Author: Interfaith

Prayer without G!d or supernatural intervention

prayer, an act of communication by humans with the sacred or holy—God, the gods, the transcendent realm, or supernatural powers. Found in all religions in all times, prayer may be a corporate or personal act utilizing various forms and techniques.

I’m going with transcendent realm…A transcendent realm is a realm that is beyond the physical and material universe, and is often associated with divine consciousness, absolute truth, or ultimate reality.

I’m going with ultimate reality.

The way I see it…for me…prayer is an act, an attempt to change my mind, encourage me to work to change some current position or perspective…to shine light on solutions to my dilemma … or perceived dilemma.

Pray but move your feet.  In my life I do not believe prayer can do anything without me acting on it.  I do not expect to be able to bend the universe to my will…or expect any supernatural force or entity to come to my rescue.

I use concepts of meditation and prayer to examine situations I have put myself in and explore ways to change them and strive not for the best for me, but the best for all, or maybe most, or some, but more than me.

If it is to be it is up to me…used to be my mantra…but I have learned how much I benefit from the good works of others…all the time, in every aspect of my life, the food I eat, the place I live, the cars I travel in, the events I go to…are a culmination of human effort put forth for my benefit humans that do not know me in China assemble computers and cellphones that make this missive possible…and they are only the last in a chain of scientists, entrepreneurs, philosophers and laborers who have literally moved mountains to make all this possible today…they are my unknown unsung heroes, my gods who have created my world…they have lived (and most have died) for my, our benefit,  they are who I revere and am thankful for.

I go into prayer not to beseech some spirit to affect my health or wealth…but to find a place of calm and acceptance for my current situation and seek what I can do to change it.

I go into prayer to calm my anxious mind that contemplates the worst, that has a tendency to blame others for my current misfortune. … and either find and begin the steps to change…or the acceptance of what is.

I feel blessed in the face of the turmoil that is going on in our world and in my body, blessed that the pain and troubles exist…and so yet do I.

I am grateful that I can express and explore my feelings and beliefs here…

Love you all, and my wish is you find the same solace in your beliefs as I do in my nonbelief.

 

wil May 31, 2024

Visit Thread: https://www.interfaith.org/community/threads/21151/

 

 

Ezekiel 37

And so the conversation continues from another thread . . .

RJM said:
I don’t see why not? Ezekiel describes all kinds of strange visions that could hardly have been familiar to his readers?

Of course he used language that was familiar to his listeners. Most people back then were illiterate, and so they wouldn’t have read it. If you were an astrophysicist, would you explain astrophysics with your own language and concepts to a people steeped in mythological thinking? I don’t think so.

I suppose RJM is referring to the following from Ezekiel as strange:

And when I looked, there were four wheels by the cherubim, one wheel by one cherub and another wheel by each other cherub; the wheels appeared to have the colour of a beryl stone. As for their appearance, all four looked alike—as it were, a wheel in the middle of a wheel. When they went, they went toward any of their four directions; they did not turn aside when they went … And their whole body, with their back, their hands, their wings, and the wheels that the four had, were full of eyes all around. As for the wheels, they were called in my hearing, “Wheel.”

Are you sure it would have been strange to his listeners, however? What do you, as a person that doesn’t live in the age of mythological thinking, find strange about it? Or, better yet, what do you think Ezekiel’s contemporaries would have found strange about it? To me, it makes sense that his audience was already familiar with the resurrection concept after Zoroastrian influence.

Thomas said:
I think the encyclopedia’s probably wrong, because the dates don’t match for a widespread belief in literal resurrection in Ezekiel’s day – the article is well over 100 years old, there’s been a lot of scholarship since then …

Yes, there has been a lot of scholarship since then, but a lot of scholars are saying the same thing. See Jon D. Levenson, a professor of Jewish studies at Harvard and one of the most influential scholars in the field, who wrote in Resurrection and Restoration (which was published in 2006): “If resurrection were thought ludicrous, or impossible even for God, then it would be a singularly inappropriate metaphor for the national renewal and restoration that Ezekiel predicts, and the vision in Ezek 37:1-10 could never have succeeded in its goal of overcoming the hopelessness of the audience.”

