Of course choosing one's religious affiliation is a fairly modern (or post-modern) thing to do and yes, on the level of making a personal choice it's individualistic.
People couldn't make those kinds of decisions quite so easily in the past and it could still be quite difficult changing from a default Orthodox position to a Protestant one, say, in some majority Orthodox countries even though they may ostensibly have freedom of religion in their political constitutions.
Yes, I've chosen to become Orthodox. I could have chosen to become Quaker or URC or RC or ...
Just as you and @ThunderBunk have chosen to remain Anglican or whatever church affiliation you happen to have. We are all free agents.
And I don’t think it’s like, at least for many/most people, people choose their religious affiliation just for fun—they choose it, often down through history with dangerous or deadly results for themselves, because they become convinced that it is true. Or at least the most true, or the church that they believe shows the most grace, or that they believe has Apostolic Succession, etc. (Obviously there will be at least some exceptions, perhaps especially in times and places when the day to day stakes are not as high.)
My point is @ChastMastr that these are all criteria of the chooser's choosing. There is no force hanging over people telling them that the apostolic succession, or any other criterion, must determine their choice. The chooser invests their authority in that criterion and then it becomes the means of determining action. The appearance of giving up choice is not correct - it is merely invested.
My point is @ChastMastr that these are all criteria of the chooser's choosing. There is no force hanging over people telling them that the apostolic succession, or any other criterion, must determine their choice. The chooser invests their authority in that criterion and then it becomes the means of determining action. The appearance of giving up choice is not correct - it is merely invested.
I’m not sure I understand this. If you believe X is true, what alternative do you have? To pretend you believe otherwise?
Yes, you accept picking a denomination/religion is an individualistic choice, that may have been less available in times past
You believe you are not telling people their individualistic vs collectivist balance is wrong - just that is should be appropriate
You believe, if we just go on personal experience, we are likely to be overly subjective
You believe religious choices are not coerced from us
You believe the both/and thing is reflected in many parts of Christian tradition, but you think some Protestant denominations are more dualistic then is correct - but you are not stating anyone on this thread is
This seems self-contradictory - in that you are telling @pease his balance is wrong, and you are saying both prioritising personal experience and Protestant dualism beyond a certain unspecified point are wrong.
It is ok to have a point of view in which you believe some people are correctly interpreting scripture, tradition and personal experience and some are not. But it is not really helpful to present that position as agreement, when it is not.
@Pease was telling me that my balance between individual freedom of conscience / choice and due deference to external sources of authority or tradition or Tradition was wrong.
I was defending myself against that charge.
I don't think I'd said anything 'against' his position until he rounded on me as if I were criticising him explicitly or implicitly.
I'm simply laying out my particular position which is that all of us exercise our individual choices or express our religious or other convictions in a social or communal context of some kind.
In my case, I have chosen to express those in an Orthodox context and to align myself with the Orthodox 'take' on theology and praxis ... which should go together of course.
Had I become a Quaker or a Methodist or RC or Presbyterian or whatever else, I'd be doing the same in that context and saying similar things from within those traditions.
In doing so I wouldn't necessarily be casting aspersions on how other people see these things.
As it happens, Orthodoxy does put a lot of emphasis on human freedom. That's why we are wary of some forms of hyper-Calvinist theology. I am grateful to @Nick Tamen and @Jengie Jon here on these boards for broadening my understanding of the Reformed tradition and showing that there is far more to it than the narrow neo-Calvinism to which I'd largely been exposed.
Be all that as it may I'm certainly not saying we should sublimate our individuality in an ant-like way to some kind of repressive system or ideology whether religious or secular.
I'm not saying, as @ThunderBunk seems to suggest that I'm acting as if I'm bowing to inexorable and irrefutable pressure to become Orthodox (or whatever else).
Of course it's my personal and individual choice.
I don't see how that's contradictory.
I chose to get married. In doing so I relinquished my singleness and capacity to do everything my own way. I had to take my wife and later my children into consideration.
Nobody was pressurising me to do that. I did so voluntarily and not always easily or willingly.
That's not an exact analogy of course but it may illustrate what I'm trying to say.
My personal experiences and choices in a spiritual sense (as wiyh anything else) are going to be informed and shaped by whatever I am exposed to or give value to in whatever religious setting I find myself in.
If I were an evangelical charismatic, as once I was, my personal experiences would be formed and interpreted within that framework.
Same now I'm Orthodox.
I'm not saying that God the Holy Spirit doesn't deal with people as individuals or that people can't have some kind of apprehension or experience of the divine or the numinous outwith formal religious affiliation. Far from it.
But I am going to refer to the Holy Spirit in Orthodox terms because that's the Tradition I have chosen to inhabit and through which to express my faith.
I choose to align myself with that.
And the Orthodox understanding is that generally speaking and inna church context 'the manifestation of the Spirit is for the common good.'
I'm not saying that this understanding is exclusive to Orthodoxy.
But I am staying that if we rely solely on apparently unmediated personal experience we may run the risk of illuminism, spiritual pride or even delusion.
All Christian traditions have checks and balances and systems in place to aid discernment. The Quakers do - although not all Friends are Christian or theistic in the traditional sense of course.
That doesn't mean I disrespect the 'Meeting for Clearance' principle nor that I wouldn't find it helpful in some way were I to encounter it.
But it makes its fullest sense in the context of Quaker faith and practice.
Equally an orthodox - small o - or Orthodox Big O understanding of the Christian faith makes most sense in the context of a body which derives its belief and practice from those principles.
Lex orandi. Lex credendi.
I will inevitably interpret my personal experience of whatever nature with whatever principles of understanding or discernment are current within my own particular context.
Ok, what would happen if a space ship landed tomorrow and little green men and women emerged to tell me I'd got it all wrong.
I'd have to weigh that up and trust the evidence of my own eyes, but in the meantime I have to go on what 'light' I've received and how I understand things in the particular contexts in which I operate.
Meanwhile, @Pease, I don't see the 'both/and' thing as being predominantly Catholic (or Orthodox) but something that is common to all forms of historic creedal Christianity.
Heck, if we believe that Christ is fully God and fully human at one and the same time according to the historic Creeds then that's a both/and thing irrespective of whether we are RC, Protestant or Orthodox.
The 1800s: Hegel and Kierkegaard
Kierkegaard is widely thought to be the first one to coin the term “either/or” with his famous work of the same name, which presents the stark choice between the aesthetic and the ethical as a rebuff to tidy Hegelian synthesis. … But Kierkegaard also might have been the first one to coin the term “both/and.” In his Attack Upon Christendom, he writes,
I who am called “Either/Or” cannot be at the service of anybody with both-and. I have in my possession a book which doubtless is all but unknown in this land, the title of which I will therefore cite in full: The New Testament of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Although I stand in a perfectly free relation to this book, and am not, for example, bound to it by an oath, yet nevertheless this book exercises a great power over me, inspires me with an indescribable horror of both-and.
In the decades after Kierkegaard’s death, these two phrases—“either/or” and “both/and”—would continue to bubble up in popular discourse. … But it was in the early twentieth century that these two streams of thought would converge, and the “Catholic both/and” as we know it began to take shape.
The 1900s: The Catholic both/and arrives
One of the first to link Catholic thought with both/and principle is the Reformed theologian Karl Barth. Barth has been quoted as referring to the “damned Catholic ‘and’”; however, the source for this phrase seems to be Hans Küng, who references it in two of his works without citation, suggesting that it’s either a paraphrase of Barth or a direct quote from personal interactions between the two. But what we do see in Barth, in his 1933 lecture “The First Commandment as an Axiom of Theology,” is a critique of the “theology of ‘and’”—a tendency to edge out the one God with other “gods,” and to supplement divine revelation with various human constructs of reason, experience, culture, history, etc. Barth principally had liberal Protestantism in view, but also declared its guilt by association with Catholicism, that original master of “and” theology:…
From then on, the Jesuits appear to have played a significant role in incorporating "both/and" into theological discourse. No prizes for guessing which pope said “A Catholic cannot think either-or (aut-aut) and reduce everything to polarization … the essence of what is Catholic is both-and (et-et)”.
