if I may... (part 1)
Submitted by Nathan on January 13 2001 00:16:23
In reply to More about Mary submitted by Sheesh! on January 07 2001 13:10:11
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Wow! I turn my back for a week and everything goes crazy in here! Does this mean we're all becoming friends or enemies? As the resident voice of Buddhist Christianity, I thought I might share some of what my training in classical metaphysics has taught me. Remember: the Bible might be timeless truth but it was written during a specific era and to judge it fairly we must gain some understanding of what was going on in the philosophical circles of Greek and Jewish thought. For those of you who know little or nothing about Buddhism, it is not really a religion but more of a philosophy in the same tradition as Platonic Greek thought, so it may shed a little light on the topic. John's Gospel is especially Buddhist in its more mystical aspects, so I recommend a good grounding in Buddhism when approaching it. Here goes. (Sorry it's so long and heavy but I promise it'll be worthwhile if you read it to the end.) The basic Buddhist premise is that humanity exists in a fallen state not because we left some sort of primal Paradise somewhere else in the cosmos, but because somehow or another our race became insane, and began to process information improperly. Buddhists believe that we STILL LIVE in Eden, but we can't see it because we have become blinded by our delusion, giving rise to belief in a false world that is just barely close enough to reality to be functional, but still plagued with darkness and sin. Compare this with Jesus message that "the Kingdom is among you" and Paul's teachings about "seeing through a glass darkly", etc. (I don't have time to reference the quotes; they're pretty famous.) The goal of Buddhism, and of Christianity-- and by the way also of Jewish Qabbala, Muslim Sufism, & Platonic philosophy, among others-- is to penetrate that veil of confusion by a total reorganization of your thinking, and enter into a state of perfect sanity where it is easy to do the right thing because it's so obvious. Almost all religions teach that salvation is possible (that's why we have them). The debate is over just HOW to get there. So Jesus may be the Way, Truth and Life but the other philosophies can be integrated and shed light on the problem. (Hence the epistles of Paul.) So you may be asking, "So what?" Well, the questions here are regarding, among other things, iconography vs. idolatry and flesh vs. Spirit. And the Platonists/Buddhists have a precise answer for this. Buddhism teaches that the insanity of the Fall is caused by the inability to distinguish between symbols and the things they represent. Here is an example. Consider a wooden table. Before it was made it was a pile of wood, and after it's destruction it will again be a pile of wood. But even while it is a table it is ALSO a pile of wood. It is two things at once. I can build a similar shape out of stone or steel and it will still be a table. So the substance it's made of is not what makes it a table; a table is a particular *arrangement* of substance. This is important. Everything has two qualities: form and substance. Now TABLE is a concept; an idea; it is a particular way of arranging certain materials for a certain purpose. It is NOT the material itself. Now what's interesting here is that material changes, but form doesn't. A pile of wood, over time, undergoes change. Maybe it grows in a tree, then it's cut down, then made into a house, then cut down again, then burnt in a fire, etc. But the concept of TABLE is eternal. No matter where you are in the world, or what time in history you are living in, you will always be able to recognize one. We tend to take this for granted. But think about it. I can show you a photograph of a person, and then when you meet this person face to face you will recognize her. But how is this possible? A flat photo and a 3D, fleshy body have nothing in common, if you actually look at the things themselves. If I were to ask every one of you in private what a table is, I would get a different response. But if I were to point to one and ask you what it is you would all say a table. If I point to a dog and say, "Is that a table?" you would all say no. But no one can say what a table IS-- you can only know it when you see it. The ancients believed therefore that there were actually TWO worlds coexisting in the same space. The one was made of pure, unchanging Ideas which were eternally true and therefore real, and the other was made of some sort of changing substance th at you could see, feel, smell, etc. but not define. The moment you tried to speak about it in words you would be filtering your experience of changing substance through your knowledge of unchanging ideas, because words ARE ideas. That stuff in John's Gospel about the WORD being GOD is dead on on; ideas are the reality, not matter, because ideas are eternal. This is not my private metaphysical rambling. It is all very established in the history of philosophy both Eastern and Western, and it is CLEARLY present in both Classical Greek thought and in Jewish mysticism. There is no doubt in the minds of those who research such things that the Church Fathers were aware of this idea and it is built right into the early Church. It is also everywhere in the New Testament, but if you don't know what you're looking for you'll miss it every time. |
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