Aupmanyav
Be your own guru.
Why did not Bahaollah think rationally about rights of women and LGBTQ? He was just as irrational as the other so-called messengers.
Questions for the Baha'i – from a primarily Christian perspective.
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Ahanu
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What exactly did he say about the rights of women and LGBTQ? And what exactly do you find irrational?
But Jesus did heal the boy -- at least according to the gospel account? With great respect to those who have to live with epilepsy in their family. Whatever Jesus did, on the supernatural level, it worked?
But, as I have argued elsewhere, the doctrine lacks coherence, as it assumes to human what belongs to the divine:
"From them (prophets and messengers) hath all creation proceeded and unto them shall return all that hath been mentioned.
This is quite wrong. Creation is from God, and all return to God. What the text posits is a demiurge, intermediate lesser divinities who are creators and to whom all created nature returns.
Reads like the biography of Muhammad (pbuh).
The over-arching point is, God does not necessarily choose the educated as His witness. Even at the level of the world, many a genius (if not most) are born to unassuming parents ...
Not at all. Jesus was a Virgin Birth.
You need to better understand the idea of 'anointed' – High Priests are anointed, Kings are anointed... what the term means is contextual.
In the New Testament, the term appears five times:
Something one does oneself before prayer (Matthew 6); something done by the woman in the house of Simon the leper (Matthew 26, Mark 14 & Luke 7) and what the womenfolk attempted after the crucifixion, but found the tomb empty (Matthew 28, Mark 16, Luke 24, John 20).
But I rather think they'll be as contradictory and incoherent as the rest ...
The Bible is pretty much proof against that – we have so many versions that we can contrast and compare – scholars have done so and although finding numerous differences, none that might infer some inherent contradiction. Even the Dead Sea Scrolls, which were meant to rewrite the history of Christianity, only endorsed the current texts.
If you did the research, rather than believe just because you're told, you'd realise this argument carries no weight.
No, if you go into the text is confuses the reflection with the reflector, as it were; it defines the nature of the messenger according to divine properties.
Indeed ... but that doesn't require a new revelation as such.
Agreed. It deepens, but does not substantially alter. The evolution of Christian doctrine over time, such as developments in Christology over the first few centuries, could be said to include further revelation – the Nicene-Constantinople Creed (325-381), for example, or the declaration of Christ understood as one person in two natures at Chalcedon (451). never contradicts what was understood before, just shows it in a new and more profound light ...
What .. in Bahai literature you mean?
Yes. As God is the Creator, that's axiomatic at the highest level ... then it's a case of 'turtles all the way down'
Well modern medicine is based entirely on material and the physical, although it does acknowledge, in the UK at least, that there are aspects outside of its purview and understanding. How do we expand the apparent efficacy of a placebo, for example?
Hopefully, a more holistic approach to health might have some benefits. Meditation has proved beneficial, and has prayer, in terms of subjective experience. (And prayer not of the 'fairy godmother' order). Such things will always escape empirical analysis, of course.
In his Little Giddings, the fourth of Eliot's Four Quartets, we read:
If you came this way,
Taking any route, starting from anywhere,
At any time or at any season,
It would always be the same: you would have to put off
Sense and notion. You are not here to verify,
Instruct yourself, or inform curiosity
Or carry report. You are here to kneel
Where prayer has been valid. And prayer is more
Than an order of words, the conscious occupation
Of the praying mind, or the sound of the voice praying.
And what the dead had no speech for, when living,
They can tell you, being dead: the communication
Of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living.
Here, the intersection of the timeless moment
Is England and nowhere. Never and always.
'It is always the same', Eliot says. To find “the still point of the turning world” one must “put off sense and notion.”
Today, more than ever, our minds are busy, occupied by the chatter of the world, a non-stop feed of thoughts from the intellectual to the imbecilic, the impassioned and the erotic. They demand our attention, drain our energy, inflame and disorder our desires.
In the Orthodox ascetical tradition, these thoughts are called logismoi: 'assaultive or tempting thoughts'. There was a correlation, in the ancient world, between logismoi and [daemon[/i]. Evagrius Ponticus, the fourth century monk, famously classified the negative logismoi under eight principal patterns – gluttony, fornication, avarice, anger, despondency, acedia, vainglory and pride.
We are trapped in this world of noise. Whether we will or not, it invades our consciousness. We experience them as originating outside ourselves. Even when we are sleeping, the barrage of logismoi continues. Through these logismoi one's psychic-spiritual world becomes contaminated and affected on a deep, fundamental level. Sometimes the intensity of a single logismos is so great that human beings under its spell may feel totally helpless.
Carl Jung was later to note that certain psychological conditions in which the illness seems to take on a life of its own, a predator upon its helpless host and victim.
To break the power of logismoi, one must cultivate 'interior silence'. Silence is God’s first language,” writes Fr Thomas Keating. “Everything else is a poor translation. In order to understand this language, we must learn to be silent and to rest in God” (Invitation to Love, p. 90).
Of course, we moderns no longer believe in the spiritual or the spirits. At best, we allow God, and perhaps offer some credence to the idea of angels ... but it rarely goes further than that.
The people of Antiquity – of the Hebrew Scripture, the New Testament and the Quran, did not dismiss the spiritual world purely becauase they embraced the material, they do not see one as necessarily excluding or disproving the other. rather they see pure materialism as somewhat blinkered.
In embracing the 'rational', the mean empirical, we have abandoned the mythopoeic, although the latter has demonstrated itself to but powerful, with a reach across the ages, something that refuses to be denied, much as the modern empiricism, being unable to determine it, denies it.
St Paul speaks of a cosmos enslaved to death, by the malign governance of the Archons – Thrones and Powers and Dominations and Spiritual Forces of Evil in the High Places, who are the gods of all nations. Whether fallen, or mutinous, or merely incompetent, these beings stand intractably between us and God. But Christ has conquered them all.
