I used to think of the proverb “where words are many sin is not absent” as a simple rebuke to those of us who like to hear ourselves talk (or write) - and on we ramble, often saying things that would have our more mature selves cringing some time later after the Spirit has done some more work on us.
And it probably still is that. But I can’t help but think Aquinas shows us a deeper recognition of it, maybe more akin to the Socratic traditions you also allude to - that our wisdom only really begins when we finally realize we know nothing at all. And paradoxically then, the speaker shuts up just when what they have to say may have gotten even more interesting yet. Maybe there is a paradox of wisdom, and those of us that wish to share it, but are always obliged to partake of it ourselves first.
I read about Psalm 82. According to one theologian, a professor of Old Testament, Psalm 82 includes old theology from Jerusalem area. At that time, other nations were serving other gods and apparently the Hebrews thought that if a god is worshiped, it somehow exists. Jahve was portrayed as being above all the gods of nations. After the exile, theology had changed a bit and the gods of other nations were viewed more like angels.
A god served by other nations could be destroyed by destroying all places where it was worshiped and forgeting its’ name. Maybe verse 7 refers to such death. Otherwise, verse 7 seems to point to mortal beings. Angels are not mortal, so it seems to point to something else than angels or comparable spiritual entities (‘gods’).
Edit:
Jesus made a comment that may help the interpretation. John 10:35-36: “If he called them gods, to whom the word of God came (and the scripture cannot be nullified), are you saying of him whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world, ‘You are blaspheming’, because I said, ‘I am the son of God’?”
This suggests that Psalm 82 is speaking about those to whom the word of God came.
I think we have not fully appreciated, and neither did Aquinas, the painful truth of an eternal universe. And yet, it is all the more meaningful that we believe by faith as it’s written in the Bible our universe was created in time.
This quote keeps coming to mind,
“The second and more striking conclusion is that there is no center of this expansion, even though we seem to be at the center.”
John C. Mather
Language must play a role in every wisdom tradition and I suspect that knowing how far words may go and when other means are needed is an indication of wisdom. As it turns out this longish excerpt from my reading in the same book last night spoke beautifully to this point.
In the rabbinic tradition, two kinds of teaching are distinguished, one literal and legalistic, the other metaphorical and imaginative. These are referred to as halakhah and aggadah, respectively. According to the Midrash, a body of early rabbinic commentary on scripture, when God promised his people corn and wine, the corn was halakhah, the wine aggadah.
Abraham Heschel has this to say of these concepts, in a passage I quote at length, because the correspondences with the phenomenology of the two hemispheres, as described in this book, are so many and so striking:
Halakhah represents the strength to shape one’s life according to a fixed pattern; it is a form-giving force. Aggadah is the expression of man’s ceaseless striving that often defies all limitations. Halakhah is the rationalisation and schematisation of living; it defines, specifies, sets measure and limit, placing life into an exact system. Aggadah deals with man’s ineffable relations to God, to other men, and to the world. Halakhah deals with details, with each commandment separately; aggadah with the whole of life, with the totality of religious life. Halakhah deals with the law; aggadah with the meaning of the law. Halakhah deals with subjects that can be expressed literally; aggadah introduces us to a realm that lies beyond the range of expression. Halakhah teaches us how to perform common acts; aggadah tells us how to participate in the eternal drama. Halakhah gives us knowledge; aggadah gives us aspiration. Halakhah gives us the norms for action; aggadah, the vision of the ends of living. Halakhah prescribes, aggadah suggests; halakhah decrees, aggadah inspires; halakhah is definite; aggadah is allusive …
Halakhah, by necessity, treats with the laws in the abstract, regardless of the totality of the person. It is aggadah that keeps on reminding that the purpose of performance is to transform the performer, that the purpose of observance is to train us in achieving spiritual ends …
Halakhah thinks in the category of quantity; aggadah is the category of quality. Aggadah maintains that he who saves one human life is as if he had saved all mankind. In the eyes of him whose first category is the category of quantity, one man is less than two men, but in the eyes of God one life is worth as much as all of life. Halakhah speaks of the estimable and measurable dimensions of our deeds, informing us how much we must perform in order to fulfil our duty, about the size, capacity, or content of the doer and the deed. Aggadah deals with the immeasurable, inward aspect of living, telling us how we must think and feel; how rather than how much we must do to fulfil our duty; the manner, not only the content, is important.