By “others,” are you talking about all the Church Fathers? I am struggling to find one that disagrees with Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, and Tertullian. Is the tradition they were handed wrong? Also, are you also talking about New Testament authors like Matthew, who probably understood Ezekiel 37 literally too? “The tombs were also opened and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised” (Matthew 27.52; Ezekiel 37.12).

 

Ahanu Apr 28, 2024

Visit thread: https://www.interfaith.org/community/threads/21126/

 

 

No false prophet will be established in Israel

Ezekiel 13 is about false prophets “that prophesy out of their own hearts”. God says to them, “Woe unto the foolish prophets, that follow their own spirit, and have seen nothing!” And that they have contributed naught to Isreal “to stand in the battle in the day of the Lord”

This reflects the many warnings the New Testament offers about false prophets.

Ezekial 13 up to verse 9 talks of these false prophets, then we get to verse 9.

9 And mine hand shall be upon the prophets that see vanity, and that divine lies: they shall not be in the assembly of my people, neither shall they be written in the writing of the house of Israel, neither shall they enter into the land of Israel; and ye shall know that I am the Lord God. (Bold by me)

God has stated that no false prophets will enter the land of Israel, let alone to the established in Israel.

Verses 10 to 16 are about a wall daubed with untempered morter, a wall that God will bring down. A personal thought on this was the wailing wall and the mortar was the prayers tucked inside the cracks, that then ties to verses 17 to 23.

Verses 17 to 23 I have no solid thoughts about, but they appear to be expanding upon the extent that false prophecy has permeated society as a whole. The extent that false prophecy has influenced our mind and prayers.

So the two main points I will raise are.

1) If a prophet comes to Isreal and is established therein, then verse 9 would indicate they are not false. I see this supports Jesus, Muhammad, the Bab and Baha’u’llah.

2) It appears verses 10 to 16 could very well be a prophecy about the wailing wall, be it symbolic or has a material unfoldment.

Happy to discuss in a friendly manner.

Regards Tony

 

Tony Bristow-Stagg 6/04/2024

Visit thread: https://www.interfaith.org/community/threads/21133/

 

 

 

Understanding esoterism

Christianity – indeed any religion – is essentially a discernment between God and the world, between the Real and the unreal, the Absolute and the relative, the Eternal and the contingent. Following from this, religion is the union of the two.

Religions are exoteric to the degree that they are shaped by their sitz in leben (‘setting in life’), the environment in which they appear and the conditions under which they take form.

They are esoteric in the sense that it is through these external forms – primarily scripture and its tradition – that is communicated the vivifying essence of that to which it attains. The esoteric is such to the degree that it is discreet, nevertheless implicit, in the forms. Thus Jesus said “To you it is given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God: but to them that are without, all things are done in parables” (Mark 4:11) – this is not to say the knowledge of the kingdom remains hidden to the ‘without’, as He also said “He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.” (Mark 4:9, 4:23 & 7:16).

In that regard, the ‘esoteric’ is always and necessarily a complement to the exoteric, you cannot have one without the other; you cannot apprehend or make sense of the esoteric other than by its complementary exoteric form – it is the esoteric that makes sense of the form, and it is the form that transmits the sense of the esoteric. It is precisely through the forms that the formless makes itself known. The esoteric is like a fluid, itself shapeless, but which adopts the shape of the form into which it is poured – the shapes vary across the religions, the fluid is the same.

All authentic religions are, eventually and inevitably, apophatic, because they transcend the world of forms, the scope of knowledge. Thus we can speak of confessional esoterisms, as a constituent part of the expression of a tradition in all its forms, in its symbologies, for example, or its rites and liturgies – each religion giving rise to its own, to a greater or lesser degree ‘transparent’ from the standpoint of metaphysics.

