In the Thursday Bible Class at St. Clement's Church here in El Paso, we've been reading one of the Books in the Old Testament. One of the pet peeves I have is to approach the Old Testament Scriptures as if we Christians were Jews--I mean devout Jews. We know that the Jewish priests of Jesus' time did the most to persecute him. They objected to His attempts to instruct the priests at the temple in His interpretation of the Jewish scriptures at His age of 12. They scolded Him for failing to observe the rules and regulations that guided the believers of His day; and they regarded His contention that there are only 2 rules basic to religion: love God and love your neighbor as yourself! Outrageous!
And, to be sure, these clerics must have rejoiced that they rid Him on the cross at Calvary.
It is with this backdrop of their treatment of our Lord that I refrain from regarding the origins of our Lord's ministry stemming from Judaism as something sacred to Christianity. Indeed, Paul had to disassociate himself from the Church of Jerusalem's tendencies to insist that Christians become "good" Jews first!
My own approach to the Old Testament writings is to see them in anticipation to the divine revelation of the New Testament, i.e., the New Covenant, where Jesus declares He leaves us with God's Comforter, the Holy Spirit. For God as the Holy Spirit attests to God's forgiveness of our shortcomings and through His Absolution imbues us with the power of God the Father, the Creator, to go forth in newness of life and determination to do what He has planned for us to do.
Let us never forget nor gloss over the fact of the hell Jesus endured lo those year of His Ministry at the hands of His religious priestly tormentors that wanted Him dead! Nevertheless, Jesus forgave them.
Tuesday, September 19, 2017
Tuesday, February 7, 2017
CD: Christianity's Religious Progress over Judaism and Islam
Sometimes, religious clerics balk at thinking that in religion, there's progress in religious belief and practice. Yet, no one today believes in the advocacy of throwing human beings as sacrifices off mountain-tops; and few parishioners today practice the burning of women at the stake. Then too, the concept of religious progress can account for the popularity among Christian believers in the efficacy of the mass or Eucharistic service as the mode to worship God.
It is in the spirit that the concept of religious progress can account for how current practices and beliefs in Christianity differ from those in either Judaism or Islam, which are, admittedly, related religions.
World Religions based on nationalism, i.e., believers belonging to a political entity they espouse
I place Judaism and Islam closer together in belief structure because both take a believer's belonging to a nation or a political entity seriously. In Judaism initially, Yahweh God was the invisible "king" of the Israelites. Through its founding leader of Yahweh worship, Moses led the children of Israel out of Egypt into God's promised land--a land flowing of milk and honey. Then prophets after Moses' leadership, became conduits of a dialogue with His people, the Jews. With the coming of the prophet Samuel, kings were crowned as the kingdom became divided into two, Israel and Judea. Nevertheless, the original covenant between Yahweh and the Jewish people (embodied in the Ten Commandments given to Moses) was maintained to proclaim the Jews as the people of Yahweh-God. That tradition continues to this very day through the variants of Judaism, e.g., Orthodox; Conservative and Reformed.
It is interesting to note that although Muhammad, knew of Jesus and the Christian faith, he leaned toward the structure of Judaism for understanding the ways of God, whom he called Allah. He himself became a warlord, conquering the whole of the Arabian Peninsula. God revealed Himself in revelations and direct encounters; and Muhammad became a conduit by which the Koran, the Holy Scriptures, was to be written down, even memorized.
As in Judaism, in Islam, God's kingdom is identified with temporal nation(s) of a time and a place; and religious believers are known as those who cherish a divine Scriptures--in Islam, the Koran and in Judaism, the Old Testament that incorporates the Pentateuch supposedly stemming from the time of Moses. Traditionally, the political entity in Islam was the Caliphate and its head was a Caliph. But in modern times, the several Muslim nations simply announce their allegiance to Islam and retain an independent political structure from the Islamic.
The "Advance in religion" made by Christianity: personal relation to God, The Creator
The Old Testament Book of Genesis recounts how God, The Creator, made and sustains the universe.
It takes the entire New Testament to explain how God, through the works of His Son Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit upon which we Christians rely to accomplish God's plan for our lives. For he wants us to lead a happy life in His care henceforth.
It is the essence of Christianity that we can call upon the Creator of the Universe to provide us the power sufficiently adequate to sustain us through the Holy Spirit's ever-constant infusion into our being. Central to this understanding, we must all call upon the name of the Lord. The service said daily is the Mass or Eucharist in which we declare our shortcomings and inadequacies as descendants of Adam and Eve to a life of sin, pursuing worldly goods and material "things," forsaking our spiritual, fundamental nature. Nevertheless, Paul, in his epistles, urges us to prefer to do and say those things that seek the good for our fellow human beings as well as ourselves--to give up our tendencies toward selfishness and a debased yielding for self-gratification at the expense of doing things that benefit the community of believers to which we have become enjoined into the Kingdom of God.
