Dear Chuck,
Here are a couple of Tolstoy quotations, one that made a lasting impression in early adulthood; the other a recent discovery.
Your reference to Taruskin that Bach "was not after beauty, he was after truth" reminded me of the first Tolstoy "frame."
Your reference to Taruskin that Bach "was not after beauty, he was after truth" reminded me of the first Tolstoy "frame."
The estrangement between Judaism and nascent Christianity (which remained a sect within Judaism until the Roman destruction of The Temple in 70 A.D.) arose from the Christian belief that the Messiah was both human and divine.
Jews had always held that the Messiah would be a human being only and NOT an incarnation of God.
That a human being should be, in any way, conflated with God was, in the Jewish view, unforgivable blasphemy. (Islam's view of The Prophet also arises from the belief that God is absolute, one, indivisible and utterly transcendent - a set of characteristics that lend themselves to authoritarian governance, trending toward fascism.)
Although the views I express below may run afoul of your recent admonition not to subject "others" to the Procrustean Bed of my own philosophy, it is nevertheless a fact that my viewpoint within Catholicism's cultural matrix sheds "a certain light."
Although the views I express below may run afoul of your recent admonition not to subject "others" to the Procrustean Bed of my own philosophy, it is nevertheless a fact that my viewpoint within Catholicism's cultural matrix sheds "a certain light."
Chesterton argues that the blinding brightness and irresistible incandescence of radical monotheism -- particularly in Islam, but also, I think, in Judaism -- results in a singularity of purpose that is ultimately opaque to the central (and decentralizing) importance of Community. (Pope Francis says his reason for choosing the priesthood was community.)
Chesterton also sees Divine Singularity in Unitarianism, not so much as it relates to the specific sect called "Unitarianism," but lower case "unitarianism" defined as any theological posture opposed to Trinitarianism. (Or, what we might call the categorical opposition of The One to The Many.)
(Please don't despair of the "blah-blah." This gets interesting...)
Just as a three-legged stool imparts upright stability to those things we want to "stand" over time, a single leg (or even two) gets very shaky very fast: hours versus centuries.
The crucial importance that Chesterton sees in The Trinity is that The Godhead Itself is a community -- Father (Effusive Creation From Beyond The Knowable/Provable), Son (Human Incarnation of The Divine) and Holy Spirit (the Inspiring "Conduit" between the two).
The relational matrix that embeds The Trinity avoids the persistent temptation to conceive God as a radically (ruggedly?) individual Deity who can thunder at Will --- without discussion, without interaction, without relationship.
Notably, Pope Francis sees the fullness of Truth as relationship.
Since Christianity posits that "God is Love," it follows from the relational nature of Love (between God and "Man" or between human beings themselves) that the Truth of God-Divinity must manifest in relationship.
The Radical One is insufficient for the God that is Love.
The Radical One is insufficient for the God that is Love.
Chesterton sees Islam's Indivisibly Singular And Totally Transcendent God (so transcendent as to be exempt from any intrinsic need for relationship) represented by the single, slashing scimitar, wielded by The Individual (i.e., Undivided) One, which is to say The One not broken into the multiplicity of inter-related Community as The Trinity is.
In Chesterton's view -- and I think it is important to point out that Chesterton seems most interested in the centrality of The Idea, whatever its underlying time-space reality -- The Trinity (at least structurally) offers salvation from the unbridled, self-obsessed presumption that God is One.
In turn, the dogmatic Trinitarian assertion of "distributed power" puts a break on any one individual seeing himself (or herself) as a smiting executor of Allah (or Yahweh's) radical Willfulness, a willfulness that does not take into account the ever ramifying implications of Community because Willful Singularity does not participate in a community.
Trinitarian religion conceives every single thing -- both "seen and unseen" (as stated in the Nicene Creed) -- as sacred, as "a sacramental," as a "thing" infused with the incarnate reality of Divinity.
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, SJ
Paleontologist/Cosmologist
Our chief purpose on this earth is not to return to The Source... although that may be.
Our purpose is to incarnate - to enflesh - the God of Love and the Love of God
Pope Francis: What Christianity Looks Like When Believers Realize "God Is Love"
"John Ford, John Wayne, Aquinas and Theosis (Christian Divinization)"
http://paxonbothhouses.
