Sacramental Strain

NOTE: This was supposed to have been published late November and is out of chronological order ...was saved as a draft instead.

It has been very interesting for me to watch myself move through discussion of sacramental theology.  As I grew up Catholic and then went to the high school seminary to discern whether or not I was going to go on to become a Catholic priest, the Sacraments were very important to me.  Taking Communion, go to Confession, feeling to ongoing presence of the Holy Spirit years after Confirmation still resonate with me today.  Indeed, I still so reverence those Sacraments that when I go to Mass with my mother I do not go to Communion as I am no longer a member of the Church and believe differently than I once did- but I do genuflect when going into one of the pews.

I feel supremely uncomfortable with Dr. Tom's assertion that an integration of the Sacraments into contemporary Unity praxis is required.  It feels backward-oriented, derivative, unauthentic.  I think that the more profound approach to contact with God is through real change, growth and not ritualized or symbolic.

That said, however, perhaps there is a place for bringing in authentic rites of contact with the Divine.  I believe that those times should transcend previous generations'

I also like Dr. Tom's idea of using some of the old sacraments, such as communion, more often in our Unity services.  I think that if the meaning of these practices can be described in a way that is deep and expanded, a new feeling of depth, love and joy can be brought out of an ancient practice, thereby utilizing the collective energy surrounding this sacrament and merging it into modern thought and modern times.  Perhaps mixing some new sacraments with the old ones could create a more meaningful link with our past traditions and yet provide a chance to express and create new ones.  Could there be a sacramental experience surrounding modern music in the church for instance?  Could we create some modern chants in english to accompany some really amazing modern music and collectively have a sacramental experience?  Ideas like this seem to blend old and new in an honoring way allowing us to be joyful of our past and creative with our future.  I find this idea of finding new ways to create sacramental experiences in Unity an exciting and uplifting thought.

The Deontological Jesus

There is no question that Jesus was a deontologist.   As an individual who had achieved the Christ consciousness he acted and spoke through that consciousness.  The rightness or wrongness of any action is always filtered through the lens of the action itself as applied to a set of ethical duties under a deontological view.  The teleological view by contrast simply  focuses on the individual and the consequences of the actions (i.e. do the ends justify the means?)

An individual in the Christ consciousness sees others through pure compassion, always reaching out to them through an assumption of their unfoldment and evolution as a soul.  Actions and beliefs that bring about an evolutionary progress are encouraged and the opposite discouraged.  It is conformity to the set of laws of the Christ, rather than the consequences of the actions themselves that set the deontologist apart from the teleologist.

And so it is.

Predestination vs. Divine Order. Newton vs. Higgs Bosun

Do we have  free will or is everything set out as Fate?

Who makes the choice?  This is a question of agency.  A confusion enters when the term "Divine Order" is sometimes conflated and used to mean "preordained."

Do I have control over whether or not I'm late to a meeting?  It's not "predestination" divine Order.  If I start out two hours early and am going to arrive very early but there is a flat tire or a car accident, other peoples' choices have interceded.  I am the Divine in Expression and so are They.


For me God is that ceaseless, restless presence that defies presence, order, manifests the unmanifestable.  Divine Order is Mind-Idea-Expression, the creative process.

Is life governed by immutable law or does it operate freely based on probabilities and tendencies?

Both.

It is a false dichotomy to bifurcate good/bad, choice/predestination, Newton/Quantum, Immutable Law/Probability.  

Paradoxes lie at the center of reality, and it is only in the transcendence of the appearance of duality that we find God.  There is no such thing as theodicy.  Everything is God and God is in everything.

Transcendence is Choice.  We transcend "reality" through utilizing imagination.  We transcend nationality by adopting a global perspective.  We transcend individuality by realizing that we and the Other are One.  Why else would a soldier throw himself on a grenade?  We transcend difficulty by recognizing it.  We see that fundamentalism and conservatism are being transcended in favor of pluralism and inclusivity.  

Progress- be it individual or societal requires learning and growth- the essence of the metaphysics of birth-death-resurrection.

Newton is correct.  Quantum Mechanics is correct.  One does not supplant the other but enhances and deepens understanding.

OMG gimme gimme

Soteriology- Gimme what I want when I want it.

