I like to make boxes, but life is outside of them.
Christianity Outside the Box
- Thread starter earl
- Start date
From an Orthodox perspective, the Incarnation was completely temporal. It is the Begetting that is atemporal. While the Son is eternally begotten of the Father, His Incarnation occurred within time, a temporal event. That is to say, while there was never a time when the Son did not exist, there was a time when the Incarnation had not happened.
Your assessment of the Patristic vs. the Arian syntheses regarding the relationship of God to humanity is pretty much within my own Church's teachings.
N
Nick_A
Guest
Hi Thomas
But there is nothing to prevent the Father acting in time and space. As I have said elsewhere, the finite is within the infinite, were that not so, then infinite would not be infinite, by definition.
As I understand it, the universe is governed by consciousness and mechanical laws. The less the conscious influence, the greater the amount of mechanical laws.
I remember reading once of an account where a seminary student was asked by an examining bishop if God were omnipotent. The student said no. The bishop asked in what way. The student replied that he can't beat the ace of trumps with the deuce.
The idea here is that everything in the universe is connected. To interfere would destroy the purpose of creation or the rules of the game. Simone Weil puts it beautifully:
The son deals with the possible while the father initiates creation which is impossible from within creation.
Would you agree that a two dimensional circle has no beginning and no end is infinite.but we see it in the context of a greater reality. A three dimensional sphere is also infinite having no beginning and no end. The four dimensional equivalent of the sphere is infinite for us since it is beyond our comprehension.
The finite is within what we call the infinite but that doesn't deny the greater context of "NOW" itself within which the infinite exists.
It would seem that as long as creation exists there must be a distinction between creator and creature.
Hillary stood up to Arius?? She was arguing even in those days! sorry, couldn't resist.
Meister Eckhart seems to accept God being outside time and space and it is only the soul that can know God.
As an aside, I remember reading somewhere that you are a seminary student or something like that. Anyhow, next year I will be involved with a project that will require the scholarly ability for Catholic undergraduate and graduate philosophy students to answer some difficult and controversial questions. The responses if worthwhile may get published. It will be intellectually challenging but it could be worth it. Does such a project interest you?
But there is nothing to prevent the Father acting in time and space. As I have said elsewhere, the finite is within the infinite, were that not so, then infinite would not be infinite, by definition.
As I understand it, the universe is governed by consciousness and mechanical laws. The less the conscious influence, the greater the amount of mechanical laws.
I remember reading once of an account where a seminary student was asked by an examining bishop if God were omnipotent. The student said no. The bishop asked in what way. The student replied that he can't beat the ace of trumps with the deuce.
The idea here is that everything in the universe is connected. To interfere would destroy the purpose of creation or the rules of the game. Simone Weil puts it beautifully:
The son deals with the possible while the father initiates creation which is impossible from within creation.
Would you agree that a two dimensional circle has no beginning and no end is infinite.but we see it in the context of a greater reality. A three dimensional sphere is also infinite having no beginning and no end. The four dimensional equivalent of the sphere is infinite for us since it is beyond our comprehension.
The finite is within what we call the infinite but that doesn't deny the greater context of "NOW" itself within which the infinite exists.
I agree. The process concerns the vertical line of being of the Cross. the horizontal line indicates linear time while the vertical line refers to the quality of now. Vertical time is really the repetition of a moment. Repetition gives it its body.
It would seem that as long as creation exists there must be a distinction between creator and creature.
Hillary stood up to Arius?? She was arguing even in those days! sorry, couldn't resist.
Meister Eckhart seems to accept God being outside time and space and it is only the soul that can know God.
As an aside, I remember reading somewhere that you are a seminary student or something like that. Anyhow, next year I will be involved with a project that will require the scholarly ability for Catholic undergraduate and graduate philosophy students to answer some difficult and controversial questions. The responses if worthwhile may get published. It will be intellectually challenging but it could be worth it. Does such a project interest you?
