The Nature Of 'fundamentalism'

[DavidS]

Here's Thomas Moore's 'take' on Fundamentalism, as expressed in Chapter 11 of Care of the Soul, in a section with the subtitle Fundamentalism and Its "Cure" – Polytheism (note, his use of the word 'polytheism' is 'unorthodox'). It's 3½ pages worth of text.

Often, when spirituality loses its soul it takes on the shadow-form of fundamentalism. I am not referring to any particular groups or sects, but to a point of view that can seize any of us about anything. One way to describe the nature of fundamentalism is through a musical analogy. If you go to piano and strike a low C rather hard, you will hear, whether you know it or not, a whole series of tones. you hear the :fundamental" note clearly, but it would sound very strange if it didn’t also include its overtones – C's and G's and E's and even B-flat. I would define fundamentalism as a defense against the overtones of life, the richness and polytheism of imagination. My students in college were fundamentalists when they objected to discussing the subtle references – the overtones – in a Hemingway novel. A person is being a fundamentalist when he tells me his dream about a snake staring him in the face as it recites passages from Song of Songs is only a carryover of his previous day's experience of finding an earthworm in his backyard.

Here we come to an important rule, applicable to religious spirituality and to stories, dreams and pictures of all kinds. The intellect wants a summary meaning -–all well and good for the purposeful nature of the mind. But the soul craves depth of reflection, many layers of meaning, nuances without end, references and allusions and prefigurations. All these enrich the texture of an image or story and please the soul by giving it much food for rumination.

Rumination is one of the chief delights of the soul. Early Christian theologians discussed at length how a biblical text could be read at many levels at once. There were literal meanings and allegorical meanings and anagogical (concerned with death and afterlife) meanings. They typically explained the story of the Exodus, for example, as an allegory about freeing the soul from imprisonment in sin. But this was not the only meaning of the story. This practice suggests an "archetypal" reading of the bible, regarding its stories not as simplistic moral lessons or statements of belief, but as subtle expressions of the mysteries that form the roots of human life. A miracle story may not be a simple proof of Christ's divinity – the soul has little trouble accepting divinity – but may instead express some unfathomable truth about the ways of the soul. Is there a way that the soul can be fed as if with h8undreds of loaves and fishes, although in life there is apparently only one of each? Is here a way that marriage – all wedding take place in Cana – turns water into wine?

From the point of view of the soul, the many churches and innumerable understandings of Christianity are its richness, while any attempt to make all churches one may ultimately be a threat to the very life of religion. It's interesting to remember that the Italian Renaissance received a major spark from a church council convened between Eastern and Western churches. In the process of setting up the council, imaginative people from many different places met in Florence, and the cross-fertilization of ideas gave rise to yet another perspective on the Christian way of life, this time heavily influenced by exposure to Greek thought and magical practices. Pico della Mirandola, who benefited from conversations occasioned by the council, decided to write a book called Poetic Theology. Cosimi di Medici became interested in Egyptian theology of magic.

The infinite inner space of a story, whether from religion or from daily life, is its soul. If we deprive the sacred stories of their mystery, we are left with the brittle shell of fact, the literalism of a single meaning. But when we allow a story its soul, we can discover our own depths through it. Fundamentalism tends to idealize and romanticize a story, winnowing out the darker elements of doubt, hopelessness, and emptiness. It protects us from the hard work of finding our own participation in meaning and developing our own subtle moral values. The sacred teaching story, which has the potential of deepening the mystery of our own identity, instead is used defensively in fundamentalism, to spare us the anxiety of being an individual with choice, responsibility, and a continually changing sense of self. The tragedy of fundamentalism in any context is its capacity to freeze life into a solid cube of meaning.

There are many kinds of fundamentalism – Jungian-Freudian, Democrat-Republican, Rock-Blues. One has to do with the way we understand the personal stories we tell. In this age of psychology, for example, many of us convince ourselves that we have certain troubles because of what happened to us in childhood. We take developmental psychology literally and blame our parents for everything we have become. The situation might change if we could see through those childhood stories, listen to them as myth, grasp their poetry, and hear the eternal mysteries singing through them.

Recently I ran into a small example of the kind of fundamentalism I am talking about. I was sitting in my office when I answered the phone and heard a clear, steady voice say, "Hello, I'm an incest survivor, and I'd like to talk with you."

I was a but stunned by the abruptness in the way this person identified herself – no name, no conversation, only this two-word category for explaining her life. Of course I realized that this person had suffered a painful experience, and I could appreciate the courage she brought to her admission, like someone struggling with alcoholism saying, "I'm John, and I'm an alcoholic." But I was taken as well by the way she recited her first utterance to me: "I'm an incest survivor." In those opening words she told me she was identified with the story of incest. It sounded like a fundamentalist confession of faith. I wondered in those first few moments how, if this woman became a patient, we would deal with both her experience of incest and her fundamentalism. Without denying any of her pain and suffering, would she be able to see through her story of incest. Could she eventually become free to be an individual rather than the main character in a story from her childhood? Had she accepted a cultural definition of incest as inevitable psychological trauma and so made it her myth?

I have said that the soul is more interested in particulars than in generalities. That is true of personal identity as well. Identifying with a group or a syndrome or a diagnosis is giving in to an abstraction. Soul provides a strong sense of individuality – personal destiny, special influences and background, and unique stories. In the face of overwhelming need for both emergency and chronic care, the mental health system labels people schizophrenics, alcoholics, and survivors so that it can bring some order to the chaos of life at home and on the street, but each person has a special story to tell, no matter how many common themes it contains.

