Another way to use our minds, Richard Rohr on Unknowing and Christianity

Faith & Science Conversation
65

I like a lot the spirit of your post(s), just one thing

Dei Verbum, for example, acknowledges that there are “seeds of the Word” in other religions. I’ve often used terms like Kali Yuga myself (because, frankly, it describes the modern world perfectly) despite it not belonging to the Christian tradition. But none of this means that the principle of non-contradiction can simply be thrown out the window.

Take reincarnation, for instance. It stands in direct opposition to core Christian beliefs.

First, it effectively sidelines the redemptive sacrifice of Christ, since salvation becomes something you achieve yourself over multiple lives (assuming there even is a “you” to speak of, which is already questionable in this doctrine; but we’ll get back to it).

Second, it undermines personal identity altogether. If you remember nothing of your alleged past lives, in what meaningful sense are you the same person or even the same entity in a broader way (so to speak)? At that point, we’re not talking about survival of the self, but about its practical annihilation under a different label. And the “new you” is a completely, absolutely new person who has basically nothing to do with the person(s) “you” (I’m using “you” even though it doesn’t make any sense in this context as there is no lasting “you” at all) were in previous lives. It’s basically, for the person you are now, the same as secular annihilation, the practical implications are the same, for your current identity.

It’s also telling that many atheists who aren’t strict materialists (there are some atheists who aren’t hardcore materialists even though they are very few and far between) seem far more open to reincarnation than to Christianity. It’s almost as if the idea of a lasting personal identity is what they really struggle with. Sometimes it even seems like they find it unsettling ( as though the prospect of truly encountering again the people you love were somehow undesirable. One has to wonder whether they’ve really thought through the implications of what they think, or whether they even really love someone else, because when you love someone, you simply cannot want them to disappear forever, nor can you be content with it. You might believe, as a materialist, that they will indeed cease to exist, but if you truly love them, you cannot honestly be at peace with that at all).

In short, I agree that seeds of truth can be found in different traditions, but only up to a point. Some claims are simply incompatible, and when that happens, they cannot all be true at the same time.

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66

There is plenty institutional hubris, although I don’t find it where you do.

I agree that God reaches out and always has, but in ways different from what you are suggesting.

I don’t know what part of Jesus’ message is being twisted. If the texts we have relating to Jesus are reliable, his claims about himself were exclusivist. Christians’ belief that access to God comes through Jesus alone come from Jesus’ own claims about himself.

If one seeks a spirituality beyond those texts, that’s a different matter, but Jesus really doesn’t come into the picture. He is not something one can recognize or comprehend from natural theology.

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67

Indeed. This does not imply that a person who has not outwardly converted cannot be saved; rather, it means that all who are saved are saved by Jesus and through Jesus. And the time will come when at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, in Heaven and on earth and under the earth.

68

What do you mean by this?

69

I mean a person who has explicitly converted to Christianity before the end of their lives.

In the same way as a Catholic i also believe in Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus (outside the Church there is no salvation), which means that anyone who is saved is saved through a mystical union with the Catholic Church, which is the instrument of salvation, even for people who are not explicitly part of it.

70

How would we know?

71

How would we know what?

72

I will try to get back to you and @Kendel soon but right now is a busy time in RL with taxes due soon, my wife set to get her other knee replaced even sooner and car that is waiting for parts to get repaired. (I much prefer when RL keeps a low profile in the background.)

I shouldn’t have mentioned Scripture because it isn’t central to my sense of the sacred. And it isn’t anything I have tried to acquire a grasp on.

Briefly I don’t think the excluded middle applies in these matters. To me it would be like arguing Hamlet can’t be true and meaningful because Long Day’s Journey Into Night is already. I don’t think of the sacred as revealing anything about the backstage of the psyche or cosmos. So I don’t think there is any fact of the matter which is in question. But that is just an aspect of our differing POV. I don’t worry about salvation or heaven as I’m under the impression we’re there now.

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73

My best to Lia.

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74

Sorry about that. I thought I had replied to a post in which you’d asked whether there are any laws which apply for all time. My reply “how would we know?” was in response to that. No telling how that seems to have been disconnected. Sloppy posting craft on my part regardless.

75
  • So, how would we know whether there are any laws which apply for all time?
  • AFAIK, we cannot prove with absolute certainty that any physical law holds for all time. That would require omniscience. But if something like the Second Law of Thermodynamics were not temporally invariant, the consequences would not be trivial. The arrow of time would lose grounding, causal inference would become unstable, and the predictive structure of physics would collapse. Memory, records, and physical processes would be unreliable. We do not observe that. Across laboratory systems, stellar evolution, and cosmological scales, the fundamental laws display extraordinary invariance.
  • So while we lack metaphysical certainty, we have overwhelming empirical stability. And it is precisely that stability that allows us to live without the constant expectation that tomorrow the basic structure of reality might arbitrarily reverse itself.
76

I wish Rohr would leave it out as well. His claims that he attempts to base in Scripture are fantasy or distortion. The Jesus he presents may start in Scripture, confronting the religious elite about legalism for example, but quickly becomes a slave to Rohr’s own beliefs, rather than the Jesus who said he came to fulfill the law, not abolish or change it or redefine it.

At least McGilchrist is up front about his connection to religion and religious claims.

I think this is a better way to describe your connection to sacred texts. But it eliminates the ability to make any firm truth claims based in them. They can be subjectively, personally meaningful, differently so, or not at all.

I wish Rohr would be so honest about them. Instead he makes claims with the certainty of a scholar who has excavated the culture, the background of the text, the author, etc., but can only back up his claim with “I really believe” or “My interpretation of my experience backs my claim up.” I think perspective is really important, and (often) I value understanding different, healthier, more generous ways of seeing things that I can learn from other people. But perspective is not the same as fact and shouldn’t be presented as such. Rohr makes this mistake constantly.

I understand this and wish again Rohr were so clear/honest in his own thinking and expression of it. Rohr cannot rely on a text full of exclusivist claims, including from the role-model within the text, and then rely on that text to back up Rohr’s claims that they promote his kind of spirituality (“If your religion does do for you what you need, change it,” for example).

Rohr aside, what IS “the sacred” as far as you understand it, and how are you aware of it, grasp anything about it?

77

Best regards to your wife. I’ll respond to some parts of your post lately. :slight_smile:

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78

I can’t make the quotes work now but to what you said here

Rohr cannot rely on a text full of exclusivist claims, including from the role-model within the text, and then rely on that text to back up Rohr’s claims that they promote his kind of spirituality (“If your religion does do for you what you need, change it.

I favor that tack but then I don’t think anyone is justified who reaches conclusions based only on a whole text full of exclusivist claims, even if they are long sanctioned ones.

All I can say is I believe it is real (without being some thing), dynamic (without being predictable or usable) and important for finding peace and meaning in these lives.