The latter notion--the kingdom of God--is not an earthly political reality but a spiritual communion shared among those who have come to know and believe in Jesus as our personal guide to bring about a happy state in ourselves (as prayerful members in the mystical realm of religious practitioners) and a dedication to seeking peace in our world of brothers and sisters.
Rather than abiding by a host of rules and regulations, Christians ask God to provide us the strength to live up to our capacities to become a unique ideal of God's handiwork in the world. We seek His guidance to come know ourselves as creatures molded by God Himself to live for a time and place for His and our neighbors' and our own self-delight. For it is with His image and His nature He has sent us into the world insitu.
It is in the spirit that the concept of religious progress can account for how current practices and beliefs in Christianity differ from those in either Judaism or Islam, which are, admittedly, related religions.
World Religions based on nationalism, i.e., believers belonging to a political entity they espouse
I place Judaism and Islam closer together in belief structure because both take a believer's belonging to a nation or a political entity seriously. In Judaism initially, Yahweh God was the invisible "king" of the Israelites. Through its founding leader of Yahweh worship, Moses led the children of Israel out of Egypt into God's promised land--a land flowing of milk and honey. Then prophets after Moses' leadership, became conduits of a dialogue with His people, the Jews. With the coming of the prophet Samuel, kings were crowned as the kingdom became divided into two, Israel and Judea. Nevertheless, the original covenant between Yahweh and the Jewish people (embodied in the Ten Commandments given to Moses) was maintained to proclaim the Jews as the people of Yahweh-God. That tradition continues to this very day through the variants of Judaism, e.g., Orthodox; Conservative and Reformed.
It is interesting to note that although Muhammad, knew of Jesus and the Christian faith, he leaned toward the structure of Judaism for understanding the ways of God, whom he called Allah. He himself became a warlord, conquering the whole of the Arabian Peninsula. God revealed Himself in revelations and direct encounters; and Muhammad became a conduit by which the Koran, the Holy Scriptures, was to be written down, even memorized.
As in Judaism, in Islam, God's kingdom is identified with temporal nation(s) of a time and a place; and religious believers are known as those who cherish a divine Scriptures--in Islam, the Koran and in Judaism, the Old Testament that incorporates the Pentateuch supposedly stemming from the time of Moses. Traditionally, the political entity in Islam was the Caliphate and its head was a Caliph. But in modern times, the several Muslim nations simply announce their allegiance to Islam and retain an independent political structure from the Islamic.
The "Advance in religion" made by Christianity: personal relation to God, The Creator
The Old Testament Book of Genesis recounts how God, The Creator, made and sustains the universe.
It takes the entire New Testament to explain how God, through the works of His Son Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit upon which we Christians rely to accomplish God's plan for our lives. For he wants us to lead a happy life in His care henceforth.
It is the essence of Christianity that we can call upon the Creator of the Universe to provide us the power sufficiently adequate to sustain us through the Holy Spirit's ever-constant infusion into our being. Central to this understanding, we must all call upon the name of the Lord. The service said daily is the Mass or Eucharist in which we declare our shortcomings and inadequacies as descendants of Adam and Eve to a life of sin, pursuing worldly goods and material "things," forsaking our spiritual, fundamental nature. Nevertheless, Paul, in his epistles, urges us to prefer to do and say those things that seek the good for our fellow human beings as well as ourselves--to give up our tendencies toward selfishness and a debased yielding for self-gratification at the expense of doing things that benefit the community of believers to which we have become enjoined into the Kingdom of God.
The latter notion--the kingdom of God--is not an earthly political reality but a spiritual communion shared among those who have come to know and believe in Jesus as our personal guide to bring about a happy state in ourselves (as prayerful members in the mystical realm of religious practitioners) and a dedication to seeking peace in our world of brothers and sisters.
Rather than abiding by a host of rules and regulations, Christians ask God to provide us the strength to live up to our capacities to become a unique ideal of God's handiwork in the world. We seek His guidance to come know ourselves as creatures molded by God Himself to live for a time and place for His and our neighbors' and our own self-delight. For it is with His image and His nature He has sent us into the world insitu.