What sayeth you Anthony? My classmate Marj does a great job of summarizing the various doctrines of "salvation" at her blog Ministerial Musing. In her conclusion she opts for the Reconciliation Theory as the "one [she] is most comfortable with" and following Piaget she argues that

"Accepting Reconciliation Theory is an emotionally advanced spiritual position, as it requires the coexistence of reasonably high self-esteem and a great deal of humility - seemingly contradictory characteristics to those who do not know and accept the Truth of who they are."

I assume that the Truth of who one is is the Christ, the potential of Christ Consciousness argued by Unity theology. (Thousands of citations omitted).

One cannot help but be amused at the attempts of a universalist syncretic religious belief such as Unity to co-opt foundational principles of the tradition from which it emerged as a way defining its diffrance.  Such attempts beg the question for the necessity of the attempting to thus define oneself, for in the end all such attempts seem, well, derivative and pathetic.  I understand that subsequent generations react to and rebel from their parents as a way of progressing toward individuality, but true art creates anew and gives the universe a new model rather than simply microwaving the old stuff doesn’t it?

I know I know- these are issues that will be presented to us in our churches.  But why meet them with the same old tired out theology that never worked for us in the first place?  Why be wishy washy and try to say “Oh well sin is just ‘missing the mark’ or ‘error thinking’” instead of saying you’re thinking is not productive, try something new!?

Karl Barth and Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., 1962

I remember when I was in Catholic seminary before (this is going back 20 years so forgive any error) we studied (a Protestant) theologian named Karl Barth, whose book The Humanity of God argued for a completely separate God “out there” which man can in no way reach or know.  It is only through God’s actions (grace) of incarnation, resurrection, etc., of Jesus that man is redeemed or redeemable.  Is Barth’s somewhat radical idea that the actions of grace in the incarnation and resurrection correct that God became Man and therefore Man had entry to God?  In other words, is Christ consciousness “oneness” with God or an overarching overweening self-apotheosis by an always existentially challenged ape family descendent?  For Barth, in the incarnation humanity and divinity merge (the Unity offshoot being “Oneness.”), an explanation for which traditional theology creates the Trinity.  Unity paints a thin layer of Christian terms and doctrine to what is essentially an Eastern monistic panentheistic spirituality.  Why bother?  Marketing and Money to an already established audience?

“At-one-ment” is quite ingenious, and many of the traditional re-visions of the Fillmores et. al. are so.  Through many series of metaphorical (“metaphysical”) biblical exegesis, the old forms are transformed into “new thought.”  Bravo!

So back to Marj and Reconciliation Theory- if God was “reconciling” man to Him/It/Herself wherein God “saves” us (from what? Original sin?) because It “loves” us, then are we not simply re-creating a God in our Human image as some Divine Functional Process who Is What It Is defined only by what It Does For Me?  Yikes!  So we are the addicts in active addiction going to the dealer to get what we need when we need it.  God is not just great, God is Pimp!

Werd. 

Demythologizing JesusGodGoddessMaleFemale

Forgive the banality of this statement, but Goddesses are awesome.  Most religious schools portray a God who is androgynous and anthropopathic, a god who has emotions, feelings, sensitivities.  However I understand the Divine, if I describe God as emotional then I cannot really call it a "man."  It is equally right and wrong to see God as Male or Female.  For me,  God as "Father" or "Mother" are simply different ways of describing our relationship with that which we seek, which serves to begin to de-mythologize Jesus.  When we take out the supernatural and the politics then what are the messages trying to say?

If Jesus existed, and many scholars have made compelling cases of that fact, it appears to have been handed down that he was a man.  Duh.  So we look at the male humanity he was.  Only his masculinity has been handed down and has overpowered his feminine side.  Sadly, and once again missing the metaphorical boat, the contemporary theological trend is an over-correction of the masculine to the feminine.  For me, the best of both worlds is Jesus as the Compassionate Judge, the appropriate balance of both masculine and feminine or Humanity and Divinity.


As for the human side...I bet he had kids...c'mon now.  When he was done walking on water and feeding many with the loaves wouldn't it have been nice to go home to the goddess?  These miracles show that Jesus was power in the world, walked through it but wasn't brought down by it.  Metaphysical interpretation of these events leads to their applicability in my life- concretizing the metaphor in a literal way elides its power, reduces it to the absurd and makes a mockery of the transcendent power it is.  When we look at the human Jesus, we also see markers as to the nature of the Divine, which is why I see him as a "wayshower" to the nature of my highest good.  Professor Shepherd stated that in medieval iconography, Jesus was pictured with both a lilly and a sword- balancing both gender approaches.

