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Message 1.聽
Posted by woofti aka groovy gravy (U1483210) on Saturday, 26th February 2011
This is a spin-off from the Christian Thread. It is meant for discussion of the mechanics of the Gospel, rather than the general Christian chat that goes on in the Christian Thread. It is hoped that by diverting the theoretical stuff over here, the Christian Thread can be enjoyed more easily by all. I have Tayler's OK for this thread.
Thanks
woof x -
Message 2
Posted by woofti aka groovy gravy (U1483210) on Saturday, 26th February 2011
Axiomatic is that theology is testimony.
It goes against the traditional grain to start with personal testimony as a basis for theology but that's exactly what I have in mind. So I had to learn to testify theologically. In theology you speak only of what you know, you report your own experience, but as part of the discourse of theology.
This is not meant to be prescriptive to anyone. I am looking back over my own theological path. -
Message 3
Posted by Kate McLaren etc (U2202067) on Saturday, 26th February 2011
Does it go against the traditional grain? What's prophecy? What are the Gospels?
I'm not in your league as a theologian (I'm not a theologian at all) but I might pop in from time to time if that's OK. -
Message 4
Posted by woofti aka groovy gravy (U1483210) on Saturday, 26th February 2011
Doesn't it? You're not supposed to start from a subjective account, surely? That's Schleiermacher. Bad. You're supposed to be objective. Obviously the goal is to fuse objective and subjective into God's subjectivity, but it's how you get there. I emphasise I am writing my own manual for how to manage living in the world and the sacraments of prayer, Eucharist and Bible-reading (both species of bread-breaking) in the life of love. Others have their own, RC, AngloC, Methodist etc but I have never managed to get on with the standard manuals, so I'm writing my own, so that I can tear it up at length and just get on with living.
Having said that I believe getting together with other Christians for mutual encouragement and edification is absolutely vital, and I have been remiss, but I have had certain difficulties to overcome re being in places with lots of people. -
Message 5
Posted by woofti aka groovy gravy (U1483210) on Saturday, 26th February 2011
< Does it go against the traditional grain? What's prophecy? What are the Gospels? >
Oh, absolutely. By 'traditional' I mean 'according to the traditions of the best theology' - if you know what I mean.
< winky wotsit > -
Message 6
Posted by Kate McLaren etc (U2202067) on Saturday, 26th February 2011
I haven't a clue who Schleiermacher is, and I care less, but it seems to me that if the whole point of our life is our relationship with God and therefore with God's creatures, then a lot of it has got to be subjective. Yes, we've got to listen to people who have gone before us and who appear to have been close to God, but I think we have to filter all that through our own experience. And dare to be wrong. And keep the ears of our soul open for when someone wiser than we are puts our interpretation right.
It is indeed like floating over 70 fathoms. No foothold, just God preventing us from drowning. -
Message 7
Posted by woofti aka groovy gravy (U1483210) on Saturday, 26th February 2011
< What's prophecy? What are the Gospels? >
Not theology, which is commentary on these?
Do stick around, I enjoy how we agree on things despite coming at the same Christ from wildly divergent starting points. -
Message 8
Posted by Kate McLaren etc (U2202067) on Saturday, 26th February 2011
Desert Island books to help me float:
Summa Theologiae, yes, all the volumes please
Kierkegaard: Works of Love, Edifying Discourses, Training in Christianity, Fear and Trembling
Newman, Apologia Pro Vita Sua
Augustine, De Trinitate and the City of God
Help! That's the eight books!
If I say I don't want Shakespeare, can I have the complete works of Lionel Blue instead? -
Message 9
Posted by woofti aka groovy gravy (U1483210) on Saturday, 26th February 2011
I agree with everything you say. And that is how I do theology. And it works.
The caveat was for those people who don't like starting with your experience (and who may not like what I write).
To me, if theology isn't you testifying to your walk with God, it isn't theology. -
Message 10
Posted by Kate McLaren etc (U2202067) on Saturday, 26th February 2011
Oh, OK, I see what you mean. The non-traditional thing being not so much testimony, but that our doing-theology is testimony.
Honestly, I don't think that's non-traditional, except in the smily-winky way you mean. In the days of the Fathers, I get the impression that all theology was testimony. It's only later, with the rise of the professors
< Kierkegaardian spit >
that it becomes theory and scholarship. I don't (I think) mind scholarship, or not if it's like yours, because you use yours in the service of your relationship with God (s'far as I can see) and in your real understanding of the Bible, not as if it were all a mathematical puzzle. -
Message 11
Posted by woofti aka groovy gravy (U1483210) on Saturday, 26th February 2011
The only book I want is Richard Wurmbrand's Sermons in Solitary Confinement.
