Christianity

[Alexis Jacobi]

Could you explain what you understand the word to mean?

There are at least two quite different precise theological definitions, plus some more informal, colloquial alternatives; so I have to ask

It is likely that in my case the definition I'd provide is similar -- in its colloquialness -- to what I already offered. Whether the word is repentance or penance, connected with a sort of moral self-examination, superficial or profound, the important thing (in my view) is the nature of the experience, the nature of the process.

Obviously, these words do have precise theological definitions, and the one one believes is right will I gather depend on what Christian school one is associated with. In the Bible stories, naturally, "Repent for the Kingdom of Heaven is near" of John the Baptist has led to this definition, but what I have chosen to quote is from a very modern Evangelical site:

The Greek word for repent is μετάνοια, said metanoia. The closest literal English meaning of the word is to have a change of mind, but might be better said, “to think differently afterwards” or “changing your mind after being with,” according to the HELPS word study and Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance. ​

To repent means to be convinced of another way, to change your mind or convictions. And in response to be convinced in your mind and heart, to change your actions. Repentance means turning from going your own way to going God’s way.

As I said I think the topic of repentance is a very interesting one. I suppose one reason is because it must, in my view, involve a genuine *contact* if you will with invisible, spiritual power. If when one describes repentance as *regret* without a reference to something higher, and metaphysical, one likely has a somewhat atheistic position. I do not accept, necessarily, and fixed definition and the only person I have reference to is of course myself.

Numerous times I have described myself (in one aspect) as an intellectual Christian. The aspect that is intellectual is that part which has made it necessary to become a *researcher* of philosophical, cultural, historical and social trends -- those trends that have produced what I refer to (sententiously) as Our Present. I could easily say, and I think it would be fair, to say that my own inner processes of metanoia, be they theologically definable and theologically kosher, as the case may be, does not have a great deal of relevance for me.

Lke Q says (genuflects): Trust the Process!

[Sculptor]

Jesus was a brown skinned insurgent from Palestine fighting for a peaceful solution to the occupation of the Western powers.

Were he alive today he would be horrified at the formation fo the Isreali state and the cabal of Western powers which made that happen and sustain the occupation of Palestine; the land thefts; the exploitation; the denial of basic human rights.

He would also be horrified at the American Religious Right.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0Crw6V-mcM

[Walker]

Would he drive a Ford or a Chevy?

[Immanuel Can]

The life of Jesus of Nazareth is definitive for millions of people.

Explain exactly what it "defines."

That depends on which interpretation has been learned.

Well, you asked me: "Is there a definitive event , such as the Resurrection event, that defines Christian doctrine?"

"An event...that defines," you said. And it's supposed to "define" all of "Christian doctrine"?

I just couldn't make heads-or-tails of the question, but only because the verb doesn't make sense in view of the noun. "Events" don't "define." One doesn't say, "The battle of 1812 defines the American Dream." At least, you don't without going on to say what you mean by a single military event "defining" an attitude.

But I can't get a clear picture of what you were asking out of your explanations so far. So I don't know how to respond.

[henry quirk]

In actual fact nearly all adults , if they introspect enough, see that they are no wiser than little children

yeah, when my kid was little he wondered why I wouldn't let hm jump off the roof with his pillowcase parachute, so I call BS on that, B

are we as wise as we think we are? nope

but some wisdom has to come from just stayin' alive (or *ahem* you'd be dead)

You don't realise that this is a role you identify with.

I think it was Vonnegut who said sumthin' about takin' care about what you pretend to be, cuz one day you wake up and are that

[Immanuel Can]

Could you explain what you understand the word to mean?

There are at least two quite different precise theological definitions, plus some more informal, colloquial alternatives; so I have to ask

It is likely that in my case the definition I'd provide is similar -- in its colloquialness -- to what I already offered. Whether the word is repentance or penance, connected with a sort of moral self-examination, superficial or profound, the important thing (in my view) is the nature of the experience, the nature of the process.

Oh. Well, the Catholic thing called "penance" is associated with repentance, but is not itself repentance, and is not a Biblical concept, whereas "repentance" is both an Old Testament and a New Testament mainstay.