Therefore, care of the souls for such a person must begin in the simple telling of her story. I would want to hear it many times, in fact, in order to grasp its nuances. I thought this woman might benefit from noticing herself in her stories and losing some of her collective, fundamentalist identity. How could she glimpse her own soul while she was busy screening her own mystery with the idea of surviving incest? I don't mean to diminish the importance of her experience or even her belief that this event was singularly important in her development. But her story needed to be deepened, perceived in a more complicated manner, and reflected upon from many points of vies, not only from the one that said: if you have experienced this, then you will be forever damaged.

We all have fundamentalist stories about ourselves, tales we take literally and believe in devotedly. These stories are usually so familiar that it is difficult to see through them on our own. They are so convincing and believable that they lead to resolutions and axioms that are very much like religious moral principles, except that they have been developed individually. Like the early Christian theologians, we can open up these stories to reveal subtleties, their many layers of meaning, their nuances and contradictions, plot structures, genres, and poetic forms – not so they can be debunked or demythologized, but so they can reveal a much greater range of their meaning and value.

Whether we are talking about religious stories or our own personal stories, the same problems often appear. What we too often hear are conclusions, a reduction of the rich details of a story to some overarching meaning or moral. In Jungian language, we could say we need to find the anima in these stories – their living, breathing soul. Bringing soul to a story entails de-moralizing our images, letting them speak for themselves rather than for an ideology that restricts and slants them from the beginning.

I have heard it said that Catholics don't need psychiatry because they go to confession. I suggest that a person who turns to the Bible as a compendium of insight into the nature of the soul does not need psychology. Generally, psychology is more abstract, less imagistic, more scientific, and less poetic than the Bible, and therefore has less promise for care of the soul. But to look at the Bible for moral certainty, for miraculous proofs of faith, or for avoidance of doubt and anxiety in making difficult life choices is very different from looking to it for insight. For the fundamentalist, the Bible is something to believe in; for the soul it is a great stimulus for the religious imagination, for searching the heart for its deepest and most exalted possibilities.

[para dealing with specific Biblical story-images omitted to 'shorten' the piece]

The soul's complex means of self-expression is an aspect of its depth and subtlety. When we express something soulfully, it is sometimes difficult to express that feeling clearly. At a loss for words, we turn to stories and images. Nicholas of Cusa concluded that we have no alternative but to live with "enigmatic images." Since soul is more concerned with relatedness and intellectual understanding, the knowledge that comes from soul's intimacy with experience is more difficult to articulate than the kind of analysis that can be done at a distance. Soul is always in process, having, as Heraclitus says, its own principle of movement; so it is difficult to pin down with definition or a fixed meaning. When spirituality loses contact with soul and these values, it can become rigid, simplistic, moralistic, and authoritarian – qualities that betray a loss of soul.

[Some contrasting examples omitted, also to keep the piece 'short'; para ends with:] The problem is never spirituality itself, but the narrow fundamentalism that arises when spirituality and soul are split apart.

There are many different kinds of spirituality. The kind with which we are most familiar is he spirituality of transcendence, the lofty quest for the highest vision, universal moral principles, and liberation from many limitations of human life. Play the child's game of making a church with your fingers. "Here's the church and here's the steeple." There you have a simple image of transcendent spirituality. But "open the door and here are all the people," and you see the inner multiplicity of the soul. This is like the statue Plato describes that on the outside is the face of man, but once opened up contains all the gods.

A tree, and animal, a stream, or a wooded grove can all be the focus of religious attention. [rest of the para omitted] ...Family is also a source and focus of spirituality. [rest of the para omitted] ...Polytheistic religions, which see gods and goddesses everywhere, offer useful guidance toward finding spiritual values in the world. You don’t have to be a polytheist in order to expand your spirituality in this way. In Renaissance Italy, leading thinkers who were monotheistic in their Christian devotion still turned to Greek polytheism for a wider range of spirituality.

[para omitted]

Polytheism also leads us to find spirituality where we least expect it, such as in Aphroditic spirituality. We could discover that sex is a source of deep mysteries of the soul and in truly a holy thing, and can be one of the fundamental experiences in the making of soul. Beauty, body, sensuality, cosmetics, adornment, clothes, and jewelry – things we tend to treat in a secular fashion – find religious import in the rites and stories of Aphrodite.

If we can get past various fundamentalist attitudes about the spiritual life, such as attachment to a too simple code of morality, fixed interpretation of stories, and a community in which individual thinking is not prized, then many different ways of being spiritual come into view. We may discover that there are ways to be spiritual that do not counter the soul's need for body, individuality, imagination, and exploration. Eventually we might find that all emotions, all human activities, and all spheres of life have deep roots in the mysteries of the soul, and therefore are holy.

[Ronagon]

I find that, very often, "fundamentalism" is about selectively observing only those particular fundamentals that fit an individual or group's agenda, which is too often horrific.

1) Christian "fundamentalism" is all about ignoring Christ's teachings and focusing on the first few books of the Old Testament, the real harsh, sadistic stuff like Leviticus.

Usually, it's bored, conceited, resentful, hateful rednecks who prefer this stuff.