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When one speaks of a confessional esoterism, this speaks of the loftiest, subtlest, most interior part of a doctrine (esoteric derives from the Greek ἐσωτέρω (esōtérō, ‘further inside’), the ‘spirit’ with regard to the exoteric ‘letter’. One is speaking of an integral doctrine in respect of its nature, leaving aside the necessary requirements of pastoral care (cf 1 Corinthians 3:1-3).

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Thus there is a distinction between ‘Esoteric Christianity’ and ‘Christian esoterism’ – the latter is talks of the distinction between the God and the world as such, according to the Revealed data of its extrinsic forms – scripture and tradition.

‘Esoteric Christianity’ has come to infer an absolute and formal distinction – a dualism and a dichotomy – commonly spoken of in ‘esoteric circles’ as a Johannine (esoteric) Christianity as other to and distinct from a Petrine (exoteric) Christianity. Nothing could be further from the two, as in fact Peter and John are one in Christ, as is clear from the mention of them both together no less than seven times in Acts, and Paul speaks of them (with James), as the ‘pillars’ of the Christian community (Galatians 2:9).

This distinction undermines the very essence of the Revelation in Christ – of the unity of spirit and matter (which itself can be traced back to Genesis) – and the nature of the Incarnation, with its consequent implication for humanity. Too often, and too easily, a syncretic grafting of various extraneous teachings and ideas are attempted to ‘explain’ Christianity whereas all this does is demonstrate a failure to properly comprehend and understand the true nature of the Revelation – something which the metaphysician recognises – for what it is, a Path unlike others in material detail, but alike and akin to them in essence.

 

 

Thomas Jan 26, 2024

Visit Thread: https://www.interfaith.org/community/threads/21003/

 

laws of nature…

please use this thread to teach verifiable laws of nature…

I would like to start with a question.

How is it, in the case of fossils, that the dead animal completely disintegrates (bones etc.) but the dirt it left the impression in keeps the shape and becomes completely solid. Wouldn’t it make more sense since the dirt I assume is wet when it takes the imprint that since the carcass is more solid initially, the the dirt would lose the shape and the carcass remains intact then the other way around?

Please get back to me and let me know how this is explained.

 

abuyusufalshafii Feb 16, 2024

Visit Thread: https://www.interfaith.org/community/threads/21027/

 

 

on Faith

There is a saying – ‘the first thing one knows is the last thing one understands’, and such is faith.

“Now faith is the substance of things to be hoped for, the evidence of things that appear not” (Hebrews 11:1), but, by the Grace of God, in some manner we can aspire to “the ultimate summit of your mystical knowledge, most incomprehensible, most luminous and most exalted, where the pure, absolute and immutable mysteries of theology are veiled in the dazzling obscurity of the secret Silence, outshining all brilliance with the intensity of their Darkness, and surcharging our blinded intellects with the utterly impalpable and invisible fairness of glories surpassing all beauty.” (Dionysius the pseudoAreopagite, The Mystical Theology, I, 1)

The ‘ultimate summit’ is such that it cannot be known, because it transcends all forms, and thus cannot be attained by knowledge, but only by faith, and a ‘leap into the dark’, which again, is what faith is.

 

Thomas 24/02/2024

Visit thread: https://www.interfaith.org/community/threads/21042/#post-388850

 

 

The Catholic state of play

According to a recent Pew survey, 50% of US Catholics believe the bread and wine become the Body and Blood of Christ, that is, they believe in the Transubstantiation.

The other half — a staggering 50% — think the change is ‘symbolic’.

Fr Dwight Longernecker — from whom I’ve filched this article — suggests a number of causes, the easiest to point a finger at being 50 years of ‘raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens’ catechesis, and most respondents here at IO seem to have an expeience of questions ignored or chopped off short.

