I’ll pick some Christians many people know something about, Luther or Calvin or Lewis, for example. These men check many of McLaren’s boxes in the “simplicity” column.
Do you think some other of McLaren’s descriptors fits them better? Which and why?
Would you classify them as Pharisees in the way you describe?
Same
and
Same again.
In part a “prefigured belief” is something that could be written down, the basics of which the tribe knows and passes down from generation to generation. But I don’t see that a prefigured belief must imply that everything is already known, or precludes further understanding.
To be sure, this is open to legalism, some for of which, I think, any form of spirituality is. The legalist will feel satisfied that all the right boxes are checked, the right sentiments are expressed, the right values held and projected. That certainly is not understanding.
Holding a prefigured belief does not automatically imply that a person thinks everything that can be known is known; Christians, for example, often appeal to mystery. And while Christians generally appeal to a core of essentials, a kind of common denominator, that list is quite brief. There is a great deal of variation beyond that.
Similarly, I don’t think that holding a prefigured belief implies that one is not seeking truth or doing it in an open-minded way. Many people come to existing systems of belief as adults in the process of seeking truth. The form of faith they eventually claim as their own may help them make sense of their experiences and provide the soil for personal spiritual growth, rather than assuring them that they have everything figured out already. Those who have grown up within a system don’t necessarily fell like the system itself tells them everything they need to know, and that mastering it is all that is needed.
I’ll step out a bit here and say that none of us starts as a blank spiritual slate. We all have our own sense of, or nose for what counts as truth and what our relationship should be to it. That sense is subjective.
I’m aware that there is strong impulse in some to instill or receive (what I find to be) rigid constraints for what and how one may think and value things. I cannot ascribe to that. I know Christians who do. In their eyes, I am too far gone. For them, though, there is a well-established master pattern that true things conform to. To know the pattern is essential for sorting out truth from untruth.
I understand that at the other end of the “spectrum” there are people who feel that truth can only be sought where absolutely no boundaries are present. Although I would argue that there are boundaries present, for example ethics, values, a different type of master pattern, which one may have developed oneself within one’s culture, education, and other realm of influences.
And then there’s everyone else in between.
I think these types of discussions are particularly challenging, because, invariably, conflicting values and emphases are revealed, which I think skew how we understand what we are looking at from the outside. Reading through this thread makes that clear to me. I think a good exercise in this discussion would to be to read something from a spiritual tradition that makes one cringe, and read not for the things that make one cringe, but for the writer’s spiritual sense, spiritual understanding. Valley of Vision is a book that always humbles me; it’s a collection of poetic Puritan prayers. One can agree with the theology or not, but the sense of what is going on in the writer is more important, I think. In my view, these writers, some of whom were teenage girls, do not fit into McLaren’s overly simplified view of spiritual development with its rigid categories and value-laden groupings of terms and concepts. They certainly don’t have a sense that they know all truth and are done seeking understanding. But they are seeking differently to understand something different.
But, it’s also likely we may never agree on any of this. Which is fine.
Perhaps the real question is, by whose standard are we measuring?
Perhaps the people we view as “advanced” may not match God’s view?
I would certainly not view Calvin as a leading light. His views on predestination are abhorrent.
Richard
Good question, Richard.
I am referring again to McLaren’s table. Or any system that rates spiritual maturity. Theology isn’t the only thing by which one is measured, is it?
What kind of person was Calvin, or any person at all. How did they live? How did they treat other people?
Part of what I am resisting in this thread, I think, is the idea that we can slice and dice someone’s spiritual maturity based on neat little criteria to which we can apply a score, which we have discussed.
If there is a way to talk about spiritual maturity, I would think it would be more holistic, fluid, organic. Observable but hard to describe.
The fruit of which makes the thing known.
I know, and i am basically claiming it is none of our business to compare or assess others. Theology is not like science. We do not have to cite a person, or find corroboration for anything other than Scripture itself.
That I agree with.
It is not our place to assess, judge or declare any one else’s place on any artificial scale we care to latch onto.
It has a certain academic interest but, that is all.
