No Robots

Sorry if my phrasing confused you. Yes, all true mystics are godless.

Brunner argues for a general typology that includes all mystics. There are gradations of course, but the essential qualities are godlessness, freedom from the world and blessedness of soul:

In point of fact there are two kinds sorts of mysticism, differing from one another as the ranting of drunkards from the language of illumined spirits. There is the muddled, stammering mysticism, and there is the mysticism luminous with truly ultimate ideas. On the one hand there are the empty dimness and darkness, the barren, chilling sentimentalism and mental debauchery, the foolishly grimacing but rigid phantasms of the Cabbala, of occultism, mysteriosophy and theosophy. We cannot draw too sharp a dividing line between these and the brightness, the simple sincerity, and healthy, rejuvenating strength of genuine mysticism, which takes the most precious gems from philosophy's treasure chest and displays them in the beauty of its own setting. Mysticism is in complete accord with the result, with the sum of philosophy. In fact, mysticism is precisely the sum and the soul of philosophy, in the form of that rapturous, passionate outpouring of love.... We are concerned with an understanding of this serious mysticism, and its meaning could be stated in three words... godlessness... freedom from the world... blessedness of soul.--p. 1-5.

bacht

Are you saying that Yahweh was seen the same way by the Jews for the thousand years before Christianity appeared?

aa5874

Not at all.

I am saying that there are written statements found to show that at around 135 CE the evolutionary process of Jewish tradition still included a real human Messiah that would kill and destroy enemies of the Jews.

I am saying that there are written statements to show that at around the middle of the 1st century, the evolutionary process of Jewish tradition did not include a real human Logos that was regarded as the Messiah that would fight, kill and destroy the Romans or the enemies of the Jewish people.

lpetrich

(Constantin Brunner's explanation snipped for brevity)

Except that the Bible doesn't really state that YHWH means "Pure Being" or whatever, and describes YHWH in anthropomorphic terms. Nobody in the Bible tries to defend anthropomorphism as a mental shortcut or whatever.

And even if the etymology is essentially correct, it could easily mean that YHWH means something like "Mr. Being". In fact, that could have been an early example of Jews avoiding speaking God's name directly and using YHWH / Mr. Being as a euphemism. But like many euphemisms, it came to have the force of the real thing, so Jews later went looking for others.

And Jesus Christ referring to "Father" -- that's blatant anthropomorphism, right there.

Petergdi

The prohibition of images tells you what you need to know. The reason for the prohibition of images is to discourage the kind of thinking that tends to go together with idols and other images.

Theists use verbal human imagery (together with other verbal imagery) for God, not because they think of God as a kind of human, but because it is pretty much impossible for a human being to think of God as impersonal without thinking that God is thus somehow something less than he is himself.

Except that it really isn't when you look at all the things he made the methaphor do.

Jesus is "Son of God" as the Christ/King from Psalm 2.

Those who do the will of God are children of God, and thus Jesus's brother, sister, (and oddly) mother.

God seems to be compared to a human father who would not give a stone to a child who asked for bread, but God certainly seems to provide a lot of stones. It is right to ask God for bread, but wrong for a child of God to ask that stones be made into bread.

Peter.

No Robots

It isn't that anthropomorphism is a shortcut, but rather that it is a distortion of an abstract spiritual principle. The prophets struggled to maintain the idea of Yahveh as an abstract principle against the anthropomorphic inclinations of the general populace and its leadership.

I won't belabor you with the many citations from scholars who attest that Yahveh denotes the abstract principle of Beingness itself.

The evidence is to the contrary, ie. Yahveh is the name that denotes the Absolute itself, and all other names are mere euphemisms. I strongly suggest that you look at Spinoza's Theological-Political Treatise for a well constructed discussion of all this.

Any word used to denote the Absolute is anthropomorphic in the sense that it necessarily reduces the ultimate to the mesure of human understanding. The Tao, the Logos, the One, Being, Brahman: all these have drawbacks. But it seems to me that Christ made a good choice with Father. As Brunner puts it, "[t]his term of Christ's, 'the Father', is moreover better than all the rest of the terms employed by the others in that it brings into relief the power of engendering while not being in the engendered" (p. 21).

dog-on

You missed the point.

For Jesus to make this statement:

This says that the "god" that was seen by the various OT witnesses was not, in fact, the "father" about whom Jesus spoke.

This is the smoking gun.

andrewcriddle

Demosthenes refers to Alexander in the course of his speeches eg Oration on the Crown Andrew Criddle

andrewcriddle

Is that really true ?

Do the myths of Dionysus involve historical figures? If so which ones ?

Andrew Criddle

Gorit Maqueda

Come on, Toto, get up and answer back. I'm too lazy to make the list by myself :devil1: