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Re: Modernism: The Pre-Modern Approach [Part 1]

Sinner Gyst — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 10:52:54 -0000

William Blake ought to "haunt" you. He is credited with keeping alive the works of Jakob Bohme. Such "pre-modern" Hermeticism is the ancient theology of all that is emergent, unifying east with west, reason with nonreason, myth with logos, black with white, sanity with insanity, evil with good; ever-spiraling but never to truth.

Re: Modernism: The Pre-Modern Approach [Part 1]

Sinner Gyst — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 23:33:51 -0000

In "A Mythology of Reason" David Walsh writes that "For the new occult philosophy to work, the old Christian philosophy must be redirected.The individual with the theoretical genius to effect their reconciliation and, thereby, become the transmitter of the new symbolism to the modern world was Jakob Bohme." Discussing Bohme's influence on Hegel, he noted that "Bohme provided for [Hegel] the most profound insight into the modification Christianity must undergo if it was to be reconciled with the spirit of the age [zeitgeist]....He shows the extent to which the earlier Christian definitions of man and God, creation and redemption, must be transformed to accommodate the new roles of the divine and human within history. Above all, it is Bohme who gives expression to the new conception of the process of reality that enables man to become the co-creator in the divine work of creation and redemption, once he has penetrated to the perspective of the mind of God."

Schaeffer, commenting on Romans 12:2, in "True Spirituality" strikes the dichotomy: "Now you will notice here another element in this that is most important in the twentieth century, and in the midst of twentieth century thinking. In the eighteenth verse [Ephesians 4:18 "being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them"] it speaks of 'ignorance.' Ignorance is in relationship to content; it is not just a spirit of ignorance. In verse 21 it speaks of 'the truth. . . in Jesus.' Truth is content, truth has something to do with reason. Truth has something to do with the rational creature that God has made us. The dilemma here in the internal world is not just some sort of gray fog; it is in relationship to content. "Be renewed in the spirit of your mind" (verse 23). This again is not simply a feeling. It's a matter of thoughts in a rational sense, and with content... This is not just an emotional holiness, but holiness in relationship to content,holiness in relationship to thought and a set of things that can be stated as true, in contrast to what is false."

Following Bohme's model, Hegel sought truth in a dialectic synthesis of god and man, heaven and earth. But Schaeffer declares in "The God Who Is There" that "Christianity demands antithesis, not as some abstract concept of truth, but in the fact that God exists, and in personal justification. The biblical concept of justification is a total, personal antithesis. Before justification, we were dead in the kingdom of darkness. The Bible says that in the moment that we accept Christ we pass from death to life. This is total antithesis at the level of the individual man."

Re: Modernism: The Pre-Modern Approach [Part 1]

Sinner Gyst — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 14:32:00 -0000

Oh, sorry. I could have been more precise. "Emergent" and "emerging" is etymologically related to Teilhards "emergence." Google it. E.g.: "For this Jesuit priest, noogenesis is essentially a planetary and mystical Christogenesis, i.e., the evolution of Christ to God-Omega as the divine destiny of humankind." http://www.huumanists.org/rh/birx.html

Sample quote: "The end of the world: the wholesale internal introversion upon itself of the noosphere, which has simultaneously reached the uttermost limit of its complexity and its centrality . . . the overthrow of equilibrium, detaching the mind, furfilled at last, from its material matrix, so that it will henceforth rest with all its weight on God-Omega . . . critical point simultaneously of emergence and emersion, of maturation and evasion." Source: The Phenomenon of Man, bk. IV, ch.3,sec.3 http://quotes.zaadz.com/Pierre_Teilhard_de_Chardin

To track it forward in time to emergent/emerging see http://jmm.aaa.net.au/articles/17689.htm, for example. The lineage is Hegel, Darwin, Haeckel, et al. And before Hegel there was Boehme.

The problem with all this is that Kuhn postulated that "when political recourse fails" to shift the emerging paradigm, that "the parties to a revolutionary conflict must finally resort to the techniques of mass persuasion, often including force."

Re: Modernism: The Pre-Modern Approach [Part 1]

Sinner Gyst — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 17:43:20 -0000

Well, I was part of the original emergent/emerging/emergence movement a generation ago. I even wrote poetry about it. I'd share it if you want to read it (if I can locate it buried in my attic files). It was a wonderful new lightness, brilliance, wonder and awe. Every spiritual thought was original, crystalline and fluid, ever-reaching to new realities. When I read Teilhard and his Hymn of Universe it was the pinnacle. A new Christology, a new eschatology! But suddenly, without warning, a dark side of the light became manifest. It was ruthless and relentless, and in the end I wanted to jump in front of a semi.

Desperate for truth, I sought answers -- years of peeling back layers upon layers to reach the foundation of the matter.

I'll share more if you're willing to listen.

