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Revelation Thoughts [a few references] (Sp. II)
Maybe the whole nature of God was disclosed in Jesus Christ; but so it is in every blade of grass, if only we had the power to recognize it. I would rather say that what Jesus partially disclosed, was: what a human can be, who has realized his/her divine kinship; has realized that in the real essential Self one is united with that ultimate, ineffable ‘Being’ of which this whole universe is composed.
Gandhi:
“God is not a person. He is the all-pervading, all-powerful spirit. Any one who hears him in his heart has access to a marvelous force or energy, comparable in its results to physical forces like steam or electricity but much more subtle.
I do dimly perceive that whilst everything around me is ever changing and ever dying, there is - underlying all that change -, a ‘living power ’, that is changeless, that holds all together, that creates, dissolves and recreates. This ‘informing power’ or ‘spirit’ is God.”
Abraham Heschel:
“We do not leave the shore of the known in search of adventure or suspense or because of the failure of reason to answer our questions. We sail, because our mind is like a fantastic sea shell, and when applying our ear to its lips we hear a perpetual murmur from the waves beyond the shore.”
He also talks about the ‘kingship of Being’ where I can see a connection with Jesus’ Kingdom message and the depth of meaning possible in that concept. [GCS]
Robinson:
"God is not a projection ‘out there̓... but the Ground of our very being.
“The break with traditional thinking [of God], - to which I believe we are now summoned -, is considerably more radical than that, which enabled Christian theology to detach itself from a literal belief in a localized heaven.
“God is a Being, existing in his own right to whom the world is related in the sort of way the earth is to the sun. Whether the sun is ‘above’ a flat earth, or ‘beyond’ a round one, does not fundamentally affect the picture. But suppose there is no Being out there at all? Suppose, to use our analogy, the skies are empty?
As Tillich points out:
“‘Deep’, - in its spiritual use -, has two meanings: it means either the opposite of ‘shallow’, or the opposite of ‘high’. Truth is deep and not shallow; suffering is depth and not height. Both the light of truth and the darkness of suffering are deep. There is a depth in God, and there is a depth out of which the psalmist cries to God.’ ..... Ps 9 De Profundis - out of the depths I cry to you, o God, Lord hear my voice ...
“The name of this ‘infinite and inexhaustible ground of history’ is God. That is what the word means, and it is that, to which the words Kingdom of God and Divine Providence point. And if these words do not have much meaning for you, translate them, and speak of the depth of history, of the ground and aim of our social life, and of what you take seriously without reservation in your moral and political activities. Perhaps you should call this depth hope, ... simply hope.
“ God is not ‘out there’. He is in Bonhoeffer’s words ‘the beyond in the midst of our life’, a depth of reality reached ‘not on the borders of life but at its centre’, not by any flight of the alone to the alone, but, in Kierkegaard̓s fine phrase, by ‘a deeper immersion in existence ’. For the word ‘God’ denotes the ultimate depth of all our being, the creative ground and meaning of all our existence. 47
“The difference between the two ways of thought can perhaps best be expressed by asking what is meant by speaking of a personal God.
“Theism understands by this a supreme Person, a self-existent subject of infinite goodness and power, who enters into a relationship with us comparable with that of one human personality with another. The theist is concerned to argue the existence of such a Being as the creator, and the most sufficient explanation of the world as we know it. Without a Person ‘out there’, the skies would be empty, the heavens as brass, and the world without hope or compassion.
“Belief in God is the trust, the seemingly incredible trust, that: to give ourselves to the Uttermost in love, means: not to be confounded, but to be ‘accepted’. That Love, says Robinson, is the ground of our being, to which ultimately we ‘come home’.
'For Rabbinic Judaism ... Scripture was not a closed book, and revelation was not a historical event that had happened in a distant time. It was renewed every time a Jew confronted the text, opened himself to it, and applied it to his own situation This dynamic vision could set the world afire (a view that was continued in gnosticism, and later rejected by the church of the councils. GCS) .' TGT 381
Cosmology as Revelation [Our World in Transition 152] Diarmuid O'Murchu
'Spiritually, modern cosmology poses a profound and provocative challenge, namely that the universe itself, and not the religions, is the primary source of revelation. It is in the unfolding orchestra of creation that we feel and intuit (as our pre-historic ancestors did for thousands of years) a divine presence, fundamentally creative and benign in nature. In the evolving dance of creation, we connect with the divine lifeforce that permeates existence in its entirety. ... we need ... to be listening and attending to the ongoing revelation. Our primary task is not to dominate life, but to celebrate it - in love and justice. The late Karl Rahner suggested that God reveals in accordance with our capacity to receive revealed truth (wisdom). If we ourselves continue to play God, to manipulate the will-to-power totally and solely in anthropomorphic terms, then little wonder that we live in such a godless world. The central religious problem of our time is that most of our religious Gods are false ones, alien to and alienated from the meaning of life and evolution.
When we reclaim the creation itself as the primary creative energy of life (whether we deem it divine or not), then not merely do our actions change, but so do our attitudes and perceptions. When we assume our participatory role as creative listeners, we realise that the appropriate action is to flow with the creative process and not to hinder it because of vested interests of an outdated and highly dangerous will-to-power. In that challenging moment of conversion (not from the world but to it) and letting go, we'll discover afresh our true role: to co-create attentively with our profoundly creative universe.'
[Evolutionary Faith 71]
‘Denis Edwards (1995; 1999) claims that the self-communication of God is activated in and through creation. Creation is the context in which the revelation and creativity of God are made possible and without which the divine creativity would not be known to us. Contrary to long-standing notions about the sinfulness and limitations of fallen nature in humans and in the surrounding world, Edwards invites us to view creation as wisely transparent and receptive to the revelation of God, made manifest in a unique way for Christians [and to all humans. GCS] through the coming [and teacching] of Jesus.’
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