Late morning. You are at Beyers' Toyota having your Avalon 'oil' change at almost 80,000 miles before the trip to Tampa/Madeira Beach on Monday. Thanksgiving is Sunday and another Thanksgiving is Thursday at Linda and Bill's near MacDill Air Force Base in West Tampa. You are feeling helpless in terms of this blog because the point is not to write down what is on your mind, the point is to focus on hints of metaphysical reality you have gleaned on in your seventy-six years of life. Embarrassing to you, you identify yourself with the transcendental minds of Blake, Kant and Emerson. You consider yourself lightly Unitarian. Let's go to Wikipedia. - Amorella
** **
Transcendentalism
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article is about the 19th-century American movement.
Transcendentalism is a philosophical movement that developed in the late 1820s and 1830s in the eastern United States. It arose as a reaction to protest against the general state of intellectualism and spirituality at the time.[4] The doctrine of the Unitarian church as taught at Harvard Divinity School was of particular interest.
Transcendentalism emerged from "English and German Romanticism, the Biblical criticism of Johann Gottfried Herder and Friedrich Schleiermacher, the skepticism of David Hume", and the transcendental philosophy of Immanuel Kant and German Idealism. Miller and Versluis regard Emanuel Swedenborg as a pervasive influence on transcendentalism. It was also strongly influenced by Hindu texts on philosophy of the mind and spirituality, especially the Upanishads.
A core belief of transcendentalism is in the inherent goodness of people and nature. Adherents believe that society and its institutions have corrupted the purity of the individual, and they have faith that people are at their best when truly "self-reliant" and independent.
Transcendentalism emphasizes subjective intuition over objective empiricism. Adherents believe that individuals are capable of generating completely original insights with little attention and deference to past masters.I disagree
Origin
Transcendentalism is closely related to Unitarianism, the dominant religious movement in Boston in the early nineteenth century. It started to develop after Unitarianism took hold at Harvard University, following the elections of Henry Ware as the Hollis Professor of Divinity in 1805 and of John Thornton Kirkland as President in 1810.
Transcendentalism was not a rejection of Unitarianism; rather, it developed as an organic consequence of the Unitarian emphasis on free conscience and the value of intellectual reason.
The transcendentalists were not content with the sobriety, mildness, and calm rationalism of Unitarianism. Instead, they longed for a more intense spiritual experience.
Thus, transcendentalism was not born as a counter-movement to Unitarianism, but as a parallel movement to the very ideas introduced by the Unitarians. I am more Unitarian.
Transcendental Club
Transcendentalism became a coherent movement and a sacred organization with the founding of the Transcendental Club in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on September 8, 1836 by prominent New England intellectuals, including George Putnam (1807–78, the Unitarian minister in Roxbury), Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Frederic Henry Hedge. From 1840, the group frequently published in their journal The Dial, along with other venues.
Second wave of transcendentalists
By the late 1840s, Emerson believed that the movement was dying out, and even more so after the death of Margaret Fuller in 1850. "All that can be said," Emerson wrote, "is that she represents an interesting hour and group in American cultivation." There was, however, a second wave of transcendentalists, including Moncure Conway, Octavius Brooks Frothingham, Samuel Longfellow and Franklin Benjamin Sanborn.Notably, the transgression of the spirit, most often evoked by the poet's prosaic voice, is said to endow in the reader a sense of purposefulness.
This is the underlying theme in the majority of transcendentalist essays and papers—all of which are centered on subjects which assert a love for individual expression. Though the group was mostly made up of struggling aesthetes, the wealthiest among them was Samuel Gray Ward, who, after a few contributions to The Dial, focused on his banking career.
Beliefs
Transcendentalists are strong believers in the power of the individual. It focuses primarily on personal freedom. Their beliefs are closely linked with those of the Romantics, but differ by an attempt to embrace or, at least, to not oppose the empiricism of science.
Transcendental knowledge
Transcendentalists desire to ground their religion and philosophy in principles based upon the German Romanticism of Herder and Schleiermacher.
Transcendentalism merged "English and German Romanticism, the Biblical criticism of Herder and Schleiermacher, and the skepticism of Hume",[1] and the transcendental philosophy of Immanuel Kant (and of German Idealismmore generally), interpreting Kant's a priori categories as a priori knowledge.
Early transcendentalists were largely unacquainted with German philosophy in the original and relied primarily on the writings of Thomas Carlyle, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Victor Cousin, Germaine de Staël, and other English and French commentators for their knowledge of it.
The transcendental movement can be described as an American outgrowth of English Romanticism.
Individualism
Transcendentalists believe that society and its institutions—particularly organized religion and political parties—corrupt the purity of the individual. They have faith that people are at their best when truly "self-reliant" and independent. It is only from such real individuals that true community can form.
Even with this necessary individuality, transcendentalists also believe that all people are outlets for the "Over-soul." Because the Over-soul is one, this unites all people as one being. Emerson alludes to this concept in the introduction of the American Scholar address, "that there is One Man, - present to all particular men only partially, or through one faculty; and that you must take the whole society to find the whole man."
Such an ideal is in harmony with Transcendentalist individualism, as each person is empowered to behold within him or herself a piece of the divine Over-soul.
Indian religions
Transcendentalism has been directly influenced by Indian religions. Thoreau in Walden spoke of the Transcendentalists' debt to Indian religions directly:
In the morning I bathe my intellect in the stupendous and cosmogonal philosophy of the Bhagavat Geeta, since whose composition years of the gods have elapsed, and in comparison with which our modern world and its literature seem puny and trivial; and I doubt if that philosophy is not to be referred to a previous state of existence, so remote is its sublimity from our conceptions.
I lay down the book and go to my well for water, and lo! there I meet the servant of the Brahmin, priest of Brahma, and Vishnu and Indra, who still sits in his temple on the Ganges reading the Vedas, or dwells at the root of a tree with his crust and water-jug.
I meet his servant come to draw water for his master, and our buckets as it were grate together in the same well. The pure Walden water is mingled with the sacred water of the Ganges.
In 1844, the first English translation of the Lotus Sutra was included in The Dial, a publication of the New England Transcendentalists, translated from French by Elizabeth Palmer Peabody.
Idealism
Transcendentalists differ in their interpretations of the practical aims of will. Some adherents link it with utopian social change; Brownson, for example, connected it with early socialism, but others consider it an exclusively individualist and idealist project.