Others (not here) blame Vatican II, and the liberalising of the Church, culminating in ‘Father Fabulous’ with his Day-Glo vestments, churches that look like a spaceships and music that seems to be a blend of Joan Baez, the Carpenters and campfire songs — in short, that religion should be hip, be cool …

This particular debate goes way back. The Fourth Lateran Council in 1215, the Council of Trent (1545-63). Trent was a response to the Protestant revolutionaries. Luther proposed “consubstantiation” and the Anglicans “receptionism”, while Calvin and Zwingli argued for a merely symbolic presence of Christ at the celebration of the Eucharist.

Modern Materialist Christian Man believes Christianity is a human endeavour, the product of a certain historical period and culture. As such, it not only may change, but it must change according to the time and culture in which it finds itself. In other words, Christianity is a relative religion. Not only is the Eucharist a symbol, it’s all a symbol/metaphor/analogy/myth.

(A note: Had the Church adopted this change with the times attitude, it wouldn’t be here today, any more than the structures of those times … even idealistic 60/70s Christian movements are dying as the generation passes …)

Modern Mysticist Christian Man (admittedly way, way less than 50%) believes that the dogmas of faith are not relative, but Revealed. The Incarnation, the Trinity, the Sacraments. The Words and the Deeds – the Eucharist and the entire Christian faith is not symbolic but supernatural. It is revealed by God, and as such transcends the vagaries of history and culture.

Longernecker makes a nice analogy:
In our downstairs bathroom we have a collection of family photographs. There I am as a child of two in my father’s arms. Next to it is a family photo when I am five, another when I am 12, then my high school portrait, my college years and then yesterday’s me … an old bald man. The physical form has changed, but in each photograph you can see it’s me. That invisible, unchanging person is my substance.

It is this “substance” of the bread and wine that changes, the ‘me’ of it. All that has happened is the ontological source has been affirmed and, if you like, actuated. If God cannot imbue the eucharistic species with his essence, than neither can man attain ‘enlightenment’ or ‘salvations’ or ‘deliverance’ or whatever you want to call it … God is more unlike us than we are unlike bread and wine. In fact God is nothing like us … so why we should think that we can achieve what cannot be achieved by any other collection of atoms in the cosmos, well …

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Mystery religions are unfashionable, unless they wear their mystery on their sleeves. Same with spirituality, whatever … ‘no pain, no gain’, the motto goes, but what if there is pain but no gain to the authentic spiritual life? Not so enticing now, it seems …

… so we slide back into eros, into the ecstatic, the whoo-hoo of mysticism, that the mystic is imbued with some kind of ‘I-know-something-you-don’t know’ Mona Lisa smile, and if you can pull that off, and write a book, you’re made.

The religion of the age is scientism. It’s the basis of faith, or rather the basis of a faith that says if it cannot be empirically determined, it cannot be.

Me? I long for an authentic Christian Mystagogia — a deeper seating of the faithful in the Mysteries of the Church, a chance to drink from deep wells … but my God, would that put you at odds with the world!

Really, in trying to stay still, we’ve gone backwards. That diet is all too rich for us now. I read the lessons of St Augustine to the Catechumen and I’m staggered by what he tells them. Say that today and it won’t be long before someone cries heretic or insists its an assertion of pantheism, or a ‘spiritual analogy’.

 

 

Thomas Aug 6, 2019

Visit Thread: https://www.interfaith.org/community/threads/19154/

 

 

 

Common doctrine and a Baha’i-Christian dialogue

This follows from a discussion elsewhere, but as it is off-topic on that thread, I thought I might start a new one, and hope to keep the discussion on track.

The salient point was this:

Tony Bristow-Stagg said:
As an example, to offer in all sincerity the Oneness of God and the Oneness of humanity both Islam and Christianity will have to let go of some doctrines.

Does that not rather imply the Baha’i view both Islam and Christianity as lacking sincerity? Again, which doctrines do you see as evidence of that?

Tony Bristow-Stagg said:
Anything that prevents us embracing the One God in the Messengers of Muhammad and Jesus, to name but a couple.