(IMHO)
Richard
And yet it is amazing just how large an effect a slim set of core beliefs can have on the reality one can see. On another forums I keep getting into hopeless discussions with physicalists about why they think consciousness should be something available to science to study. But when your thinking basically starts with “well we at least know there are atoms and energy and celestial bodies …” many quickly fall into questioning and then disparaging any point of view which doesn’t revolve around the tangible.
While I didn’t receive a carefully chosen starter set of beliefs I did of course receive a default set of societal beliefs and values unattached to any longstanding faith tradition, as we all do. Somehow I have managed to acquire a sense of the sacred without the starter set of beliefs Christianity could have provided. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t necessary or have no value. I assume they do or you wouldn’t pass them on.
When I look at Brian’s stages of spiritual development I understand them by way of my own experience. What else can one do? On that basis I think they do make some sense even if they don’t provide anything useful going forward. And as with much in life, acquiring a formal understanding of something which comes naturally is of questionable value.
This probably goes to the difference in how we come to belief and how different paths can look to those who go a different way. But I take your points and can see the sense in what you day. No matter what we come to believe or how, what we understand will tend to coalesce and take on a sense of finality which may yet come in for further refinements in ways we can’t always see coming.
I have for a lot longer thought that literal belief is just a way to allow one to focus on what is greater and to go on claiming it in culture more and more in the sway of physicalism. I’ll never think it is necessary but I imagine it can be helpful.
That describes well what I find worthy of criticism in Christianity but as you show it isn’t necessary. So even if some are found lacking it is better not to use too broad a brush when describing Christianity as we find it.
Guilty as charged. But when I stopped seeing God as anything like a person who is reaching out to me I was also able to loosen my insistence on personal direct revelation. I think one can gain a direct sense of God and how God feels about what we experience without cramming Him into a tiny, tidy box or pretending to know more than we rightfully can. I really think God is intimately tied up in everything as the ground of being. As that which becomes, God is outside of our reach.
Yes to the rest. They are very difficult as my writers block of the past couple days testifies to. But you do very well with it anyhow. I’m quite sure I haven’t managed to address everything of interest to you but perhaps I have managed as much as I can for now.
Indeed… and if you believe in an infinite God (at a high order of infinity and multidimensional), then this suggest possibilities for spiritual growth (becoming more like God) which are very difficult to compare.
This a very soft (paradigm dominated) science/philosophy. And if the above observation is correct we can understand why. When you are exploring (both in living it and trying to understand it) such a high dimensional space, you are not only too likely to see many exceptions, but the rules themselves may be somewhat ad-hoc or even a projection upon reality. If we are not just imagining patterns in the chaos then those patterns might still be somewhat temporary and circumstantial.
You’ve managed splendidly. Thank you, Mark!
Actually, no.
Why does God break the cycle and do two things on the 3rd and 6th day?
It would be easy to make a perfect cycle:
He separates the waters to create land on day 3 and produces all creatures (including Man, on day 6.
The seven days are theological. They are to instigate the sabbath.
Yet, Jesus does not enforce the sabbath in the way Judaism does, and Paul in Romans 14 makes the sabbath optional for non Jews.
Richard
who cares…are you going to deny that Ford motor company made cars simply because they decided to modify the routine on a particualar stage of the build?
conspiracy theories are not a defense there…that argument is irrelevant.
God doesn’t call creation perfect…he said that what he saw was “good” and then after day six that it was “very good”.
Your own argument is defeated using one of your own arguments from TEism there…that creation before the fall was not perfect!
Either it was or it was not perfect…neither binary are good for you on that front!
Now there’s a huge problem there… you come from a Sundary worshiping church right (or at least you align with Sunday worship yes?)
Sunday worshipping churches, which are the vast majority of Christianity, clearly believe that the Sabbath was done away with at the cross when Christ said “it is finished”. Trouble is, now you’re claiming that the Sabbath is directly part of the “pre-fall” (before sin) world…that it has nothing to do with sin.
So which is it amigo? Again, neither binary are good for you on that front!
I disagree…
A sister text to Romans 14 is Matthew 7:
12In everything, then, do to others as you would have them do to you. For this is the essence of the Law and the Prophets.
another sister text to Romans 14 is Luke 6
39Jesus also told them a parable: “Can a blind man lead a blind man? Will they not both fall into a pit? 40A disciple is not above his teacher, but everyone who is fully trained will be like his teacher.
