tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37269394.comments2024-02-24T17:03:49.577-06:00DisputationesDennis Bielfeldthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13948642851506603307noreply@blogger.comBlogger262125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37269394.post-87121888139649949272024-02-24T17:03:49.577-06:002024-02-24T17:03:49.577-06:00I've just read the entire article fairly caref...I've just read the entire article fairly carefully (for really the first time). I have two brief comments, the first regarding Husserl. There is much debate as to the extent that Husserl is a "realist." He certainly has strong idealist tendencies. One could almost take Husserl as being consistent with a kind of coherence version of truth, and thereby not far from Putnam's critical realism. What possibly saves him from this is the powerful influence of intuition and passive synthesis. IOW, it is not clear to me how intentionality addresses the realist problem. Does one really require a realist conviction for intentionality and Heideggerian involvement to work?<br /><br />And that brings me to my last point. The problem addresses here is "external realism," and, as you mention, its scope is larger than theology. In particular, it will influence all the so-called sciences. Can the sciences, most especially the hard sciences, survive without realism? Practical arts, like engineering, aren't influenced. Their criteria is the observables and whether the science "works." Can the hard sciences survive on instrumentalist attitudes? To me, it seems, that the priests of physics must be realists, even if no one else takes their ruminations to be "real." <br /><br />One needs to ponder this. What persuades these abstract thinkers of the invisible that they are touching reality? Beauty, completeness, simplicity? <br /><br />Maybe this is where intentionality comes in. If I can intend God from what is given, is that enough; and if the horizon of this God coheres complex and manifold experience, is that enough. <br /><br />John Warwick Montgomergy was my mentor for my masters in philosophy. He wrote a book title Faith Founded on Facts. The idea, as I remember it, is that "facts" can never be sufficient for faith, but that faith without facts is groundless. Isn't the way of all phenomenology, of all experience? Experience is intrinsically transcendental. Bill Powersnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37269394.post-47878096959731241512024-01-21T16:50:21.370-06:002024-01-21T16:50:21.370-06:00I agree, Tim. We have a structural problem of too...I agree, Tim. We have a structural problem of too few pastors and congregations closing because of it. Clearly, a structural response would be more certificate, associate and BA ministry preparation. I don't care that LCMC is now requiring the M.Div. This is a surface matter and explains surface things. The big thing most be addressed structurally. Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37269394.post-37034271421985560672024-01-21T16:47:23.525-06:002024-01-21T16:47:23.525-06:00That is a good structural explanation. It does exp...That is a good structural explanation. It does explain quite well. Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37269394.post-68747836919162466562024-01-21T16:42:07.482-06:002024-01-21T16:42:07.482-06:00Bill, Great post. I have the blog now set to publi...Bill, Great post. I have the blog now set to publish comments, and did not know it had been switched off. All yours should not show. Your post here speaks for itself. THANK YOU! Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37269394.post-77208655517592449412024-01-21T16:39:05.026-06:002024-01-21T16:39:05.026-06:00This is a very interesting response, and I thank y...This is a very interesting response, and I thank you for it. Keller is likely right, and clearly this is existential. The question pertains to the epistemic situation. While somebody not generally interested in Christian life might be moved towards openness because of tuning of the cosmological constants arguments, it does not seem to be the same with respect to the resurrection. It is revealed and it is clearly all or nothing. I do think that Jesus actually rising from the dead is the center of Christian faith. THANK YOU!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37269394.post-37482589025992905912024-01-21T15:35:39.753-06:002024-01-21T15:35:39.753-06:00It is not wholly clear to me that much has changed...It is not wholly clear to me that much has changed. We have always operated in a more immanent visible realm and one that is invisible and seemingly distant. It doesn't immediately appear possible to escape the necessity for both, even logical positivists failed to do so.