Do I believe it? St John seemed to think the same, and that's two principle authorities within the Apostolic order – their experience was greater than mine, and on that score I'm with Hamlet: "There are more things in heaven and Earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your (Anglo American analytical) philosophy."
Yes.
Tony Bristow-Stagg
One Planet One People Please
That is confirmed by Baha'u'llah. The key is attachments and moderation. @Thomas
"..Should a man wish to adorn himself with the ornaments of the earth, to wear its apparels, or partake of the benefits it can bestow, no harm can befall him…. Eat ye, O people, of the good things which God hath allowed you, and deprive not yourselves from His wondrous bounties. Render thanks and praise unto Him, and be of them that are truly thankful..." Baha’u’llah, Gleanings from the Writings of Baha’u’llah
Regards Tony
It is a patristic notion (developed with extraordinary profundity by Maximus the Confessor) that humanity was created as the methorios (Gk:
meqorioß 'a border, boundary or frontier') between the physical and the spiritual realms, or as the priesthood of creation that unites earth to heaven:
"Be you also as living stones built up, a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ." (1 Peter 2:5) and
"But you are a chosen generation, a kingly priesthood, a holy nation, a purchased people: that you may declare his virtues, who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light" (1 Peter 2:9).
Ahanu
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Yes. As God is the Creator, that's axiomatic at the highest level ... then it's a case of 'turtles all the way down'
Belief in God as the creator doesn't mean we must use supernatural explanations for every single phenomenon. We can explore the complexities of God's creation without resorting to spirits or demons nowadays. Early Christian explanations attribute these phenomena to the supernatural, but that doesn't mean they are not part of the natural world; it just tells me they lacked the capacity to describe in subtle language the natural world accurately.
Oh, I believe our thoughts and beliefs can have an influence on the physical world to a degree, but shifting explanations into a more holistic direction will not lead us to introducing demonic possession through the backdoor of mental health practices. No Christian today in modern medicine will evoke demons to explain mental health issues, even in a more holistic environment where psychedelics are encouraged. The focus in modern medicine (including even more holistic approaches) is on developing effective treatments that will help people get better. The concept of demons, as defined by the ancient world, doesn't contribute to reaching this goal.
Okay.
Ahanu
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In the Gospel of Mark, however, demons are portrayed as external entities that enter and leave people. Mark suggests an external entity here:
-The demon "throws the boy into a convulsion" (Mark 9.20)
-The demon “has often thrown him into fire or water to kill him" (Mark 9.22)
-Jesus commands the demon to "come out of him and never enter him again" (Mark 9.25)
-The spirit "shrieked" and "convulsed him violently" (Mark 9.26)
How does this fit with the idea of negative logismoi as internal thoughts? This connection might reflect a later Christian development, where demons became associated with negative thoughts and temptations, not the philosophical thinking of first century Jewish people.
Anyway, what's my point?
The world needs a relational theology. The human experience of an epileptic seizure (the feeling of loss of control, convulsions, and so on) remains consistent across time. However, the explanation for that experience changes dramatically depending on the scientific understanding and culture of the time. Focusing on the core experience itself can be more important than getting caught up in specific interpretations or how it was explained.
Let's say we want to understand if Baha'u'llah is on the same level of consciousness as Jesus or Muhammad. His core experiences and actions should have a similar impact on the world. If they have a similar impact, then we should be able to pinpoint whether or not the source had similar experiences or not. It's not rocket science that requires a lot of metaphysical lifting. Also, it is a more objective approach.
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True. But a belief in God would surely allow for spiritual as will as physical hierarchies?
Indeed we can. We can also explore with an open mind in regard to spiritual hierarchies and non-material entities.
You use terms like 'we must' or 'without resorting' – I'm not suggesting anything so emphatically. Rather, I simply keep an open mind.
I'm not so sure about that ... As I have said before, scholars marvel at the language, insight and subtlety of the Ancient World, I do not share your opinion of it.Early Christian explanations attribute these phenomena to the supernatural, but that doesn't mean they are not part of the natural world; it just tells me they lacked the capacity to describe in subtle language the natural world accurately.
I wonder sometimes if it is not us who have lost that subtle sense. One can hardly suggest the Patristic authors lack subtlety, of either language or spiritual insight. Material physics was not their thing.
Not suggesting anything by 'the back door' – acupuncture, meditation, other holistic forms were once frowned on or dismissed as pseudoscience. On the other hand, 'mindfulness meditation' is not a magic bullet, and there have been instances of negative psychotic states resulting usually from poor instruction within an unregulated field.
Speak to a Buddhist meditation practitioner regarding the theory of logismoi, and I'm pretty sure they'd agree.
I can't speak from experience, but I do know the Catholic Church undertakes exhaustive examination in the face of a request for exorcism, and assumes almost as a given that the cause will be a mental health issue.
Of course, if we look at America, then the picture gets distorted – but I do put that down to socio-political reasons and fundamentalist ideologies rather than actual cases of demonic possession.
From the demon's point of view, overplaying one's hand is self-defeating. If demons exist, then God exists, that kind of thing. So in the cases of temptation, and even possession, I would have thought the demon's watchword is always obscurity and anonymity.
I mean a pain-in-the-a** evangelical fundamentalist serves the cause more effectively than a child's head doing a 360 rotation.
I also happen to think that you have to be a target before you become an object of demonic interest. It's a case of return on (demonic) investment. Possessing Joe Bloggs won't advance the cause, as it were. Breaking a saint has a more reverberative effect.
Well modern medicine is purely materialist.
Ahanu
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Oh, I was still editing and adding more to my post. Please check it again. I will take the time to read your reply later when I have more time.