Paul states nothing about not keeping the Sabbath in Romans 14…this passage of scripture has nothing to do with that claim.
The chapter is about the law of liberty and the law of love…not throwing out the Sabbath. BTW, you know the 10 commandments are Gods moral law right…that this is also known as His Law of Love?
Plenty do. It is a matter of style and form. There is a form to that passage and the double ups disrupt it.
Your comparison does not address this.
And it is not about the perfection of God or nature either.It is not a conspiracy theory eithrr. it is literary criticism.
Now yu are just getting picky or silly.
The Christian sabbath is in relation to the day of resurrection. You know this, I know this, so stop mucking about.
That is you perrogative but there are several occasions where Jesus interprets the Sabbath rule differently from the Pharisees.
I do not approve of trying to contradict one piece of sciprture with another and it is also contrary to your normal position.
Romans 14 stands on it ow its own.
5 One person considers one day more sacred than another; another considers every day alike. Each of them should be fully convinced in their own mind5 5 One person considers one day more sacred than another; another considers every day alike. Each of them should be fully convinced in their own mind
Your behaviour on the Sabbath depends on your belief of the Sabbath,
Richard
As I am (fully convinced…). End of story.
In my tradition, there are folks who call it “Sabbath” and folks who never do, because the Sabbath is on Saturday, and we worship on Sunday. For those of us who don’t use “Sabbath” to refer to Sunday (the normal day of Christian worship) it is often called the Lord’s Day.
[Emphasis mine]
I like the way @mitchellmckain put this.
Returning to the discussion OP, I think it can be useful to have tools for discussing something like “the current state of one’s own spiritual experience” (or something like that) without treating these states as stages on a Spiritual Progress Report.
However, I don’t think it’s realistic or helpful to try to come up with a DSM for Spiritual Health that is used to pigeonhole people into some artificial category.
Having the freedom to describe what any of us is experiencing in ways that are subjectively meaningful seems more consistent with the the experience itself and how anyone progresses through their own experience in time and life. Focusing on check boxes and “diagnoses” seems inconsistent with the kind of thing we are discussing anyway.
Personal self assessment is one thing, as in knowing our own limitations and doubts, but comparing it?
If we read Paull it is clear that he sees faith as a gift from God that we use or dismiss. The idea of changing, or adding to it would seem to be seen as up to God not the individual. Our duty is to utilise what we have. I do not agree with this view but it can temper any idea of development or growth,
We are discouraged from comparing one person to another in terms of faith, or to treat someone as a role model thereby taking their example over personal understanding and faith.
Seeking help or encouragement is not the same as trying to match the person we see as further advanced.
I think the emphasis should be on confronting the things we are struggling with rather than setting what might be unrealistic standards as a goal
Richard
Having read over a quarter of Luther’s works, I have to say that if you read chronologically along with a biography (to get the sense of time and circumstances) the good monk goes through all of the stages. In his sermons he sounds a great deal like the simplicity stage, but the reason is simple: he’s expounding to people who are mostly at that stage. But if he had remained at simplicity he would never have dared disagree with the pope! In his journey to Rome he faced perplexity, and in his lectures on Galatians it’s evident that he reached serenity.
Indeed it’s hard to imagine someone who hadn’t reached serenity saying this:
Ah, if I could only pray the way that dog looks at meat.
I’ve read most of Lewis’ non-scholarly material, and would have to say that he seems to have skipped the simplicity stage and gone right to complexity!
I haven’t read enough of Calvin’s work to make a case, though.
Is because I let the Bible be what it was written as, not what your MSWV wants it to be.
Where does the text say that?
Why would he be teaching Egyptian history???
Big deal – those same items apply to a good piece of fiction; in fact they apply better to the novels of Grisham and Clancy than to the opening of Genesis: Genesis doesn’t do much if any critical examination of sources.
Which follows the standard ANE opening form of a creation story, whether the Egyptian or Sumerian or Babylonian. Any ancient Israelites hearing that phrase would have known that the subject was theology, not history.