Emerson believed the latter; in his 1842 lecture "The Transcendentalist", he suggested that the goal of a purely transcendental outlook on life was impossible to attain in practice:
You will see by this sketch that there is no such thing as a transcendental party; that there is no pure transcendentalist; that we know of no one, but prophets and heralds of such a philosophy; that all who by strong bias of nature have leaned to the spiritual side in doctrine, have stopped short of their goal.
We have had many harbingers and forerunners; but of a purely spiritual life, history has afforded no example. I mean, we have yet no man who has leaned entirely on his character, and eaten angels' food; who, trusting to his sentiments, found life made of miracles; who, working for universal aims, found himself fed, he knew not how; clothed, sheltered, and weaponed, he knew not how, and yet it was done by his own hands.
...Shall we say, then, that transcendentalism is the Saturnalia or excess of Faith; the presentiment of a faith proper to man in his integrity, excessive only when his imperfect obedience hinders the satisfaction of his wish.
Influence on other movements
Transcendentalism is, in many aspects, the first notable American intellectual movement. It has inspired succeeding generations of American intellectuals, as well as some literary movements.
Transcendentalism influenced the growing movement of "Mental Sciences" of the mid-19th century, which would later become known as the New Thoughtmovement. New Thought considers Emerson its intellectual father. Emma Curtis Hopkins "the teacher of teachers", Ernest Holmes, founder of Religious Science, the Fillmores, founders of Unity, and Malinda Cramer and Nona L. Brooks, the founders of Divine Science, were all greatly influenced by Transcendentalism.
Transcendentalism also influenced Hinduism. Ram Mohan Roy (1772–1833), the founder of the Brahmo Samaj, rejected Hindu mythology, but also the Christian trinity. [Ram Mohan Roy] found that Unitarianism came closest to true Christianity, and had a strong sympathy for the Unitarians, who were closely connected to the Transcendentalists.
Ram Mohan Roy founded a missionary committee in Calcutta, and in 1828 asked for support for missionary activities from the American Unitarians. By 1829, Roy had abandoned the Unitarian Committee, but after Roy's death, the Brahmo Samaj kept close ties to the Unitarian Church, who strived towards a rational faith, social reform, and the joining of these two in a renewed religion.
Its theology was called "neo-Vedanta" by Christian commentators, and has been highly influential in the modern popular understanding of Hinduism, but also of modern western spirituality, which re-imported the Unitarian influences in the disguise of the seemingly age-old Neo-Vedanta.
Major figures
Major figures in the transcendentalist movement were Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Margaret Fuller, and Amos Bronson Alcott. Some other prominent transcendentalists included Louisa May Alcott, Charles Timothy Brooks, Orestes Brownson, William Ellery Channing, William Henry Channing, James Freeman Clarke, Christopher Pearse Cranch, John Sullivan Dwight, Convers Francis, William Henry Furness, Frederic Henry Hedge, Sylvester Judd, Theodore Parker, Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, George Ripley, Thomas Treadwell Stone, Jones Very, and Walt Whitman.
Criticism
Early in the movement's history, the term "Transcendentalists" was used as a pejorativeterm by critics, who were suggesting their position was beyond sanity and reason.
Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote a novel, The Blithedale Romance (1852), satirizing the movement, and based it on his experiences at Brook Farm, a short-lived utopian community founded on transcendental principles.
Edgar Allan Poe wrote a story, "Never Bet the Devil Your Head" (1841), in which he embedded elements of deep dislike for transcendentalism, calling its followers "Frogpondians" after the pond on Boston Common.
The narrator ridiculed their writings by calling them "metaphor-run" lapsing into "mysticism for mysticism's sake", and called it a "disease."
The story specifically mentions the movement and its flagship journal The Dial, though Poe denied that he had any specific targets. In Poe's essay "The Philosophy of Composition" (1846), he offers criticism denouncing "the excess of the suggested meaning... which turns into prose (and that of the very flattest kind) the so-called poetry of the so-called transcendentalists."
***
See also
***
Dark romanticism
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Edgar Allan Poe is among the most well-known authors of Dark Romanticism
Dark Romanticism is a literary subgenre of Romanticism, reflecting popular fascination with the irrational, the demonic and the grotesque. Often conflated with Gothicism, it has shadowed the euphoric Romantic movement ever since its 18th-century beginnings. Edgar Allan Poe is often celebrated as the supreme exponent of the tradition.
Definitions
Romanticism's celebration of euphoria and sublimity has always been dogged by an equally intense fascination with melancholia, insanity, crime and shady atmosphere; with the options of ghosts and ghouls, the grotesque, and the irrational. The name "Dark Romanticism" was given to this form by the literary theorist Mario Praz in his lengthy study of the genre published in 1930, ‘’The Romantic Agony’’.
According to the critic G. R. Thompson, "the Dark Romantics adapted images of anthropomorphized evil in the form of Satan, devils, ghosts, werewolves, vampires, and ghouls" as emblematic of human nature. Thompson sums up the characteristics of the subgenre, writing:
Fallen man's inability fully to comprehend haunting reminders of another, supernatural realm that yet seemed not to exist, the constant perplexity of inexplicable and vastly metaphysical phenomena, a propensity for seemingly perverse or evil moral choices that had no firm or fixed measure or rule, and a sense of nameless guilt combined with a suspicion the external world was a delusive projection of the mind—these were major elements in the vision of man the Dark Romantics opposed to the mainstream of Romantic thought.
18th- and 19th-century movements in different national literatures
Elements of dark romanticism were a perennial possibility within the broader international movement of Romanticism, in both literature and art.
Like romanticism itself, Dark Romanticism arguably began in Germany, with writers such as E. T. A. Hoffmann Christian Heinrich Spiess, and Ludwig Tieck – though their emphasis on existential alienation, the demonic in sex, and the uncanny, was offset at the same time by the more homely cult of Biedermeier.
British authors such as Lord Byron, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Mary Shelley, and John William Polidori, who are frequently linked to Gothic fiction, are also sometimes referred to as Dark Romantics. Dark Romanticism is characterized by stories of personal torment, social outcasts, and usually offers commentary on whether the nature of man will save or destroy him.[Some Victorian authors of English horror fiction, `such as Bram Stoker and Daphne du Maurier, follow in this lineage.
The American form of this sensibility centered on the writers Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Herman Melville. As opposed to the perfectionist beliefs of Transcendentalism, these darker contemporaries emphasized human fallibility and proneness to sin and self-destruction, as well as the difficulties inherent in attempts at social reform.