Alternatively, the radical "unitarianism" of Islam is so unconcerned with the incarnation of Divinity (since Allah never incarnated, was never divided into a communitarian matrix-milieu of divinely related "members") that Islam can easily degenerate into considering no earthly thing as a sacrament.
"The Word was made Flesh
and dwelt among us."
In the Islamic mind, it is easy to see everything as a toy in the hands of The Almighty that can be disposed as Allah - not bound by community - sees fits.
Project this view of divinity into an ignorant individual's psyche and "hell breaks loose." (According to Salman Rushdie, "Boko Haram" -- often translated as "Western Education Is Bad" -- actually means "Books are Evil.")
Carl Jung had this to say about the Vatican's 20th century proclamation of The Assumption of Mary -- physically -- into heaven.
Western religious tradition
Jung's assessment of Western religion arose both from his own experiences as well as from the psychotherapeutic work with his European clients. As a young man he had visions and dreams that were powerful and rich with meaning, yet he clung to Christianity. While he believed that God could "do stupendous things to me, things of fire and unearthly light", he was profoundly disappointed by his first communion—in his words, "nothing happened".[2] He saw the same symptoms in his clients, namely, a fascination with the power of the unconscious, coupled with the inadequacy of Western religious symbols and rituals to represent this power. Summing up his analysis of the modern European situation he said: "Our age wants to experience the psyche for itself ... knowledge, instead of faith."[3]
...
In "A Psychological Approach to the Doctrine of the Trinity",[6] ... Jung interprets the Father as the self, the source of energy within the psyche; the Son as an emergent structure of consciousness that replaces the self-alienated ego; and the Holy Spirit as a mediating structure between the ego and the self. However, Jung believed that the psyche moves toward completion in fours (made up of pairs of opposites), and that therefore (using tenet #3 above) the Christian formulation of the Trinity would give way to a quaternity by including missing aspects (e.g. the feminine and evil). This analysis prompted Jung to send a congratulatory note to Pope Pius XII in 1950 upon the adoption of the doctrine of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, to wit completing the quaternity.
Jungian Interpretation of Religion
Wikipedia
Chesterton On Islam: "It Is A Test Of Good Religion Whether You Can..."
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2015/01/chesterton-on-islam.html
- “There is in Islam a paradox which is perhaps a permanent menace. The great creed born in the desert creates a kind of ecstasy out of the very emptiness of its own land, and even, one may say, out of the emptiness of its own theology. It affirms, with no little sublimity, something that is not merely the singleness but rather the solitude of God. There is the same extreme simplification in the solitary figure of the Prophet; and yet this isolation perpetually reacts into its own opposite. A void is made in the heart of Islam which has to be filled up again and again by a mere repetition of the revolution that founded it. There are no sacraments; the only thing that can happen is a sort of apocalypse, as unique as the end of the world; so the apocalypse can only be repeated and the world end again and again. There are no priests; and yet this equality can only breed a multitude of lawless prophets almost as numerous as priests. The very dogma that there is only one Mahomet produces an endless procession of Mahomets. Of these the mightiest in modern times were the man whose name was Ahmed, and whose more famous title was the Mahdi; and his more ferocious successor Abdullahi, who was generally known as the Khalifa. These great fanatics, or great creators of fanaticism, succeeded in making a militarism almost as famous and formidable as that of the Turkish Empire on whose frontiers it hovered, and in spreading a reign of terror such as can seldom be organised except by civilisation…” –Lord Kitchener, by G.K. Chesterton
Subjecting Interstellar To My Procrustean Bed
Pax tecum
Alan
On Sat, Jan 10, 2015 at 11:31 PM, CH wrote:
Richard Taruskin on Bach: "He was not after beauty, he was after truth."
On Jan 10, 2015 11:05 PM, "Alan Archibald" <alanarchibaldo@gmail.com> wrote:
The coincidence of truth and laughter: a consummation devoutly to be wished.
On Sat, Jan 10, 2015 at 8:09 PM, CH wrote:
Literally laughed out loudOn Jan 10, 2015 7:02 PM, "Alan Archibald" <alanarchibaldo@gmail.com> wrote:
I'm kindly disposed to schizoid.