Re: Modernism: The Pre-Modern Approach [Part 1]

Sinner Gyst — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 14:35:28 -0000

Experiences. . . where to begin. . . . Perhaps with a metaphor:

A cool, dark forest with tall trees reaching to the sun, eerie paths without end, shadows and light interplaying among damp leaves. Stillness. Peace. But it wasn't real. Startled, out of the shadows lurks foul beasts, dank smells, a growing oppressiveness. And then suddenly with no warning -- life versus death! Flee the forest! Yet the path is not marked, and the way is not clear. Get out! The underbrush is tangled, twisting and tripping, slimy and oozing. The darkness is encroaching quickly!

There was a way out. I was literally carried out by His Arms. But it wasn't to be the end of the story. I knew the forest. I had lived and breathed the forest for days upon years, and knew it by heart. So, I had to go back into the forest - that dreadful forest - and mark the path, identify the trees, locate the pits, sweep the path, draw a map, post hazard signs, cry aloud into its stifling stillness and perhaps - just perhaps - someone else could find a way out.

So, when I read: "I’m only beginning to explore the “pre-modern” approach to modernism," I recognized the path! I walked it, lived it, exuded it, reached its interior. And I see an incredibly intelligent kid who's being drawn into the calming stillness of the forest because it looks and smells and feels so good. What else can I do but to engage in the "conversation"? And if at first it appears to be a lambasting of the forest (a "severe denouncing" says Websters), it is much more than that. It was a warning, "Look out!" because I happen to know what's around that next tree, and the tree after that, and the path after that. And I know where they all lead. And so I obey, "And others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire..."(Jude 22)

In the posts above I told you about a few of the trees and paths that are nearby the entry point into the forest. Not much. Just a few things. Enough to provide a bit of a roadmap.

Don't ever check in your brain at the edge of the forest. The forest entices with the sweet floral scents of truth. But there is no Truth to be found there.

Re: Let me tell you a story

Sinner Gyst — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 11:20:22 -0000

It was the Spring of 1972. I had just left a dimlit diner in a rundown neighborhood several blocks from a colllege campus, a hippie hangout that provided sandwiches into the wee hours of the night. I was on my way to a coffee-house that was open all night. It was a freebie coffee house that offered Jesus and His salvation to a bedragled group of freaks and druggies that hadn't washed their jeans or their long hair in weeks. Anyone searching was welcome. It was in the basement of a widow woman's home, a lady who years before had a vision from the Lord to open her home to minister to youth.

As I walked, I noticed that a car stopped and dropped off two nice-looking girls in the middle of the block. They came over to me on the sidewalk and asked how to get to the coffee house. Although they were attractive, they were a little rough around the edges. We talked as we walked and I learned a few things about life I hadn't known before - and as a hippie I had seen an awful lot of the rough side of life by age 18, particularly with men. They told me they were fleeing from a motorocycle gang where they had been "kept" for the past few years as the gang prostitutes. They informed me quite matter-of-factly that my life was in danger for helping them to get to this coffee house because when word got out that they had fled it would mean trouble. The kind of trouble that involved whips, chains, weapons, etc.

But they seemed calm. An odd kind of calm that only comes from peace within. They had found Jesus, and He had saved them. So they had to flee, they explained. And someone had told them about this coffee house and they knew if they ran to it that they would be sheltered and helped. They just wanted JESUS. They knew they could "sin no more." I brought them into the coffee house and introduced them to the widow and they hid out a few months. I later heard that the motorcycle gang had come around looking for them, but the coffee house was "protected by God's angels." God had a way of working like that back then. It was a real revival and people's hearts were converted.

Something about this excerpt above troubles me deeply. It is reminiscent of the Scripture, "Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled; notwithstanding ye give them not those things which are needful to the body; what doth it profit?" (James 2:16) A birthday bash for a prostitute is a wonderful thing to do, but what happened next? How did she escape that life? Where was her "john"? How would she survive if she tried to escape? How could she find a way to "go and sin no more"?

I don't mean to be picky. But this excerpt almost makes it seem like it was a party to celebrate prostitution. If there isn't a clear Gospel message of salvation, and how she can become cleansed by the blood of the Lamb (and I know firsthand, these women FEEL the DIRT), then she's only been offered a cake and a prayer. Not a life, and not a new life.

Authentic Christianity not only has a party for her, but tells her about Jesus the only "man" Who will never fail her, and THEN goes the extra miles by doing tangible things to help her out of that environment - even if it dangerous, even if it is self-sacrificing, even if it is costly. There is a radical ("to the root") Christianity in which you even go so far as to open your home and minister 24/7. The widow lady did it. We've done it.

But why would we care to do this unless we had first tasted the cool water that cleanses, and experienced the new life that heals and restores, and knew for a certainty that we lived on borrowed time because it is "no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me"?