French authors such as Jules Barbey d’Aurevilly, Charles Baudelaire, Paul Verlaine and Arthur Rimbaud echoed the dark themes found in the German and English literature. Baudelaire was one of the first French writers to admire Edgar Allan Poe, but this admiration or even adulation of Poe became widespread in French literary circles in the late 19th century.
20th-century influence
Twentieth-century existential novels have also been linked to Dark Romanticism, as too have the sword and sorcery novels of Robert E. Howard.
Criticism
Northrop Frye pointed to the dangers of the demonic myth making of the dark side of romanticism as seeming "to provide all the disadvantages of superstition with none of the advantages of religion".
Immanence
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 |
This article needs additional citations for verification. improve this article adding citations to reliable sources (August 2014) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)
|
The doctrine or theory of immanence holds that the divine encompasses or is manifested in the material world. It is held by some philosophical and metaphysical theories of divine presence. Immanence is usually applied in monotheistic, pantheistic, pandeistic, or panentheistic faiths to suggest that the spiritual world permeates the mundane. It is often contrasted with theories of transcendence, in which the divine is seen to be outside the material world.
Major faiths commonly devote significant philosophical efforts to explaining the relationship between immanence and transcendence but do so in different ways, such as:
· casting immanence as a characteristic of a transcendent God (common in Abrahamic religions),
· subsuming immanent personal gods in a greater transcendent being (such as with Brahman in Hinduism), or
· approaching the question of transcendence as something which can only be answered through an appraisal of immanence.
Ancient Greek philosophy
Another meaning of immanence is the quality of being contained within, or remaining within the boundaries of a person, of the world, or of the mind. This meaning is more common within Christian and other monotheist theology, in which the one God is considered to transcend his creation.
Pythagoreanism says that the nous is an intelligent principle of the world acting with a specific intention. This is the divine reason regarded in Neoplatonism as the first emanation of the Divine. From the nous emerges the world soul, which gives rise to the manifest realm.
Pythagoreanism goes on to say the Godhead is the Father, Mother, and Son (Zeus). In the mind of Zeus, the ideas are distinctly articulated and become the Logos by which he creates the world. These ideas become active in the Mind (nous) of Zeus. With him is the Power and from him is the nous.[2] This theology further explains that Zeus is called Demiurge(Dêmiourgos, Creator), Maker (Poiêtês), and Craftsman (Technitês). The nous of the demiurge proceeds outward into manifestation becoming living ideas.
They give rise to a lineage of mortal human souls. The components of the soul are 1) the higher soul, seat of the intuitive mind (divine nous); 2) the rational soul (logistikon) (seat of discursive reason / dianoia); 3) the nonrational soul (alogia), responsible for the senses, appetites, and motion. Zeus thinks the articulated ideas (Logos). The idea of ideas (Eidos - Eidôn), provides a model of the Paradigm of the Universe, which the Demiurge contemplates in his articulation of the ideas and his creation of the world according to the Logos.
Buddhism
|
This section does not cite any sources. improve this section adding citations to reliable sources removed(February 2011) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)
|
Tantric Buddhism and Dzogchen posit a non-dual basis for both experience and reality that could be considered an exposition of a philosophy of immanence that has a history on the subcontinent of India from early CE to the present. A paradoxical non-dualawareness or rigpa (Tibetan — vidya in Sanskrit) — is said to be the 'self perfected state' of all beings. Scholarly works differentiate these traditions from monism.
The non-dual is said to be not immanent and not transcendent, not neither, nor both. One classical exposition is the Madhyamaka refutation of extremes that the philosopher-adept Nagarjuna propounded.
Exponents of this non-dual tradition emphasize the importance of a direct experience of non-duality through both meditative practice and philosophical investigation. In one version, one maintains awareness as thoughts arise and dissolve within the 'field' of mind, one does not accept or reject them, rather one lets the mind wander as it will until a subtle sense of immanence dawns. Vipassana or insight is the integration of one's 'presence of awareness' with that which arises in mind. Non-duality or rigpa is said to be the recognition that both the quiet, calm abiding state as found in samatha and the movement or arising of phenomena as found in vipassana are not separate. In this way it could be stated that Dzogchen is a method for the recognition of a 'pure immanence' analogous to what Deleuze theorized about.
Christianity
Catholicism and Eastern Christianity
According to Christian theology, the transcendent God, who cannot be approached or seen in essence or being, becomes immanent primarily in the God-man Jesus the Christ, who is the incarnate Second Person of the Trinity. In Byzantine Rite theology the immanence of God is expressed as the hypostases or energies of God, who in his essence is incomprehensible and transcendent. In Catholic theology, Christ and the Holy Spirit immanently reveal themselves; God the Father only reveals himself immanently vicariously through the Son and Spirit, and the Divine Nature, the Godhead is wholly transcendent and unable to be comprehended.
This is expressed in St. Paul's letter to the Philippians, where he writes:
who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped,
but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men.
Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
The Holy Spirit is also expressed as an immanence of God.
and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven: "You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased."
The immanence of the triune God is celebrated in the Catholic Church and Eastern Churches during the liturgical calendar feast as the Theophany of God (see Feast of Theophany).
Pope Pius X wrote at length about philosophical-theological controversies over immanence in his encyclical Pascendi dominici gregis.
In the theology of Karl Rahner, it is said that "the economic Trinity is the immanent Trinity, and the immanent Trinity is the economic Trinity." That is to say, God communicates Himself to humanity ("economic" Trinity) as He really is in the divine Life ("immanent" Trinity).
Mormonism
According to Latter Day Saint theology, all of material creation is filled with immanence, known as the light of Christ. It is also responsible for the intuitive conscience born into man. The Light of Christ is the source of intellectual and spiritual enlightenment, and is the means by which God is in and through all things.
LDS scriptures identify the divine Light with the mind of God, the source of all truth and conveyor of the characteristics of the divine nature through God’s goodness. The experienced brilliance of God reflects the “fullness” of this spirit within God’s being.
Similarly, mankind can incorporate this spiritual light or divine mind and thus become one with God. This immanent spirit of light bridges the scientific and spiritual conceptualizations of the universe.
Continental philosophy
Giordano Bruno's, Baruch Spinoza's and, it may be argued, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's philosophies were philosophies of immanence versus philosophies of transcendence such as Thomism or Aristotelian tradition.
