Well hast thou taught the way that might direct
Our knowledge, and the scale of Nature set
From center to circumference, whereon
In contemplation of created things
By steps we may ascend to God.
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Jan 16, 2024 7:19 pm
Excellent. Then at least we can agree on that.
You provide launching points for an examination of the *metaphysical picture* that directs and controls your perception. Once one has understood that there is an overarching *picture* through which you order your interpretation of this world, and once one has seen that to one degree or another we all must do this, it is at that point where an actual *conversation* could begin. Please note: you refuse that conversation. You refuse to examine the imposed order of your own metaphysical structure, or to put it slightly differently, you refuse to examine it as j
ust one among many possibilities in the organization of a sense of Order.
Therefore: back to the beginning we must go. The entirety of your belief system depends on a sense, a picture in fact, of Cosmic Order. That is, the Garden in which the First Couple had existence. Something disturbed that Order. It was Absolutely Perfect because it was God's created space. There was no toil, no pain and no death in that Original Space. But there came along
something that was the efficient cause of the disruption of the Cosmic Perfection. Instigated by Satan (though the idea that the Snake was Satan was introduced later as the metaphysics were concretized) to *disobedience* to the commands of Divine Order the First Couple not so much fell but were
tossed out of the Beautiful Order. The notion of Fall implies movement from one level to another, lower level. And here, even if it is not as clear as it could be, and related to the notion of Cosmic Order, is the idea and the laws pertaining to Hierarchy.
So in your way of visualizing things, obviously derived from a Biblical Picture, Adam & Eve descended from one quite high, indeed perfect, hierarchical level and down into this Earth Realm (the place where all of are now) which is, by definition, an Afflicted World. The World itself, in some mysterious manner that I cannot visualize, was tarnished & corrupted as punishment for the Disobedience of the Original Pair. Let us make it plain: all our human woes, all our troubles, all our pain anxiety distress fear arose when we lost our Proper and Decreed Ground on a Higher Metaphysical Plane. But we must also note that Strife ruled on this level. The First Murder emblemized that strife.
So these are the elements of Metaphysical Story upon which an Existential perceptual system was constructed. You cannot subtract those elements because they are the Foundation of the Metaphysical Picture. However, you
could substitute an entirely different scenery -- an entirely different set of Stories and Pictures -- that could well describe the same loss of a Perfect State and the notion of Fall (down into a prison-realm).
So I could present, as illustration, the Vaishnava (a sect that worships Vishnu) notion that we are all existing in *a material entanglement* that arose because we were lured away from God's Perfect World by our attraction for the Phenomena of the World. The proposition is that there is such a thing as *God's Internal Energy* and *God's External Energy'. We are located, according to metaphysical definition, is an Existential Sphere (Loka) that is strung between God's Internal Energy and God's External Energy.
All of our problems arise because of our 1) location (the nature of the place itself) and 2) because of our desires and inclinations. If we give ourselves over to the World's Processes (getting, enjoying, hoarding) we tighten the grip that that materialism has on us and we careen, evermore, into God's Exterior Energy and away from God's Interior Energy. God's Interior Energy corresponds with the ill-defined Christian notion of *Heaven*.
What I want to focus on, Immanuel, is in the sense of *admonition* that you bring out in your preaching.
[Middle English amonishen, admonishen, alteration of amonesten, from Old French amonester, admonester, from Vulgar Latin *admonestāre, from Latin admonēre : ad-, ad- + monēre, to warn; see men- in Indo-European roots.]
Personally, and as a critic of your preaching style and the content of your preached message, I do not think you explain enough in relation to this
admonition. But
the admonition in Christian rhetoric is crucial indeed. One is admonished both to *do something* and also *not to do* other things. My point is that
the same notion is evident and operates in other religious-ethical systems. My view is that the Christian Admonition is not well-enough explained. It has lost its sense of connection to an Overarching Divine Order that certainly was strongly present when the Metaphysical Worldview was not doubted and not opposed or assaulted by a view that simply
cannot see the world through these Metaphysical Pictures.
For this reason I want to point out that even though you (Immanuel) pretend to being situated within Modernity -- your language, your academic background, your careful use of language, your emphasis on *logic* and Aristotelian discourse -- your Worldview, your Metaphysics, is actually and more truly that of the former Age which is now *merely a shadow* of what it once was. Your preaching is unsuccessful for a number of reasons but one of them is because you cannot recognize that you are an advocate and an apologist for a Metaphysical Picture that is understood now not to apply and you are talking with people who have, in varying degrees, been *spat out* from or extruded from that olden Medieval worldview and who wander in the
Here Below without a
clear Metaphysical Picture.
The only thing that you call for (admonish) is this weird act of Accepting Jesus. Mystically, magically, this act of the will, causes this state you call Salvation to descend down on a man. I do not know what images to employ here. Is it a switch that Jesus flips? Is it a supernal illumination that is imbued into one? Is it a subtle marker or signal that, on the opposite side of the equation, corresponds to the Mark of Cain? But whatever the case it is that act -- Accepting Jesus -- that saves one from literally everything about this existence that is described in terms of falling from a high state down into a lower (prison-like) state.
Now I am not in any sense uninterested in this View or in any View which involves a Picture of our Metaphysical Condition. But I do find that only when one reduces the Metaphysical Predicates down to their most elemental does it become possible to offer a sound REASON as to why one should bother to think in metaphysical terms.
Another curious aspect about your preaching is that it does not ever involve any reference to or description of the Demoniac Element which, let's face it, is as necessary to Christian metaphysics as is any definition of an Absolutely Good God. But what has destroyed the Original Order in which the First Couple was blissfully and eternally living was, in Christian Metaphysics, none other that the Demoniac Presence that has rulership here. Thus if no one is responding
properly to your Preaching Message, it is because Satan is intruding between it and the Salvation that you represent. There is no alternative, in fact.
Yet I would suggest that *Satan* must be better understood as a Metaphysical Principle (or anti-principle) in order to make the Story you present
more intelligible.
Excellent. Then at least we can agree on that.
Let us -- Oh Noble Brother! -- agree that it is
these things, these
elements, that are the true base of an honest and upright conversation about your Metaphysical System as you present it to the Forum, and as you have been presenting it for longer than a Decade!
We're done.
