christiannonduality.com Blog

Discovering What You Already Know but maybe didn’t realize you knew it

1 ) What about hell?

It’s a necessary theoretical construct. But it should only be used to console people who find a relationship with God positively repugnant. We need to comfort them with the notion that God would not coerce anyone into a relationship with Her. Otherwise, for all practical purposes, forget about it.

2 ) What about religion? Is it necessary?

A religion is an axis of interpretation, an interpretive stance or axiology, around which our cosmology spins. Our cosmology is necessary to realize truth, beauty and goodness and, in that regard, it is also sufficient. Religion, then, is not necessary. One can live an abundant life without it. One can realize truth, beauty and goodness without religion. For example, many say they are spiritual but not religious; they are not being disingenuous.

3 ) What do you mean by “our” cosmology? I thought there were as many cosmologies as there were religions?

Cosmology represents the relationship between science, culture and philosophy. Science is a descriptive method that asks: What is that? Culture, an evaluative stance, asks: What is that to us? Philosophy is a normative method that asks: How do we best acquire or avoid that?

Now, humankind celebrates this cosmological reality in many diverse and beautiful ways. But this story of the cosmos and our place in it is not really up for grabs. It’s Everybody’s Story. We are stardust. We are golden. But we’re not necessarily making our way back to the garden (although that’s a rather popular interpretive stance). Our cosmological knowledge has advanced slowly but it does advance inexorably. It includes both cosmic and biological evolution, for example, and the paradigm of emergence.

4 ) How does religion fit in? If there’s no hell (for all practical purposes) and an abundant life of truth, beauty and goodness already available to us, what’s left for religion to do?

Religion looks at cosmological reality and asks: How does all of this tie-back together or re-ligate? Put more simply, it looks at life’s truth, beauty and goodness and asks: Is there, perhaps, more?

Religion, then, is our pursuit of superabundance. To the extent that life is a journey, we aspire to travel even more swiftly and with less hindrance toward truth, beauty and goodness. Religion seeks to augment these value-realizations by amplifying the risks we have  already taken in science, culture and philosophy. Religion amplifies these risks through faith, hope and love and realizes these augmented values in creed, cult and code. In creed, we articulate truth in doctrine and dogma. In cult, we cultivate beauty in liturgy, ritual and practices. In code, we preserve goodness in law and disciplines. And this new law, by the way, is love. And its justice is known as mercy. And its methods are not coercive; they’re nonviolent. (Where nonviolence is concerned, I often think of Polanyi’s tacit dimension or of how in semiotic science and Baldwinian evolution there can be a downward causation without any violation of physical causal closure. Such forms of non-energetic or formal causation can be ineluctably unobtrusive while, at the same time, utterly efficacious. This provides a great analog for the gentle, yet powerful, influence of the Spirit on all of creation, always coaxing but never coercive. If it’s any consolation to our human passions, Jesus suggests that our nonviolent responses are experienced by our detractors like the heaping of burning coals upon their heads. ) Above all, we enjoy our unitive fellowship in community. A community (koinonia) of peace or grand shalom, where we find – not perfection – but wholeness.

5 ) If everyone is, so to speak, saved vis a vis any conception of hell and all religions are about the task of aspiring to superabundance, then why all the fuss about, for example, an insidious indifferentism, a facile syncretism or false irenicism regarding different religions?

Well, we are not indifferent in that we want to give God the greatest possible glory, ad majorem Dei gloriam. So, while it is one great image to conceive of us all there together in Eternity, lighting up the firmament to our fullest capacity, fired up by the very glory of God, it might otherwise be a somewhat sobering thought to also imagine that many of us will have escaped as through a fire with our little 40 watt bulbs while folks like Mother Teresa shine forth as a blazing helios. We can believe, in my view, that every trace of human goodness, every beginning of a smile, will be eternalized. Each moment of our lives is ripe for eternalization or will be burned off as ever to be forgotten chaff.

But, far more than any fanciful contemplation of our eternal state, we are not indifferent because not all are equally able to enjoy and realize life’s truth, beauty and goodness, life’s intrinsically good and potentially abundant nature. And, yes, I affirm life’s beauty and goodness and abundance, unconditionally, very much aware of some rather significant cosmic irony, not indifferent to the immensity of human pain, the enormity of human suffering. And, while I haven’t ignored some of those French existentialists (Camus and Sartre), I have paid more attention to their Russian counterparts (Dostoevsky).

I do believe that it is when we awaken to our solidarity that compassion will ensue. So, it seems like we would want to aspire to practice such a religion as would best foster human development and growth: intellectual, affective, moral, sociopolitical and religious. We want to get religion as right as we can in order to help as many as possible to run life’s race more swiftly and with less hindrance, sharing and enjoying life’s abundance. We seek enlightenment for ourselves, even, out of compassion for our fellow wo/men who would otherwise have to suffer our unenlightened selves.

It may be too early on humankind’s journey to successfully discern which religions are best fostering such growth and conversion, but these are criteria about which we should care very deeply. We need to dialogue deeply and with great humility. I will say this: Religions that get away from Everybody’s Story and tinker wily nilly with cosmology are indeed out to lunch. Cosmology is not something one can just make up; it’s comprised of autonomous methodologies, like science and philosophy.

6 ) Where, then, does the Incarnation fit in?

Well, it is about at-ONE-ment but not, in my view (or that of Scotus and the Franciscans), a penal, substitutionary atonement. In other words, it was not occasioned by some felix culpa (happy fault) as if in response to some grand ontological rupture located in the past. Rather, it was in the divine cards from the cosmic get-go, this, God-is-with-us, Emmanuel. It has more to do with a Teilhardian-like teleological striving oriented toward the future. Most concretely, it’s all about a profound intimacy with a deeply caring Lover. It’s a dance, perichoresis.

7 ) What, then, about soteriology and eschatology?

Well, I’m with all the existentialists in recognizing that we are in a predicament of sorts. But I’m also with those who affirm a radically incarnational view, which sees us as co-creators in an unfinished universe, hence the moaning and groaning in this grand act of giving birth. I suppose I could join the theodicists and suggests that, surely, there must’ve been a better way! But I’ve finally quit beating my head against that wall just because it felt good when I stopped and have decided to just put my shoulder to the plow and plant a few seeds for the Kingdom.

Eternity is not something that happens before or after time. It is an atemporal and thoroughly NOW thing! As has been said, it’s heaven all the way to heaven, hell all the way to hell. Heavenly thoughts that are of no earthly significance will not be realized in eternity because by not being now here they’ll end up being no-where. The truth of religion is found in a soteriology that measures its success in terms of how well we are fostering an eschatological realism grounded in conversion (Lonergan’s) and compassion (leading to diakonia, service), NOW.

8 ) What about God-talk, metaphysics and such?

There is a type of God-talk that begins with cosmology. We could call that philosophical or natural theology. I am a metaphysical realist, even regarding God-concepts. Here we clarify categories, disambiguate vague concepts, frame up questions and formulate arguments. Here we affirm the reasonableness of our questions. This is not unimportant. But it is woefully insufficient for a number of reasons, like the excess of meaning we are dealing with, for example and to say the least. With Peirce, however, after forming the argument and asking the question, we then stop! We don’t pretend to have answered the questions and we don’t proceed with God-proofs via syllogistic argumentation, which Peirce considered a fetish (and I agree).

There is another type of God-talk that proceeds from within the faith. We call that a theology of nature.  Here we wax metaphorical with our analogical imaginations. All metaphors eventually collapse of course, but it is my belief that those drawn in fidelity to our cosmology are going to be the most resilient because our analogs will be better, our tautologies more taut.

Of course, there are other descriptors for God-talk, such as kataphatic and apophatic, both aspiring to increase our descriptive accuracy of God, the former through positive affirmations and the latter through negations. These categories apply to both natural theology and a theology of nature. Most God-talk is going to come from our theology of nature. We can exhaust what can be known from the perspective of natural theology in a single afternoon’s parlor sitting. The currency of natural theology is the affirmation: Good question! This does not mean, however, that the lingua franca of a theology of nature is going to therefore be: Good answer! A theology of nature traffics, instead, in iconography. It brings us to value-realizations via a more nondual, contemplative stance toward reality. The chief caveat emptor where icons are concerned is their elevation into idols. In this regard, our 21st Century religion could use a huge therapeutic  dose of ancient apophatic mysticism to ensure that our icons do not become idols.

Another good distinction between natural theology and a theology of nature is that the former is philosophical and engages our problem-solving dualistic mindset while the latter is robustly relational and nondual. Even some of the best theologies of nature, like Jack Haught’s aesthetic teleology and Joe Bracken’s divine matrix, with all of their sophisticated references to the biological and cosmological sciences, are poetic ventures, metaphorical adventures, much more akin to St. Francis’ hymns to nature than, for example, Gödel’s modal ontological argument.

9 ) What do you make of institutional religion and such approaches as involve clerical and hierarchical models?

