Montag, 23. März 2009

Ein verborgener Schatz

"Ich war ein verborgener Schatz und wollte erkannt werden; deshalb erschuf Ich die Welt."
Sufi-Weisheit

Sonntag, 22. März 2009

Von Gott und dem Leben als Mensch (Kardinal Ratzinger)

"Natürlich können wir dieses "Warum hat es Gott so gemacht?" letzlich nicht erklären. Warum bleibt er so leise? Warum ist er so schwach in der Welt? Das ist eine Frag, die sich gerade der glaubende Mensch unweigerlich immer wieder stellen wird. [...] Wir können eigentlich heute nur versuchen, Gott so anzunehmen, wie er ist und dem dann Sinn abzugewinnen. Ich glaube, dass wir gerade dadurch, indem wir in das Abenteuer einer nicht ins letzte durchschaubaren, aber doch sicher von seiner Liebe getragenen und geführten Geschichte hineingehen, Stück um Stück sehend werden. Wir erhalten auf diese Weise die für uns Menschen angemessene Aufgabe. [Wir sollten] einen Weg gehen und darin selber etwas zum Geheimnis und zur Grösse der Welt beitragen. Ich würde sagen, es ist uns genug gegeben, um leben zu können. Und die Grenze unseres Erkennens ist nicht nur eine Herausforderung, sondern auch ein Geschenk. Es führt uns in das Abenteuer des Weitergehens, des Erlernens hinein, in dem unsere Masse wachsen. Voraussetzung hierfür ist tatsächlich immer wieder der Demutsakt, uns vor Gott zu beugen, den wir nicht durchschauen können." aus: Joseph Kardinal Ratzinger, 'Gott und die Welt', Knaur Verlag, München, 2002, S.81/82.

Donnerstag, 19. März 2009

Sophismus?

"Es ist naiv, zu glauben, dass es für furchtbare Dinge, die wir nicht verstehen, einfache Erklärungen gibt. Dies weil sie uns das Gefühl geben, die Dinge unter Kontrolle zu haben. Was aber nicht der Fall ist."

.... Das letzte Wort zum Theodizee-Problem?

Mittwoch, 18. März 2009

Papst Benedikt XVI und Evolutionäre Spiritualität

Darwin hat mit seiner Evolutionstheorie versucht die Entstehung der Arten ohne eingreifen Gottes zu erklären. Der Schöpfer wird so nur zu Beginn wichtig, wenn sich die ersten Keime des Lebens entwickeln, bzw. der Big-Bang stattfand. Aber schon Darwin war der Ansicht, dass neben dem Zufall im Prozess der Entstehung der Details der verschiedenen Arten, es Gott als Weltschöpfer und erste Ursache braucht.
Papst Benedikt XVI ist nun überzeugt, dass die Evolution, trotz ihrer zahlreichen Umwege, als Ganzes betrachtet, etwas Sinnvolles ergibt! Also nicht göttliches Design der einzelnen Arten (was Kreationismus, bzw. Intelligent Design wäre), sondern 'Design der Welt', Weltschöpfung. [Dies klingt meiner Meinung nach schon ziemlich nach einer Variante von Evolutionärer Spiritualität. Wegen der Bedeutung des Schöpfergottes in dieser Sichtweise - trotz allem, wird sie auch "theistische Evolution" genannt.] Wir sollten mit Geist & Herz wahrnehmen und nicht nur mit der naturwissenschaftlichen Methode. Dann sollten schliesslich auch "Explosionen der Liebe" sichtbar werden.

aus: Evolution oder Schöpfung - ein Gegensatz? Gedanken von S.Em. Christoph Kardinal Schönborn, Programm Nr. 11, März '09, k-tv.

Dienstag, 17. März 2009

Ist die Hoffnung grösser als die Angst?

"Als Christ ist meine Lebenshaltung davon geprägt, dass meine Hoffnung stärker ist, als meine Angst. Angst macht nicht einfach nur unfrei. Die Frage ist vielmehr, wie kann ich mit Ängsten und Sorgen aus dem Geist der Freiheit umgehen? Das ist für mich die entscheidenden Frage. - Denn ich weiss ganz genau, dass wenn ich der Angst oder gar dem Tod Herrschaft über meine Gedanken einräume, dann werde ich diesen Ängsten nicht gewachsen sein. Deswegen sind Glaube und Gottvertrauen die entscheidenden Kraftquellen um mit diesen Ängsten angemessen umzugehen."