Unfortunately, the metaphor becomes concrete and thus politicized into competing camps (kind of like the Copernicans and the Ptolemaics- and we know who won that game eh?)   The way we see God is shaped by the window of Jesus- if we "see" a warmongering radical then we will find that.  Paul Tillich noted that any symbol of God must be "affirmed and denied" at the same time.  I proffer this:

So the above image would be affirmed and denied in the sense that the affirmation is that Jesus stands by his beliefs and denied in that he never took up arms (right?).  Unity defines the "Trinity" as "Mind-Idea-Expression."  This is Modalism: God as Divine, as God-Idea-as-Me, and as Activity Expressed (me and the universe).  "I can see God in XYZ way" (modalism, quantum perspective= is it a particle or a wave (depends on how you look at it)) vs. "God IS this way." (organic, 3 leaf clover, pretzel, all three aspects are required). 

So, Is Unity "Trinitarian"?  Jesus, a .45 and a shotgun?   Are we saying what God is? Or are these simply ways of organizing our thinking about the divine mystery that is God?  We have borrowed some terms from Christianity to express these issues just as the Catholic church made those same choices after several centuries of debate in antiquity and made the choices concrete in the Nicene Creed.  I would agree that it is possible to believe in Jesus Christ as the Second Person of the Trinity while remaining faithful to One Power/One Presence and to the biblical witness.  BIG qualification though: I do not believe this at a literal level- these are metaphors of my deepest primordial Self.  If as Professor Shepherd suggests that Jesus "represents" each of us in the Trinity, the perfect-man idea, the "offspring of God-Mind," then I can palette the idea.  Can palette be a verb?

Each of us is Divine.  God is not "out there" somewhere- God is everywhere, in/as EVERY HUMAN. HELLLOOO.  Wake up!  God is within each of us, is us, as us, through us.  Jesus shows the way to our own divine potential.  Thanks for the Joan Osborne reminder:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CdDUJpAe98

Tongue Twisted

"When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability." (Acts 2: 1-4).

Um, this is scary stuff.  I think if that happened to me I'd be curious and maybe a little concerned.  This is the original passage upon which contemporary Pentecostals rest their claims to receiving the "gift" of glossolalia- speaking in tongues.

My first observation is that the passage says that the Apostle actually SPOKE LANGUAGE, simply different ones.  In other words if this happened to me today I'd be speaking in Russian or Japanese- languages with which I have no relationship.  Well, I guess I know "sayonara."  Anyway, even a plain reading of the text without recourse to advanced literary theory clearly states they were speaking languages.

Every review I've ever seen, which Professor Shepherd acknowledged, notes that contemporary Pentecostals, when "fallen out" make guttural sounds, gibberish, and non-linguistic pre-language.  This affords the individual an opportunity to receive the "gift" and thus complete an intricate social system of baptism that indicates the difference between an insider (called a "Saint") and an outsider (called a "Sinner").  The possession by the loa of the Vodou devotee functions in much the same way- to provide an individual a subjective way to experience god and to cement one's insider status.  

I have never experienced this form of prayer.  I am leery of the fuzzy margins of where the individual ends and God begins because of course in my tradition there is no separation of the two requiring a reunification of any kind- certainly not in a public dramatic way.  To me this type of display is a detachment of the brain from an animalistic sensory experience and is thus grounded purely in physical expression.  When the politics of initiation and social status are layered on top of that issue then the "authenticity" comes into real question.  My former Ph.D. dissertation adviser, Dr. Elaine Lawless, writes

"Specialized language serves further to mark the group to outsiders, to delineate boundaries that keep groups distinct, and to intensify group cohesion and solidarity. A special language must be close enough to the mother language to make sense to the members of the group and simple enough for the novice to pick up fairly quickly. No tome is set aside for the teaching of this specialized language, but its constant and repetitive use in the verbal messages of the group members serves to teach the newcomer what the words mean and where and how it is appropriate to employ them" ("The Special Language of Pentecostalism" in God's Peculiar People, University of Kentucky Press, 1988).

For me, too many levels of questions lead to avoidance.

Dr. Sherpherd's Questions:

1. What is “speaking in tongues”? See above.
2. Have you done it? No.
3. Do you do it now? No.
4. Would you be comfortable with it during your Sunday morning services? Absolutely not.