<br /><br />No one with "mere" evidence can know anything. All that results is an endless concatenation of unrelated experience. The relationships that make of sense of time are invisible. <br /><br />What we are uncomfortable with today is the invisible would be Spirit, would be likened unto human character, willful, purposeful, any kind of robust agency. We reserve this capability wholly to ourselves. Why? <br /><br />Many there are that try to diminish human characteristics. We are like monkeys, dogs, or dolphins. We hope to bring them into fellowship with us or diminish our capabilities. We feel compelled to deny anything like free will. Whatever we imagine of God, God is like us. To avoid such a possibility we prefer that our "creator" be unlike us, that the "creator" be unknowing, indifferent, mechanical. What lies behind this mechanical monster, I mean really behind, we dare not ponder. We are taught to be suspicious of all such questions. Why is there something and not nothing? Why is what is the way it is and not the infinite number of other possible ways of being? These are too much for us, and, of course, there always be something too much for us. Even Luther counseled that some questions ought not be asked.<br /><br />Our hermeneutics of suspicion have drained us dry. We must live as much as is possible on the surface, like bugs skimming along a ponds surface. It was, paradoxically, just such suspicion that motivated the early Christian scientists, but they, unlike our moderns, had their feet in both worlds. They insisted that our knowledge be grounded in evidence, what can be seen, in order to join it to a world that is unseen. With this they were comfortable.<br /><br />It is, as Dennis never tires of telling us, possibly Kant's fault (or simply his time) that denied us any confidence in the unseen, even though we all, everyone of us, knows that the seen cannot of its own endure. The seen must stand upon the unseen.<br /><br />Where this is not the case nothing stands still, nothing endures and there is no knowledge. Everything is thin and unreliable. Such is the modern predicament. It is paradoxical that the Enlightenment intended to do away with all "superstition," making room for certain and reliable knowledge, while today, absent "superstition," we have all become solipsists, out at sea and unable to feel the bottom. <br /><br />Having said all of this, to me it appears obvious. What is far less obvious and far more challenging is how to get from here, where all might agree, to Christ, the Incarnated, Crucified God. Bill Powersnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37269394.post-46792749070524270552024-01-21T15:10:05.436-06:002024-01-21T15:10:05.436-06:00I have been following your thoroughly and well-tho...I have been following your thoroughly and well-thought-out posts, Dennis. As a pastor concerned with evangelism for a long time, the lack of it in mainline churches today, and the reasons for their wanting little to do with it, what you have said seems to me quite correct. I think there are other contributing factors to the rejection of faith among the younger generations as well. It is among these that the exodus from the churches and from faith itself has been shown to be the greatest. The new morals we encounter from them are in part due to their rejection of older generations' morals, as though old equals evil and young equals free and enlightened. It isn't just Bill Maher who thinks he is more moral than God. How we will be able to have conversations with the people you describe is a problem in itself; they don't necessarily even want to talk to us. But I would offer this thought as a way forward. It begins with a statement from the late Timothy Keller: “If Jesus rose from the dead, then you have to accept all that he said; if he didn't rise from the dead, then why worry about any of what he said? The issue on which everything hangs is not whether or not you like his teaching but whether or not he rose from the dead.” ― Timothy Keller, The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism When I first read this and contemplated it, I next went to the Acts of the Apostles. I was reminded of how, in their preaching to the world, the Apostles led with the Resurrection. We have lots of evidence for the Resurrection, and I believe here is where our apologetics ought to concentrate. The person who becomes convinced that Jesus is risen from the dead will have lots to rethink. I have many books of apologetics, and have made my own contributions there as well (Exodus Found, When the Bible Meets the Sky for examples). It is important to help people see that the universe is best explained as the creation of God, not an accident. But with all the facts and figures belonging to the many arguments involved in all that, the subject is not an existential one like resurrection is. Resurrection, if true, is about me. And if Jesus is raised from the dead, it doesn't matter what I may have thought before about my my place in natural history, or where I may have thought morality comes from, or new views of what is right and wrong sexually. If Jesus is raised from the dead, any opinions I may have held in disagreement with what he has revealed as Lord do not matter at all. The Resurrection of Jesus Christ is the central reality of our faith, and the basis on which we should try to communicate with all of our neighbors.<br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37269394.post-21964038085862230082024-01-14T14:54:48.280-06:002024-01-14T14:54:48.280-06:00We average less then 2 children per household..a...We average less then 2 children per household..and a few parents like me maybe did not inot make it our priority Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37269394.post-910450746644991092024-01-13T17:05:58.574-06:002024-01-13T17:05:58.574-06:00Donors, prayer support, and a committed cadre read...Donors, prayer support, and a committed cadre ready to establish this effort are necessities. <br /><br />We can't simply leave this to the graduate programs. There must be a place for certificate, associate, and bachelor level ministry preparation.