De Ce Mintea Creştinului Nu Poate înţelege Alte Religii Optiuni

[shapeshifter]

Vă invit la o dezbatere despre limitele şi prejudecăţile creştinului vis-a-vis de alte religii.

[shapeshifter]

Thought:
By “thought” we mean here, not an artificial elaboration but the mental crystallization of real knowledge. With all due deference to anti-Platonic theologians, Platonism is not true because it is logical, it is logical because it is true; and as for the possible or apparent illogicalities of the theologians, these can be explained not by an alleged right to the mysteries of absurdity, but by the fragmentary character of particular dogmatic positions and also by the insufficiency of the means of thought and expression. We may recall in this connection the alternativism and the sublimism proper to the Semitic mentality, as well as the absence of the crucial notion of Maya – at least at the ordinary theological level, meaning by this reservation that the boundaries of theology are not strictly delimited.

Thought (exoteric):
Theological or, to be more precise, exoteric thought – the two things do not always coincide exactly – generally shows itself incapable of grasping simultaneously two divergent aspects of one and the same reality: it works by alternatives which tend to be moralizing, the more “pious” option being the “truer” one in its eyes, the type of piety being determined by the perspective which is characteristic of the Revelation in question, even though this Revelation may not necessarily imply the same option on the plane of the pure truth. It is not Christ who is anti-Platonic, it is Christians who are, to the extent that they are: however traditional the anathema pronounced in certain liturgical practices of the Greek Church against the Platonists may be, it nonetheless clearly derives from what we may call the “human margin.” Theologically, the falsity of the Platonic thesis can only amount to a hypothesis, and one which is all the more senseless in that no theologian can contest that the principles of things necessarily preexist in the creative Intellect, or Providence, if one so prefers, and that each positive
cosmic possibility is presided over by an angelic power which is its prototype or “idea.”

Thought (profane):
Profane thought is not confined to thought which is ignorant of metaphysical and mystical truths, but also includes thought which, while knowing these truths well enough in theory, has nonetheless a disproportionate approach to them, an approach that is unaccompanied by a sufficient adaptation of the soul; not that such thought is profane by definition as in the case of ignorant thought, but it is so secondarily or morally and lies in grave danger of error, for man is not merely a mirror, he is a
cosmos which is both complex and fragile.

Sacred Thought / Profane Thought (difference between):
There is an essential distinction to be made here: there are errors that lie within the framework of integral and decisive truth, and there are errors that break this framework, and therein lies the whole difference between sacred and profane thought. It is sometimes said that no doctrine is entirely wrong and that there is truth in everything, but this is altogether false, because,
while fundamental – and thus decisive – truths can neutralize any minor errors in a doctrine, minor truths are valueless within the framework of a major error; this is why one must never glorify an error for having taught us some truth or other, nor look for truth in errors on the pretext that truth is everywhere the same – for there are important nuances here – and above all one must not reject a fundamental and comprehensive truth because of a minor error that may happen to accompany it.
Be that as it may, the human soul is capable, paradoxically and up to a certain point, of combining spiritual knowledge with a singular incapacity to express it in accordance with the total context and the logic of things. There is, after all, no common measure between the inner man attracted by the emanations of the Infinite, and the outer man living on preconceptions and habits and sometimes allowing his thought to move on a level proportionally far below his intelligence. It is of course desirable for man to match his thought to his real knowledge without letting any purely formal inconsistencies persist, but this is a particular grace.

Error:
The fact that errors exist does not in itself amount to a proof that the intelligence suffers from an inevitable fallibility, for error does not derive from intelligence as such. On the contrary, error is a privative phenomenon causing the activity of the intelligence to deviate through the intervention of an element of passion or blindness, without however being able to invalidate the nature of the cognitive faculty itself. To give to partial truths an absolute significance is the very definition of error.

Acest topic a fost editat de shapeshifter: 20 Jul 2009, 01:44 AM