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Corey
Five with a Four-wing
Date Joined Feb 2003
Total Posts : 1893
| Posted 8/11/2008 3:54 PM (GMT -6) |   | I've been pondering, for various person reasons, the nature of fundamentalism. I'm thinking the essential characteristic of all flavors of fundamentalism (whether Christian or Muslim, etc.) is this: disdain for the ambiguous, or, conversely, the desire for certainty.
Then I came across this post by Paul Young (author of The Shack) and REALLY liked it:
http://www.windrumors.com/43/the-beauty-of-ambiguity-mystery/
Before God, in grace, we will with all our power to be that which He shows us we are. | | Back to Top | | |
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Tom
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353
| Posted 8/14/2008 4:15 AM (GMT -6) | | It's hard to condemn the desire for certainty. I think that's a natural desire. It's the intolerance for diversity of opinion where the lack of certainty permits such diversity which is objectionable. Don't you think?
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Corey
Five with a Four-wing
Date Joined Feb 2003
Total Posts : 1893
| Posted 8/14/2008 9:06 AM (GMT -6) | | I've really been soaking on this a lot lately. Let's see if I can better put my thoughts into words. Maybe "disdain for ambiguity/desire for certainty" isn't the best way to phrase what I'm after. But there's something in here that really rings true with me.
I'm trying to describe our, yes, natural, tendency for epistemic closure... but closure where closure is not warranted. The intolerance of other positions is a secondary symptom, an outworking of that. We attempt to go beyond our station as humans and presume objectivity. We forget our inherent subjectivity.
The "desire for certainty" per se may just be our desire for God; God alone is certain. But, it's so easy and common that we tire of waiting in faith for the eschaton that we turn to substitutes to satisfy our craving. Theology is often a golden calf.
In this world, I believe we're intended to live by faith. Life here is a continual dialectic. The temptation is to collapse that into "certainty".
Before God, in grace, we will with all our power to be that which He shows us we are.Post Edited (Corey) : 8/14/2008 9:09:25 AM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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Tom
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Total Posts : 10353
| Posted 8/14/2008 11:48 AM (GMT -6) | | Are you certain that life here is a continual dialectic? Hehe. Had to ask that.
I see your point Corey. No objections here. The natural desire for closure becomes an obsession for people who don't live by faith and who therefore can't tolerate the co-existence of mutually exclusive views. They can't rest without controlling information. And being "right" give them the control (and the 'life') they seek.
Close?
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Tom
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Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353
| Posted 8/14/2008 1:27 PM (GMT -6) | | C: I do find the tolerance that says, "you do you" to have the exact sort of mood that I feel from fundamentalists. It doesn't speak from a standpoint of respect and ambiguity that the other person might be right; it's much more closed and condescending.
T: Yep.
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Tom
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Total Posts : 10353
| Posted 8/14/2008 1:29 PM (GMT -6) | | My question then is, What did you have in mind by bring "beauty" into it? Is it that 'not knowing' is more beautiful than 'knowing'? I'm guessing not that. Is it the beauty of tolerance with respect to adiaphora?
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One Love
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Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 8/14/2008 1:47 PM (GMT -6) | | Without ambiguity, faith cannot exist...right? Faith has ambiguity as the ground of it's existence. You don't have faith for something you are "certain" of...though one can subjectively appropriate something (or someone like Christians do with Christ, the God-Man) with ultimate concern in the midst of objective uncertainty.
Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen?
See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. All who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God. | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 8/14/2008 1:53 PM (GMT -6) | | D: Without ambiguity, faith cannot exist...right?
C: I'm inclined to affirm this, yes.
Well, makes sense to me. 
See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. All who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God. | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 8/14/2008 2:45 PM (GMT -6) | | Perhaps the question can be asked this this way:
In what ways do demonic beings (like Satan) LACK faith in God?
James...
Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by what I do. You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that—and shudder.
See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. All who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God. | | Back to Top | | |
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JET
Registered Member
Date Joined Jun 2002
Total Posts : 397
| Posted 8/14/2008 4:33 PM (GMT -6) | | | Corey: The gist of it, I think, is that faith is beautiful to God, and ambiguity is entailed by faith. Ambiguity is an essential part of God's beautiful design.
JET: Yeah. When I read the link, I was thinking of how epistemic distance is so central to John Hick's soul-making theodicy. Hick's classic book on evil was supposed to come out in a new edition last year. I had it on order, but the release apparently got delayed, my order got cancelled, and I never followed up.
Maybe we can do Hicks after Hasker.
Doesn't Polkinghorne also talk about the function (and beauty?) of uncertainty? | | Back to Top | | |
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Corey
Five with a Four-wing
Date Joined Feb 2003
Total Posts : 1893
| Posted 8/14/2008 9:42 PM (GMT -6) | | Tom: [Are] you guys talking about faith as 'trust' or faith as, say, believing something X to be true in the absence of overwhelming evidence that rules out any possible rational disbelief in X?
Corey: Faith is the substance (hupostasis) of things hoped for, the evidence (elegchos) of things not seen. This is about exactly opposite of saying that we have evidence that results in faith! No, quite the reverse: we have FAITH AS EVIDENCE of the unseen. Faith is the stuff that bridges the gap between the unseen and the seen. Faith is our response to and expression of the unseen.