Coming back to the here and now, when you use the term "both/and", you are referring to the way in which what is Catholic is distinct from the Protestant. And from the Catholic perspective, one thing that can never be both/and is Catholic / Protestant. It can only ever be either/or. This is, quite understandably, the price Protestantism pays for being "not Catholicism". And because of this, in our context, "both/and" sounds like a declaration of distinction and difference.
My frustration isn't that I am saying the same things over and over again and not getting any where - although I am repetitive I'll admit. Perhaps it's the result of attending too many Orthodox liturgies or singing repetitive worship songs before that... 😉
It's more a case that I feel that some posters persist in misunderstanding - or perhaps even misrepresenting - what I'm clumsily trying to say.
The charitable interpretation would be that I've not explained myself very well.
I have no idea whether @Pease has an appropriate 'balance' between the individual and the corporate and it really isn't my place to say whether or not that is the case.
What I was responding to was an apparent assertion that my own understanding is out of whack according to what? - Pease's 'personal experience.'
Not sola scriptura nor church tradition or Tradition, the Anglican trilateral or whatever else but Pease's say-so.
I was attempting to highlight the irony of that. Blessed be Pease. Blessed be his holy name.
Pope Pease.
Ok, I'm riffing and teasing and I'm not seriously suggesting that Pease is setting himself up as the final and infallible authority on all matters spiritual any more than any one else here is doing so.
But that's the context of the exchange. If I have given any offence then I apologise.
@Gamma Gamaliel it would be easier to follow your argument if you wrote more concisely and with more sentences per paragraph, rather than many paragraphs of one or two sentences.
I think what I'm saying is that the apparent dichotomy isn't one. A collective ego is still an ego, which derives its energy and capacities from the egos which flow into it. Tradition retains its power through this process, as do scriptures, both of which embody a collective ego through which religions have functioned over the centuries. Ultimately, as human beings we are all somewhere in the same emotional and spiritual delta, flowing among and through each other, however we choose to characterise it, wherever we seek to position ourselves, and however (un)willing we are to acknowledge it. By the same token, we are each trees, with our own root systems, and other forms of metabolism, and with at least influence, if not control, over our own personhood.
This smacks of arrogance, and maybe it is, but I am realising more and more the implications of the fact that reality is a dictatorship. I could be wrong; but if I'm right, I'm right.
@Gamma Gamaliel it would be easier to follow your argument if you wrote more concisely and with more sentences per paragraph, rather than many paragraphs of one or two sentences.
Fair do's. I tend to write on the hoof and in a 'thinking aloud' kind of way so it's not as polished here as it might be when I write in other contexts. I will try to shape and review things more cohesively in future.
Whether it's to do with my posting style or the readers' presuppositions, I often think though that people read things into my posts that I'm not actually saying or what they think I'm saying rather than what I've actually written.
@dafyd seems to have got my gist but that doesn't let me off the hook as a number of people appear to have been somewhat perplexed or frustrated by my posts recently.
You might try avoiding the phrases "I'm not saying that...", "That doesn't mean that..." and "Not that anybody here is saying that, but...". Those phrases almost always introduce red herrings, and often very inflammatory ones! Which always leaves me wondering why you bothered to explicitly mention something that neither you nor the rest of us is saying. Better to just leave them out entirely.
You might try avoiding the phrases "I'm not saying that...", "That doesn't mean that..." and "Not that anybody here is saying that, but...". Those phrases almost always introduce red herrings, and often very inflammatory ones! Which always leaves me wondering why you bothered to explicitly mention something that neither you nor the rest of us is saying. Better to just leave them out entirely.
Not just those phrases, but whatever they might be referring to, especially if it comes before the phrase. When I read through a few hundred words, only to then read “Not that I’m saying that,” or “Not that anyone here is saying that,” I find myself wondering both “then why did you write so much about it?,” and “Well, what are you saying, then?,” or “What do you think others are saying?”
And from the Catholic perspective, one thing that can never be both/and is Catholic / Protestant. It can only ever be either/or. This is, quite understandably, the price Protestantism pays for being "not Catholicism". And because of this, in our context, "both/and" sounds like a declaration of distinction and difference.
From the Roman Catholic perspective, certainly--but from certain Anglican perspectives, we can indeed be both Catholic and Protestant.
I'm inclined to think that "I'm not saying that" or the like heads off some possible misunderstandings that could happen, in case there is any doubt. Maybe especially when there have been, by various sources over the course of one's life (bad theology from when one was in college, or in various books, or things from megachurch televangelists in the news, etc.), things taken to extremes or what have you, even if those sources are not anyone on the discussion thread. Kind of heading off that stuff at the pass.
Yes, I think that's the sort of thing I'm trying to do with phrases like, 'not that I'm saying that' or 'not that anyone here is claiming that ...' and so on.
It's a kind of 'apophatic' rather than 'cataphatic' way of presenting a case but I can see how it can easily irritate or set hares running.
I s'pose I'm running various scenarios and possible positions through my mind and also dealing with tensions - hopefully creative ones - in my own thinking.
Perhaps I ought to 'journal' that set of thing rather than use the forums as a scribble-pad as well as a discussion space.
Coming back to the mysticism thing and indeed the discernment process, I am working through issues around what the Greeks would call 'phromena', the process of acquiring the 'mind' and attitude of the Church as it were. The 'mind of Christ' which I'd see as a collective and collegial thing, and how individual or personal insights sit with that.
That's a hefty issue I think and these things do entwine and overlap of course.
It's a bit like Celtic knot-work. Trouble is, in writing about it I can end up tying myself in knots as well as those who do me the undeserved courtesy of reading my posts.
I s'pose I'm running various scenarios and possible positions through my mind and also dealing with tensions - hopefully creative ones - in my own thinking.
Perhaps I ought to 'journal' that set of thing rather than use the forums as a scribble-pad as well as a discussion space..
That would be appreciated. Perhaps doing the “scribbling” in draft, then editing down and reviewing in preview post, before finally posting, would help.
But to borrow a well-known Protestant phrase, 'Here I stand ...'. 😉 You know the rest.
Supposedly said by the man who had just rejected the authority of the historic creedal Christianity of his upbringing, for his own individualistically authorised version of this faith. I'm unable to tell why you relate this. Is it about his obduracy?
… What I was saying was that there should be an appropriate balance between the individual and the collective.
What is the appropriate balance? Is it 50/50? What thing or authority determines it? You don't seem to address these aspects.
Heck, if we believe that Christ is fully God and fully human at one and the same time according to the historic Creeds then that's a both/and thing irrespective of whether we are RC, Protestant or Orthodox.
But not the same kind of "both/and" thing as the balance between the individual and the corporate, as you suggest in another post:
Why not have the individual and the corporate as a both/and thing and hold them in tension at times if necessary?
Back to the first post:
That said, I do think that some - but by no means all - sections of particularly conservative Protestantism do have a tendency to be somewhat dualistic and either/or.
But I'm not levelling that charge at anyone here.
Then why mention it at all? If it's not relevant to anyone involved in the discussion, how does it advance your explanation?
I hope that clarifies things a bit.
Not really, I'm afraid. I keep hoping for there to be some kind of development of the explanation of your position, or why you're taking it, but being unable to find one. (This position being fairly succinctly described in the following couple of paragraphs.)