Obviously, these words do have precise theological definitions, and the one one believes is right will I gather depend on what Christian school one is associated with. In the Bible stories, naturally, "Repent for the Kingdom of Heaven is near" of John the Baptist has led to this definition, but what I have chosen to quote is from a very modern Evangelical site:

The Greek word for repent is μετάνοια, said metanoia. The closest literal English meaning of the word is to have a change of mind, but might be better said, “to think differently afterwards” or “changing your mind after being with,” according to the HELPS word study and Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance. ​

To repent means to be convinced of another way, to change your mind or convictions. And in response to be convinced in your mind and heart, to change your actions. Repentance means turning from going your own way to going God’s way.

The two main theological definitions are both included above. They are somewhat different, you can note, but they're both represented. Absent from that account is any mention of "penance," however.

"Penance" is a human attempt to "make up for" evil one has done by trying to do a counterbalancing amount of "good" or "reparations." It's a works-based way of trying to buy one's way out of judgment and to offset evil so as to counterbalance the scales of justice. And "penance" is prescribed by a priest, who tells one what, and how much, one must do in order to be forgiven for one's trespasses.

But the Bible says that sin doesn't work that way. You don't "buy back" credits to excuse evil you've done, by doing something "good" afterward; and certainly not at the arbitrary declaration of some "priest." Good deeds are not "weighed off" against bad ones, in some scale that allows for a certain amount of evil, so long as sufficient good is found afterward. Rather, in the eyes of a perfectly righteous HaShem, no evil can be countenanced at all; and the goods that men do are not excuses for their evil. This is why the prophet Isaiah writes,

"Yet shall we be saved?
For all of us have become like one who is unclean,
And all our righteous deeds are like a filthy garment;
And all of us wither like a leaf,
And our wrongdoings, like the wind, take us away." (Isaiah 64:5-6)

Our "righteous deeds" are not credit against our wickedness: here, we see that our wickedness will make even our righteous deeds no more than "filthy rags" in God's sight. The problem will not be the good deeds themselves; the problem will remain the dirty hands that did all those deeds, whatever they were.

And this theme, of course, is explicitly taken up in Romans 3 in the New Testament, of course, quoting this Isaiah passage explicitly. So in neither Testament is "repentance" interpreted as "penance." Rather, it has the two aspects you see in your definition above: first, a "change of mind," a mental reconditioning in which one's whole assessment of things is changed, one's perspective on and interpretation of the world is renewed to likemindedness to God's assessment, and then one's actions are engaged to reverse course, reject one's old path, and turn toward God.

This is repentance. Anything less is not. One needs both a new mind and a new way. And one's sins are not consquently "offset" against one's former deeds (which have all been "filthy rags" anyway), but rather one is forgiven for those sins, and they are removed from the account against you, by the grace of God. And how is this to be done? Not by appeal to one's own righteousness, but by appeal to the sacrifice God has provided to take away sins...a concept you will find everywhere in both Torah and the New Testament, as I'm sure you are aware.

As I said I think the topic of repentance is a very interesting one. I suppose one reason is because it must, in my view, involve a genuine *contact* if you will with invisible, spiritual power. If when one describes repentance as *regret* without a reference to something higher, and metaphysical, one likely has a somewhat atheistic position.

This is an extremely astute insight on your part, Alexis.

You are absolutely right. The conventional (or, to use your term, atheistic) view of "repentance" is that it's something a human being does on his own -- if he has reason to want to do it at all (which under atheism, I can see no reason he does). Biblical repentance is an actual interaction between God and man. To create a genuine "metanoia" is something no human being can do on his own -- first, because without reference to God, he has no correct standard of righteousness to which to refer and no direction to turn, but secondly, because real repentance takes an actual (shall I say "chemical"?) change of mind that human beings are incapable of achieving alone. It means God actually intervenes to enable the change to take place, and the change depends entirely on the man's repentant relationship to the actual God.

Of course, left to pure Atheism, such a person believes there's no such Entity to which to relate, no objective standard to which to "repent," and not even anything that can be defined as a "problem" to warrant repentance. Even his vague intuitions that something is wrong can only be derived from some visceral, residual feeling pulled from his religious past, but ungrounded and utterly inexplicable within the terms of his Atheism.

I could easily say, and I think it would be fair, to say that my own inner processes of metanoia, be they theologically definable and theologically kosher, as the case may be, does not have a great deal of relevance for me.