Well, for starters, we shouldn’t confuse means and ends. And, once we’ve identified the means, we shouldn’t so quickly insist that they are the only means. The Spirit, it seems, is well capable of work-arounds?

Even the hierarchical structures I’m familiar with are conceived in a way that gives primacy to bottom-up dynamics. In other words, in theory, the top-down dynamic is a dissemination of what’s been received from below, not a de novo fabrication emanating from above. When a hierarchy, on occasion, loses this integral relationship or integrity, it is in a state of ex-communication, a reality that travels a two-way street.

10 ) What about interreligious dialogue?

We have made progress in moving from our exclusivistic ecclesiocentrisms to a more inclusivistic Christocentrism. I think our next good step is a pneumatological inclusivism, which needn’t bracket our Christology but should lead, at least, with the Spirit.

Those of us with a radically incarnational view of reality can affirm the Spirit at work in science, philosophy and culture and can recognize the truth, beauty and goodness realized on the human journey, which is pervasively graced. And we can recognize the value-realizations that have been augmented by our great religious traditions, affirming the efficacies and recognizing the inefficacies in their attempts to foster intellectual, affective, moral, sociopolitical and religious growth, development and conversion. We need to dialogue regarding what we’re getting right and what we’re getting wrong — not preoccupied with heavenly destinations, but — in order to give God the greatest possible glory and in order to compassionately console and help others to travel more swiftly and with less hindrance on life’s journey, realizing life’s deepest values and greatest goods.

Footnote: Walker Percy spoke of Kierkegaard’s On the Difference Between a Genius and an Apostle:

Like the readings that mean most to you, what it did was confirm something I suspected but that it took Søren Kierkegaard to put into words: that what the greatest geniuses in science, literature, art and philosophy utter are sentences which convey truths sub specie aeternitatis, that is to say, sentences which can be confirmed by appropriate methods and by anyone, anywhere, any time. But only the apostle can utter sentences which can be accepted on the authority of the apostle, that is , his credentials, sobriety, trustworthiness as a newsbearer. These sentences convey not knowledge sub specie aeternitatis but news.

The Art of Fiction XCVII: Walker Percy by Zoltan Abadi-Nagi/1986.

This reiterates the distinction between our cosmology as knowledge sub specie aeternitatis and our axiology as Good News.

Click on the Questions symbol above to meet Bill & Jacki Dahl, whom I “met” via Ron Cole!

Bill & Jacki Dahl

EVERYBODY has contemplative, nondual moments.
The only reason for the fuss is that too often we squander them or allow them to be taken from us.

A nondual stance toward a reality is that moment of pure raw awareness prior to any problem-solving processing. If that reality is another person, for example, if our encounter of that person places us immediately in a problem-solving mode, whether from our perspective or their’s, whether of a moral or a practical nature, then we are using our dualistic mind, which is empirical (measuring), rational (logical), practical (making use or meeting a need of either person) or moral (evaluating right and wrong, good and evil) and so on.

Sometimes this functional mode is absolutely what is called for.

On the other hand, if our encounter of that other person is sheer enjoyment of presence and wholly relational and involving verbs like trust, love, forgive and such, and if we are engaging in what is more like pure play and growing intimacy and self-forgetful ecstasy, then we are using our nondual mode.

One can think in terms of paradox, too. In our problem-solving mode, we can resolve paradox (dialectical synthesis), dissolve paradox (thru paradigm and perspectival shifts) or evade paradox, practically (for example by ignoring it).

Life’s biggest paradoxes, its cosmic ironies and deepest mysteries (like theodicy questions), it seems, do not lend themselves very readily to problem-solving resolutions, dissolutions or evasions but require, instead, what I like to call exploitation, whereby we take a tension and exploit it transformatively by maintaining the tension as a creative tension.

In a nutshell, if you read the Old Testament and make a list of all of the complaints issued by the Psalmists and questions raised in Job, or even look in the New Testament, you notice that the age-old time-honored philosophical questions regarding life’s deepest mysteries like
1) what about creation, how and when did that take place
2) suffering and why THAT? and
3) other questions put directly to Jesus —
are not answered in philosophical or scientific or empirical or rational terms.

God did not answer our night terrors from our beds with explanations and ideas.

He answered by showing up, hugging us, telling us everything will be alright. He answered in a relational way but not a problem-solving way.

He doesn’t deconstruct our boogeymans.

He holds us and sings us a lullaby. And we forget how scared and lonely we were.

The nondual is robustly RELATIONAL.

