philosophy – Intelligent Christian Spirituality

SOLVING THE HUMAN DILEMMA

Henri Nouwen holds the mystical path

devotion to God

to be central to the life of the heart.

When morality gets too much attention

it subverts the priority of the mystical.

In any case, true morality flows out of oneness

the Law of Karma rules:

“You cannot do good or evil to your self

without doing the same for your neighbors”

– Catherine of Siena

To the extent we can look at our self

clearly/compassionately, we can confidently/fearlessly

look into someone else’s eyes – and into their soul

since eyes are the mirrors of the soul.

For Teilhard de Chardin love is not

an epi-phenomenon – something humans can acquire

rather it is what we constantly bathe in

something closer to us than our breath

which includes agape/eros/philia (brotherly/sisterly love)

and undergirds/supports the rise of consciousness –

deepening love and rising consciousness go together.

Similar to Teilhard, theologian John Macquarrie

illumines the human condition

by his main theme of self-transcendence

which simultaneously opens us to God the Infinite

while recognizing our essential finitude.

We humans are always a problem to ourselves

because we are finite yet longing for infinity –

longing for the Godhead, for Infinite Love

the living God beyond our images/idols of God.

This is where we need faith –

because according to Simone Weil

“Faith is the ability to hold creative tension

between paradoxes that are irresolvable

such as being finite but longing for infinity.”

Faith in God is the solution

to the otherwise unsolvable human dilemma.

MYSTICISM AND POLITICS

Mysticism is direct experience of God

but most mainline pastors are sceptical about experience

because they believe faith must have intellectual content –

and it must involve social justice –

true faith is not simply pentecostal or mystical.

Johann Metz’s theology of politics was influenced by

Catholic theologian Karl Rahner

existentialist philosopher Martin Heidegger

marxist philosopher of hope Ernst Bloch

Jurgen Habermas’s critique of modern consciousness

liberation theologian Gustavo Gutierrez

and the base communities who

practically and politically implemented

the ideas of all these thinkers.

If Metz were alive today he would include scientists and mystics

since mysticism explores consciousness

and understanding consciousness is

the next big frontier for science.

What most pastors miss or forget

is that Divine Co-creativity works

within the evolutionary process

and within us –

the Spirit works primarily through

our mind/heart/gut’s consciousness and experience

rather than as an external agent of cause-and-effect.

“The universe is the primary Sacred Reality

and we become sacred by participating in it” –

Thomas Berry

This is how we get wholeness/salvation –

salvation by participation in the universe

since the whole cosmos was designed and created

with a view to the Cosmic Christ

the noble goal/perfection/center of the universe.

This is the starting point for Johann Metz

in his theology of politics.

UNITY OF COSMOS AND RELIGIONS IN CHRIST

We recognize now that Descartes’ “I think therefore I am”

reduces self and God to concepts

making it impossible to experience

the full mystery of God or self.

Beyond Descartes, the social and cultural living conditions

of modern humans have changed so much

through natural/human/social sciences/technology

we now literally live in a new age/new era of human history.

Quantum principle: concepts like ‘God’ and ‘divinity’

are human constructs used sparingly in quantum theology

because they may limit, not enhance, our understanding

of life’s ultimate source and meaning.

The Cosmic Christ was alive well before Jesus –

for indigenous cultures much of their myth and ritual

comes from the experiences of shamans

tuned in to the Universal/Great Spirit.

Having a psychic crisis is part of the training of shamans –

wounded healers can heal others undergoing a similar crisis –

the work of shamans foreshadows the Cross and Resurrection.

The purpose of the universe up to the time of Christ:

to produce Christ, the most excellent of all beings

incarnating the divinity of the universe.

The purpose of the universe since Christ:

for everyone to become/put on the mind of Christ.

The purpose of the universe is Christ and Christs.

A cosmos without Christ is a body without a head –

it cannot function nor hold itself together.

Christ is the head/exemplar of the universe’s purpose :

union and transformation in God.

John Paul II in noting the commonality of religions

clearly saw the Cosmic Christ everywhere

and followed the concern of the Second Vatican Council

with world peace/world unity

because there can be no global peace

without peace between religions –

a peace that science and technology cannot give.