<br /><br />Quote: "Lutheran theology is incarnation (sic), not excarnational." This declaration of our theologiy's reality puts the "for you" at the forefront of all theological education.Timothy J. Swensonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15713323879908931560noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37269394.post-33695850065877153362023-05-17T20:29:37.922-05:002023-05-17T20:29:37.922-05:00I was scanning some neo-Marxist thinking with rega...I was scanning some neo-Marxist thinking with regard to what they call "ideology," but is probably more like Taylor's social imaginary or a worldview. What I was struck by was the use of Lacan's notion of the "Real," which he says is inaccessible because of language. I am guessing that he imagines this "Real" to be what human existence is like prior to language, in the raw, before ideas, before "ideology." Given this picture of reality, how are we to regard "religion," "God."? There is a relationship between this "Real" and "ideology." It would have to be pre-linguistic. Is it possible to think that "semantic realism" needs to explore the pre-linguistic? Just wondering out loud.Bill Powersnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37269394.post-1892374017130991972023-04-30T20:06:09.171-05:002023-04-30T20:06:09.171-05:00When I make reference to the "world," ev...When I make reference to the "world," everyone, I think, has a good idea of what I am referring to. Despite that no one can, nor can there be universal agreement about, the exhaustive character and attributes of that "world," there might still much that we could say and agree about regarding that "world." The reference is opaque. We might say that "world" is a kind of rigid designator in all the manifold and even contrary descriptions. Such was certainly the case in the history of the "electron." <br /><br />Does this situation lead one to believe that there is no "world"? No, I think that the existence of the "world" is never in doubt. <br /><br />I don't know if this helps. It seems that we have to explore why it is we are convinced of the "reality" of anything. I suspect that we will find confidence in many things that don't fit Johnson's paradigm (e.g., Wittgenstein's certainties, like yesterday). Bill Powersnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37269394.post-14130814965741046462023-03-22T11:04:35.143-05:002023-03-22T11:04:35.143-05:00I entered a comment that may not have been publish...I entered a comment that may not have been published. If not, let me know and I'll try to create a facsimile. Bill Powersnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37269394.post-71610474716202059802023-03-22T10:55:42.550-05:002023-03-22T10:55:42.550-05:00In communicating Christ, we need to decide what ar...In communicating Christ, we need to decide what are the meanings, the relationships, that are essential, or at least essential as we presently understand it. We have to also decide whether your linguistic concerns are currently central to Gospel's aim. What are the chief roadblocks to belief? Perhaps if we lay these out on the table, we will find that deeply imbed in them are these kinds of linguistic concerns. <br /><br />You speak of a "worldless world" and a "selfless self." There is, I would agree, some sense (a Rieffian sense) in which the roof has been blown off, and people are rudderless and foundationless. And yet, it seems, people go on. It is not possible to have an entirely "worldless world" or "selfless self." These may be "less than" or "modified" worlds and selves, but they are, nonetheless, worlds and selves. This needs to be explored. The presencing of God changes much. Is God necessarily replaced with something god-like in order to constitute an enduring world and self? <br /><br />Merleau-Ponty's chiastic relationship with the world requires a communication between the two, without, it seems, any clear understanding of what each contributes (if that is even sensible). I only point out that all your "worldings" of "rabbits" are imaginative variations of what a given world. As such, they are all, pace Quine, translatable in some sense. Even if not as lived experiences, they are all imaginable from one "world" to another. <br /><br />I am, as you know, very interested in this project. It requires the varying skills and experiences of many, including those in the trenches. We ought, too, not to think that our pews are not filled with such roadblocks. Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37269394.post-25916987824235349372023-03-06T20:11:00.862-06:002023-03-06T20:11:00.862-06:00It is unclear to me what the project is. We are al...It is unclear to me what the project is. We are always passing beyond our experience to a place where we cannot be. As such, what would a Christology or any metaphysics (if that is correct) be? Would it be unassailable? Would it be coherent with the phenomenal and experience, as such not unique? If we are to find a ground, we must be "outside" it, somehow not clouded by the very ground we seek. Is this, then, another "ground"? <br /><br />All that seems possible is an appropriate attitude given this Deep Cloud of Unknowing. We are more than weak. Is the project, then, to become less than weak? Bill Powersnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37269394.post-10266862836744401672023-03-06T19:45:42.345-06:002023-03-06T19:45:42.345-06:00So, here's one question: In Husserl's Prin...So, here's one question: In Husserl's Principle of Principles he enshrines what he calls "intuition" as the ultimate arbiter. Does this affect this conundrum? Bill Powersnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37269394.post-47911245912178956272022-10-09T22:36:11.747-05:002022-10-09T22:36:11.747-05:00Bill, I just found comments by people waiting to b...Bill, I just found comments by people waiting to be moderated. I did so, and now know how to do this immediately, so don't give up posting here! <br /><br />Levinas talks about the face of the Other as a trace of God in the world, but makes it clear that a trace pertains to that which one was. A rabbit passes through the snow and leaves a trace in it with his paws. We might go on to further interpret the trace as a sign of the rabbit, but the trace seems to be logically independent of the sign for seemingly while the sign needs an interpretant, perhaps a trace does not. <br /><br />Levinas' Jewish identity seems to be prevalent in most of his writings. I am not sure that the for the Orthodox Jew, the face of others could be understood as a second-place location for the Divine. This is an interesting question! Dennis Bielfeldthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13948642851506603307noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37269394.post-43438346964920589142022-10-02T14:26:04.938-05:002022-10-02T14:26:04.938-05:00This is a great topic, Tim. The problem with visi...This is a great topic, Tim. The problem with vision and mission statements is that they must be tied to accessible outcomes. But Kierkegaard's knight of faith looks entirely like the knight of resignation, although there is a movement of the spirit with respect to the first unavailable to the second. Thanks for raising this point! Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37269394.post-88020031350732471892022-07-08T15:01:02.481-05:002022-07-08T15:01:02.481-05:00Thanks for this! It's cogent and clear, deliv...Thanks for this! It's cogent and clear, delivering a concise summary of ethical systems and their problems. I would be inclined to argree with you about incorporating the "Other." While ethics, under the various systems build character and serve the common good, prove of utilitarian benefit to society, and/or serve individuals with acts of kindness and generosity, it seems to me that adherence to some ethical system first provides protection against the "Other." That is, ethics are first self-serving. Ethics provides the self with the means of justifying the self to the self, and to the "Other." Following the rules, the ethics, allows the self to be blameless before others. These others (or the "Other) are the tribunal which will pass judgment on the self, assigning blame or righteousness. The various ethical systems are suited to different kinds of tribunals before which the self must appear blameless. Prior to any ethical system being chosen or any ethics laid down, the tribunal of judgment needs determining. The first choice is an extrinsic choice rather than an intrinsic one.<br /><br />A difficulty with all this comes associated with the "blameless" goal of ethics. There is no humility in "blameless," especially when considered as "no blame attaches." If, however, "blameless" is thought of as "accepting responsibility without blaming anyone," then it possesses an inherent humility. Institutional and corporate clients are not necessarily good at practicing humility, especially when they've developed mission and vision statements providing them with a blameless righteousness.<br /><br />How might ILT use this work you're doing as it draws up its mission and vision statements?Timothy J. Swensonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15713323879908931560noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37269394.post-29153632434346749352022-06-20T18:02:16.461-05:002022-06-20T18:02:16.461-05:00I am studying Levinas' Senseless Suffering whi...I am studying Levinas' Senseless Suffering which sees in the gratuitous evil of the 20th century the "end of theodicy," which is some kind of totalizing space where this and all suffering dwells. He wants to play "theodicy" off against "ethics," as if we must choose one or the other. Turing to the Face of the Other can be seen as a project responding to the "death of God," finding human meaning and ethics in the particular Other, human community, as a savior for a godless world. <br /><br />I'd be interested in your take on this understanding. Bill Powersnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37269394.post-27630338158213505872022-04-04T21:52:49.314-05:002022-04-04T21:52:49.314-05:00Initial comment continued...