The problem is that people think religion is mostly about what is right and wrong, morally, or what we can do to earn God’s love; or religion is about how to have our practical needs met, our pocketbooks and health and prosperity Gospel garbage; or that religion answers our empirical questions about creation; or that religion shows us how to think logically to solve philosophical puzzles.

If you listen to fundamentalistic evangelists, whether Protestant or Catholic, if they are preoccupied with empirical, rational, practical and moral questions, which are NOT unimportant or irrelevant, but spend very little time on RELATIONAL questions, like growing in trust, intimacy, forgiveness and love, then they are reinforcing the dualistic mindset and human socialization processes but neglecting the nondual stance and human transformational processes.

We do not need special divine revelation to know what is true empirically, logically, rationally, practically or morally for that is all transparent to human reason (general revelation).

The value-added aspect of special divine revelation is the GOOD NEWS of Jesus that God is not the deistic watchmaker but the lover, the Daddy. That’s where the emphasis needs to be placed — on the Good News and less on the old news that anyone could figure out (like how to be good), even without Jesus.

Nondual awareness is what one does when they are being loved, being love, beloved one.

What could one possibly mean by convergence in the emerging church conversation, especially once recognizing and acknowledging that we remain, in the same instance, Anglimergent, Baptimergent, Cathlimergent, Luthermergent, Presbymergent and so on?

To the extent the conversation primarily involves a consideration of methods, practices and experiences and not, rather, belief systems, conclusions and propositions, and given the conversation’s postfoundational orientation, what emerges will not be in the form of  arguments in the strict sense. Instead, we are discovering a convergence that is more so of nonpropositional nature.

This is to say that this convergence does not articulate, for example, a new narrative arch of a distinctly descriptive, normative or speculative nature, which would be a cosmological enterprise. Rather, this convergence has an axiological trajectory, which is to say that it fosters a harmonic resonance of an evaluative, interpretive or existential nature. Interpretively, we are coming away with a deepened sense of solidarity. Evaluatively, we share a profound sense of compassion. We share, then, a great unity of mission even as we recognize our diversity of ministry and acknowledge our plurality of belief systems.

What emerges, then, is not so much a convergence of metanarratives but, instead, of meta-perspectives. It is a convergence of perspectives that conditions HOW we will first see and experience reality, so to speak, desiring the Kingdom, and not of narratives setting forth WHAT we will eventually think about reality in order to somehow argue and prove the Kingdom.

A lot of people, who remain immersed in dualistic mindsets with their problem-solving orientation to all of reality, have a difficult time evaluating the emerging church conversation. These are likely the same tweeple who are repeatedly tweeting their frustration with trying to nail jello to the wall in their coming to grips with what the emerging conversation is all about. For so many, apologetics is primarily evidential, rational and presuppositional, proceeding with empirical, logical, practical and moral reasoning. And, by all means, this approach to reality is indispensable and necessary. When it comes to life’s deepest mysteries, more ultimate concerns and most significant value-realizations, however, we must go beyond this dualistic approach and engage reality with a more nondual, contemplative stance.

So, when we speak of a convergence in the emerging conversation, we are not suggesting a novel set of concepts and categories. Neither should one look for a specific political agenda. It is not a convergence of moral reasoning, such that emergent folk will all necessarily share the same positions on one moral reality or another. Even regarding cosmological matters, we are not suggesting a convergence of views regarding such things as philosophy of mind, theological anthropology, divine interactions and so on.

A distinctly nonpropositional convergence of shared practice and shared experience, of a deepened sense of solidarity and heightened sense of compassion, will very much condition our approach to environmental & social justice, ecclesiology, worship and Jesus. Notice how these are not primarily propositional realities but are, first and foremost, relational realities. We are not first preoccupied with getting answers right as if we were mostly dealing with ideas. This convergence is not about getting the correct relationships between ideas, whether through a harmony of reasons or even intuitions. This is about realizing the right relationships between humankind and God, ourselves and one another, ourselves and nature and even our relationship to our own self.

This harmonic convergence, then, is like a symphony of many instruments, each with its own sound and timbre, all playing together in the same key, in harmony and to the rhythm of the same Drum.

This is not to deny, however, that to the extent that we are conditioned, shaped and formed by a convergence of nonpropositional influences, that it will not eventually transvalue our more propositional approaches, effecting their convergence also. It will. But that requires a great deal of patience.

I have to run. The exigencies of life press in. But I will elaborate on all of this later and hopefully in a more accessible way.