Kant's "transcendental" critique can be contrasted to Hegel's "immanent dialectics."
Gilles Deleuze qualified Spinoza as the "prince of philosophers" for his theory of immanence, which Spinoza resumed by "Deus sive Natura" ("God or Nature").
Such a theory considers that there is no transcendent principle or external cause to the world, and that the process of life production is contained in life itself.
When compounded with Idealism, the immanence theory qualifies itself away from "the world" to there being no external cause to one's mind.
Giovanni Gentile's actual idealism, sometimes called "philosophy of immanence" and the metaphysics of the "I", "affirms the organic synthesis of dialectical opposites that are immanent within actual or present awareness".
His so-called method of immanence "attempted to avoid: (1) the postulate of an independently existing world or a Kantian Ding-an-sich (thing-in-itself), and (2) the tendency of neo-Hegelian philosophy to lose the particular self in an Absolute that amounts to a kind of mystical reality without distinctions." Not useful.
Political theorist Carl Schmitt used the term in his book Politische Theologie (1922), meaning a power within some thought, which makes it obvious for the people to accept it, without needing to claim being justified.
The immanence of some political system or a part of it comes from the reigning contemporary definer of Weltanschauung, namely religion (or any similar system of beliefs, such as rationalistic or relativistic world-view).
The Nazis took advantage of this theory creating, or resurrecting, basically religious mythology of race, its heroes, and its destiny to motivate people and to make their reign unquestionable, which it became.
The French 20th-century philosopher Gilles Deleuze used the term immanence to refer to his "empiricist philosophy", which was obliged to create action and results rather than establish transcendents. His final text was titled Immanence: a life... and spoke of a plane of immanence.
Furthermore, the Russian Formalist film theorists perceived immanence as a specific method of discussing the limits of ability for a technological object. Specifically, this is the scope of potential uses of an object outside of the limits prescribed by culture or convention, and is instead simply the empirical spectrum of function for a technological artifact.
Judaism
Traditional Jewish religious thought can be divided into Nigleh ("Revealed") and Nistar ("Hidden") dimensions.
Hebrew Scriptureis, in the Kabbalistic tradition, explained using the four level exegesis method of Pardes.
In this system, the first three approaches, Simple, Hinted and Homiletical interpretations, characterise the revealed aspects. The fourth approach, the Secret meaning, characterises a hidden aspect.
Among the classic texts of Jewish tradition, some Jewish Bible commentators, the Midrash, the Talmud, and mainstream Jewish philosophy use revealed approaches.
Other Bible commentators, the Kabbalah, and Hasidic philosophy, use hidden approaches. Both dimensions are seen by adherents as united and complementary.
In this way, ideas in Jewish thought are given a variety of ascending meanings. Explanations of a concept in Nigleh, are given inherent, inner, mystical contexts from Nistar.
Descriptions of Divine immanence can be seen in Nigleh, from the Bible to Rabbinic Judaism. In Genesis, God makes a personal covenant with the forefathers Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Daily Jewish prayers refer to this inherited closeness and personal relationship with the Divine, for their descendants, as "the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob".
To Moses, God reveals his Tetragrammaton name, that more fully captures Divine descriptions of transcendence. Each of the Biblical names for God, describe different Divine manifestations. The most important prayer in Judaism, that forms part of the Scriptural narrative to Moses, says "Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One."
This declaration combines different Divine names, and themes of immanence and transcendence.
Perhaps the most personal example of a Jewish prayer that combines both themes is the invocation repeatedly voiced during the time in the Jewish calendar devoted to Teshuva (Return, often inaccurately translated as Repentance), Avinu Malkeinu ("Our Father, Our King").
Much of the later Hebrew Biblical narrative recounts the reciprocal relationship and national drama of the unfolding of themes of immanence and transcendence. Kabbalistic, or Hasidic Jewish thought and philosophy describe and articulate these interconnected aspects of the Divine-human relationship.
Jewish Mysticism gives explanations of greater depth and spirituality, to the interconnected aspects of God's immanence and transcendence.
The main expression of mysticism, the Kabbalah, began to be taught in 12th Century Europe, and reached a new systemisation in 16th Century Israel.
The Kabbalah gives the full, subtle, traditional system of Jewish metaphysics. In the Medieval Kabbalah, new doctrines described the 10 Sephirot (Divine emanations) through which the Infinite, unknowable Divine essence reveals, emanates, and continuously creates existence. The Kabbalists identified the final, feminine Sefirah with the earlier, traditional Jewish concept of the Shekhinah (immanent Divine Presence).
This gave great spirituality to earlier ideas in Jewish thought, such as the theological explanations of suffering (theodicy). In this example, the Kabbalists described the Shekhinah accompanying the children of Israel in their exile, being exiled alongside them, and yearning for Her redemption.
Such a concept derives from the Kabbalistic theology that the physical World, and also the Upper spiritual Worlds, are continuously recreated from nothing by the Shefa (flow) of Divine will, which emanates through the Sefirot. As a result, within all creations are Divine sparks of vitality that sustain them.
Medieval Kabbalah describes two forms of Divine emanation, a "light that fills all worlds", representing this immanent Divine creative power, and a "light that surrounds all worlds", representing transcendent expressions of Divinity.
The new doctrines of Isaac Luria in the 16th Century completed the Kabbalistic system of explanation. Lurianic Kabbalah describes the process of Tzimtzum (צמצום meaning "Contraction" or "Constriction") in the Kabbalistic theory of creation, where God "contracted" his infinite essence in order to allow for a "conceptual space" in which a finite, independent world could exist.
This has received different later interpretations in Jewish mysticism, from the literal to the metaphorical. In this process, creation unfolds within the Divine reality. Luria offered a daring cosmic theology that explained the reasons for the Tzimtzum, the primordial catastrophe of Shevirat Hakelim (the "Breaking of the Vessels" of the Sefirot in the first existence), and the messianic Tikkun ("Fixing") of this by every individual through their sanctification of physicality. The concept of Tzimtzum contains a built-in paradox, as it requires that God be simultaneously transcendent and immanent: On the one hand, if the Infinite did not "restrict itself", then nothing could exist.There would be no limits, as the infinite essence of God, and also His primordial infinite light (Kabbalistic sources discuss God being able to reign alone, a revealed "light" of the Sefirah of Kingship, "before" creation) would comprise all reality. Any existence would be nullified into the Divine Infinity.
