphorism of the Day, June 9, 2019
We might think of language as simply a taxonomic system to classify all manner of things. Language does bear the objectivity of classification so that we together can think and believe that we are referring to the same thing. But language also includes the individual and subjective appropriation of language such that meanings become nuanced to each person within their individual personal experience. Diversity of language also means that each person has their own "dialect" in meaning and articulation of any given language. On Pentecost it means that the Spirit of harmony much incorporate and blend individual language users for common purpose of communities of love and justice.
Aphorism of the Day, June 8, 2019
Pentecost is the event which proclaimed that the message of Christ was able to translated into every language. Anglicans sometimes treat their Book of Common Prayer as a Common Text and such a text can become regarded as rigid and arcane when the Spirit of translation of prayer into the common language of anyone who wants to pray is denied. The public agreement upon a corporate text of prayer should not be seen in conflict with the validity of common prayer in the private words of anyone who wishes to prayer. The Spirit of God makes prayer "common."
Aphorism of the Day, June 7, 2019
Babel is bad and a curse was transformed to Babel is good and a blessing because the Gospel of Christ could be translated into every language and each person had access to the transforming Spirit of God who had been promised by Jesus. The Jesus Movement wanted to universalize Judaism in ways that was beyond the mission of Judaism for those who remained within the synagogues. By translating the message into too many foreign languages the Christian movement also accepted habits of Gentile peoples which were no longer deemed as defiled.
Aphorism of the Day, June 6, 2019
The Spirit of Pentecost is about the wisdom of how to live on the continuum between unity and diversity. To be heavy on the "unity" side can be an expression of a forced pattern of power elites and unity of fascism is a sin against the spirit. The chaos of each person doing his own thing without regard for the social and distributive consequences is also a sin against the Spirit. Christly unity is letting the wind of the Spirit play each person as the unique pipe in the organ adding to the fullness of the whole.
Aphorism of the Day, June 5, 2019
Pentecost irony: Christians are people "divided" by having a common Spirit. Divided? Divided to have diverse missions in each of the languages which people in our world speak. Many people do not have faith to believe in the Unity in difference which such a great God-Spirit can comprehend.
Aphorism of the Day, June 4, 2019
Pentecost is the dynamic on the continuum of the one and the many. From the many one; from the One, many. How does one affirm diversity while being held together with an experience of unity such that fracturing does not keep all individuals reconnecting. Spirit is the mystification known in the experience of the Team which is not spelled with an "I." Spirit is the experience of the oneness of harmony of the entire "One" orchestra. We needed oneness and diversity and learning how to balance the dynamic of the two is what Pentecost is about. Pentecost is about taking a unifying experience of Christ and translating it into endless numbers of languages.
Aphorism of the Day, June 3, 2019
For the divine to be comprehensively known, God would need to be accessible in all languages. God comes to language events differently; difference is affirmed in the event of Pentecost. Pentecost is the ultimate event of "Common" Prayer, not in making everyone pray in one sacred and liturgical language, but in the adapting of the praise of God to the common language of each person who is drawn to prayer.
Aphorism of the Day, June 2, 2019
We've heard of "money laundering," but what about "language laundering?" How can we clean up our use of language in word and deed? Jesus of Nazareth and the Ascended Christ, prayed and prays and that suggests to us that as we designate our lives to the practice of prayer, we can do some serious "language laundering," both in our speaking acts and in our body language deeds.
Aphorism of the Day, June 1, 2019
Justin Martyr, a second century apologist, with his "logos" theology could posit that Plato and others who did not know Jesus of Nazareth could be "unknowing Christians," even though they were regarded to be "pagans." If, following, John 1:1, Word is God, then being worded beings is the "default" position of humanity and probably is the most explicit reflection of God's image, if indeed, God is Word. Anyone who uses their worded life toward the full expression of love and justice in word and deed, is certainly Christly.
"No one who puts his hand on the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God." This saying of Jesus means that hope is the constitution of those who understand God. It means we look to surpassing ourselves in a future state rather than wallow in nostalgia for the good 'ol days.
Aphorism of the Day, June 29, 2019
Regarding the fruits of the Spirit, Paul wrote, "There is no law against such things." This is the assertion of the positive law of what we can do full throttle and excessively; the negative law of prohibition is stated in the negative "thou shalt not!" The negative law is "realistically" based upon knowing human tendency in knowing that the energies of our lives are going to make us habitually do bad things. The positive law is based upon the Spirit, who inspires and energizes toward the very best expression of virtues which can be done excessively without prohibition. One cannot even imagine a negative law of the Spirit: Thou shalt not love, be peaceful, know joy, have self control, be gentle, be good, be faithful and patience? The fruits of the Spirit invite unbridled and unending excess.
