.

Posted March 19th, 2009 by Schalk Schalk in Integral and Christianity

Please Login to Add Comments
hide all sub-comments
Report Abuse

[Comment Deleted]

Posted March 19th, 2009 by admin

This comment has been deleted by the author.

3 Comments

First Impressions

Posted March 19th, 2009 by Greg Mayers in response to [Comment Deleted]

Dear Schaik:

I have been chasing these posts around by you, Cameron and others, and am deeply relieved to read so lively and passionate a discussion around eastern traditions and Christianity. I have recently changed an opinion, which I held unthinkingly for many years, an opinion that is polpular because it levels out the rough spots in this problem of differences in traditions. I use to think, like many others, that there is only one mountain, and religious traditions are only different path up this one mountain. I no longer accept that simplistic metaphor.

I am a Catholic priest, a long time student of Willigis Jaeger, who gave me permission to teach both Christian Contemplation and Zen. In addition I am a Zen Teacher (Ryuun-ken is my teaching name) in the Sanbo-Kyodan Zen lineage. I say this, not to brag, but to establish my authority by personal experience to make the following statement: Christians and Buddhists do not climb the same mountain, and when they arrive at the top, they do not see the same view. I've been up both mountains. To conflate the two is to dishonor both. There are a lot of generalities shared by the two, but there are distinctions that cannot be erased. I honor it all, both my Catholic "self" and my Buddhist "self". And I live with the tension between the two inside of me. A Buddhist once asked my teacher Willigis: How can you a Catholic priest be teaching Zen Buddhism? He answered: I don't know how, I just do it!

I have just one quibble with your fine presentation and it is the assertion that unless one explicitly believes in Jesus, one ain't going to get "there" in the afterlife, if I understand you correctly. It is essentially the old theological debate about salvation outside the Church. The unrelenting, unconditional love of God (or, Love that is God) excludes nothing and no one. The psychopathic criminals will rejoice alongside the Mother Teresas as will the aethists, etc. I don't know how, God will just do it!

I want to end with a lengthy quote from one of my favorite authors, Oliver Clement, that describes the view from the top of the Christian mountian. It is so eloquent and compact, so right on, and so worth the effort to read through it.

The Fathers distinguish here, without in anyway separating them, the inaccessible essence of God and the energy (or energies) by means of which his essence is made inexhaustibly capable of being shared in. It is a distinction that is inherent in the divine Persons and it points, on the one hand, to their secret nature and, on the other hand, to the communication of their love and their life. The essence does not imply depth greater than the Trinity; it means the depth in the Trinity, the depth, that cannot be objectivized (sic), of personal existence in communion. The inaccessibility of the essence means that God reveals himself of his own free will by grace, by a “folly of love” (St Maximus’s expression). God in his nearness remains transcendent. He is hidden, not as if in forbidden darkness, but by the very intensity of his light. It is only God’s inaccessibility that allows the positive space for the development of love through which communion is renewed. God overcomes otherness in himself without dissolving it and that is the mystery of the Trinity in Unity. He overcomes it in his relations with us, again without dissolving it, and that is the distinction-identity of the reality and the energies. ‘God is altogether shared and altogether unshareable,’ as Dionysius the Areopagite and St Maximus the Confessor say. The energy is the expansion of the Trinitarian love. It associates us with the perichoresi of the divine Persons.

God as inaccessible essence – transcendent, always beyond our reach.

God as energy capable of being shared in – God incarnate, crucified, descended into hell, risen from the dead and raising us up, that is, enabling us to share in his life, even from the starting point of our own enclosed hell – God always within our reach.

The energy – or energies – can therefore be considered from two complimentary standpoints. On the one hand is life, glory, and the numberless divine Names that radiate eternally from the divine essence. From all eternity God lives and reigns in glory. And the waves of his power permeate the universe from the moment of its creation, bestowing on it its translucent beauty, masked partially by the fall. At the same time, however, the energy or energies denote the actions of God who is living and active, operations that create and maintain the universe, then enable it to enter potentially into the realm of the Spirit, and to be offered the risen life. All these operations are therefore summed up in Jesus, the name that means ‘God saves’, ‘God frees’, ‘God sets at liberty’. In his person humanity and all creation are ‘authenticated’, ‘spiritualized’, and vivified’, since as St Paul says, ‘In him [Christ] the whole fullness of the deity dwells bodily’ (Colossians 2.9). The energy as divine activity ensures our share in the energy as divine life, since what God gives us is himself. The energy is not a impersonal emanation, nor is it a part of God. It is the life that comes from the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit. It is the life that flows from the whole being of Jesus, from his pierced side, from his empty tomb. It is that power of God giving himself entirely while remaining entirely above and beyond creatures. (The Roots of Christian Mysticism;, pp. 237-238).

Fondly

Greg Mayers

Please Log in to Vote.

1 out of 1 members found this useful.

[Comment Deleted]

Posted March 20th, 2009 by admin in response to First Impressions

This comment has been deleted by the author.

1 Comment

Please Log in to Vote.

2 out of 2 members found this useful.

Feeling a little ache

Posted March 21st, 2009 by Greg Mayers in response to [Comment Deleted]

Anne:

Thank you for your kind words. I'd like to answer you question at the end of your post: Do you not feel at least a little ache when thinking about those that will not understand? The short answer is: No. The Vatican Council II stated clearly that non-Christian traditions contained something of the eternal truths in them, and therefore are to be respected and honored. These tradition are so rich beyond imagination and we Christians can learn so much from them. I don't ache for them, I rejoice with them, for the Spirit is so incredibly rich in her expressions. I am completely overcome by the "unrelenting, unconditional love of God" however and whenever it finds an outlet. This adds to the overflowing abundance found in our own tradition, and thus is a cause of great rejoicing and pleasure for me.

Fondly,

Greg Mayers