KNOCKING ON THE PEARLY GATES

On all the key issues in spirituality:

the equality of men and women/

the harmony of body and soul/

the holiness of being/the goodness of humans/

the compatibility of mysticism and prophecy

Meister Eckhart exceeded the Aristotelian Thomas Aquinas

and so Eckhart was definitely not a Neo-Platonist

as he is often portrayed – he sought the unity of opposites –

the unity of Heaven and Earth.

But Newtonian physics separated all things –

and thinking of matter composed of hard separate atoms

impacted our view of self – the individual against community

and our view of Spirit – as somehow opposed to material science

and our view of nature – as a product to be exploited for gain –

the result has been massive alienation

from self/God/nature.

The Jewish world of Jesus thought of all things

as created/hierarchical/anthropocentric/

governed by fixed laws with a fixed beginning and fixed end.

But modern evolutionary physics sees reality

as a dynamic interplay of chance/law/interconnection –

Aristotle’s fixed reality of matter and form

has been deconstructed by relativity and quantum mechanics

into a never-ending/interconnected/flow

of energy and information.

The creative union of God and matter

is not a metaphysical doctrine as much as a

pragmatic explanation of the universe –

the religious paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

had an innate tendency/power to see God

not apart from the physical world

but in it/through it/as it.

The Kingdom/Queendom/Kindom/Presence of God

is within us and all around us

so we do not have to die

to get to the Pearly Gates

(owned, conspirists claim, by Bill Gates –

therefore the “Gates of Heaven”)

we only have to be fully alive with God

in this present spiritual/material world.

HEAVEN/HERE/NOW

By reversing the relationship between being and union

Teilhard de Chardin overturned classical metaphysics

and introduced a new principle of reality – hyperphysics –

being comes out of union not vice versa –

the whole/community precedes the individual.

According to the great Protestant theologian Paul Tillich

communal non-being threatens humanity in three ways:

our ontic self-affirmation is threatened:

relatively by ‘fate’ (contingent/circumstantial/existence)

absolutely by death

our spiritual self-affirmation is threatened:

relatively by emptiness

absolutely by meaninglessness

our moral self-affirmation is threatened:

relatively by guilt

absolutely by condemnation.

And according to Richard Rohr’s Immortal Diamond

we cannot discover our True Self

until we overcome the four splits of the False Self:

our idealized self split from our shadow self
our mind split from our body
our life split from our death
our self split from others.

But Christ unites all/overcomes all non-being/splits

makes invisible visible/incomprehensible comprehensible –

God became human so that Christ may be first

not only in the spiritual realm

but also in the material realm.

If we could trust that “Your name is already written

in heaven” as Jesus said, it would immediately resolve

our most basic anxiety – that we are not good enough –

and would make all competing/criticizing/conquering unnecessary –

we would no longer suffer condemnation by ourselves/others/God.

Material things cannot dwell in each other

but spiritual things can: God/humans/all angels

dwell in each other in all joy and happiness

though we discern it not – unless we wake up to hyperphysics

and discover heaven/here/now.

THE NONDUAL BEDROCK OF RELIGION

The modern/postmodern/secular world is often struck

by its own power, and raises anxious questions

about humanity’s meaning/role/destiny in the universe

so, Christianity needs to bring its own vast resources

to bear on these questions.

If Christianity’s mission is to dialogue

with all people, it must begin

by creating mutual respect/harmony with all churches –

interdenominational infighting makes Christians

hypocrites when they try to reach out.

As a chaplain in World War II, John MacQuarrie

saw the basic goodness of soldiers

and grace operating in Muslims

which challenged his Calvinist negativity

about human nature’s “absolute depravity”

and led to his conversion from Presbyterian to Anglican

letting go of Calvin’s exclusivism, he found grace

everywhere, and became the stellar Anglican theologian.

Jesuits in Japan hung out with Zen monks

and readily participated in the quasi-religious

“Tea Ceremony” which looks from the outside

like a non-spiritual ritual, but internally

is about disciplined silence/simplicity/

self-effacement/contemplation.

