Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by James C Schultz on 5th mo. 16, 2010 at 1:22am

Forest, good to hear from you again. Hope you are well. With regard to knowing God, isn't what George Fox said about the books and preachers not being enough on point? As someone above pointed out God himself is indescribable by our limited abilities. However Jesus is that Picture that is worth a Thousand Words. As he told the Apostles when Philip asked Him to show them the Father, he that has seen me has seen the Father. John 14:8 & 9.
What I believe George Fox emphasized in his journal was that book learning isn't enough, you need a spiritual revelation through the Holy Spirit.

Permalink Reply by Forrest Curo on 5th mo. 16, 2010 at 11:50am

It's good to let the Holy Spirit guide you to books (people, places, thoughts) that can stimulate you to new perspectives, deepen what you already know... and in that reading/thinking, keep in mind that you need the Holy Spirit to guide your efforts to see clearly through such lenses. I gather, from having read in his Journal now and then, that George Fox also was learning from inside and outside both. We have not been placed in a disembodied realm, but one that features both forms of influence.

The elements of our picture of Jesus... can use a little error-correction on the pixels. What does it mean to "see" Jesus? The earliest pictorial representations depict him as Asclepius, with no beard, while later images look like whatever people lived where those images were made. Okay, it's not a physical image you're talking about--But the mental images people form of him have the same problem of resembling the person who constructs them.

So we're pretty much stuck with assembling a concept made from words-- from someone who said that if we want to honor him we should be digesting his words (and the message embodied in them).

Permalink Reply by James C Schultz on 5th mo. 16, 2010 at 3:04pm

I'm reminded of the story of the Tower of Babel. When I first heard the story I was told that it was the origin of the world's languages. Being three score and ten I am not sure that the person who told me that when I was less than 10 knew what she was talking about. Having experienced numerous misunderstandings in conversations and especially in letters while supposedly communicating in the same language, I tend to believe that it was the beginning of words being interpreted in accordance with the hearer's desires or perception(s) and not the speaker's intent. In many instances words are insufficient to describe the beauty of a sunset. A picture comes much closer, even from the simplest camera. Unfortunately those of us who haven't seen Jesus must rely on words. But on occasion, as we meditate on what those who saw him tell us, the Holy Spirit can give us a "Eureka moment" when we catch a glimpse of His beauty and are transformed by that beauty into a more Christlike being. It is in those moments that we "know" Jesus and in those moments that our relationship with Him grows. It's like going to our neighbor's bbq and breaking bread with him. It's a relationship that is in the process of being transformed from a "nodding acquaintance" to a "friend in need".

Permalink Reply by Forrest Curo on 5th mo. 18, 2010 at 11:53pm

One can interpret the word "Christ" to mean "the Spirit that manifests [more or less fully] in human life", so that Jesus (aside from his First Century political title "Messiah", which has the literal meaning of "Christ" but a whole different cultural significance) can be described as a man who brought forth that Spirit to an extraordinary degree.

Would being "Christ-centered" have that kind of meaning to you?-- seeking to let that Spirit develop and have its way in you?

The "Liberal Friend" translation of this "Spirit" would be "that of God in a person." So I see this Spirit, this life in us, as having been more fully manifest in Jesus than in the rest of us-- And by that, a person who looks at Jesus and sees God isn't just mistaking a man for the Creator; he's seeing what's there in every human soul, only not as clearly so.

(This confuses me too, but feels true!)

