Are you at a point in your life where you're convinced you'll go to heaven?

[emptym]

Originally Posted by Philosoph

I have to respectfully disagree with this. You're on the right track, but heaven as a "place" which is separate from this world/this life is a specifically Christian/Jewish/Muslim idea. Many cultures do not have "religion" in the same sense that we do here. All myths and religions may very well be attempts to understand a fundamental truth, but our concept of "heaven" is not it.

Reminds me of an anecdote I heard once. An Indian man traveled frequently for business or just for fun. He liked to learn about the religions of the places and cultures he visited to better understand the people there. Anyway, at one point he ended up coming to America, and so he picked up a Bible. He tried to understand it, but remarked to a friend, "I have been reading this Bible, but I can't find any religion in it!"

If you can discover the reason he said that, you would learn quite a lot about the way you and others relate to the world.
[\\podium][\\soapbox]

Is his sense of "religion" our sense?

Originally Posted by RyJ Maduro

I've gotten ten Hail Marys for eating meat on a Friday during Lent, but only one Hail Mary for casual/drunken pre-marital intercourse. Who'da thunk it.

I say stick with the second priest.

 

[Philosoph]

Originally Posted by emptym

Is his sense of "religion" our sense?

Nope.

Here's something I find mildly amusing and a little tragic: in India the word "bhakti" denotes what most Westerners mean by "religion." Roughly translated, it means "devotion." In Hinduism, it is considered the lowest form of spiritual understanding, suitable only for the simple and unwashed masses, more or less.

To be fair, I think Christianity and the other Western religions have quite a lot to offer, but this offer is left unfulfilled the majority of the time because of persistent individual and institutional misunderstanding.

 

[Dragon]

Originally Posted by Philosoph

I have to respectfully disagree with this. You're on the right track, but heaven as a "place" which is separate from this world/this life is a specifically Christian/Jewish/Muslim idea. Many cultures do not have "religion" in the same sense that we do here. All myths and religions may very well be attempts to understand a fundamental truth, but our concept of "heaven" is not it.

Reminds me of an anecdote I heard once. An Indian man traveled frequently for business or just for fun. He liked to learn about the religions of the places and cultures he visited to better understand the people there. Anyway, at one point he ended up coming to America, and so he picked up a Bible. He tried to understand it, but remarked to a friend, "I have been reading this Bible, but I can't find any religion in it!"

If you can discover the reason he said that, you would learn quite a lot about the way you and others relate to the world.

[\\podium][\\soapbox]

I agree with what you`re saying, and you are already proving my point that when a PERSON tries to explain this stuff (heaven, paradise, afterlife, other dimension, whatever you want to call it) the interpretation is just that...an interpretation. I used the word HEAVEN in my post just to keep things simple here.

 

[emptym]

Originally Posted by Philosoph

Nope.

Here's something I find mildly amusing and a little tragic: in India the word "bhakti" denotes what most Westerners mean by "religion." Roughly translated, it means "devotion." In Hinduism, it is considered the lowest form of spiritual understanding, suitable only for the simple and unwashed masses, more or less.

To be fair, I think Christianity and the other Western religions have quite a lot to offer, but this offer is left unfulfilled the majority of the time because of persistent individual and institutional misunderstanding.

I think you're right on about the persistent misunderstanding. And you have me intrigued by the story. I hope you'll say more about it. Coho said he found it deep, and it may be. But I'm wondering how we would react if we reversed the roles, and said:

An [American] man traveled frequently for business or just for fun. He liked to learn about the religions of the places and cultures he visited to better understand the people there. Anyway, at one point he ended up coming to [India], and so he picked up [the Bhagavad Gita (lets say)]. He tried to understand it, but remarked to a friend, "I have been reading this [Bhagavad Gita], but I can't find any religion in it!"

In my opinion, this would say more about the American businessman than about the Bhagavad Gita. How much weight should we give a traveling businessman's view about a text he "picked up" and "tried to understand"?

