That's not the question. What both Wil and I were wondering was is the expression of love that begins where agape leaves off.
No, Thomas, I am asking
you to think about it. It's a
very good question. If I could accurately and adequately tell you about Love
greater than you have heard about in the Bible, and via the message preached by Christ Jesus ... I WOULD be a person of Christ's authority or greater. Yet you are trying to reverse the tables here. It doesn't work that way. What I have done is invited you to Ponder.
Either you will accept my invitation, and also my assurance that I do NOT have the authority which I have referenced (not my finger, Thomas, what is it
POINTING toward, even if neither of us can as yet properly describe it) ... or else you can just play the game and
cop out. The latter does not mean there
is no such a Love, nor does considering it mean that there is - but unless you accept my invitation, you may never know!
+++
{on Eidos}
You said:
It means 'image', 'form' or 'shape', although in Aristotle it means the essence of a thing and its primary substance.
If I were to talk of eidos, I would connect it with theos, the former meaning 'something that is seen' and the latter meaning 'that which sees' ... thus the primary image of God is that which sees all (and thus stands above all) and made in the image, we are made to view (also derived from the term) all, from our particular vantage point ... with all that the idea (another derivation of the term) implies.
And I agree! I agree with you because, as we are told in Scripture that we are created
in the IMAGE of the Divine. This means we
A) can RELATE to the Divine to begin with, B) this being so precisely because we SHARE in the Divine Nature, and C) the nature of this sharing means we CAN understand something of our Creator(s) as we develop our relationship to said Being(s) and vice versa.
On point
A, and with specific consideration of the
Eidos ... we have a
meeting of the Mind(s). I believe it is said,
let that Spirit be in YOU which was in Christ Jesus. This has EVERYTHING to do with Mind; not mortal mind, but rather
Christ Mind, Divine Mind, Illumined Mind ... aka, the Holy Spirit.
On point
B, it is not required of the Christian to believe that her own nature is utterly and irredeemably sinful. She need not accept the dogma which has formed and been propagated as the notion of
original sin. She is free to recognize her own faults and shortcomings, to notice
for herself that she is capable both of conformity to God's Laws as well as deviation, and - MOST importantly - to choose the FORMER, rather than the latter.
Were there no GOOD innately (because Divinely
Provided and NEVER `lost') within her, she might be forced to choose -
sin. Yet because there IS Good within the human heart (still, always, eternally - called by St. Paul,
"Christ in YOU, the Hope of Glory") ... because of this, because the aspiring Christian DOES share in the Divine Nature, she is capable of answering
that Call rather than the whisperings of temptation, and this leads us to:
Point
C, wherein
we come, increasingly AS God already does, though not
as yet to such a Universal degree, to SEE ALL.
Our Vision as yet, at best, remains limited
while God's remains as it always, ever has, ever shall be - WHOLE. But the ESSENCE of that Wholeness, being every bit as
indivisible as every other Divine Attribute, rests INNATE within us. Either we can recognize this and relate, or, I would suggest, we are still working on points
A & B. We may need to consider just what the implications are of NOT being innately
fallen, lost and irredeemable creatures.
For while Christian theology
seems to say we are capable of Redemption, and provides the methodology (soteriologically speaking) of
Christ Jesus for that process, there is precious little dwelt on these days (that I can see) of
just HOW this happens. This is where the esoteric traditions pick up, where exoteric religions
leave off. And that is true of esoteric Buddhism, as well as the esoteric teachings within
Hinduism, Judaism, etc. every bit as much as Christianity.
But back to the
Eidos and
Theos ...
I said:
And if there is no mutual attempt, a reaching out and reaching in on the part of man, searching for God, then it really doesn't matter too much whether God is there for us anyway, does it?
You said:
But there is, so again, I wonder why you even make this point to me?
In terms of a purely scholarly discussion, fine. But on a more personal note and level, neither you nor I, nor anyone at these forums is
through with his Journey here upon planet Earth. So, there is
always room for improvement. We are
always capable of renewing, deepening and discovering more about this process of reaching out and reaching in!
I said:
What we have to ask ourselves, is where do we meet God? What is the nature of that world, of that aspect of our Psyche, of the ground of being where man and God are not mutually exclusive, but rather, interrelated (and yes, Interdependent!)?
You said:
Well the Bible would be a useful place to start ... but one must clear away one's preconceptions first ... Interdependent? Not according to the Bible.
I think we need to take our nose out of the text if we wish to get a really good understanding of it. All the illumination in the world will do us little good if we have
nothing to compare it to. We NEED this
something from within our own lives, from the lives of those we live with and see on a daily basis, and from our experience in the greater world around us (from the levels of community, society at large, our entire planet with all its many Kingdoms, and even looking out into the Universe ...
especially considering our relation
to and with each of these).
Now. If you use
the Bible as the
measure of all things, then make sure you have the right KEYS. You must understand the symbolism that the
many, many authors of these different books chose to use, this across a span of
many hundreds of years ... each with slightly different background and traditions, personal religious feelings and inspirations, and of course, each with his own understanding and interpretation of
what needed emphasizing most, being Divinely indicated (more or less relatively so) ...
perhaps.
