RE: Theology of Steemit Series: Article 1 - Introducing the Series
I think what you are doing here is absolutely wonderful.
For anyone who takes theology seriously, there has to be a theology of the blockchain, just as there has to be a theology of everything which is encompassed and saturated with the Divine—i.e. Everything.
I unexpectedly stumbled across a great Barth passage the other day (weirdly enough, while browsing through some research on the history of the Muslim Mutakallimun) that your philological discussion of “theology” reminded me of:
“God is personal, but personal in an incomprehensible way, in so far as the conception of his personality surpasses all our views of personality.”
It made me think that, if the personal God is truly incomprehensible, then what is there left to say about Him?
Yet, we all have lots to say about God, and the people who understand God the most, seem to be the one with the most to say.
So maybe the journey to comprehending The Incomprehensible Personal God is the whole purpose in the first place, even The the destination can’t ever be reached or even approached, in this life.
In which case, what you are doing here is a benefit to every single one of us on Steemit who have the pleasure if reading your insights.
I look forward to reading your work for a long time to come.
Thanks!
Say @ilt-yodith, have you read Islam Without Extremes - A Muslim Case for Liberty by Mustafa Akyol? That's were I first learned about the Mutakallimun.
I have not, I’ll have to check it out.
The title sounds fascinating but only because for me it seems so commonsensical.
My understanding of Islam (such as I have an understanding) is that the theology on which almost every surviving variant of the faith is based, tends to be overwhelmingly concerned with good relations between all men and between Man and God.
Of course you can take parts of the Quran and the Hadiths and interpret them in a way that can be used to justify horrible violent things.
But no more so than with any other religious Scripture.
The many believing Muslims that have been a part of my life have been, without exception, kind, good-natured, and empathetic towards their neighbors.
And, for various reasons, in many of the situations in which we found ourselves, we all had some arguably compelling reasons to not feel so favorably disposed towards one another .
A common analysis of us Western Christians about Islam is that it has never had a Reformation - a movement to revive the original intent of the founders of the religion after so many centuries of evolution, a movement that would lead millions farther away from the mindset of Wahabbi Islam in Saudi Arabia or the Political Islam of the Muslim Brotherhood. Akyol makes a good case that everything needed for a liberal, or even a Libertarian Muslim mindset is there in the words of the Prophet, and many get-back-to-the-liberal/rational-spirit-of-Islam movements have emerged, such as the Mutazalites, but have been snuffed out or otherwise superseded by Political Islam, and I might add, Western meddling hasn't furthered the cause of a liberal theology.
While I'm not part of that Christian "us" to which you refer, I fully understand what you are saying, and in fact, would take it a step further.
It's my understanding that the various Sufi schools of Islam were around long before what we could all an essentially "retrogressive reformation" of the Salafi, Wahhabi, Deobandi, Muslim Brotherhood etc...movements came around and took the absolute strictest parts of various mainstream Sunni movements, threw some radical politics in there, and churned out a very ahistorical version of Islam.
I don't think Western meddling of any kind has ever furthered any good cause, in any circumstance...ever. So I'm right there with you on that one.
Wow... quite an endorsement of the endeavor.... Now I hope to even come close to living into the endeavor! I'm so glad you will be along for the journey and I really look forward to hearing more from you as this proceeds. Interesting Barth quote... he's always got so much to say. I think you are on to the point that I would want to highlight is that in the journey to comprehending the Incomprehensible Personal God, we are actually the recipients of an all encompassing INVITATION to know God. We are gifted by this invitation by this self-same God. God wants to be known... when I think of the incarnation and Emanuel I think that is truly what God is up to... take the veil away and reveal what God's posture towards us and the creation truly is... God is FOR us. So like a true lover, we are invited into intimate conversation and that becomes the root of all of our theology ultimately. From this invitation then, we find that we are free to explore and speak and seek language to express, even if falteringly and incompletely, our interactions born from this invitation.
“[I]n the journey to comprehending the Incomprehensible Personal God, we are actually the recipients of an all encompassing INVITATION to know God. We are gifted by this invitation by this self-same God. God wants to be known.”
I want to be certain that you know what I am about to say is absolutely genuine and has no relation to either attempting to get upvotes or to be unnecessarily flattering.
I believe that the part of your response that I quoted in this comment, is one of the most beautiful expressions of the relationship between Man and Providence that I have ever encountered.
I truly mean it, to the point where I thought you were quoting Barth, when, to the best of my knowledge, notwithstanding it’s derivation from ideas of other theologians, these are your own unique words.
I’m somewhat enamored with the Song of Songs, because the whole concept of situating the Agapic Love between Man and the Divine within the context of the powerful Eros (in the classical sense of the concept) found throughout Solomon’s Song, is such a powerful way of conveying the inconceivable magnitude at which the Present Deity’s love for humanity and each human exists.
So when you say that this Divine Invitation is an invitation to an intimate conversation like as between two lovers, my heart and my head go straight to Canticles, and it makes it very obvious why such an arguably “out-of-place Love Poem” in a debatably “minor” part of Scripture, has had both a broad and deep influence on so many aspects of the theologies of the Abrahamic Faiths.
Put more simply, I’m fairly certain you have summed up the most important underlying strand woven into every part of our understanding (such as it is) of our position within the Mind of of God Himself. (Or, if that’s too mystical, I can replace “the Mind of God” with “Existence permeated by God’s Essence.”
I’m delighted (and I don’t use the word “delighted”) to know that there is someone in then world who has the incredible ability to convey the types of thoughts that I’m certain all people of Faith feel but can’t quite translate into language.
It's a delight to find someone else who is enthusiastic about the Song of Songs. One book that says so much about God without ever mentioning God. I think maybe I'll go read it again.
I read a great quote yesterday (after I started to re-read Song of Songs and various analyses of it):
The quote essentially says that it’s subtle metaphors accomplish massive tone-shifts “between the gaiety of bliss and the despondency of infidelity.” For the example, “it leaps seamlessly from the ecstasy of [Passover] night to the crisis of faith six days later on the banks of the Reed Sea.”
And it does all of this with only hints as to its larger metaphorical meaning—making the revelation of its deeper meaning after a repetition of reading that much more mind-blowing.
Remove all the metaphorical connotations, and even just on the surface, as a pure love poem, it still ranks up there as one of the greats.
With the multiple layers of metaphor and deeper meaning...it’s realky a no brained why it’s called the Song of Songs.