Update: Really, the best articulation of the emerging conversation trajectory from a Catholic perspective is in this video clip of Fr. Richard Rohr: Fr. Richard Rohr describes the Emerging Church Conversation

Also, here’s the latest HomeBrewed Christianity Podcast of Fr. Rohr: Get your Non-dualism on with Richard Rohr

Day 3 – continuing

Beyond socialization, we are opening ourselves up to ongoing transformation and a deep desiring of the Kingdom. We experience a deep desiring for environmental and social justice in solidarity with and compassion for humankind and our cosmos. Ever more identified with Jesus and His deep desiring of communion with the Father, we long for the coming of the Cosmic Christ. Our ecclesiology is more ecumenical and egalitarian as we go beyond institutional structures (and not necessarily without them) seeking authentic community in manifold and multiform ways, wherever two or more can gather in His Name. Our worship becomes the practice of the Presence of God as we seek an abiding relationship with Him – not Whom we possess, but – Who possesses us.

In solidarity and sharing this same deep desiring, we may otherwise differ in HOW we see justice playing out morally, practically and politically, in HOW we see the Kingdom unfolding eschatologically and metaphysically. And we can abide with these differences because of our deep humility and deep love for one another, encouraging and forgiving one another, sharing a vision THAT in the Kingdom all may be well, all will be well, all shall be well and we will know that all manner of things shall be well.

The emerging church conversation is less about positions and more about dispositions, about being disposed to a Deep Awareness, Deep Solidarity, Deep Compassion, Deep Humility, Deep Worship, Deep Justice, Deep Ecology and Deep Community. That these realities will play out in our lives we are confidently assured. How they will play out is something we explore in humility and civility with all people of goodwill. Ours is foremost a shared axiology, interpretively and evaluatively, of what we deeply desire and deeply value. We share practices that shape, form, cultivate and celebrate these desires and values. We believe that, one day, this will lead also to a shared cosmology, descriptively and normatively, consistent with the best science and best philosophy.

“Your life is shaped by the end you live for. You are made in the image of what you desire.” Thomas Merton

Below is a contribution evoked by Kevin Beck’s question re: empathy & compassion: (more…)

Below, I will employ a Strategic Plan paradigm to characterize and organize the emerging church conversation employing what might, at first, appear to be characteristically Catholic categories. In doing so, I hope to emphasize how this conversation proceeds more from a consideration of questions rather than answers, practices rather than conclusions, methods rather than systems.

While there is certainly an implicit assumption that one will take from these conversations some best practices, which will then be integrated into some otherwise disparate ecclesial systems, we hope to show how such approaches as descriptive science, normative philosophy, evaluative culture and interpretive religion can be methodologically autonomous even while, at the same time, being axiologically integral, which is to say that each method is necessary, none alone sufficient, in every human value-realization.

For example, put more plainly, how can we answer the normative question How does one best acquire or avoid that? without first answering the descriptive question What is that? much less the evaluative question What’s that to us? (I say to “us” rather than “me” in recognition of our radically social nature). And we dare not ignore our interpretive grand narratives, which, sometimes for better and sometimes for worse, contextualize all of these questions with their (often implicit, very often unconscious even) answers to the question How does all of this re-ligate or tie-back together?

Before laying out a Cathlimergent approach, I want to build a conceptual bridge to the approaches taken by many of our Protestant sisters and brothers. Dialogue about prescriptive realities is very much dependent on fair and accurate descriptive representations (avoiding unnecessary strawmen and ad hominems). When it comes to good scholarship and civil discourse, few have gone about it better than the author of Deep Church, Jim Belcher,  so I will employ his categories in our bridge-building effort.

To wit, when Jim —

prescribes Deep Truth in response to a captivity to Enlightenment rationalism he’s breaking open our category of normative philosophy;
prescribes Deep Preaching in response to ineffective preaching he’s breaking open our category of orthodoxy vis a  vis boundary establishment and defense;
prescribes Deep Evangelism in response to an overemphasis on belief before belonging he’s breaking open our category of orthodoxy vis a vis inclusivism and boundary negotiation;
prescribes Deep Worship in response to uncontextualized worship he’s breaking open our category of orthopathy;
prescribes Deep Gospel in response to a narrow view of salvation he’s breaking open our category of orthopraxy in relationship to orthodoxy;
prescribes Deep Ecclesiology in response to weak ecclesiology he’s breaking open our category of orthocommunio vis a vis church as institution and tradition;
prescribes Deep Culture in response to tribalism he’s breaking open our category of orthocommunio vis a vis church as organism, in the world, transcending boundaries to permeate and improve the temporal order by being tribal not tribalistic (cf. Rohr).