Some would suggest that the Christian can readily dispose of half of the Bible immediately, leaving the Hebrew Scriptures to Judaism, the fact of the matter being that such texts are valuable primarily as
historical commentary ... but useful for little else. Even so, with what does that leave us? We have the Gospels, and yet these
canonical books were chosen in a rather suspect manner from
some 40 or more POSSIBLE books, and we know full well that MANY early Christian communities used plenty of other texts for the first
several HUNDRED YEARS of Christianity - before the majority of them were pronounced
anathema, being
excised aways like so much unwanted flesh.
Ah, what does the body retain then? The Gospels, the letters of Paul, the Book of Revelation, and so much additional material as
seemed appropriate to these same MEN who made the choices way back when. Again,
what were the circumstances of all this, during that interesting era of the reign of the Pagan Emperor Constantine, titular head of the cult of
Sol Invictus?
Then there's the whole issue of St. Paul and his - how shall we say - somewhat
biased view of things, with a heavy hand here and perhaps a bit of an emphasis there ... such that, while we are indeed seeing the contributions of an INITIATE (it is futile to argue that St. Paul did not understand the Mystery Traditions and have intimate knowledge of their Teachings, for this evidence
FILLS his letters to the young Church!) ... nevertheless St. Paul added his own
flair to Christ's Teachings,
to say the LEAST.
If one is not familiar with the Mystery Traditions which are the very
heart of ancient Greece (let us consider, for example, the
Greater and Lesser Mysteries of the Eleusinians,
just for starters) ... there will be little hope of properly grasping what St. Paul was trying to express to his audience. For, while we THINK we may know
something about the Christ and His sublime Teachings, we will fail to recognize the viewpoint
of the audience with which St. Paul was dealing, the choice and meanings of his various metaphors and choice of symbolism, and the proper
FIT which these pieces all had ... leading to an understanding that can ONLY come about when ...
... as you say, one "clears away one's preconceptions first." But, ask this, and I find most folks would rather just
stick to the Bible. 
I said:
It does no good to say, God does not need Man; God already has everything that God needs. This is surely true of the Godhead, but this is an unapproachable God.
You said:
Not at all ... maybe for you, but not for me ... quiote the opposite. Really one wonders who's commentary you've been following when reading the Bible ... The implication of your comment is that without some leverage over God, how can we get near Him?
God does not need man. God loves man ... something far more fruitful. Eros is need, agape is something else altogether.
But here we must remain on different sides of the table. For you are anthropomorphizing, and I do not believe this is a useful or an accurate method of approaching or understanding the Divine. It may be well and good that we have our
images of Christ Jesus, the various Saints and Apostles, the Holy Virgin and all that rigamarole ...
... but once you have cast
God in the
image of flesh and blood mankind, then if you do not APPLY the proper symbolism, and remember the ORDER in which these things
came about, and according to which
they are maintained ... your efforts to follow the Divine Procession will be doomed to failure.
You, Thomas, have repeatedly made
no distinction between
Godhead and
God in manifestation. You confound the two, and say that
God can be at one and the same time knowable by humanity
at and on each level.
But this can never be!
The Godhead is, and remains,
UNKNOWABLE, because
BEYOND the scope of human - even Angelic - comprehension. Neither our ivory tower
intellect, nor our heart's
greatest desire, can reveal these highest of all Mysteries. No Initiation Ceremony, no
high and holy Master, not Christ, not God, not Jesus, not Joshua, can
draw aside the veil and reveal the innermost God.
That will drive some people batty, it will perturb us, it will seem an affront, or it will, unfortunately, discourage us at times. But such folk, and this means US from time to time, should rest content with the fact that
Mysteries unfold literally without end ... from lesser, to greater and Greatest (!), and so on. NONE of us has yet been witness to the
final Revelation, and none of us ever shall be capable of receiving such in this current world cycle!
You say
"God does not need man," but you fail to correlate this statement with THE GODHEAD. Fine, if you wish to emphasize this point, then at least
pin the tail on the right, hmm, end of the beast in consideration. For you would have us think we are about as meaningful and important to the Divine
as that proverbial ... tail end of the donkey. Remember, we are not these
lost, hopeless, PURELY erring and sinful creatures that some have - sadly - come to believe us to be. This error of theology needs to be flushed and sent on to the dungheap where it ever has belonged!
God
DOES need Humanity, and until you can see that, you will always have a God that is
apart, aloof, already `there' (having never
`left') ... just sitting around drumming her proverbial
fingers (oh yes, she has those, and toes, and such a bright, gay little frock with the most marvelous decorations and patterns and -
HORSE FEATHERS on it).
You cannot say,
oh but Christian Theology INSISTS thus and so. Fine. Then that it is why the theologians are so far in their hearts and minds from their Christ.
I think Gandhi put that into expression, though he may have had a little broader vision of the same sentiment than I do.
Still, if you hold your yardstick next to God, and expect God to
trim God's yardstick down to size, who's the fool there -
you or God? 
