“Shalom, therefore is not detached from the reality of everyday life in the world, nor is it in any sense super spiritual, utopian, or otherworldly…It is well-being that exists in the very midst of threats — from sword and drought and wild animals…Active and practical, shalom never avoids the realities of an imperfect world.” Last…
Category
Christianity
Death (of God or anything else) is Not Radical, it’s Natural: A Good Friday Reflection
“Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die;”” John 11:25 Good Friday is the day Christians commemorate the crucifixion and death of Jesus. There are a few theories out there regarding why Good Friday is called “Good Friday.” The one…
Every Moment is a Loss and Every Moment is a Gain: More on Ontic-Shock, Psychoanalysis & Perpetual Perishing-Birthing
“One pulse of enjoyment follows another, and, as their number grows, all the pulses form the serial society we call the soul. It is like a growing pile of coins. Each pulse takes in all the frozen data from its predecessors and adds novel feelings of its own. The occasion does not passively copy the…
I don’t believe in God but I’m very interested in her: LeRon Shults, Adaptive Atheism, Science, and Human Development
“I don’t believe in God but I’m very interested in her.” –Arthur C. Clarke I recently listened to another great interview with theologian/philosopher, LeRon Shults. Every time I listen to LeRon he challenges me and gets me thinking. I really appreciate this about him. Reflecting back, though, every time I hear LeRon talk about his…
“Lack” is The Wrong Word: Psychoanalysis, Sickness, Despair, and Demanding a Root Canal When a Filling Will Do
“One of Nietzsche’s objections to Christianity was, he said, that Christianity depends on the notion that Nature has brought forth this sick creature of which it (Christianity) is the cure; and I think psychoanalysis sounds like that. It’s brought forth something sick, something “lacking” of which it (psychoanalysis) is the cure. “Lack” is the absence…
Reflections on Nature, Super-Nature, Eternal Objects, Thumbnail Sketches, and the Cosmic Animal
“It is nonsense to conceive of nature as a static fact, even for an instant devoid of duration. There is no nature apart from transition, and there is no transition apart from temporal duration.” –Whitehead … “It is as true to say that God is permanent and the World fluent, as that the World is…
The quest for certainty is futile, and yet fruitful life requires convictions.
“Henry Nelson Wieman’s greatest contribution, in my opinion, is his empirical demonstration that the process of creative transformation is one that can be empirically described and that this description shows that, although it can be facilitated and served, it cannot be managed or controlled by human beings. On the other hand, I concluded that Wieman’s…
I know there were blind poets but I don’t think there were ever any blind philosophers…
“My view is that the whole of Western Philosophy has assumed that the basic way in which we know the World, and anything outside of ourselves, is through vision. I know there were blind poets but I don’t think there were ever any blind philosophers, and I think that’s a great loss…the Bible is not…
The Absolute is That Which Has No Relation: Thoughts on Religious and Ontological Pluralism
“[Universalism]…is a lovely sentiment but it is dangerous, disrespectful, and untrue. For more than a generation we have followed scholars and sages down the rabbit hole into a fantasy world in which all gods are one. This wishful thinking is motivated in part by an understandable rejection of the exclusivist missionary view that only you…
Trans-unification – Toward Multiplicity
“When the “One” becomes invisible again, this is really not about the loss of monism, but of dualism. The disappearance of dualism is really a condition for the liberation of multitude. Gilles Deleuze has the formula that as soon as dualism vanishes “monism is pluralism.” The same strategy, I think, appears in Loomer’s theopoetic language…