That seems okay to me so long as it is understood who the junior partner is. We are like scrub nurses partnering with our better natures who do the skilled work in surgery.
Oops. Sorry, Mike. I was scrolling through this thread, trying to find what I last remembered reading and saw your question, which I had read and forgotten to answer. I just looked over my copy. There is a brief discussion about Hamann, but only to give the broadest idea of why he was important to K.
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(171) The Unknowable
As to what the life of God is to himself, we can only know that we cannot know it–even that not being absolute ignorance, for no one can see that, from its very nature, he cannot understand a thing without therein approaching that thing in a most genuine manner.
As found in MacDonald’s unspoken sermon: The Creation of Christ
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(172) Warning
… let us understand very plainly, that a being whose essence was only power would be such a negation of the divine that no righteous worship could be offered him: his service must be fear, and fear only. Such a being, even were he righteous in judgment, yet could not be God. The God himself whom we love could not be righteous were he not something deeper and better still than we generally mean by the word–but, alas, how little can language say without seeming to say something wrong! In one word, God is Love. Love is the deepest depth, the essence of his nature, at the root of all his being.
As found in MacDonald’s unspoken sermon: The Creation of Christ
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My problem is with thinking of God as a being apart when I think of Him as the catalyst which calls forth the unfolding of each being’s becoming. I don’t think what that is could at the same time be a being too. Or who/what woukd have called forth His being?
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It is a pretty common conceptualization of God - and understandably so I guess, given that the only way we can understand relationships is in a context of other sentient beings - i.e. “persons”. And so the Bible personifies God - whom Christians believe is ultimately personified for real in Jesus.
But as far as God the Creating Spirit goes … not only does personification prove inadequate, but even as a species of “beinghood” it fails. We simply don’t have any category for it.
I guess I forgot to post a new one this morning! Not sure how that happened, but will get that now.
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(173) The Two First Persons
The response to self-existent love is self-abnegating love. The refusal of himself is that in Jesus which corresponds to the creation of God.
…
When he died on the cross, he did that, in the wild weather of his outlying provinces in the torture of the body of his revelation, which he had done at home in glory and gladness.
As found in MacDonald’s unspoken sermon: The Creation of Christ
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Oh I have a pretty good idea. Sorry if I contributed to the load.
I’m agreeing with your distinction between the relatable Jesus and perpetually beyond our understanding creating spirit. Another coincidence: early this morning I got a long email from a regular Zoom participant in the weekly McGilchrist topics Sunday meeting. I sent him a link to the thread I started here and invited him to check us out and contribute any thing he’d like. I don’t know just how religious he is but there was scripture woven through that message. I haven’t heard back yet but I’ve asked if I could share it or parts of it here.
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Love moves you to focus on the happiness of the beloved which paradoxically provides the best conditions for one’s own enduring happiness.
That isn’t a paraphrase of GM’s words but it is what comes to mind as I read them.
The second excerpt didn’t spark any light in this old head.
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Actually, my last bit from GM there didn’t spark much for me either! And I uncharacteristically trimmed the excerpt down to only what Lewis chose to include because all of GM’s numerous ommitted words in between (which I usually leave in) didn’t help me out so much this time. (though, in fairness that usually means I just need to re-read it a couple times before any lightbulbs start coming on.)
So … thank you for your paraphrase on it there, Mark, because to me that was the real gem.
Will see if this morning’s offering is any better… coming right up.
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(174) The Imitation of Christ
There is no life for any man, other than the same kind that Jesus has; his disciple must live by the same absolute devotion of his will to the Father’s; then is his life one with the life of the Father.
Because we are come out of the divine nature, which chooses to be divine, we must choose to be divine, to be of God, to be one with God, loving and living as he loves and lives, and so be partakers of the divine nature, or we perish.
As found in MacDonald’s unspoken sermon: The Creation of Christ
Interesting title on today’s bit above, Mark - given what you and I have discussed. That’s what Lewis chose to label this one as (and I did include just a bit more than Lewis did.)
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You know me well, and now you have provoked a ‘godless’ sermon:
We who are alive are in a state of becoming that never ends. Every moment presents opportunities to perceive what is important and feel the tug of the sacred.