"Sünde ist die Abwendung von Gott. Es ist eine Desorientierung im Blick auf die Frage, was ist der Halt meines Lebens, worauf kann ich hoffen, wie verhalte ich mich zu meinem Nächsten? Glaube, Hoffnung und Liebe sollten stärker sein, als Glaubensverlust, Zukunftsangst oder Abwendung vom Nächsten."

Bischof Wolfgang Huber, in: 'Vis-à-Vis', 3sat, 22.25 Uhr, 16.3.09.

Dienstag, 10. März 2009

A Unitarian Universalists Faith Perspective

How is the realtionship between Evolutionary Spirituality and liberal religion (Unitarian Universalism)? - In the following some thoughts of Rev. David Bumbaugh from Meadville Lombard Theological School, Chicago:

“* We believe that the universe in which we live and move and have our being is the expression of an inexorable process that began in eons past, ages beyond our comprehension and has evolved from singularity to multiplicity, from simplicity to complexity, from disorder to order.
* We believe that the earth and all who live upon the earth are products of the same process that swirled the galaxies into being, that ignited the stars and orbited the planets through the night sky, that we are expressions of that universal process which has created and formed us out of recycled star dust.
* We believe that all living things are members of a single community, all expressions of a planetary process that produced life and sustains it in intricate ways beyond our knowing. We hold the life process itself to be sacred.
* We believe that the health of the human venture is inextricably dependent upon the integrity of the rest of the community of living things and upon the integrity of those processes by which life is bodied forth and sustained. Therefore we affirm that we are called to serve the planetary process upon which life depends.
* We believe that in this interconnected existence the well-being of one cannot be separated from the well-being of the whole, that ultimately we all spring from the same source and all journey to the same ultimate destiny.
* We believe that the universe outside of us and the universe within us is one universe. Because that is so, our efforts, our dreams, our hopes, our ambitions are the dreams, hopes and ambitions of the universe itself. In us, and perhaps elsewhere, the Universe is reaching toward self-awareness, toward self consciousness.
* We believe that our efforts to understand the world and our place within it are an expression of the universe's deep drive toward meaning. In us, and perhaps elsewhere, the Universe dreams and reaches toward unknown possibilities. We hold as sacred the unquenchable drive to know and to understand.
* We believe that the moral impulse that weaves its way through our lives, luring us to practices of justice and mercy and compassion, is threaded through the universe itself and it is this universal longing that finds outlet in our best moments.
* We believe that our location within the community of living things places upon us inescapable responsibilities. Life is more than our understanding of it, but the level of our comprehension demands that we act out of conscious concern for the broadest vision of community of we can command and that we seek not our welfare alone, but the welfare of the whole. We are commanded to serve life and serve it to the seven times seventieth generation.
* We believe that those least like us, those located on the margins have important contributions to make the rest of the community of life and that in some curious way, we are all located on the margins.
* We believe that all that functions to divide us from each other and from the community of living things is to be resisted in the name of that larger vision of a world everywhere alive, everywhere seeking to incarnate a deep, implicate process that called us into being, that sustains us in being, that transforms us as we cannot transform ourselves, that receives us back to itself when life has used us up. Not knowing the end of that process, nonetheless we trust it, we rest in it, and we serve it.”
Diesen Kern des UU Glaubens hat David Bumbaugh in seinem Artikel "The Marketing of Liberal Religion" im Journal of Liberal Religion, Vol. 9, No. 1, Summer 2009 veröffentlicht.

Sonntag, 8. März 2009

Religious Liberalism

UU theologian James Luther Adams referred to "the Five Smooth Stones of Liberalism." In brief Adam's five smooth stones are:
(1) The conviction that revelation is not sealed. Answering now to our endeavor, truth and right are still revealed. Scripture is useful, but never God's final word. [This is why we say that we have a "living tradition."]
(2) Relationships between people should be covenantal. That is, they should rest on mutuality and persuasion as much as possible, not on coercion and power-over.
(3) We share a human obligation to work toward what Dr. King called "the Beloved Community" of love and justice.
(4) Merely thinking ourselves virtous and well-intentioned won't get us there. We must forgo notions of the immaculate conception of our own virtue and instead practice the organization of power and the power of organization in order to realize the social incarnation of the good we love.
(5) Within all the universe provides and with the openness of history, we are never justified in an ultimate pessimism, but must ever keep faith with the future.
from: "The Five Smooth Stones of Religious Liberalism", in: James Luther Adams, "On Being Human Religiously". Beacon Press, Boston. 1976.