Hi Dogbrain —
God bless, from a son of the West,
Thomas
From the Catholic as well, yours is a much more precise definition ... thank you.
Music to mine ears.
I hope so ...
God bless, from a son of the West,
Thomas
Hi Oprem —
Otherwise I'm bound to assume this is the kind of misunderstanding/fabrication I've come across before. Normally it's poor old Origen who normally gets dragged into this kind of nonsense by those of a Theosophical persuasion who have a vested interest in proclaiming that Christianity taught reincarnation ...
Let Arius say it:
"and that He does not derive his subsistence from any matter (therefore He is not reincarnation of any prior being — Thomas); but that by His own will and counsel (He would appear then to be self-generate — Thomas) He has subsisted before time, and before ages, as perfect God, only begotten and unchangeable, and that before He was begotten (therefore the prior assertion 'by His own will' must be an error, as he now says He exists by the will of the Father — Thomas), or created, or purposed, or established, He was not."
However you resolve Arius' paradox, there is no talk of reincarnation, in fact quite the opposite — the Son is before all time, all ages, perfectly, begotten of the Father.
(The paradox is, if the Son is before time, then how can there be 'a time when he was not'? There cannot be a time before time, because 'before' itself implies temporality ... so not a paradox really, but just an error of logic ... which Athanasius drove the Church through. The Son is eternally begotten of the Father, else the Father is as conditioned by time as the Son is — if there was a time before the Son, then there was a time before the Father, and so God is rendered mutable and subject to change. For Athanasius, the Eternal does not suffer any temporal condition — there is no before or after in the Eternal, so what 'happens' in the Eternal does so without origin and without cease. Even Constantine could see Arius had got it wrong (well, Constantine's adviser on religious affairs at the very least, a theologian by the way of no little repute).
Even Jesus made the point: "Be you therefore perfect, as also your heavenly Father is perfect" (Matthew 5:48) — Only in God can perfection be found, and man cannot rest until he is in God, as long as he seeks perfection in himself, he seeks himself apart from God — he sets himself up as his own master: "No man can serve two masters. For either he will hate the one, and love the other: or he will sustain the one, and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon" (Matthew 6:24).
Only in Christ can man find the Father ... only in the Spirit can man find Christ.
Oh, I was not offering a refutation of Arianism, per se, just making a point. If I was doing that, I'd be much more precise.
Whoa! Given what? Could you give me the citation upon which you base this assertion?
Otherwise I'm bound to assume this is the kind of misunderstanding/fabrication I've come across before. Normally it's poor old Origen who normally gets dragged into this kind of nonsense by those of a Theosophical persuasion who have a vested interest in proclaiming that Christianity taught reincarnation ...
Let Arius say it:
"and that He does not derive his subsistence from any matter (therefore He is not reincarnation of any prior being — Thomas); but that by His own will and counsel (He would appear then to be self-generate — Thomas) He has subsisted before time, and before ages, as perfect God, only begotten and unchangeable, and that before He was begotten (therefore the prior assertion 'by His own will' must be an error, as he now says He exists by the will of the Father — Thomas), or created, or purposed, or established, He was not."
However you resolve Arius' paradox, there is no talk of reincarnation, in fact quite the opposite — the Son is before all time, all ages, perfectly, begotten of the Father.
(The paradox is, if the Son is before time, then how can there be 'a time when he was not'? There cannot be a time before time, because 'before' itself implies temporality ... so not a paradox really, but just an error of logic ... which Athanasius drove the Church through. The Son is eternally begotten of the Father, else the Father is as conditioned by time as the Son is — if there was a time before the Son, then there was a time before the Father, and so God is rendered mutable and subject to change. For Athanasius, the Eternal does not suffer any temporal condition — there is no before or after in the Eternal, so what 'happens' in the Eternal does so without origin and without cease. Even Constantine could see Arius had got it wrong (well, Constantine's adviser on religious affairs at the very least, a theologian by the way of no little repute).
Nope ... Arius states that the Son is God ... not adopted, nor promoted, nor elevated, nor enlightened ... and again how can man aspire to be equal in moral rectitude to God, who alone is perfect?
Even Jesus made the point: "Be you therefore perfect, as also your heavenly Father is perfect" (Matthew 5:48) — Only in God can perfection be found, and man cannot rest until he is in God, as long as he seeks perfection in himself, he seeks himself apart from God — he sets himself up as his own master: "No man can serve two masters. For either he will hate the one, and love the other: or he will sustain the one, and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon" (Matthew 6:24).
Only in Christ can man find the Father ... only in the Spirit can man find Christ.
As is God Consciousness.
taijasi
Gnōthi seauton
Alas, what can be said. A man can be surrounded by the Truth, and still refuse to see it. He can even hear it spoken in a dozen foreign languages, yet because no one formulates in words that he can recognize, his instinct is to remain suspicious, doubtful or even to become hostile.
If you recognize something as familiar, whether it pleases you or not, at least try to address it, to address that person directly, and for God's sake, resist this insistence on putting things back into a box. It is one thing to chain, or imprison one's own God-understanding, or God-consciousness to that box ... it is another thing entirely to try and do this to/for another. The motivation may be the same -- fear, xenophobia, pride -- but we really have NO RIGHT to impose our own dogmas when we meet another human being.
The quickest way to do that, as we see being attempted here, is to find a way to group the new person, or his/her viewpoint, in together with other viewpoints which we have already rejected ... rather than bother to think those viewpoints through, or consider on any serious level what they may hold in store for us. Heaven forbid (we literally ask) that there might actually be something in there of such importance, such weight, such pure, unadulterated VALUE ... that our own viewpoint would have to change, receive adjustment, or be amended in order to resonate more closely with TRUTH.
BACK TO THE BOX!!!
Oh, let the sun beat down upon my face, stars to fill my dream
I am a traveler of both time and space, to be where I have been
To sit with elders of the gentle race, this world has seldom seen
They talk of days for which they sit and wait, all will be revealed
Talk and song from tongues of lilting grace, sounds caress my ear
But not a word I heard could I relay, the story was quite clear
-- `Kashmir,' Led Zeppelin
Or as we can see, his mind fights against him, and all he can come up with is, "you're not one of THOSE, are you?" This just proving, all the more that he clearly has NEVER UNDERSTOOD the very least which "those" have tried to share ... since he neither recognized the Truth which THEY have had to share, and is not even capable of assessing for himself what elements of a stranger's viewpoints might be similiar, or identical.I am a traveler of both time and space, to be where I have been
To sit with elders of the gentle race, this world has seldom seen
They talk of days for which they sit and wait, all will be revealed
Talk and song from tongues of lilting grace, sounds caress my ear
But not a word I heard could I relay, the story was quite clear
-- `Kashmir,' Led Zeppelin
If you recognize something as familiar, whether it pleases you or not, at least try to address it, to address that person directly, and for God's sake, resist this insistence on putting things back into a box. It is one thing to chain, or imprison one's own God-understanding, or God-consciousness to that box ... it is another thing entirely to try and do this to/for another. The motivation may be the same -- fear, xenophobia, pride -- but we really have NO RIGHT to impose our own dogmas when we meet another human being.
The quickest way to do that, as we see being attempted here, is to find a way to group the new person, or his/her viewpoint, in together with other viewpoints which we have already rejected ... rather than bother to think those viewpoints through, or consider on any serious level what they may hold in store for us. Heaven forbid (we literally ask) that there might actually be something in there of such importance, such weight, such pure, unadulterated VALUE ... that our own viewpoint would have to change, receive adjustment, or be amended in order to resonate more closely with TRUTH.
BACK TO THE BOX!!!