I'm simply laying out my particular position which is that all of us exercise our individual choices or express our religious or other convictions in a social or communal context of some kind.
In my case, I have chosen to express those in an Orthodox context and to align myself with the Orthodox 'take' on theology and praxis ... which should go together of course.
The following got me reflecting on my own experiences:
My personal experiences and choices in a spiritual sense (as wiyh anything else) are going to be informed and shaped by whatever I am exposed to or give value to in whatever religious setting I find myself in.
If I were an evangelical charismatic, as once I was, my personal experiences would be formed and interpreted within that framework.
Same now I'm Orthodox.
…
I will inevitably interpret my personal experience of whatever nature with whatever principles of understanding or discernment are current within my own particular context.
This might be one area in which we differ. As far as my church affiliation goes (which you refer to elsewhere), my time as a charismatic evangelical also lies in the past. I appreciate the formative effect that it had on me, and accept that it still plays an important role in shaping who I am. This strikes me as a somewhat both/and attitude, in contrast to what seems in your case to be a more either/or attitude regarding the faiths that you have had.
It doesn't seem to me at all inevitable that our interpretation of our personal experience is just done with whatever principles of understanding or discernment we think are current.
You raise some interesting points. I would say that the balance or what we might call an appropriate equilibrium between the personal and the corporate aspects is going to depend on the context or whatever particular issue we are talking about which may require discernment. That can only be illustrated by examples, I think and there are of course areas where personal view points or differences of opinion don't make a great deal of difference.
The Greeks have a word for it, 'theologoumena'.
The Orthodox don't tend to dogmatise a great deal beyond the Creeds and conciliar decrees, so there's room for personal opinion on everything else.
You still seem to be reading things into my posts that I haven't actually said. I also value aspects of my charismatic evangelical past in terms of my spiritual formation and trajectory. I don't think I said otherwise in the posts you refer to but making assumptions based on what you think I might say rather than what I've actually said.
Besides, I haven't had many 'faiths'. I've only had the Christian faith. I was a Christian when I was a Protestant. I am a Christian now I'm Orthodox.
As for what you claim I haven't addressed, I believe I have done so. I will spell it out. In matters of faith and practice I adhere to the Orthodox understanding of Holy Tradition, which includes an Orthodox understanding of scripture.
When I was a Protestant Christian I adhered to a Protestant understanding of these things pretty much in line with whatever group I was involved with.
Unless we have founded our own unique and personal religion we all do that, we adhere to the theology and praxis of whatever that group happens to be. We don't invent it ourselves. That does mean we blindly and blithely go along with everything that's done and said but whatever church or group we are involved with will inform our practice and our interpretation of scripture and much else besides.
So please don't accuse me of having an either/or attitude to my previous church affiliations when a) much of what was there accords with what is taught and practised where I am now (and across Christendom as a whole), b) I still value and quote aspects of what I learned back then and c) I try to maintain an eirenic and ecumenical attitude towards other Christians in whatever tradition, church or denomination they happen to be involved with.
Stop trying to tell me what I do or don't believe. I have indicated that I will try to make my posts clearer in future but it would also help if you read what I've written instead of reading things into it that aren't there and filling any gaps with speculation.
And from the Catholic perspective, one thing that can never be both/and is Catholic / Protestant. It can only ever be either/or. This is, quite understandably, the price Protestantism pays for being "not Catholicism". And because of this, in our context, "both/and" sounds like a declaration of distinction and difference.
From the Roman Catholic perspective, certainly--but from certain Anglican perspectives, we can indeed be both Catholic and Protestant.
Quite. And from a broader angle, one of the things that crops up early, as an Anglican, is "We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church." It takes a while to find out what that means.
Can the last two pages of posts accurately be summarised as "mysticism is whatever I say it is, superstition is whatever I say it is?"
No. It can be summed up as, 'Our understanding of both mysticism and superstition is based on our own reading, research, impressions and experience within the context of the particular faith-group and society we operate within. We draw on sacred texts and received processes of discernment developed within those contexts as well as our own 'nous' and critical faculties and always with the understanding that there is more to learn.'
And from the Catholic perspective, one thing that can never be both/and is Catholic / Protestant. It can only ever be either/or. This is, quite understandably, the price Protestantism pays for being "not Catholicism". And because of this, in our context, "both/and" sounds like a declaration of distinction and difference.
From the Roman Catholic perspective, certainly--but from certain Anglican perspectives, we can indeed be both Catholic and Protestant.
Quite. And from a broader angle, one of the things that crops up early, as an Anglican, is "We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church." It takes a while to find out what that means.
It takes a lifetime (and beyond) to understand what that means in any Christian context, whether Anglican or anything else.
On the both/and thing. I tend to operate on the principle that most things in the Christian faith can be paradoxical and can contain or reconcile apparent contradictions.
So, Christ is both fully God and fully human at one and the same time.
Does faith alone or grace alone save us or is it faith and works or sacraments or belonging to the 'right' church or ...
No, it is Christ that saves and it is not of ourselves but a gift of God.
But how that operates or is worked out or fulfilled in practice is going to depend on a whole range of factors and God mysteriously works in and through it all.
So we shouldn't dichotomise these things or treat them as a mathematical equation.
'Freda had 80% faith and 20% works.'
'Albert's salvation was 25% due to his baptism, 15% down to his good works, 18.7% due to ...'
No. That's not how it works.
'It is God who is at work within us to will and to work his good pleasure.'
Who crucified Jesus? God? Or sinful people?
The scriptures tell us. It was by the 'hands of wicked men' but also, mysteriously, by God's set purpose and foreknowledge.
And so on ...
Baptism. Does that 'save' us? Or is it the faith expressed through baptism? Or is it both? Or much more besides?
I'm not applying 'both/and' as some kind of medieval Scholastic mathematical formula.
I simply think of it as a principle that tends to hold when we are looking at knotty issues such as predestination and freewill or the presence of Christ in the Eucharist or how sacraments (or ordinances) operate or how the Church can be so messy and annoying and yet somehow 'the pillar and ground of the truth.'
Immediately someone will object. It's not the Church but the faith of the Church. In which case we'll apply both/and always acknowledging that Christ is both the 'author and perfector of our faith'.
He isn't the author only but the perfector also. Both/and. That's how these things work, or so it seems to me from what I've been taught in various contexts and my understanding of scripture in the context both of Holy Tradition as understood in an Orthodox context and the consensus of opinion across the Christian world more generally.
Can the last two pages of posts accurately be summarised as "mysticism is whatever I say it is, superstition is whatever I say it is?"
My summary would be that mysticism is what the collective says it is and/or what the individual says it is.
Evelyn Underhill's definition is:
Mysticism is the art of union with Reality. The mystic is a person who has attained that union in greater or less degree; or who aims at and believes in such attainment.
Which I think carries an echo of Caroline Spurgeon's related answer (not that surprisingly, given the period in which Practical Mysticism was written. Thanks for the reference, Heron.)
Can the last two pages of posts accurately be summarised as "mysticism is whatever I say it is, superstition is whatever I say it is?"
The last two pages of posts have little to nothing to do with that question. Admittedly, the posts are rather long and rambling, so nobody can blame you for not reading them. But it's generally considered wise to avoid expressing opinions on posts you haven't read.
…
One thing I'd still like to understand is what the term "both/and" means for you, as it has a wide range of possible connotations.
On the both/and thing. I tend to operate on the principle that most things in the Christian faith can be paradoxical and can contain or reconcile apparent contradictions.
…
I simply think of it as a principle that tends to hold when we are looking at knotty issues such as predestination and freewill or the presence of Christ in the Eucharist or how sacraments (or ordinances) operate or how the Church can be so messy and annoying and yet somehow 'the pillar and ground of the truth.'