But I am missing my reference library terribly. I don't know when I shall get my books back. I miss my dictionaries and commentaries. -
Message 12
Posted by woofti aka groovy gravy (U1483210) on Saturday, 26th February 2011
< In the days of the Fathers, I get the impression that all theology was testimony >
Oh, me too! I was thrilled when I started reading Patristics. They knew God all right. -
Message 13
Posted by woofti aka groovy gravy (U1483210) on Saturday, 26th February 2011
For me, theology is written in the throes of almost physically passionate love for God.
There are plenty of real theologians out there. Dimitru Staniloae was one. -
Message 14
Posted by Kate McLaren etc (U2202067) on Saturday, 26th February 2011
Oh help, yes, Wurmbrand. Of course. Look, I'll just have to not go to that desert island.
I do feel for you re the books, having lost all, or nearly all, mine three times. I still only have the essentials and by no means all of them, and some of them I shall probably never have again.
There was a time when I read tons of theology, but mostly I found the scholarly stuff very tedious. While I didn't find the Fathers, especially the Greek Fathers, tedious. The professors would say the Fathers aren't rigorous, are over-credulous, over-sentimental and so on. And maybe so, for academics. But, although some of them were indeed scholars, they are not primarily academics but people trying to tell others about their great love (who is God), about salvation and redemption and and and. Trying to bring others to Life. It's a completely different attitude and motive and purpose.
And you get the same thing with the mystics (though I am not so good at reading them, that's a matter of taste). Teresa isn't a scholar, but she's a Doctor of the Church. And there's more in the Canticle of the Sun than in a scholarly tome about Creation.
And then you get the Wurmbrands and the Bonhoeffers and whatsisname the young chappie whose pik I probably still have in my old Office book.
AND - and this gets interesting - in the same tradition, yes, I really think in the same tradition, you get the current popular stuff like Philip Yancey and all the others, some evangelical some not...many of them do have a theological background but what they write is testimony, evangelism, apologetics at the most...I think it is fascinating that things have come full circle. -
Message 15
Posted by Poorgrass (U12099742) on Saturday, 26th February 2011
Just bookmarking this thread. Theology isn't my thing, and I will probably not have much to contribute, but I will enjoy reading it.
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Message 16
Posted by Kate McLaren etc (U2202067) on Saturday, 26th February 2011
Theology isn't my thing either, Poorgrass, but testimony definitely is. The church has finally shut me up as to the pulpit, but they can't shut me up in ordinary life.
(though the invisible flea is certainly having a good go at it) -
Message 17
Posted by Masefield (U14794746) on Saturday, 26th February 2011
bookmarking
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Message 18
Posted by Kate McLaren etc (U2202067) on Saturday, 26th February 2011
It is often said that a bit of persecution never did Christians any harm. Well, I don't know about that. But I do think it's interesting that now, when in much of the west Christianity is at least unfashionable and at most fair game for insults and worse, we are moving away from professors squabbling over words and over angels on pins (not a word, though, not a WORD against St Tom whom I love second only to Kierkegaard) and going right back to standing among our enemies or the indifferent and giving testimony.
And of course testimony is theology. It's squabbling over words that isn't theology, though woofti can demonstrate how to use the results IN theology. -
Message 19
Posted by Kate McLaren etc (U2202067) on Saturday, 26th February 2011
Theology is words about God - that's all. And it should be words that tell what God is like in Him/Herself. If I talk about my Significant Other, you honestly do not want to know my speculations about how much bus fare she pays to get to her work or exactly how much older her sisters are, or whether the family house gets flooded when the tide's in. You want to know whether she is loving, whether she is compassionate, whether she is intelligent, whether she is beautiful, whether she is funny...
You want testimony, not measurements. -
Message 20
Posted by woofti aka groovy gravy (U1483210) on Saturday, 26th February 2011
< And it should be words that tell what God is like in Him/Herself. >
Yes I haven't got there yet, which I'm aware of, but the goal is to write theology that brings people to Christ. Words that are soaked in the attractive, winsome grace of Christ and arguments that lead people to the truth.
My technical stuff about heart, soul, mind and body is part of the setting out of a method for theology. I am trying to develop a method for theology. I can't do it at university because of the weakness of my flesh. Whether I can do it without scholarship to bounce off, I don't know.