The emerging church conversation is lyrical in a sense as a pattern presents that reveals a fugue-like interplay of boundary establishment, boundary defense, boundary negotiation and boundary transcendence.

Does everyone come out singing the same lyrics even if we all seem to be humming the same melody? Of course not! But there’s a not too distant drumbeat that has us all marching, sometimes swiftly with little hindrance, often bumbling and stumbling, to the same beat and beckoning us into a banquet hall where the banner over us all is love.

To some extent, boundary establishment is largely a discursive, descriptive enterprise where orthodoxy enjoys its moment and has its say; it describes such as our essential creeds,  theological anthropology and social ontology (marriage, children, family, institutions, etc). Boundary defense is a normative enterprise where orthopraxy exerts its influence in loving and compassionate action ordered to the end of orthocommunio or authentic unity in community, where we realize our telic aim of boundary transcendence.

None of these boundary dynamics enjoy any efficacy in and of themselves, however, apart from the boundary negotiation that occurs in orthopathy, where our desires, themselves, are first shaped and formed by liturgy, whether of the mall, the marketplace or Eucharist. (I cannot more highly recommend Jamie Smith’s Desiring the Kingdom, in this regard.)

Liturgy, then, nurturing our nondual, contemplative stance, enjoys an epistemic primacy in the fugal movement of orthopathic, orthodoxic, orthopraxic and orthocommunal moments. This is to recognize that sacrament and song and psalmody and story-telling and gathering for bread-breaking came first in our tradition, our ecclesial phylogeny, so to speak, and that it remains first, even now, in each of our lives, our spiritual ontogeny, in other words, as ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny in religion as well as biology and every other emergent reality.

A question that begs regarding this exercise is if we are primarily about finding questions, exploring methods and exchanging practices, where might the theoretical rubber hit the road in next proposing concrete ecclesial changes?

Where I hope to take my questions and concerns is here:

American Catholic Council

The outline below is meant to be comprehensive but not exhaustive. In each category are sample strengths, weaknesses, threats and opportunities and sample resources. It is intended as a catalyst for constructive conversation and a guideline for dialogue, a conceptual bridge-builder or heuristic device. It is expected that you will engage this outline, perhaps even suggesting an entirely different paradigm, certainly adding different strengths, weaknesses, threats, opportunities and resources, raising new questions and concerns, breaking open new categories.

I’m a retired Bank CEO so thought, immediately, that this resembles strategic planning. A spiritual director might look and see a prayer ladder of lectio, meditatio,  operatio, contemplatio. A social media consultant might see a P2P platform or a viral meme. A conflict resolution mediator might see (Greg, what DO you see?) … What, then, do YOU see?

So, Catholics and nonCatholics, alike, please join us at Cathlimergent!

What’s Up? wussup? or WOTS up?: the Emerging Church Conversation as Strategic Planning Exercise (Risk Management)

EXTERNAL OPPORTUNITIES & THREATS

Axiological Visions as amplification of risks (through beliefs) ordered toward augmentation of value thru:

DESCRIPTIVE SCIENCE (a cosmological methodology) asking What’s that?

Threats:
Scientism

Opportunities:
Technological Advance
Dualistic, problem-solving approach

Resources:
The Cosmic Adventure: Science, Religion and the Quest for Purpose by John F. Haught

Institute on Religion in an Age of Science

Metanexus

Zygon Center for Religion and Science

EVALUATIVE CULTURE (an axiological methodology) asking What’s that to us?

Threats:
Practical Nihilism
Consumerism
Narcissism

Opportunities:
Story-telling
Music & Dramatic Arts

Resources:

Inter Mirifica, Decree On the Means of Social Communication, 1963.

Gaudium et Spes, Pastoral Constitution On the Church In the Modern World,1965.

Ad Gentes, Decree On the Mission Activity of the Church, 1965.

NORMATIVE PHILOSOPHY (a cosmological methodology) asking How do we acquire or avoid that?

Threats:
Enlightenment Rationalism – naïve realism
Radically Deconstructive Postmodernism

Opportunities:
Critical Realisms thru weak foundationalism and nonfoundational (fallibilism) & postfoundational epistemologies
Semiotic Realism

Resources:
Donald L. Gelpi, S.J.

Centre of Theology and Philosophy

INTERPRETIVE RELIGION & IDEOLOGY (an axiological methodology) asking How does all of this re-ligate or tie-back together?