Thanks Gamma Gamaliel. I think I get where you're coming from, all the way up to
Immediately someone will object. It's not the Church but the faith of the Church. In which case we'll apply both/and always acknowledging that Christ is both the 'author and perfector of our faith'.
He isn't the author only but the perfector also. Both/and. …
I don't get how Christ being "the author and perfector of our faith" is a both/and thing. There doesn't appear to be any significant paradox or mystery or tension (or even balance) involved in this concept. Christ is the one on whom (a life of) faith depends from beginning to end, from start to finish. All of it in His hands. It seems to me to be a way of describing a single concept. (The image that comes to mind is that of the potter.)
Can the last two pages of posts accurately be summarised as "mysticism is whatever I say it is, superstition is whatever I say it is?"
No. It can be summed up as, 'Our understanding of both mysticism and superstition is based on our own reading, research, impressions and experience within the context of the particular faith-group and society we operate within. We draw on sacred texts and received processes of discernment developed within those contexts as well as our own 'nous' and critical faculties and always with the understanding that there is more to learn.'
How's that?
Well it appeared from what you said that it was fine for a person to choose their own church group or theology.
I don't really understand how one can both believe that their understanding informed by all the things you mentioned above can *both* be true *and also* other people's differing understandings can also be a fair alternative understanding.
And how that distinction is functionally different to choosing your own position on these things.
Either the Roman Catholic view is correct or the Protestant view is correct or Spiritualism is correct or Buddhism is correct. I don't really understand how there can be grades of correctness nor how you are making those distinctions.
But maybe these things are too complicated to explain.
…
One thing I'd still like to understand is what the term "both/and" means for you, as it has a wide range of possible connotations.
On the both/and thing. I tend to operate on the principle that most things in the Christian faith can be paradoxical and can contain or reconcile apparent contradictions.
…
I simply think of it as a principle that tends to hold when we are looking at knotty issues such as predestination and freewill or the presence of Christ in the Eucharist or how sacraments (or ordinances) operate or how the Church can be so messy and annoying and yet somehow 'the pillar and ground of the truth.'
Thanks Gamma Gamaliel. I think I get where you're coming from, all the way up to
Immediately someone will object. It's not the Church but the faith of the Church. In which case we'll apply both/and always acknowledging that Christ is both the 'author and perfector of our faith'.
He isn't the author only but the perfector also. Both/and. …
I don't get how Christ being "the author and perfector of our faith" is a both/and thing. There doesn't appear to be any significant paradox or mystery or tension (or even balance) involved in this concept. Christ is the one on whom (a life of) faith depends from beginning to end, from start to finish. All of it in His hands. It seems to me to be a way of describing a single concept. (The image that comes to mind is that of the potter.)
Fair challenge. I was just accumulating 'and' examples. I should have stopped earlier.
Can the last two pages of posts accurately be summarised as "mysticism is whatever I say it is, superstition is whatever I say it is?"
No. It can be summed up as, 'Our understanding of both mysticism and superstition is based on our own reading, research, impressions and experience within the context of the particular faith-group and society we operate within. We draw on sacred texts and received processes of discernment developed within those contexts as well as our own 'nous' and critical faculties and always with the understanding that there is more to learn.'
How's that?
Well it appeared from what you said that it was fine for a person to choose their own church group or theology.
I don't really understand how one can both believe that their understanding informed by all the things you mentioned above can *both* be true *and also* other people's differing understandings can also be a fair alternative understanding.
And how that distinction is functionally different to choosing your own position on these things.
Either the Roman Catholic view is correct or the Protestant view is correct or Spiritualism is correct or Buddhism is correct. I don't really understand how there can be grades of correctness nor how you are making those distinctions.
But maybe these things are too complicated to explain.
Of course it is fine for people to choose their own religion or philosophy. Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.
Does that mean that I believe the Church of Scientology or the Church of Jesus Christ and Latter Day Saints are 'valid'? No, I don't.
But that doesn't mean people don't have the right to belong to these groups.
As far as Roman Catholicism and Protestantism go, my view is that they are both right on those issues they share in common with traditional creedal Christianity across the board. Where they differ then that's where we have to come down on one side or the other or decide that apparent contradictions can be complementary.
Where we do come down on one side or the other and my own Orthodox Tradition differs from both in various ways, then we still have to show due respect and consideration for them as fellow expressions of the Christian faith.
Of course one can have degrees and grades of correctness. "William Shakespeare was the most important French playwright" is more correct than "William Shakespeare was the most important French novelist".
Newtonian mechanics is more correct than Descartes' or Galileo's theories, but less correct than Einstein's theories of relativity or quantum mechanics. Incidentally, Einstein's theories of relativity and quantum mechanics are contradictory (quantum mechanics is digital and relativity is analogue). Reconciling them has been the major overarching problem of theoretical physics in the last half century.
Or to wheel out another hackneyed example, light is either made of waves or of particles depending on how you measure it.
Protestantism and Roman Catholicism are both varieties of Christianity and have that in common.
Buddhist meditation and Christian contemplative prayer are similar practices, and some Buddhist and Roman Catholic monks have studied and borrowed from each others' traditions.
In any case, thinking that a religion is wrong is not at all the same as thinking it's a superstition. Calling something a superstition to me implies that the explanatory beliefs behind it are not merely wrong but non-existent. (Why is it unlucky to see a black cat? It just is.)
Furthermore, superstition consists of beliefs about empirical outcomes, usually favourable or unfavourable. Mysticism is not an attempt to achieve any kind of empirical outcome except maybe a cessation or redirection of desire for empirical outcomes.
I don't really understand how one can both believe that their understanding informed by all the things you mentioned above can *both* be true *and also* other people's differing understandings can also be a fair alternative understanding.
And how that distinction is functionally different to choosing your own position on these things.
Either the Roman Catholic view is correct or the Protestant view is correct or Spiritualism is correct or Buddhism is correct. I don't really understand how there can be grades of correctness nor how you are making those distinctions.
I'm not convinced that these concepts of "true" and "correct" are particularly useful in this context, when attempting to compare faiths (or different versions of a faith). For a neutral viewpoint regarding a faith, it might be more useful to ask the questions "is it helpful?" and "is it harmful?" (for example).
It's possible to reach a range of conclusions about whether a particular faith is helpful and whether it is harmful, or even whether some faiths are more helpful or harmful than others, without needing to determine whether or not any of them are correct. In other words, while being "true" or "correct" is usually quite important to the believers of a faith (although this can vary), it seems less so when it comes to comparing faiths.
On the measure of being helpful, and not being harmful, I think mysticism comes out quite well.
… Mysticism is not an attempt to achieve any kind of empirical outcome except maybe a cessation or redirection of desire for empirical outcomes.
In this regard, I found the preface to Practical Mysticism rather unsettling. It starts with an apposite quote from Blake and a reference to the Great War, which provides a useful amount of context:
If the doors of perception were cleansed,
everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.
For man has closed himself up,
till he sees all things through the narrow chinks of his cavern.
Preface
This little book, written during the last months of peace, goes to press in the first weeks of the great war. Many will feel that in such a time of conflict and horror, when only the most ignorant, disloyal, or apathetic can hope for quietness of mind, a book which deals with that which is called the "contemplative" attitude to existence is wholly out of place.
However, reading on in the preface…
We are often told, that in the critical periods of history it is the national soul which counts: that "where there is no vision, the people perish." No nation is truly defeated which retains its spiritual self-possession. No nation is truly victorious which does not emerge with soul unstained. If this be so, it becomes a part of true patriotism to keep the spiritual life, both of the individual citizen and of the social group, active and vigorous; its vision of realities unsullied by the entangled interests and passions of the time. This is a task in which all may do their part.