Hi Nick —
To me, the universe as a physical entity is governed by natural laws. For some those laws speak implicitly of a creator — the big question not of 'how', but 'why' — for others, those laws speak only of the 'why' of it within themselves ...
Its axiomatic for me that consciousness is a quality of the soul, and there is more to the life of the soul than the physical — the first scientific philosophical investigation of the world began when man wondered 'how' things work, and the meta-physical investigation began when he asked 'why'.
It seems natural to man, for he is by nature inquisitive, to ask if there is not 'more to it than that', if there is not something 'outside the box' of the phenomenal world.
In making sense of it all, man is intimately aware of his own consciousness that can not only encompass all that is seen, but also speculate on all there might be that is not seen.
Man unites the universe in his consciousness, it becomes one thing, 'the world', to him, but it is still distinct from him. It is inevitable that he will speculate upon a mode of consciousness of things in which their very natures are transcended. But here's a paradox, he cannot transcend his own nature, nor can he make the nature of another his own ... he cannot be anything other than a man.
He seeks the One Thing that unifies all, something which must, by its nature, contain the nature of all things and also of itself.
It is towards this idea of unity, of one-ness, that the law of consciousness is directed, and this is the foundation of natural moral law, a law written 'in the heart' (cf Romans 2:15) that seeks the perfection — the good — not only of self, but of all things, the significant aspect of which is that all things should exist in right relation to all other things.
Sorry ... I'm rambling.
Nothing is impossible for God, as your wonderful quote from Simone Weil states, but the Son has made the possible so that Creation might exist.
Oh dear ... huge discursion into 'living in the moment' and living in receipt of the moment ...
Re the former, yes God is outside time and space as He is Transcendant, but in the Christian Tradition He is also Immanent in, and indeed acts in time and space, Eckhart would not have refuted that.
Thomas
I'm not sure how you determine 'governed by consciousness' —
To me, the universe as a physical entity is governed by natural laws. For some those laws speak implicitly of a creator — the big question not of 'how', but 'why' — for others, those laws speak only of the 'why' of it within themselves ...
Its axiomatic for me that consciousness is a quality of the soul, and there is more to the life of the soul than the physical — the first scientific philosophical investigation of the world began when man wondered 'how' things work, and the meta-physical investigation began when he asked 'why'.
It seems natural to man, for he is by nature inquisitive, to ask if there is not 'more to it than that', if there is not something 'outside the box' of the phenomenal world.
In making sense of it all, man is intimately aware of his own consciousness that can not only encompass all that is seen, but also speculate on all there might be that is not seen.
Man unites the universe in his consciousness, it becomes one thing, 'the world', to him, but it is still distinct from him. It is inevitable that he will speculate upon a mode of consciousness of things in which their very natures are transcended. But here's a paradox, he cannot transcend his own nature, nor can he make the nature of another his own ... he cannot be anything other than a man.
He seeks the One Thing that unifies all, something which must, by its nature, contain the nature of all things and also of itself.
It is towards this idea of unity, of one-ness, that the law of consciousness is directed, and this is the foundation of natural moral law, a law written 'in the heart' (cf Romans 2:15) that seeks the perfection — the good — not only of self, but of all things, the significant aspect of which is that all things should exist in right relation to all other things.
Sorry ... I'm rambling.
In Patristic metaphysics, they speak of the Son as Principle (Gk: Logos and/or Arche) and the Father as Principle without Principle (Arche Anarchos).
Nothing is impossible for God, as your wonderful quote from Simone Weil states, but the Son has made the possible so that Creation might exist.
Indeed. Is not the infinite always 'NOW', whereas the finite is 'NOW' only momentarily, being fixed as it appears, and thus becomes history and in that sense 'written' ... ?
Oh dear ... huge discursion into 'living in the moment' and living in receipt of the moment ...
Precisely. The created is not its creator.
