Spiritual Marriage (A Postmetaphysical Approach to the Scandal of Particularity)

Whatever story resonates with the audience the most will naturally be easiest and most interesting to learn from. People don't have to relate to Christ. I'm of the opinion that s/he (God/dess) doesn't insist on it. The idea of HP as a Christ type actually isn't too far off for me but for many people --probably most-- HP is a fine story without any comparisons made to other stories. I love it myself. Oh and definitely that whole Star Wars thing was just insanely classic.  Darth Vader.  What a name.

Tom wrote:  …your spiritual marriage model appeals to me, as it avoids throwing babies out with bathwater, it avoids imperialist absolutizing of My Truth Only, and it recognizes IMO a certain fundamental about living, which is this: one must choose in this life, and any choice necessarily closes options otherwise available.  Those options carry real value, thus any commitment, it seems to me, carries a sense of loss of parts of my being left behind.  But that is the price of living, and the price of creativity, and of developing oneself and that which one values and chooses. 

Thanks, I think that's beautifully put. 

Tom said:  If I were to guess, I'd say the instinct to absolutize
intends to cover over this sense of loss by waving the magic wand of supposed Universal Value.

I'd say that's a good guess, and an important insight.  It seems to me that there is also something about assent to the Universal Value that, because of its apparent “force of necessity” (using Bohm's phrase), serves to erase or obscure memory of the choice that put it in place.

Tom said:  The upside of recognizing one's partiality, and the loss it entails, is one can touch real value by virtue of having committed oneself—-chase two rabbits, catch none-—while retaining real connection to others, a love, even, of who and what they are in and for their difference.  For, among other reasons, they have explored something I have excluded from my life, they've raised that infant-possibility I aborted, and that something can be shared in an atmosphere of rich respect.

Yes, and that recognition of the could-have-been-for-me in the path of another, while it doesn't deny particularity, or the richness therein, also implies a universal element – universalizability in our respective enactments.

Best wishes,

B.

-- Maybe I am confused?  Balder was trying to express what two individuals gain rather than

'give up' by voluntarily committing to go thru life together.   Becoming one not only physically however spiritually. Lady can be very 'hot' and many men can find her attractive.  Women do like to be 'seen' however fulfillment comes with depth and sharing hardships of life not just better times.  So when two people decide to make their 'we' space sacred and voluntarily decide to express their love for each other physically an 'exclusive arrangement' they are making their 'we space' sacred. 

Tricia

-- From my interpretation of integral theory is just the opposite.  We are NOT condemned to be partial.  Quite the contrary we can choose to be 'specialist.'  

Integral theory makes it 'easier' to make fundamental commitments for marraige, family, career etc.  You completely lost me.

Tricia

Hi Cam, carrying further with this notion of partiality, what would viewing Christianity as partial entail or imply? 

Hi, Cameron,

No problem about the delayed response -- I know what a task moving can be!

The connection you trace between the "spiritual marriage" perspective and Badiou's philosophy sounds like a fruitful one for me to explore.  I am only vaguely familiar with him at this point.

Tentatively, given my lack of familiarity with Badiou's work, I would suggest that, in a post-postmodern approach, we would still need to be cautious about treating an historical situation or event as a universal truth-event-in-itself.  By this, I mean declaring a particular historical event a truth-event for all people, once and for all, as if it could stand by itself as such an event apart from particular subjects (e.g., as if it could be declared an objective, transhistorical truth-event, independent of all historical subjects).  Such a move would still be metaphysical.

My thought here, and it may very well be Badiou's as well, is that we cannot leave out the question of "for whom" in a post-metaphysical, enactive forumlation.  Which would mean that the Christian truth-event is not an event fixed once and for all in the past, but something that emerges anew in the encounter between a particular subject and (a particular expression of) the Gospel.  One cannot "encounter" an historical event directly, but only a (developing, shifting, evolving) account of said event.  The historical event cannot be separated decisively from the account, in other words, and the rupturing truth-event that is the Christian experience of metanoia is thus both unique and universal.  Unique because both the individual and the account encountered (the Gospel message) are historical, particular, evolutionarily and contextually situated; and universal because common patterns of experience can nevertheless be traced across the Christian community.

Does this make sense to you, or am I missing something?  (I'm sort of shooting blind, knowing so little about Badiou's philosophy).

I make these points in part because a metaphysical, totalizing interpretation of the life, death, and resurrection of Christ as an objective truth-event-in-itself is one which I believe would tend to incline one (in interfaith contexts) in the problematic direction of triumphalism, as we've been discussing.  But also simply because the concept of an historical event as an objective, universal truth-event-in-itself is metaphysical and still subject to the myth of the given.

Best wishes,

Bruce

P.S.  Regarding Tom's question about partiality, I suspect he was asking whether Christianity would admit to its own partiality or incompleteness, its own limitations (given the choices and commitments Christians must make to the exclusion of other possibilities, other horizons).