JD, I feel similarly about your posts. You display an even handedness that seems to be lacking a great deal in many. Even if we might disagree in some areas, I have a great respect for you and wish to keep that honor from you as well.
I find the question of Aquinas extremely fascinating. I am convinced in my heart and mind that it is true that all men and women, Man as a race, is made in the image and likeness of God; the actual living God, not the one we almost invaraibly, in my opinion, necessarily make up due to our limited perceptions and understanding. In that regard, I feel that similarly to a classroom, there are degrees, and even kinds of qualitatively different understandings we have of God’s Nature, and of our special and racial possibilites of relationship with Divinity.
Also because of my belief that all are created in this image and likeness, that events that occur in the human psyche are necessarily within a set of paramaters defined by the nature of our own Being. I belive that this is true of Mankind since he was that. That means to me, that since God is the substrate of Creation and is Eternal, there has not been a time in human history when God wasn’t. That means that all those folks before Jesus, after Him, and into the future on and off this planet, have had, do, and will have various kinds and degrees of encounters with the Divine. Those encounters are necessarily filtered through the means at hand, those being in part such things as language, belief system, education, intellect, etc, etc.
My personal sense is that the nature of encounters withthe Divine are not restricted ot any of a particular faith. However, in describing the encounter, it is only possible to do so through one’s adopted filters. Let us say then, that the Spiritual Reality of the encounter with the Divine superscedes the temopral and limited reality of the filters.
I had, when I was younger, a kind of encounter that literally knocked me out of my understanding of the world as I thought it was. Indeed, it became abundantly and incontrovertably clear that the world as I knew it was in fact built on my consenting to dynamics and paramaters of one kind or another, either imaginary of corresponding to a more substantial relaity. Being of reasonable intelligence, I tried with every toool availabel to me to integrate my experience by means of teh very strong RC paradigm I lived by at the time. It just didn’t work.
So, I put it aside without destroying it, but with a view to discovering if there was some way of integrating my experience by explanations outside the church. I did this wiht a view that had both the Church and the World having in common a God, and that man is fallible and incomplete.
Indeed, I di find a system that not only accounted for my experience, but allowed me a clear cognative line to include and syntesize my own experience, the world as it seemed to be, and the Church. That system has over the last thirty odd years proved to be increasingly accomodating in its fundamental ability to reconcile systems seemingl disparate in form, but not in substance.
The essence of this system is a form of self knowledge not ordinarily experienced by most folks. It happende to me in an unceremonious and unannounced way, but it changed my perception of reality, as I said. Butnow things make sense that didn’t before, and with far greater ease. Yet, I would not recommend my understanding to anyone. It is something arrived at, not aquired, as is faith. And for those in my position of arrival by discovery, there can be no other way. Yet, to the “fathful” it seems inexplicable and to some even blasphemous. It is not. it is simply the way things have been since God made the world, so to speak.
I would think that by now some readers will have given up on this ramble, and that is well and good and as it should be. As I said, I do not recommend my way, ancient and tried as it is. It is a Way only for a few. It is the way of esoteric Catholicism, one of the many names it might go by. Few can take it because it will destroy the understanding of the world one might currently have. But the New world is Real and demands utter respnsibility. In fact another name for it is, indeed, “The Path Of Absolute Responsibility.”
So, JD, if you are still with me, and haven’t “hung up” on this note, try going here for a more “Catholic” take on what I am saying:
amazon.com/Basic-Self-Knowledge-Harry-Benjamin/dp/0877281629 You can read the prefatory material there and get a more historical perspective, and one that I hope will explain to you why I might come off the way I do.
We are not engaged here in a game, though it has some aspects of that. I feel it is incumbent on us to go according to our conscience. I have done so in my own case, and have only experienced thereby the unfolding of a greateer and more consitent understanding, one which accomodates a radical understanding of the nature of religion, ours in particular, since I was a very zealous and learned advocate of it. Whether you agree or disagree with the stated face of it, I hope that you are clear that for me it is not an intellectual exercise, but a living Reality. We are each where we are by the law of our Being. I am not here to proselytize or convert, I amonly speaking of my experience because you asked. I pray that it is of some meaning to you. If not, that is fine too. At least I respected your request for explication.
As for Aquinas, IMHO, he had a realization consitent with the deepest possible as pointed to in the work linked to above. I also feel that had he the means to communicate directly with the many who have had a similar experience, Catholic or not, they would all have been in agreement as to the Nature of their encounter.
BD, FZPC