Yes to the latter bit — the body is just the material form of the soul, it's not other than the soul in that aspect. But then, in the reports of beatific and even bliss experience, people record fragrances, sounds, colours, sensations, all consonant with the order of their experience. This is how the body knows God.
Re the former, yes God is outside time and space as He is Transcendant, but in the Christian Tradition He is also Immanent in, and indeed acts in time and space, Eckhart would not have refuted that.
It does, but I must decline. I'm doing a degree course (BA Divinity), and plan to go on beyond that, so I cannot commit to such a project. Good luck with it.
Thomas
Thinking outside the box.
It struck me yesterday, when I heard the Lectionary reading, that 'thinking outside the box' from a Catholic philosophical perspective is a perilous undertaking. Our Primordial Parents tried it, with tragic consequences. (and Pandora tells us we can't even handle what's in it, unaided.)
St Paul says "And be not conformed to this world; but be reformed in the newness of your mind... "
As a Catholic, the Fides Qua, the Deposit of Faith, comprises that which was revealed in the Person, words and deeds of Jesus Christ, everything else radiates from that. That which is revealed is a Revelation, a disclosure of truth unaccessable to the unaided reasoning faculty, unaccessable but knowable, even experientially, in the Holy Spirit.
When the will and the intellect are ordered towards that which is revealed, which is and can only be an act of faith, the Holy Spirit illuminates those secret depths of the soul, wherein man knows not only himself, the truth of his own being, his own nature, but the source and origin of that nature, a vision occluded by the primordial disordering of the mental faculty of man, when his eyes were opened and he found himself alien in Paradise.
This is the meaning of Christian gnosis.
The core idea of this is metanoia ... often translated as 'Repentence' but in the Catholic tradition as 'a change of heart'. The term actually translates as 'going beyond (Gk: meta the mind' (Gk: noia).
Going beyond the mind is not an intellectual exercise. A nature cannot be other than itself, and the mind cannot think other than it thinks. Going beyond the mind involves not just the mind, but involves the very being of the person. That's why we say 'change of heart' and not 'change of mind'.
Going beyond the mind necessitates a step into the darkness beyond the reach of the light of the intellect, as such it is an act of faith, and act of hope, and act of love.
(Many initiatic exercises try to replicate this 'step into the darkness', I am in mind of the training of the yamabushi.)
In Scripture we have the race to the empty tomb (John 20:4-8).
To me then, 'thinking outside the box' is thinking in the old ways, staying in the world, staying in the assumption that we can determine our own good, our own end, and how to attain it.
For as long as we determine the direction we should take, we earn the rebuke of Peter, "Get thee behind me, satan."
+++
Does this mean there's nothing new in Catholic theology?
Absolutely not. In his second encyclical, published last year, Pope Benedict XVI offered a startling new interpretation of the idea of Purgatory. There's stuff there, in a few lines, to keep theologians 'unpacking' a whole new line of teaching for years.
For me, the deeper I look, the box keeps turning up fresh and new surprises. Outside the box, it's the same old, same old.
Just a view from across the Tiber.
Thomas
It struck me yesterday, when I heard the Lectionary reading, that 'thinking outside the box' from a Catholic philosophical perspective is a perilous undertaking. Our Primordial Parents tried it, with tragic consequences. (and Pandora tells us we can't even handle what's in it, unaided.)
St Paul says "And be not conformed to this world; but be reformed in the newness of your mind... "
As a Catholic, the Fides Qua, the Deposit of Faith, comprises that which was revealed in the Person, words and deeds of Jesus Christ, everything else radiates from that. That which is revealed is a Revelation, a disclosure of truth unaccessable to the unaided reasoning faculty, unaccessable but knowable, even experientially, in the Holy Spirit.
When the will and the intellect are ordered towards that which is revealed, which is and can only be an act of faith, the Holy Spirit illuminates those secret depths of the soul, wherein man knows not only himself, the truth of his own being, his own nature, but the source and origin of that nature, a vision occluded by the primordial disordering of the mental faculty of man, when his eyes were opened and he found himself alien in Paradise.