You have this arrogant confidence that the Holy Spirit was required to have Moses write in a form convenient to you, to answer the kinds of questions someone born in the twentieth century would have, using the definition of truth that comes from a scientific materialist society, and it leads you to throw in the trash the actual theology of the opening chapters of Genesis.
Only if you’re ignorant of how they started out various kinds of literature back then.
So the Epic of Gilgamesh is a literal historical account, and Tom Clancy’s Red Storm Rising is a literal historical account, and the Tale of Atrahasis is a literal historical account, and John Grisham’s The Firm is a literal historical account as well? They go into great detail explaining things in order – and two of them are about the creation of the earth!
The Sumerian Kings List(s) have the same sort of details about their authors. So do you accept that Sumerian kings had reigns that lasted tens of thousands of years?
You’re committing a fallacy here, though I don’t recall the name for it: you’re assuming that since something has a set of characteristics that seem to match some category then it must belong to that category even though those characteristics match other categories.
Stop telling the Bible what it has to be and start reading it for what it was written as!
Most people have read and studied your citations given that you make the same ones repeatedly, and no longer pay attention because they come across as being from a parrot, sounds repeated without knowledge of what’s behind them.
False – that’s a lie I first encountered in high school, one used by the SDA in order to attack traditional Christianity. The first church I ever attended was United Methodist, and the pastor explicitly said the Sabbath wasn’t done away with, it was just superseded by something (Someone) “greater than the Sabbath”, indeed the fulfillment of the Sabbath. The next church I attended was Lutheran, and they said the same thing. I’ve also attended Foursquare, Presbyterian, Roman Catholic, and Orthodox churches, and none of them said what you claim.
What happened at the Cross was that the Sabbath was fulfilled: the Sabbath was a type of the rest that Christ gives; as it is written,
“Come to Me, all who labor and are heavily burdened, and I will give you rest.”
– which could be translated as “… I will give you Shabbat”.
That’s what you always claim with the link to Genesis 1!
Which means that if you do to others as you would have them do to you, then you have fulfilled the Sabbath.
One person esteems one day as better than another, while another esteems all days alike.
Is the Sabbath not a day? Paul plainly tells us that regarding all days alike is fine, so if the Sabbath is a day, it is not necessary to honor it any more than any other day.
Besides which, the greatest day of all is the day when Jesus walked on this world as a human – but hey, that’s every day of the week! So celebrate Jesus, and don’t worry about the Sabbath.
Further, in Colossians Paul flat out says not to pay attention to people who insist on observing the Sabbath, because the Sabbath is “a shadow of the things that were to come, whose reality is Christ”.
The Law of Love is the one new commandment that Jesus gave:
As I have loved you, so also love one another.
The Ten Words are only pointers; they point to the Cross. Christian morality comes from the Cross; anything else is not Christian.
“Who cares” just says “I don’t care about the scriptures”. God didn’t put His affirmation on the text without having reasons for what is there, so we defintely should care about even this detail!
I’ve encountered that fairly often in the Fathers; another usage is “preparation day” and “Resurrection day”, meaning “Sabbath” and … well, and resurrection day.
Agreed. I’m not particularly impressed by the scheme in the OP, though it does fit fairly well with a standard progression in morality as well as one dealing with conceptualization.
This reminds me of advice given in a “Master’s Course” in ethics, where a “scale” of moral/ethical growth was presented: while the scale may be useful for understanding where one is at, it is not a guide for how to progress; you will progress as you are able and cannot force it.
Except that we aren’t – Paul says to imitate him, and the whole initial idea of ‘Saints’ was that they were examples of how to imitate Christ.
Does it help any if those who’ve entered into ‘perplexity’ (or the ‘harmony’ stage after that) can acknowledge that all the steps along the way are a necessary part of the journey? Or is that still too much like a triumphalist ‘progression’ that condescends in its view of those earlier stages?