Monday, July 11, 2016
ID: Walker's Study of the Koran-1
It has been emphasized in the two classes I've attended of the study of Koran with John Walker, our discussion leader, that we are to use Muhammed's life as our exemplar, according to Islam doctrine.
I raised the point that we cannot do so, since we live in the Twenty-Second Century A.D. and Muhammed lived centuries ago. The fiction that one can essentially carry out the habits and routines of a person living in another age is preposterous, not worthy of intellectual discussion.
In Christianity, we are given the exhortation from Jesus to take up our cross and follow Him. But this edict is not to be taken literally; and no Christian thinks so, it would seem.
I raised the point that we cannot do so, since we live in the Twenty-Second Century A.D. and Muhammed lived centuries ago. The fiction that one can essentially carry out the habits and routines of a person living in another age is preposterous, not worthy of intellectual discussion.
In Christianity, we are given the exhortation from Jesus to take up our cross and follow Him. But this edict is not to be taken literally; and no Christian thinks so, it would seem.
CD at St. Clement's: Fear to be bold and courageous for God
Father Rick on the staff delivered the sermon 7/10/16. He claimed that Christians must be bold and fearless to act according to God's Will for them, even as the Good Samaritan did the unusual thing of stopping to help someone in distress.
The notion that this act of the Good Samaritan, helping one in urgent need, requires reaching out to another person one doesn't know--an act of love and kindness. It implies abandoning one's ordinary routines in life to make this act realized. What courage! (as Paul Tillich, American Theologian, would contend.)
The notion that this act of the Good Samaritan, helping one in urgent need, requires reaching out to another person one doesn't know--an act of love and kindness. It implies abandoning one's ordinary routines in life to make this act realized. What courage! (as Paul Tillich, American Theologian, would contend.)
CD at St. Clement's: The Love of the Disciples for Jesus
During the Anchor Club meeting this past Sunday, I theorized that the disciples of Jesus must have been hugely discouraged with the death of their leader at the cross. But wonder of wonder, it was Paul who converted to Christianity on the road to Damascus who came upon the scene to encourage them to carry on. For Peter, the leader of the Christian Church in Jerusalem, Paul's encouragement included financial gifts to support the church there. We think of the disciples as the backdrop of Jesus' ministry, since the Gospels do not relate their real function as ministers to Jesus, to encourage him to do bold and wondrous acts on behalf of His Father. Nevertheless, they supported, i.e., did what they could to help, Jesus carry out his mission.
Wednesday, May 11, 2016
Christian Theology of Peace & Well-Being
This is a new Christian philosophy-theology, taking its foundations in German philosophy of the 19th Century, originating in the writings of Professor F. Hegel and in English philosophy of the 20th Century, through Alfred North Whitehead's process philosophy.
There are 3 points or premises about which this Christian theology is formed: its Scriptural foundations, its cosmological underpinnings as revealed through history; and its development in a personal identity of each Christian believer.
I. Scriptural Foundation
The underlining metaphysical premise of this theology is that the world's Prime Mover is love. This love is the principle of attraction by which all things--stars, planets, and even persons--are bound together through the creative, physical force of love.
We are told in John 3:16 that "God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son..." It is through Jesus that we become members of the mystical Kingdom Of God, bestowed with the gift of eternal life. Truly, in the Kingdom we exist forever more.
The keys to this kingdom, the New Testament claims, is just two rules or commandments believers are committed to follow. These are exemplified in the kind of love that binds us in holy fellowship: (1) love God as the Creative force pervasive in the universe; and (2) love each other and other beings in Creation as one loves oneself. In loving oneself, man comes to know himself as a creature of God's creation; and from that love is expressed one's place in God's plan for one's life.
II. Manifestations of our love for God
Because we are members of the Kingdom of God in which the love of God is a pervasive force, we strive to effectuate love in our dealings with one another and with other entities in God's universe. Meaning, we seek to express that love in what we do and say.
For instance, when dealing with others, we strive to do the loving thing. As cited in the Scriptures, Jesus sought to meet the spiritual and physical needs of His followers. When the crowd needed food,or drink, He worked miracles to produce the food. That presupposes His empathizing with His people in order to feel their desires. Similarly, a Christian believer must display an attitude of concern for others so as to relate to their situation. He must ask the ever-present question "How can I express God's love in my dealings with another?" If, for instance, he determines that his brother is in need of a job, can he find something the brother can do for him, if only on a part-time basis? Or could he ask of his friends whether they know of anybody who's hiring a jack-of-all-trades person?
Indeed, it is the hallmark of Christian peoples to extend to the poor and helpless physical and mental relief. This tendency in evidence since the days of the Early Church.
