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Corey
Five with a Four-wing
Date Joined Feb 2003
Total Posts : 1893
| Posted 1/25/2008 10:12 AM (GMT -6) |   | | The word seems to be thrown about quite a bit as of late, and I suspect that my understanding of the term does match with how other people are using it here.
My general point is this: properly understood, "mystical" relates a direct experience of the divine. All the prophets were mystics in this sense. It may not be "provable" to others, but for the individual it's undeniable; it's properly basic.
My specific point is this: I wonder if Dwayne's construction is truly mystical. I don't get the sense that his argument stems from his first-person experience of God (does he truly experience Oneness himself?). Rather than being mystical, it seems to be quite the opposite: it's the result of a series of rational deductions. | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 1/25/2008 10:25 AM (GMT -6) | | This is what I'll tell you straight up.
I did the Jesus prayer.
Experienced the Dark Nights of Soul and Spirit.
Experienced the "stillness" spoken of in hesychasm.
I experienced the "white light", "via negativa", the "Absolute Unity of Being" exprerience that Loder talked about. (THAT's what began to sell me on it's legitimacy...and didn't let me fall into unbelief! God was gracious!)
Doc's work (and rationalistic) way of thinking (ala process) LED me to have categories to UNDERSTAND what the Fathers and Saints were saying...and helped me to enter into the experience that they had already been having.
And I've never had so much personal and relational transformation in my self-conscious existence.
Most of all, I am known of the Father's Love and Will in the deepest of my being.
What does this go for? 
So God created human beings in his own image, in the image of God he created them... Post Edited (Imago Dei) : 1/25/2008 9:28:03 AM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 1/25/2008 8:36 PM (GMT -6) | | Corey:
Hey, that's cool... all I want and pray for you is that your relationship with God would be as intensely personal and subjective as possible. Stay before the face of God. As I've prayed and contemplated this stuff, I felt I just needed to say something, to caution against giving systematics more weight than they will bear. I'm concerned of the subtle substitution of our conceptions in place of God as he is. We all do it.
Thanks for saying what was on your heart. I appreciate it. The interesting thing is that being "Father's Child" is the most interpersonally intimate relationship I've ever experienced in my conscious existence. Riveting, humbling, powerful, painful, HUMBLING, strengthening, HUMBLING. Without God's graceful rod of affliction, my intellect would fall into mess. Without Father's Spirit, I am undone...at any moment. I will stay in the Father's loving will, God's grace sustaining.
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Corey:
Just a little hair-splitting... language is just symbol. How do you know that the substance of your "Dark Night of the Soul" or "white light" or "Absolute Unity of Being" etc matches what those other people experienced? I don't see how anyone can know that. I can't know that I've entered "into the experience that they had already been having". All I can know is what I'VE experienced myself; I can't know the qualia of others' experiences.
I did this the same way I discovered that I had narcissistic personality tendencies and ADHD. I looked at my behavior and experiences, and compared them with the research and anecodotes about people who were disagnosed as having NPD or ADHD problems. Whenever you get the feeling like "How the heck did these people know this about ME? They are talking MY experience here!" ...then you know. You just know.
I used to disbelieve in the "white light" stuff...until I experienced it myself. It was the same way with me back in 1997 with believing in miracles or speaking in tongues. Back before then, I used to think all "spiritual phenomena" like healings and tongue speech were believed by insane, deluded, simple folk who let their subconscious hopes for some ecstatic experience. (I was quite judgemental and narrowminded especially to "church folk" ...even more than the Meph days, if you can believe that.  )
Then God blasted me with the gift of tongues and a "Saul on Damascus road" experience...and things changed dramatically. This is the experience that started my road to ministry, seminary, and...well, here.
Same thing happened to me with the experience of what Loder called (and I like) Absolute Unity of Being.
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Something different. What PERSONAL perspective do both the Only-Begotten Son and the Adopted Children of God take to define themselves fundamentally? What is a PERSONAL perspective that can exist in TWO NATURES with TWO MINDS and TWO WILLS in ONE PERSON?
"Abba, Father!" and through that, even bolder..."I and the Father are one."
Make sense?
So God created human beings in his own image, in the image of God he created them... Post Edited (Imago Dei) : 1/25/2008 7:43:10 PM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 1/26/2008 10:21 AM (GMT -6) | | How about this:
The "Christ-in-us", in whom we dwell epicletically, is the one who says "I and the Father are one" in us as Christ's Real Presence in the world. (Christ's Body)
More palatable?
So God created human beings in his own image, in the image of God he created them... Post Edited (Imago Dei) : 1/26/2008 9:27:25 AM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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PotOnWheel
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 1/26/2008 10:28 AM (GMT -6) | |
Imago Dei said...Bruce, Do you believe that it's possible for a believer to say and believe "I and the Father are one" under any circumstances? Just for my own clarity.
To be fancy I'll say that it is impossible for a believer to say that with clarity .
I mean, its fun word games and all that, and probably signifies something that it true. But it's mighty poor for communication purposes. And that is truely frustrating. (It ends up, some times, feeling like we have to take you on faith without being sure of what you are saying.)