Now, I'm not dismissing the Indian businessman's possible insight. But I am "suspicious." I think much has to do with his definition of "religion." If it is something of a low level, and he did not find it in the Bible, this may be taken as a compliment. But i don't think it was meant that way. The original meaning may be inexpressible, but I would appreciate your attempt, Philosoph.

 

[dsholmes1]

There is no heaven.

 

[globetrotter]

I think that there is a big difference between how the east and the west see both religion and philosophy. when I was living in india, I had 30 indian employees, and a lot of indian customers, and I invested a lot of time reading about indian religion. the people I worked with really apprectiated it, and it gave me some great insites into the way they did things. but the way they see religion, and the way christian/jews/muslims see religion is quite different.

 

[Augusto86]

I'm curious...someone wanna give me a quick summary of what the difference is?

And I'm suspicious of the claim that "Eastern" religions like Hinduism have some deeper understanding of religion than the west, simply because the percentage of ignorant, unwashed masses is much greater there than here. Most people in India are just trying to survive...whereas it seems to me the great religious thinkers in most traditions have been very well educated.

Oh, and:
No heaven for a gangster...

 

[globetrotter]

Originally Posted by Augusto86

I'm curious...someone wanna give me a quick summary of what the difference is?

And I'm suspicious of the claim that "Eastern" religions like Hinduism have some deeper understanding of religion than the west, simply because the percentage of ignorant, unwashed masses is much greater there than here. Most people in India are just trying to survive...whereas it seems to me the great religious thinkers in most traditions have been very well educated.

Oh, and:
No heaven for a gangster...

I will try this from the perspective of an undereducated businessman.

some theorists divide up religion and morality into aspects of man to man, man to god ceremony, purity, faith (I think that there are 5, but I can't remember)


in the west, almost everything about our religion has come down to man to man ethical issues - charity, obortion, crime and punishment, etc. there is almost nothing about purity - except in very recent american protostant ethic "cleanliness is next to godliness", and very little in the way of ceromony - aside from grace before meals, night prayers and sabbath church.

in india, religion has a great deal to do with purity and ceromony - sacrificing, solo litergy, pigrimiges, acts of sacrificing for a specific deity (no meat on certain days, no washing on certain days, etc. )

also, the concept of man to man ethics in india is very very different - I know this is going to atract flack, but I always say that the indian religion has no 10 comandments - nobody ever said "though shall not..." there is no concept that everbody on the planet shouldn't X anybody. every group has different rules, concderning every different situation (althogh this is a gross oversimplification)

 

[Philosoph]

Originally Posted by emptym

I think you're right on about the persistent misunderstanding. And you have me intrigued by the story. I hope you'll say more about it. Coho said he found it deep, and it may be. But I'm wondering how we would react if we reversed the roles, and said:

An [American] man traveled frequently for business or just for fun. He liked to learn about the religions of the places and cultures he visited to better understand the people there. Anyway, at one point he ended up coming to [India], and so he picked up [the Bhagavad Gita (lets say)]. He tried to understand it, but remarked to a friend, "I have been reading this [Bhagavad Gita], but I can't find any religion in it!"

In my opinion, this would say more about the American businessman than about the Bhagavad Gita. How much weight should we give a traveling businessman's view about a text he "picked up" and "tried to understand"?

Now, I'm not dismissing the Indian businessman's possible insight. But I am "suspicious." I think much has to do with his definition of "religion." If it is something of a low level, and he did not find it in the Bible, this may be taken as a compliment. But i don't think it was meant that way. The original meaning may be inexpressible, but I would appreciate your attempt, Philosoph.

If you reverse the roles in the anecdote, you end up with exactly the same issue: the Eastern/Western ideas of "religion" are quite different and not compatible. From the Eastern perspective, the entirety of Western religion is like a child's understanding of the great mystery. From the Western perspective, the Eastern spiritual understanding is a heresy. Actually, the little story about this mysterious businessman, even though it's true (I heard it secondhand), is really just something to get you thinking about the difference.