There may not be a universal religion

but there is a universal wisdom

which Aldous Huxley wrote about in 1945

in The Perennial Philosophy – all religions

value virtues like patience/humility/kindness/

compassion/peace. Like John Henry Newman

who was a major influence in Vatican II

Huxley believed God’s Plan included all religions.

The fact that nondualism is central

to three major religions: Taoism/Hinduism/Buddhism

and underlay Christian mysticism for sixteen centuries –

Jesus said “You are in Me and I am in you

and we are in God” – means nondualism

unites both Western and Eastern religion.

UNITY SURPASSING MODERNITY

The Perennial Philosophy highlighted

the “Great Nest of Being”

which was the universal worldview of humanity

until modernity reared its methuselah head.

Going beyond modernity

since the turn of the millennium has been

a growing awareness of commonality

between religions, and unity of all sciences –

a general visioning of all things as interrelated.

However major dualisms still persist:

heaven vs Earth/spirit vs body/human vs animal/

sacred vs secular – all these dualisms

which falsify life/nature/God

since God works thru both/and polarities

not either/or dualisms – God is in and beyond

the Earth/body/nature/culture/life.

Photosynthesis, one of the key factors in life

happened when chlorophyll molecules served everything

by capturing solar energy and converting it into

food and energy for others

3,000,000,000 years ago.

Nature serves us and Law serves us

and so our will delights in Law

but we cannot fulfill all laws

so the Cosmic Christ emerged from within the universe

as Jesus the Christ who lived under the Law

and experienced all our temptations/compulsions

in order to redeem/liberate us from the Law

with the Divine Love that goes beyond Law.

Following Jesus, Christian social action

finds God in politics/work/social programs –

anything that betters human life –

because Christ became human

and every human is another Christ

and we cannot let Christ live

in physical/spiritual squalor –

“As you do to the least, you do to Me”

– Jesus the Unitive Thinker in Matthew 25:40.

INTEGRALISM A WAY OUT OF POLARIZED WORLDVIEWS

It goes without saying that debate is polarized today. The left is convinced they are right. The right know they have the truth. Going beyond both into underlying worldviews might create understanding and help alleviate the conflict.

Currently there are three predominant worldviews at work in our society: traditional, modern, and postmodern. Each has its own strengths and pathologies. A fourth approach, integralism, takes the best from those three and lets go of the negative stuff.

People in the traditionalist worldview hold positive values like fairness, honesty, duty, honour, patriotism, making sacrifices for the greater good, and traditional religion. These are the good people who voted for Donald Trump, not because they liked him personally but because he spoke their language about tradition. He was going to restore things to the way they used to be, and “make America great again.” They felt it would be hard to bring this about and so they needed a tough guy like Trump to make it happen.

The pathology of this worldview is that it tends to be ethnocentric. It focuses on “our group” being totally right and everyone else being wrong. It is an “us versus them” mentality. This can result in racism, homophobia, and xenophobia, that is, fear of strangers or anyone different than us. So, it is not surprising that it is against having a never-ending influx of immigrants. People here can get stuck in rigid law and order.

The second worldview, the modern, also has many positive values, mainly about independent thought and empowerment of the individual. The modern worldview is in favour of science, rationality, freedom, democracy, capitalism and global markets.

The shadow side of modernism has been an insensitivity to minorities and those who through no fault of their own cannot keep up with the competition. It is marked by over-consumption of the world’s resources and resulting environmental degradation. And as the individual triumphs, there is no sense of community and the greater good.

The postmodern worldview began around 1968 according to Richard Rohr, Ken Wilber, and others. On the positive side, postmodernism is obsessed with human rights and the absolute equality of all people, particularly women, blacks, indigenous people, people of colour, LGBTQ and the handicapped. It is sensitive to minorities and the marginalized. People who hold this worldview tend to be world-centric not ethnocentric. They want to include all groups, including the natural world, and so are extremely environmentally conscious. People who believe in progressive religion would fit in here.

The pathology of this approach lies in the tendency of every new level of development to be overly-critical of the worldview that preceded it. So, postmodernism tends to be anti-modern. It is anti-capitalism, ignoring all the good things capitalism has brought us. It is wary of all hierarchies that could create inequality and believes there are no absolute, objective truths. In a post-truth world, people can get stuck in chaotic relativism and disorder.