Aphorism of the Day, June 28, 2019
Jesus actually discouraged someone from "literally" following him, since he traveled so light with no guaranteed place to sleep. The call of Christ does not need to be radical physical relocation; it should begin and remain as interwoven with one's life situation in the gradual process of repentance, i.e., becoming better today than yesterday.
Aphorism of the Day, June 27, 2019
We usually associate the call of Christ as being a call to leave and go somewhere else and change what one is doing with one's life. The more challenging and perhaps valid notion of the call of Christ is to understand it as being interwoven with the lives we currently now live. Being called away is "only a temporary phase" of learning new discipline but such discipline should be geared toward understanding the call of Christ as interwoven with one's natural and normal everyday life.
Aphorism of the Day, June 26, 2019
"Leaving all" to follow Christ as in being ordained to the "full time ministry," actually may be the right to get paid for appearing in religious roles while criticizing those who aren't always in church with inconsistent attendance. If someone is not learning how to weave the call of Christ into the all of the intermittent events which occur in the pre-ordained life, then they will also fail to make the call of Christ genuine in their "ordained" life.
Aphorism of the Day, June 25, 2019
I will wait for a more opportune time to respond to the call of Christ, like after I have buried all the older members of my family or when I've finished saying farewell to my families. Farewells and funerals will always be happening in the unplanned intermittent ways that they occur. The call of Christ is interwoven with the intermittent events of ordinary family life. Don't use waiting for death or farewells as an excuse for not responding to the call of Christ.
Aphorism of the Day, June 24, 2019
The perspective of Jesus on the call to follow him has to do with understanding that it is interwoven with everything else that might happen to one within the particular contexts and circumstances of one's life. One cannot "escape" life to follow Christ.
Aphorism of the Day, June 23, 2019
St. Paul refers to the ultimate mystical process of "transitioning." He wrote to be clothed with Christ means there is no male or female. Being in Christ as the primary identity means that how we manifest any other identity is to be a shape of how our ministry is to be articulated. If Christ is our primary identity, we need to commit our other identities as ways to promote our primary identity with Christ.
Aphorism of the Day, June 22, 2019
The semantics of the Law versus faith in the vocabulary of St. Paul is crucial to the definitions that governed the breakdown between the synagogue and the church. The issue was instigated by the fact that the Jesus Movement became a "Spirit" movement when Gentiles could receive inward verification of favor with God without complying to all of the precepts of the Judaic Law. How could people consider themselves within the tradition of Judaism without complying to the basic precepts which heretofore had defined observant Judaism? One can see the verbal gymnastics that Paul had to generate to explain the new paradigm of faith within the Jesus Movement. Did any truly observant Jew believe that the loving kindness of God's forgiveness did not co-exist with the goal of keeping the recommended behaviors of the Torah? Was it a false assumption of Paul to assume that believing in God's loving kindness did not co-exist with the efforts to observe the law? One can assume that Paul had written a paper tiger version expressing his own former practice of Judaism vis a vis the Jesus Movement so as to view the difference as a battle of Law or Faith. One can see the same sort of argument arise again in the Luther dichotomy of works vs. grace. It is true that because their are people who live the worst case caricatures of Law only or grace only that such oppositional theologies get generated.
Aphorism of the Day, June 21, 2019
St. Paul believed in the interior battle with principalities and powers and forces of evil. This cosmic clash was instantiated in the presentation of the life of Jesus as one who cast out the forces of interior darkness and uncleanness from the lives of people as the ultimate People Whisperer. His inner authority was so obvious that the inner authorities harassing the lives of people had to obey his exorcisms.
Aphorism of the Day, June 20. 2019
"daimon" as a negative controlling impulses has correspondences in every age and culture, whether it is a whole range of mental illnesses, developmental and experientially originated or physiologically/genetically "caused." Ancient diagnostic practice could account for a wide range of maladies under the guise of "demons," and such certainty of unseen causes persisted for many illnesses. Joseph Lister with his sanitary practices exorcised the "demons" of hidden germs so that germs lost their "demonic" etiology. Mental illness and the incredible chemical restructuring of the brain which takes over in addiction to prescribed and unprescribed drugs can manifest behaviors with seeming unseen causes, which in the old days would have fit under the encompassing diagnosis of demonic, or in the Purity Code designation as "unclean" and therefore feared and shunned for public safety. Jesus as People Whisperer would not let such people diagnosed as those with "unclean innards" be isolated from contact to comforting, supporting resources of people. Jesus the People Whisper crossed the quarantine boundary without fear of being infected by the persons victimized by the classification of being "unclean" in their inner being.
