A notion which strikes fear into the hearts of every fundamentalist, and has the industrio-evangelical establishment of today battening down the hatches and loading the cannons.
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I realize of course that it isn’t as simple as sending everyone off with the book in their hands, that a relationship in a community is part of the deal or should be. Relationship is essential but balancing those peer relationships with personal responsibility and responsibility to what is greater is complicated. I’m guessing the move from Catholicism to Protestantism may have been motivated to remove the need for a priest class as a mediator to the sacred. A noble cause but so long as some form of authority is retained it is hard to avoid the downside of institutional power. And then there twin threat of peer pressure and fear of owning the truth that is given one to feel resulting in conformity of representation, indicated in what you quoted, and an aversion to the mysticism of direct presentation.
I had some trouble following you there, and maybe that needs a bit more unpacking … for me anyway. Is the “what you quoted” bit in reference to the quote you included just underneath that paragraph? If so, I’m not getting the connection.
(181) How to Read the Epistles
The uncertainty, however, lies always in the intellectual region, never in the practical. What Paul cares about is plain enough to the true heart, however far from plain to the man whose desire to understand goes ahead of his obedience, who starts with the notion that Paul’s design was to teach a system, to explain instead of help to see God, a God that can be revealed only to childlike insight, never to keenest intellect.
As found in MacDonald’s Sermon: The Mirrors of the Lord [181-183]
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Thanks. I am curious what others think of this… I know that there are a lot of parables in the NT illustrating this here, but I hesitate, knowing how we can be taken in unintentionally when approaching an figure of authority–I feel that I need to protect the child with intellectual inquiry first.
Certainly, the desire to know God is a childlike one; but wise as snakes, innocent as doves, can go hand in hand.
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This reminds me of another sermon I heard a few years ago on something the pastor was calling “the obedience hypocrisy gap”–or something like that. The point was that people will continue to learn new “intellectual” things from scripture the more one studies the text throughout their lifetime. Yet, one can always glean (like a child), the basics of what one is supposed to do in obedience to the knowledge one has at the time. So, the “take home” message was don’t let your obedience lag behind your knowledge–to the extent that it does, you are living a hypocritical life as a disciple of Jesus, i.e., “the hypocrisy gap”.
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As I look back at it now a day later I admit I don’t see it either. I’m afraid I may have too many discussions going at once in different venues. I’m not sure if they are really as intertwined as I was imaging but sorry for the confusion.
I worked hard all day in the garden today starting early so I barely had time to read today’s offering. But I did enjoy the discussion.
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If one can lose their naivette about the world, but without become jaded cynics about everything, then I think that might look something like ‘wise as snakes’ but ‘innocent as doves’. There is more than just that too I’m sure.
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I was just looking back at something I posted. A couple years ago … and my only thought was: did I really write that? It was like a time capsule of sorts.
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Hope I didn’t break the thread with my lapse. Then again I think you are entitled to some rest too. If you decide not to post an excerpt on some days we’ll just have to be grateful for the many others when you have.
I think part of my lapse was looking to force a response where none was triggered. Sometimes, if the spirit isn’t involved, it is better to stand back.