That’s a rather nebulous answer – I doubt any religious authority will agree to ‘anything’ when asked precisely what dogmas and doctrines they will be obliged to ‘let go’.

The issue here is how Catholicism and Baha’i perceive ‘oneness.’

Nostra Aetate is The Declaration on the relation of the (Catholic) Church to non-Christian Religions (Vatican II, 1965)

1.1 – In our time, when day by day mankind is being drawn closer together, and the ties between different peoples are becoming stronger, the Church examines more closely her relationship to non-Christian religions. In her task of promoting unity and love among men, indeed among nations, she considers above all in this declaration what men have in common and what draws them to fellowship.

In the Christian view, the whole creation is a theophany, and speaks of the One True God in all its multiplicity and diversity – as Nature teaches – as a good. It seems to me you want to do away with this diversity of religious expression, in favour of a particular ‘oneness’.

One is the community of all peoples, one their origin, for God made the whole human race to live over the face of the earth. One also is their final goal, God. His providence, His manifestations of goodness, His saving design extend to all … until that time when the elect will be united in the Holy City, the city ablaze with the glory of God, where the nations will walk in His light.
Here the Church speaks of oneness and community – a unity in diversity.

… Thus in Hinduism, men contemplate the divine mystery and express it through an inexhaustible abundance of myths … through searching philosophical inquiry … through ascetical practices or profound meditation or a flight to God with love and trust. Again, Buddhism, in its various forms, realizes the radical insufficiency of this changeable world; it teaches a way … to acquire the state of perfect liberation, or attain, by their own efforts or through higher help, supreme illumination. Likewise, other religions … each in its own manner, by proposing “ways,” comprising teachings, rules of life, and sacred rites. The Catholic Church rejects nothing that is true and holy in these religions. She regards with sincere reverence those ways of conduct and of life, those precepts and teachings which, though differing in many aspects from the ones she holds and sets forth, nonetheless often reflect a ray of that Truth which enlightens all… in whom God has reconciled all things to Himself.
My emphasis – the Catholic Church rejects nothing in those religions, whereas the Baha’i will require a ‘letting go’ of dogmas and doctrines, rites and liturgies.

Thus where thew Church recognises many “Ways”, the Baha’i acknowledges only one.

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Looking more closely, it seems clear that Christianity will have to ‘let go’ its very foundational doctrines – of Jesus Christ, the Only-Begotten Son of God; of the Holy Spirit and the Life in the Blessed Trinity … furthermore it would seem to imply that Scripture and Tradition would have to be edited, redacted and reworked to fit the Baha’i model.

And the same applies to Islam and Judaism, Hinduism and Buddhism.

Tony Bristow-Stagg said:
Anything that prevents us from embracing the Councels sent by God.

By which you mean the ‘cousels of God’ as delivered by your messengers take priority and stand as the authoritative measure of the counsels of every other religion?

Tony Bristow-Stagg said:
Otherwise, the Unity, peace and security of all of humanity is not possible.

But I don’t think this will be true ‘unity’, as unity implies diversity, and you seek to abolish diversity in thought and practice.

As the Baha’i have no clergy nor a liturgy, are we all obliged to ‘let go’ our clergies ands our liturgies? Our sacraments?

It seems to me your peace and security will be achieved only with the evisceration of religions, rendering them glove puppets promoting Baha’i doctrine?

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Our Scripture says:
“There is neither Jew nor Greek: there is neither bond nor free: there is neither male nor female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus.
(Galatians 3:28, cf Colossians 3:11 and Romans 10:12)

Clearly, there are Jews and Greeks, men and women, but there is a Unity and a Oneness that transcends the World of Forms – it does not do away with them, as you seek to do – its love is greater.

In short, I think your ‘oneness’ is, metaphysically and philosophically, a categorical error (in the sense it confuses distinct categories of being and nature)

 

Thomas  8/02/2024

Visit Thread: https://www.interfaith.org/community/threads/21013/