This is the meaning of Christian gnosis.
The core idea of this is metanoia ... often translated as 'Repentence' but in the Catholic tradition as 'a change of heart'. The term actually translates as 'going beyond (Gk: meta the mind' (Gk: noia).
Going beyond the mind is not an intellectual exercise. A nature cannot be other than itself, and the mind cannot think other than it thinks. Going beyond the mind involves not just the mind, but involves the very being of the person. That's why we say 'change of heart' and not 'change of mind'.
Going beyond the mind necessitates a step into the darkness beyond the reach of the light of the intellect, as such it is an act of faith, and act of hope, and act of love.
(Many initiatic exercises try to replicate this 'step into the darkness', I am in mind of the training of the yamabushi.)
In Scripture we have the race to the empty tomb (John 20:4-8).
To me then, 'thinking outside the box' is thinking in the old ways, staying in the world, staying in the assumption that we can determine our own good, our own end, and how to attain it.
For as long as we determine the direction we should take, we earn the rebuke of Peter, "Get thee behind me, satan."
+++
Does this mean there's nothing new in Catholic theology?
Absolutely not. In his second encyclical, published last year, Pope Benedict XVI offered a startling new interpretation of the idea of Purgatory. There's stuff there, in a few lines, to keep theologians 'unpacking' a whole new line of teaching for years.
For me, the deeper I look, the box keeps turning up fresh and new surprises. Outside the box, it's the same old, same old.
Just a view from across the Tiber.
Thomas
Thomas metanoia was in a sense what I have in mind when I think about going outside the box-the box of the mind-heart. Truly thorough transformation is indeed not an intellectual exercise be it of Catholic or other theological persuasion. It is beyond any conceputalizing per se. Now you do seem to propose that one needs to stay within a particular box of practice to achieve metanoia and that I do not necessarily disagree with. Earl
Earl
M
mee
Guest
I did wonder. Had it not been you, I would have prepared myself for another round of Church-bashing.
Therein lies the problem as I would see it? How can one conceptualise beyond the conceptual? Or think beyond the thinkable, without the risk of going off into pure fantasy ... or madness?
I think there is an element of inarguable common sense in there somewhere ... It seems to me that if you're a Christian, the Tradition sets the parameters, if you're a Buddhist, the Tradition, etc., etc.Now you do seem to propose that one needs to stay within a particular box of practice to achieve metanoia and that I do not necessarily disagree with.
I can't see how thinking 'outside the box' can have no parameters at all, otherwise we're into some Dada-esque theatre ... in which, for example, thinking outside the box of Quantum Theory involves smearing jam on ones genitals (Lord knows where that image came from!) ... d'you see my point? Who's to say that such activity is not a valid approach to the question facing the Quantum Physicist if one's thinking outside the box?
But I don't mean to belittle your inquiry. I do think art went through such a period of nonsense, and probably does so periodically.
I assumed one would mean thinking about Christianity outside the guidelines of Tradition ... but you know me, and know what I think of that!
Then again, if someone want's a challenge of Christianity outside the box, but in the tradition, will they read Presence and Thought: Essay on the Religious Philosophy of Gregory of Nyssa by Hans Urs von Balthasar (a cardinal of the Catholic Church) and explain it to me ... ?
Balthasar opens with "The Philosophy of Becoming and Desire" and goes on to examine St Gregory's idea of 'Spacing' ... (you can read the first page on Amazon)
As one reviewer states:
"... For Gregory what is central is God's infinitely transcendant Being, which by virtue of its metaphysical infinity is entirely incomprehensible in every way to the human mind. Nevertheless, the human mind is drawn to participate in the mystery of infinite Being, both by its beauty and by its infinite fullness and richness... Gregory has a very dynamic view of God and the soul's relation to it, having the view the soul is always ever drawn further into the mystery of Being, or else ever further descending into nothingness if it falls away from Being."