Do you mean that you have found them unsatisfactory, or that you don't think repentance is a thing you personally need, or that repentance isn't an important condition of relationship to God, or that it isn't necessary to a "Christian" ethos, or something else?

Lke Q says (genuflects): Trust the Process!

I made quite a study of that show, and Q was one of the more interesting fixtures in it, from a religious perspective. But I have my reservations about his theology, of course.

[Alexis Jacobi]

I wrote: "I could easily say, and I think it would be fair, to say that my own inner processes of metanoia, be they theologically definable and theologically kosher, as the case may be, does not have a great deal of relevance for me."

Do you mean that you have found them unsatisfactory, or that you don't think repentance is a thing you personally need, or that repentance isn't an important condition of relationship to God, or that it isn't necessary to a "Christian" ethos, or something else?

I accept the notion of metanoia in the theological Christian sense. I think the Catholic sense of it is similar enough -- the same thing is talked about -- but obviously the Catholic picture is different. In all the texts I have read about proper penance the *inner turning* is always stressed. You cannot do penance without that inner element.

What has relevance, for me, is obviously the process I have been going through which is metanoia certainly, but also historical revision, cultural revision, revision of milieu, and so many other things. What I can say is that having come into the Christian matrix, and I do refer to entering into spiritual relationship, has been tremendously relevant. I see it as a *restructuring of the self*. It is a process with which one has to be willing to cooperate.

My view though is as I said: I think there are many sorts of relationship possible (to divinity). I see my own as no necessarily of a high calibre, yet nonetheless it is one, and it is valid. I tend to be far more open to building bridges between all sects.

[Immanuel Can]

I wrote: "I could easily say, and I think it would be fair, to say that my own inner processes of metanoia, be they theologically definable and theologically kosher, as the case may be, does not have a great deal of relevance for me."

Do you mean that you have found them unsatisfactory, or that you don't think repentance is a thing you personally need, or that repentance isn't an important condition of relationship to God, or that it isn't necessary to a "Christian" ethos, or something else?

I accept the notion of metanoia in the theological Christian sense. I think the Catholic sense of it is similar enough -- the same thing is talked about -- but obviously the Catholic picture is different.

The differences are subtle when viewed from the outside, but profound from a theological perspective. And this gets to Catholicism's biggest distinctive from Christianity -- the primacy of works, versus the primacy of metanoia.

This is to say that while both emphasize that there must be a change of mind and a change of actions, in Catholicism, the "penance," the change of action, is the true dynamic of the forgiveness. The change of mind is assumed, provided the change of action follows. If your priest says, "Do it," and you do, then the matter is settled with the priest's absolution. Works fix things.

In Christianity, in contrast, the metanoia is the dynamic of repentance, and the repentant actions that follow are the "fruit," but not the "root" of forgiveness. A renewed mind leads one to act in better ways; but neither before nor after salvation do works themselves have any salvific power at all. Moreover, in Christianity, there is no thought of weighing off good and bad works against each other, nor of absolution achieved by priestly fiat.

I might simplify the case this way: in Catholicism, your bad actions are the problem, and the solution is to perform more Catholic actions than bad ones. In Christianity, the badness of your human nature (its whole inclination to sin) is the whole problem; and only somebody who is spiritually reconstituted by God as a different sort of person is also forgiven.

In all the texts I have read about proper penance the *inner turning* is always stressed. You cannot do penance without that inner element.

That may be. But that "inner turning," from a Christian perspective, cannot happen without actual regeneration by God, and the "penance," meaning the works of restitution themselves, neither pay for nor offset any sin. They are only expressions of obedient gratitude to God, given what He has done in forgiving one.

What has relevance, for me, is obviously the process I have been going through which is metanoia certainly, but also historical revision, cultural revision, revision of milieu, and so many other things. What I can say is that having come into the Christian matrix, and I do refer to entering into spiritual relationship, has been tremendously relevant. I see it as a *restructuring of the self*. It is a process with which one has to be willing to cooperate.

