Wonderfully written my friend, there is much to contemplate here. If my gentle pushback contributed in anyway to this erudite and thoughtful piece, then I am happy.
A couple of quick thoughts:
I fully accept that grace erupts from within at the same time as arriving from without - it has to be this way of course. I just wonder whether you make too much of the inevitability of grace arising from the particular contingencies of our life - I’m thinking of CS Lewis talk of being a reluctant convert. Did his life, his childhood, his academic pursuits, result in his certain conversion? History and contingency can work against grace just as much for it, it seems to me.
Regarding the vision of unity in diversity you seek, I wonder whether or not it is enough to posit the Christian understanding of the Trinity (with all the qualifications something like Hart’s Vedantic construal allows) as one way of underwriting this. Are there other ways? (I’m genuinely asking). Reading Philo and Ibn Arabi, albeit as a Christian, whilst of course neither writers endorse a full blown Nicean trinitarianism, the very fact of creation leads both - it seems to me anyway - to endorse something like a diversity and unity within God. For example, the latter refers to “Nafas al-Rah-mãn” the sighing of God which grounds all of creation. Henry Corbin, a scholar of Ibn Arabi writes, “For the cloud (the sigh) is the Creator, since it is the Sigh He exhales…”. If this isn’t a straining towards what is later fleshed across the earlier ecumenical councils, I’m not sure what is.
I look forward to conversing with you in person on the completion of your first term.
It's funny you should comment now. I had a moment only last night, my mind wandering from an abstruse Deleuze passage, when I realised that the Trinity was almost certainly true. It seems apparent that the only way you derive difference from unity, without falling into the Gnosticism of Boehme, Hegel, etc., is by positing that difference as an equiprimordial feature of that unity, which is obviously a complete mystery but acceptable precisely because it's a mystery to philosophy, which is limited from the first.
I don't, incidentally, think this conclusion contradicts what I'm saying here. I still hesitate to favour Bulgakov over Eckhart, simply because when the latter identifies a Gottheit behind the Trinity he's speaking to an experience of mystical unity which I find inarguable. But I also do recognise the metaphysical necessity of something like the Trinity. As such, I think you can make the case that it represent a higher metaphysical knowledge of God, but not something that can be made (as I consistently argue against here) to be 'set off' over and against other experiences of God, something that could, by its correctness, preclude other people from knowing God in their traditions. It feels, dare I say, slightly more like an epistemic or doctrinal difference rather than mystical: not that I believe in sharp distinctions there, but just something that I don't think can allow for 'exclusion', broadly speaking. Any dualism demands a higher unity, so Trinitarian and nontrinitarian monotheism cannot be set off against one another to limit our approach to God as all in all. One may be 'right', and even recommended, but this normativity cannot allow for exclusivism, I feel.
Much rich contemplation here on the religion of the future. I had not thought to describe the mystic, as you do here, as the Holy Fool, but you’re certainly right that that’s what they are.
Thank you! Yes - and then the next question is quite how you manage that type in relation to the rest of religion, which must continue to be 'sober' for the sake of practical living. I would hope that its influence could be something like a fountainhead which guides, if not dictates, the necessarily 'worldly minded' strata. And so I pine for the day that the likes of Eckhart and Porete are taken to be centrepieces in Christian religion.
It reminds me of the book "Bruchko" by Bruce Olson where he describes his experience of bringing Christianity to a remote South American tribe (the Motilones) He has to first understand their language and so by get inside their thought. He then discovers that their religion such as it is contains the sense of a deep and tragic separation from God-that God has left them. This he seizes as an opportunity to tell them the story of Jesus as God coming close to them, but crucially the story is entirely transposed into their cultural context (as Bruce prays: "Jesus, become a Motilone.")
He eventually creates a translation of the New Testament into their language with help from one of the tribe who has become his friend. They are trying to translate Jesus parable of the man who built his house upon sand, vs. On a rock. The friend is confused by this, because he says it doesn't make sense: "when you build a house you don't build it on a rock-it will fall over-you build it in sand where the poles can go deep" (they build their houses on stilts). So the parable literally becomes "build your house on a sandy land!"
The Motilones sleep in hammocks, and they have a custom of hanging one's hammock on the same rafter as someone else to show respect and reverence for that person. So belief in Jesus becomes an analogy of "Hanging my hammock from Jesus rafter."