I would take a less strident stance about always holding in our minds the example of Jesus; at least, once you’ve taken it to heart; you will feel the tug of the sacred toward some opportunities or away from some choices. When that force is recognized then effort is called for. Because we do not know the mind of what knows better, one can’t plot a complete course in advance for how to live our lives and no expert exists who we should blindly follow either. We may think we know enough, but it better not to foreclose on the opportunity to take that point of view into account in each moment through the tug of the heart. The mind alone isn’t enough. When we do act preemptively, we elevate our own wisdom to a station for which it isn’t fit.
All we can do is keep in mind our role as emissary, to use IM’s metaphor, and bring our intelligence and learning to bear to better serve as we are able. But I don’t think our regard for the sacred should preoccupy our attention excessively. While taking time to recall our actual station in this life and our dependency is a good idea, it doesn’t supersede the need to attend to the well being of others - our friends and families and really anyone else making their way through this life negotiating these same challenges and opportunities. There is much more in how we live our life that pleases our master than how we are while we are self consciously feeling grateful for all that is given or even when we stand in awe of it all. But we have responsibilities in this life that go beyond following ancient guidelines or even what strike us as better modern ones.
Parents do not go on celebrating their children’s rule following past a certain age in life. That which we serve also feels our joy and wonder in the many corners of our lives which are not focused on that which we would serve. What is more also serves us, obviously, in more profound and subtle ways. It is right to be grateful but it isn’t right to ignore the injunction to care for others as there really is very little which the master needs for Himself. And there is no shame in feeling joy in life in any moment. Appreciating these lives is the greatest way we have of expressing our gratitude.
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I’m not nearly so confident as you seem to be that your sermon was Godless.
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Well I’m not either. I’m not so much conceding that point as I am conceding to those who like to throw the obvious my way that I’m likely to be creedally out of step, and it they want to call that godless - meh.
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I sincerely enjoyed that deep thought, @MarkD . Thank you!
Here’s a MacDonald quote that reminds me of it–one of my favorites of his:
“There is this difference between the growth of some human beings and that of others: in the one case it is a continuous dying, in the other a continuous resurrection. One of the latter sort comes at length to know at once whether a thing is true the moment it comes before him; one of the former class grows more and more afraid of being taken in, so afraid that he takes himself in altogether, and comes at length to believe in nothing but his dinner: to be sure of a thing is to have it between his teeth.”
― George MacDonald, The Princess and Curdie
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Thank you Randy for the excellent quote and also the link to more on Goodreads. I also liked this one:
‘I don’t know how to thank you.’
Then I will tell you. There is only one way I care for. Do better, and grow better, and be better.
This is what I think the good master wants and what an earnest emissary must seek to accomplish. It needn’t be show-offy or for status. It should be for the sake of the Other.
I’m quite sure going to war to score points for a group that shared your understanding of the sacred is not the better one needs to do, will not lead to the better that is needed and thus will not result in being very good. In fact that way leads in the opposite direction. Only love is love. War is never more than war. I can’t imagine blowing smoke up the sacred to exalt what is a thinly disguised temple to one’s own ego is at all welcome either and improves nothing.
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(175) Pain and Joy
The working out of this our salvation must be pain, and the handing of it down to them that are below must ever be in pain; but the eternal form of the will of God in and for us, is intensity of bliss.
As found in MacDonald’s unspoken sermon: The Creation of Christ
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Reading bits and pieces of MacDonald, occassionally most of, or even an entire sermon, I am really struck by the similarities between him and Kierkegaard (the bits I have read of his work as well). It’s possible, maybe likely that MacDonald read SK, but I doubt (that’s mostly a hunch) that Kierkegaard was aware of Mac Donald. I don’t know that SK knew English, and by the time SK died, GM (not General Motors as I first misread up a few posts) was only 30ish. His work would not have been translated. In fact, it still may be translated only a bit.
What I see in both, however, is a very strong influence of Romanticism. There are passages in F&T that seem to be descriptions of a character in a Romantic novel, specifically, the Knight of Infinite Resignation. In F&T I think there is evidence that SK was too self aware to have written any part of it without intent. But his mastery of the intellectual style of Romanticism that is evident throughout the book demonstrates a deep familiarity with it.
This quote from GM is similar. The focus on this dicotomy of pain and bliss, for example, is a Romantic assumption.
Interesting. At least to me. Something to explore after I tick off all those other things on my list. ; )
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9 posts were split to a new topic: Defenses and more defenses