But this desire to express the love of God in our daily lives is manifest in the way we look upon the world in general. As believers in the God who so loved the world that He gave His son, we go out of our way to find the paths of love open to us to preserve God's creations, including maintaining an environment conducive for mankind to live and prosper in. We want to know the bounds of God's love in His Creation and so wander to foreign lands and alien worlds. The result of our striving to express God's love is new knowledge by which we gain greater control of our environment.
IIa. The Historical Record of our Journeys to express the love of God through our interactions
It was the great German philosopher Hegel of the 19th Century who proclaimed the epochs of history as Thesis, Antithesis, and Synthesis. These allude to the times in which man strives to reach historical pinnacles of human achievement in the world, met with resistance by those counteracting a purpose or aim, thereupon resulting in a period of chaos and strife--necessarily followed by a period of reconciliation of these two antithetic historical forces in a period of Synthesis (that has lasting duration). In this way, God's will becomes the world's destiny.
IIb. Fundamental affirmation of Christianity: Our expressing God's love through what we do and strive to do produces world peace and harmony among all peoples
The ultimate aim of world and universal order is achieved by striving to express God's love in all that we do. This is the theology of peace that passeth all understanding!
III. Personal Well-being
Each of us must live with oneself. That is, we must come face to face with who we are in contradistinction with who we wish we were or who we desire to be!
IIIa. The question of self-identity. Jesus would ask His disciples: 'Who do they (i.e., the crowd) say that I am?' And He received back the labels--"teacher," "rabbi," etc., but never "The Christ!" It would take the event of Jesus' crucifixion to attain that appellation from those who knew Him.
So too, each one of us is in search of hearing the identity from those around us that is what we want to be known as: "a good father," "a sharp lawyer," and so on.
Note that Jesus told His disciples the identity each of them would become, namely, fishermen of mankind. It was each's identity as members of the Kingdom of God, since each would live up to His calling.
IIIb. As members of the Kingdom of God, each should strive to maintain a balance between the emotional highs and lows, an equilibrium that enables him to tackle life's stresses and achievements equally well, Indeed, Jesus cautioned those who followed Him, to neither delight that He ranks among the spiritual greats, e.g., Moses, nor to become depressed over the death of a dear friend. Simply, he urges, accept today's encounters and remain prepared to cope with whatever befall in the future. This emotional state of equilibrium is known in Greek Philosophy as the Doctrine of the Mean.
IIIc. Withal, the believer who does what should earn him the true self-identity for which he seeks knows with certainty already that his spiritual journeys through life merit him God's blessing; and so he declares with confidence: "it is well with my soul."
There are 3 points or premises about which this Christian theology is formed: its Scriptural foundations, its cosmological underpinnings as revealed through history; and its development in a personal identity of each Christian believer.
I. Scriptural Foundation
The underlining metaphysical premise of this theology is that the world's Prime Mover is love. This love is the principle of attraction by which all things--stars, planets, and even persons--are bound together through the creative, physical force of love.
We are told in John 3:16 that "God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son..." It is through Jesus that we become members of the mystical Kingdom Of God, bestowed with the gift of eternal life. Truly, in the Kingdom we exist forever more.
The keys to this kingdom, the New Testament claims, is just two rules or commandments believers are committed to follow. These are exemplified in the kind of love that binds us in holy fellowship: (1) love God as the Creative force pervasive in the universe; and (2) love each other and other beings in Creation as one loves oneself. In loving oneself, man comes to know himself as a creature of God's creation; and from that love is expressed one's place in God's plan for one's life.
II. Manifestations of our love for God
Because we are members of the Kingdom of God in which the love of God is a pervasive force, we strive to effectuate love in our dealings with one another and with other entities in God's universe. Meaning, we seek to express that love in what we do and say.
For instance, when dealing with others, we strive to do the loving thing. As cited in the Scriptures, Jesus sought to meet the spiritual and physical needs of His followers. When the crowd needed food,or drink, He worked miracles to produce the food. That presupposes His empathizing with His people in order to feel their desires. Similarly, a Christian believer must display an attitude of concern for others so as to relate to their situation. He must ask the ever-present question "How can I express God's love in my dealings with another?" If, for instance, he determines that his brother is in need of a job, can he find something the brother can do for him, if only on a part-time basis? Or could he ask of his friends whether they know of anybody who's hiring a jack-of-all-trades person?
Indeed, it is the hallmark of Christian peoples to extend to the poor and helpless physical and mental relief. This tendency in evidence since the days of the Early Church.