Second, I want to g...Initial comment continued...<br /><br /><br />Second, I want to give some thought to this "phenomenological encounter with the other." You wrote: "Can phenomenological encounter ground the Other? Can it give a basis for a radical theological of the Cross where one finds oneself living without metaphysical and ontological nets, as it were?" I would say, "Yes, conditionally." If the phenomenological encounter were the events of Word and Sacrament ministry, then I would agree that such an encounter grounds a life without "metaphysical and ontological safety nets." What replaces them is something more certain than either and that is God's promise. We, who exist temporally, must anticipate the promise's fulfillment and so there exists a time (on our part) where the promise exists unfulfilled. But, God, who exists eternally, simply speaks what already exists for him in his present. The cross ultimately critiques and dismantles those metaphysical and ontological safety nets we've devised for ourselves in order to leave us with the one thing we have which endures forever, the Word of the Lord.<br />This is beautifully said, "We are now the not that we shall once be when we are no longer being the one for whom the not of the future is no longer." There is a wonderful complexity of expression here that invites one into its complexity where, upon entry, its simplicity is revealed. I like that. I am assuming that you're speaking of the boundary conditions to life defining life itself and categorizing it. The cross confronts us with the future "not" of our being, imposes that "not" upon us in the present, and so delivers us into an immediate death... the death of Christ into which we were baptized, making it our death as well.<br />A bit of humor here, possibly... Our current VP attempts to imitate the complexity of language you're fond of Dennis. She, however, possesses not the rhetorical skills or the grammatical tools to communicate simplicity in comprehensible complexity as do you. She, rather, remains simply incomprehensible in her attempted complexity.<br /><br />Third, I assume you are not using the word "showing" in the sense of the "show me" state where seeing is believing when you say, " The Theology of the Cross is about showing, but not about a metaphysics of presence." I take it that you use "showing" as roughly equivalent to the semantic field of "revealing." This would reword the preceding quote, "The Theology of the Cross is about revealing, but not about a metaphysics of presence. Would it be appropriate to say that the Theology of the Cross reveals but does not explain? Proclamation is not the sort of saying that leads to dogmatics. Rather, it is the sort of speech that reveals both the reality of the Divine Otherness and the reality of the Holy Spirit worked faith in that one who is wholly other. With the proclamation of Jesus Christ, him crucified, and him alone handed over to be the life of dead sinners that the "ontological of identity, an identity that has closed the clearing of the divine other" has been overturned and a new reality established.Timothy J. Swensonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15713323879908931560noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37269394.post-52390619272999679102022-04-04T21:49:21.508-05:002022-04-04T21:49:21.508-05:00Thank you for sharing this stimulating reflection....Thank you for sharing this stimulating reflection. I've comments in three areas. <br /><br /> First, since learning of it, I've never trusted Kant's "transcendental unity of apperception" as you have said it. For me, language is the vehicle transmitting unity. This gift is recognized, perhaps even honored, in Adam as God brought the things (creatures) of creation to Adam for his naming of them and they were called by whatever Adam named them but in all of them no mate was found for Adam (Ge. 2:19-20). This first human revealed the necessary skills of categorization and discernment: the creatures were placed in distinguishable categories with recognized boundaries between them. If a creature was one thing, it could not be another thing (later, I believe Aristotle would develop this as his law of non-contradiction?). The first human also had discernment in that none of these other creatures were suitable to a be a mate. As would later be exclaimed, "There was no 'bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh'" to any of them. The unity of our experience is mediated from outside of us and language is the mediator. True language teaches the unity of true experience. Language used to deceive or confuse not only truth but the foundation of our united experience.<br /> The relevance of this was driven home to me as I related to our grandson Eric. He struggles to overcome his autistic tendencies. In his pre-school and early school days, his idea of a joke was to insist on mis-categorizing something, insisting it was one thing when it was clearly something different. He would laugh contentedly as he challenged your perception all the while knowing his insistance was entirely misplaced. He had found humor in his little challenge of accepting the norms of conventional categorization.<br /> Humor itself is a way of contradicting the conventional categorizations in such a way that the conventions themselves are re-inforced. Humor ceases to exist wherever there is no longer left any conventional categories to be contradicted. And, humor ceases to exist wherever conventional categories are declared immune to contradiction. This, perhaps, is why we live in such a humorless culture right now. Nobody can take a joke.