Permalink Reply by scot miller on 5th mo. 22, 2010 at 9:02pm

First, it's great to hear from you Benjamin! E mail me at my earlham address so we can catch up. Also, after writing this post, I realize that it is impossibly negative, and apologize to Forest for what might seem like an attack. I believe I could have responded more lovingly and in better understanding, but I will stick with the
original for honesty's sake. Better that everyone know me for what I am, that what I'd like to be.
It has been a while since I posted on this topic originally, but I am certainly interested in the recent posts. The most important response in this ongoing conversation, the one that speaks most to my condition, is T. Vail Palmer’s “sense of being part of the people of God.” In response to Forest’s concern about the implication of the “Christ” title, and it’s meaning in regard to context, the point of my post is that Jesus of Nazareth belongs at the heart of Friends faithfulness because of the historical actions that were consciously undertaken by Jesus in response to YHWH’s covenant with Israel – the People of God. Jesus’ faithfulness to covenant obligations paved the way for the nations to join the People of God as the appropriate response to Empire and oppression. This is no mystical messianic concern, but something concrete – aside from miracles, virgin births, and pie-in-the-sky salvation interpretations – in the actions of Jesus that were necessarily human. This does not mean that Jesus must necessarily be deified. Still, in regards to the point made that Jesus is not necessary to salvation, he certainly is within the context of the historical Quaker story. The myth of Jesus as representative of salvation found through YHWH is integral to Friends as a unifier. Testimonies are no unifier without an originating authority that has been tested corporately. Just because an individual has been led to feel that nonviolence is a proper response to evil is a nice tidy way to keep clean of the nastiness of humanity.
This is the danger of so-called personal relationships with Jesus that I was concerned with in the original post.
That danger is so evident in the modern Society of Friends, a sort of closet modernism that subscribes to the supremacy of the individual experience at the expense of corporate affirmation. It seems to me that when Forest speaks of experiences of the divine, and of how difficult it is to “know” the deity, or that Jesus is just one way to know God, he limits conversation intentionally by marginalizing the Christ-centered faith. How can one sit at the table of conversation when there is an understanding that no particular knowledge of God can be vindicated by history? I imagine that Forest would respond that he has no need to be vindicated by God, or history, or any particularity outside of his own experience. This may be the ultimate goal of the individual, but it is a goal more appropriate for consumers, and not a people who identify themselves a peculiar people.
Forest is entirely correct about the importance of individual experience, and the importance of language and metaphor. However, all religious experience is necessarily bound by language, otherwise its individualistic nature is irrelevant to the spiritual questions of the community at hand. Community gives common language to religious experience as a means of facilitating intelligibility amongst neighbors, and codifying experiences so that experiences of the Spirit can be interpreted and affirmed as being truly of God. Without relevant linguistic codes and metaphors as unifying signifiers, individual experience turns into ranterism.
It is the common language of Christ-centeredness in the context of Christian theology that made my original post about modalism open to discussion. The common language, and a history of individual experiences given meaning by that language, made the discussion intelligible to most of the posters. I had a very difficult time, however, putting Forest’s contributions into context, and many of them seem to be attempts to marginalize the particular nature of both, the questions of the original post and most of the responses that stayed within the commonly identified themes of historical Christian and Quaker theological concerns.
Theology is indeed closely related to poetics. Yet, capitalism and western individualism has turned many of the west’s founding narratives, metaphors, and particularities into consumer relevant goods that necessitate the meaning of these unifiers be equated with nostalgia and derided as quaint representations of the past that make people feel better about the more popular mythology of “a time of simpler days.” Yet, poetics attempts to signify the inexplicable by maintaining that the inexplicable can be understood from a variety of points of view with the onus of interpretation and meaning-giving wholly dependent upon the individual. A poetics of theology should place the onus of interpretation and meaning-making on a community of faith, so that a distinctive and particular response to the inexplicable realities of life can be given an understanding that serves the community. Modernist poetics suggests that universals are appropriate places for particularities to be relevant to the whole. Peculiar theologies that are invested in the unifying nature of linguistic and interpretive boundaries, such as a Christ-centered history of salvation and revelation of a particular deity are those communities that insist that diversity is important because of its ability to maintain diversity, and not just to make a more consumer-appealing socio-political, economic, or most importantly, spiritual universal truth or lack of truth. I would rather be invested in a world that has competing truths than one that regards the annexation of particularity as an ultimate goal.

Permalink Reply by Forrest Curo on 5th mo. 23, 2010 at 12:05am

I wouldn't need an apology for “being attacked,” even if I had been.

I would, however, like better attention to what I've been saying, enough to distinguish it from certain things I haven't been saying, no matter how many times you may have heard that “Liberal Friends believe ___”!

I am not “subscribing to the supremacy of the individual experience”; I am affirming the supremacy of what gives rise to it. I am not “talking about my experiences,” as one of Fox's critics put it, but referring to something that's been available for me to experience and remains available for anyone to experience.

I continue to find what Jesus said and did of utmost importance; but I don't think he was hanging there to serve as anybody's “unifier”. He was given the office of de jure King of Israel at a time and in circumstances where this could only lead to his death, with a profound effect on the lives of subsequent humanity. It was not to give anyone a “Get out of Hell free” card; though it has helped free many people from the “Hell on Earth” they would have produced for themselves without his influence. I myself have found the effort to understand his meanings essential; but if he helps you in some other way, okay.

Any particular knowledge of God... is to be vindicated by God. Period.

History can certainly toss us some puzzles, as to what God intends and how God works toward it. But God is not under history's jurisdiction. God does not require a community of faith to assign Him a useful meaning; God is the meaning.

A community of Truth can only be built upon spiritual bedrock. All your ricketty ladders of tradition and interpretation ultimately rest upon that, or they rest upon nothing. If you leave off tacking these things together, you can cut to the Foundation of them. If we disagree after that, God remains to settle our confusions.

Permalink Reply by Forrest Curo on 5th mo. 24, 2010 at 11:50am

If you want to label my position, try "Low-Christology/high-anthropology."

Jesus was not "merely human" and neither are we.

In the language of another religion, "Atman is Brahman." (But Atman hides itself beneath a thick thicket of verbiage aka "ego". Hmm, does this sound like the "Saw that I was naked" aspect of 'The Fall'?) "In God's image" and "breathed His life into mankind" are more familiar allusions.

And no, I don't need to go to Quaker Meeting to hear any doctrine whatsoever (nor any number of cliches). Neither do I need to go there to find God. But going offers a helpful reminder to pay attention again.

What I keep finding in this discussion-- is lots of talk about how people "should" conceive their religion, with very little realization that said religion is actually about something, with a reality beyond us (whether you take that to mean "us as individuals" or as any collective entity you may consider more authoritative.)

Permalink Reply by Forrest Curo on 5th mo. 24, 2010 at 9:02pm

I just tend not to be on anyone's theological spectrum. Being all things to all people (often the wrong things) and thereby confusing to most.

The rule at Pendle Hill was "In speaking, use the theological language that makes sense to you, and in listening, translation is your responsibility." If we could all agree on that rule it would make for better arguments.

Permalink Reply by Nanna Kapp on 7th mo. 17, 2010 at 4:13pm

Friend James,

I am in agreement with what you have written. Simply explained, and especially the last few lines which shows the similarity of my own experiences. Thank you for sharing this.

Peace to you,

Nanna Kapp

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