And Heschel draws interesting conclusions. They are both necessary, he emphasises: ‘Halakhah without aggadah is dead, aggadah without halakhah is wild … There is no halakhah without aggadah, and no aggadah without halakhah … Our task is to learn how to maintain a harmony between the demands of halakhah and the spirit of aggadah.’ Nonetheless, not only is one greater than the other, but, as with the Master and his emissary, the one that should be subservient has come to dominate:
To reduce Judaism to law, to halakhah, is to dim its light, to pervert its essence and to kill its spirit. We have a legacy of aggadah together with a system of halakhah, and although, because of a variety of reasons, that legacy was frequently overlooked and aggadah became subservient to halakhah, halakhah is ultimately dependent upon aggadah. Halakhah, the rationalisation of living, is not only forced to employ elements that are themselves unreasoned, its ultimate authority depends upon aggadah …109
With varying degrees of success a healthy balance is maintained between these hemispheric forces, provided, as Heschel says, halakhah (the viewpoint of the left hemisphere) plays a supporting, not the lead, role. In this it is no different from the rest of life. That is how we come to have functioning religious
Multiple factual events happened to Rich and Maggie. Recognizing the function and precise meaning of each set does not require any particular astuteness but being willing to recognize God’s providential M.O. requires… willingness.
The Bahai is a unification religion/movement coming out of Islam, just as the moonies came out of Christianity and the Hari Krishna came out of Hinduism. But while the Bahai and moonies ended up starting new religions with their own messiahs, the Hari Krishna are just part of the already very broad and inclusive umbrella of Hinduism. Thus in truth the Hari Krishna really didn’t add anything to Hinduism because Hinduism already readily reaches across all religious boundaries to embrace all religious teachings.
In any case, everything Rob Brewer spoke of in that post comes from Hinduism and there is not hint of Bahai in anything he has said. Teachers in Hinduism are often referred to as swami’s. The Vedanta is a school of Hinduism and Bhagavad Gita is a sacred text of Hinduism. And it is far from unusual for Hindus to speak of Buddha and Christ as avatars of God. This inclusive nature of Hinduism also makes it easy for people to learn from its ideas and teachings without identifying themselves as Hindus.
Thus I wouldn’t jump to the conclusion that Rob is Hindu any more than you should take my reference to the Tao Te Ching to mean I am Taoist.
I tend to regard myself as a panentheist Christian, who suggests that the divine (or God) exists both within the universe and beyond it, which is a perspective which can be found within various religious and philosophical traditions. Panentheism may not be as well-known or mainstream as some other theological perspectives, and sometimes we come under attack from people who misunderstand our perspective, but there are religious and spiritual traditions that incorporate panentheistic elements into their beliefs.
Process theology is, for example a school of thought within Christian theology that embraces panentheism and Alfred North Whitehead and Charles Hartshorne are known as Process theologians for example. We assert that God is not a static and unchanging being but rather is in a dynamic relationship with the world, evolving alongside it.
As @mitchellmckain confirmed, some of the quotes I have provided demonstrate that some interpretations within Hinduism can be considered panentheistic. Above all, the Advaita Vedanta tradition teaches that the ultimate reality (Brahman) is both transcendent and immanent to the universe. According to Advaita Vedanta, consciousness is the very basis of existence. It is in and through everything. Without consciousness there would be nothing. Everything that exists is, by its very nature, consciousness. And if there were nothing else, consciousness would still be there.