… September 12, 1914.
This has a ring of mysticism as patriotic duty. I wonder if the publisher (if not also the author) was thinking of the intended audience. (Wikipedia says Evelyn Underhill was a pacifist.) One thing it suggests to me is that the "why" of mysticism matters as much as the "what" or the "how".
In chapter I, Evelyn Underhill starts by asking "What is mysticism?" which leads pretty quickly into considering a human being's relationship to reality, and then the nature of reality. This progresses from a somewhat philosophical framing to the analogy of a tapestry. Thereafter, it heads back to what I find to be a fairly familiar walk-through of the answer to the question "how am I going to do this?", which is how chapter III starts. Practical Mysticism is pretty much as it says on the cover (real or imagined).
There was, of course a train of thought among some believers, including senior clergy both in the UK and in Germany that the bloodletting of The Great War would have some kind or 'purging' effect and be all to the good.
This may not have gone as far as one bishop's blood-curdling 'Kill them! Kill them!' sermon but there was a lot of this crap about and the prefacd to Practical Mysticism may be a mild nod in this kind of direction.
That wouldn't put me off reading it though, but neither would I consider contemplative prayer or mystical practice as a means of improving the national psyche or character - although I would argue that if we were all calm, mindful and 'dispassionate' about worldly success and getting our own way then the world would indeed be a better place.
Richard Rohr argues that activism needs to be balanced out by contemplation to prevent it becoming brittle and aggressive.
Like @pease I'm grateful to @Heron for the Caroline Spurgeon reference.
Doh! Thinking about it, I have read Underhill's book already! A long time ago now.
I don't know but I may be right in thinking that her pacifism developed as a result of WW1. It was certainly very pronounced between the Wars, so that wouldn't surprise me.
Perhaps an Underhill expert can advise on this?
FWIW my own view of Underhill is that she was pretty kosher despite early flirtation with all that 'Golden Dawn' malarkey but her writing style is rather dated though. I think she can be read with profit though and that her heart was in the right place.
'Holy Evelyn Underhill, Anglican mystic, pray for us!'
Of course one can have degrees and grades of correctness. "William Shakespeare was the most important French playwright" is more correct than "William Shakespeare was the most important French novelist".
Newtonian mechanics is more correct than Descartes' or Galileo's theories, but less correct than Einstein's theories of relativity or quantum mechanics. Incidentally, Einstein's theories of relativity and quantum mechanics are contradictory (quantum mechanics is digital and relativity is analogue). Reconciling them has been the major overarching problem of theoretical physics in the last half century.
Or to wheel out another hackneyed example, light is either made of waves or of particles depending on how you measure it.
Protestantism and Roman Catholicism are both varieties of Christianity and have that in common.
Buddhist meditation and Christian contemplative prayer are similar practices, and some Buddhist and Roman Catholic monks have studied and borrowed from each others' traditions.
In any case, thinking that a religion is wrong is not at all the same as thinking it's a superstition. Calling something a superstition to me implies that the explanatory beliefs behind it are not merely wrong but non-existent. (Why is it unlucky to see a black cat? It just is.)
Furthermore, superstition consists of beliefs about empirical outcomes, usually favourable or unfavourable. Mysticism is not an attempt to achieve any kind of empirical outcome except maybe a cessation or redirection of desire for empirical outcomes.
I was sitting by a river today and contemplating whether "a river" exists. In one sense it obviously exists, birds sit in it, it erodes the banks, boats bob on it.
In another sense, maybe it doesn't. You can't point to a specific object that is "the river" given that it is a constantly moving amount of water. Something that's been happening for millions of years.
Which of course isn't an original thought. Heraclitus seems to have built an entire philosophy on the idea that "you cannot step into the same river twice."
This I would suggest is a true both/and philosophy point.
A "grading" of truth is a completely different thing.
Someone else has offered the concept that the claims of mysticism can be measured against a scale of usefulness.
So who decides that? Some think talking to the dead via a medium is useful, some think it is useless superstition.
Shakespeare was a playwright and was not a novelist. "Shakespeare was the most important French playwright" states that Shakespeare was French and a playwright, which is true on one count and false on one; while Shakespeare was French and a novelist, is false on both counts.
Now you introduced the phrase 'grades of correctness' so it's possible you've used it with some idiomatic meaning that cannot be deduced from the component parts, in which case I can neither agree nor disagree.
I see. So a demonstrably false statement is more correct than another demonstrably false statement because the first contains less false clauses than the second.
Does this multiply? Is a statement containing 5 lies more correct than one containing 10 lies?
When I said about grades, I was imagining a spectrum.
On the right side is "useful mysticism" in the left side is "dangerous superstition" and there is some kind of effort to sort different spiritual claims so they are more to the one side than the other.
I'm wary of a completely utilitarian approach to these things but do think that some forms of spirituality can be more helpful than harmful, but it's always going to be difficult to 'prove' whether or not that's the case.
In the case or Spiritualism, I would consider it harmful on several counts but wouldn't set it on some sliding scale of helpfulness or harmfulness in comparison to, say, overly zealous forms of Christian fundamentalism. I'd suggest these things should br judged on their individual merits according to circumstances.
So, for instance, I once read about a woman who was fined for cruelty to her dog for refusing professional veterinary care when it was injured. She was an extreme Pentecostal an insisted on trying to cure the poor creature through prayer. Do I think she deserved to be 'done' for cruelty and neglect? You betcha.
Does that mean that I tar all Pentecostals with the same brush?
No.
So if a Spiritualist took their dog to a vet and a Pentecostal (or Methodist, RC or Orthodox or other 'brand' of Christian didn't), I'd say that the Spiritualist was right and the others wrong, even though doctrinally speaking I'd say the others were closer to the mark.
When it comes to what we might call mysticism - for want of a better word and I agree it's a somewhat loaded term - how do we evaluate it? There's the Pauline thing in 1 Corinthians about the 'things of the Spirit' being 'spiritually discerned' which can sound very circular of course.
I would of course argue that things like Spiritualism or Scientology or Mormonism were beyond the pale because they are incompatible with scripture and tradition as understood from a mainstream small o orthodox perspective as well as a Big O one.
That doesn't mean that I accept everything and anything that flies under a small o or Big O Orthodox banner. I might believe that the 'faith' is nearer the mark in small o and Big O settings but that doesn't mean I think all its practitioners are squeaky clean.
I'm not convinced that these concepts of "true" and "correct" are particularly useful in this context, when attempting to compare faiths (or different versions of a faith). For a neutral viewpoint regarding a faith, it might be more useful to ask the questions "is it helpful?" and "is it harmful?" (for example).
I totally don't understand this concept at all. They make claims about the world, the supernatural, God or the gods, which are either true or false. And as for "helpful" or "harmful," aren't those dependent on what "helpful" and "harmful" are, especially if they may be at least partly dependent on those claims?
I can see what @pease is saying but I'm not sure 'neutral' is the right term. We can be 'non-aligned' or unaffiliated with a faith position but that doesn't mean we have a neutral attitude towards it.
Faith positions do make truth-claims of course. I don’t think Pease is denying that. Rather, I think he's saying that if we aren't involved in this, that or the other faith position then it doesn't make much sense for us to deploy concepts such as 'true' or 'correct' as we aren't invested in any of them.
That doesn't mean that there is no such thing as objective truth nor that someone who isn't a believer doesn't accept that there is. They may believe that it is objectively true that all religious positions are superstitious mumbo-jumbo, for instance.
I can see why Pease suggests a 'helpful' / 'harmful' distinction instead but that's going to be difficult to 'prove' one way or another and some practices you or I might consider harmful might be considered helpful by someone else.