The difference, as I see it, is this:

The West insists on defining God as an individual "other" than man as well as the world. God is "out there" somewhere, in heaven, which is thought of as a place which is somehow separate from the world. This "otherness" is a barrier between man and God, and Western religion is an attempt to create a relationship across this barrier. Individual man relates somehow to the individual God (man is an "image of God," we must obey divine commands, Jesus loves us, etc.). This also creates a barrier between man and the world. The world is separate from God, and so it lacks divinity and creates all sorts of problems (sin, desire, worldliness, etc.). God is not present in the world and so the task of man is to get away from the world and join him in heaven, that "other place." We do this by literally believing in the historical account provided to us by the tradition.

The East, on the other hand, does not define God as "other." Instead, God is not an individual at all but the divine transcendent reality of the world. This means that "God" or divinity is always and everywhere present, both in the individual and in the world. The great task then, is to learn to recognize and identify oneself with this divinity. The divine nature of the world is in fact identical to your own divine nature. To recognize this is to achieve enlightenment, so "heaven" is not a place but a state of being here and now in the world. As in the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas, "the kingdom of heaven is spread upon the earth but men do not see it." The great irony in this is that this identification of oneself with the divine in the world is precisely what Jesus was crucified for: the heresy of saying that "I and the Father are one." The "belief" here is a symbolic union of yourself with the world, and the religious teachings are symbols that are designed to allow this realization to take place in you.

So which one of these is right? Both and neither. The right one is the one that deepens your own awareness and enriches your life. Although I do think that if you really try to understand the different mythic and religious understandings of various cultures over time, you'll find that the "Eastern" view is really the more universal and the "Western" is kind of a historical accident. To be clear, I think that Jesus originally intended to teach something much closer to the "Eastern" conception than what we are told he taught. There are strong and striking similarities in the teachings of all the major spiritual teachers that lead me to think that they might all have been onto something. When certain concepts appear repeatedly in different cultures independently, I take it as a sign. One of the problems with the West that the East doesn't face is that the Church (even if you're Protestant: they have the same root) has turned what used to be symbols into literal history. "Religion" has become institutionalized and is dependent on literal belief. Then when, for various reasons (changing times, science) those literal beliefs become untenable, what are you left with? A broken institution concerned with perpetuating itself. But the symbols are still buried in there if you look for them, and if they have meaning for you, then that's wonderful.

Geez, I didn't mean to write a book...

 

[emptym]

I like books. And yours is good. I'm glad you clarified. Although I would still ask you to connect this more explicitly to the story. Did the business then mean that the Bible had too much of a separation between the divine and the human/natural, and thus contained no religion?

To your book, I offer a short and a long response:

Short = You seem to consider two possibilities: God is immanent in the world in the sense of one with the world or God is transcendent in the sense of totally separate from the world. Then you identify the first with the East and the second with the West. I would say that there is a third option. God is both immanent and transcendent. In this view, transcendence is not "other than" but "including and going beyond" as infinity includes 2 but is beyond it (a simple example). It is true that some strains of Western/Near Eastern religions opt for your second possibility, but many opt for my "third option." Catholicism is an example.


Long = Your distinction between East and West is interesting, but I think that it does not do enough justice to the diversity of the West (I'm not competent enough to judge it's justice to the East). Much of what you say is true (God is not creation), but I would say they are distinct, rather than separate. There is no problem of bridging God and creation or humanity because they are intrinsically related from creation on. They are not, however, identical. There is sin and evil in the world. This is what "separates" God from the world. Evil is truly evil acc. to Xns. It can be transformed into good (as in JC's acceptance of the evils consequences of sin and transformation of them into a communication of the evils of sin and the goodness of love that invites a response of repentance and love and thus forms the more reconciled relationship that is redemption). So while creation and God are intrinsically related from the beginning, there is a growth in the relationship that is achieved slowly over time, through the natural orientation to God, through the supernatural gift of grace, and through human cooperation with grace.

