7/3/74
1. When it became clear that the Church has
used the language of Platonism A.E. Taylor says all philosophizing
in West footnotes on Plato Says Plato wee articulating a mindset,
therefore you could say Christianity was set in Platonism.
2. Richard Niebuhr taught me that all people
have their own Old Testament. If it hat not been for Exodus, the
coming of Jesus would not have happened.
3. With Tillich's essay on Future of Religion
-- Jarred me with -- Religious symbols of world are depositories
of phenomenological encounter with profound reality of deep humanness.
Therefore every one of their symbols deals with humanness.
4. Every society knows about the Christ. Buddha
called it the lamination. Everybody knows about the saving Logos
- in comparative religion they talked about salvation.
5. Only when Jesus Christ appeared in history
did man become aware of profound meaning of the logos. The early
Church was clear before Abraham was, I am, lap of father, John's
prolegomena. Whatever poetry there was, Jesus Christ was profundity
of the Christ Therefore with glasses of Jesus Christ you spot
in the symbols of the other religions ~ in Buddhism the third
noble truth. The Jesus Christ enables me to make this remark.
It is objective as 1 + 1 = 2. There must not be bigotry. The shocking
thing is Platonism is rationalism of Ayrians. The Ayrians carried
Platonism in India and got mixed with Dravidians and you got Hindus.
6. Time Magazine review of 18th Century Emperor
of Japan. In Sinocism I tend to be abstract because I've never
lived as close to Chinese as Hindus. Therefore I am abstract.
Therefore the last thing is the awareness that if you do this
Job you have to get to the heart of stored up experience of Christians.
Buddhism is simple. Their heart is four truths and eight steps unto those truths.
Hinduism is complex. Kantwell Smith was correct
in Sinocism. It is the yin yang principle and four TAOS such as
familial love.
Islam: Kantwell Smith did his worst. But that
is best stored up experience of Arab experience or invention of
humanness. It is in the Word. The Koran is the solidification
of that.
But Judaism is the same. The Torah -- we are
the people of the book. The book is the Word.
In starting with the Sufi tradition. Sufi book
you have to take non abstract part of religion. The phenomenological,
the existential, the evangelical. They are unfrozenness of Make
it drip - use the emotional, devotional side of religion is closer
to liquid. Like swirling dervish, 80 rapid they went into trances.
It was their way of taking marijuana.
Balloon: Day after tomorrow consult with spirit
people who are Sinoists.
1. With a Confucian Christian.
2. Hindu
3. Buddhist background
Method I Trinitarian
1. Look for Christ happening
2. Manifestation of Christ happening
3. You're looking at their understanding of final reality
(what they are over against, e.g. Buddhists
say nothingness)
We took Father, Son and Holy Spirit and came
out with EEK, OK, UK
II Other World
1. Mystery
III Sanctification / Justification
Our own experience in transparenizing Christianity
We called it demythologizing, secularizing,
grounding it, probing, seeing through verbal symbols to reality.
We got caught in our swamp. We look through
reality
Historical method shed skin of the 20th Century
unshedding then shedding skin
The happening happens: forces you into a journey
1. reconstruct
2. create future
3. present
4. acting in response
5. response to response which creates not yet
Get methodology Tagore did for Hinduism what
we did for Christianity. He started a university in Calcutta in
Humanities.
Look for Buddhism -- Dark Night of the Soul is there:
Being torn apart inside
Unfulfillment
Awe-filled loneliness
Overwhelming ineffectivity ~ minnow in the
ocean of history rather than a carp in a millpond.
These categories come close to experiential dimensions:
We become Hindus in order to enter the temple
You are the temple of God
We're going into profound depths of Hindu spirit.
Celebrate new theologizing since the Protestant Reformation
The Protestant Reformation was interim so we could get to
classical religion.
In Becket -- Defend the Honor of God (not the
Savior of God)
Enabling spirit for this moment
Significating the Church for this moment
That itself is profundity of love.
If this transparentization of religion doesn't
happen, the Church doesn't have the slightest chance of saying
what the Holy Spirit, Christ Word, and God are. He's doing it
now -- we can participate-or we'll be left out. We create myths
so people can swim instead of drown.
Faith is not a religion.
Faith, Hope, and Love are the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the
overlay of action on mystery, law and passion.