But in Kabbalah too, particularly in the teachings associated with Isaac Luria (known as Lurianic Kabbalah), there is an exploration of a panentheistic view of God. The concept of tzimtzum is a fundamental aspect of Lurianic Kabbalah, and is the idea that God, the Ein Sof (the infinite and transcendent aspect of God), “contracted” or withdrew His divine light in order to create a space for the universe and finite realms to exist. This act of tzimtzum allows for the existence of a seemingly independent and finite world while maintaining the belief that God is still immanent within creation, albeit in a concealed or veiled form. So, in Kabbalistic thought, there is a tension between God’s transcendence (the Ein Sof) and God’s immanence within the created world, which aligns with panentheistic ideas. This mystical perspective is a significant aspect of Kabbalah and is often used to explain the relationship between the divine and the material world.
I am also, therefore, a non-dualist. Non-dual Christianity emphasizes the idea of non-duality or the unity of all things, including the relationship between the individual and the divine. It draws inspiration from various Christian mystics, theologians, and contemplative traditions. We seek to experience a direct and unitive connection with God or the divine, often transcending dualistic notions of God as separate from the self or the world. We are inspired by the teachings of mystics such as Meister Eckhart, John of the Cross, and Julian of Norwich, among others.
I’m not sure which guy you are referring to, but many people have a restricted view of religion. I remember many moons ago (1999) how I bought two books from a German theologian Jörg Zink, “Unter dem großen Bogen – Das Lied von Gott rings um die Erde” (Under the great arch – the song of God around the earth), and “Dornen können Rosen tragen – Mystik, die Zukunft des Christentums” (Thorns can bear roses – mysticism, the future of Christianity), and was immediately shunned for mentioning them.
The problem was that Zink was criticising Christianity for being a representation of faith, rather than a living culture, which he saw in many traditions. But his encouragement to “Go your own way and live from experiences,” he took from Jesus and the inner kingdom or Paul and the inner Christ. He spoke of the dark night of the soul, reviewed thinking about God, and came to the conclusion that man is greater than he knows and that the world is dance. He envisioned the divine light over the future and encouraged Christians to rest in God.
Jörg Zink had been a pioneer in the translation of biblical texts into an understandable and contemporary language. His texts from the New Testament first appeared in 1966, the texts from the Old Testament in 1967 in a chronologically ordered selection made with the New Testament in mind. So, he was no stranger, but he seemed to have made a cardinal error for some. The fact that he included texts from the Aztecs, from a hymn to Amun from the time of Ramses II, 13th century BC, from Epictetus from Greek Stoicism, from Islam, Sufism, and Qumran, in addition to biblical hymns of praise, was heretical for many.
But I think you can see where I come from, and how this fascination continued to guide me over the decades since then.
Albert Einstein to a little girl from New York named Phyllis:
“…everyone who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that some spirit is manifest in the laws of the universe, one that is vastly superior to that of man. In this way the pursuit of science leads to a religious feeling of a special sort, which is surely quite different from the religiosity of someone more naïve."
Dear Professor Einstein: Albert Einstein’s Letters to and from Children ISBN 10 9781591020158
Inspired by your uncertainty, I followed your link back to its source who happens to be on my “Ignore” list. Take heart. your source was either referring to some guy that neither you nor I are familiar with or to me, with the greater probability being that it was me.
No doubt, your source was responding to my brief comment which, in turn, was a response to your loquacious reply to my question, “Are you a Baha’i?”
In the evangelical community I was associated with.
It is my short appraisal of his criticism, I would have to quote him at length to explain his position. He was specifically mentioning the waning spiritual tradition in Europe, but also the fundamentalism in the world, which failed to appreciate the vast variety of traditions and worship, that essentially pointed to the ineffable and transcendent Ground of Being.
Jörg Zink wasn’t, as far as I could recognise, a panentheist.