A grammar for talking about God. That's what I am interested in thinking about. -
Message 21
Posted by woofti aka groovy gravy (U1483210) on Saturday, 26th February 2011
This is my manifesto, from 1996 at the very outset of theological studies.
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Message 22
Posted by Kate McLaren etc (U2202067) on Saturday, 26th February 2011
Trouble is, our grammar and our vocabulary are so conditioned by our environment. Many people have developed a grammar for talking about God. Hosea did. I don't like it, but I don't have to. Matthew did, Paul did, Augustine did, Tom did, Gertrude did (cringe) Therese did...and so on. And Wesley did, and George Fox did. And, indeed, so did Kierk.
For me you'd have to go a long way to better the Psalms, but I'm aware that they have to be read in conjunction with the Gospels and accompanied by prayer or they are hard to understand. But if they don't show the beauty of God, I'm not sure what does.
But yes, of course, every age needs a grammar and a vocabulary. And maybe every person. Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks, or, sometimes, simply can't because the heart is too full. -
Message 23
Posted by woofti aka groovy gravy (U1483210) on Saturday, 26th February 2011
But no, it isn't just a grammar for talking, but a grammar for action. Yes, that is absolutely vital, but that's going to be part of the method I think. Apparently I appeared in a dream to a fairly well-known Catholic theologian once and told her "You have to hold it in your hand before you can hold it in your mind"...!
-
Message 24
Posted by woofti aka groovy gravy (U1483210) on Saturday, 26th February 2011
< Trouble is, our grammar and our vocabulary are so conditioned by our environment. >
Is that a problem? -
Message 25
Posted by Kate McLaren etc (U2202067) on Saturday, 26th February 2011
Well yes, exactly. In particular (from which the rest flows) "To talk of God outside Christ is to talk of oneself." There are some of us, and I am not sure that it is entirely a blessing, or if it is it is a blessing that, as Kierk says, "wounds from behind", who are physically aware of living and moving and having our being in God. I do not have any meaning outside God any more than I have existence outside God. Truth does not have any existence outside the Person Who it is. I love your description of the elaborate dance of attempting to place oneself anywhere but in God. Ultimately it is empty (vanity of vanities) and meaningless (I've forgotten the Hebrew word, but you know it).
And yes, God is our Thou. Which is why, on the Christian thread, I was trying to identify that quotation which I remembered as saying something like "The sum of all our words is: He is all".
As to what you said to your friend, well obviously, as the philosopher said, nothing is in the mind unless it was previously in the senses. Maybemaybe. Or else maybe nothing is recognised by the senses unless it was previously in the soul.
I'm having a small battle elsethread. Explain to me why, the first day I come back to ML, I immediately wade in among the atheists?
< sigh > -
Message 26
Posted by Kate McLaren etc (U2202067) on Saturday, 26th February 2011
I think it is, over the ages, because the meanings of words and concepts and expressions and even actions change as the world and our environment and our language changes, and hence misunderstandings, and hence the constant need for new grammars and new vocabulary.
And must now go and zizz. Goodnight and joy be with you all. -
Message 27
Posted by woofti aka groovy gravy (U1483210) on Saturday, 26th February 2011
< There are some of us, and I am not sure that it is entirely a blessing, or if it is it is a blessing that, as Kierk says, "wounds from behind", who are physically aware of living and moving and having our being in God. I do not have any meaning outside God any more than I have existence outside God. >
Yes I think it is knowledge of our woundedness that keep us close to God, and remember Jeremiah who wailed My wound will not heal.
Our lives are very, very interesting indeed, when you compare our inner lives with how it looks on the outside.
Another thing is I believe the Kingdom has a whole set of different things - everything the world has, the Kingdom has its own version of. Reason, logic, causation, philosophy - the predicament of our being born into one Kingdom but physically living in another should help us with wisdom to state paradoxes in a healing way. The two kingdoms are totally different in Matthew 5 ways. When I start looking at how, I always think the Kingdom, and therefore possibly also theology, has a reasoning of its own, a different kind of logic, as well as different theories of being, seeing and knowing. TF Torrance in his later years used to say this and passed the baton onto our generation. Macmurray also wrote of a 'logic of friendship'.
I also thought that true feminist theology was feminist after the Petrine concept of beautiful from within, ie saturated by grace, ie every word containing every other word, like music, and every word cradling the head like Mary cradles Jesus in the Pieta. Theology that is Marian like that is feminist theology. I don't mean Marian in content, but in texture. Hans Urs von Balthasar wrote Marian theology in the Roman tradition, as did Wurmbrand in his own way in the early years of his freedom. -
Message 28
Posted by woofti aka groovy gravy (U1483210) on Saturday, 26th February 2011
Anyway, fundamental to everything (apart from the Trinity, but that comes later) I think is this. We have four dimensions: heart (aka spirit), soul, mind and strength (body).