Wonderfully written my friend, there is much to contemplate here. If my gentle pushback contributed in anyway to this erudite and thoughtful piece, then I am happy.
A couple of quick thoughts:
I fully accept that grace erupts from within at the same time as arriving from without - it has to be this way of course. I just wonder whether you make too much of the inevitability of grace arising from the particular contingencies of our life - I’m thinking of CS Lewis talk of being a reluctant convert. Did his life, his childhood, his academic pursuits, result in his certain conversion? History and contingency can work against grace just as much for it, it seems to me.
Regarding the vision of unity in diversity you seek, I wonder whether or not it is enough to posit the Christian understanding of the Trinity (with all the qualifications something like Hart’s Vedantic construal allows) as one way of underwriting this. Are there other ways? (I’m genuinely asking). Reading Philo and Ibn Arabi, albeit as a Christian, whilst of course neither writers endorse a full blown Nicean trinitarianism, the very fact of creation leads both - it seems to me anyway - to endorse something like a diversity and unity within God. For example, the latter refers to “Nafas al-Rah-mãn” the sighing of God which grounds all of creation. Henry Corbin, a scholar of Ibn Arabi writes, “For the cloud (the sigh) is the Creator, since it is the Sigh He exhales…”. If this isn’t a straining towards what is later fleshed across the earlier ecumenical councils, I’m not sure what is.
I look forward to conversing with you in person on the completion of your first term.
Peace and all good.
Hi Christian! Missing you here in Cam.
It's funny you should comment now. I had a moment only last night, my mind wandering from an abstruse Deleuze passage, when I realised that the Trinity was almost certainly true. It seems apparent that the only way you derive difference from unity, without falling into the Gnosticism of Boehme, Hegel, etc., is by positing that difference as an equiprimordial feature of that unity, which is obviously a complete mystery but acceptable precisely because it's a mystery to philosophy, which is limited from the first.
I don't, incidentally, think this conclusion contradicts what I'm saying here. I still hesitate to favour Bulgakov over Eckhart, simply because when the latter identifies a Gottheit behind the Trinity he's speaking to an experience of mystical unity which I find inarguable. But I also do recognise the metaphysical necessity of something like the Trinity. As such, I think you can make the case that it represent a higher metaphysical knowledge of God, but not something that can be made (as I consistently argue against here) to be 'set off' over and against other experiences of God, something that could, by its correctness, preclude other people from knowing God in their traditions. It feels, dare I say, slightly more like an epistemic or doctrinal difference rather than mystical: not that I believe in sharp distinctions there, but just something that I don't think can allow for 'exclusion', broadly speaking. Any dualism demands a higher unity, so Trinitarian and nontrinitarian monotheism cannot be set off against one another to limit our approach to God as all in all. One may be 'right', and even recommended, but this normativity cannot allow for exclusivism, I feel.
Best,
Sam
Much rich contemplation here on the religion of the future. I had not thought to describe the mystic, as you do here, as the Holy Fool, but you’re certainly right that that’s what they are.
Thank you! Yes - and then the next question is quite how you manage that type in relation to the rest of religion, which must continue to be 'sober' for the sake of practical living. I would hope that its influence could be something like a fountainhead which guides, if not dictates, the necessarily 'worldly minded' strata. And so I pine for the day that the likes of Eckhart and Porete are taken to be centrepieces in Christian religion.
This is so well stated.
It reminds me of the book "Bruchko" by Bruce Olson where he describes his experience of bringing Christianity to a remote South American tribe (the Motilones) He has to first understand their language and so by get inside their thought. He then discovers that their religion such as it is contains the sense of a deep and tragic separation from God-that God has left them. This he seizes as an opportunity to tell them the story of Jesus as God coming close to them, but crucially the story is entirely transposed into their cultural context (as Bruce prays: "Jesus, become a Motilone.")
He eventually creates a translation of the New Testament into their language with help from one of the tribe who has become his friend. They are trying to translate Jesus parable of the man who built his house upon sand, vs. On a rock. The friend is confused by this, because he says it doesn't make sense: "when you build a house you don't build it on a rock-it will fall over-you build it in sand where the poles can go deep" (they build their houses on stilts). So the parable literally becomes "build your house on a sandy land!"
The Motilones sleep in hammocks, and they have a custom of hanging one's hammock on the same rafter as someone else to show respect and reverence for that person. So belief in Jesus becomes an analogy of "Hanging my hammock from Jesus rafter."