2) Islamic "fundamentalism" is actually a truer form of fundamentalism, in that it more accurately conforms to the TRUE fundamentals of Islam and it's holy books, which are a nightmare. Everybody's trying to pretend like terrorism and Islam are independent ways of life. But the truth is that TRUE Islam IS terrorism. Anyone who is "Muslim" and is NOT a terrorist, is NOT a TRUE Muslim, by the teachings of the Koran. Only the terrorists are true Muslims.

Most lazy, phoney, so-called "educated" people like to repeat what the PC establishment has fed them, that Islam is a "beautiful, sweet little religion" of whimsy and happiness. Real puppies and kittens kinda sh!t. But of course, they're phonies, too lazy to actually pick up a copy of the Koran and read books that discuss it... they'd rather cave in and conform.

They'd rather just FAKE knowing about it. These people are all about creating the illusion of enlightenment, without actually making it so, by doing their homework. And the whole world will slip into eternal hell and darkness, if these short-sighted, self-serving invertebrates have their way.

So, there ya go.

[rich]

Ronagon:

:lol:

Yes, there are some that interpret whatever was written has to be true, for the reason, it was written. Especially those, having not enough gray matter to think and reason things out for themselves. :huh: ;)

However, who can stand up, and proclaim, that what we personally think is absolute truth. :think:

Right or wrong, we still have the freedom to express our thoughts, regardless of what others think. Or should we all shut up ? :unsure:

[Ronagon]

Oh, I got ya.

We should all pretend to not have answers, even when answers are available, because this world is ruled by social envy and when we try to make a valid and correct point, we make others jealous.

So rather, we should all sit back and PRETEND like there are no correct answers... pretend like there are no wrong answers, and no just plain evil. 1 + 1 can be 3 and the earth can be flat, if a bullying mob says so.

Yeah, that's admirable.

[rich]

Ronagon,

If you were answering my post, you read it wrong or misinterpreted it. I never wrote the things you say in your reply! :angry:

[DavidS]

Can't seem to stop picking up shells on this beach. B)

Hi Ronagon -

Very much appreciated your 'take' on various forms of 'fundamentalism'.

Re:
Originally posted by Ronagon@Jan 25 2004, 12:34 PM
Islamic "fundamentalism" is actually a truer form of fundamentalism, in that it more accurately conforms to the TRUE fundamentals of Islam and it's holy books, which are a nightmare. Everybody's trying to pretend like terrorism and Islam are independent ways of life. But the truth is that TRUE Islam IS terrorism. Anyone who is "Muslim" and is NOT a terrorist, is NOT a TRUE Muslim, by the teachings of the Koran. Only the terrorists are true Muslims.
I wanted to share that I have a similar take based solely on my reading of a couple of translations of the Quran. I speculate that there may be something in the Hadith (which, the little I know about it, had/has more to do with practically administering 'relations' between people) which 'softens' this - or there may not be, I don't know.

But, getting back to the 'terroristy'ness of the Quran, my impression of it is that it's a kind of "If you're not with 'us', then you're agin' 'us' ('us' being the "'good' guys") and 'we' are 'justified' in dealing with and disposing of you/them, accordingly." rallying-call-statement which is very much like the Bush-Blair rallying-call and 'justification' for the 'War on Terrorism'. Also, let it not be lost that 'they' regard the American 'alliance' with their arch-scape-goat-enemy, Israel, as essentially being something that 'supports' (Israeli-self-interest-asserting) 'terrorism'.

Strikes me that the two born-of-'tribal'-'survival' motives and 'justifications', each mirroring 'evil' in the 'other', are locked in a death-embrace -- bringing the mythic-prophecy that "He who lives by the sword, shall die by the sword" to 'fruition' in world-stage proportions which any 'Greek Play' writer would glory in!

My own "myth" is that the con·flagration which 'they' ;) and others like 'them' (together) create will be and remain for centuries a 'bright' educational beacon which serves to provide the necessary 'correction' factor to the human sense based thought-tendency to get caught up in 'self'-versus-'other' image·in·ings (and derivative us-vs-them 'rallying' 'calls' and 'documents' ).

At least, I don't 'vision'-see why that either can't or won't be the case. One 'facet' (perspective) of the flow of Life, is that it's all one BIG 'teaching' to us little, just learning to psychospiritually 'navigate', fishies regarding flow-'error'. :D

[sonrisa]

Hi Ronagon, your post about fundamentalism reminds me of a letter somebody supposedly sent that witch Dr Laura. Here it is:


Dear Dr. Laura:
Thank you for doing so much to educate people regarding God's Law. I have learned a great deal from your show, and try to share that knowledge with as many people as I can. When someone tries to defend the homosexual lifestyle, for example, I simply remind them that Leviticus 18:22 clearly states it to be an abomination. End of debate.

I do need some advice from you, however, regarding some of the other specific laws and how to follow them.

> 1. When I burn a bull on the altar as a sacrifice, I know it creates a pleasing odor for the Lord - Lev. 1:9. The problem is my neighbors. They claim the odor is not pleasing to them. Should I smite them?

> 2. I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7. In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair price for her?

> 3. I know that I am allowed no contact with a woman while she is in her period of menstrual unseemliness - Lev. 15:19-24. The problem is, how do I tell? I have tried asking, but most women take offense.