Jesus and Paul differentiate. So does Hebrews 4:12. The New Birth divides soul and spirit. Some people become aware of this immediately - they are the 'born again' crowd - for others it happens in a different way. The following is commonly taught in the Pentecostal church and seems entirely reasonable to me, consonant with both the teaching of the Bible and my own experience as I have walked with God.
The heart is where we meet with God. It is that in us which contacts Eternity.
The soul is where we meet with the world. It includes our emotions, our senses, our natural faculties.
The mind is an aspect of the soul life. The soul life is mostly what goes on in our bodies, the mind life goes on behind the eyes.
(The imagination is the spirit of the mind.)
The body is obviously the body.
In unregeneration the heart is a stone to which God cannot communicate except to strike sparks of conscience.
In regeneration the heart of stone is replaced by the heart of flesh that is sensitive to the richnesses of God's revelations.
The heart is safe in God.
This is where common Penty teaching ends and I begin!
The soul, on the other hand, is our body/soul consciousness, which is on a continuum with the whole sea of soul in the world. The realm of the soul is run by Mama Babylon, which is why some denominations fear it. Yet Christ made the redemption of our souls a possibility. "Possess your souls in patience." "You are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls." God said, "I will remember Babylon".
The believer's soul is open to the whole world, and the world will use it up until it is dead. We are as open to the slings and arrows as Christ was open to his tortures on the Cross. Every parent knows this.
We live from our hearts, not from our soul-body consciousness, so we can go all the way from turning the other cheek to being martyred if necessary.
This basic division of heart and soul is fundamental to my theology, but is not recognised or taught except in certain quarters of the church. Nevertheless I have proved its Biblical truth in my struggles with schizophrenia, which is an affliction of the soul and mind, but not of the spirit. So I would like to try to outline the differences between the faculties so people know what I mean when I talk about the heart and the soul.
*Heart - spiritual realities in the gold of God
*Soul - emotional realities in the mud of humanity
*Mind - thinking about these realities
Surely people can see the distinction in experience? They are all part of the experience of salvation, I am not saying one should be concentrated on at the expense of the other, or one is bad and the other good - no, it is a matter of /relationship/ . In unregeneration there is only the soul and the mind, which is master. Through new birth we get a new heart, then through discipleship the heart becomes the master of the soul and mind, so their relationship changes as we go on with and into Christ. The soul comes off the throne and Jesus comes into our hearts and takes up residence there, then our hearts master the rest of us. "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart (first), soul (second), mind (third) and strength (last). This is not an order of importance but an order of relationship. God masters the heart, the heart masters the soul, which masters the mind, which masters the body.
This is what I believe it means when it says we are in the world but not of it. Our souls are swimming in the ocean of humanity, linked and vulnerable to and able to bless every other living soul, but our hearts are seated in heavenly places in Christ Jesus, safely lifted out of melee and circumstance and in peace.
That might be too blunt and simplistic for some, but it's what I have believed for years now.
At last I can do a woofti-chain without worrying about it!
-
Message 29
Posted by dean volecape (U1477030) on Sunday, 27th February 2011
This is all a bit over my head, particularly first thing in the morning, but do I gather that you don't like Hosea?
I can't stand him but have wondered was I missing something? -
Message 30
Posted by Bractondefeated (U3173859) on Sunday, 27th February 2011
Response to message 1 - Woofti dere, thank you so much for this. I dont know if you were responding to my post in the Christian thread, but this is exactly what I'd hoped for. Though I feel a bit bad now, as though I'd chased you out. I really didnt mean to - its simply that I thought that thread was in fact becoming two threads in one.
I value your contributions hugely, though when I have time to play on the mb, my brain is often not up to your brilliant and profound contributions!