Aphorism of the Day, June 19, 2019
Spiritual disciplines and public health in the ancient practice of applied law in Israel, were more unified under the aegis of religious leaders who handled laws which pertained to "public health." Public health threats were classified into a a code of what was clean or unclean. What was unclean was regarded to be a threat to public health. An angry and violent person to self and others who was designated as having an "unclean spirit" or many "unclean spirits," had to be avoided to protect the public. This situation was devastating for family members of the oppressed person much like mental health disorders are distressing for families today. Jesus dared to interact with people who had been designated as those with "unclean spirits." He was able to bring a clean heart and renewed spirit to be who had been declared to be internally "unclean."
Aphorism of the Day, June 18, 2019
In certain locations where the Gospels were coming to textual form, the near universal diagnosis for manifold human maladies was demon possession, or those who were controlled by an "unclean spirit." In the purity code classification, something designated as unclean was to be shunned and isolated from the community, thus leaving one with such a public health quarantine, bereft and abandoned except perhaps by family members who still cared for them but were at their wit's end for some intervention. Jesus is presented as an "exorcist" in the Synoptic Gospels, even as John's Gospel does not recount any such ministry of Jesus. Hmm. Curious? Perhaps such "medical" treatment was not familiar to the community in which John's Gospel was written? One way to understand Jesus in this healing role is to understand him to be a "People Whisperer." He had such inward spiritual authority that he was able to dispel all of the inner accusing forces which had come to reside in people whose lives had become diminished by inner constituent forces of linguistic constellation that were so pronounced as to be able to control the body language of a person toward self harm. The great occupational lack in our world today is that there are not enough people whisperers who can befriend people in a way to dispel the inward controlling impulses in people toward their own harm and the harm of others. "O God, raise up more "people whisperers" in the tradition of Jesus, the Great People Whisperer."
Aphorism of the Day, June 17, 2019
Interesting to trace the "demonization" of daimon from the classic Greek era to the koine Greek era of the New Testament. A daimon was a spiritual guide or friend of someone like Socrates or daimon could refer to a "controlling impulse," which does seem to have some connection with the demons of the New Testament era, even though such daimons could be creative impulses and not just the notion of being out of control in a negative sense. In the New Testment era the demons had become fallen angels who were opposed to God's purposes in this world and showed their opposition by inhabiting people who probably were traumatized persons who were shocked into their alternate personalities (dissociately disordered ones) to shatter into becoming the expression for the multiple personalities, even to be named Legion. If a demon is a "diabol," opposite of an Angel Messenger "Symbol," the demon represent the maladjustment of the interior life with the external world such that the heebie jeebies drives one's life into chaotic clusterf***ing discord. Jesus, as the people whisperer, was the ultimate Sane Symbolic person who was able to resew the interior life of people with their exterior manifestation with the end result of the state of mind called "peace." In that peace a sane sense of significant order and control returned to one's life.
Aphorism of the Day, June 16, 2019
Time complicates everything by mystifying everything with a future, which from now is only possible and not actual. So, the Trinity is a mystery because the Trinity still has a future for human being in time. The nature of someOne everlasting means that their full meaning is not and cannot be fully known and understood by those who are not the SomeOne. As lesser beings we can humbly accept the adequacy of what we know about the Trinity without presuming infallible knowledge.
Aphorism of the Day, June 15, 2019
Did gravity exist before Newton? Did the Trinity exist before Jesus, before the New Testament, before the Council of Nicaea? Whitehead: "The laws of science are statistically approximate, not causatively absolute," meaning that to articulate a law or theory about some natural behavior does not "cause" it to happen. Articulating the "Trinity" does not "cause" the Trinity. Language itself is a continuous statistical approximating of all of the previous traces that are available to language users in contributing to a greater body of language events. Language about the Trinity derived from further language approximation of the traditions about God which existed in the Hebrew Scriptures and then attained new insights in how the relationship of Jesus with God was articulated in his remembered words and how his oracle words came to the New Testament writers. These tradition were further developed into the Credal formulas of the Council of Nicaea as it was deemed important to "standardize" teaching about God because of the perception of the need for political unity in the Empire.
Aphorism of the Day, June 14, 2019
Father and Son are parent-child relationship words. Spirit is a word metaphor for personal essential identity from the hidden but verified entities of breath or wind. Spirit is given credit for executing the conception of Jesus and birthing Christ in each person. The Trinitarian Persons have relationship reality, even as they get "deconstructed" in the notion of God as Word. In God as Word or Word as God, all becomes the One of Plenitude, a Plenitude that is not yet finished, temporally speaking.