> 4. Lev. 25:44 states that I may indeed possess slaves, both male and female, provided they are purchased from neighboring nations. A friend of mine claims that this applies to Mexicans, but not Canadians. Can you clarify? Why can't I own Canadians?

> 5. I have a neighbor who insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2 clearly states he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself?

> 6. A friend of mine feels that even though eating shellfish is an abomination - Lev. 11:10, it is a lesser abomination than homosexuality. I don't agree. Can you settle this?

> 7. Lev. 21:20 states that I may not approach the altar of God if I have a defect in my sight. I have to admit that I wear reading glasses. Does my vision have to be 20/20, or is there some wiggle room here?

> 8. Most of my male friends get their hair trimmed, including the hair around their temples, even though this is expressly forbidden by Lev. 19:27. How should they die?

> 9. I know from Lev. 11:6-8 that touching the skin of a dead pig makes me unclean, but may I still play football if I wear gloves?

> 10. My uncle has a farm. He violates Lev. 19:19 by planting two different crops in the same field, as does his wife by wearing garments made of two different kinds of thread (cotton/polyester blend). He also tends to curse and blaspheme a lot. Is it really necessary that we go to all the trouble of getting the whole town together to stone them? - Lev. 24:10-16. Couldn't we just burn them to death at a private family affair like we do with people who sleep with their in-laws? (Lev. 20:14)

I know you have studied these things extensively, so I am confident you can help. Thank you again for reminding us that God's word is eternal and unchanging.

Your devoted disciple and adoring fan.
Jim

[a random hack]

However, who can stand up, and proclaim, that what we personally think is absolute truth.

seems plenty of people think they can, and do :) .

tho why they do it, is another question :lol:

sonrisa, :lol::lol::lol:

[sonrisa]

Random
:badgrin:

[Bernie]

Hi,

I'm new here. The title of this thread caught my eye. I represent a relatively new splinter sect in Christianity, Esoteric Fundamentalism. Actually, there's only one adherent....me.

Anyway, I'm quite comfortable with my esoteric fundamentalism and not sure why I would need a "cure", which this thread appeared to promise but seems not to have delivered (or I missed it).

So. Where can I find the Cure? Why do I need it?

God bless you in your walk.
The Esoteric Fundamentalist

[sonrisa]

Hi Bernie, welcone to TBV! What is Esoteric Fundamentalism? Sounds interesting! :)

[Bernie]

Hi sonrisa,

Thanks for the welcome. Christian Esoteric Fundamentalism is essentially an epistemological basis of support for Bible inerrancy, which I hold to as part of my fundamentalist beliefs...but it goes beyond typical fundamentalist belief in that this epistemology lays the groundwork for delving more deeply into the esoteric of "hidden" meaning which lies within the literal, as Swedenborg noted.

I'm in the process of building a website, which I hope to be up and running in a month or so. Here's the beginning page or so that covers the fundamentals of my belief (pun intended).....
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Preface

1. Idea, information and meaning are interchangeable signifiers. Idea is information; information is meaning; meaning is idea.

2. Information/ideas/meaning possesses the quality of either truth or falsehood. Meaning/information/ideas can possess truth and falsehood simultaneously only virtually, not absolutely.

3. Intellect is the immaterial cognitive power which is formed from and is the sum and product of sense impressions from corporeal reality and the incorporeal essence of human spirit. It is the agent, mode and act of human knowing. Intellect powers cognition relative to its capacity to apprehend and assimilate the sum total of all information/ideas/meaning in potency perfectly and totally, and in act only fractionally and incompletely. Consequently, reality is dual, comprised of mutually interactive components from the material existence of time and space [particulars] and the immaterial, incorporeal essences.

4. Universal reality can be further subdivided into two categories:
1) those universals which appliy to the material world and fall into the category of the descriptive, as in color,
temperature or timbre;
2) that which applies to the realm of universal, incorporeal reality (God, spirit, etc.) from which prescriptive ideas or information (morality, ethics, values) emerge. Information in any of these categories of reality may be either true or false.

Premise

Scripture can be shown to be inherently inerrant when its teachings and principles as meaning are extracted according to a combined theological/philosophical interpretive framework in which the cognitive operation takes into account the conflicting elements existing in human spirit.

Human cognizance incorporates into its activity datum from sense [particular existence in time and space] and spirit [prescriptive universal reality]. These combine to form intellect. Spirit is the power and animation of intellect for good and bad, creating awareness, the first dynamic in the coginitive process. Intellect consists in extracting descriptive universal information from the particular data it apprehends, enduing this information/meaning with prescriptive qualities in the operation of apprehension-reason-judgment.

Sense is the most conspicuous feature in cognition largely because the dynamic of the unregenerate spirit as incorporeal pathology influences the attention of the mind on particular existence [spiritual darkness, Jn 1:5, 3:20, etc.]. This is so because prescriptive truth contains within it the spiritual ‘antibody’ which destroys falsehood, the essence of the unregenerate spirit. Spirit is the vigor and predominant influence of the mind, and its unregenerate elements naturally resist prescriptive truth as an insect resists flame.

Example

Jesus stated: "…by your words you shall be justified, and by your words you shall be condemned" (Mat 12:37). For a human being to be justified and condemned simultaneously is only possible virtually; i.e., the same person may logically be justified for some words and condemned for other words, but never both justified and condemned for the same words.

