Originally posted by familyman:
As I re-read my post it occurs to me that my use of the terms 'male and female' may be misunderstood. Thanks, Rick
Rick�
I had really forgotten about this thread. I was a long time ago.
As regarding your image of the joining of a man and woman with the offspring being Christ - some people would interpret that in a poor way, but it is certainly an image used in scriptures.
It is also used in Greek myth. But I will skip over its use there except to say it is used in a similar way.
In some languages (Hebrew included) there is a use of gender for items which we of the more restricted English language seldom assign gender to. However we often assign gender in other indirect ways - for example a ship is most often a �she�. The captain (male) and the ship (she) join in a union - and there is a product of that union (sailing). A stranger is most often referred to as a he if the real gender is not known. When giving an example within psychology, philosophy and related sciences - we most often give that person a male gender even while the example applies to either gender (�If a man wants reality - he must seek it.�).
St Augustine rightly recognizes the role of the biblical use of gender to often be symbolic of the male gender being representing the faculty of intellect (the knowing ability) and the female gender representing the will (desire and motivation). Being symbolic of these aspects within ourselves, adam and eve exist even at this moment within each of us. And what would be the point of the narration of adam and eve if these two types really had nothing to do with us except the genetic origin of our species and the initial cause of our problem of sin? Does know that - really have any immediate benefit on you - or me - today at this moment?? No, the narration of adam and eve - has everything to do with you, and me, and any human, here today and right now because the story of their action (and the results) toward paradise or away from paradise - takes place within us - over and over and over again.
The symbol of marriage - is often used to express a union of intellect and will - that produces an off-spring.
The volitive will - alone - is blind. It needs the eyes of the intellect. The intellect alone is motiveless - it needs the desire (motivation) of the will. And either are helpless without the faculty of - memory - else we would always be fresh as babies and never retain knowledge of results. Imagine what it would be like if you had no memory? We would not be able to function - we would not be able to learn. We would always be - a newly born.
In order for us to function - out intellect investigates and figures out a way to reach a goal. Our will provides emotion by which we steer the intellect. This is a simple way to say it and so it is not technically correct.
Our intellect (knowing ability) and our will (motive) join in a union (go into each other) and that union produces something new - it has off-spring. A �child� - which also within itself contains an element of intellect and will. Today we tend to call that a �mindset�. For example - once I become a mathematician - that has its own mindset. It has its own life of the intellect and its own desires and goals (will - motivations). On and on this production takes place and its growth is biblically imaged as the growth of a tree always sprouting new branches of knowledge from itself.
In the biblical view - the full integration of out intellect and our will (the marriage of both - the undivided person) goes hand in hand with our mystical marriage to God. One - presupposes - the other.
One can think of this in a simple way by reasoning that the design of our intellect (how it was created and what it is intended to do) is to be fully integrated with the design of our will. A - wholeness. A oneness - a full union. An un-divided person and personality. The opposite of that is the possessed man of the gospels who was inhabited by (�My name is legion.�) so many personalities that it is compared to the number of soldiers in a Roman legion (100). Today - we would call this man a schizophrenic - but the truth is that we all have within us many personalities which we put on or off according to the situation. We are dominant to those under us and we are subservient to those above us. We use shifting situational ethics. We do not let our yes be �yes� and our no be �no� because we first think of all the personal repercussions and we adjust and amend our answer according to our self-providential needs. We look for our own profit or at least our lessen our loses.
This full union of our faculties - is also a full union with reality. It can be nothing else. It is a full union with nature - and by that also a full union with nature�s God.
When the faculties of intellect, will, and memory - are united in an equality - each is working according to its design. Its - natural - design.
At birth - we experience this natural union with nature. Through instinct and intuition (in-tuition or in-teaching) we are in an original communion with nature. We easily follow its promptings because we do not yet know (through memory) other choices. Our will - is moved by nature itself. Hunger - sleep - pain - all these movements of the will - are movements not by choice nor by past experience - but rather immediate movements through the media of our immediate experiences of the life (movement) of nature that we are so immersed in and in union with. It is indeed - a paradise - where God (through the media of nature) provides all - for us.
Once we have fallen from heaven - exiled form God-providence - we ever after long for a return to that Providence and that fresh face to face experience of reality - as it is.
If there is anything that we learn in life it is that real happiness - is not found in the constructions of our own imagination. It is only to be had as an integral part of reality itself.
What do we search for? God? Or reality?
The fact is that if you find one - you have by necessity - found the other.
God creates reality (as an immediate human experience) at every moment. Reason tells us that he can do nothing other than that. God - does not create un-reality and un-reality has no existence. John echoes this when he tells us regarding the Word �and everything that is - was created through him - and no-thing exists without him.� This is a simple way to say that only reality has any existence - and that which is not really has no existence at all. God - creates - reality - and no-thing (object, item, or event) else.