·
· Therefore, we could not have the variety of limited, finite things that comprise the creations in the Universe that we inhabit. (The number of such creations could still be potentially limitless, if the physical Universe, or Multiverse had no end).
·
· Because each limited thing results from a restriction of God's completeness, God Himself must transcend (exist beyond) these various limited things. This idea can be interpreted in various ways. In its ultimate articulation, by the Hasidic leader Shneur Zalman of Liadi, in the intellectual Hasidic method of Chabad, the Tzimtzum is only metaphorical, an illusion from the perspective of man. Creation is panentheistic (taking place fully "within God"), and acosmic (Illusionary) from the Divine perspective. God Himself, and even His light, is unrestricted by Tzimtzum, from God's perspective.
·
· The Tzimtzum is merely the hiding of this unchanged reality from Creation. Shneur Zalman distinguishes between the "Upper Level Unity" of God's existence from the Divine perspective, with the "Lower Level Unity" of God's existence as creation perceives Him. Because God can be above logic, both perspectives of this paradox are true, from their alternative views.
·
· The dimension of the Tzimtzum, which implies Divine transcendence, corresponds to the Upper Level Unity. In this perspective, because God is the true, ultimate Infinity, then Creation (even if its physical and spiritual realms should extend without limit) is completely nullified into literal non-existence by the Divine. There is no change in the complete unity of God as all Reality, before or after creation. This is the ultimate level of Divine transcendence.disagree,No ultimate level
·
On the other hand, in Lurianic Kabbalah, the Tzimtzum has an immanent Divine dimension. The Tzimtzum formed a "space" (in Lurianic terminology, the Halal, "Vacuum") in which to allow creation to take place.
The first act of creation was the emanation of a new light (Kav, "Ray") into the vacated space, from the ultimate Divine reality "outside", or unaffected, by the space. The purpose of the Tzimtzum was that the vacated space allowed this new light to be suited to the needs and capacities of the new creations, without their being subsumed in the primordial Divine Infinity.
Kabbalistic theology offers metaphysical explanations of how Divine and spiritual processes unfold.In earlier, mainstream Jewish philosophy, logical descriptions of creation ex nihilo (from nothing) describe the new existence of creation, compared to the preceding absence. Kabbalah, however, seeks to explain how the spiritual, metaphysical processes unfold.
Therefore, in the Kabbalistic system, God is the ultimate reality, so that creation only exists because it is continuously sustained by the will of God.
Creation is formed from the emanated "light" of the Divine Will, as it unfolds through the later Sefirot. The light that originated with the Kav later underwent further contractions that diminished it, so that this immanent expression of Divinity could itself create the various levels of Spiritual, and ultimately, Physical existence.
The terms of "light" and temporal descriptions of time are metaphorical, in a language accessible to grasp. In this immanent Divine dimension, God continuously maintains the existence of, and is thus not absent from, the created universe.
In Shneur Zalman's explanation, this corresponds to the conscious perception by Creation of "Lower Level Unity" of God. In this perspective, Creation is real, and not an illusion, but is utterly nullified to the immanent Divine life force that continuously sustains and recreates it. It may not perceive its complete dependence on Divinity, as in our Self-transcendence. I agree with this.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
***
Self-transcendence is a positive personality trait that involves the expansion of personal boundaries, including, potentially, experiencing spiritual ideas such as considering oneself an integral part of the universe.
Several psychologists, including Viktor Frankl, Abraham Maslow, Pamela G. Reed, C. Robert Cloninger and Lars Tornstam have made contributions to the theory of self-transcendence.
Self-transcendence is distinctive as the first trait concept of a spiritual nature to be incorporated into a major theory of personality.
Self-transcendence is one of the "character" dimensions of personality assessed in Cloninger's Temperament and Character Inventory. It is also assessed by the Self-Transcendence Scale and the Adult Self-Transcendence Inventory.
Nature of the trait
Several overlapping definitions of self-transcendence have been given. Viktor Frankl wrote, "The essentially self-transcendent quality of human existence renders man a being reaching out beyond himself."
According to Reed, self-transcendence is:
the capacity to expand self-boundaries intrapersonally (toward greater awareness of one’s philosophy, values, and dreams), interpersonally (to relate to others and one’s environment), temporally (to integrate one’s past and future in a way that has meaning for the present), and transpersonally (to connect with dimensions beyond the typically discernible world).
Taking a developmental perspective concerning aging and transcendence, Tornstam defined the concept of gerotranscendence as "a shift in metaperspective, from a midlife materialistic and rational vision to a more cosmic and transcendent one, accompanied by an increase in life satisfaction."
In Cloninger's seven-dimensional model of personality, there are four temperament dimensions that have a strong biological basis, and three learned character dimensions that are believed to be concept-based.
Self-transcendence is a character trait considered to relate to the experience of spiritual aspects of the self. The concept was influenced by theories of personality development in humanistic and transpersonal psychology.
Self-transcendence refers to an identification of the self with the universe conceived as a unitive whole. According to Cloninger, this "may be described as acceptance, identification, or spiritual union with nature and its source."
Components
Self-transcendence as assessed in the Temperament and Character Inventory originally had three subscales, but two more were later added:
1. Self-forgetful vs. self-conscious experience
2. Transpersonal identification vs. self-isolation
3. Spiritual acceptance vs. rational materialism
4. Enlightened vs. objective
5. Idealistic vs. practical
An independent study found that the five subscales proposed by Cloninger were difficult to replicate using factor analysis and suggested that the self-transcendence scale of the Temperament and Character Inventory is better represented by four sub-dimensions:
1. Spiritual and religious beliefs (e.g., belief in the existence of a higher power)
2. Unifying interconnectedness (i.e., an experienced sense of connection with other living beings, the environment, and a higher power)
3. Belief in the supernatural (e.g., belief in paranormal phenomena, such as extrasensory perception)
4. Dissolution of self in experience (e.g., absorption, or a loss of sense of separate self while immersed in experience)
The Adult Self-Transcendence Inventory has five subscales:
1. Self-knowledge and self-integration
2. Peace of mind
3. Non-attachment
4. Self-transcendence
5. Presence in the here-and-now and growth
Relationship to other personality traits
Coward (1996) found positive correlations between self-transcendence, hope, purpose in life, and cognitive and emotional well-being in a study of healthy adults ages 19 to 85. Negative correlation has been found between self-transcendence as measured by Reed's Self-Transcendence Scale and depression in both middle-aged and older adults.