This story of 1) original unity, 2) some degree of separation and 3) a slow return to unity, is the story of the Bible.

As you mention, Jesus claims to be one with the Father and prays that all people might be one with the Father as well (Jn 17:20-22, etc.). Creation is the result of God breathing God's spirit into the void (Gen 1:2). As you said, human beings are the image and likeness of God (Gen 1:26). The Hebrew scriptures as a whole tell not so much a story of God as other, but God as personally related (thus Pascal distinguishes between the God of the philosophers and the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob). The "good news" of the Gospels is that God has chosen to dwell among us (Jn 1:14). On the incarnation, we believe that god became man so that men might become gods (St. Athanasius). He called us not slaves but friends (Jn 15:15) and the understanding of the authors, as influenced by Aristotle and other Greek thinkers, was that friends share something in common. Through grace, we are called to be not simply friends even, but sons and daughters of the Father, brothers and sisters of Christ, and temples of the Holy Spirit (Bernard Lonergan, SJ, compiled from the NT). Heaven is not a "place" but in incomprehensible state of total union with God and all of creation.

As Jesus said, the Kingdom of God is both present in each of us and yet to be achieved, "at hand" and "not yet." Union is the beginning and the end, but for now there is some degree of separation due to our free rejection of God in sin.

The Church is part of this, so you're right that the Church is broken. But what human institution is not? I agree too that the Bible is a compilation of stories and symbols, and one should not interpret all of them literally. However, such literalism does not apply "even" to Protestants, but particularly to some Protestants. Catholics are not literalists or fundamentalists, at least officially or in meaningful numbers. Hence their/our valuing of both evolution and creation, for example (Creation is not to be taken as literally 6 days).

 

[Philosoph]