Aphorism of the Day, June 13, 2019
The most developed references to members of the Trinity are found in the Gospel of John, a very late document when compared with writings of Paul and the other Gospels. The oracle words of Jesus which came to the Johannine author clarified how the Christians understood their relationship with God. Christian believed that in synchrony and/or in sequence they were knowing God as coming in their experience to be named in their language as Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Aphorism of the Day, June 12, 2019
The progression of Trinitarian understanding. Narrative language of Jesus regard his relationship to God. Credal formularies to teach in abbreviation the narrative form of the words of Jesus about the Father and the Holy Spirit. A philosophical theology about the necessity of what the Creeds stated about Father, Son and Holy Spirit in order to standardize church teaching in churches which had grown and had open disagreement about their teaching about the nature of God. The end result of the Nicaean statements about the Trinity declared the excommunication of more than half of the Christians in the world. The Trinity as an expression of Church Administration was not immediately received by those who disagreed.
Aphorism of the Day, June 11, 2019
Part of the problem of understanding the Trinity has to do with the Hellenization of theology that was evident in the results of the official documents of the Council of Nicaea. Might be better just to deal with how Jesus is presented in the Gospel in his self understanding of God and his use of Father and the Spirit.
Aphorism of the Day, June 10, 2019
The Trinity became the "logical" explanation for the early church to describe the success as Christ experience continued to be replicated in mystical experience.
Aphorism of the Day, June 9, 2019
We might think of language as simply a taxonomic system to classify all manner of things. Language does bear the objectivity of classification so that we together can think and believe that we are referring to the same thing. But language also includes the individual and subjective appropriation of language such that meanings become nuanced to each person within their individual personal experience. Diversity of language also means that each person has their own "dialect" in meaning and articulation of any given language. On Pentecost it means that the Spirit of harmony much incorporate and blend individual language users for common purpose of communities of love and justice.
Aphorism of the Day, June 8, 2019
Pentecost is the event which proclaimed that the message of Christ was able to translated into every language. Anglicans sometimes treat their Book of Common Prayer as a Common Text and such a text can become regarded as rigid and arcane when the Spirit of translation of prayer into the common language of anyone who wants to pray is denied. The public agreement upon a corporate text of prayer should not be seen in conflict with the validity of common prayer in the private words of anyone who wishes to prayer. The Spirit of God makes prayer "common."
Aphorism of the Day, June 7, 2019
Babel is bad and a curse was transformed to Babel is good and a blessing because the Gospel of Christ could be translated into every language and each person had access to the transforming Spirit of God who had been promised by Jesus. The Jesus Movement wanted to universalize Judaism in ways that was beyond the mission of Judaism for those who remained within the synagogues. By translating the message into too many foreign languages the Christian movement also accepted habits of Gentile peoples which were no longer deemed as defiled.
Aphorism of the Day, June 6, 2019
The Spirit of Pentecost is about the wisdom of how to live on the continuum between unity and diversity. To be heavy on the "unity" side can be an expression of a forced pattern of power elites and unity of fascism is a sin against the spirit. The chaos of each person doing his own thing without regard for the social and distributive consequences is also a sin against the Spirit. Christly unity is letting the wind of the Spirit play each person as the unique pipe in the organ adding to the fullness of the whole.
Aphorism of the Day, June 5, 2019
Pentecost irony: Christians are people "divided" by having a common Spirit. Divided? Divided to have diverse missions in each of the languages which people in our world speak. Many people do not have faith to believe in the Unity in difference which such a great God-Spirit can comprehend.
Aphorism of the Day, June 4, 2019
Pentecost is the dynamic on the continuum of the one and the many. From the many one; from the One, many. How does one affirm diversity while being held together with an experience of unity such that fracturing does not keep all individuals reconnecting. Spirit is the mystification known in the experience of the Team which is not spelled with an "I." Spirit is the experience of the oneness of harmony of the entire "One" orchestra. We needed oneness and diversity and learning how to balance the dynamic of the two is what Pentecost is about. Pentecost is about taking a unifying experience of Christ and translating it into endless numbers of languages.
Aphorism of the Day, June 3, 2019
For the divine to be comprehensively known, God would need to be accessible in all languages. God comes to language events differently; difference is affirmed in the event of Pentecost. Pentecost is the ultimate event of "Common" Prayer, not in making everyone pray in one sacred and liturgical language, but in the adapting of the praise of God to the common language of each person who is drawn to prayer.
Aphorism of the Day, June 2, 2019
We've heard of "money laundering," but what about "language laundering?" How can we clean up our use of language in word and deed? Jesus of Nazareth and the Ascended Christ, prayed and prays and that suggests to us that as we designate our lives to the practice of prayer, we can do some serious "language laundering," both in our speaking acts and in our body language deeds.
Aphorism of the Day, June 1, 2019
Justin Martyr, a second century apologist, with his "logos" theology could posit that Plato and others who did not know Jesus of Nazareth could be "unknowing Christians," even though they were regarded to be "pagans." If, following, John 1:1, Word is God, then being worded beings is the "default" position of humanity and probably is the most explicit reflection of God's image, if indeed, God is Word. Anyone who uses their worded life toward the full expression of love and justice in word and deed, is certainly Christly.