How would a parish priest at St. Nicholas Carpatho-Rus Greek Catholic Orthodox Church say it to his parishoners who because of shift hours in the coal mine under the church could only stand at the top of the hill on theirbreak and gaze down at Scranton, PA and pray, during the time of the Liturgy -- they who might not make it home alive that day, because Slaves were expendable, cheep labor, and the house belonged to the mining company and if that son hadn't taken his father's place the whole family would go homeless...his younger brother might take his place and loose fingers in the machinery. What would THAT parish priest say, for "clarity?" (Scranton is not just about "The Office.")
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PotOnWheel
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 1/26/2008 10:30 AM (GMT -6) | |
Imago Dei said...
How about this:
The "Christ-in-us", in whom we dwell epicletically, is the one who says "I and the Father are one" in us as Christ's Real Presence in the world. (Christ's Body)
More palatable?
Did it make sense?
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PotOnWheel
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 1/26/2008 10:31 AM (GMT -6) | |
Imago Dei said...In other words, the ONLY REASON that we can say "I and the Father are one"... and it have real meaning...is BECAUSE we are Christ's "further Incarnation" as Christ's Body. When we are "continual participation" in Christ, we live as such. Doesn't this make sense?
Much better.
But for style and ultimately for communications purposes I'd make an addition.
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PotOnWheel
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 1/26/2008 10:34 AM (GMT -6) | | | I'd add (IN BOLD) that "the ONLY REASON that we can say "I and the Father are one"...and it have real meaning...is BECAUSE we are *by the Spirit, united with Christ, AND ARE THEREFORE, BTW, RIGHTLY EVEN CALLED "Christ's further Incarnation" as Christ's Body (IF YOU FOLLOW THAT). AND, THEREFORE, WE SHOULD REMEMBER THAT When we are "continual participation" in Christ, we live as such.
That way you take your reader/listener one step at a time. Always build on the familiar, with established trust that you won't change the rules mid-game. And always keep that trust.
Your original statement did not have clarity. And if you were trying for economy of statement it did not have that either.
(o)Post Edited (PotOnWheel) : 1/26/2008 9:39:02 AM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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PotOnWheel
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 1/26/2008 11:09 AM (GMT -6) | | | | |
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PotOnWheel
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 1/26/2008 11:11 AM (GMT -6) | |
Imago Dei said...Hmmm...you're good at this, Bruce. Thanks, bro.
The more I teach special ed. the more I believe I am one. And I cringe thinking about my poor college students twelve years ago.
But I learn from my mistakes and from large obstacles.
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PotOnWheel
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 1/26/2008 11:13 AM (GMT -6) | | | | |
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PotOnWheel
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 1/26/2008 11:57 AM (GMT -6) | | | | |
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One Love
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 1/26/2008 12:52 PM (GMT -6) | | | | |
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PotOnWheel
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 1/26/2008 12:57 PM (GMT -6) | | |
I'm a bit dumb, ignorant, etc. But how I get to be picky. (but not without escuse)
D.'s like says "In the church's classic teaching, Christ recapitulated- assumed, took into Himself- all of humanity in His Incarnation and Passion, and we in turn are to recapitulate His life. Living the life of Christ in our body is to live the perfect human life."
In light of Behr's mentioning that the Cross is CENTRAL with everything else past and present radiating out from it, I'll edit the "ed" in recaptitulated to say RECAPTITULATES. (And I think I'll be right on that--but I'm no authority on anything but pottery.)
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feelinahole
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2004
Total Posts : 754
| Posted 1/26/2008 4:11 PM (GMT -6) | | "What I can say is that I began by wondering whether or not there was such a thing as "mystical experience." And there seemed to be a common informal view around that "mystical" had something to do with the having of very uncommon priviledged "experiences"; and, on the other, because when I read any of the Christian writers who were said to be mystics I found that many of them--like Eckhart or the Author of The Cloud Of Unknowing--made no mention at all of any such experiences and most of the rest who, like John of the Cross or Teresa of Avila, did make mention of "experiences," attached little or no importance to make and certainly did not think the having of them to be definitive of "the mystical."
"Put very bluntly, the difference seemed to be this: that whereas our employment of the metaphors of "inwardness" and "ascent" appears to be tied in with the achievement and the culitvation of a certain kind of experience--such as those recommended within the practice of what is called, nowdays "centering," or "comtemplative" prayer--the medival employment of them was tied in with a "critique" of such religious experiences and practices. Whereas we appear to have "psychologized" the metaphors, the Neoplatonic medivel writer used the metaphors in a "Apophatic" spirit to play down the value of the experiential."
"...that is to say, the 'hidden' or 'secret', wisdom as being what the Author of The Cloud Of Unknowing called a divinity which is hidden precisely from experience."
"What differentiates the medivel employment of those metaphors froim ours is the fact that we have retained the metaphors, evacuated them of their dialectics and refilled them with the stuff of "experience."
From the "Darkness of God," by Denys Turner
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