I’m aware of that, believe me. As long as we also understand that fundamentalism was also a response to an attack on orthodoxy and a response to higher criticism and etc.
Why do you frame it as an "attack" on orthodoxy? Why that word choice? Wouldn't that be like saying long-hair styles are an attack on short hair? Do you view those who hold a different way of thinking to be attacking you?
If a preacher gets famous in New York tomorrow saying “everyone who is saved must speak in tongues and perform miraculous healings” and I say “fundamentally the scriptures say differently,” that doesn’t mean I’m anti-modern in outlook, right?
But the preacher you described is not coming from a place of modernity, so of course your criticism of him would have nothing to do with modernity. It would have to do with Pentecostalism and his interpretation of it, not the approaches of modernity applied to scriptures. If you were against those, then you'd be anti-modernity, believing that such approaches only makes what was once clear and concise in our thinking to be questable. Let's just return to the basics, what it says in black and white terms to our thinking as it once did, in the simpler days. What does "fundamentalism" mean to you? A progression of thinking into uncharted territories, or a return to clear and concise answers?
As I understand Catholicism from the leaders on down (official doctrine approved by the Index of the Holy See, not just what the man on the street thinks his Roman church teaches) Roman Tradition has a big T and scripture has a little s. Catholics are Christians but their church has never repudiated or revoked the Council of Trent, stating that anyone who says sola scriptura or sola fide is anathema. That’s a big doctrinal issue.
It's not a big doctrinal issue to them. They don't see it as such. Are they wrong?
Consider also that with thousands of Christians sects today, I’m not saying any sect or my church is it. I was saved reading the Bible I still adhere to. Put another way, I don’t discount Catholics or Protestants but their sects don’t tell me what to think, how to think or who to trust.
Ah, now you're getting closer. So you are going by your own thoughts on what is truth then?
I try to practice things like mindfulness, intuitive improvisation, theophostic prayer, thinking on problems before bed to let the subconscious solve the problem, silent meditation, meditating on scriptures, doodling, etc.
Cool. Good to know. I'm happy you're not like some fundamentalists I've encountered who consider meditation or Contemplative Prayer to be of the devil, New Age, opening yourself up for possession and the lies of Satan and whatnot.
To be honest, I also feel strongly that the longer one studies the scripture, regarding some things, the LESS one prays. I don’t need to pray even briefly to consider whether to defraud someone in business--stealing is wrong. I don’t need to pray even briefly to know in a given situation if I should instruct my children without exasperating them--or honor my spouse--or etc.
This interests me. This could be a longer conversation in it own right at another time, but I'll briefly put it this way. I consider prayer itself, if not the "give me this and that" kind of self-focused neediness prayer, to be a form of meditation in that it directs and focuses the mind and intent. I started a topic a little while ago that touches a little on what it sounds like you may be getting at.
http://www.religiousforums.com/threads/a-break-from-meditation.191243/
But what I find curious to me in what you say here is your example of not needing to question about stealing. I think what I'm talking about in my topic I linked to has more to do with my overall change of being and modes of thinking and responses themselves continuing to grow despite stepping back from the daily practice for a time. Questions of moral choices like stealing and whatnot are really something much more basic that was programmed into me through culture in my earlier youth, rather than being part of spiritual development through meditation. Perhaps that's part of your work and path? I don't know.
But Jesus also talked about His crucifixion and resurrection with atonement, forgiveness, dominion and power. I can’t think of a single liberal or conservative scholar who denies the historicity of Jesus or that He was crucified. Even the Jesus seminar knows He was crucified, literally, regardless of their stance on the resurrection.
A few things about this. Those who wrote about Jesus had him talking about his death and resurrection, and all those things. To be clear about that. It's part of the narrative story they wrote. But that Jesus had died an early death, ripped as it were away from his followers, is highly likely. The details of the story as they go are not necessarily the "facts" of the events however. They are elements of the story.
I actually was invited out to coffee by one of the scholars who was part of the Jesus seminar, as she was interested in hearing my views I had been discussing elsewhere earlier. We talked for a couple hours at least. I loved one of her comments she made. She had stated regarding the Nativity story. "Do I believe it really happened the way it's written? If it didn't, it should have. It's a wonderful story."