Those who hold the integral worldview try to live by Wilber’s dictum of “transcend and include.” This means that you keep developing, constantly working on transcending your previous worldviews, but also try to include all the positive things from each earlier stage of development.

Integralists try to escape rigid order and chaotic disorder and bring about a healthy reordering of things. There are many people who are trying to do this such as Jeff Salzman with his podcast, The Daily Evolver,and Steve McIntosh with his book Developmental Politics. In religion, besides Rohr, there is Catholic bishop Robert Barron with his Word on Fire podcast, Brian McLaren, a major Protestant thinker with books like A New Kind of Christianity and Pope Francis with his “integral ecology” outlined in his 2015 encyclical “On Care for Our Common Home.”

What the world needs now is to respect and include the positive values behind others’ worldviews, let go of the negatives and learn to work together to bring about a new post-pandemic reordering of society and life.

Bruce Tallman is a spiritual director and religious educator of adults. http://www.brucetallman.com 

TEST EVERY SPIRIT

“Beloved, do not believe every spirit

but test the spirits to see

if they are from God” – I John 4:11

There are many visionaries/prophets in the world today

but we must discern the rind from the fruit.

Meister Eckhart is no Gnostic

but he emphasized transcendent/ineffable knowing

which the 21^st century mind cannot grasp

since it believes all knowledge can be rationally analyzed

or if not, the knowledge-object does not exist.

But God transcends human rationality –

“My thoughts are not your thoughts

and My ways are not your ways –

as the heavens are higher than the earth

so My ways are higher than your ways

and My thoughts higher than your thoughts” – Isaiah 55:8-9.

Limited 21^st century rationality proclaims this god must not exist.

Eckhart was under the influence of mystical Judaism

therefore, the Hasidim (Jewish mystics), show up in his writing –

the Baal Shem Tov said “In remembering lies redemption”

and Eckhart called Christ “The Great Reminder.”

Eckhart reminds us the heart ties together God’s triple-c calling:

communion with God/

community with others/

commission – ministry for others.

Eckhart believed salvation must include social justice

but most traditional salvation theories ignored the obvious:

racism/sexism/slavery/poverty/degradation of Earth –

Protestants overlooked the decimation of indigenous Americans

and Catholics overlooked the poverty of social justice in Latin America.

Recognizing the inner beauty of each human being

is at the heart of being human –

when we judge others we deny their inner beauty/

their beauty never gets a chance to shine/

and we block evolution’s flow

to greater love and consciousness.

COSMOGENESIS: THE EVOLUTION OF LOVE

Science has shown us:

– all life comes from a single event, the Big Bang

– the universe is not a static, fixed event

it is a ‘cosmogenesis’ – ongoing creativity

– all life participates in this birthing

and is deeply connected.

Teilhard described evolution as a “biological ascent

towards greater unity and complexity

in which qualitative differences spontaneously arise.”

According to Raimundo Panikkar’s ‘cosmotheandrism’

– we cannot say ‘I’ without the divine

– we cannot say ‘Thou’ without consciousness

– we cannot say ‘It’ without the world –

all three are necessary for cosmogenesis.

Descartes’ ‘cogito ergo sum’ (‘I think therefore I am’)

arrives at his ‘self’ as an objective reality, a ‘thing’

and then arrives at ‘God’ as another ‘thing’

another finite being

instead of transcendent and infinite.

Looking straight at our ‘self’ makes us uncomfortable

so the essence of bravery is to live without self-deception –

the more we get to know our judgmentalism/arrogance/pettiness

– the less they can sink their fangs into us

– the more they lose their power

– the more we can love.

“The purpose of spiritual books like Introduction to the Devout Life

is to bring us to the love of God despite

the thousand darts of mockery

worldly people will throw at you.”

– Francis de Sales

We need Teilhard/Panikkar/de Sales to overcome the world

and keep cosmogenesis/cosmotheandrism/the evolution of Love/

the galaxies and stars

flowing like a mighty river.