tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7154359965221795553.post760941556879949190..comments2024-03-01T14:27:35.794-08:00Comments on Albion Awakening: Evolving Consciousness and its ResultsBruce Charltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09615189090601688535noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7154359965221795553.post-11568920168334945132018-02-11T02:56:24.984-08:002018-02-11T02:56:24.984-08:00Yes, it's what Bruce says. The opportunity is ...Yes, it's what Bruce says. The opportunity is there but we have to take it. There is certainly no inevitability about it. In fact, as I say in the post, it is a risk. The chance of a greater height to be gained means there might also be a greater fall, both individually and collectively. At the moment the latter looks more likely but perhaps we can't see the wood for the trees. After all we have been told that for God anything is possible (regarding the rich and their chances of going to heaven as being like that of a camel going through the eye of a needle)<br /><br />Would it be heretical to think that God himself 'evolves' in some way and he does so through the historical process of time? In one respect he is the same,yesterday, today and tomorrow but in another he too can grow through his creation. Maybe that's why he creates. It's like the expanding universe. It's always as big as it can be given the strictures of time and space, but then it gets bigger. But that's not an analogy one can take too far.William Wildbloodhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13231219533755925897noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7154359965221795553.post-34024855283955884132018-02-11T00:36:30.832-08:002018-02-11T00:36:30.832-08:00@CCL - If you think that either William or myself ...@CCL - If you think that either William or myself are suggesting some kind of inevitable movement towards collective enlightenment - you have completely misunderstood us! <br /><br />There is on one hand a matter of divine destny - what God wants us to do; and on the othe rhand, there is individual human agency - what we understand and believe, and how we think and live. <br /><br />My conviction is that from here and now, nothing Good can happen without human agency consciously embracing and pursuing it. <br /><br />By contrast; any idea of masses being swept along towards inevitable goals by unconsicous inevitability can only be in service of evil. Bruce Charltonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09615189090601688535noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7154359965221795553.post-8168505722144391962018-02-10T22:45:58.661-08:002018-02-10T22:45:58.661-08:00What I'm saying is that the situation exists n...What I'm saying is that the situation exists now, or not at all, in any possible future.<br /><br />You are <i>now</i> walking towards (or crawling, or feeling about for) the door that Christ opened (or will open, depending on how one measures temporal affairs), or you will never do so. C.S. Lewis said that many a young man, by acknowledging his lack of faith, was making the first real strides towards genuine belief. It is a profound truth that many who do nothing more than passively follow the prevailing culture around them are damned...what makes such a truth profound is that it is true of those in deeply religious or even Christian prevailing cultures as well as those in depraved and degenerate cultures.<br /><br />This is what I dislike most about this idea that there is some grand historical shift towards people becoming generally enlightened (or 'saved', though from what if they are in so little danger is unclear to me). Not <i>merely</i> that it is in fact objectively wrong, but that it tends so easily towards this collectivist idea of salvation.<br /><br />When Christ offers salvation to our entire house if we believe, it is because <i>we will act to help them take hold of salvation</i> if we believe. It is not because they are not responsible for their own salvation.<br /><br />Of course, I also regard the idea of "objective truth" as untrue...<i>objectively</i> speaking. For me, all truth is subjective, and that means that, if the idea of "objective truth" is subjectively valid in leading to predictive adaptation, when then it is subjectively true and the lack of any objective truth to it is immaterial (or rather, irrelevant, lest I be taken literally). So I see the utility (which is always subjective) of believing in "objective truth" as if that were not nonsense on the face of it.<br /><br />But I have yet to see any evidence that the idea of some grand historical movement towards collective enlightenment has anything to offer but spiritually deadly complacence.Chiu ChunLinghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03519192610708043962noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7154359965221795553.post-9008089639066626862018-02-04T04:35:19.809-08:002018-02-04T04:35:19.809-08:00CCL, I don’t understand what you are saying. Chris...CCL, I don’t understand what you are saying. Christ may have opened the door but we still have to walk through it. Do I not say that we have to dedicate ourselves to Christ if the scenario I envisaged is to come about? Faith in Christ and, more importantly, the inner reality of which Christ is the human face, will lead to the intuitive understanding of reality of which I speak here.<br />William Wildbloodhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13231219533755925897noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7154359965221795553.post-6174858168672709912018-02-03T23:24:25.140-08:002018-02-03T23:24:25.140-08:00@CCL - "You are trying to imagine a humanity ...@CCL - "You are trying to imagine a humanity that does not need the saving Grace of God. " <br /><br />- That isn't correct, either of William or of myself. The motivations are quite different. <br /><br />The difficulty is probably metaphysical, I infer you are arguing from a different set of assumptions regarding the basic nature of reality, the purpose of Men and the task we each confront. <br /><br />My personal view is that traditional Christian philosophy has Not served us well in explaining the human condition - because it starts-out-with and makes foundational absolute and abstract terms (such as Grace). Such abtractions then structure and distort the whole argument henceforth. <br /><br />Whereas it ought to be describing in terms of persons, and their motivations. <br /><br />It is not easy to stick to persons as primary when making explanations, and (apparently) few (other than children and the simple) have suceeded in resisting the lapse back into primary abtractions; a metaphysic wrongly-built-into Christian theology in the mysterious era after the Apostles - but the whole nature of the Gospels would seem be be telling us that this is how we ought to proceed.<br /><br />For me; it was the greatest achievement of the Mormon prophet Joseph Smith to recover this original sense of understanding the Gospels, and to develop Christian theology on that basis. <br /><br />Technically this can be described as a pluralist and evolutionary theology (as William James recognised) - but in fact that wasn't how it happened; it was instead (I think) an extraordinary and inspired directness and freshness of spirit that allowed Joseph to see what had always been there, on the surface, waiting to be seen. Bruce Charltonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09615189090601688535noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7154359965221795553.post-24914280498367027182018-02-03T19:27:18.044-08:002018-02-03T19:27:18.044-08:00"I have tried to project my mind forward to a..."I have tried to project my mind forward to a time when humanity has moved on from the lower mind-centred state it now inhabits, in which unsupported thought (though strongly coloured by emotion and prejudice)."<br /><br />This is the great mistake. You are trying to imagine a humanity that does not <i>need</i> the saving Grace of God. There was exactly one such human, ever, and He recognized that it was only through emotion and prejudice directed towards faith in Him that any other humans could be saved.<br /><br />It is well that our emotional prejudice of Christ's absolute goodness should lead us to <i>attempt</i> to emulate Him. It is dangerous in the extreme to suppose that we may ever be able to accomplish such emulation through our own efforts rather than through His Grace.<br /><br />Another way of putting it is that properly realizing and accepting our own limitations is the first step in overcoming the emotional prejudices that <i>most</i> separate us from God.Chiu ChunLinghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03519192610708043962noreply@blogger.com