I'm reminded that "Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God's possession—to the praise of his glory." Note that the believing comes first, then the Holy Spirit is given as a guarantee. We do indeed have knowledge, but this knowledge is obtained AFTER having believed.
Gosh, this seems so obvious to me. I must be missing something if Tom is on a different page. As finite beings, we MUST live by faith... like it or not! We cannot know -- for certain -- much at all until after it happens.
Before God, in grace, we will with all our power to be that which He shows us we are.Post Edited (Corey) : 8/14/2008 10:24:36 PM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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Tom
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Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353
| Posted 8/15/2008 12:47 AM (GMT -6) | | I'm just not clear on what you were getting at, 'faith' as a quality (like 'trusting in') or the object of faith. And it seems that you're saying even AFTER we're glorified we don't close the epistemic gap any. We'll never have any more certainty than we do right now since what now is is the 'beauty' God created in order to achieve.
I get the Heb 11 thing. But the point is that the eschaton means "that which is hoped for" gets possessed. We 'arrive' so to speak. So what of faith and epistemic distance in the eschaton? I don't think this was your point, but I went there when thinking about 'faith' and 'hope'. Faith and hope are 'beautiful' I think because it's a beautiful thing for people to trust love, and in trusting to come to know (as you say). But I'm not sure that epistemic distance is, by itself, a 'beautiful' thing. It's like saying the lack of knowledge is itself 'beautiful' and I don't see that. I think 'beauty' is a creative achievement, and you don't get that in 'states' so to speak. It's what we DO with our not knowing that's beautiful. Right?
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Corey
Five with a Four-wing
Date Joined Feb 2003
Total Posts : 1893
| Posted 8/15/2008 7:15 AM (GMT -6) | | | I've got in mind something of the essence/energies distinction. Yes, we will see face-to-face (in his Energies)! Oh God, how I long for that! But, being that he is infinite and I am finite, there is always more to pursue (toward his Essence), like the shout from C.S. Lewis' The Last Battle, "Further In and Higher Up!" It's not a point of frustration that we never "arrive", but a point of beauty. While indeed we know God profoundly intimately, there always more beauty to discover in him. The gap between his infinitude and our finitude is a spring from which faith will continually flow.
I agree that in the eschaton "that which is hoped for" gets posessed. But I posit that there is even more to pursue beyond that, which no one's even imagined yet. God enjoys being sought!
All I'm saying is that we never become infinite.
----
What does it mean: "Now abides these three: faith, hope, love"... might this not indicate that living by faith is a continual mode for us?
Before God, in grace, we will with all our power to be that which He shows us we are.Post Edited (Corey) : 8/15/2008 7:30:21 AM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 8/15/2008 7:21 AM (GMT -6) | | Here's my perspective as a hardcore "J". You know how "J"s like certainty and decisiveness...and we can tend to want closure and certainty pretty quickly (as opposed to a "P" person [Like Corey and Tom] who NATURALLY likes to leave things open.) What has really helped me personally is the idea of TRAJECTORY...or DIRECTION. Though we never "arrive" at a destination called "perfection", we maintain a kind of dynamic equilibrium with God's Spirit through "humble love"...keeping in step with that Spirit. We continously "empty ourselves" with/by our human spirits as God continually "fills us" with and by his Spirit. (This is what Loder called "differentiated unity between the created human spirit and Uncreated Holy Spirit in the life of Christian faith) As infinite as our participation in God can be...without the CONSTANT, "DECISIVE" TRAJECTORY of loving "self-emptying before God", we will not have the ANY of the "perfection" we seek.
In this way..."perfection" is the Way of the journey. Perfection as progression.
Being infinitely satisfied in God (Sabbath Rest for the soul)...but infinitely "stretching forward" towards God. (epektasis)
PS: I really think it's so important to keep our personality tendencies in play for our theologizing. It's just how we see things. It's a good thing that the Church is a COMMUNITY of people with DIFFERING personality traits. 
See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. All who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God. Post Edited (Divine Progeny) : 8/15/2008 7:42:04 AM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 8/15/2008 7:35 AM (GMT -6) | | Corey:
What does it mean: "Now abides these three: faith, hope, love"... might this not indicate that living by faith is a continual mode for us?
I'd say that LOVE is the grounding of the others ("the greatest of these is love" )...but I would agree with the "continual mode" idea. Sho nuff...
See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. All who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God. Post Edited (Divine Progeny) : 8/15/2008 7:38:51 AM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 8/15/2008 7:37 AM (GMT -6) | |
Corey:
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I think we're on the same page, D. But I want to leave that open...   |
See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. All who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God. | | Back to Top | | |
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Tom
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353
| Posted 8/15/2008 8:02 AM (GMT -6) | | I'm in total agreement with the eschaton being an endless exploration into God and the endless creative unfolding of loving expression, etc. (ala the right mixture of Origen and Gregory of Nyssa, NOT Maximus). I'm not sure I'd use the term "ambiguity" to express the "sense of expectancy" or "sponteneity" or the unpredictability of "creative expression." Nor would I say "ambiguity" itself is just "beautiful." So I'm still not sure what the point is. But that's OK. Don't worry 'bout me!
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Tom
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Total Posts : 10353
| Posted 8/15/2008 8:11 AM (GMT -6) | | In other words, tell me what it is in the eschaton that you two feel we shall remain ambiguous on/about? Can you tell me that?
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