It often has the virtue of being more honest than the alternatives.Pax tecumAlan
On Sat, Jan 10, 2015 at 6:58 PM, CH wrote:
And you called the movie schizoid! Sure way to invoke my protective wrath, you big meanie.On Jan 10, 2015 6:52 PM, "Alan Archibald" <alanarchibaldo@gmail.com> wrote:
Dear C,
Thanks for your email.I agree wholeheartedly with your suggestion that film (maybe all art) is "not just intellectual and can powerfully and suggestively represent inchoate concepts before they can be articulated."I also agree with your suggestion of caution though I can't help cringe a bit at the suggestion (perhaps accurate) that I'm subjecting Interstellar to a Procrustean Bed.That said, I think humans have to make sense of things in terms of their experience, all the while pushing the envelope a bit but careful not to break it.If I remember correctly, it was Chesterton who said that an open mind is like an open mouth: its purpose is to let something in, then close down on it and chew.Chesterton also pointed out that humankind is in a constant muddle because it is fickle, whimsical and fashionable, always quick to forsake fidelity to a fixed set of moral aspirations.In this regard, I have long thought America would have made more progress by now if -- instead of creating the fracturedness and fractiousness of the Rainbow Coalition -- we had stuck with Franklin's Four Freedoms. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Freedoms We'll see how it turns out, but I'm guessing homo sapiens would have been better served by "following the money" instead of getting diverted by groin, uterus and what goes on in the bedroom.Pax tecumAlan(This correspondence is posted as Subjecting "Interstellar" To My Procrustean Bed? at http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2015/01/ subjecting-interstellar-to-my. html)
On Sat, Jan 10, 2015 at 5:42 PM, CH wrote:
Be careful about fitting someone else's artistic vision into the Procrustean Bed of your philosophy!Part of the beauty if film as a medium is that it's not just intellectual, and can powerfully and suggestively represent inchoate concepts before they can be articulated. I welcome this fertile ground of the imagination and resist trying to infer and articulate a final philosophical position of "what he meant"...But I dare not disagree with you, because of your annoying habit of usually being right. Damn you.Speaks to the depth of vision of the film that it prompts such diverse conversations and passionate positions!
C
On Jan 10, 2015 3:28 PM, "Alan Archibald" <alanarchibaldo@gmail.com> wrote:
Dear Chuck,
I just realized why the end of the movie is schizoid - dividing its attention between the divine "them" and humankind as its own "God."I'm guessing that Nolan - or at least a significant part of him - wants to believe that humans are their own God but simply couldn't get his "universal plot" to work without "divine" intervention."John Ford, John Wayne, Aquinas and Theosis (Christian Divinization)"
http://paxonbothhouses.
blogspot.com/2012/12/more-on- theosis.html After my third viewing I am starting to see things both more clearly, and sometimes in a new (or brighter) light.I look forward to talking it over with you.Pax tecumAlanP.S. Here's the expanded version of an email I sent to Danny after he and I saw Interstellar. I composed it late last night for Maria.
Dear Maria,I'm so happy we got to see "Interstellar" together!Here is the reflection I wrote after seeing it with Danny.I sent you a carbon copy but want to be sure you have a "fresh" copy.I've also made a few additions to the text so that it's better than before.LoveDaddy man***Dear Daniel,Thanks for seeing "Interstellar" with Chuck and me.The movie's theological substrate reminded me of the following links.LoveDman
I can imagine.
And I cannot imagine.Cooper: You're a scientist, Brand.Brand: So listen to me when I say love isn't something that we invented. It's observable. Powerful. It has to mean something.Cooper: Love has meaning, yes. Social utility, social bonding, child rearing...Brand: We love people who have died. Where's the social utility in that?Cooper: None.Brand: Maybe it means something more - something we can't yet understand. Maybe it's some evidence, some artifact of a higher dimension that we can't consciously perceive.
"The Word was made Flesh"
The NoosphereTeilhard de Chardin's Vision
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, SJPaleontologist/CosmologistPope Francis: What Christianity Looks Like When Believers Realize "God Is Love"
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