Bless you
Bracton -
Message 31
Posted by Kate McLaren etc (U2202067) on Sunday, 27th February 2011
Part 1 of Drystane-chain in response to woofti-chain:
Yes, I remember you taking a pasting once elsethread about your different kind of logic. I can鈥檛 see why people mind hearing that. It is so clear from the Gospels (and indeed from Paul). I think it may be because it implies that unbelievers (sorry 鈥 I use the word as shorthand) are genuinely missing something, missing a whole realm, a whole dimension of thinking. Not just an argument, a whole dimension. The logic of the Kingdom is as logical as the logic of the world, and it doesn鈥檛 fall down through basic non-existence, as the logic of the world does. The world is built on non-being. I see it all the time (I mean SEE it, so clearly that I can鈥檛 understand how others don鈥檛 SEE it). All this stuff just doesn鈥檛 exist. I only exist because at every instant God is holding me in being. I actually have no 鈥渞ight鈥 to anything except love (back and forth). It鈥檚 who God is and, mirroredly, who I am. And the rest, the buildings, the stock market, boundaries between countries, the whole great bloody structure, has no being. When I talk about eternal life, or heaven, I mean existence, reality, without all the non-being that we have erected around it. We can be in eternal life now. And death has no dominion.
I don鈥檛 know what you mean about feminist theology鈥hough I think I do when you say Marian. Maybe you are saying feminist/feminine in the way a man would鈥he way a man thinks about women (fair enough 鈥 you are one, and so was Jesus) but it鈥檚 not the way a woman thinks about women: I can鈥檛 see 鈥渨oman鈥 as per se beautiful from within etc as you say鈥ecause I am one.
Am I correctly understanding鈥he bit where you differentiate heart=spirit, soul, mind and strength=body is you doing a sort of dictionary (actually it reminds me of maths: Let X be a number between 4 and 64. Let y be a number鈥tc)? I鈥檒l have a struggle not to see 鈥渟oul鈥 as the most real part, the part where we 鈥渘aturally鈥 meet with God (I say naturally, because in fact we can meet with God in every part, but only by a special divine dispensation 鈥 that鈥檚 why we sometimes feel something physical in response to God: tears, warmth, whatever, or have some sort of enlightenment in our mind). Soul, to a Catholic (which is what I am as regards tradition) is the part that is directly created by God as opposed to body which is co-created or procreated by our parents. But I will try to remember! But yes, 鈥渉eart鈥 is a properly Hebrew way of describing our God-bit. Except, of course that I believe (against the penny catechism) that our likeness to God is in all our parts, not just the soul/spirit. I believe that we were created, that the whole of us was created, after the likeness of the Son made flesh.
Pause. -
Message 32
Posted by Kate McLaren etc (U2202067) on Sunday, 27th February 2011
Second part of Drystane-chain:
鈥淚n unregeneration the heart is a stone to which God cannot communicate except to strike sparks of conscience. In regeneration the heart of stone is replaced by the heart of flesh that is sensitive to the richnesses of God's revelations.鈥
I like that, and observe it to be true.
Babylon is what I describe in my previous post as that which has no being. I think. And in which most of us spend most of our lives. There is no absolute need to fear it, but all the same, that may be the safest way (that鈥檚 another very Catholic concept). Babylon, being in some sense the natural dwelling place of that part of us (you say soul, I鈥檇 say flesh, which includes mind) can suck us in. The result is feeling altogether too much at home in the world, forgetting that we have here no abiding city and that our commonwealth (what a wonderful word, when you forget about politics) is in heaven. It is the pull of Babylon that prevents us from, as you say, living from our hearts. The trouble is (or the good thing is) that a Christian (I use the word in the proper sense, not in the religious sense) who falls into that is not living in her proper element and she is in pain 鈥 she is, though she doesn鈥檛 know it, drowning.
God has as many ways of relating to us and looking after us as there are people. And what we call vocation, or leading, or whatever we call it, is God鈥檚 judging what is most likely to keep us safe from Babylon. That鈥檚 where I think the Orthodox are right when they say a vocation to be a monk does not show exceptional holiness but exceptional sinfulness or fragility. The strong ones are out there in Babylon unscathed. I can鈥檛. You (woofti) can鈥檛. Who knows whether the schizophrenia isn鈥檛 there to protect you, horrible as it is. It is of the strong ones, really, that what you say is fully true: 鈥淥ur souls are swimming in the ocean of humanity, linked and vulnerable to and able to bless every other living soul, but our hearts are seated in heavenly places in Christ Jesus, safely lifted out of melee and circumstance and in peace.鈥
I might try to do a threefold division along the lines thought of in Gestalt psychology:
The inner zone: what I call the soul and you call the spirit and we can both agree in calling the heart
The outer zone: what you call the soul and I call the flesh (and I include the non-discursive mind)
The middle zone: as you say, thinking about these realities.
I think you鈥檙e going too far in saying that in unregeneration there IS no heart. There is, but it is pretty well non-functional until a spark from God sets it alight. But spot on (I think) in saying that part of (the first and essential part of) salvation is the soul (flesh) coming off the throne. To which Babylon is constantly striving to return it.