Spiritual vs. Religious: Another Useless Dichotomy

So much time seems to be spent in the Medieval practice of determining how many angels fit on the head of a pin as  a way of discovering the ontological nature of God.  Today there appear to be a couple of camps devoted to the nature and practice of belief in God, the traditional "Religious" track and the somewhat reactionary response to the track, the "Spiritual."

Adherents to the traditionalist system (mostly) take an approach to God that stresses structure, dogma,  social church context, and a system of belief that usually stresses God "out there" somewhere (with some small exceptions such as panentheistic religions).  This group seems rather suspicious of the historical newcomer group and its view of them can be seen here: http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2012/09/29/my-take-im-spiritual-not-religious-is-a-cop-out/

The "reactionary" camps consists of those who see themselves as practicing a spiritual perspective but who don't adhere to a traditional religious path to do so.  The reasons for not doing so are as varied as the stars in the sky.  Perhaps some fall into the laziness outlined in the blog above.  Others are emigrants fleeing whatever pain was inflicted upon them in their experiences with the larger organized structures.  Whatever.

To me the distinctions are irrelevant and both sides have things to offer.  Much of this has more to do with our obsession to label and categorize and control than it does about experiencing authentic relationships with ourselves, our deity(ies), and finding the practices that bring us to happiness, satisfaction, enlightenment.  For me that is the bottom line- what is advancing me?  What can I glean from X experience?  Religions offer history and thousands of years of experience in the nature of metaphysical ideas.  Spiritualists for lack of a better terms offer the ideas of freedom from structure and invidiual thought.  The whole thing is kind of like a mini-Reformation.  For me the truth lays in transcending both and incorporating the underlying lessons.

Pragmatic Idealism and MEMEME

     In exploring the multi-faceted arena of epistemology, Dr. Shepherd explicates a system of truth-testing he calls Pragmatic Idealism, based on his reading of Charles Fillmore and other mystical Christian thinkers.  He notes that Idealism is the belief that everything in the world has its origins in spirit, and that idealists are supremely optimistic about the nature of reality.
 
Positing a somewhat radically practical approach to an epistemology of theology and its study, Dr. Shepherd writes:

 “[William] James would never push his system this far, but could we say that true religious ideas are those which demonstrate good results in the real world?... True religious ideas are those which demonstrate good results in the real world.  Religious ideas which are demonstrated true by existential reality have inner-personal validity. You prove them true when they work for you.”

 

I won’t quibble of the use of the term “religious” although I think what may be meant is “spiritual.”  I think that spiritual principles trump religious beliefs or ideas in that they are the underpinning universal Truths that are filtered through religions.  It’s much easier to beat up on the notion of “good results” as applied through that filter- surely the priests of the Inquisition fully knew and felt that they were having “good results” by ridding the world of apostates and sinners just as radical Muslim terrorists know they are having “good results” by eliminating enemies of [their verson of] Islam.

 

 

Come on- really?  Am I misunderstanding here?  If the filtered Truth of an ideal spiritual principle is passed through a lens that is completely subjective in nature then the lens becomes the all-powerful determinant of “good results.”  If I want to hurt people I can justify it 1. Existentially- yeah it works for me and is cleansing for them; 2. Comparatively- yep my radical buddies all agree that it’s fine to hurt others to advance our philosophy; 3. Holistically- violence promotes spiritual growth by rearranging the beliefs of the afflicted to conform with my Truth; 4. Christologically- Jesus deployed violence in clearing the Temple of those pesky money changers.  I shall embark on my campaign of knocking Truth into people’s heads immediately. :)

 

Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Theology of Violence

          It’s funny how one can get so sucked in and triggered by the deliberate cognitive dissonance employed by the hand of the skillful practitioner of the Socratic method of pedagogy.  I recall while teaching at various universities that I would deliberately take the most inflammatory statements in the hopes of getting a rise from a student or two, to shake the foundations of their belief systems, to bring them into undiscovered territory where they are forced to articulate the philosophical underpinnings of some of their most deeply held beliefs.  And thus the universe kindly returned the lesson this week as I was hoisted upon my own proverbial petard.

         I was horrified in my Metaphysical Theology class when our esteemed professor, a man of great learning and intellect, trotted out the theology of one Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a theologian in WWII Germany who actively subverted the Third Reich and was even part of the failed assassinations plots against Hitler.  My professor is a Vietnam veteran who flew helicopters and served our nation as a Chaplain for decades.  From the padded seat of my bourgeois office I can only imagine the things he may have seen- like Bonhoeffer- and the impact those observations made on these men.  For Bonhoeffer at least, violence toward Hitler- and ultimately his own death at the orders of Hitler- became the “cost of discipleship” in a country where Christians tacitly acquiesced to the horrors of the Holocaust.