"The Rev. William Sloan Coffin writes that,
On the religious side, liberals believe that the integrity of love is more important than the purity of dogma. Dogma is a sign post, love is a hitching post. Liberals contend that we should sharpen our minds, not narrow them. We understand that.... faith, far from clearing up uncertainty, makes it possible to live with uncertainty. Fundamentalists, on the other hand, cannot bear uncertainty. They indulge in what psychiatrists call "premature closure". .... Liberals contend that one of the most wonderful things about life is to act wholeheartedly without absolute certainty. (World, Vol. V., No.1, p. 6)."

"There is no way that we can inerrantly know the mind of God, how ever we may conceptualize it. For us, the fallible to claim infallibility; for the finite to claim perfect understanding of the infinite is, quite simply, idolatry. The setting up of something less than the ultimate in the place of the ultimate. Therefore things like claims of scriptural literalism and inerrancy are not only illogical, they are arrogant. If there is a sacrilege in liberal religion it is this type of claim."

The sermon 'What is Liberal Religion and Why should I care?' by Rev. Patrick Price is very interesting with regard to the building blocks of liberal religion

"Already Dr [William Ellery] Channing had passed beyond the position of his youth, and he recognized that once liberalism became static and systematized, it, too would become an orthodoxy….Liberal religion must not…shut the door on new truths, must not rest, but rather must ‘submit to the inconvenience of suspense and imperfect opinion.’….The bible of tomorrow has not been written, is not completed. (Challenge of a Liberal Faith, by George Marshall, p.23)."

Citation from the sermon 'What is Liberal Religion?' by Rev. Kimi Riegel.

Integral Thinking and Faith Without Certainty

I agree that "Integral Spirituality" (from Ken Wilber) and Evolutionary Spirituality (form Andrew Cohen) contain interesting elements. It is especially the holistic view, and the conviction that there is potential for further development. They are both quiet teleological. It is their conviction that there are "higher states of consciousness" acessible where I see the problems! And an "integral world view" has the potential to become totalitarian. Since it is convinced to have a "theory for everything" (book title of Ken Wilber). This problem goes back to Hegel, and was criticised later by Karl Popper. Further, I see a potential incompatibility of an "integral approach" with a "faith without certainty" (book title of Paul Rasor). And for me faith will remain always without certainty. That is good tradition of liberal religion, too. I don't believe in certainties based on alleged "higher spiritual visions", nor on "reveiled truth" form so called "holly books". But nevertheless I like integral thinking, too. But for me it is only a philosophical world view, open to rationally based cricism.

Sonntag, 1. März 2009

The Heart of Integral Thinking

The great goal of Advaita Vedanta monism is the union with the ONE in the beyond, beyond the veil of maya. Nevertheless the formula Brahman (the world soul) and Atman (the individual soul) are one can stimulate holistic thinking already in this world.
The following quote is from the "Gandhi-Gita", Discourse VI:
“28. The yogin, cleansed of all stain, unites himself ever thus to Atman, easily enjoys the endless bliss of contact with Brahman. [Cf. "Being wholly absorbed in the divinity, the soul is one with it, conjoining as it were, centre with centre." Plotinus] 29. The man equipped with yoga looks on all with an impartial eye, seeing Atman in all beings and all beings in Atman. 30. He who sees Me everywhere and everything in Me, never vanishes from Me nor I from him. One starts with seeing oneself in his near neighbour, then in his distant neighbours, then in still more distant humanity, and ends in seeing himself in all; and seeing oneself in another is to love the other. That is the same thing as seeing other beings in one’s Self. The next natural step is to see God in everyone and everyone in God. The yogin who worships and loves God worships and loves everyone, for he sees God in everyone; 31. The yogin who, anchored in unity, worships Me abiding in all beings, lives and moves in Me, no matter how he lives and moves. 32. He who, by likening himself with others, senses pleasure and pain equally or all as for himself, is deemed to be the highest yogi, O’Arjuna. As Shankaracharya explains: “By realizing that all creatures feel the same pleasure and pain as he feels, he harms no being.”"
The last sentence is for me the most important one: "By realizing that all creatures feel the same pleasure and pain as he feels, he harms no being." It's like Buddhism. Having recognised that all life is harm, its ethical imperative has become "Don't harm!"
Now Sri Aurobindo has reformulated classical Hinduism. The longing is not anymore for the oneness of the beyond. It is more that God has entirely become Nature ("involution"). And now Nature seeks to become progressively God again ("evolution"). It is a dynamic pandeism. In the Aurobindan view the world soul is manifested in this world. Thus, we have to care for all creatures of this world. With this reformulation of classical Advaita Vedanta teaching by Sri Aurobindo the age of the "Integral" has started.