Thanks for the response. Though this isn't the easiest format for these long kinds of discussions... In your short response you bring up the immanent/transcendent distinction. I think that's interesting, but both of those possibilities are subcategories of the "other," "not-other" distinction I was making. I see the East/West distinction as resting on the answer to the question, "What is God?" The West (btw, by "the West" I mean the institutionalized dogma of the Christian/Protestant/Jewish/Muslim religions. There are other viewpoints that crop up that differ from the dogma, but the institutions - the Man! - usually call them heresy. More below) answers that God is an "other," an individual being. So whether God is a being or Being who is immanent in the world or transcendent of it, he's still "other" than it. The East, on the other hand, answers that God is not "other" than the world but identical with it: not an individual "other" being. So for them he's not immanent in the world because he is the world. God is the world. The world is God. This, of course, is heresy for a Christian. So when Jesus said "I and the Father are one," the Western response was to invent a doctrine about how Jesus had both man-nature and God-nature at the same time, different from man who only has man-nature. But his God-nature is also different from the Father's God-nature, even though they're both somehow the same person. And they're both identical to and different from the Holy Spirit. Literally three persons in one. The Eastern response to Jesus saying "I am God" would be "Yes, of course. And so am I. And so is that tree over there, and those mountains beyond it. God is not something different from the world that is either present in it or not. Actually, using the word "God" for that idea has the wrong connotation, because "God" for us is a proper noun identifying an individual. Another way to put it might be to say that in Eastern thought, "God" is nothing more or less than the life of the world. And insofar as you yourself are that life, so too are you "God." That is, you are also the life of the world. I realize I'm making generalizations, but I think they're still accurate ones. There is more diversity than I'm letting on, but unfortunately it's still overshadowed by our institutionalized religion. Some people with differing viewpoints that I can think of offhand are Neoplatonists, specifically Plotinus and Proclus, Pseudo-Dionysius with his negative theology, Meister Eckhart, Augustine to some degree, Black Elk, a Native American shaman, Schopenhauer, and many more. But of course the accepted Christian theological doctrines come from Aquinas, and Aristotle through him, whether misused or not. The other viewpoints were either marginalized (pseudo-Dionysius, Augustine, Neoplatonists, Plato even) or declared heretical (Meister Eckhart, various Platonically-influenced ideas). The problem as I see it is that the dogma has become literal and concrete. The symbols are no longer allowed to speak for themselves, and so the individual does not experience for himself any meaning aside from the accepted literal "facts" of the belief. This is a crisis in the modern Western world because when the literal beliefs which may have had a profound meaning 2000 years ago become untenable in the modern worldview, the institution does not allow the individual to find any new meaning in the symbols because that would be contrary to the dogma. To get around to your first question, regarding that story... The Indian man read the Bible and found in the Old Testament the horrendous and violent history of a jealous Levantine deity-concept spurring a specific group of people to basically murder the surrounding tribes. In the New Testament he found the confusing doctrine of a man who was also not a man, literally born of a virgin, present in space and time, but also a member of an individual non-spatiotemporal psychotically-split identity. In both he found an attitude of servitude and devotion to an individual deity, and this he would consider to be only appropriate to children or the unlearned. Nowhere did he find anything indicating the path toward enlightenment. Nothing to help him realize his union with the world and all life, nothing to help him see that he himself is a microcosm of the universe, and that the great mystery of the large world is present in and identical with the mystery of his own self. Hence no religion in the way he thought of it. Also, I'm not meaning to present myself as an expert or an authority on this subject. These are just the thoughts I've arrived at after a heck of a lot of reading and cognitive digestion. Funnily enough, I was/am supposed to be Catholic. One negative consequence of our dogmatic religion is that it closes people's minds. After all, why do they need to think when the "truth" is spoonfed to them every Sunday? I've found that most people either aren't interested in this kind of discussion or emphatically do not want to hear it. So thank you to everyone reading this for not blasting me with lightning bolts of divinely-inspired destruction.

Originally Posted by emptym

I like books. And yours is good. I'm glad you clarified. Although I would still ask you to connect this more explicitly to the story. Did the business then mean that the Bible had too much of a separation between the divine and the human/natural, and thus contained no religion? To your book, I offer a short and a long response: Short = You seem to consider two possibilities: God is immanent in the world in the sense of one with the world or God is transcendent in the sense of totally separate from the world. Then you identify the first with the East and the second with the West. I would say that there is a third option. God is both immanent and transcendent. In this view, transcendence is not "other than" but "including and going beyond" as infinity includes 2 but is beyond it (a simple example). It is true that some strains of Western/Near Eastern religions opt for your second possibility, but many opt for my "third option." Catholicism is an example. Long = Your distinction between East and West is interesting, but I think that it does not do enough justice to the diversity of the West (I'm not competent enough to judge it's justice to the East). Much of what you say is true (God is not creation), but I would say they are distinct, rather than separate. There is no problem of bridging God and creation or humanity because they are intrinsically related from creation on. They are not, however, identical. There is sin and evil in the world. This is what "separates" God from the world. Evil is truly evil acc. to Xns. It can be transformed into good (as in JC's acceptance of the evils consequences of sin and transformation of them into a communication of the evils of sin and the goodness of love that invites a response of repentance and love and thus forms the more reconciled relationship that is redemption). So while creation and God are intrinsically related from the beginning, there is a growth in the relationship that is achieved slowly over time, through the natural orientation to God, through the supernatural gift of grace, and through human cooperation with grace. This story of 1) original unity, 2) some degree of separation and 3) a slow return to unity, is the story of the Bible. As you mention, Jesus claims to be one with the Father and prays that all people might be one with the Father as well (Jn 17:20-22, etc.). Creation is the result of God breathing God's spirit into the void (Gen 1:2). As you said, human beings are the image and likeness of God (Gen 1:26). The Hebrew scriptures as a whole tell not so much a story of God as other, but God as personally related (thus Pascal distinguishes between the God of the philosophers and the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob). The "good news" of the Gospels is that God has chosen to dwell among us (Jn 1:14). On the incarnation, we believe that god became man so that men might become gods (St. Athanasius). He called us not slaves but friends (Jn 15:15) and the understanding of the authors, as influenced by Aristotle and other Greek thinkers, was that friends share something in common. Through grace, we are called to be not simply friends even, but sons and daughters of the Father, brothers and sisters of Christ, and temples of the Holy Spirit (Bernard Lonergan, SJ, compiled from the NT). Heaven is not a "place" but in incomprehensible state of total union with God and all of creation. As Jesus said, the Kingdom of God is both present in each of us and yet to be achieved, "at hand" and "not yet." Union is the beginning and the end, but for now there is some degree of separation due to our free rejection of God in sin. The Church is part of this, so you're right that the Church is broken. But what human institution is not? I agree too that the Bible is a compilation of stories and symbols, and one should not interpret all of them literally. However, such literalism does not apply "even" to Protestants, but particularly to some Protestants. Catholics are not literalists or fundamentalists, at least officially or in meaningful numbers. Hence their/our valuing of both evolution and creation, for example (Creation is not to be taken as literally 6 days).