In a broader general or universal sense, the individual can be said to be both justified and condemned without contradiction, because contradiction which exists when applied to the individual in the realm of particular reality loses its relevance when reduced to its constituent parts in universal reality. When meaning is understood and applied only or primarily in a literal and particular sense, the individual’s justification or condemnation is absolute and may be only one or the other. Jesus’ words cannot be properly interpreted as having only literal and particular meaning else contradiction occurs; one and the same person cannot be judged as a whole because no individual’s words are only evil or only righteous.

When the sum total of words by which the individual is judged are comprised of both true information/meaning and false information/meaning, the perfection of justice is denied if an absolute condemnation or an absolute justification is decreed upon that person.

It is injustice to condemn wholly when some of an individual’s words are true, or to justify when some of an individual’s words are false. Therefore, to preserve the essential distinctiveness of the whole (our individuality), wrath is transfered from the indiviudal in particular reality to his or her component elements in universal reality, where the work of destruction/condemnation of the offense which resides in the unregenerate spirit is meted out in perfect justice. God’s grace is revealed here in bringing forth from this inner death new life (Jn 12:24) in progressive regeneration. Thus, the process of sanctification.
---------------------------------------------------------------------

I apologize if this is overlong, but thought it would give a general idea of what I believe. This view has been routinely condemned by conservatives as liberal hogwash, and despised by liberals because it supports the fundamentalist view. Damned if I do and damned if I don't. So it goes.

God bless you in your walk.

[DavidS]

Hello Bernie -

The 'logic' of your presentation strikes me as being as 'sound' as anyone else's. However, regarding the possibility that you regard what you have 'envisioned' as the 'totality' of 'the truth', I offer the following quotes from Ch.2 of the The Bhagavad Gita as 'proxy' (for me) comments:

"As a man can drink water from any side of a full tank, so the skilled theologian can wrest from any scripture that which will serve his purpose."

and

"When thy reason has crossed the entanglements of illusion, then shalt thou become indifferent both to the philosophies thou hast heard and to those thou mayest yet hear.
When the intellect, bewildered by the multiplicity of holy scripts, stands unperturbed in blissful contemplation of the Infinite, then hast thou attained Spirituality."

Except, I would add, based on my personal experience, that I think it is possible for the 'intellect' of a person who has broken through and gone past 'entanglements' in 'illusion' may also delight in the cross-cultural multiplicity of 'holy' scripts, and actively 'include' 'readings' of them, as well as a multitude of pinball-ball-bounce 'insights' which 'flow' in 'response' to what's said in them, in the course of their 'standing' 'unperturbed' in'blissful contemplation' of the 'Infinite'.

I truly am glad you find so much to relate to in biblical scriptures, as well. I have personally also 'mined' a lot of 'gold' by being 'clued in' to its existence by what's 'encoded' there. But, the 'point' of my 'message' is that there are additional 'clues' elsewhere (just about everywhere!).

[Bernie]

Hello DavidS,

Thanks for your response. No, of course I don't believe I've found the totality of truth. I DO believe that moral absolute exists (He is God), but we are capable of discerning only elements of it in this life.

I also don't disagree with your points about mining truth in other religions, but I am fundamentalist enough in my Christianity to reject the idea that 'all religions lead equally to God'. That a great deal of truth is spread around and can be found not only in relgion but in atheist and agnostic circles speaks to the universality of God's love for His creation, which most conservatives seem to have trouble accepting, but none of this detracts from the foundational princples of my religion.

I consider myself to be "fundamentalist" in most of the points of historical fundamentalism, not necessarily or primarily in the popular [and extremely negative] sense it's intended by most folks today.

God bless you in your walk.

[sonrisa]

well, Bernie, your post gave me something to think about. I had to reread it a few times before replying. One thing that sticks with me is that you talk about the inerrancy of the Bible, which I'm taking to mean infallibility. A few posts up I posted what most of us would consider some outdated Bible passages. How do you explain these? Were they correct in their time, but, now that we as a society have moved beyond them, they are irrelevant, or in the case of slavery, morally abhorrant? Seems to me that the fundamentalists that I've run across like to pick & choose their Bible passages, ignoring the ones they don't like. Maybe that's why they don't like you- becuz you insist on the inerrancy of the Bible, they think they gotta swallow it whole!! :)

So it seems to me these so-called "fundamentalists" aren't really fundamental at all, quoting whatever Scripture they feel will suit their needs & ignoring the rest. I also wonder how much they really know about getting back to the basics, the early Christian Church. You see, I am interested in the historical/archealogical aspects of Biblical times & the early Church, Turns out, at least according to the archaelogists & scholars I've heard talk about it, is that what we think we know about Jesus & his teachings is being obscured by the haze of many centuries. Today's "fundamentalists" aren't the only ones picking & choosing Scripture- around the 4th or 5th century the Church Fathers threw out some 250 Gospels, including the Gospel of Thomas, which I personally think is interesting becuz it appears to be an eyewitness account of Jesus' ministry, as opposed to being written years, decades even, after Jesus' death & resurrection. Each of the others as well provides insight into early Christian teaching & thought. Anyhow all we have left are the 4 they obviously liked since they weren't thrown out along with the rest. Does your Esoteric Fundamentalism reach back & include these other Gospels? What about Gnosticism & other ancient teachings that, as the centuries passed, fell by the wayside?

