Well.
That was pretty interesting..
My first class in Systematic Theology I. Oof. This will be both stimulating and worrisome, I can see it already. There's a whole world of ideas that I haven't heard of, many more which I have heard of but don't understand well, and a bunch that I do grasp but don't necessarily trust in the way I used to.
Good teacher. I like him. He is open to the ideas of others, but will gently guide their thinking when it's incomplete. And the man knows his subject well enough to extemporize and shift gears to accomodate discussion, with appropriate examples to clarify.
Ha - he even provided an answer for us to tell people when they ask "well, what did you learn?" I can confidently say with the rest of the class, that tonight I apprehended the differences and the interplay between the neumena and phenomena of Immanuel Kant, epistemologically speaking. :)
Oh yeah, that. What you just said there. Yup. I'm all about that.
The creepy part was that the thing I have been angry at God about for a few years now is pretty much exactly the dilemma Kant articulated, the disconnect between the way things really are in their essence, and our limited knowledge of them via experience (or lack of same.) Example: who God really is, and how we understand Him (or rather, fail to) through our mind and senses.
I have found myself focusing on knowing other things (and people) that I *can* experience, hoping they will substitute for the God Whom I cannot experience. