Looking for contact with God can sometimes seem to be an arduous task. Often we expect something direct – a clear pathway opening up between God and ourselves, like the wrestling Jacob, the law receiving Moses, or the barren Sarah; yet are disappointed when this does not usually take place. Perhaps our vision would improve if we began to reflect on the indirect ways in which God, through nature, the trustworthy other, and Scripture, can create conduits bridging the distance that we may be experiencing. Being attuned to the manifestation of God through these configurations opens us up to new ways of seeing and perceiving the multifarious touching points between us and the great and mysterious I Am.
Monday, September 30, 2013
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2 comments:
Great to hear again from you --by visiting your blog and posting. Still along L'Abri's motto that "honest questions deserve honest answers," I keep seeking G-d's manifestations in nature, human & nonhuman experiences, esp. otherness and caring for others. I am offering 3 seminars on different texts & aspects of Spinoza's takes on revelation, ethics and theological-political matters, esp. trying to make sense of his usually misunderstood dictum "deus sive natura" and how the Hebrew scriptures, Christianity, and human freedom could address existential questions about meaning, G-d, and personhood. I still hope to see you sometime soon --at least, sooner than later --I'll get back to you shortly. Shalom! Nita
Thanks so much for your visit and comment. Always great to hear from you. I do hope that the sometime sooner works out. Your seminars sound highly interesting. I have just been lecturing on Selfhood & Theology and a writing colleague (topic of science & theology) is doing Neuroscience - Neurotheology.
I like this from Ricoeur - Phil & Rel Lang.
“One of the traits which makes for the specificity of the biblical discourse, as we all know, is the central place of God-reference in it. The result of our earlier analysis is that the signification of this reference of biblical discourse is implicated, in a special way which we have yet to describe, in the multiple unified significations of the literary forms of narration, prophecy, hymn, wisdom, and so forth. “God-talk,” to use John McQuarries’s phrase, proceeds from the concurrence and convergence of these partial discourses. The God-referent is at once the 10 coordinator of these varied discourses and the index of their incompleteness, the point at which something escapes them.
In this sense, the word “God” does not function as a philosophical concept, whether this be being either in the medieval or the Heideggerian sense of being. Even if one is tempted to say—in the theological metalanguage of all these pretheological languages—that “God” is the religious name for being, still the word “God” says more: it presupposes the total context constituted by the whole space of gravitation of stories, prophecies, laws, hymns, and so forth. To understand the word “God” is to follow the direction of the meaning of the word. By the direction of the meaning I mean its double power to gather all the significations which issue from the partial discourses and to open up a horizon which escapes from the closure of discourse.”
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