"the church universal is best served not by attempting to write the one systematic [theology] for everyone but by distinctive theologies written in different ways from different perspectives. as such, theology represents an affirmation of god's mystery and majesty that is no more captured by one theology than by one cannonical gospel."
should divine authority reside in the canon or the community?
postmodern theology moves away from modernism and the scientific god who can only be subjectivly perceived, the dead god of nietzche, and uses methods such as deconstructive readings to see how the biblical texts relate to present day people. thus the question above. should one fear the changing or evolving conceptions of god and the place of the church, realizing that every reading of scripture, and the writings themselves, are conditoned and time, location, cultural and sexual bias? the postmodern mindset acknowledges that no one has the god's eye perspective, the deffinitive reading, on anything. so is our focus as christians to protect the tradition, the orthodoxy; to guard against change and the heresies of our fathers, or might we meet the transcendent god in our time realizing he is not bound by tie nor tradition, seeing him in our own time through our own eyes?
Sunday, July 8, 2007
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
the virtue of nothingness
from the child of sartre and de beauvoir
i stopped trying to be something, to describe myself as such and such; a conglomerate of tendencies and proclivities. you are nothing, i am not-a-thing, there is a virtue in emptiness, willful emptiness; the antithesis of consumptive personalities. to be beyond category and objectification, to exist as pure being unmediated without the multiplicity of inessential qualities.
i want to be nothing, not the absence of things, but the negation of them; embrace the emptiness instead of trying to project my being onto abstracts and objects. identity is only the relative differences of your relationships with others; you try too much to be that which your not, which you cannot be, which no one is- and then you construct your personality you feel distanced, alone.
you will never find yourself outside of yourself; in the reflections of others, in the possession of objects or the construction of exchangeable traits. you continually try to invest value into your life, under the guise of 'discovery,' because you see the burden of being viewed as valueless; you want to find your value in your being recognized, as long as someone believes in you, invests meaning into you, you will feel value, and valued. but this is an empty pursuit operating on credit without substantial reference or backing. people seek a validation for their existence, not in themselves but in others, in projects, and in ideals. no longer is there a difference between having an image of recognition and the awareness of that recognition such that we are continually trying to shape the perception of ourselves in the minds of others.
create an image of yourself to project, because, that's all you'll ever be, a picture, an apparition, the appearance of a person.
tell me who you are so that i may remember you, that is what you want isn't it, to be remembered?
distinguish yourself from the rest, an individual, that which makes you you makes you alone. congratulations.
make something of yourself, because, right now, you are nothing.
i stopped trying to be something, to describe myself as such and such; a conglomerate of tendencies and proclivities. you are nothing, i am not-a-thing, there is a virtue in emptiness, willful emptiness; the antithesis of consumptive personalities. to be beyond category and objectification, to exist as pure being unmediated without the multiplicity of inessential qualities.
i want to be nothing, not the absence of things, but the negation of them; embrace the emptiness instead of trying to project my being onto abstracts and objects. identity is only the relative differences of your relationships with others; you try too much to be that which your not, which you cannot be, which no one is- and then you construct your personality you feel distanced, alone.
you will never find yourself outside of yourself; in the reflections of others, in the possession of objects or the construction of exchangeable traits. you continually try to invest value into your life, under the guise of 'discovery,' because you see the burden of being viewed as valueless; you want to find your value in your being recognized, as long as someone believes in you, invests meaning into you, you will feel value, and valued. but this is an empty pursuit operating on credit without substantial reference or backing. people seek a validation for their existence, not in themselves but in others, in projects, and in ideals. no longer is there a difference between having an image of recognition and the awareness of that recognition such that we are continually trying to shape the perception of ourselves in the minds of others.
create an image of yourself to project, because, that's all you'll ever be, a picture, an apparition, the appearance of a person.
tell me who you are so that i may remember you, that is what you want isn't it, to be remembered?
distinguish yourself from the rest, an individual, that which makes you you makes you alone. congratulations.
make something of yourself, because, right now, you are nothing.