<br /> I've come to appreciate Tom Wolfe's book "The Kingdom of Speech." He advances the notion that speech mediates our experience and brings brings us to a unity of experience by revealing to us a tradition of mediated experiences. I think this directly contradicts Kant's "transcendental unity of apperception" which arises from within. When language mediates a tradition of experiences to us, that is an "ecstatic" from without transmission of unity.<br />Timothy J. Swensonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15713323879908931560noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37269394.post-78732586357532177432022-04-04T20:26:02.641-05:002022-04-04T20:26:02.641-05:00I don't think it is the other that is at stake...I don't think it is the other that is at stake. It is pretty obvious that, no matter the unity of apperception, or a transcendental ego, no matter the apparatus of unity of experience, we cannot of this apparatus alone construct a world. <br /><br />Rather what is at stake is the character of the other. Naively, we might try to divide our apperceptions into a part contributed by our synthesizing apparatus and that by the world. What is clear, however, is that something is always given, and it is this givenness that is "passively" received by our "intuition." IOW, there is something primordially and pre-cognitively given. <br /><br />Were one to pursue something like Merleau-Ponty's chiasm, one might say that we are made for one another, us and the world, inextricably intertwined. Were this not in some sense true, no "communication" would be possible. An apparatus capable only of constructing peanut-butter sandwiches would have a hard time of it. Poorly put, but the point ought to be clear that there must be some kind of "coherent" dance between what the world gives and what we receive. Were we to merely meditate in our armchairs about this "constituted" world, much could go awry. But we don't. We are continuously, over countless experiences, engaging and testing our understanding of the world. We know what it is like for our constituted expectations to be confirmed and what it means for them to be disappointed. <br /><br />And yet I cannot say that even with all of this, our countless evidence and confirmation, whether we couldn't be wrong, deeply wrong about many aspects of the "real" world. This can only mean that what the world gives is insufficient for there to be a unique understanding, or that there are aspects of the world which escape all evidencing and experiencing. <br /><br />This latter would not surprise me. The very notion that there is a "world," by which we mean "one world," is clearly an astonishing inference, if we can regard it as one, since we my no means experience the "entire" world and all its possibilities, but merely a shred of it. And yet we all appear to presume this global unity, enduring over time and space. Bill Powersnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37269394.post-51208479195193664172022-02-05T19:05:27.134-06:002022-02-05T19:05:27.134-06:00This was so awesome, Doc B! So blessed to be in th...This was so awesome, Doc B! So blessed to be in this class. This moves the needle much further since Phenomenology. Love it. Thank You. ~PaulSkellig Michaelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10567425183485574358noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37269394.post-57566599953682003832021-11-18T10:54:37.851-06:002021-11-18T10:54:37.851-06:00I sit at my computer preparing to type a response....I sit at my computer preparing to type a response. In doing so, I attend to the screen, the touch of my fingers on the keypad, then forgetting them to attend to the thoughts that find their ways encrypted on the screen. Drawing back, I see myself sitting on a chair, as one typing in a small room upstairs, with a damp, cold show of winter about the land, now raked clean of summer's harvest, with the unseen hosts of men and women about their business, that for generations have somehow come to this place and time. I am all of these and more. And yet where am I? I, the time traveler, the receder, drawing back and returning again. Is there a place, a resting place, to see it all, to include it all, and still be or have an I. The I, some place from which to see, is always and ever unseen, always behind on the other side, the dark side. <br /><br />When I see the tree outside my window, I see but from one perspective. I see but one side, and yet I don't apperceive the tree as one-sided. I see what cannot be seen from here. Indeed, cannot be seen from anywhere. Merleau-Ponty speaks of anonymous co-perceivers, as if in my one-sided seeing, I share in those infinity of perceivers who see the tree from all its sides at the same time that I do. I hereby receive the intuition that there are or could be an infinity of co-perceivers and the mere possibility of that number conveys to me that the tree is not what I alone perceive, but what we all perceive. In doing so, I pronounce my own one-sided perceiving to be an illusion. I renounce my ownness, my aloneness, and in so doing I come to live in a world in which I inhabit, in which I am a part of, although I cannot from my I alone