[Bernie]

Hi Sonrisa,

You ask, " I posted what most of us would consider some outdated Bible passages. How do you explain these? Were they correct in their time, but, now that we as a society have moved beyond them, they are irrelevant, or in the case of slavery, morally abhorrant?"

May I humbly suggest that the answers you seek lie in Rational Esotericism, of which I am (as the Estoeric Fundamentalist) the one and only adherent. As such, I've elected myself spokesperson for the entire organization, and am at your service.

The evils you mention were, insofar as they refer to slavery and such of course, part and parcel of the culture of the time. But you appear to suggest that we are different. We don't sell our children as slaves, though we kill unborn babies with nary a second glance, and all perfectly legal. But this is another topic, of course, and doesn't answer your primary question.

Paul understood that the law was spiritual (Rom 7:14), and Jesus stated in Mat 5:18 that not a "jot or tittle" will pass from the Law before all is fulfilled. The literal is granted a reprieve, and finds fulfillment in the spiritual. Still, I wouldn't cry out against slavery overmuch...it's still alive and well today all over the world, only we're much more subtle and sophisticated in our approach to it. Greed has a majority of America in her grip, possibly more today than at any other time in history. We're slaves to our technology, in some very real senses. Try to not jump through all the hoops society puts up today..be an idealist. Unless you're independently wealthy enough to drop out of society, you learn to keep your nose clean and not p.o. the wrong folks, or you may find it hard to obtain meaningful employment. (Sticking up for your beliefs on moral and philosophical grounds is fine, but whether you're right or wrong, the HR dude or lady you rub the wrong way will make your life miserble when you're looking for your next job...)

It's common knowledge that most of the laws concerning food possess medical validity. Many of the Mosaic laws would be no-brainers if humans were perfect beings. Many of the laws of Moses refer to a circumstance we cannot nor do we wish to attain to: perfection. You poke fun at Lev 25:44, but seem to overlook the laws about treating sojourners among the Jews morally, allowing them to become circumcized and join themselves to God's people, etc.

There are deeper spiritual meanings attached to all these. I don't pretend to recognize them, am not particularly well read in the Mosaic law...I find it somewhat boring...but believe its principles are inerrant and infallible all the same.

If by asking if the verses you quoted were "correct in their time", you mean that they were to be literally followed to the letter, sure. They haven't lost this validity today. But we're set free from these laws by Christ's sacrifice. They were then, too, but didn't realize it, didn't realize the purpose of it. (The law of righteousness by faith was only brought into closer focus by Christ; it was instituted from the beginning.)

The literal is transfered to the universal. The decrees of God are perfectly valid yet today, but are inerrantly transfered from the literal/particuar to the spiritual/universal.

God bless you in your walk.

[sonrisa]

Thanx for your response Bernie! Again it made me think. Good point you mentioned about people today being slaves to technology, the rat race, & the god-almighty $. Actually that remark reminded me of a newspaper article I read before the Holidays about how the police somewhere in Fla raided a camp of slave laborers at some orange juice company. The place was just across the street from an old folx golf course can you believe it, and all for cheap OJ! So slavery is (unfortunately) alive & well in the 21st century, if illegal. But we no longer condone it. Let me see if I'm folowing you here- you say the Bible passages are still inerrant, even tho today we consider slavery (in it's traditional form, that is) to be reprehensible, and that they find fulfillment in the universal? That these passages are relevant becuz we are slaves to the almighty $ to some degree? Even if you're not greedy you still gotta eat & pay rent- & the ISP bill!

You appear to suggest that we are different

Well I meant that we had evolved to consider slavery morally reprehensible, but as you pointed out, we merely found ourselves another kind of master. The more things change, the more they stay the same, I guess.

[Bernie]

Hi Sonrisa,

YOU: "Let me see if I'm folowing you here- you say the Bible passages are still inerrant, even tho today we consider slavery (in it's traditional form, that is) to be reprehensible"

1) Yes, I'm saying the Bible is inerrant.

2) You seem to me to be blurring the facts a bit. Where in the Bible does God command people to take slaves? I thought we touched on the fact that the Law was given and woven into the culture of the time, just as now.

God bless you in your walk.

[sonrisa]

Thank you! That is what I was a little confused about. So the law applied to that particular time then, but not now. And that is true, I suppose, for all of Scripture? As we spiritually evolve, the Scripture takes on a meaning specific to the time & place we are (spiritually) in? We, being society, that is.

[Bernie]

Hi sonrisa,

YOU: "So the law applied to that particular time then, but not now. And that is true, I suppose, for all of Scripture?"

No, the Mosaic Law is just as applicable literally and spiritually today and at all times. By "applicable", I mean its truth was true when given and is equally true today. We violate it with impunity today, much more so than Israel did. That doesn't mean it's not true. The Law is in this sense inerrant in its literal sense; it's infallible in its spiritual sense.

Swedenborg noted that the literal rendering can be abused without doing damage to its internal, spiritual meaning. But truth that exists on any level is immune to change. Contingency is a defect in both physical and spiritual aspects of creation.

We're not beholden to the Law today. Actually, the Jews were actually only beholden to it so that it could be played out on life's stage, to show the rest of the world.

To answer your second question--as the official spokesman for Rational Esotericism--the same is true for all Scripture. As an Esoteric Fundamentalist, I stand against the idea that Scripture is the product of human minds, is merely a compendium of human religious thought, as historical fundamentalism did. In fact, one reason Rational Esotericism is hated by liberals is because it provides support for most of the historic fundamental principles, which I also hold to be true....an exception would be premillenialism, which is open to interpretation and should not be included as a fundamental principle.

