As far as worldviews are concerned, we are dealing with a conception of reality freed from the categories of good and evil, but with a metaphysical foundation, not a naturalistic or pantheistic one. Being knows nothing of good or evil, nor do the great laws of things, nor the Absolute. A good or an evil exists solely in function of an end, and what is the standard by which to judge this end and thereby fix the ultimate legitimacy of an action or a being? Even the theology of Providence and the efforts of theistic theodicy to prop up the concept of the moral God cannot do away with the idea of the Great Economy that includes evil, in which evil is only a particular aspect of a higher order, transcending the little human categories of the individual and the collectivity of individuals. \nThe 'other world' attacked by European nihilism, presented by the latter as sheer illusion or condemned as an evasion, is not another reality; it is another dimension of reality in which the real, without being negated, acquires an absolute significance in the inconceivable nakedness of pure Being. \nIn an epoch of dissolution, this is the essential basis of a vision of life that is appropriate for the man reduced to himself, who must prove his own strength. Its counterpart is to be central or to make oneself so, to know or discover the supreme identity with oneself. It is to perceive the dimension of transcendence within, and to anchor oneself in it, making of it the hinge that stays immobile even when the door slams (an image from Meister Eckhart). From this point on, any 'invocation' or prayer becomes existentially impossible. The heritage of 'God' that one dared not accept is not that of the lucid madness of Kirilov; it is the calm sense of a presence and an intangible possession, of a superiority to life whilst in the very bosom of life.

• worldview
• reality
• good and evil
• being
• morality
• moral relativism
• nihilism
• theology
• the fourth way
• gnosticism

The Hebrew word nabi^7, which has been misleadingly translated by the Greek designation of 'prophet', presents an extremely interesting difficulty. To prophesy in its modern connotations is to foretell the future, but this is not what is indicated by the verb naba, whose practitioners were the nabiim (plural of nabi). These terms come from a group of cognate words which have nothing to do with time, but rather with flowing and becoming bright. Thus we may think of a nabi as one who metaphorically was flowing forth or welling up with speech and visions. They were transitional men, partly subjective and partly bicameral. And once the bright torrent was released and the call came, the nabi must deliver his bicameral message, however unsuspecting (Amos 7:14-15), however un-worthy the nabi felt (Exodus 3:113 Isaiah 6; Jeremiah 1:6), however distrustful at times of his own hearing (Jeremiah 20:7-10). What does it feel like to be a nabi at the beginning of one of his bicameral periods? Like a red hot coal in one's mouth (Isaiah 6:7) or a raging fire shut up in one's bones that cannot be contained (Jeremiah 20:9) and that only the flowing forth of divine speech can quench.\r\n\r\n⁷ Transliteration from Hebrew into English is always misleading. Perhaps a better case here might be made for nbi or nvi. That its meaning was ambiguous even at the time seems to be indicated in I Samuel 9:9. See also John L. McKenzie, A Theology of the Old Testament (New York: Doubleday, 1974), p. 85.

• reference point
• bicameral mind
• language
• translation
• meaning
• old testament
• metaphor
• time
• future
• speech
• english
• theology

...this blurring of Rank and Kierkegaard is not a weak surrender to ideology but an actual scientific working-through of the problem of human character. Both men reached the same conclusion after the most exhaustive psychological quest: that at the very furthest reaches of scientific description, psychology has to give way to “theology”—that is, to a world-view that absorbs the individual’s conflicts and guilt and offers him the possibility for some kind of heroic apotheosis. Man cannot endure his own littleness unless he can translate it into meaningfulness on the largest possible level. Here Rank and Kierkegaard meet in one of those astonishing historical mergers of thought: that sin and neurosis are two ways of talking about the same thing—the complete isolation of the individual, his disharmony with the rest of nature, his hyperindividualism, his attempt to create his own world from within himself. Both sin and neurosis represent the individual blowing himself up to larger than his true size, his refusal to recognize his cosmic dependence. Neurosis, like sin, is an attempt to force nature, to pretend that the causa-sui project really suffices. In sin and neurosis man fetishizes himself on something narrow at hand and pretends that the whole meaning and miraculousness of creation is limited to that, that he can get his beatification from that.38

• rank
• kierkegaard
• character
• psychology
• meaning
• sin
• neurosis
• isolation
• community
• causa-sui
• creation
• nature
• force
• thought
• guilt
• theology
• ideology
• talking