Although there has not been a great deal of research into the validity of self-transcendence as a measure of spirituality, one study found that self-transcendence was significantly related to a number of areas of belief and experience that have been traditionally considered "spiritual"
A study relating the Temperament and Character Inventory to the Five factor model personality traits found that self-transcendence was most strongly related to openness to experience and to a lesser extent extraversion. Self-transcendence is largely unrelated to traits in Zuckerman's "Alternative five" model and Eysenck's model which do not include an equivalent to openness to experience. Self-transcendence is strongly related to absorption.
Relationship to psychopathology
Cloninger found that psychiatric patients tend to be lower in self-transcendence compared with adults in the general population. Low self-transcendence was found to be particularly evident in patients with many symptoms of schizoid personality disorder but is otherwise not a common feature of people with personality disorders.
This is in contrast to the traits of cooperativeness and self-directedness which have been found to be low in personality disorder profiles generally. Cloninger suggested that self-transcendence levels may help differentiate between people with schizoid and those with schizotypal personality disorder as the latter is more strongly associated with psychotic thinking.
Psychosis proneness and psychotic symptoms
High self-transcendence has been linked to psychotic tendencies, such as schizotypy and mania, particularly in individuals low in both self-directedness and cooperativeness.
Cloninger proposed that self-transcendence leads to "mature creativity and spirituality" when coupled with high self-directedness.
However, self-transcendence may be associated with psychotic tendencies when associated with underdeveloped character traits.
Self-transcendence, in itself, is moderately related to schizotypy, particularly the cognitive-perceptual component associated with magical thinking and unusual perceptions.
A research study found that the specific combination of high self-transcendence, low cooperativeness, and low self-directedness was especially associated with a high risk of overall schizotypy.
Another study found that people with schizophrenia also had a combination of high self-transcendence, low cooperativeness, and low self-directedness compared to non-psychotic siblings and a community control group. Cloninger has referred to the specific combination of high self-transcendence, low cooperativeness, and low self-directedness as a "schizotypal personality style".
Low cooperativeness and self-directedness combined with high self-transcendence may result in openness to odd or unusual ideas and behaviours associated with distorted perceptions of reality.
On the other hand, high levels of cooperativeness and self-directedness may protect against the schizotypal tendencies associated with high self-transcendence.
People with bipolar disorder have been found to score higher in self-transcendence and harm avoidance, and lower in self-directedness compared to a community control group. Levels of self-transcendence in particular were found to be associated with severity of psychotic symptoms in people with bipolar disorder.
This accords with previous research findings linking self-transcendence to delusions and mania.Higher self-transcendence in people with bipolar may reflect residual symptoms of the disorder rather than transpersonal or spiritual consciousness. Define spiritual consciousness.
MacDonald and Holland argued that two of the four sub-dimensions of self-transcendence identified in their study, belief in the supernatural and dissolution of the self in experience, probably account for the relationship between self-transcendence and psychopathology found by researchers. Previous research has found linkages between supernatural beliefs and schizotypy,
and they suggested that dissolution of the self is likely to be linked to phenomena such as absorption, dissociation, and suggestibility, which have potentially pathological implications.
Validity
Criticisms have been made of Cloninger's conception of self-transcendence. Although Cloninger proposed that character traits, including self-transcendence, are wholly learned, more recent research suggests that biological and genetic factors play an important role in how self-transcendence is expressed.
Although humanistic and transpersonal theories of psychology have maintained that spirituality is an essential component of health and well-being, published research using the Temperament and Character Inventory has linked self-transcendence to various aspects of mental illness.
Cloninger and colleagues have even proposed more recently that self-transcendence may represent a subclinical manifestation of mood and psychotic disorders. Additionally of concern is the paucity of research evaluating the validity of the self-transcendence as a measure of spiritual aspects of personality.
Evidence relevant to the validity of the scale is provided by a study by MacDonald and Holland who found that people who were convinced that they had had a spiritual experience scored higher on self-transcendence compared to those who had not.
Additionally they found that self-transcendence had positive and meaningful associations with four areas of spirituality: beliefs about the existence and relevance of spirituality; spiritual experience; paranormal beliefs; and traditional religiousness. (Although the dissolution of the self sub-dimension of self-transcendence had little relation with these things.)
However, self-transcendence was largely unrelated to existential well-being.
The latter was most strongly related to the Temperament and Character Inventory traits of high self-directedness and low harm avoidance.
Self-directedness is associated with self-control and adaptability, whereas low harm avoidance is associated with emotional well-being.
This suggests that self-transcendence may be a valid measure of areas of spirituality relating to spiritual beliefs, spiritual experiences, paranormal beliefs, and traditional religiousness, but is unrelated to having a sense of meaning and purpose in life which is more related to other features of personality.
Additionally, the dissolution of the self in experience aspect of self-transcendence appears to have little relationship with spirituality and may be related to the more pathological aspects of the trait.
Contribution to quality of life
People with schizophrenia tend to have poorer self-rated quality of life compared to the general population. A study of individual differences in people with schizophrenia found that higher scores on self-transcendence and self-directedness and lower scores on harm avoidance were associated with better self-ratings of quality of life. The authors suggested that this finding accords with previous studies finding that spirituality in people with schizophrenia is associated with better adjustment to illness.
Notes
1. Jump up ^ Existential well-being refers to having a positive sense of meaning and purpose in life and a sense of inner strength. Although considered by some to be an aspect of spirituality, some researchers have argued that existential well-being taps general psychological well-being and is not clearly related to the "spiritual" as the term has been traditionally understood
· present World, that feels its own existence as independent reality. However, this derives from the great concealments of Godliness in our present World. "The Divine life-force which brings all creatures into existence must constantly be present within them ... were this life-force to forsake any created being for even one brief moment, it would revert to a state of utter nothingness, as before the creation ...". (Tanya, Shaar Hayichud, Chapter 2-3. Shneur Zalman of Liadi).
I question the logic of the above
***
Transcendence
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
|
This article needs additional citations for verification. improve this article adding citations to reliable sources (August 2009) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)
|
In religion, transcendence refers to the aspect of a deity's nature and power that is wholly independent of the material universe, beyond all known physical laws.
This is contrasted with immanence, where a god is said to be fully present in the physical world and thus accessible to creatures in various ways. In religious experience transcendence is a state of being that has overcome the limitations of physical existence and by some definitions has also become independent of it.