It is that. But it is not merely a choice made by the individual to restructure himself. Rather, it's a submitting to the dynamic of God's Spirit in one's own life, starting with an admission of one's own personal failure (repentance), an admission of one's own powerlessness (an appeal for salvation), and an investing of one's belief in the truth of God, rather than in one's own understanding. That final step...of trusting God instead of self, is crucial (and I choose that word precisely*). It is the final commitment, the final forsaking of self and relying on God, that makes salvation possible. And it is also the humiliating part of the process of salvation -- the one that asks me to stop being so darn smug, so darn self-confident, so determined to "do it my way," and to admit my own dependence on God. So our natural inclinations resist it brutally.

That is where the battle is fought: at the point at which God asks me to give up myself, my pride, my independence, my rebellion, my self-justification, my rights, and give myself over to Him. That's the metanoia.

My view though is as I said: I think there are many sorts of relationship possible (to divinity).

Some people do think that. But as the Tanakh says, "There is a way which seems right to a person, but its end is the way of death." (Prov. 14:12)

Or as Jesus Christ Himself said, “Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it. For the gate is narrow and the way is constricted that leads to life, and there are few who find it." (Matthew 17:13-14)

So there are ways people, many people, think lead to "divinity" which do not. There are such things as "wrong ways," no matter how fervently people may believe in them -- and no matter how many do.



* FN: "Crucial" as in "crux" of the matter, but also the "crucifying" of the self of which Christ (Matthew 16:24) and Paul (Gal. 2:20) spoke.

[Belinda]

Immanuel Can wrote:

It is that. But it is not merely a choice made by the individual to restructure himself. Rather, it's a submitting to the dynamic of God's Spirit in one's own life, starting with an admission of one's own personal failure (repentance), an admission of one's own powerlessness (an appeal for salvation), and an investing of one's belief in the truth of God, rather than in one's own understanding. That final step...of trusting God instead of self, is crucial (and I choose that word precisely*). It is the final commitment, the final forsaking of self and relying on God, that makes salvation possible. And it is also the humiliating part of the process of salvation -- the one that asks me to stop being so darn smug, so darn self-confident, so determined to "do it my way," and to admit my own dependence on God. So our natural inclinations resist it brutally.

That is where the battle is fought: at the point at which God asks me to give up myself, my pride, my independence, my rebellion, my self-justification, my rights, and give myself over to Him. That's the metanoia.

I agree with what you say with the reservation I don't believe literally in the personhood of God.

Repentance is a life stance or aspiration towards the good, which involves turning away from what is not good. R surges and wanes and is not constant and it needs constant work .Part of that work is relinquishing what one did yesterday but instead is facing today and one minute hence.R is not being humble and saying sorry, (nor doing a penitential quid pro quo with God !) but is positive.

Repentance is not a once and for all event except perhaps in the case of a sole mystical experience, and we must be careful to distinguish between those on one hand and emotionalism on the other.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Would he drive a Ford or a Chevy?

A Fiat of course. Very surprised you missed that!

[Immanuel Can]

Immanuel Can wrote:

It is that. But it is not merely a choice made by the individual to restructure himself. Rather, it's a submitting to the dynamic of God's Spirit in one's own life, starting with an admission of one's own personal failure (repentance), an admission of one's own powerlessness (an appeal for salvation), and an investing of one's belief in the truth of God, rather than in one's own understanding. That final step...of trusting God instead of self, is crucial (and I choose that word precisely*). It is the final commitment, the final forsaking of self and relying on God, that makes salvation possible. And it is also the humiliating part of the process of salvation -- the one that asks me to stop being so darn smug, so darn self-confident, so determined to "do it my way," and to admit my own dependence on God. So our natural inclinations resist it brutally.

That is where the battle is fought: at the point at which God asks me to give up myself, my pride, my independence, my rebellion, my self-justification, my rights, and give myself over to Him. That's the metanoia.

I agree with what you say with the reservation I don't believe literally in the personhood of God.

Well, then, perhaps you have a little of what the Atheist lacks: you have, at least a sense of direction for "the Good" (i.e. the impersonal "god" you acknowledge). But how do you have it? How do you know which direction to "repent" in?

Should you be more merciful (as the Christian God would bid you be), or less (as Social Darwinism or Ayn Rand would have you be)? Should you regret and fight your procreative faculties as a woman (as the Second Wave Feminists would argue) or should you embrace them and be thankful for them (as the God of Genesis would have you do)? Should you be more oppositional and hateful to those on the Right (as those on the Left would have you be), or more compassionate to your 'enemies' (as Jesus Christ said you should)?