I was in Japan for the Ninth International Congress on the History of Religions. One of our leading New York social philosophers, who was a conspicuous delegate to that extraordinarily colorful assemblage -- a learned, genial, and charming gentleman, who, however, had had little or no previous experience either of the Orient or of religion (in fact I wondered by what miracle he was there) -- having gone along with the rest of us on our visits to a number of noble Shinto shrines and beautiful Buddhist temples, was finally ready to ask a few significant questions. There were many Japanese members of the congress, not a few of them Shinto priests, and on the occasion of a great lawn party in the precincts of a glorious Japanese garden, our friend approached one of these. 'You know,' he said, 'I've been now to a good many ceremonies and have seen quite a number of shrines, but I don't get the ideology; I don't get your theology.'The Japanese (you may know) do not like to disappoint visitors, and this gentleman, polite, apparently respecting the foreign scholar's profound question, paused as though in deep thought, and then, biting his lips, slowly shook his head. 'I think we don't have ideology,' he said. 'We don't have theology. We dance.'             That, for me, was the lesson of the congress. What it told was that in Japan, in the native Shinto religion of the land, where the rites are extremely stately, musical, and imposing, no attempt has been made to reduce their 'affect images' to words. They have been left to speak for themselves -- as rites, as works of art -- through the eyes to the listening heart. And that, I would say, is what we, in our own religious rites, had best be doing too. Ask an artist what his picture 'means,' and you will not soon ask such a question again. Significant images render insights beyond speech, beyond the kinds of meaning speech defines. And if they do not speak to you, that is because you are not ready for them, and words will only serve to make you think you have understood, thus cutting you off altogether. You don't ask what a dance means, you enjoy it. You don't ask what the world means, you enjoy it.

• meaning
• religion
• will
• experience
• thought
• art
• speech
• theology
• history
• ideology
• rites

There are no commandments, because there is no commander anywhere. All authority is a delusion, whether in theology or in sociology. Everything is radically, even sickeningly, free. The first law of magic is as neutral as Newton's first law of motion. It says that the equation balances, and that's all it says. You are still free to give evil and pain, if you decide you must. Once done, however, you never escape the consequences. It always comes back.

• authority
• evil
• consequences
• theology
• law
• newton

There are no commandments, because there is no commander anywhere. All authority is a delusion, whether in theology or in sociology. Everything is radically, even sickeningly, free. The first law of magic is as neutral as Newton's first law of motion. It says that the equation balances, and that's all it says. You are still free to give evil and pain, if you decide you must. Once done, however, you never escape the consequences. It always comes back.

• authority
• consequences
• existential
• existentialism
• freedom
• good and evil
• magick
• evil
• theology
• law
• newton

William Temple (Archbishop of Canterbury) told us a story about Sir Walford Davies, who was then Master of the King's Music.  He had been present on an occasion when Sir Walford was instructing an untrained choral group in hymn-singing.  He started them out with some familiar hymn which they bellowed forth with gusto to impress the Archbishop, and the musical effect was terrible.  But there was also present a small professional choir, and Sir Walford asked them to go through several verses of a completely unfamiliar hymn so that everyone could memorize the tune.  'Now,' he said, 'we're all going to sing this new hymn.  But one thing is absolutely important: you must not try to sing it.  Just think of the tune and let it sing itself.'  The result was such a marked improvement that he turned to the Archbishop and said, 'Isn't that also good theology?

• music
• education
• zen
• theology
• taoism
• tao

But are God and nature, spirit and flesh - like individual persons, mutually exclusive?  'He that is unmarried,' said St. Paul, 'careth for the things that belong to the Lord, how he may please the Lord.  But he that is married careth for the things that are of the world, how he may please his wife.'  Yet this is to say that the divine cannot be loved in and through the things of the this world, and to deny the saying that 'Inasmuch as you have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, you have done it unto me.'  If the love of God and the love of the world are mutually exclusive, then, on the very premises of theology, God is a finite thing among things - for only finite things exclude one another.  God is dethroned and un-godded by being put in opposition to nature and the world, becoming an object instead of the continuum in which we 'live and move and have our being.

• christianity
• love
• religion
• st. paul
• god
• nature
• flesh
• spirit
• theology