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Oh … I’m here, and nothing’s broken! I just had a serious letter I was writing to somebody that I wanted to get off my chest this morning first. Next installment coming right up…
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(182) The Entrance of Christ
But we must beware of receiving this or any symbol after the flesh , beware of interpreting it in any fashion that partakes of the character of the mere physical, psychical, or spirituo-mechanical. The symbol deals with things far beyond the deepest region whence symbols can be drawn. The indwelling of Jesus in the soul of man, who shall declare! But let us note this, that the dwelling of Jesus in us is the power of the spirit of God upon us; for ‘the Lord is that spirit,’ and that Lord dwelling in us, we are changed ‘even as from the Lord the spirit.’ When we think Christ, Christ comes; when we receive his image into our spiritual mirror, he enters with it. Our thought is not cut off from his. Our open receiving thought is his door to come in. When our hearts turn to him, that is opening the door to him, that is holding up our mirror to him; then he comes in, not by our thought only, not in our idea only, but he comes himself, and of his own will–comes in as we could not take him, but as he can come…
As found in MacDonald’s Sermon: The Mirrors of the Lord
There is a way of being in the world that requires not thinking of ourselves and others too narrowly. And it is already there. It doesn’t wait for us to get things in order or to figure things out. But we don’t always inhabit that way of being. We set it aside when we view the world for how it can serve us or how we can accumulate more of it for ourselves. When we proceed in that manner we commodify the world and in the process each other and ultimately ourself as well. There are contexts which call for being strategic, but if we move into that mode too thoroughly it can corrupt our most basic nature, robbing us of a wealth of spiritual treasure more intrinsically valuable than any worldly wealth.
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(183) The Same
Thus the Lord, the spirit, becomes the soul of our souls, becomes spiritually what he always was creatively; and as our spirit informs, gives shape to our bodies, in like manner his soul informs, gives shape to our souls. In this there is nothing unnatural, nothing at conflict with our being. It is but that the deeper soul that willed and wills our souls, rises up, the infinite Life, into the Self we call I and me , but which lives immediately from him, and is his very own property and nature–unspeakably more his than ours: this deeper creative soul, working on and with his creation upon higher levels, makes the I and me more and more his, and himself more and more ours; until at length the glory of our existence flashes upon us, we face full to the sun that enlightens what it sent forth, and know ourselves alive with an infinite life, even the life of the Father; know that our existence is not the moonlight of a mere consciousness of being, but the sun-glory of a life justified by having become one with its origin, thinking and feeling with the primal Sun of life, from whom it was dropped away that it might know and bethink itself, and return to circle for ever in exultant harmony around him.
As found in MacDonald’s Sermon: The Mirrors of the Lord
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I’m struck by this part, the aim of which seems to be to differentiate between the quality of our being, which is hard to speak of usefully without distortion, with the nature of objects in the world.
Are we also objects in the world? While we can analyze aspects of our bodies in terms of function, chemical composition and so on, none of that gets at who we are or how we are as beings. This gets at the inadequacy of simple materialism and our need for more than science. But now is the time for more sleep and less knowing. Hope to get back to see what other discussion there may be.
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I’m glad you found at least part of this last one provocative or perhaps insightful, because at first glance, it looked like it might be more quintessentially MacDonaldian ‘theology concentrate’. And I’m not saying it isn’t indeed that. What I’m seeing in it though is more anticipation of where later Mystics like Rohr would go in speaking of the universal scope and implications of incarnation - Rohr extending the Christ-embeddedness outward into the cosmos near and far; but MacDonald calling attention to its innermost presences inside of us. It makes me think that contemporary mystics owe some literary debt to MacDonald, even if perhaps indirectly - or maybe have just managed to tap into some of the same prior treasures as MacDonald may have found.
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I recently watched a video of a talk given by the controversial author, alcoholic, egotist and extremely earnest searcher, the late Alan Watts who has a rather novel concept of what made the gospel The Good News and how that got twisted into something less good. I won’t just throw that out there unless you’re interested as it would no doubt need heresy trigger warnings. But I somehow doubt Rohr would bat an eyelash.
Oh - when I’ve been reading all sorts from Rohr to Anne Lamott or Nadia Bolz-Weber, – people who would squirm uncomfortably if they weren’t busy being called heretics by status-quo evangelicism, I don’t think you have much to worry about. Throw a link my way - either in here private message as you may prefer. I’ve heard of Alan Watts before, but don’t recall that I’ve ever read or viewed anything from him.
I owe the missus one more hand of rummy and then I’ll find it and include a time stamp for the part though it isn’t very long.
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The 8 minute mark is what I had in mind
Heresy triggers.
Move it to a PM if you like.