Thomas
Well again Thomas I'm looking at metanoia-the radical transformation of heart and mind-from the contemplative-mystical experiential end of things. In fact, I tend to think that the traditional notion of metanoia as related only to repentance and reconciliation to Jesus with reaffirmation of a certain set of beliefs as being too limited in scope. Full metanoia to me is nothing less than a radical opening of one's heart-mind which one cannot think themselves to-i.e., it's not simply an affirmation of beliefs which is why I said you cannot think your way to it. take care, earl
no bashing, "said the soldier to the priest"...
I don't think Earl is the type anyway. He just plays a good game of chess, and likes to discuss things during the game. I personally like that.
I appreciate that Q. My attempts to push at the margins of any box are not meant as any form of bashing. Just simply trying to look at things from pehaps unexpected angles. earlno bashing, "said the soldier to the priest"...
I don't think Earl is the type anyway. He just plays a good game of chess, and likes to discuss things during the game. I personally like that.
Hmm, as steel sharpens steel...
kiwimac
God is NOT about Fear
That is, of course, only IF you accept that Revelation is a prophetic book. It is not, it is apocalyptic, it's contents refer almost entirely to the early Christian period and the various persecutions suffered by the Christian community then.
Actually Kiwi, it's both. It speaks of the past, and warns of the future, should man continue on the path he is on...that my friend, is thinking outside of the box.
lunamoth
Episcopalian
Hey kiwi, good to see you.
I think perhaps that Thomas was referrring to revelation in general, as in God revealing His will to us, not necessarily the book of the Bible, St. John's Revelation.
Hi Earl —
If Eriugena was around we could ask him The Division of Nature is a definite case of thinking outside the box!
The work we do then, in your words, is that radical opening of the heart to what we are told is there even though we don't yet know what is there — it is and can only be an act of faith in one's tradition, the heart stepping out of its own knowing, its own light, through the veil, into the Spirit, and its knowing.
You can't think it. You have to do it.
+++
Of course then, those who do open new ground, beyond the perceived limits of the box, invariably become suspect ... Origen, Eckhart, de Chardin, Merton; it's not a short list by any means ... if only because their words are often obscure, and liable to misinterpretation. The lives of the mystics are often testimony of a 'raw deal' at the hands of their superiors.
If we didn't factor human nature into the discussion, we'd be talking about an intellectual utopia. Even a genius like Aquinas, whose advance was so measured, so precise, his method so rigorous as to be an exemplary model studied even today, still left his commentators room to doubt his philosophy ... I don't think they ever questioned his orthodoxy.
Thomas
If Eriugena was around we could ask him
The Division of Nature is a definite case of thinking outside the box!And yet I agree ... but then for us, full metanoia is a gift of the Holy Spirit — the 'meta' aspect is beyond the human into the divine — by adoption or as we say, filiation, although I prefer the Orthodox term theosis. So we don't work metanoia, it is worked in us ... by our incorporation into a greater nature than our own.
The work we do then, in your words, is that radical opening of the heart to what we are told is there even though we don't yet know what is there — it is and can only be an act of faith in one's tradition, the heart stepping out of its own knowing, its own light, through the veil, into the Spirit, and its knowing.
You can't think it. You have to do it.
+++
Of course then, those who do open new ground, beyond the perceived limits of the box, invariably become suspect ... Origen, Eckhart, de Chardin, Merton; it's not a short list by any means ... if only because their words are often obscure, and liable to misinterpretation. The lives of the mystics are often testimony of a 'raw deal' at the hands of their superiors.
If we didn't factor human nature into the discussion, we'd be talking about an intellectual utopia. Even a genius like Aquinas, whose advance was so measured, so precise, his method so rigorous as to be an exemplary model studied even today, still left his commentators room to doubt his philosophy ... I don't think they ever questioned his orthodoxy.
Thomas