in its one-sidedness see this to be the case. Without this, without the perspectives of countless unseen perceivers, the world would lack independence of being. It would be as if I light up the world, instead the world lighting up and illuminating me. <br /><br />What this suggests is that I alone cannot make enduring objects of the world. I require not-I to do so, and this begins to address the withdrawal and receding of perspectives. As long as I try to accomplish this alone, I will fail and, as failing, we also fail to make an objective world in which to dwell. But what of these countless anonymous observers? Where are they? I cannot see or count them. They are simply always there, silent and invisible, giving substance to the world and my continued being, what endures and constitutes me and all that I can see and not see, for I know myself to be too small and inattentive to do so. <br /><br />They are the gaze of God that I cannot see, but can always feel in the background that must remain unspoken in the background that makes a foreground possible. It is like knowing that I have a backside, the side never seen or touched. It is not like knowing that I am typing right now. It silently goes unspoken, but always there. What kind of knowing and feeling is that? It is as if the entire world bears witness to it without saying so. <br /><br />This is the place that Christ beckons us unto, a place where we love but are not lovers, where we judge but are not judgers. It is an I that is located in the heart of God, where there is no I, or perhaps another kind of I, one qualitatively different from the I of here and now. Billhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11974057250074273162noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37269394.post-90776846134659443402021-11-18T10:51:43.959-06:002021-11-18T10:51:43.959-06:00I sit at my computer preparing to type a response....I sit at my computer preparing to type a response. In doing so, I attend to the screen, the touch of my fingers on the keypad, then forgetting them to attend to the thoughts that find their ways encrypted on the screen. Drawing back, I see myself sitting on a chair, as one typing in a small room upstairs, with a damp, cold show of winter about the land, now raked clean of summer's harvest, with the unseen hosts of men and women about their business, that for generations have somehow come to this place and time. I am all of these and more. And yet where am I? I, the time traveler, the receder, drawing back and returning again. Is there a place, a resting place, to see it all, to include it all, and still be or have an I. The I, some place from which to see, is always and ever unseen, always behind on the other side, the dark side. <br /><br />When I see the tree outside my window, I see but from one perspective. I see but one side, and yet I don't apperceive the tree as one-sided. I see what cannot be seen from here. Indeed, cannot be seen from anywhere. Merleau-Ponty speaks of anonymous co-perceivers, as if in my one-sided seeing, I share in those infinity of perceivers who see the tree from all its sides at the same time that I do. I hereby receive the intuition that there are or could be an infinity of co-perceivers and the mere possibility of that number conveys to me that the tree is not what I alone perceive, but what we all perceive. In doing so, I pronounce my own one-sided perceiving to be an illusion. I renounce my ownness, my aloneness, and in so doing I come to live in a world in which I inhabit, in which I am a part of, although I cannot from my I alone in its one-sidedness see this to be the case. Without this, without the perspectives of countless unseen perceivers, the world would lack independence of being. It would be as if I light up the world, instead the world lighting up and illuminating me. <br /><br />What this suggests is that I alone cannot make enduring objects of the world. I require not-I to do so, and this begins to address the withdrawal and receding of perspectives. As long as I try to accomplish this alone, I will fail and, as failing, we also fail to make an objective world in which to dwell. But what of these countless anonymous observers? Where are they? I cannot see or count them. They are simply always there, silent and invisible, giving substance to the world and my continued being, what endures and constitutes me and all that I can see and not see, for I know myself to be too small and inattentive to do so. <br /><br />They are the gaze of God that I cannot see, but can always feel in the background that must remain unspoken in the background that makes a foreground possible. It is like knowing that I have a backside, the side never seen or touched. It is not like knowing that I am typing right now. It silently goes unspoken, but always there. What kind of knowing and feeling is that? It is as if the entire world bears witness to it without saying so. <br /><br />This is the place that Christ beckons us unto, a place where we love but are not lovers, where we judge but are not judgers. It is an I that is located in the heart of God, where there is no I, or perhaps another kind of I, one qualitatively different from the I of here and now. Billhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11974057250074273162noreply@blogger.com