But this desire to express the love of God in our daily lives is manifest in the way we look upon the world in general. As believers in the God who so loved the world that He gave His son, we go out of our way to find the paths of love open to us to preserve God's creations, including maintaining an environment conducive for mankind to live and prosper in. We want to know the bounds of God's love in His Creation and so wander to foreign lands and alien worlds. The result of our striving to express God's love is new knowledge by which we gain greater control of our environment.
IIa. The Historical Record of our Journeys to express the love of God through our interactions
It was the great German philosopher Hegel of the 19th Century who proclaimed the epochs of history as Thesis, Antithesis, and Synthesis. These allude to the times in which man strives to reach historical pinnacles of human achievement in the world, met with resistance by those counteracting a purpose or aim, thereupon resulting in a period of chaos and strife--necessarily followed by a period of reconciliation of these two antithetic historical forces in a period of Synthesis (that has lasting duration). In this way, God's will becomes the world's destiny.
IIb. Fundamental affirmation of Christianity: Our expressing God's love through what we do and strive to do produces world peace and harmony among all peoples
The ultimate aim of world and universal order is achieved by striving to express God's love in all that we do. This is the theology of peace that passeth all understanding!
III. Personal Well-being
Each of us must live with oneself. That is, we must come face to face with who we are in contradistinction with who we wish we were or who we desire to be!
IIIa. The question of self-identity. Jesus would ask His disciples: 'Who do they (i.e., the crowd) say that I am?' And He received back the labels--"teacher," "rabbi," etc., but never "The Christ!" It would take the event of Jesus' crucifixion to attain that appellation from those who knew Him.
So too, each one of us is in search of hearing the identity from those around us that is what we want to be known as: "a good father," "a sharp lawyer," and so on.
Note that Jesus told His disciples the identity each of them would become, namely, fishermen of mankind. It was each's identity as members of the Kingdom of God, since each would live up to His calling.
IIIb. As members of the Kingdom of God, each should strive to maintain a balance between the emotional highs and lows, an equilibrium that enables him to tackle life's stresses and achievements equally well, Indeed, Jesus cautioned those who followed Him, to neither delight that He ranks among the spiritual greats, e.g., Moses, nor to become depressed over the death of a dear friend. Simply, he urges, accept today's encounters and remain prepared to cope with whatever befall in the future. This emotional state of equilibrium is known in Greek Philosophy as the Doctrine of the Mean.
IIIc. Withal, the believer who does what should earn him the true self-identity for which he seeks knows with certainty already that his spiritual journeys through life merit him God's blessing; and so he declares with confidence: "it is well with my soul."
Sunday, September 13, 2015
Linguistic Analysis; and Concepts and Meanings
When I was in graduate school, New York University, 1960-69, the philosophical technique in hot vogue was Linguistic Analysis. Though NYU's philosophy department fundamentally favored the 1930's American espousal of pragmatism, it nonetheless courted the 'forefront' philosophies, which in the 1960s and 1970s, was Linguistic Analysis, as espoused by Ludwig Wittgenstein, many years prior. The thrust of the movement was to dissect meanings of terms appearing in contexts of discourse as functional items descriptive of situations either real or imagined.
But where they came short was in highlighting the concept that has several meanings in situ. In essence, they were featuring logical atoms but failed to pay close attention to the molecular structure that the concept provides. Hence, they bogged down over miniscule discussions about the meaning of terms or concepts, when in fact while there are conventional meanings there are also stipulative or nominal meanings a speaker can designate for use in a particular context. Wittgenstein was taken with the contextual use of terms, i.e., the power of the concept to take on a particular meaning to represent some action or thing. Its adjectival power, so to speak in coming to know what we're talking about.
For me, the power of logic is in the concept, even as Aristotle argued centuries ago. Sentential logic merely describes the properties of a situation--yes, in situ.
But where they came short was in highlighting the concept that has several meanings in situ. In essence, they were featuring logical atoms but failed to pay close attention to the molecular structure that the concept provides. Hence, they bogged down over miniscule discussions about the meaning of terms or concepts, when in fact while there are conventional meanings there are also stipulative or nominal meanings a speaker can designate for use in a particular context. Wittgenstein was taken with the contextual use of terms, i.e., the power of the concept to take on a particular meaning to represent some action or thing. Its adjectival power, so to speak in coming to know what we're talking about.
For me, the power of logic is in the concept, even as Aristotle argued centuries ago. Sentential logic merely describes the properties of a situation--yes, in situ.
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