So, for instance, I might consider Spiritualism harmful but to someone who doesn't share my particular views on the issue it may appear no more or less harmful than what I get up to in my own religious practices.
Overnight I've been thinking about the first time I heard Tavener's 'The Lamb', it was on the music list for Christmas at the church I was singing at in the West Midlands, early 00s. I was blown away by it, and the sense of awe and wonder is something I retain to this day.
I wonder whether it is worth us thinking about the root and impact of the mystical minimalism of Avo Part and Sir John Tavener; and perhaps even the mystical edges of Whitacre and Gjeilo.
Why are composers who so effectively invoke mystical experiences, gaining such traction?
Yesterday I was spending time with Gjeilo's 'Northern Lights' a setting of a text from the Song of Solomon. It drew me in and challenged me and disturbed me. And as the sun rose this morning, lighting the sky, it echoed within.
Comments
And I don’t think it’s like, at least for many/most people, people choose their religious affiliation just for fun—they choose it, often down through history with dangerous or deadly results for themselves, because they become convinced that it is true. Or at least the most true, or the church that they believe shows the most grace, or that they believe has Apostolic Succession, etc. (Obviously there will be at least some exceptions, perhaps especially in times and places when the day to day stakes are not as high.)
I’m not sure I understand this. If you believe X is true, what alternative do you have? To pretend you believe otherwise?
This seems self-contradictory - in that you are telling @pease his balance is wrong, and you are saying both prioritising personal experience and Protestant dualism beyond a certain unspecified point are wrong.
It is ok to have a point of view in which you believe some people are correctly interpreting scripture, tradition and personal experience and some are not. But it is not really helpful to present that position as agreement, when it is not.
I was defending myself against that charge.
I don't think I'd said anything 'against' his position until he rounded on me as if I were criticising him explicitly or implicitly.
I'm simply laying out my particular position which is that all of us exercise our individual choices or express our religious or other convictions in a social or communal context of some kind.
In my case, I have chosen to express those in an Orthodox context and to align myself with the Orthodox 'take' on theology and praxis ... which should go together of course.
Had I become a Quaker or a Methodist or RC or Presbyterian or whatever else, I'd be doing the same in that context and saying similar things from within those traditions.
In doing so I wouldn't necessarily be casting aspersions on how other people see these things.
As it happens, Orthodoxy does put a lot of emphasis on human freedom. That's why we are wary of some forms of hyper-Calvinist theology. I am grateful to @Nick Tamen and @Jengie Jon here on these boards for broadening my understanding of the Reformed tradition and showing that there is far more to it than the narrow neo-Calvinism to which I'd largely been exposed.
Be all that as it may I'm certainly not saying we should sublimate our individuality in an ant-like way to some kind of repressive system or ideology whether religious or secular.
I'm not saying, as @ThunderBunk seems to suggest that I'm acting as if I'm bowing to inexorable and irrefutable pressure to become Orthodox (or whatever else).
Of course it's my personal and individual choice.
I don't see how that's contradictory.
I chose to get married. In doing so I relinquished my singleness and capacity to do everything my own way. I had to take my wife and later my children into consideration.
Nobody was pressurising me to do that. I did so voluntarily and not always easily or willingly.
That's not an exact analogy of course but it may illustrate what I'm trying to say.
My personal experiences and choices in a spiritual sense (as wiyh anything else) are going to be informed and shaped by whatever I am exposed to or give value to in whatever religious setting I find myself in.
If I were an evangelical charismatic, as once I was, my personal experiences would be formed and interpreted within that framework.
Same now I'm Orthodox.
I'm not saying that God the Holy Spirit doesn't deal with people as individuals or that people can't have some kind of apprehension or experience of the divine or the numinous outwith formal religious affiliation. Far from it.
But I am going to refer to the Holy Spirit in Orthodox terms because that's the Tradition I have chosen to inhabit and through which to express my faith.
I choose to align myself with that.
And the Orthodox understanding is that generally speaking and inna church context 'the manifestation of the Spirit is for the common good.'
I'm not saying that this understanding is exclusive to Orthodoxy.
But I am staying that if we rely solely on apparently unmediated personal experience we may run the risk of illuminism, spiritual pride or even delusion.
All Christian traditions have checks and balances and systems in place to aid discernment. The Quakers do - although not all Friends are Christian or theistic in the traditional sense of course.
That doesn't mean I disrespect the 'Meeting for Clearance' principle nor that I wouldn't find it helpful in some way were I to encounter it.
But it makes its fullest sense in the context of Quaker faith and practice.
Equally an orthodox - small o - or Orthodox Big O understanding of the Christian faith makes most sense in the context of a body which derives its belief and practice from those principles.
Lex orandi. Lex credendi.
I will inevitably interpret my personal experience of whatever nature with whatever principles of understanding or discernment are current within my own particular context.
Ok, what would happen if a space ship landed tomorrow and little green men and women emerged to tell me I'd got it all wrong.
I'd have to weigh that up and trust the evidence of my own eyes, but in the meantime I have to go on what 'light' I've received and how I understand things in the particular contexts in which I operate.
This seems to be the case in one sense of the term's provenance. From the highly informative A brief history of the Catholic both/and:
From then on, the Jesuits appear to have played a significant role in incorporating "both/and" into theological discourse. No prizes for guessing which pope said “A Catholic cannot think either-or (aut-aut) and reduce everything to polarization … the essence of what is Catholic is both-and (et-et)”.
Coming back to the here and now, when you use the term "both/and", you are referring to the way in which what is Catholic is distinct from the Protestant. And from the Catholic perspective, one thing that can never be both/and is Catholic / Protestant. It can only ever be either/or. This is, quite understandably, the price Protestantism pays for being "not Catholicism". And because of this, in our context, "both/and" sounds like a declaration of distinction and difference.
It's more a case that I feel that some posters persist in misunderstanding - or perhaps even misrepresenting - what I'm clumsily trying to say.
The charitable interpretation would be that I've not explained myself very well.
I have no idea whether @Pease has an appropriate 'balance' between the individual and the corporate and it really isn't my place to say whether or not that is the case.
What I was responding to was an apparent assertion that my own understanding is out of whack according to what? - Pease's 'personal experience.'
Not sola scriptura nor church tradition or Tradition, the Anglican trilateral or whatever else but Pease's say-so.
I was attempting to highlight the irony of that. Blessed be Pease. Blessed be his holy name.
Pope Pease.
Ok, I'm riffing and teasing and I'm not seriously suggesting that Pease is setting himself up as the final and infallible authority on all matters spiritual any more than any one else here is doing so.
But that's the context of the exchange. If I have given any offence then I apologise.
This smacks of arrogance, and maybe it is, but I am realising more and more the implications of the fact that reality is a dictatorship. I could be wrong; but if I'm right, I'm right.
Fair do's. I tend to write on the hoof and in a 'thinking aloud' kind of way so it's not as polished here as it might be when I write in other contexts. I will try to shape and review things more cohesively in future.
Whether it's to do with my posting style or the readers' presuppositions, I often think though that people read things into my posts that I'm not actually saying or what they think I'm saying rather than what I've actually written.
@dafyd seems to have got my gist but that doesn't let me off the hook as a number of people appear to have been somewhat perplexed or frustrated by my posts recently.
I lose the plot pretty quickly.
Indeed--that doesn't mean they'd be right!
From the Roman Catholic perspective, certainly--but from certain Anglican perspectives, we can indeed be both Catholic and Protestant.
It's a kind of 'apophatic' rather than 'cataphatic' way of presenting a case but I can see how it can easily irritate or set hares running.
I s'pose I'm running various scenarios and possible positions through my mind and also dealing with tensions - hopefully creative ones - in my own thinking.