And exactly how do you know which way you should "turn" in all these issues? What's your mechanism for knowing?

For you say,

Repentance is a life stance or aspiration towards the good, which involves turning away from what is not good.

This means you already have to know what "towards the good" is: but the accounts above differ diametrically, rationalizing opposite "turnings." How do you know you're "turning toward" the actual "good"?

Repentance is not a once and for all event

It's both, actually. Certainly you're right to say that one needs to repent many times, because we are fallen and fallible creatures. Fair enough.

But Biblically, there is a primary metanoia, or "change of mind," in which one turns ones entire course of life in a new direction. And without that primary metanoia, there is no salvation. For one cannot be saved by pursuing one's own way more ardently; one can only be saved by turning God's way.

"All of us, like sheep, have gone astray. Each of us has turned to his own way. But the Lord has caused the wrongdoing of us all to fall on Him." (Is. 53:6)

[Alexis Jacobi]

In actual fact nearly all adults , if they introspect enough, see that they are no wiser than little children pretending to themselves that they are this or that role they are playing at, but they aren't. We are lost and seek certainty about who we really are but we never find that certainty, we only think we do. For instance you think you are certain that you are really a 'Christian'. You don't realise that this is a role you identify with. The dentist, the mother, the judge, the criminal, the communist, the failure, the rich man, all come to identify themselves with these roles. But they are not these roles. At the moment of their deaths and forever after only the Recording Angel knows the full story .

This morning I was reading an essay by WB Yeats The Celtic Element in Literature and it brought to mind what I conceive of as the 'hidden difference' in contrast to the 'obvious difference' between my relationship to things spiritual and that of IC.

By hidden difference I mean something that is there and has effect but is not overtly conceptualized and hence does not become part of the conversation. And what you have written, in the quoted paragraph, caused me to think "Belinda is speaking from a Celtic mind-set", which is to say not so much from the mind but from the heart.

"Men who lived in a world where anything might flow and change, and become any other thing; and among great gods whose passion were in the flaming sunset, and in the thunder and the thunder-shower, had not our thoughts of weight and measure."

Yeats quotes Earnest Renan from his The Poetry of the Celtic Races:

"No race communed so intimately as the Celtic race with the lower creation, or believed it to have so big a share in moral life."

One thing that I must say I *object to* is the imposition of an absolute controlling definition when it comes to man's relationship to divinity. But that really means to life itself and to the entire way that a person lives life. Living life is not *theological science* and life is not a series of hard and fast definitions. One of the things that I encountered when I studied The Great Chain of Being (which is far more than a mere Medieval fantasy but a way of seeing and understanding the value and the value-difference inherent in life and applying it to an imagined model) (it became necessary to study The Great Chain of Being to be able to better understand Shakesepare and the seventeenth century, in fact it is imperative) is that when this model was overturned, it was at that point that both Hell and Heaven were effectively dispersed -- or what is the word I am looking for? Made to disappear, made unreal. But it is in the imagination of those things, those places, those outcomes, that their moral value really lies.

One of the outcomes of ultra-modernity has been the destructive of the imaginative mind. It is odd because if I use the term *imagination* and refer to man's imagination, I know that this is taken as a reference to what is unreal, because we now have determined that what is imagined is false. So, in fact, with ultra-modernity all previous meaning was overturned.

Consider for example what Sir John Davies [Born: April 16, 1569] wrote when musing as to why the soul is united to the body:

This substance, and this spirit of God's owne making,
Is in the body plact, and planted heere,
That both of God, and of the world partaking,
Of all that is, Man might the image beare.

God first made angels bodilesse, pure minds,
Then other things, which mindlesse bodies be;
Last He made Man, th'horizon 'twixt both kinds,
In whom we doe the World's abridgement see.

It is rather hard to explain without involved without an involved essay how the largest part of our meanings, and of our value-meaning, arose in that other time when the World was seen differently -- when the world was both seen and lived-in as well as imagined. Largely now, we live in a 'dead world'. It is in this sense the destruction of this imagining faculty which undermines the possibility of believing in what Christianity presents to us as value and ideal. What is *true* in Christianity is never received as a set of dreary facts (the despotism of facts) but rather because of its momentous overarching sense. But when this is undermined the sense of it all can no longer be imagined.