This is typically manifested in prayer, séance, meditation, psychedelics and paranormal
"visions".
It is affirmed in various religious traditions' concept of the divine, which contrasts with the notion of a god (or, the Absolute) that exists exclusively in the physical order (immanentism), or indistinguishable from it (pantheism).
Transcendence can be attributed to the divine not only in its being, but also in its knowledge.
Thus, a god may transcend both the universe and knowledge (is beyond the grasp of the human mind).
Although transcendence is defined as the opposite of immanence, the two are not necessarily mutually exclusive.
Some theologians and metaphysicians of various religious traditions affirm that a god is both within and beyond the universe (panentheism); in it, but not of it; simultaneously pervading it and surpassing it.
I agree with this.
View by religion
Bahá'í Faith
Bahá'ís believe in a single, imperishable god, the creator of all things, including all the creatures and forces in the universe.
In the Bahá'í tradition, god is described as "a personal god, unknowable, inaccessible, the source of all Revelation, eternal, omniscient, omnipresent and almighty." Though inaccessible directly, God is nevertheless seen as conscious of his creation, with a mind, will and purpose.
Bahá'ís believe that God expresses this will at all times and in many ways, including through a series of divine messengers referred to as Manifestations of God or sometimes divine educators.
In expressing God's intent, these manifestations are seen to establish religion in the world. Bahá'í teachings state that God is too great for humans to fully comprehend, nor to create a complete and accurate image.
Buddhism
In Buddhism "transcendence", by definition, belongs to the mortal beings of the formless realms of existence. However, although such beings are at 'the peak' of Samsara, Buddhism considers the development of transcendence to be both temporary and a spiritual cul-de-sac, which therefore does not eventuate a permanent cessation of Samsara.
This assertion was a primary differentiator from the other Sramana teachers during Gautama Buddha's own training and development.
Alternatively, in the various forms of Buddhism—Theravada, Mahayana (especially Pure Land and Zen) and Vajrayana—the notion of transcendence sometimes includes a soteriological application.
Except for Pure Land and Vajrayana, the role played by transcendent beings is minimal and at most a temporary expedient. However some Buddhists believe that Nirvana is an eternal, transcendental state beyond name and form, so for these Buddhists, Nirvana is the main concept of transcendence.
The more usual interpretation of Nirvana in Buddhism is that it is a cessation—a permanent absence of something (namely suffering), and therefore it is not in any way a state which could be considered transcendent.
Primordial enlightenment and the dharma are sometimes portrayed as transcendent, since they can surpass all samsaric obstructions.
Christianity
The Catholic Church, as do other Christian Churches, holds that God transcends all creation. According to Aquinas, "...concerning God, we cannot grasp what he is, but only what he is not, and how other beings stand in relation to him."
Anthropomorphic depictions of God are largely metaphorical and reflect the challenge of "human modes of expression" in attempting to describe the infinite.St. Augustine observed "...
[I]t is only by the use of such human expressions that Scripture can make its many kinds of readers whom it wants to help to feel, as it were, at home." The "sense of transcendence" and therefore, an awareness of the "sacred", is an important component of the liturgy. God is recognized as both transcendent and immanent.
Hinduism
Transcendence is described and viewed from a number of diverse perspectives in Hinduism. Some traditions, such as Advaita Vedanta, view transcendence in the form of God as the Nirguna Brahman (God without attributes), transcendence being absolute.
Other traditions, such as Bhakti yoga, view transcendence as God with attributes (Saguna Brahman), the Absolute being a personal deity (Ishvara), such as Vishnu or Shiva.
In the Bhagavad Gita transcendence is described as a level of spiritual attainment, or state of being which is open to all spiritual aspirants (the goal of yoga practice), the state at which one is no longer under the control of animalistic, base desires and is aware of a higher spiritual reality.
When the yogī, by practice of yoga, disciplines his mental activities and becomes situated in transcendence — devoid of all material desires — he is said to be well established in yoga.
The exact nature of this transcendence is given as being "above the modes of material nature", which are known as gunas(ropes) which bind the living entity to the world of samsara (repeated rebirth) in Hindu philosophy.
Islam
Tawhid is the act of believing and affirming that God (Arabic: Allah) is one and unique (wāḥid). The Qur'an asserts the existence of a single and absolute truth that transcends the world; a unique and indivisible being who is independent of the entire creation. According to the Qur'an:
"Say: He is God, the One and Only; God, the Eternal, Absolute; He begetteth not, nor is He begotten; And there is none like unto Him." (Sura 112:1-4, Yusuf Ali)
Thy Lord is self-sufficient, full of Mercy: if it were God's will, God could destroy you, and in your place appoint whom God will as your successors, even as God raised you up from the posterity of other people." (Sura 6:133, Yusuf Ali)
According to Vincent J. Cornell, the Qur'an also provides a monist image of God by describing the reality as a unified whole, with God being a single concept that would describe or ascribe all existing things:"God is the First and the Last, the Outward and the Inward; God is the Knower of everything (Sura 57:3)"
All Muslims have however vigorously criticized interpretations that would lead to a monist view of God for what they see as blurring the distinction between the creator and the creature, and its incompatibility with the radical monotheism of Islam.
In order to explain the complexity of unity of God and of the divine nature, the Qur'an uses 99 terms referred to as "Most Beautiful Names of Allah" (Sura 77:180)[12]. Aside from the supreme name "Allah" and the neologism al-Rahman (referring to the divine beneficence that constantly (re)creates, maintains and destroys the universe), other names may be shared by both God and human beings.
According to the Islamic teachings, the latter is meant to serve as a reminder of God's immanencerather than being a sign of one's divinity or alternatively imposing a limitation on God's transcendent nature.
Tawhid or Oneness of God constitutes the foremost article of the Muslim profession. To attribute divinity to a created entity is the only unpardonable sin mentioned in the Qur'an. Muslims believe that the entirety of the Islamic teaching rests on the principle of Tawhid.
Judaism
|
This section does not cite any sources. improve this section adding citations to reliable sources removed(August 2014) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)
|
Jewish theologians, especially since the Middle Ages, have described the transcendence of God in terms of divine simplicity, explaining the traditional characteristics of God as omniscient and omnipotent. Interventions of divine transcendence occur in the form of events outside the realm of natural occurrence such as miracles and the revelation of the Ten Commandments to Moses at Mt. Sinai.