Perhaps I ought to 'journal' that set of thing rather than use the forums as a scribble-pad as well as a discussion space.
Coming back to the mysticism thing and indeed the discernment process, I am working through issues around what the Greeks would call 'phromena', the process of acquiring the 'mind' and attitude of the Church as it were. The 'mind of Christ' which I'd see as a collective and collegial thing, and how individual or personal insights sit with that.
That's a hefty issue I think and these things do entwine and overlap of course.
It's a bit like Celtic knot-work. Trouble is, in writing about it I can end up tying myself in knots as well as those who do me the undeserved courtesy of reading my posts.
That would be appreciated. Perhaps doing the “scribbling” in draft, then editing down and reviewing in preview post, before finally posting, would help.
What is the appropriate balance? Is it 50/50? What thing or authority determines it? You don't seem to address these aspects.
But not the same kind of "both/and" thing as the balance between the individual and the corporate, as you suggest in another post: Back to the first post: Then why mention it at all? If it's not relevant to anyone involved in the discussion, how does it advance your explanation?
Not really, I'm afraid. I keep hoping for there to be some kind of development of the explanation of your position, or why you're taking it, but being unable to find one. (This position being fairly succinctly described in the following couple of paragraphs.)
The following got me reflecting on my own experiences: This might be one area in which we differ. As far as my church affiliation goes (which you refer to elsewhere), my time as a charismatic evangelical also lies in the past. I appreciate the formative effect that it had on me, and accept that it still plays an important role in shaping who I am. This strikes me as a somewhat both/and attitude, in contrast to what seems in your case to be a more either/or attitude regarding the faiths that you have had.
It doesn't seem to me at all inevitable that our interpretation of our personal experience is just done with whatever principles of understanding or discernment we think are current.
No offence taken.
You raise some interesting points. I would say that the balance or what we might call an appropriate equilibrium between the personal and the corporate aspects is going to depend on the context or whatever particular issue we are talking about which may require discernment. That can only be illustrated by examples, I think and there are of course areas where personal view points or differences of opinion don't make a great deal of difference.
The Greeks have a word for it, 'theologoumena'.
The Orthodox don't tend to dogmatise a great deal beyond the Creeds and conciliar decrees, so there's room for personal opinion on everything else.
You still seem to be reading things into my posts that I haven't actually said. I also value aspects of my charismatic evangelical past in terms of my spiritual formation and trajectory. I don't think I said otherwise in the posts you refer to but making assumptions based on what you think I might say rather than what I've actually said.
Besides, I haven't had many 'faiths'. I've only had the Christian faith. I was a Christian when I was a Protestant. I am a Christian now I'm Orthodox.
As for what you claim I haven't addressed, I believe I have done so. I will spell it out. In matters of faith and practice I adhere to the Orthodox understanding of Holy Tradition, which includes an Orthodox understanding of scripture.
When I was a Protestant Christian I adhered to a Protestant understanding of these things pretty much in line with whatever group I was involved with.
Unless we have founded our own unique and personal religion we all do that, we adhere to the theology and praxis of whatever that group happens to be. We don't invent it ourselves. That does mean we blindly and blithely go along with everything that's done and said but whatever church or group we are involved with will inform our practice and our interpretation of scripture and much else besides.
So please don't accuse me of having an either/or attitude to my previous church affiliations when a) much of what was there accords with what is taught and practised where I am now (and across Christendom as a whole), b) I still value and quote aspects of what I learned back then and c) I try to maintain an eirenic and ecumenical attitude towards other Christians in whatever tradition, church or denomination they happen to be involved with.
Stop trying to tell me what I do or don't believe. I have indicated that I will try to make my posts clearer in future but it would also help if you read what I've written instead of reading things into it that aren't there and filling any gaps with speculation.
It is available free from Project Gutenberg here
Like all prayer, mysticism is something that is best 'done'. When I have 'done' I have often met God on the road.
Heron
One thing I'd still like to understand is what the term "both/and" means for you, as it has a wide range of possible connotations.
Quite. And from a broader angle, one of the things that crops up early, as an Anglican, is "We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church." It takes a while to find out what that means.
No. It can be summed up as, 'Our understanding of both mysticism and superstition is based on our own reading, research, impressions and experience within the context of the particular faith-group and society we operate within. We draw on sacred texts and received processes of discernment developed within those contexts as well as our own 'nous' and critical faculties and always with the understanding that there is more to learn.'
How's that?
It takes a lifetime (and beyond) to understand what that means in any Christian context, whether Anglican or anything else.
On the both/and thing. I tend to operate on the principle that most things in the Christian faith can be paradoxical and can contain or reconcile apparent contradictions.
So, Christ is both fully God and fully human at one and the same time.
Does faith alone or grace alone save us or is it faith and works or sacraments or belonging to the 'right' church or ...
No, it is Christ that saves and it is not of ourselves but a gift of God.
But how that operates or is worked out or fulfilled in practice is going to depend on a whole range of factors and God mysteriously works in and through it all.
So we shouldn't dichotomise these things or treat them as a mathematical equation.
'Freda had 80% faith and 20% works.'
'Albert's salvation was 25% due to his baptism, 15% down to his good works, 18.7% due to ...'
No. That's not how it works.
'It is God who is at work within us to will and to work his good pleasure.'
Who crucified Jesus? God? Or sinful people?
The scriptures tell us. It was by the 'hands of wicked men' but also, mysteriously, by God's set purpose and foreknowledge.
And so on ...
Baptism. Does that 'save' us? Or is it the faith expressed through baptism? Or is it both? Or much more besides?
I'm not applying 'both/and' as some kind of medieval Scholastic mathematical formula.
I simply think of it as a principle that tends to hold when we are looking at knotty issues such as predestination and freewill or the presence of Christ in the Eucharist or how sacraments (or ordinances) operate or how the Church can be so messy and annoying and yet somehow 'the pillar and ground of the truth.'
Immediately someone will object. It's not the Church but the faith of the Church. In which case we'll apply both/and always acknowledging that Christ is both the 'author and perfector of our faith'.
He isn't the author only but the perfector also. Both/and. That's how these things work, or so it seems to me from what I've been taught in various contexts and my understanding of scripture in the context both of Holy Tradition as understood in an Orthodox context and the consensus of opinion across the Christian world more generally.
Evelyn Underhill's definition is: Which I think carries an echo of Caroline Spurgeon's related answer (not that surprisingly, given the period in which Practical Mysticism was written. Thanks for the reference, Heron.)
Why not 'both/and'?
I'll get me coat ... 😉
That the whole thing is subjective mumbo-jumbo.
Which they are entitled to do so of course.
But hardly surprising from someone coming at it from a non-faith position.
Well it appeared from what you said that it was fine for a person to choose their own church group or theology.
I don't really understand how one can both believe that their understanding informed by all the things you mentioned above can *both* be true *and also* other people's differing understandings can also be a fair alternative understanding.
And how that distinction is functionally different to choosing your own position on these things.
Either the Roman Catholic view is correct or the Protestant view is correct or Spiritualism is correct or Buddhism is correct. I don't really understand how there can be grades of correctness nor how you are making those distinctions.
But maybe these things are too complicated to explain.
Because it’s a popular show, one that many people consider the best Star Wars stuff they’ve seen in a while, and…
Oh, and/or, not Andor…
Never mind. 😛
Fair challenge. I was just accumulating 'and' examples. I should have stopped earlier.
Of course it is fine for people to choose their own religion or philosophy. Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.
Does that mean that I believe the Church of Scientology or the Church of Jesus Christ and Latter Day Saints are 'valid'? No, I don't.
But that doesn't mean people don't have the right to belong to these groups.