 

[scarphe]

Originally Posted by Philosoph

The difference, as I see it, is this:
The West insists on defining God as an individual "other" than man as well as the world. God is "out there" somewhere, in heaven, hhich is thought of as a place which is somehow separate from the world. This "otherness" is a barrier between man and God, and Western religion is an attempt to create a relationship across this barrier. Individual man relates somehow to the individual God (man is an "image of God," we must obey divine commands, Jesus loves us, etc.). This also creates a barrier between man and the world. The world is separate from God, and so it lacks divinity and creates all sorts of problems (sin, desire, worldliness, etc.). God is not present in the world and so the task of man is to get away from the world and join him in heaven, that "other place." We do this by literally believing in the historical account provided to us by the tradition.
..
Though i can agree with this for the most part it as a rough summary of religious thought in the west tradition, it also overlooks the the tradtion of spinoza which fit more with the eastern lin of thinking concerninngig deitities.

 

[Philosoph]

I'm not trying to present a summary of religious thought in the west, and especially not of the entire philosophical tradition. I'm trying to highlight the difference in the dogmatic religious doctrines of the west and the spiritual understanding of the east. There are definitely other alternatives in the western tradition (Schopenhauer, for one, Spinoza as you mentioned, Martin Buber, and others) but they are not accepted by our religious institutions. The Catholic Church, for instance, doesn't endorse Spinoza. The problem isn't that there are no alternatives to dogmatism, it's that those alternatives are not accepted. Anyone can still hold them, of course, but then you're outside the Christian/Jewish/Muslim social community.

 

[emptym]

Hi Philosoph, interesting stuff, as usual. You mentioned that you thought immanent and transcendent are both subcategories of the other/not-other distinction. I assume you meant that they are both part of the "other" category; pls correct me if I'm wrong. If I'm right about that, I'm guessing that the "immanent other" would be some kind of idolatry, ie worshiping something within the universe, and thus something finite, as divine. The "transcendent other" would then be your view of the official/dogmatic Western religions. And by the "not-other" of Eastern rels, I take it that you mean what Xns call the heresy of pantheism.

So we have three options: 1) Pantheism (not-other), 2) Idolatry (immanent other) and 3) Western (transcendent other).

I would see it differently, namely that Pantheism and Idolatry are types of immanence, and fundamentalist Protestants, Muslims, and perhaps Jews, believe in a totally transcendent God.

