Theological wanderings.
Mar. 31st, 2007 09:01 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nonionayLast night, I found two books in the free book box. One has "Astral Projection" emblazoned on the cover, but rather than offering the standard fluffball ways of ejecting your spirit from your body, it contains pages upon pages of actual accounts of out-of-body experiences. ("Ejection from suffocation"!)
The other one discusses the five points of Calvinism. Specifically, it compares them to Arminianism, which the Synod of Dort rejected when it made the Five Points. Calvinism, if you didn't know, is obsessed with predestination. Arminianism says that man was not entirely left depraved by the Fall of Adam, and has free will with which he can choose to believe and be saved. Faith is his contribution to salvation.
Calvinism, on the other hand, says man is so fucked up thanks to Adam, that only God can save him. Apparantly God decided all this in advance by whatever mysterious bingo game he's playing up there. God grants faith and repentence to his elect, not the other way around.
So. While you could say that in Calvinism, all the praying in the world won't get you anywhere, in truth, if you're the sort to pray in the first place, you're probably one of the elect. Does that sound right?
Really, I want to wrap my head around pre-destination. I think I can condense it to two things:
1. People think the world is shit. Therefore, being allowed to rise above it (by being in the cool kid's club of the Elect, is pretty sweet.
2. To God goes all the glory. He is the awesomest thing EVAR. Man does not deserve credit for anything. Maybe we used to be as awesome as Him, back when He made us in His image, but Adam done gone and fucked that up. (I would tend to believe that Jesus' actions allowed us to revert back to Awesome-as-God status, thereby allowing our free will to mean something.)
I am finding myself starting to debate the points in my head when suddenly I'm struck by, "What the hell am I doing! Both these things require basic assumptions I don't even believe!" Namely, that god is some conscious entity out there pulling weeds. Arminianism says God pulls weeds based on foresight of who would be a faithful person. Calvinism says God just figures it all out in advance. I think the whole thing's silly.
I don't think God's separate, I don't think he needs to be conscious. I'm more of a pantheist. (And Gnostic when it comes to the Fall, though the kaballah gave me a new persepctive) The way I define god, a tree is as much god as my liver is me. (Except more so. If you hacked out my liver, I'd die. If you hacked down all the trees, god wouldn go on. But then, if I die, maybe only my body and ego die. And my body and legacy will still be a part of what I call god. So maybe, by hacking down all the trees, we kill this one, ego-manifestation of god. End tangent, back to Calvin.) I suppose you could say that the un-elect are like tumors that God has to cut out of His body. I'm not sure I like where that is going, so I'll just say I think God is a grown-up, and way more spiritually advanced than any of us, so He'd face his death by human-cancer bravely, and not be afraid of whatever form He'll take next.
Not that I'm advocating killing God or chopping down the rainforests. But seriously, people, Life. Goes. On.
Anyway, all this started because I need to define a lot of theological points in my fantasy system. Specifically Free Will.
What I have come up with (cut and pasted from my notes. The religion is a Hindu/Catholic melding focusing on the Holy Father/Mother/Child):
"Let my will be Thine, and Thy Will be mine."
The Holy Father writes our True Paths on the soles of our feet before we are born. It is up to us to walk this path and "Follow our Feet." It can be difficult to see, however, and delusion is everywhere. Others prefer an easier path.
The Family can reveal it if they Will, or place things in our path to lead us in the direction they WIll.
Humanity has a very strong free will. There is great debate as to whether man should be allowed to damn themselves, if a priest should be allowed to damn a man, or if the matter is solely between a man and the Family.
Evil arises when the will of man and god differ. Therefore, a Hitler-esque tyrant is only evil if he is acting on his own, not the Father's Will. (It 's always the Father's Will. He wills, the Mother acts, the Child subverts and changes. )
And that last one is going to be so much fun when I start working with my self-righteous villain.
I've got a world where people can take magically binding oaths. That doesn't sit well with some people who don't like messing with free will. After all, how can a person be saved if they can't choose their path? I'm still working on the idea of "salvation." I'll probably use my personal definition and say a person needs to be saved from entrapment in the material world/their own misery and neuroses. So, if a person ends up taking an oath that forces them off their True Path, they would either end up stuck as a ghost or in some nasty reincarnation cycle. At the worst, they could spend eternity in the freezing hell of Briho.
