Well, sometimes you tow the party line, sometime you give us your own rehashed or nuanced version and belief(s).
Actually it's all doctrine. My only interest here is defending doctrine — I don't put forward my own position per se within that context.
The difference as you see it is doctrine you're aware of ('party line' — please can your refrain from such abuses?), and doctrine your not, in which case you erroneously attribute it to me. I'm flattered, but really, I cannot take credit for anything but my errors.
I only wish you could maintain objectivity and not be so abusive when you find yourself being corrected. I'm not correcting you really, I'm pointing out your errors for anyone else reading this, to prevent them from following you into erroneous assumptions about traditional orthodox Christian doctrine.
Not at all. Beyond the Intellect, of which you speak and of which your tradition apparently treats ... there is Buddhi.
No, this is an erroneous reading of the tradition, again due to your confusing first and second principles. You're assuming 'intellect' as deployed in Brahminic and Buddhist texts. It's not.
In the Christian Tradition, Intellect is located in the Divine, it is not a function of the human faculty (as is intellect), but utterly transcends it. It's there in St John, St Paul, Hebrews, the Cappadocians, St Denys, St Maximus, St Augustine, St Thomas, St Bonaventure, Meister Eckhart, Nicholas of Cusa.
The Logos of God is the intelligible light that shines out of the Uncreate and Unfathomable Darkness of the utterly transcendent Divine. It is immanently present in and to the soul but is a light which man, in his darkness, fails to comprehend (cf John 1:5). It is not a body of knowledge, nor even the totality of all that was, is and can be known, of all that is and all that is not ... the Intellect is the Unqualified Knower, not the qualified or indeed unqualified known.
The Sufi says “Allah is known to Himself alone” and furthermore "He who knows his soul knows his Lord”.
Frithjof Schuon said: "
Remove the passional element from the soul and the intelligence – remove “the rust from the mirror” or “from the heart” – and the Intellect will be released; it will reveal from within what religion reveals from without ... This release is strictly impossible – we must insist upon it – without the co-operation
of a religion, an orthodoxy, a traditional esoterism with all that this implies."
Schuon, Esoterism as Principle and Way.
Thomas, get off of the my-dick-is-bigger stick...
Andrew — you always revert to abuse and offence when you're at a loss for a response. So from here on I will, for your sake, ignore your asinine, abusive and offensive language, and stick to the doctrinal points under discussion.
The HIM in Whom we live, and move, etc. is the LOGOS of our Planet, perhaps Solar System.
No it is not. You're into multiplicity again. The correct technical term is
logoi and all the multitudinous logoi, from the logoi of the least-existent nano-particle to the logoi of the cosmos as a whole, are secondary and subsequent to their Principle, which is the Logos of God — obviously — and this is the Logos of whom Scripture speaks. See the Prologue of John, or the Hymn of Colossians ...
You don't seem to even realize that the Holy Spirit is the ILLUMINED, awakened HIGHER Intellect [to which you earlier refer] and the SON thus revealed [with its correlation, or parallel in the SUN, our STAR
No. This is a 'system' imposed on that which transcends systems ...
... there could be no Planetary and specific Christ ...
Confusion of level again. Multiplicity again.
... because of all this, that we DO KNOW Chrestos becomes Christos...
No. Confusion of first and second principles again.
That your own Tradition has failed to guard properly and sufficiently the secrets...
Your ignorance of my tradition is abundantly clear.
When a man cannot even see that there is a GNOSTICISM which has no more to do with history than is the activity of the Holy Spirit limited to such ...
Here again ... the very proliferation of gnostic systems shows beyond a shadow of a doubt that there is no complete comprehension of the Principle. This can also be seen in the gnostic delight in forms, systems and structures.
If further evidence was required, the fact that one can be a gnostic, and be a completely disreputable human being should say something. Wisely St Paul in his letter toTimothy referred to the 'gnosis so called'.
Christian gnosis is beyond forms, systems, structures and so forth, which is why you find it so elusive ... it is a gnosis of being, which cannot be counterfeit.
It is also a gnosis of grace, which means the most lowly of the faithful — the widow at the temple, the publican at prayer — is actually closer to God than the highest self-declared adept, who is still locked into the world of manifestation. I point out
again[/] the parable of the rich young man, who was without doubt better schooled than any of the disciples (with the exception of John) and yet could not bring himself to follow the Logos of God.
He was so wedded to the natural intellect, that he could neither see nor follow the transcendent Intellect.
Another example is Natanael (cf John 1:45-50) ... who gave testimony of Christ: "thou art the Son of God, thou art the King of Israel." but did not follow Him.
Affectionately your OLDER - if equally stubborn - BROTHER
Read your posts old chum, and look how reason flies out the window when you cannot argue against the point I make, and is replaced with unbridled rancour ... you insult me, my tradition, everyone in it, and its history ... and yet you have the effrontery to preach my tradition to me!
Out of the mouths of babes and children, old chum ... but not yours.
Don't kid yourself, read back your post, look at how you rant and rave and heap contempt upon me, my tradition, the faithful, when you can't come up with an answer — reason flies out of the window, and rancour pours in — why? Because you fall short of your own self-image, and and if that is a sign of your superiority over me, then I want no part of your 'brotherhood'.
“According to one master, many people arrive at specific understanding, at formal, notional knowledge. There are few who get beyond the science and the theory; yet one man whose mind is free from notions and from forms is more dear to God than the hundred thousand who have the habit of discursive, roving reason. God cannot enter in and do his work in them owing to the restlessness of their imagination. If they were free from pictures they could be caught and carried up beyond all rational concepts. As St. Dionysius says, and also have the super-rational light of faith at its starting point, where God finds his rest and peace to dwell and work in as he will and when he will and what he will. God is unhindered in his work in these so he can do in them his most precious work of all, working them up in faith into himself. These people no one can make out; their life is an enigma, and their ways, to all that do not live the same. To this truth and to this blessed life, to this high and perfect consummation no on can attain except in abstract knowledge and pure understanding.
Many a lofty intellect, angels not excepting (for in life and nature an angel is nothing but pure mind), has erred and lapsed eternally from the eternal truth. This may happen also to those who, like the angels, preserve their idiosyncrasy and find satisfaction in the exercise of their own intelligence.”
Meister Eckhart: Signs of the True Ground
God bless,
Thomas