On the other hand, conservatives also hate RE because it leads to the rational conclusion that all human beings will eventually be saved and rest in eternal life and glory with God, Judas, Hitler and all...and it reveals the poverty of their harshly restrictive literal translation of the Bible.

God bless you in your walk.

[Thomas Knierim]

Bernie: Universal reality can be further subdivided into two categories:
1) those universals which appliy to the material world and fall into the category of the descriptive, as in color, temperature or timbre;
2) that which applies to the realm of universal, incorporeal reality (God, spirit, etc.) from which prescriptive ideas or information (morality, ethics, values) emerge. Information in any of these categories of reality may be either true or false.

Ah, univerals! I thought the scholastics had fought that out once and for all. Your explanantion raises a few questions. What is incorporeal reality? And, most importantly, what are prescriptive truths and what epistemic method establishes them as such?

Bernie: Scripture can be shown to be inherently inerrant when its teachings and principles as meaning are extracted according to a combined theological/philosophical interpretive framework...

Yes, of course. Similarly I can demonstrate that "The Capital" of Karl Marx contains the sentence "Frederick Engels is a beery buffoon" by a combinatoric approach based on information theory.

Thomas

[Bernie]

Hello Thomas,

YOU: "Ah, univerals! I thought the scholastics had fought that out once and for all."

Haven't you heard, thomism has been making a comeback.

YOU: "What is incorporeal reality?"

It's the meaning which forms in the mind when the signifier "incorporeal reality" is mentioned.

YOU: "what are prescriptive truths and what epistemic method establishes them as such?"

Prescriptive truths are what we ought to do. In my view, the same epistemic method which establishes the predicate/subject relationship (water/boiling; snow/white) for descriptive universal reality also applies to prescriptive universal reality: natural similitude. Descriptive universals are extracted from particulars and prescriptive truth from spiritual/incorporeal essence--being natural to intellect--naturally corresponds to judgment in matters of human behavior.

The fact that good and evil have never changed testifies to the absoute nature of prescriptive truth.

God bless you in your walk.

[Thomas Knierim]

Bernie: In my view, the same epistemic method which establishes the predicate/subject relationship [...] for descriptive universal reality also applies to prescriptive universal reality: natural similitude. Descriptive universals are extracted from particulars and prescriptive truth from spiritual/incorporeal essence--being natural to intellect--naturally corresponds to judgment in matters of human behavior.

All very well, but how are "prescriptive truths" corroborated and verified? In the case of descriptive truths (scientific theories, for example), we can rely on the process of empirical corroboration, i.e. test by experiment and observation. A descriptive truth must pass each time, otherwise it is falsified and we can dismiss it. With prescriptive truths (ethics) things are trickier. What methods of corroboration/falsification do we have? If a prescriptive truth can be neither corroborated nor falsified, how do we judge its usefulness?

Bernie: The fact that good and evil have never changed testifies to the absoute nature of prescriptive truth.

You realize of course that this works only with universals. If you start to apply the "good" and "evil" attributes to particulars, i.e. acts of human beings, opinions often vary, don't they?

Cheers, Thomas

[Bernie]

Hello Thomas,

YOU: "how are "prescriptive truths" corroborated and verified?"

Tricky business, isn't it? There are far too many variables in the realm of morals and ethics to achieve certitude, of course, but common sense suggests some answers. You may tell me repeatedly that I ought not take cocaine, that there are far-reaching consequences for its abuse. We both know from common sense that this is true.

I said I believe that absolute morality exists, but I have never said these absolutes are knowable in this life.

YOU: "You realize of course that this works only with universals. If you start to apply the "good" and "evil" attributes to particulars, i.e. acts of human beings, opinions often vary, don't they?"

Absolutely (pun intended). But this is actually the basis for rational esotericism/esoteric fundamentalism--salvation of the individual [and thus our individuality] is made possible by the transfer of a loving God of His wrath from the realm of particular reality to universal existence [the spirit], and new birth replaces the old destroyed stuff. Particulars are transitory; universals are not. Salvation lies beyond, which is what all religion basically teaches anyway.

I don't pretend RE is perfect; but then I'm bringing a formal 9th grade education to the table, and didn't start reading philosophy (Aquinas) till last winter...but once I got interested, found it fascinating.

God bless you in your walk.

[sonrisa]

so then Bernie, is Esoteric Fundamentalism based on the writings of Thomas Aquinas? In addition to the Bible, of course.

[Thomas Knierim]

Bernie: You may tell me repeatedly that I ought not take cocaine, that there are far-reaching consequences for its abuse. We both know from common sense that this is true.

I presume there would be general agreement about cocaine being bad for you, as in this case, the prescriptive guideline rests on descriptive truth, i.e. observations of the effect of cocaine addiction. But there are much more complicated ethical questions which are not readily answered by common sense, or for which there is no historical data available. For example, the question whether it was good or bad to invade Iraq falls into this category.

Bernie: I said I believe that absolute morality exists, but I have never said these absolutes are knowable in this life.