Threats:
Religious Fundamentalism
Enlightenment Fundamentalism
Colonialism
Paternalism

Opportunities:
Ecumenism
Inter-religious & Inter-ideological Dialogue

Resources:
Dialogue Institute

Ecumene

David Group International

Francis X. Clooney, S.J.

Innerexplorations

Dignitatis Humanae, Declaration On Religious Freedom, 1965.

Monastic Interreligious Dialogue

INTERNAL STRENGTHS & WEAKNESSES

Religion as a further amplification of risk ordered toward the further augmentation of value thru:

ORTHODOXY & TRUTH ARTICULATED IN CREED (DOGMA) or boundary establishment

Weaknesses:
Dogmatism
Ecclesiocentric Exclusivism

Strengths:
Pneumatocentric Vision
Christocentric Inclusivism
Theocentric Inclusivism
Honest Jesus Scholarship (cf. Rohr)

Resources:
Dei Verbum, Dogmatic Constitution On Divine Revelation, 1965.

Fides et Ratio

Gravissimum Educationis, Declaration On Christian Education, 1965.

Unitatis Redintegratio, Decree on Ecumenism, 1964.

Orientalium Ecclesiarum, Decree On the Catholic Churches of the Eastern Rite,1964.

Nostra Aetate, Declaration On the Relation Of the Church to Non-Christian Religions, 1965.

ORTHOPATHY & BEAUTY CELEBRATED & CULTIVATED (CULT / RITUAL) IN LITURGY or boundary negotiation

Weaknesses:
Ritualism
Dualistic Approach
Traditionalism

Strengths:
Retrieval, Renewal, Revival of Tradition
Contemplative Stance
Nonduality

Resources:
Center for Action and Contemplation

Fors Clavigera (Jamie Smith)

Brother David Steindl-Rast

Christian Nonduality

Cynthia Bourgeault

Contemplative Outreach

Worship Blog

The Website of Unknowing

Shalomplace

Sacrosanctum concilium, Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, 1963.

ORTHOPRAXY & GOODNESS PRESERVED IN CODE (LAW) or boundary defense

Weaknesses:
Legalism

Strengths:
Social Justice

Resources:
Religion Online – Social Issues

Sojourners

Center for Action and Contemplation

ORTHOCOMMUNIO & UNITY ENJOYED IN FELLOWSHIP or boundary transcendence

Weaknesses:

Institutionalism, Heirarchicalism,Patriarchalism, Sexism

Strengths:

Magisterial Reform
Democratization
Organic Growth
Noninstitutional Vehicles

Resources:
Lumen Gentium, Dogmatic Constitution On the Church, 1964.

Christus Dominus, Decree Concerning the Pastoral Office of Bishops In the Church, 1965.

Perfectae Caritatis, Decree On Renewal of Religious Life, 1965.

Optatam Totius, Decree On Priestly Training, 1965.

Presbyterorum Ordinis, Decree On the Ministry and Life of Priests, 1965.

Apostolicam Actuositatem, Decree On the Apostolate of the Laity, 1965.

GENERAL RESOURCES

Brian D. McLaren

Commonweal

Emergent Village

Emerging Women

Per Caritatem

Phyllis Tickle

Post Christian

Radical Emergence

Transmillenial

Zoecarnate

Anglimergent

Boulder Integral

Catholica

Emerging Church Portal (international)

Phyllis Tickle

Taming the Wolf

Thomas Merton Center

Virtual Chapel

Human knowledge advances incrementally, building on what we learned in and from the past. We see how this plays out in our word usage as we add various prefixes and suffixes and come up with new words (neologisms). Three prefixes come especially to mind: 1) post-, 2) trans- and 3) meta-.

In the way I most often use these prefixes, 1) post- means after, 2) trans- means beyond or through and 3) meta- means more comprehensive. None of these prefixes necessarily also means without (which is most often indicated by the prefix a-). Not even the prefix non- necessarily means without; it primarily means we are talking about something else.

The postmodern critique remains a critical assessment of modernism. In my view, it suggests, for example, that modern methods should not be considered systems, modern practices should not be confused with conclusions and philosophical approaches should not misconstrued into schools of philosophy. It recognizes that the best methods, practices and approaches are fallible but self-subverting, self-critical, self-correcting and guided probabilistically (in other words, neither absolutely, infallibly nor apodictically). Our closures are then provisional.

Ironically and tragically, there has been a perversion of this critique from a method into a system, a practice into a conclusion, an approach into a school of thought. This tragedy, postmodernism, mimics the failed school of modernism in its over-reaching. Modernism, for its part, was guilty of epistemic hubris. Postmodernism, a tonic turned toxic, proceeds with an excessive epistemic humility, which is manifestly unwarranted.