Monday, June 4, 2007
tragic sense of life
the traditional so-called proofs of the existence of god all refer to the god-idea, to this logical god, the god by abstraction, and hence they really prove nothing, or rather they prove nothing other than the existence of the idea of god.
and thus for the divinity of god is substituted his necessity. and in the necessity, his free will-that is to say his conscious personality-perishes.
suffering is the substance, the starting point for consciousness
a human god- that is the only type of god we are able to concieve of
for man has not deduced the divine from god, but rather he has reached god through the divine...
christianity sprang from the two great spiritual streams-the judaic and hellenic-each one of which had arrived on its account, if not at a precise deffinition of, at any rate a deffinite yearning for, another life.
and men made a god of this christ who suffered, and through him they discovered an eternal essence of a living, human god-that is, of a god who sufferes-it is only the dead, the inhuman, that does not suffer-a god who loves and thirsts for love, for pity, a god who is a person.
to believe in god is to long for his exitence and, further, it is to act as if he existed; it is to live by this longing and to make it the spring of our action. this longing or hunger for divinity begets hope, hope begets faith, and hope and faith beget charity. of thi divine longing is born our sense of beauty, or finality, or goodness.
faith, in a certain sense, creates its object. and faith in god consists in creating god; and since it is god who gives us faith in himself, it is god who is continually creating himself in us.
we wish not only to save ourselves, but to save the world from nothingness. and therefore god. such is finality as we feel it.
and thus for the divinity of god is substituted his necessity. and in the necessity, his free will-that is to say his conscious personality-perishes.
suffering is the substance, the starting point for consciousness
a human god- that is the only type of god we are able to concieve of
for man has not deduced the divine from god, but rather he has reached god through the divine...
christianity sprang from the two great spiritual streams-the judaic and hellenic-each one of which had arrived on its account, if not at a precise deffinition of, at any rate a deffinite yearning for, another life.
and men made a god of this christ who suffered, and through him they discovered an eternal essence of a living, human god-that is, of a god who sufferes-it is only the dead, the inhuman, that does not suffer-a god who loves and thirsts for love, for pity, a god who is a person.
to believe in god is to long for his exitence and, further, it is to act as if he existed; it is to live by this longing and to make it the spring of our action. this longing or hunger for divinity begets hope, hope begets faith, and hope and faith beget charity. of thi divine longing is born our sense of beauty, or finality, or goodness.
faith, in a certain sense, creates its object. and faith in god consists in creating god; and since it is god who gives us faith in himself, it is god who is continually creating himself in us.
we wish not only to save ourselves, but to save the world from nothingness. and therefore god. such is finality as we feel it.
Saturday, May 12, 2007
hammers and meaning
Someone once said that everything looks like a nail to the man holding a hammer. these days it seems more apropos to say that everything seems worth remembering to the person holding a camera, or more profound to the man who is wont to write poetry. it's always difficult to distinguish between value discovered and value fabricated. popular media teaches us to see through a melodramatic lens; music, movie and television corrupt one's sense of reality. conventional wisdom has made importance, like the rest of einstein's world, relative, and the social event replaces the meaning-void. nostalgia is what one finds comforting, safety in the unchanging and ever impressing past; we are seeing the present 'through the rear-view mirror.' it seems foolish to still have days you had when you were seventeen; i have yet to find an ideology, a person, an arbitrary goal to commit myself to. that's what adulthood, is i believe; resignation. create a goal, make a plan and hope for longevity and good credit. i think. i am still young enough to have romantic proclivities. i can never tell if something actually matters or if i just make it matter; the most vexing thought is wondering why i have the desire to assign everything degrees of final relevance. i can't help but feel that i am creating the circumstances that cause me to question so that i might have something to think about, that i seek out my problems in order to give my life complexity.
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