Could the canonical results of the Council of Nicaea be called an ideology on behalf of the Emperor to get people to just think about heavenly Persons and forget about what Jesus said in the Beatitudes, about the rich and the poor, and about what to render to Caesar and God? Orthodoxy unwittingly came to mean making sure we know metaphysical exactness about the Trinity while being free to ignore the oppressed and the poor.
Aphorism of the Day, May 30, 2026
Constantine did not want churches to disagree about him and his right to rule. He did not want the bishops to disagree on doctrine so he forced them to standardize their belief through canon law. It should not be left to irony that he did not ask the bishops to gather to devise canon laws on what to render to Caesar, or all the sayings of of Christ on behalf of the poor, or about the literal meanings of the Beatitudes. It was safer for Constantine to have them argue about the nature of the Trinity.
Aphorism of the Day, May 29, 2026
Mysticism resides in the private confidence which often is made public that I have a "mysterious" interior which is more than I can say but which floods with so much esteem the "ego" is inflated beyond words that it must melt in humility. But by the way, I have had this "interior" event. But can any snowflake say, "my uniqueness is better than yours?"
Aphorism of the Day, May 28, 2026
The present is always really a continuous "present" because we are trapped in before and after occasions with us being in the threshold between the before and after. We register the threshold occasion with language products internal and external, and they are but runes purported to signified what they are not, namely memorial past uses of language about past uses of language.
Aphorism of the Day, May 27, 2026
If the Council of Nicaea was a Emperor forced effort to get the church to agree on doctrine and they did so by trying to deal with the texts of the words of Jesus about the Godhead, and they dealt with those texts using mainly platonic categorical thinking, and if this method left apologists with the necessity to confess that we can only declare mystery, why should not other modes of thought be used to explicate the words attributed to Jesus about Father, and the Holy Spirit? The Father and I are one, and the Father is greater than I. Surely the end of discussion on reconciling these two is not over. The Trinity may be a continually deferred problem into the future.
Aphorism of the Day, May 26, 2026
What is the source for the Trinity? The texts which arose containing words of Jesus and the particularizing of the divine in a human person. By the fourth century, Trinitarians used Greek philosophical notions to explicate the divine math of one plus one plus one equals ONE. But since the source is textual, it might be more insightful to hearken back to the Heraclitus dissoi logoi whereby there is the native acknowledgment of language bearing irreconcilable contradictions of the yes and the no, because the TEXT itself is the Unity Bearer.
Aphorism of the Day, May 25, 2026
Alas, Memorial Day is observed again without humanity truly learning the lesson that "war is hell," and while we mourn and remember those individuals who died fighting for their communities, we seek to live beyond misanthropic disillusionment with humanity toward a time when self-inflicted war pain will have taught us the lesson of peace.
Aphorism of the Day, May 24, 2026
Instead of reading Pentecost as a linear account of a historical event, as a sacred wisdom story it attempts to give an insight into the healing of the "wound" of the curse of Babel even as it indicates that Diaspora Jews like Paul would be the key for a Christo-centric Judaism to make inroads into the Gentile populations because the message was "translatable" into the language and cultures of everyone.
Aphorism of the Day, May 23, 2026
Isn't it curious how most people read the Bible as what Roland Barthes dubbed as "readerly reading," or a passive consumption of one's group interpretations?" What I mean is that most people from their religious group choice read the Bible as favoring their own groups view. And so it is like nations at war praying to the same God that their side will win because our side deserve to prevail over the enemy who is praying to the same God?
Aphorism of the Day, May 22, 2026
How do we read ancient texts like the Bible being so far removed from their contextual linguistic constitution? We can do it in temporal-contextual provincialism, by needing to feel that our own current belief is superior to all others, and so we assume that the ancient text is a "rubber stamp" of legitimization of what we and our group believe. Another way might be to read with hermeneutic empathy and charity for people of the past who are significantly different in time and place and cultural knowledge and information than we are. When critical Bible scholars say that the Bible writings are "forgeries," are they speaking to the writers and editors of Scriptures or to subsequent readers who regarded the readings to be "empirically" verifiable accounts of the way things happen? Many biblical scholars confess to be former fundamentalists who "left" the faith (of fundamentalism) yet still make their living by critically studying the Scriptures, but often with the emotional hurt of having been lead astray by their ventures within fundamentalist communities. To read Scripture with charity and empathy is to try to identify with ancient contexts and the kinds of questions which they raised in their own time and their own valuing systems for whether something was "credible" for their communities in terms of its relevance. This is what I would call "hermeneutical charity" in the attempt to appreciate the logic of whatever the epistemological paradigm that prevailed in the ancient contexts. From the hermeneutic of empathy for the ancient contexts, one can then translate and find correspondences of big life questions which face us today in the logic of our own epistemological contexts. There need not be the lack of hermeneutic charity with people of the past or the implication that they were less human because they weren't smart enough to be as advanced as us to actually have the ability to blow up the entire world. The arrogance of our scholarly "progress" sometimes reeks badly.