Christianity - would be so much simpler for us - if we could keep that in mind. Sanctity within Christianity - is a plunge - a dive - into reality - into what is real - into that experience - of reality that God creates. In that sense - to be a Christian - is to embrace the - existential of life - and not to question it or over analyze it.
In the mind of John the apostle - that existential reality - is a person. It is the resurrected Jesus Christ. That risen - yet invisible to our human senses - body and being of Jesus in his activity of the Logos. That is, the reasoning, of God, which creates. The creative action which is both a cause (first cause) and purpose (cause toward a reasoned goal). That goal - is of course �let us make man in our image.�
While man is, in someway, is bodily created in am image of God (keep in mind that the god-nature has no hands, eyes, hair, flesh, etc) by way of a symbolic reflection, Our human nature (all of it on any level) reflects, in a spiritual way, more fully and more completely than anything else in creation - attributes of that nature which is God. While that of us which is spiritual (and the Greek word spirit is psyche which means - mind) and most like God - has a freedom to it. A freedom of ours (like his own freedom) which has the ability to chose and reject. It is this - within us - that God �forms� day to day between the hammer of human experiences - and the choices of going by our conscience (together-knowing) or not.
It is the light of our conscience - which Jesus tells us we are not to cover over with a basket or hide behind a couch - but rather let it light up the whole room (use it to see by). We are to know things and events - by way of our conscience - above all.
There are two forms of the Will of the father - that come to us.
The first form comes to use by way of the exterior. It is the things and events - which come to us each day. We must submit to it - in its reality - but let us not confuse that submission with a robot like passivity - because that form of God�s will (that direct expression of God to and toward us) is in concert with the other form of God�s will which comes to us by way of out conscience. It is primarily by the enlightenment of our conscience that we are to judge what response is called for to the exterior expression of his will.
If we follow our promptings of good conscience when we are placed in any situation brought to us today - then it is between that act of conscience and that act of external experience - that our personality is formed and shaped - to be like his own. He provides in two ways - he provides externally and internally. And all we need to is accept and cooperate - and reality itself - shapes our personality into that mystery which he desires we become. I say mystery because it is an existential reality and not an analytical and mental facsimile.
When we do this - on a daily basis - the part of our nature which is our personality - which is memory - is formed (or reformed). Our - habitual - faculty.
Remember I said that we are in essence - a function of intellect, will, and memory. As the faculty of memory is purged from unreality - the intelligent and will are freed from the tendency of habit. They can now function unrestrained by past tendency of habit. When this purgation of memory - takes place - the intellect and the will - are temporary - blinded. Hense St. John of the Cross calls this the �dark night�. Now this bothers us more if we are trying to live by self plans because we become somewhat unable to predict what the future will be. Before - we predicted the future for ourselves according to what we had planed by way of manipulation - we manipulated things, people, and events as best we could in order to provide for ourselves what we deemed necessary for our own self security. And since that was a habitual act of ours - when we are temporarily (and involuntarily) without that ability - it is uncomfortable and like a blindness to intellect and will. The more we take each moment as it comes - the less will this bother us. The more we look to the daily bread (the immediate will of God) the less do we try to store up our stock of break in towers meant to secure us from famine. I am referring to the gospel story here of the man who stored wheat in his store house towers but died the next day so that his work did not bring him - life.
I have been to long here now - and yakked my head off - and that has not gone well with me recently.
Now, to sum up�
The image of that marriage (union) of our own intellect and will - has always gone hand in glove - with the mystical marriage of ourselves with Christ. That union in us - that complete integration of intellect and will according to its intended design by nature - is not Christ itself - but it is the �ground� within us that allows our full (and mysterious because we do not know how it happens) union with Jesus (who is Logos, existential reality, a person with his own mind and will). So it is understandable why mystics speak of the birth of Christ in us.
That union - stops short in concept - if e think of just the full integration of our own nature - as being Christ. It is an admirable goal in itself (the union of ourselves with the nature of reality) - but it lacks the further existential reality that - existential reality itself - is a thinking and reasoning person - a self intelligent - being - which as first cause of all things and events (prime mover) imparts intelligent and purposeful design - moment by moment.
The full integration of our intellect, will, and memory, with existential reality - becomes the appropraiate means of our cooperation with the will of God - and the means of that union of our own intellect and will - with the intellect and will of God.
I am not a theologian so I have spoken in generalities.
I understood your image of the union of male and female. It is a biblical image of the mystical union that the spiritual father of the church have often spoken of. They often called it - our deification - in the sense of its always being contigent upon our mystical union and likeness with God. A gift (grace) and not ours by by oor own nature. Jesus called it 'life' ... "I am the life." within which God gives himself to us.
Apparently this has been my Easter post - on the ressurection from death to life.
-ray
