Don't Underestimate Your Spiritual Power

3/20/2020

The following was taken from a comment I wrote in response to this post:

I have no desire to alienate or distance any serious Christian, Catholic or otherwise. In many ways this blog has become a way for me to form alliances and relationships with serious Christians of all denominations, and I want to continue building those alliances and relationships to whatever extent I can.

By serious Christians I mean those who truly believe in Jesus Christ and wish to follow Him with the entirety of their minds, hearts, and souls. I do not wish to bicker over theological fine points or haggle over who is right and who is wrong concerning history, church dogma, doctrine, traditions, or anything else.

We all have our own unique spiritual destinies, one that is guided by a loving God, and I have no qualms with any Christian who believes he is doing the right thing by adhering to a church.

Having said all of that, we are experiencing something unprecedented in the history of the world. I am not referring here only to the closure of churches over a virus scare, but everything that is happening. What matters now is the primacy of the spiritual. Whatever helps you find and maintain the primacy of the spiritual is fine with me, as long as it aligns with God's reality and loving Creation.

"the Catholic Church is not the Church of the pope, the cardinals, the bishops, the parish priests, or even the laity. It is the Church of the Saints."

I'll go a step further. The Church is you. You should strive to be that Saint. Don't underestimate the power of your spirit. The time for waiting to see what will happen has passed. God is waiting for us to take a step toward Him through an act of Creativity. God is waiting for us to become co-Creators.

I say that not out of heresy or spiritual pride, but out of necessity and sobriety.

Gentlemen, like it or not, we have been un-Churched. As I said earlier, you are now the Church. You need to draw on direct knowledge from God. You are the immanent that needs to meet the transcendent. That meeting happens through love, faith, and hope.

We can and should draw on tradition, but we shouldn't be regressive. Nor should we be passive. We need to move beyond our spiritual adolescence and become spiritual adults.

That is our task.

Here and now.

2 Comments

NLR

3/21/2020 23:46:41

Thank you for your response. When I wrote my comment on the earlier post, I did not feel alienated or distanced at all. On the contrary, I have great sympathy for this blog and those like it because they assert the primacy of the spiritual and Christianity in particular. I wanted to collect my own thoughts and also to defend the value of tradition because it allows people to go beyond the limitations of their own capabilities.

To use an analogy for the situation we are in, it is as if we are painters living in an age when all the greatest artists currently alive are far below those of the past and not only that, but brushes and paint are nearly gone and no one remembers how to remake them. And now, the museums have all closed. Our options are to reinvent painting or to create an entirely new art form, one not dependent on paint or brushes at all. The first is impossible because we cannot recreate the conditions when painting was invented, yet for people who cannot even draw well to contemplate the second is daunting, to say the least.

I find the arguments (primarily Bruce Charlton’s) that we cannot revert to the Christian culture of the past and so if there is any prospect for Christianity at all, it must something new to be completely convincing. Yet, the conclusion comes about simply from the logic of the situation: since we cannot go backward; if there is anywhere at all to go, then it must be forward. There is something missing, which is the specific and concrete place that we will go and how to get there. There has to be some foundation from which the new will be built up.

And that is one thing that the modern world has been relentless in doing: attacking or destroying any of the old foundations (family, community, and profession are three examples). That is one reason why we don’t see any resistance to what is currently happening. From what foundation could someone resist? The system has grown so all encompassing that there are very few places where someone could stand outside the system and defy it from a strong position. And to defy from within the system would be to invite legal or financial punishment on one and possibly one’s family.

The rites, writings, and examples provided by tradition give a concrete form for Christianity to take and concrete resources from which to draw. The concrete and detailed form of a new Christianity will be different for each person, and why might it not include something from the rich resources of tradition. In the Lord of the Rings, the actual defeat of Sauron was accomplished by the new, the Hobbits, but it could not have been done without help from representatives of the earlier ages, such as the High Elves, the Numenoreans, and the Ents. Might not the old things still have a role to play in bringing forth the new?

Thank you again for taking the time to write your thoughtful response. It is very heartening and encouraging.

Francis Berger

3/22/2020 17:18:58

NLR - We can and should draw from tradition, but tradition will not provide us with the tools we need to continue the work of Christianity. Simply put, it does not suffice. And that's what it comes down to in the end.

Is Christianity essentially a complete work or is it, for lack of a better phrase, still a work in progress - a work in progress that requires our participation beyond the framework of tradition and conventionality?

If we believe Christianity is complete as it is, then yes, we need do no more than seek comfort and inspiration in tradition and adhere to traditional modes of thinking and being. But that doesn't seem to work anymore. Something more is required.

I believe Christianity is still evolving and that this evolution requires our active and willing participation through creativity. In fact, I would go as far as to say that this evolution can only happen outside the framework of tradition.

I am not sure if you are familiar with Berdyaev, but he offers the following insights on the subject, insights I,myself, believe to be true:

"The world is passing through three epochs of divine revelation: the revelation of the law (the Father), the revelation of redemption (the Son) and the revelation of creativity (the Spirit). These epochs correspond to certain signs in the heavens. It is not given us to know the definite chronological limits of these three epochs: they are all co-existent. Today we have not fully lived out the law, and redemption from sin has not yet been completed, although the world is entering a new religious epoch. ... The three epochs of divine revelation in the world are the three epochs of the revelation about man. In the first epoch man's sin is brought to light and a natural divine force is revealed; in the second epoch man is made a son of God and redemption from sin appears; in the third epoch the divinity of man's creative nature is finally revealed and divine power becomes human power. ... The final mystery is hidden in this, that the divine mystery and the human mystery are one, that in God there is hidden the mystery of man and in man the mystery of God. God is born in man and man is born in God. The ultimate revelation of man means the revelation of God."

"Religious discussion centres upon the possibility of new revelation and a new spiritual epoch. All other questions are secondary. The new revelation is not at all a new religion, distinct from Christianity, but rather the fulfilment and completion of the Christian revelation, bringing it to a true universality. This we do not have as yet. But we cannot simply wait for the revelation of the spirit. It depends upon man's creative activity as well. It is not to be understood as only a new revelation of God to man: it is also the revelation of man to God. This means that it will be a divine-human revelation. In the Spirit, the divisions and contradictions of the divine and the human will be overcome, while the distinction between them will be maintained. This will be the crowning of the mystical dialectic of the divine and the human."

The opening of a new epoch of the Spirit, which will include higher achievements of spirituality, presupposes a radical change and a new orientation in human consciousness. This will be a revolution of consciousness which hitherto has been considered as something static. The religion of the Spirit will be the religion of man's maturity, leaving behind him his childhood and adolescence....

In the religion of the Spirit, the religion of freedom, everything will appear in a new light: there will be neither authority nor reward: the nightmare of a legalistic conception of Christianity and of eternal punishment will finally disappear. It will be founded, not upon judgment and recompense, but on creative development and transfiguration, on likeness to God."

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Don't Underestimate Your Spiritual Power

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