Aphorism of the Day, May 21, 2026
Does the Trinity come to language because of the necessity of a threshold between a Bi-inity? There is Logos co-extensive with everything that is not Logos, and the Third in between the two.
Aphorism of the Day, May 20, 2026
It is hard to lose a notion of legitimization functioning as some transcendental signified even if one acknowledges that one lives within a hermeneutical circle or paradigm or seemingly flashing states of metaverses. Seemingly Aristotle implied that arche or first principles for rationality or logic are "irrational"/extra-rational, in appealing to what cannot be verified or being open to falsification. It might be better to say that we live in language as a "para-verse," that is, a co-extensive continuous naming of whatever we think is happening. But language as the "para-verse" means that we are caught in the perpetual play of deconstruction and if such a continuous process is the transcendental signified that we are caught in it is the instantiation of the continuous MORE, the not yet, the will have been future anterior having come to language.
Aphorism of the Day, May 19, 2026
The evolution of the imprinting of the inward instinctual life with the images from outside eventuated in the rise of inner linguistics to begin a naming manipulation of what is outside of a person even to agreement between namers about what is being named and thus began the rise of truth of a well-used metaphor, until it was replaced or altered with another. Creation might be better called things coming to having a name by namers.
Aphorism of the Day, May 18, 2026
The Hebrew Scriptures and New Testament are evidence of community writings exemplifying the need to "update" to take into account arising events and practices and this updating exposes contradictions due to different issues in the communities at different times. A delayed Lord's Day is one such example of adjustments in updating of community writings of what became "official" Scripture.
Aphorism of the Day, May 17, 2026
The incarnation of the divine assuming the entirety of a human being stands in contrast to the seeming unseen celestial deities as actual "physical" beings in the skies. The incarnation is the adaption of anthropocentric ways of knowing what is not human, namely, animal life, plant life, and yes, divine life. We honestly adapt what is unavoidable, namely our anthropocentric ways, because we cannot have non-human experiences.
Aphorism of the Day, May 16, 2026
To appropriate ancient texts one needs to translate through inversion, meaning the outer is the unknown magnitude of the physical world bearing the linguistically coded inner space of the perceivers. Where modern religion has gone wrong is to make the external the actual idol rather than seeing the external as but bearing the linguistic world of inner space.
Aphorism of the Day, May 15, 2026
It could be that visionary language of Scripture is written when the authors doors of perception are influenced by liminal time between REM sleep and fully awakened state, also called the hypnopompic state.
Aphorism of the Day, May 14, 2026
The major task of appropriating much of ancient text is to translate the seeming apparent outward cosmology into inward cosmology and seeing the outer as mere projection of the inward, while granting the naive realism of seeming perceptual realism which governed the quotidian of their lives according to the laws of nature. Modern cinematography is a corresponding phenomena to ancient cosmological presentations.
Aphorism of the Day, May 13, 2026
What's in the Bible in terms of meaning? The history of people reading the Bible is mainly proof of R. Barthes notion of writerly readers, meaning the readers write their meanings into the Bible from their own subjective contextual constitution, and if they can get a "quorum" it can count as communally true and orthodox meaning. This theory of writerly reading and truth by vote could have easily been disproven with every Bible reader arriving at one self evidential meaning imparted with every biblical word for every person in every translation and personal context.
Aphorism of the Day, May 12, 2026
At some point humans were able to develop language ability and become creators of their world by naming it and know it through naming. This seminal event is given an origin myth of knowing the divine as the inward user of that language who speaks things into "knowable" existence. The creation as a language event is given divine status. And John's Gospel prologue writes it this way: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word WAS GOD." The further naming of the divine instantiates the axiological function of language to use divine as a way of assigning supreme Value.
Aphorism of the Day, May 11, 2026
Language arising within the inner private realm has externalized and created or made humanly experiential the world through the naming of the same and by assuming the cementing of word with objects provide the illusion of stability. This stability is significance because it has allowed the understanding of probability needed to manipulate the objects of the world for human sustenance.
Aphorism of the Day, May 10, 2026
It is more accurate to say that we have inherited language traditions which inculcated the religious themes of the past rather than presume to know how the super-heroes of religions morphed from actual people into the utopian people we needed on which to anchored our values.