Silliness thus abounds. Modernity gone awry with its conflation of methods into systems gave us scientism, an arrogation of science into a full-blown philosophical school, as well as fideism, a subjugation of faith via its divorce from reason. A metaphysic, misconstrued, imagines it can decouple from physics and many claim to be transrational whose approach is, in fact, arational. All manner of insidious -isms abounded as the approaches of modernity were inflated into such schools as logical positivism and radical empiricism. Religious approaches were perverted into encratism, pietism, rationalism, quietism and every variety of absolutist fundamentalism, including both sola scriptura and solum magisterium approaches of Protestantism and Roman Catholicism.

As a therapeutic critique, the postmodern perspective would have us go beyond the modern not without it. We go beyond science but not without it. Faith, narrowly conceived as an epistemic leap beyond such nonrational presuppositions as nihilism, solipsism and relativism, is an indispensable prerequisite to knowledge. More broadly conceived, faith is a super-reasonable and existential response to reality that can be considered a forced (not to choose is to choose), vital (pertains to our ultimate concerns, most urgent and insistent longings, and most deeply cherished values) and live (neither empirically measurable nor logically demonstrable but still rationally equiplausible and practically defensible) option.

Our great traditions, with their interpretive approaches to ultimate reality, and our science and philosophy, with their descriptive and normative approaches to more proximate realities, are all ordered, evaluatively,  toward human value-realizations, which can be in turn assessed for how well they institutionalize our ongoing conversion and transformation, intellectually, affectively, morally, socio-politically and religiously (what Gelpi building on Lonergan might equate with a growth in human authenticity).

What is the way forward?

If it is indeed going to be posthierarchical, in addition to being more dialogical and democratic, will it necessarily be ahierarchical? or even necessarily noninstitutional? Or will some hierarchical and institutional apparatus inevitably emerge as a necessary evil, at least where it is, so to speak, developmentally-appropriate? For that matter, if authentically post-Western, post-European and postcolonial, won’t we much more narrowly conceive the meaning of developmentally-appropriate, especially vis a vis language, practices and cultural traditions? Under any other circumstances, it positively must be postpatriarchal and postpaternalistic?

Certainly, it will be postfoundational, recognizing a plurality of methodologies and the primacy of narrative in all human knowing, but will it also acknowledge certain indispensable propositions and essential metanarratives? Certainly metaphysical and moral realisms are indispensable presuppositions?

It will affirm that science, philosophy, culture and religion are methodologically-autonomous but will it acknowledge that they are also axiologically-integral?

Will it eschew evidentialism, rationalism, presuppositionalism and existentialism in favor of a more holistic perspectivalism but without defining holism in terms of a facile moderation or simple balancing act, acknowledging that certain approaches will sometimes enjoy at least a primacy if not an autonomy? This is to ask, then, if the dual and nondual approaches to reality might better be described as the transdual, which necessarily goes beyond, but not without, our dualistic, problem-solving mind in approaching life’s most important values, primarily, from a nondual approach?

Whatever we do, let’s not be silly. Let’s avoid modernism and postmodernism as we embrace the best of the modern and postmodern, as we embrace reality, one another, ourselves and our God.

When we encounter a seemingly insoluble conundrum or deep mystery, we will not a priori know whether such a paradox might resolve dialectically (in an Hegelian-like synthesis), dissolve perspectivally (from a simple paradigm shift, changing how we approach the problem or overcoming a category error), best be maintained in a creative tension between competing aspects in a both-and manner or might present in a truly antinomial fashion (such that a reductio ad absurdum cannot be overcome without sacrificing the basic presuppositions of reason, itself).

For life’s most important questions and most pressing concerns, don’t expect easy problem resolutions and dissolutions. One best learn to nurture creative tensions and to live with absurdity. All of the great wisdom traditions are in agreement about this reality; in Christianity, it’s called the Cross. In the end, our trust in this process must go beyond our rational problem-solving and apologetics to be grounded in a relationship, which believes and hopes for the sake of love, alone, and loves for the sake of love, itself; in Christianity, this relationship is grounded in Jesus.

Note: Most of the posts on this blog deal with epistemology, an exploration of how we know what we know. And they eschew any notion of a religious epistemology over against any other epistemologies, defending a stance that says that epistemology is epistemology is epistemology. I invite you to explore both the Christian Nonduality Blog and Website and to connect with me, Radical Emergence, on Twitter.

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our symbols reveal what they conceal

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