And now I am away to Meeting and to have lunch with an excellent anam cara, with whom I may also go to Mass...a nice varied diet of Christianity! -
Message 33
Posted by woofti aka groovy gravy (U1483210) on Sunday, 27th February 2011
Job's a good 'un, Bracton! Don't feel bad.
-
Message 34
Posted by woofti aka groovy gravy (U1483210) on Sunday, 27th February 2011
Thanks Dykers. As to terminology:
The four-fold division I get from Jesus in the Gospels (Mark) when he said what the greatest commandment was.
Paul uses different words to denote the same realities: the 'soul' (psyche) is basically synonymous with 'flesh' (sarx). The mind of the flesh (soul) is at enmity with God, but the mind of the spirit (heart) is life and peace. Remember Paul compares the 'spiritual' man (pneumatikos) with the 'soul' man (psychikos). Music, literature and philosophy are soul realities; praying, worship and living by faith are spiritual ones.
As long as we both know what we mean, which we do, the terminology isn't that important, as long as we both know what we mean by what words, which we do.
I'm enjoying this and I rely on you and other MLers to keep me in check.
woof x -
Message 35
Posted by woofti aka groovy gravy (U1483210) on Sunday, 27th February 2011
Re the feminism, yes I am taking a man's pov - Peter's in fact, from 1 Peter 3:1-7. Sorry! It was only an idea, nothing to do with the main thing I want to try to pin down. And yes, the stuff above is indeed a setting out of terms.
-
Message 36
Posted by woofti aka groovy gravy (U1483210) on Sunday, 27th February 2011
< The strong ones are out there in Babylon unscathed. I can鈥檛. You (woofti) can鈥檛. Who knows whether the schizophrenia isn鈥檛 there to protect you, horrible as it is >
The power of my mind led me down to Luciferian pride when I was younger. I think the illness is like entering into heaven with one eye if you know what I mean. If you mind causes you to sin, pluck it out. -
Message 37
Posted by woofti aka groovy gravy (U1483210) on Sunday, 27th February 2011
Yes, I remember you taking a pasting once elsethread about your different kind of logic. I can鈥檛 see why people mind hearing that. It is so clear from the Gospels (and indeed from Paul). I think it may be because it implies that unbelievers (sorry 鈥 I use the word as shorthand) are genuinely missing something, missing a whole realm, a whole dimension of thinking. Not just an argument, a whole dimension. The logic of the Kingdom is as logical as the logic of the world, and it doesn鈥檛 fall down through basic non-existence, as the logic of the world does. The world is built on non-being. I see it all the time (I mean SEE it, so clearly that I can鈥檛 understand how others don鈥檛 SEE it). All this stuff just doesn鈥檛 exist. I only exist because at every instant God is holding me in being. I actually have no 鈥渞ight鈥 to anything except love (back and forth). It鈥檚 who God is and, mirroredly, who I am. And the rest, the buildings, the stock market, boundaries between countries, the whole great bloody structure, has no being. When I talk about eternal life, or heaven, I mean existence, reality, without all the non-being that we have erected around it. We can be in eternal life now. And death has no dominion.聽
Amen, that's very nice. We are seeing the same thing. Amazing isn't it! I suppose it's only Augustine's Two Cities but it's nice to witness it a living reality before one's very eyes. -
Message 38
Posted by woofti aka groovy gravy (U1483210) on Sunday, 27th February 2011
And what I want to try to clarify (not saying this is How Things Are, but it is my chosen terminology, to which I keep, so I want to clarify my terms up front) is that 'the world' is a place of soul, a soul soup, where everyone lives from their souls and their minds, where people seek soul gratification and money is the oil. Remembering that the soul is the animal part of man, the emotions, instincts, natural thoughts, natural vision, appetite etc. The world is the domain of what Paul called the natural or 'soulish' man. And Mama B is in charge of this realm. The earth. Natural, soulish, fleshly, earthly, temporal - all words describing the natural world into which we are all born.
Now, the soul world is redeemed through Christ. It's all good - God created everything good. Music is a soul thing and that's good. But in order to enter into the discipleship of co-redemption with the Trinity, to walk in such a way as to realise the plan of God for his creation, I have found I had to learn how to start allowing Jesus to sit on the throne of my heart, relegating my natural soul life, with its imaginations, thoughts and desires, to second place. This is not fearing or shunning the soul world - although I was so attached to certain things like music that I had to do drastic things in the earlier years like getting rid of all my music books & CDs. But it is reaching the right balance that counts. I did it one way, others do it their way, there are countless ways. I used to read Puritan books while I was undergoing these disciplines, but that won't be for everyone.
"Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you."
It is like a lamp. The Holy Spirit is the electricity, the heart is the bulb, the soul is the glass shade. The soul might be different colours depending on the person, but the heart shines through the soul and out into the world. The Bible says the heart is the lamp of the Lord.
GH Mead had a distinction which might help pin down the difference between heart and soul.
In life we have our "I", which remains the same throughout our lives. This is the essential you. That is what I call the heart.
We also have a selection of "me"s. Each me is an expression of the I in the various roles it plays in life. A person might have a son me, a mother me, an employee me, a student me, a professional me, etc. We modulate our output as people depending on what we are doing and who we are with. (Perhaps some don't, but most do I think, at least this was Mead's finding.) Each 'me' is a manifestation of soul.
I put my feet up on my own table but not at someone else's house. That's an at home 'me' and a friend's house 'me'. I come across differently hanging out with Henry from the way I do when talking to a policeman who has just pulled me over. You know I wouldn't call him 'dude', I call him Sir, and I am more respectful and careful than usual. Same at work, at the airport security, etc etc. Those 'me's there are phenomena of soul. External stuff. The part of you that gets 'formed' in religious formation. That's the soul, the expression, the mannerisms, the clothing you wear: outside stuff. Your "I" who remains the same inside, is your heart. The Bible says God looks at the heart and knows our hearts.
I've got a theological vision of eucharistic anthropology and the church as a place of healing but it's going to come out in bits and pieces, this thread is just the place, and I hope people will correct me where I miss the mark. I'll give Bible refs at some stage. (Would be nice to have my books.)
BTW I agree with Drystane that the unredeemed do have a heart, but it is a heart of stone which God can only strike sparks of conscience on, by comparison with the heart of flesh which God gives us which is sensitive to the nuances of the Holy Spirit. Those who are not born again, the 'earth-dwellers' as Revelation calls them, live from their souls, which are only infinite; we live from our hearts, which are eternal. The earth dwellers walk in the flesh; we walk in the Spirit. They walk by sight, we walk by faith. The dichotomy is clear in Paul.
Another topic is pinning down the difference between faith and sight. -
Message 39
Posted by woofti aka groovy gravy (U1483210) on Sunday, 27th February 2011
The basic distinction between heart and soul is found in Psalms where David addresses his soul and asks why are you downcast?
Also in the hymn "Praise, my soul, the King of heaven". That's your heart commanding your soul to praise God. -
Message 40
Posted by Masefield (U14794746) on Sunday, 27th February 2011
Axiomatic is that theology is testimony ... In theology you speak only of what you know, you report your own experience, but as part of the discourse of theology.聽
Well, if that is what you mean by theology then I think we'll have to part company, because it corresponds to nothing I recognise. You're welcome to your thread, but I don't think I'll be able to contribute to it on this basis, and I don't really want to argue with what is obviously very personal stuff.
John -
Message 41
Posted by woofti aka groovy gravy (U1483210) on Sunday, 27th February 2011
Sure thing, John.
Disability theology is very close to my heart. I knew a man Prof Swinton at Aberdeen, who is one of the leading experts in this discipline. He was a psychiatric nurse before becoming a man of books. I was doing a master's with him when I fell ill. The thesis was to be about the theology of the encounter between the psychotic person and the believers in the assembly. It concerned the onto-relational texture of the interpersonal space that subsists wherever two or more are gathered.
I developed a philosophical method which I can't decide whether to introduce into this thread. It is based on the personalist philosophy of John Macmurray. I give it a theological tweak. It takes its accounts of being, seeing and knowing (ontology, phenomenology and epistemology) from the Bible revelation. I wonder whether it would have worked. Perhaps we can see here. -
Message 42
Posted by woofti aka groovy gravy (U1483210) on Sunday, 27th February 2011
But that would mean I would need my books, which I dont have.
I will cut a long story short. The disabled one suffers. When he comes into the assembly of the believers he should, if the New Testament is to be believed, find an oasis of rest. I planned to examine this oasis from two main theological angles, the trinitarian and the Christological. I was going to look at what disability is, and analyse the encounter between a disabled person and believers in the church. The textures of the interpersonal space amongst believers, I thought, facilitate rest and healing for those who visit it.
How?
For that you have to take on board the heart/soul anthropology I've outlined above.
Our hearts are free in heaven, but our souls are joined to the soul ocean in the world.