Ah, but you said that "the same epistemic method which establishes [...] descriptive universal reality also applies to prescriptive universal reality". Yet, it seems that ethical particulars are contingent on circumstances and that they are delineated by psychological factors, i.e. intentions and value systems of the individual or group, which implies that universal ethics are much harder to derive from particulars. This makes them IMO epistemically different from universal descriptive truths. It is therefore no surprise that the field of normative ethics (meta-ethics) is so small.

Bernie: I don't pretend RE is perfect; but then I'm bringing a formal 9th grade education to the table, and didn't start reading philosophy (Aquinas) till last winter...but once I got interested, found it fascinating.

What's RE? - Aquinas is indeed fascinating. I was very impressed by his writings, not by his ontology but his epistemology. He was far ahead of his time.

Thomas

[sonrisa]

Frankly Thomas, I would question the ethics of anybody who thinks it's a good idea to invade a sovereign nation (already weakened by ecomonic sanctions & therefore basically a sitting duck) & plunder its resources. I would also question the ethics of anybody who would tell bald faced lies to achieve this end.

[Bernie]

Hello Thomas,

YOU: "you said that "the same epistemic method which establishes [...] descriptive universal reality also applies to prescriptive universal reality". Yet, it seems that ethical particulars are contingent on circumstances and that they are delineated by psychological factors, i.e. intentions and value systems of the individual or group, which implies that universal ethics are much harder to derive from particulars. This makes them IMO epistemically different from universal descriptive truths."

We probably view contingency differently. My religious structure (Rational Esotericism=RE) figures heavily into the philosophical side of things in that I see contingency as an exclusive quality or defect of creation.

Calvin, doubtless seeing the logical contradiction in the simultaneous existence of good and evil, went on to formulate an equally illogical doctrine of spiritual birth as an either/or proposition. The human spirit in Calvinisism is either regenerate or unregenerate, with no middle ground. Unfortunately, this idea is purely inferential from Scripture, destroys causality [defect in mind and body are effects of spiritual causes] and simply does not work experientially.

RE overcomes this problem thus...

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Figure one


BBBB BBBB
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Figure two

Fig 1 represents the totally unregenerate spirit. Fig 2 represents the same spirit, now partially regenerate. This is my theory of "Fragmented Spirit", which simply sees the human spirit regenerated progressively and fragmentally instead of totally and instantly one way or the other. The same principle is in how we see gray in B&W newspaper print. "Gray" is of course an optical illusion in print, actually made up of the opposites of black and white, fragmentally.

This same principle, applied in universal reality (the spirit), reveals contingency as a defect--a defect which causally spreads into creation in mind and matter. Epistemologically, the natures of water-boiling-212 degrees F are based on a perfection that doesn't exist -- trace elements in H2O, imprefections in heat flow and measurement techniques, etc. are descriptive 'evils' which prevent perfection. Still, for practical purposes, everything fits and works. Prescriptive reality operates under similar spiritual imperfections--when the status of our prescriptive receptor [the spirit] exists as it does in Fig. 2, as I believe is true of all humanity, then it is both in our nature to do evil AND good. We participate in both, in the fullest sense implied by Aquinas, I think: we become one intellectually with the fragmented content of the spirit. We receive into ourselves and become one with false and true information, which I see as the primary cause of most behaviors and appetites -- the natural ones like hunger and tiredness tied to sense, of course.

This is how I see the two as similar epistemically.

God bless you in your walk.

[Bernie]

uh-oh....my wannabe homemade graphic didn't work...when it posted, it moved all the empty spaces I typed into Fig 2 to the left, kind of wrecking the fragmented effect I'd hoped for. I'm sure you get the point, though.

B.

[Bernie]

I may not have been very clear in the post above concerning prescriptive epistemic relationships.

The motive that establishes correspondence between subject and predicate in descriptive reality is the similitude or nature of the objects represented, i.e. heat-fire.

I see philosophy as unable to provide the same basis for prescriptive judgments...come to think of it, orthodox Christian theology is also unable, though the answer is found in joining a modified theology [fragmented spirit/progressive spiriutal birth] with dualism..sort of a "dual" dualism, of both mind/body and contrary elements (regenerate/unregenerate) within the individual spirit...to arrive at a similar prescriptive epistemology.

It is our nature to both sin and be good. No particular human is only good or bad (despite what dogmatic religionists in all religions think); good and evil both are natural tendencies in humanity. Everything is done imperfectly, on a macroscopic scale, evil can be seen as a pathology that perverts all creation, especially human behavior. On a micro scale, evil gets much more up close and personal and takes on the aspect of conscious entity (us; our love and practice of it).

This is why I see the cosmological arguments for contingency as interesting but missing the point: to argue whether we "might not" have existed is speaking directly past the true quality of contingency, the not knowing, which is itself the defect of lack of complete true information or perfection.

God bless you in your walk.

[Thomas Knierim]

Bernie,

I think I get the drift of what you're saying. Buddhism has a very similar conception of "impurity" applying to the phenomenal conditions of substances as well as mind. The term "imperfection" which you seem to use analogously has a neo-Platonic connotation, since it implies the existence of perfect states and phenomena (which Buddhism denies, btw.); still, I can't see anything leading to ethics from there. Given that human nature includes capability for both good an evil, it appears even more difficult to develop normative ethics from purely subjective epistemic methods (i.e. relying on self-validation of what is "good and evil"). Obviously, the world is full of deluded individuals who have self-validated that it is good to walk around and kill anyone who doesn't share their ethnicity/religion/ideology.

Thomas