As far as Roman Catholicism and Protestantism go, my view is that they are both right on those issues they share in common with traditional creedal Christianity across the board. Where they differ then that's where we have to come down on one side or the other or decide that apparent contradictions can be complementary.
Where we do come down on one side or the other and my own Orthodox Tradition differs from both in various ways, then we still have to show due respect and consideration for them as fellow expressions of the Christian faith.
It's not a zero-sum game.
Newtonian mechanics is more correct than Descartes' or Galileo's theories, but less correct than Einstein's theories of relativity or quantum mechanics. Incidentally, Einstein's theories of relativity and quantum mechanics are contradictory (quantum mechanics is digital and relativity is analogue). Reconciling them has been the major overarching problem of theoretical physics in the last half century.
Or to wheel out another hackneyed example, light is either made of waves or of particles depending on how you measure it.
Protestantism and Roman Catholicism are both varieties of Christianity and have that in common.
Buddhist meditation and Christian contemplative prayer are similar practices, and some Buddhist and Roman Catholic monks have studied and borrowed from each others' traditions.
In any case, thinking that a religion is wrong is not at all the same as thinking it's a superstition. Calling something a superstition to me implies that the explanatory beliefs behind it are not merely wrong but non-existent. (Why is it unlucky to see a black cat? It just is.)
Furthermore, superstition consists of beliefs about empirical outcomes, usually favourable or unfavourable. Mysticism is not an attempt to achieve any kind of empirical outcome except maybe a cessation or redirection of desire for empirical outcomes.
It's possible to reach a range of conclusions about whether a particular faith is helpful and whether it is harmful, or even whether some faiths are more helpful or harmful than others, without needing to determine whether or not any of them are correct. In other words, while being "true" or "correct" is usually quite important to the believers of a faith (although this can vary), it seems less so when it comes to comparing faiths.
On the measure of being helpful, and not being harmful, I think mysticism comes out quite well.
In chapter I, Evelyn Underhill starts by asking "What is mysticism?" which leads pretty quickly into considering a human being's relationship to reality, and then the nature of reality. This progresses from a somewhat philosophical framing to the analogy of a tapestry. Thereafter, it heads back to what I find to be a fairly familiar walk-through of the answer to the question "how am I going to do this?", which is how chapter III starts. Practical Mysticism is pretty much as it says on the cover (real or imagined).
There was, of course a train of thought among some believers, including senior clergy both in the UK and in Germany that the bloodletting of The Great War would have some kind or 'purging' effect and be all to the good.
This may not have gone as far as one bishop's blood-curdling 'Kill them! Kill them!' sermon but there was a lot of this crap about and the prefacd to Practical Mysticism may be a mild nod in this kind of direction.
That wouldn't put me off reading it though, but neither would I consider contemplative prayer or mystical practice as a means of improving the national psyche or character - although I would argue that if we were all calm, mindful and 'dispassionate' about worldly success and getting our own way then the world would indeed be a better place.
Richard Rohr argues that activism needs to be balanced out by contemplation to prevent it becoming brittle and aggressive.
Like @pease I'm grateful to @Heron for the Caroline Spurgeon reference.
I also like @Dafyd's response to @Basketactortale's question.
I don't know but I may be right in thinking that her pacifism developed as a result of WW1. It was certainly very pronounced between the Wars, so that wouldn't surprise me.
Perhaps an Underhill expert can advise on this?
FWIW my own view of Underhill is that she was pretty kosher despite early flirtation with all that 'Golden Dawn' malarkey but her writing style is rather dated though. I think she can be read with profit though and that her heart was in the right place.
'Holy Evelyn Underhill, Anglican mystic, pray for us!'
I was sitting by a river today and contemplating whether "a river" exists. In one sense it obviously exists, birds sit in it, it erodes the banks, boats bob on it.
In another sense, maybe it doesn't. You can't point to a specific object that is "the river" given that it is a constantly moving amount of water. Something that's been happening for millions of years.
Which of course isn't an original thought. Heraclitus seems to have built an entire philosophy on the idea that "you cannot step into the same river twice."
This I would suggest is a true both/and philosophy point.
A "grading" of truth is a completely different thing.
Someone else has offered the concept that the claims of mysticism can be measured against a scale of usefulness.
So who decides that? Some think talking to the dead via a medium is useful, some think it is useless superstition.
"William Shakespeare was the most important French playwright" is more correct than "William Shakespeare was the most important French novelist".
What does that mean?
Now you introduced the phrase 'grades of correctness' so it's possible you've used it with some idiomatic meaning that cannot be deduced from the component parts, in which case I can neither agree nor disagree.
Does this multiply? Is a statement containing 5 lies more correct than one containing 10 lies?
This to me is nonsense.
On the right side is "useful mysticism" in the left side is "dangerous superstition" and there is some kind of effort to sort different spiritual claims so they are more to the one side than the other.
In the case or Spiritualism, I would consider it harmful on several counts but wouldn't set it on some sliding scale of helpfulness or harmfulness in comparison to, say, overly zealous forms of Christian fundamentalism. I'd suggest these things should br judged on their individual merits according to circumstances.
So, for instance, I once read about a woman who was fined for cruelty to her dog for refusing professional veterinary care when it was injured. She was an extreme Pentecostal an insisted on trying to cure the poor creature through prayer. Do I think she deserved to be 'done' for cruelty and neglect? You betcha.
Does that mean that I tar all Pentecostals with the same brush?
No.
So if a Spiritualist took their dog to a vet and a Pentecostal (or Methodist, RC or Orthodox or other 'brand' of Christian didn't), I'd say that the Spiritualist was right and the others wrong, even though doctrinally speaking I'd say the others were closer to the mark.
When it comes to what we might call mysticism - for want of a better word and I agree it's a somewhat loaded term - how do we evaluate it? There's the Pauline thing in 1 Corinthians about the 'things of the Spirit' being 'spiritually discerned' which can sound very circular of course.
I would of course argue that things like Spiritualism or Scientology or Mormonism were beyond the pale because they are incompatible with scripture and tradition as understood from a mainstream small o orthodox perspective as well as a Big O one.
That doesn't mean that I accept everything and anything that flies under a small o or Big O Orthodox banner. I might believe that the 'faith' is nearer the mark in small o and Big O settings but that doesn't mean I think all its practitioners are squeaky clean.
I totally don't understand this concept at all. They make claims about the world, the supernatural, God or the gods, which are either true or false. And as for "helpful" or "harmful," aren't those dependent on what "helpful" and "harmful" are, especially if they may be at least partly dependent on those claims?
Faith positions do make truth-claims of course. I don’t think Pease is denying that. Rather, I think he's saying that if we aren't involved in this, that or the other faith position then it doesn't make much sense for us to deploy concepts such as 'true' or 'correct' as we aren't invested in any of them.
That doesn't mean that there is no such thing as objective truth nor that someone who isn't a believer doesn't accept that there is. They may believe that it is objectively true that all religious positions are superstitious mumbo-jumbo, for instance.
I can see why Pease suggests a 'helpful' / 'harmful' distinction instead but that's going to be difficult to 'prove' one way or another and some practices you or I might consider harmful might be considered helpful by someone else.
So, for instance, I might consider Spiritualism harmful but to someone who doesn't share my particular views on the issue it may appear no more or less harmful than what I get up to in my own religious practices.
I wonder whether it is worth us thinking about the root and impact of the mystical minimalism of Avo Part and Sir John Tavener; and perhaps even the mystical edges of Whitacre and Gjeilo.
Why are composers who so effectively invoke mystical experiences, gaining such traction?
Yesterday I was spending time with Gjeilo's 'Northern Lights' a setting of a text from the Song of Solomon. It drew me in and challenged me and disturbed me. And as the sun rose this morning, lighting the sky, it echoed within.
Cheers
Heron