That is compassion, our participation in other people's troubles. Empathy, whatever. We feel another person's pain but we are not dragged down by it or personally affected by it. Our hearts are free but our souls are touched with other people's infirmities, seeing as, as Luther said, we are all 'little Christs'. We know how to take troubles, both our own and other people's, to the Lord in prayer.
Thanks to the division of heart and soul in the New Birth, we are not in our innermost essence touched when our souls suffer. Our souls may suffer our own or others' pain, but we are not personally dragged down by the burden, because our hearts are set free from earth and at rest beholding the Vision of God. So someone can come and unburden a lot of stuff, and I take it on board in my soul as feelings in my body, but I am not overcome by it in my heart, but instead take it to the Lord who removes the burden.
Then I introduce the concept of shared life as mutual burden-bearing. Galatians 6:2 <> 6:5. -
Message 43
Posted by woofti aka groovy gravy (U1483210) on Sunday, 27th February 2011
Basically, the assembly of the believers is a place where burdened people can come and drop their burdens without having them thrust back at them, and are presented with the good news that they need never pick them up again, because of Jesus. I was interested in providing a theological account of such a remarkable gathering.
-
Message 44
Posted by Poorgrass (U12099742) on Sunday, 27th February 2011
>"Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you."< Alleluia!
Our church children sang that beautifully this morning during communion. We chose it because "Seek ye first" featured in this morning's Gospel reading.
Must say I'm way out of my depth reading this thread, not being a theologian, but please don't stop. -
Message 45
Posted by woofti aka groovy gravy (U1483210) on Sunday, 27th February 2011
This is very basic kind of stuff, PG, I've moved back to evangelical type stuff, this is really Bible Study rather than proper theology, but the basic anthropology of discerning between heart and soul is something I often refer to because it's a basic reality of the New Birth, in the light of which so many apparently puzzling things become clear IME.
There's nothing worse than a hard fundamentalist, but when believers live the evangelical/pentecostal way in *love* as it is meant to be lived - looking at the Bible as /describing/ the life of love and rest that believers already enjoy, rather than as /prescribing/ a difficult and arduous life of trying to please God - it's rather beautiful, as mauri said on a thread in TB recently.
Drystane knows what I'm on about! It's nothing complicated, just trying to pin down some things about the Kingdom of God and being a Christian that I find interesting, in the hope that someone else will too. It's all provisional and to be left behind as soon as it is read.
Ooh, the theme of tonight's programme on CCFM is "Revival in Cape Town". -
Message 46
Posted by annarina (U4017189) on Sunday, 27th February 2011
this is really Bible Study rather than proper theology,聽
This is a fascinating thread. I've been out of touch for a while suffering from terrible trouble with my ISP and broadband connection - I'm just hoping it'll last long enough to post this quick observation. I am thinking that 'Bible Study' can often be more fundamentally illuminating than 'theology' because undertaken properly it implies a mind and heart gladly and obediently open to God's revelation of himself. 'Theology' on the other hand can often tempt us to put our own fallible intellect in judgement on God and his word. -
Message 47
Posted by Masefield (U14794746) on Sunday, 27th February 2011
I agree with you, annarina. In which case, do you think this should be back on the Christian thread? I'm getting very confused. If it's all about "testimony" (whatever that is), then surely it is not about theology? I think "Bible study," in whatever form, is fundamental to the Christian experience and should therefore be on a more open forum.
John -
Message 48
Posted by Bette (U2222559) on Sunday, 27th February 2011
Just tagging on (new threads in TVH automatically appear in My Discussions, so found myself here).
I had always understood the term 'theology' to be about discussing the idea of god/s - so I was quite surprised to read this thread and only to come across christianity. I just wonder what the idea behind this thread was, and how it would/could differ from the Christian thread. -
Message 49
Posted by Masefield (U14794746) on Sunday, 27th February 2011
My , admittedly limited, understanding of this field makes me think that "theology," however understood, is primarily Christian theology, whereas the broader picture is embraced under "religious studies." But as I have already indicated above, I don't think this thread is particularly theological; and so I wouldn't worry about the terminology involved. If you feel you want to contribute, just go ahead.
John -
Message 50
Posted by Kate McLaren etc (U2202067) on Sunday, 27th February 2011
I think this thread is a place to explore theology as testimony and also theology as lived experience at possibly greater length and possibly greater depth than suits the Christian thread which roams all over the place; it started (correct me if I'm wrong, woofers) when someone found one of woofti's series of longish posts altogether too much. So this is a place to fight them out, no, tease them out without getting in the way of the Christian thread.
But I am boringly tired again, so have to disappear.
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