In Jewish Kabbalistic cosmology, God is described as the "Ein Sof" (literally, without end) as reference to God's divine simplicity and essential unknowability. The emanation of creation from the Ein Sof is explained through a process of filtering.
In the Kabbalistic creation myth referred to as the "breaking of the vessels," filtering was necessary because otherwise this intense, simple essence would have overwhelmed and made impossible the emergence of any distinct creations.
Each filter, described as a vessel, captured the emanation of this creative force until it was overwhelmed and broken by the intensity of God's simple essence.
Once broken, the vessel's shards, full of absorbed "divine sparks," fell into a vessel below. This process ultimately continued until the "light" of Godliness was sufficiently reduced to allow the world we inhabit to be sustained without breaking. The creation of this world, however, comes with the consequence that Godly transcendence is hidden, or "exiled" (from the immanent world).
Only through the revelation of sparks hidden within the shards embedded in our material world can this transcendence be recognized again. In Hasidic thought, divine sparks are revealed through the performance of commandments or "mitzvot," (literally, the obligations and prohibitions described in the Torah).
A Kabbalistic explanation for the existence of malevolence in the world is that such terrible things are possible with the divine sparks being hidden. Thus there is some urgency to performing mitzvot in order to liberate the hidden sparks and perform a "tikkun olam" (literally, healing of the world).
Until then, the world is presided over by the immanent aspect of God, often referred to as the Shekhinah or divine spirit, and in feminine terms.
Sikhism
Waheguru (Punjabi:) is a term most often used in Sikhism to refer to God, the Supreme Being or the creator of all.
It means "Wonderful Teacher" in the Punjabi language, but in this case is used to refer to the Sikh God. Wahi means "wonderful" (a Middle Persian borrowing) and "Guru" (Sanskrit: गुरु) is a term denoting "teacher". Waheguru is also described by some as an experience of ecstasy which is beyond all descriptions.
Cumulatively, the name implies wonder at the Divine Light eliminating spiritual darkness. It might also imply, "Hail the Lord whose name eliminates spiritual darkness."
Earlier, Shaheed Bhai Mani Singh, Sikhan di Bhagat Mala, gave a similar explication, also on the authority of Guru Nanak.
Considering the two constituents of "Vahiguru" ("vahi" + "guru") implying the state of wondrous ecstasy and offering of homage to the Lord, the first one was brought distinctly and prominently into the devotional system by Guru Nanak, who has made use of this interjection, as in Majh ki Var (stanza 24), and Suhi ki Var, sloka to pauri 10.
Sikh doctrine identifies one panentheistic god (Ek Onkar) who is omnipresent and has infinite qualities, whose name is true (Satnam), can do anything (Karta purkh), has no fear (Nirb hau), is not the enemy of anyone (Nirvair), is beyond time (Akaal), has no image (Murat), is beyond birth and death circulation (Ajunee), is self-existent (Sai Bhang) and possesses the grace of word guru (eternal light) we can meet him (Gurprasaad).
Sikhs do not identify a gender for Ek Onkar, nor do they believe it takes a human form.
In the Sikh tradition, all human beings are considered equal regardless of their religion, sex, or race. All are sons and daughters of Waheguru, the Almighty.
The "death of God" and the end of transcendence in secular culture
|
This section does not cite any sources. improve this section adding citations to reliable sources removed(August 2014) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)
|
In 1961, Christian theologian Gabriel Vahanian's published The Death of God. Vahanian argued that modern secular culture had lost all sense of the sacred, lacking any sacramental meaning, no transcendental purpose or sense of providence.
He concluded that for the modern secular mind "God is dead", but he did not mean that God did not exist.
In Vahanian's vision a transformed post-Christian and post-modern culture was needed to create a renewed experience of deity.
Paul Van Buren and William Hamilton both agreed that the concept of transcendence had lost any meaningful place in modern secular thought. According to the norms of contemporary modern secular thought, God is dead. In responding to this denial of transcendence Van Buren and Hamilton offered secular people the option of Jesus as the model human who acted in love. The encounter with the Christ of faith would be open in a church-community.
Thomas J. J. Altizer offered a radical theology of the death of God that drew upon William Blake, Hegelian thought and Nietzschean ideas. He conceived of theology as a form of poetry in which the immanence (presence) of God could be encountered in faith communities.
However, he no longer accepted the possibility of affirming his belief in a transcendent God. Altizer concluded that God had incarnated in Christ and imparted his immanent spirit which remained in the world even though Jesus was dead. Interesting to me.
It is important that such ideas are understood as socio-cultural developments and not as ontological realities.
As Vahanian expressed it in his book, the issue of the denial of God lies in the mind of secular man, not in reality.
Critiquing the death of God theology, Joseph Papin, the founder of the Villanova Theology Institute, noted: "Rumbles of the new theology of the 'Requiem for God," (theologians of the death of God) proved to be a totally inadequate foundation for spanning a theological river with a bridge.
The school of the theology of the "Requiem of God," not even implementing a "Requiem for Satan," will constitute only a footnote to the history of theology. . . . 'The Grave of God,' was the death rattle for the continuancy of the aforementioned school without any noticeable echo."
Professor Piet Schoonenberg (Nijmegen, Netherlands) directly critiqued Altizer concluding: "Rightly understood the transcendence of God does not exclude His immanence, but includes it."
Schoonenberg went on to say: "We must take God's transcendence seriously by not imposing any limits whatsoever, not even the limits that our images or concepts of transcendence evoke.
This however occurs when God's transcendence is expressed as elevated over the world to the exclusion of his presence in this world; when his independence is expressed by excluding his real relation and reaction to the world; or when we insist upon his unchangeable eternity to the exclusion of his real partnership in human history."
Above five selections chosen and edited from - Wikipedia
** **
You are home and shortly Carol, Kim and you will be off to lunch. We can work on this later. - Amorella
1226 hours. This is really, really interesting.
You have completed the editing of your notes with some initial commentary. Post. - Amorella
2229 hours. This has been a really good read. Most interesting! I agree with some aspects of the articles but not all. What this shows me at this point in time, is that some of my perspective through a lifetime of spiritual experience is that others who had greater minds and greater scholarly and religious perspective had their say long before I have come upon my own. Which, at the moment, has been rather shallow, except that I did follow my own spiritual path when I felt it was proper. I had no choice but to follow my own path, which was spiritual. It showed me who I had become. This I cannot and will not deny.
Agreed, my boy. You followed your own path. Post. - Amorella