But most importantly, I think there is a 4th option, a both/and option. Are you familiar with the Catholic view of analogy? In this, God is both in/around us, and distinct from us. This is official Catholic dogma, at least since the Fourth Lateran Council. It holds as I argued earlier that there is both a likeness and a dislikeness, a unity and a difference, between God and creation. It is also an important point of contention between the Catholic church and Protestant theology, particularly conservative strains, most recently championed by such thinkers as Karl Barth and Eberhard Juengel. They accuse the Catholic church of what you believe to be the position of Eastern religions.

Now, not all Protestants agree with Barth. As you know, there is another strain of liberal Protestants who take their point of departure from Schliermacher, and they emphasize the unity with God. There are many churches in the US that favor this position. But it's the fundamentalists who get all the press, and they are the ones who emphasize the "otherness."

You mentioned Plotinus and Dionysius. But far from being marginalized, they actually heavily influenced Thomas Aquinas (through Muslim and Jewish thinkers) and thus the Lateran council on this matter. They distinguished between three ways to talking about God: (1) affirmation, direct cause, or aitia, (2) negation or aphairesis and (3) transcendence, analogy, or hyperoche

Direct affirmation is more confusing than helpful, since God is infinite and no finite language can capture God's essence. Negation is helpful for clearing out misconceptions, but not so helpful for building understanding. Analogy is most helpful, and it requires that there be some type of union of creation with God. This is precisely what some strains of conservative Protestant theology deny. But what the Catholic church officially affirms.

Now, some analogies are better than others. To say that God is "other" is bad because it implies total separation, which the Church denies all over the place. Love is perhaps the best. It implies some sense of "otherness" but also some sense of identity or unity. For example, one's wife is an "other" but hopefully, if the relationship is one of love, there is some sense of unity. Love captures the paradoxical truth of unity with distinction.

Interestingly, many Westerners are captivated by Eastern religions precisely because of paradox. But the Catholic church is full of paradox (seeming contradiction): knowing is by both faith and reason; authority is held by both scripture and tradition, salvation is both by human effort and divine grace; Jesus is both divine and human; God is both three and one; God is both in/around us and other than us. Let us have no false dichotomies!

A few corrections: you wrote of Jesus that "his God-nature is also different from the Father's God-nature, even though they're both somehow the same person." It's actually the reverse. Their natures are identical, but they are somehow different persons. The Trinity is three persons, one nature. Also, Augustine has by no means been marginalized by Xy. He is easily the second most honored theologian in both Roman Catholicism (after Thomas) and conservative, fundamentalist Protestantism (after Luther or Calvin). And Meister Eckhart was not condemned as a heretic.

 

[emptym]

On a related point in your last paragraph: I agree with you that dogma and spoon-feeding causes problems. It truly is a terrible thing. But it can also be good and necessary. As you say, scripture is in the form of stories and symbols. They need continual re-interpretation in light of changing linguistic and cultural systems, scientific discoveries, historical realities, etc. Because of this, I prefer doctrines to dogma. Dogma implies permanence and universality. Doctrine implies change and flexibility.

This said, however, there are some realities that will not change. Hate will not replace love as the central value, for example. But what love is in particular contexts will change.

Religious communities are human communities. Communities are formed not simply by shared geography but more so by shared meanings, values, and ways of life. If these are to be shared, there must be some control over them. This is true for a nation, for scientific community, or for a church. Some people will give their lives to understanding the community's traditions. They will devote years of study and training. Their opinions will not be perfect, or always the best, but there is some measure of likelihood that they will be better than the average opinion. Their opinions are to be valued. To what degree and in what way varies. We think of this as a top down approach, but development is also from the bottom up. Many saints and theologians were condemned at first, including Thomas Aquinas. And for all the stress on doctrines and dogma, it is actually official that only God will judge ultimately--of course, we all participate in divinity...

Thus, I think it may be another false dichotomy to imply that one must choose between being close-minded and spoon-fed in a corrupt institution or being free to interpret the symbols how one pleases.