          I found myself repulsed by the professor’s idea that Bonhoeffer’ s ideology could be equated with the non-violence of Gandhi.  I found it took all my legal training to be able to hold those paradoxical views in mind at the same time.  I felt intuitively that one residing in Christ consciousness would not kill another divine being.  Can we imagine Jesus or Buddha advocating Hitler’s death?  In what circumstances is “holy murder” acceptable?  In class I proffered the holy violence examples of Anders Breivik, the Crusades, the Inquisition, the KKK as historically rejected philosophies of violence as a means to an end.  To this I would add the murders of abortion doctors, Hammurabi’s Code, Timothy McVeigh and extremist fundamentalist Muslim terror groups- all who advocate violence as a viable means to their respective ends.  I do not subscribe to these positions.

          Professor Shepherd asks “Should Christians concern themselves with making this world a better place or concentrate on spiritual pursuits?” as if the two practices are separate.  My answer is- both.  But, the world is not made a better place by sinking to the level of murder.  Where does one draw the line?  Is the legal status of abortion in America a "genocide" such as Hitler perpetrated that authorizes the use of deadly force?  The slippery slopes abound.  To paraphrase a cliched license plate: Who would the Christ kill?

Verbi Dei?!?

You may be wondering about the Latin texts in this blog.  "Verbi Dei" means "The Word of God."  By writing this I am not creating some sort of apotheosis and equating myself with God; however, I recognize the Divinity within myself and strive every day to give it voice.  The blog is entitled "Quaere Verum" which roughly means "To seek truth" or "Seek truth."

Theological Snapshot (Always in Progress)

I used to notice a certain kind of “feeling” after meditation when I would sit on my back porch above the garden late at night.  I could hear the sounds of the deer down by the creek in the distance, and on a clear summer night smell the pine and forest.  Today it’s more difficult for me to “enjoy” such a first person phenomenological experience as I bemusedly and ironically note my positionality while “it” all seems so harmonious and unified.  I still wonder what “it” is, the multifaceted flow of sensory experience, feelings and powers greater than myself that converge in the field of unlimited potential of those suspended moments of genuflection reductively labeled “meeting God.”

For me, I take a moment to relish in the unusual opportunity to use the first person pronoun, I AM, I I I.  OK.  Philosophically I rebel against Kantian dualism, the Cartesian dialectic, premodern simplicity, modern structuralism and even the postmodern sterility of intersubjective context.  I situate myself somewhere that includes all these epistemologies yet simultaneously rejects their absolutist arrogance.  As I gingerly step onto the stage of the Unity Licensure and Ordination process, I find myself wrestling with the ontological referents of Hasselbeckian metaphysics that reduces reality to a dichotomous universe bifurcated into Absolute/Relative realms where the God-Law Ideated me as a corporal moral agent who willingly chooses that which hits or misses the “mark,” the Highest Good- revealed merely by sitting in the Silence.  Kind of like being touched by that Sybok guy from Star Trek V and having an instant epiphany.  Neato.

My embedded theology has moved away from this kind of simplistic faith, that of the Catholic altar boy who ultimately graduated as the Valedictorian from the Jesuit-run Seminary for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles through years of academic training as a folklorist/cultural anthropologist and finally through legal training as an attorney and metaphysical training through various schools and ultimately at Unity.  All these twists and turns have helped me evolve through faith and doubt.  Simple first person phenomenology is blind to its limits and fails to take into account postmodern approaches that illuminate intersubjective contexts and cultural embeddedness of what speech-act theorist Jurgen Habermas calls the “philosophy of consciousness”- stretching all the way back to Foucault.

I know a spirituality that is the transcendence of forms in favor of a trans-essentialist, multi-contextual approach that includes whatever truth is to be had in any aspect- first person, second person, third, etc., as well as whatever perspectives about those positions can teach me.  I don’t do the question of evil, for me theodicy doesn’t exist- I assume a deep ontological connection between all experiences and anything to contrary is simple necrophilia.  I know a theology that is cognitive and experiential, of commitment and relaxation, requiring both knowledge and action.  I lightly hold an Augustinian and Unity view that assumes love is the backdrop of the play of life.  I know that any enlightenment state can be realized at any stage of development, and look for more of the same.