Aphorism of the Day, May 9, 2026
A person's pride or esteem may come from how one regards one's interior life. It can be regarded as an oceanic connection with everyone else's interior life as some great omni-world consciousness without being able with focused attention to be able to come to languaged thoughts or even recognized inner images. If one's interior is filled with memories of regret or shame or trauma the outward appearance of a person can belie the secret. But how can one say or imply, "My interior life is better than yours?" Such really means that my experience of my interior life is different from yours and perhaps I am better able to project a public confidence about my private interior than you. Everyone has a secret interior and living with the uniqueness of that interior is a task of one's public life.
Aphorism of the Day, May 8, 2026
Seminarians are said to lose their faith with a critical study of the Bible. Study of the Bible takes it apart to explain how and perhaps why the text functioned within the contexts of the various writers while noting that the modern context is so significantly different to insinuate that one today believes in the same way that ancient people did. The seminarian turned preacher can resort to the level of many congregants in returning to the mythical-literal mode of Bible stories without critical commentary to avoid being called a liberal agnostic or the preacher can be convinced that Eternal Word makes language itself as omni-sacramental which can lead to the rhetorical value of faith in Christly values of love and justice. By the way, pistis in Aristole meant persuasion. pistis in New Testament Greek means faith or belief, or persuasion about Christly values.
Aphorism of the Day, May 7, 2026
The human vocation includes how one articulates one's "snowflake-like" uniqueness. But uniqueness and articulation are words which are communal and therefore not unique. By unique I would mean that every person has a locked within them a sense of privacy with can never be fully exposed externally or translated into language products with public accessibility. No matter how public we become our lives are still tinged with a great private interior which exists in times and so it continues within us and is perceived or experienced differently in time which accounts for the continuous preservation of one's private interior life. What we might want to relate uniqueness to is how the private uniqueness can be articulated within the social and cultural and sub-cultural hermeneutic contexts through which one presents a violation of private uniqueness by articulating a translation of one's uniqueness within the telling social situation wherein a person seeks the kind of social affirmation associated with what one might call "self esteem." Uniqueness is personal and communal; "I matter because I know myself to be unique in the way that I have taken on language and applied to my interior private realm, but I also matter because I have also used language to translate my private interior self to a community of telling recognition for esteem and dignity amongst other people.
Aphorism of the Day, May 6, 2026
Psychotherapy works from the assumption that what becomes published is often but a lie veiling what remains unpublished from the interior secret place. In psychotherapy a therapist recognize that people cannot bear their completely published life.
Aphorism of the Day, May 5, 2026
Everyone's interior life is an individual secret until portions of it are not through being translated into language products perceivable in their external world. Even after portions are "published" there remains the private untouched unpublished greater portion of the inner self.
Aphorism of the Day, May 4, 2026
Through the Word all things have come to be. There may be a world before language, but we have to use language to designate "world before language," which means life without language is inconceivable.
Aphorism of the Day, May 3, 2026
The big elephant which is always in the room and the tacit, "it goes without saying," is that we are indeed saying. We are trapped in the language loop assume absolute identity with many "signified others" but in fact we are only within the loop of signifiers deferring continuously to other signifiers in our constant effort to affirm what is "really" there. And yes, "really" and "there" are also words in this signifying loop. To admit this is not to deny that there are very meaningful values within our language loop, values like love and justice, which we should never cease to attempt to articulate in new ways in new language situations. Because we are trapped in time with the each situation being but a minuscule, such situational word use still has valuing potential for defining and articulating new occasions of what love and justice can mean.
Aphorism of the Day, May 2, 2026
For Paul, his use of the phrase "my Gospel" seems to make his interpretation of his experience of Christ and the resulting necessary responses to it, as a very personal and individual thing, even while he seem to want others to embrace his "version" of "his" Gospel, because he was not inferior to any of the apostles. He seems to contradict this in 1 Corinthians when he chided members for being loyal to leaders rather than to Christ. What we can glean from these seeming contradictions is evidence of different kinds of Christian articulated beliefs in the pre-orthodox era of Christianity. The New Testament writings include both the conflict of Paul with "Jerusalem" Christo-centric Judaism as well as the attempt for rapproachement of Paul's Gospel with that expressed by those in the Peter and James schools of practice.
Aphorism of the Day, May 1, 2026
Imagine in antiquity the bombardment of external environments upon sentient beings when the wedding of the invisible interior with exterior world resulted in a language user with words to relate the inside with the outside. And LOGOS made the world realized by the rising language users in a new way for sentient life. One could imagine an awakening akin to Helen Keller's tutor spelling water into her hand and the water which was "unknown" was creatively known.