Also circling back to the OP myself, I know that Rohr put all this in very parallel observations with his three boxes: (roughly) - 1. Construction. 2. Deconstruction. 3. Reconstruction. (I don’t think he used those exact labels - I’m going off memory here.) But he gives all three boxes their due. While he obviously thinks that #3 is a good destination to reach after a lifetime of experience and reflection shaped by faith; he goes out of his way to validate the other boxes as the soil and nourishment that make the third box possible. A child who is denied structure and rules and direction (no matter how simplistic it is) will find it much harder to emerge into any healthy kind of adulthood, and will still, in turn, find their way into black and white thinking as adults to make up for their deprivation in that area as a child. Liberals who try to live their entire lives in the 2nd box (and never give their children any chance to experience the ‘construction’ phase) also run into maladaptive problems. So Rohr would say the problems start when you try to live your entire life always staying in one of the earlier stages, clinging to the conviction that no other stages could exist as valid places to be.
so much error…where to start?
The sabbath has nothing to do with the resurrection…it was specifically an institution of Creation and our Creator. (i dont know where you came up with the resurrection garbage?)
Read the fourth commandment it reiterates all of that pretty comprehensively!
your statement Romans 14 Stands on its own…ah no bible text stands on its own, you play games with that whenever it suits…only this time, youve been caught out on that one.
I dont care what you think, what i do know is that there are no scholars who take isolated bible texts and create doctrine from them when other texts contradict that doctrine. This is exactly why scholars cross reference (and its also why i do it…ive been trained at university to do that). So you are 100% wrong on this and ive already shown why with the other texts on the topic…again, i do not care whether or not you agree, im not making up those references, they come straight out of biblical concordances created by bible scholars. Since you are not a scholar, your lack of experience there does not provide any credibility especially when you fail to address the cross refences on said theology and doctrines.
The inference that Jesus interpreted the sabbath different to the pharasees is a woeful theological stuff up! Read the text again…properly.
The point was, that pharisees had made the law a burden, they made the Sabbath a burden, Christ quite clearly told them he did not come to do away with the law, he came to fulfill it. That means live according to the law…that’s the whole point!
So what does it mean for Chist to fulfill the law?
Well obviously, Christs sacrifice to pay the wages of sin = death (physical death) but this is not the end of the story…I’ve explained this before from the Old Testament Sanctuary Service…i cant help it if “stupid is stupid does” when it comes to others understanding of such a plainly obvious biblical truth…and there is of course the point that “we are all still here” so clearly it isn’t over yet (apparently few here notice that obvious fact!)
The point of the text is that we should be fully convinced in our own minds…that has nothing to do with keeping the Sabbath different ways because you have a different doctrine…Christ and the apostles all had exactly the same doctrines…given some were preaching to gentiles, I’m not sure how you figure they taught something different to gentiles to what Christ taught to them during his ministry to the Jews? We all have only the one bible there and that alone refutes your claim! This is exactly why you guys keep harping on with the genre nonsense…its the only way to get around this dilemma (I’m not so stupid as to fall for that one).
The point is not that they were teaching different doctrine, they were responding to different attacks against that doctrine…its not the doctrine that was changing there.
You point about style and form…plenty care about it.
The appropriateness of employing such lenses depends (in part) on one’s attitude reflected in part in this riff:
“God, I thank you that I’m not like the rest of these spiritual troglodytes.” or “God, I think you that I’ve come so far.”
vs
“God, have mercy on me, the perplexed one.”
But I keep finding myself asking: What’s the point?
As @Richard and I discussed a few posts up, I guess it can be helpful for one’s self-assessment or understanding, or for people to have some kind of common language, if they are seeking counsel or advice. Even then it’s really easy to slide into (or simply reveal one’s) triumphalism and pride.
Then again, I cannot imaging having such a discussion with anyone about my own experience. Period. The very few people I would trust with such a discussion do not press. There is no one else. And to imagine they would be having the discussion with a rubric of spirituality in mind! No. Absolutely NO.
I also feel rashy about the idea that there is a single route for anyone’ spiritual development, or that there is some sort of expected outcome. We’ve seen here that that’s simply not the case.
I thought @mitchellmckain’s point was valuable:
There’s plenty of gut in my response and thinking here. I don’t deny it. I guess it’s valuable to people more inclined to talk about their spiritual life and experience in the ways described in this thread to understand that such discussions have to be handled with great care and may likely be met with revulsion, even if that revulsion is not nearly so loudly/voluminously expressed as my own.
“Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” -Colossians 4:6
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