So what I try to point out -- with limited success to those of imagination-dead atheistic mind, but then also to the mind of a person like IC who seems to live in a very strict "theologically defined" imposed world -- is that there has to be a return to a different way of seeing the Christian mystery. I believe this is certainly true if one examines (if one actually sits down and reads through) the Ordinary of the Mass, and here I mean the real Mass, the Old Mass that has been supplanted. It involves one in an 'images journey' of assent; it is an uplifting spiritual enactment which in the best instances combined very High Art, music, sense, poetry and meaning. But then it is actually infused with invocative, spiritual power.

What kind of mind is it that must undermine, that is compelled to undermine, the old sense of meaning? But how can we, we moderns, recover the old sense of meaning when we have been thrust out of that way of seeing? Again I refer to Gloucester: I stumbled when I saw. When I saw I did not see. I thought I was seeing but I was not seeing true.

[Alexis Jacobi]

So what I try to point out -- with limited success to those of imagination-dead atheistic mind, but then also to the mind of a person like IC who seems to live in a very strict "theologically defined" imposed world -- is that there has to be a return to a different way of seeing the Christian mystery. I believe this is certainly true if one examines (if one actually sits down and reads through) the Ordinary of the Mass, and here I mean the real Mass, the Old Mass that has been supplanted. It involves one in an 'images journey' of assent; it is an uplifting spiritual enactment which in the best instances combined very High Art, music, sense, poetry and meaning. But then it is actually infused with invocative, spiritual power.

I have to make it plain that if I describe IC's perspective in this way it is because of the convention of generalization. Moreover I am referring to a tendency with which we all have a relationship. It is simply that there are other tendencies which have as much relevance and importance (in my view).

[Immanuel Can]

So what I try to point out -- with limited success to those of imagination-dead atheistic mind, but then also to the mind of a person like IC who seems to live in a very strict "theologically defined" imposed world -- is that there has to be a return to a different way of seeing the Christian mystery. I believe this is certainly true if one examines (if one actually sits down and reads through) the Ordinary of the Mass, and here I mean the real Mass, the Old Mass that has been supplanted. It involves one in an 'images journey' of assent; it is an uplifting spiritual enactment which in the best instances combined very High Art, music, sense, poetry and meaning. But then it is actually infused with invocative, spiritual power.

I have to make it plain that if I describe IC's perspective in this way it is because of the convention of generalization. Moreover I am referring to a tendency with which we all have a relationship. It is simply that there are other tendencies which have as much relevance and importance (in my view).

I accept this as an honest reply and devoid of any ill-will. I appreciate that we speak frankly and companionably. May I offer my own perspective in the same spirit?

If I may say, the one tendency that is most important in metanoia is the decision to take it personally, to heart, as a challenge to one's own self, and as calling for a commitment. And I think there are two ways in which one is tempted to avoid the challenge that metanoia presents to the individual: one is to treat it as a subject of cool, detached, academic investigation; the other is to treat it as a matter of aesthetics or taste.

To do either of these has the humanly-desired effect of extracting one from the convicting nature of metanoia: one no longer has to face the crux of the matter. The self is not asked to lay itself down anymore. There need be no personal "turning," and one is not put to the cross. But that decision, to treat metanoia as a matter of academic or sociological inspection instead of a personal challenge also means that light will be withdrawn from one. Because man would like God to speak without threat to the self, without demand, to the cool perspicacity of his mere intellect -- but God does not speak that way.

When God speaks, human responsibility follows. Always. You see this on Mt. Moriah, Mt. Sinai, and again at Ebal and Gerizim. There will be no cool, detached and distant revelation of God; the nation that knows Him must answer for it with their personal commitment -- or they are responsible entirely for what they refuse to see, refuse to take personally, and refuse to act upon.

So there is great danger in treating God as a sociological subject, as a cultural artifact, or as an aesthetic exercise. There is equal danger in looking into Him as a mere philosophical postulate. (1 Sam. 6:19 gives an interesting illustration of this). What one's ears hear, in the process, one will answer for. And there is no way to investigate HaShem without the corresponding response of obedience...at least, no safe way. God does not give light to those who will not act upon it. So to stand back and consider God coolly, as if He were a mere factor in a cultural landscape, is to deprive oneself of the means to learn what one needs to understand, and to invite judgment for ever single thing one does learn.

Serious stuff. And I'm not suggesting that any of this is what you are doing. But given your comment above, it could be, if you chose to make it that. And as a friendly voice, I have to advise against such a strategy.

[Alexis Jacobi]

I accept this as an honest reply and devoid of any ill-will. I appreciate that we speak frankly and companionably. May I offer my own perspective in the same spirit?

No ill-will is possible for a few reasons one being that I have no use for it! So any differences can be calmly discussed.

But overall, and in many important categories, I understand what you make efforts to put forth. I have areas of difference, yet I am uncertain as of yet what these differences actually mean. But when I speak of differences, or myself and with what I differ, I cannot locate it in you, that is, personally. My differences occur on a different plane. The reasons why this is so are quite interesting and for that reason worthy of examination.

Serious stuff. And I'm not suggesting that any of this is what you are doing. But given your comment above, it could be, if you chose to make it that. And as a friendly voice, I have to advise against such a strategy.

I agree very much with the statement 'serious stuff'. Life is not a joke and it should not be a cluttered pastime. Yet certainly we live in a general atmosphere where the model individual does not, and perhaps cannot, take life seriously. But what does this mean? I do not know how I came to this perception but when I was reading Andre Gide I concluded that in our time it had become possible to live life with significantly more -- what is the word? -- enjoyment, or perhaps real abandon, than had been possible at other times. Life was no longer (at least for many moderns) a matter of day in and day out suffering, but offered the possibility of relative well-being that would not be interrupted. I suppose a large part of this resulted from modern medicine, even perhaps dentistry, and I am not joking.

It occurred to me that the prospect of living a full life more or less suddenly opened up as a real possibility. And I think a large part of this had to do with alleviating suffering. It became possible (again in the developed countries) to lead a rich, full life within the bodily frame, indeed fully within the bodily frame. If life was far less circumscribed by quite acute suffering, all of a sudden (it seemed to me) that the prospect of living life took on whole other possibilities. And my thought was that it is this that has, significantly and profoundly, produced a change in attitude that has affected how the Christian path and the Christian religion is understood.

So instead of seeking God as a refuge and a solace from a quite literally cruel and unforgiving world -- an existence circumscribed by pain and suffering -- one had need of a god that was a partner to life-lived , to abundance and fullness, to opened horizons, and naturally to every single aspect of sensuous, bodily experience, especially perhaps that of sex-experience. Simultaneously then, the god of eternal punishment, or a world filled with what seemed eternal punishment and affliction, became all on the sudden irrelevant. Who then had use for the dreary, oppressive language of finger-shaking religious guilt-trippers?

And then what was the real purpose of life in any case? If it was, for large numbers, no longer necessary to passively and impotently suffer, how then could life be defined as a place of mortal sorrow that required recourse to a God who would alleviate it in some imagined, indefinite future?

So what I try to do here is to present and explain something crucial to understanding Our Present. Life is no longer (again for many, for most) a vale of tears but an open horizon.

Here, I think, is where Nietzsche becomes relevant to this discussion. He is the harbinger of what seems to be a new ethical attitude. You say that he is an 'atheist' and I do not in fact think that is the case. He defines however a different god. I think you and I (and those reading) know quite well that Nietzsche rejects something but favors another. And his 'rejection' is something that he lived-out in his own body/psyche. He really should have continued in his family line as 'preacher of the (Christian) Word'. Instead, to all appearances, he became preacher of the anti-Word. But I do not think this is the same as rejecting the notion of divinity. But this leads to the question: What god then did he *see*, or what god did he define?

Now that is the question. Because there is no doubt that if he defines a god, and if he defines a worship, it is of the incarnated entity. And in this sense he was, and he still is, a harbinger not of a new doctrine -- he did not invent this new horizon -- he merely saw it with a clarity no one else had. For this reason he became explosive.

I am providing a preamble to what is a far larger conversation and a set of ideas that I work with (or I should say that are working on me). Consider this the first installment.

You question my 'religious commitment' and I have no problem at all with this! But these explanations take time. Because we are unraveling all sorts of difficult knots.