I thought that was a perfect way to put it! And this comes right back to what I said before to you about the truth versus the facts. It's the message of the narrative, the story, what it points to, what it evokes from within us that is the truth.
So you can apply that to anything in the Gospel stories. Did they happen that way in history exactly, factually as recorded? I ask, is that what it's about? What faith is it allows our understanding of these things to change, while the truth of it is what we carry with us, regardless of how we understand the "facts" of it. The meaning to me seems to be deeper that way, rather than focusing on trying to "prove it", which misses the point of the stories. "If it didn't happen, it should have".
Would you still have faith if you learned very little of the story actually happened? Or would that destroy your faith, or simply change the nature of it? If it would destroy it on the other hand, then that's something to consider.
I understand, but the Sanhedrin has this exchange with Jesus:
...
Even a cursory look at traditions outside the NT, like Talmud, show that Jesus was using non-figurative and figurative language that incited people to stone Him to death… literally, not figuratively. You have a slippery slope, and I feel like I’m holding my arm out to you to catch you.
No, I don't believe you do understand what I'm saying. I'm talking about the overall symbolic canvas upon which he spoke either figurative or literal language. This will take some de-focusing of the eyes here for you for a minute or longer to get the picture of what I am pointing to. Hang on for deeper dive here.
All language is symbolic. All language is metaphor. They are symbolic representations of how we perceive reality, creating patterns against vast, or infinite openness, the undefined. If you think of looking up at the stars you simply see a canvas littered with little points of lights everywhere. But if you connect some of those points together and see a pattern of some, say the belt of Orion, now it becomes recognizable to you, and it's something you can use to relate to it yourself, and a point of reference you can have others share with you in order to establish communication with them to talk about aspects of the vast open night sky.
Any of our models of reality, the things we call them, are simply patterns we identify and give a name to them. But they are not actually what we call them - until they are!
And that's the problem with language. These metaphors of reality in our thinking become descriptors of reality. We shortcut our way to understanding using this things to describe the reality of it to ourselves and others, and soon that's all we understand about it. It literally is Orion up there. It literally is a "tree". It literally is "God". It is the thing we imagine it to be, the thing we've patterned it to be, the thing we've given a name to it. I heard it said that when metaphors become
descriptors of reality, they become a dead metaphor.
So earlier in our discussion I talked about modes of consciousness, or perhaps that was in another thread I talked about that. In either case these modes of consciousness, how we see and interpret reality, all have systems of languages they use that both reflect, and support, that mode of thinking and perceiving self and reality. You can read about these structures of consciousness which Jean Gebser mapped out in his research briefly discussed here:
http://www.gaiamind.org/Gebser.html
So when I say Jesus would have been speaking to and from that framework, this is what I am referring to. He would have be speaking to those who were using the mythic structure as Gebser describes. And when I use the word myth, I never mean it to say something is a "lie".
I mean it as a type of symbolic structure. It is the type of overall perception of reality, how a people in a time are relating to reality in how they pattern it. The mythic structures have patterns of reality that have an external deity as the one controlling the world, or at the least above it somewhere with the power over it, whether it uses it or not.
The reality of what Jesus said in his conversations are simply reflective of that mode of talking about truth and reality. What that reality is can in fact be understood using different structures of language through different modes of consciousness, such as the rational or Modernist structures, or the pluralistic or Postmodernist structures, or the Integral of post-postmodernist structures. Generally speaking I tend to "pattern reality", as I explained, in Integral structures.
I can speak of reality using mythic symbolism, rational symbolism, postmodernist symbolism, etc. But in that I map out reality recognizing that these are all patterns of reality which is wholly beyond anything we has humans can grasp or know with our symbolic minds "as it is". We all have to translate it somehow into models our thinking can process and "hang on to". I just recognize the nature of what these things are, rather than mistaking the finger pointing at the moon with the moon itself, collapsing the metaphor into a descriptor and killing it.
I'm going to break at this point to let you digest some of that. Plus, my fingers are tired.
