Re: intelligent design/Universalism

On Wed, 12 Oct 2005 01:17:03 GMT, bill@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Bill
Samuel) wrote:

>In article <isjnk1hsnfumbb7bluaauopqk4fqsebrhb@xxxxxxx>, Timothy Travis <qspirit@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>>I suppose it goes to what the phrase about coming to the Father
>>through me means...does it mean through the particular manifestation
>>of the Spirit in the human form of Jesus (the word made flesh) or can
>>it also mean solely through the Spirit/Counselor that it is written
>>that Jesus said would be left after his human death to guide us?
>>manifestation to lead all--even though explicitly rejecting the form
>>of Christianity?
>
>The early Friends did not separate Christ from Jesus.

Perhaps not, but Jesus in the flesh has not been available for quite
some time, now, and so it is not possible for us--and was not possible
for early Friends--to come to The Father (a symbol for God, by the
way) through Jesus in the flesh.

So, we must come to The Father through the Spirit/Holy Spirit, the
Counselor, the one that Jesus/Christ said would be left, right?

>Jesus was more than a
>particular manifestation to them; he was the incarnate Word of God. They were
>not concerned with accepting Christianity, but with accepting Christ who is
>the same as Jesus.

Does this mean that you think that one can, as I wrote, perceive the
call of the Spirit, be open to it, cultivate it, undergo the changes
of which Barclay wrote (of which you quote) and then hear the Gospel
for the first time, reject this historical account and some of the
doctrines that have grown up from them and still be a part of the
"catholic church?" Or, at the moment of rejecting the historical
gospel (rather than recognizing its truth) is that person now beyond
the ambit of salvation?

>>I guess the question is whether you think that it is necessary for one
>>to express one's spiritual understanding in terms of Christian symbols
>>(if s/he was once exposed to that set of symbols) or whether being
>>conformed by and to the Light/Christ is sufficient?
>
>Again the early Friends were not into the symbols. They were into the reality
>of the Living Christ, one and the same as Jesus.

Well, yes and no. They were into the Living Christ, no doubt, as I
have said here many times we need to be in the presence and be guided
by the Spirit and changed by it, rather than caught up in our
abstractions and trying to find our way with spiritual roadmaps as
inaccurate as those at which we marvel on museum walls.

But early Friends were dripping with symbols, with abstractions they
used to express their experience. The seed, the Light, the Cross,
the whore's cup, Babylon...it goes on and on. You are into symbols,
too-the Living Christ is not, of course, reality, but a symbol for the
reality of the transcendent power that orders the Creation and which
animates all. What you are talking about when you say Living Christ
is, of course, real, but your expression of it is an abstraction, a
symbol for that reality.

So--I just want to know if your view is that someone who has been
changed by the Spirit, as described by Barclay as the work of Christ
in us, without the benefit of Christian teaching, is saved/within the
catholic church, even though, upon reading the Bible and they doubt
and do not accept the particular accounts of the writers of the
Gospel.

I am sure you agree that such a person would understand and grasp the
techings of Jesus--and agree with them. But what about the Cross and
the virgin birth and all the trappings (baptism, atonement) that are
so important to some Christians that they say those who reject these
are beyond the limit?

is recognizing that these teachings are the result of the changes that
have taken place within themselves sufficient or is it necessary to
accept those doctrines that are particularly Christian?

Or is your definition of the change that Barclay writes that this
change is such that any who "really" undergo it will realize, when
they encounter it, that the Bible is literally true (in the sense that
early Friends believed that) and that without the proof of that
acceptance they aren't really "changed," at all?

>
>This probably doesn't quite answer all your questions. That is fine.

It's fine in regard to some of them but you posted an article that
seem to try to inclusively account for all kinds of universalism. One
of my questions was whether there might be one that you left out. I
would appreciate it if you could explain to me how what I described is
included in your order.

>Friends
>were coming from a different paradigm. The questions we are inclined to ask
>from within our culture are not necessarily answered by traditonal Quakerism.

I very much wonder about that. If that is so then it seems to me that
we are unable to transcend our culture, in spiritual matters, and that
early Friends were unable to transcend their's. That may be true in
terms of the symbols we employ and that they employed. That's the
heart of my question, Bill. Whether despite the separations of both
time and distance among cultures and the symbols these devise to make
sense of our experience, is it possible for people to have the same
experience and for it to have the same (saving) impact on them
regardless of how they express it? And if it is, is it possible for
us, despite the limitations of our culture, to recognize it happening
outside the boundary of the abstractions we take for "real."

Or is it not possible for people to have this same experience, be
changed in this same way, unless when they express it they do so in
the same abstractions Christians use, at least, if they encounter
those symbols.

You seem to read Barclay to say that they must...and I read Barclay
such as to recognize that there are plenty who have shared and been
changed by the experience of The Spirit who do not and never will
accept the symbols that make up basic Christian doctrine.

>And, IMHO, there are things we don't understand, and there are tensions among
>aspects of the Truth that we find hard to reconcile in our human minds but
>which are fully reconciled in the mind of God.

That's why I am asking because it doesn't seem difficult for me to
reconcile what seem to you to be tensions in regard to a universal
spiritual experience, which I take to be the foundation of
"universalism." What you take to be "many paths up the mountain" may,
in some instances, not be that at all. It may be that the same
mountain was scaled, in the *same way,* in a different place and time
and that the account of it is in a different language.

My view is that confusion is caused because there are many Christians
(as well as people how embrace other religions) who are caught up in
the symbols, the ideas, and do not know the experience, at all. They
therefore do not know the change that Barclay writes about and make
all their judgments based on whether something is consistent with the
intellectual framework they have worked out or have been handed. Early
Friends, of course, wrote and wrote and wrote about this problem.

So many people want to hang their own label on this universal
experience and deny that others have had it because those others don't
explain it the same way, they use different abstractions to make it
intelligible (when, of course, it is not intelligible except in the
experience of it).

As you may have seen from me before, I sometimes wonder whether
Friends were not "accidentally" Christian, whether if the Spirit were
moving people in the same way and for the same purpose some other
place on earth they might not have been Hindus or Buddhists. Actually,
of course, I think it did and they did, constantly and everywhere
although not always in such a spectacular was as in 17th Century
England. There are Friends all over the globe many of whom recognize
one another despite the cultural trappings, despite the different
symbols. They recognize fruit--as it is written onto the countenance
of others, as it is the product of the lives of others.

>How God will ultimately accept people is God's business. We shouldn't be too
>quick to assume that particular people will be rejected.

Or are rejected in the Kingdom of the here and now? Perhaps I am
wrong but some of what you wrote in your account of the different
kinds of universalism seemed to carry at least undertones of
rejection.

Timothy Travis
Bridge City Friends Meeting
Portland, Oregon

There's a Light that shining when the world began,
It's the Light that is shining in the heart of a man,
It's the Light that is shining in the Turk and the Jew,
It's the Light that is shining, Friend, in me and in you...

"To study history means submitting to chaos and
nevertheless retaining a faith in order and meaning."

Father Jacobus
.

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