Gary Childress wrote: ↑Mon May 06, 2024 2:51 pm
Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Mon May 06, 2024 2:48 pm
what the fuck is this shit?
The Question of the Ages ….
So, AJ, do you believe the God of the Bible exists, or are you agnostic? I assume you're not an atheist?
The creation we are in, the manifest Kosmos, is I believe (feel, intuit, reason) the creation of (let’s say) a supreme intelligence. I accept that “reality” cannot — does not — exist without that •intelligence•. So in this sense I am not an atheist. But am I a theist?
Because of my own spiritual experiences it would be very hard for me to deny (if I can put it like this) a Providential power the nature of which I cannot fathom. Yet I know it through effects (experiences, realizations) and certainty what Jung called •synchronicities•.
My response would be that such experiences can be
beckoned. And that there is (let’s say) a science to that. Yet all of this is internal to man. Yet — and strangely — whatever *it* is does appear (manifest) externally, sometimes in very odd and surprising ways.
You will be very hard-pressed to explain (in your case even to know remotely) what •the God of the Bible• is. There are many pictures or glances of this God recorded in those disparate books.
So to know that God one would have to turn to (for example) those who have dedicated their lives to the endeavor. What do they say?
What I myself might say is that, yes, The Bible is a work that reveals a historical relationship, an unfolding of understanding. I would say that what it *is* starts with Hosea. But to explain what I mean is another question.
What I am learning comes to me indirectly through talking with extraordinary ignoramuses, breathtaking in their hard nut to crack dullness and lack of literary and theological backgrounding. The lesson? You have to delve far more deeply into the innards of these problems before you can
pronounce on them (as the pronouncers do indeed pronounce).
Christian
theology is where the gold is. It is the work that has been done in relation to the (so-called) Revelation.
Still, the question of What kind of a reality we are in and especially the ethical imperatives — these are the most knotty issues. Christianity has done more substantial and relevant work in this area than any other religion.
Fact.