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Tom
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Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353
| Posted 4/21/2010 9:22 AM (GMT -6) |   | Sometimes life can constrain us into a new way of thinking. Miracles can't do that. Unexpected events, things we thought not likely or possible, can't force us to change our mind. When Christ confronted Paul on the Damascus road, Paul "lived his way into a new way of thinking." He was forced to reexamine his beliefs in light of his experience.
That does happen.
But it's more often the case (I think) that people live "out of" their worldview. After all, that's WHY Paul was on the Damascus road to begin with. Our beliefs and perspectives shape/influence our choices and actions. And behavior modification follows when how we think or view things is challenged. We change how we think, what we believe, and as a consequence start living differently.
But I agree with Nyssa (and Fr Stephen) that "wonder" is an essential aspect of the Christian life. Of course, Nyssa spent his life studying and arguing and promoting particular "concepts" too, but that doesn't make him an idolater.Concepts CAN get in the way and become idols.
I was thinking two things:
1) It's not so much a choice BETWEEN 'understanding' and 'wonder', as if we don't have wonder and amazement for the things we DO understand. Wonder can be had for the things we understand too, provided we live in the knowledge that all things are in God, sustained by him, etc. I have wonder at a sunset, a lightning storm, Niagra Falls, the birth of my kids, though I understand the natural process that produce those things. I can explain HOW they are what they are. But THAT they are at all, that anything is at all, THAT takes us to the Ground and to wonder.
2) While I think concepts can be idolized and that there's a necessary wonder that takes over...at the same time I think wonder can also be responsible for idolatry. It was not concepts that led primitive cultures to worship the sun and moon. It was that they did not understand the rotation of the Sun and Moon or how the seasons change. They made gods out of ignorance, not knowledge. They're amazement at the natural order made them idolaters.
In a Christian context, where faith is assumed, then yes...wonder grasps the ineffable. But it's not something 'wonder' necessarily does outside that context. It may lead to idolatry, and this just brings up the role of 'concepts' and rightly understanding things. Those concepts (what we DO understand) play an important role in directing wonder toward God in an act of worship and away from the tendency to turn what we don't understand into idols.
Is that something close to accurate?
Tom
KIXYTΘEMTAPost Edited (Tom) : 4/21/2010 11:13:10 AM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 4/21/2010 12:59 PM (GMT -6) | | As a person thinks, so are they, right? I'm all the way with you, Tom. Actually, I'd beat another dead horse and say that there is a bi-polar assymetrical relational unity between "wonder" (a sense of the numinous, supra-rational, etc) and "world composition" (worldview formulation, exchange, etc., rational/emotive) in the one who loves and knows God. At least that's what Loder would say, I think.
Beyond vision, in the fourth and final phase of the journey of intensification, is the numinous, imageless passage into the absolute unity of all things. Here no-thingness (cf. Eckhart's Ohne bild) is experienced as more real that than the reality of the ordinary state, even after self-consciousness returns to phase 1. Although imageless, its impact most often leaves the after-image of radiant white light, so vivid it cannot be described except perhaps by a kind of via negativa. For this phase there is no language, only silence--favete linguis (hold your tongue), says Kierkegaard. For this phase there is still differentiated self-consciousness, but beyond that only a reaction of awe as before the Holy who both fascinates and overpowers at the same time. This corresponds to the vision of God in Augustine, Hildegaard, Teresa (of Avila), Eckhart, and several others.
James Loder
The Knight's Move
Page 273.
Something else. I would say that the TWIST in the Mobius Strip of said bi-polar assymetrical relational unity that shows a true ONENESS between the supra-rational and the rational would be WISDOM...which is inseparable from the COMPASSION of God. True wisdom understood by creatures only comes from God, right?
--------------------------------------------
My son, if you receive my words
and treasure up my commandments with you,
making your ear attentive to wisdom
and inclining your heart to understanding;
yes, if you call out for insight
and raise your voice for understanding,
if you seek it like silver
and search for it as for hidden treasures,
then you will understand the fear of the Lord
and find the knowledge of God.
For the Lord gives wisdom;
from his mouth come knowledge and understanding;
he stores up sound wisdom for the upright;
he is a shield to those who walk in integrity,
guarding the paths of justice
and watching over the way of his saints.
Then you will understand righteousness and justice
and equity, every good path;
for wisdom will come into your heart,
and knowledge will be pleasant to your soul;
discretion will watch over you,
understanding will guard you,
delivering you from the way of evil,
from men of perverted speech,
who forsake the paths of uprightness
to walk in the ways of darkness,
who rejoice in doing evil
and delight in the perverseness of evil,
men whose paths are crooked,
and who are devious in their ways.
-----------------------------
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Post Edited (One Love) : 4/21/2010 1:17:53 PM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 4/21/2010 1:20 PM (GMT -6) | | | Make sense, yo?
If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him. But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind. For that person must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.
James 1:5-8
We've gotta wholeheartedly trust in our Daddy, that He loves us and really WANTS to give us Wisdom (inseparable from His Spirit)...so that we can PLEASE Him as His beloved Children!
And I tell you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent; or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”
Luke 11:9-13
The father of the righteous will greatly rejoice; he who fathers a wise son will be glad in him.
Proverbs 23:24
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Post Edited (One Love) : 4/21/2010 1:45:54 PM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 4/21/2010 1:53 PM (GMT -6) | | Example: The Wisdom of Solomon.
Now try and tell me that "wonder" and "understanding" weren't both in THAT. 
Two thoughts:
1)Can you imagine what could have been if Solomon maintained the HUMILITY he had in 1 Kings 3 throughout his life? What could have been, indeed... 
2) Isn't Solomon's request pretty much lining up with what Jesus was talking about in Matthew 6...about "seeking first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness"? Seems so to me.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Post Edited (One Love) : 4/21/2010 2:01:35 PM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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JET
Registered Member
Date Joined Jun 2002
Total Posts : 397
| Posted 4/21/2010 4:00 PM (GMT -6) | | | Tom,
If you haven't read it, I think you'd like the passage in N.T. Wright's "Surprised By Hope" where he talks about an epistemology of faith, hope and love. Below is a short excerpt I was able to copy and paste from the internet, but one really needs to read the whole passage.
Quote:
That is why...we cannot use a supposedly 'objective' historical epistemology as the ultimate ground for the truth of Easter. To do so would be like lighting a candle to see whether the sun has risen. What the candles of historical scholarship will do is to show that the room has been disturbed, that it doesn't look like it did last night, and that would-be 'normal' explanations for this won't do. Maybe, we think after the historical argument have done their work, maybe morning has come and the whole world has woken up. But to investigate whether this is so we must take the risk and open the curtains to the rising sun. When we do so, we won't rely on the candles any more, not because we don't believe in evidence and argument but because they will have been overtaken by the larger reality from which they borrow, to which they point, and in which they will find a new and larger home.
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