However, some people believe oaths can help you keep following your Feet, so they're not declared evil. You just have be very, very careful how you word them, and never take one casually.
The other one discusses the five points of Calvinism. Specifically, it compares them to Arminianism, which the Synod of Dort rejected when it made the Five Points. Calvinism, if you didn't know, is obsessed with predestination. Arminianism says that man was not entirely left depraved by the Fall of Adam, and has free will with which he can choose to believe and be saved. Faith is his contribution to salvation.
Calvinism, on the other hand, says man is so fucked up thanks to Adam, that only God can save him. Apparantly God decided all this in advance by whatever mysterious bingo game he's playing up there. God grants faith and repentence to his elect, not the other way around.
So. While you could say that in Calvinism, all the praying in the world won't get you anywhere, in truth, if you're the sort to pray in the first place, you're probably one of the elect. Does that sound right?
Really, I want to wrap my head around pre-destination. I think I can condense it to two things:
1. People think the world is shit. Therefore, being allowed to rise above it (by being in the cool kid's club of the Elect, is pretty sweet.
2. To God goes all the glory. He is the awesomest thing EVAR. Man does not deserve credit for anything. Maybe we used to be as awesome as Him, back when He made us in His image, but Adam done gone and fucked that up. (I would tend to believe that Jesus' actions allowed us to revert back to Awesome-as-God status, thereby allowing our free will to mean something.)
I am finding myself starting to debate the points in my head when suddenly I'm struck by, "What the hell am I doing! Both these things require basic assumptions I don't even believe!" Namely, that god is some conscious entity out there pulling weeds. Arminianism says God pulls weeds based on foresight of who would be a faithful person. Calvinism says God just figures it all out in advance. I think the whole thing's silly.
I don't think God's separate, I don't think he needs to be conscious. I'm more of a pantheist. (And Gnostic when it comes to the Fall, though the kaballah gave me a new persepctive) The way I define god, a tree is as much god as my liver is me. (Except more so. If you hacked out my liver, I'd die. If you hacked down all the trees, god wouldn go on. But then, if I die, maybe only my body and ego die. And my body and legacy will still be a part of what I call god. So maybe, by hacking down all the trees, we kill this one, ego-manifestation of god. End tangent, back to Calvin.) I suppose you could say that the un-elect are like tumors that God has to cut out of His body. I'm not sure I like where that is going, so I'll just say I think God is a grown-up, and way more spiritually advanced than any of us, so He'd face his death by human-cancer bravely, and not be afraid of whatever form He'll take next.
Not that I'm advocating killing God or chopping down the rainforests. But seriously, people, Life. Goes. On.
Anyway, all this started because I need to define a lot of theological points in my fantasy system. Specifically Free Will.
What I have come up with (cut and pasted from my notes. The religion is a Hindu/Catholic melding focusing on the Holy Father/Mother/Child):
"Let my will be Thine, and Thy Will be mine."
The Holy Father writes our True Paths on the soles of our feet before we are born. It is up to us to walk this path and "Follow our Feet." It can be difficult to see, however, and delusion is everywhere. Others prefer an easier path.
The Family can reveal it if they Will, or place things in our path to lead us in the direction they WIll.
Humanity has a very strong free will. There is great debate as to whether man should be allowed to damn themselves, if a priest should be allowed to damn a man, or if the matter is solely between a man and the Family.
Evil arises when the will of man and god differ. Therefore, a Hitler-esque tyrant is only evil if he is acting on his own, not the Father's Will. (It 's always the Father's Will. He wills, the Mother acts, the Child subverts and changes. )
And that last one is going to be so much fun when I start working with my self-righteous villain.
I've got a world where people can take magically binding oaths. That doesn't sit well with some people who don't like messing with free will. After all, how can a person be saved if they can't choose their path? I'm still working on the idea of "salvation." I'll probably use my personal definition and say a person needs to be saved from entrapment in the material world/their own misery and neuroses. So, if a person ends up taking an oath that forces them off their True Path, they would either end up stuck as a ghost or in some nasty reincarnation cycle. At the worst, they could spend eternity in the freezing hell of Briho.
However, some people believe oaths can help you keep following your Feet, so they're not declared evil. You just have be very, very careful how you word them, and never take one casually.
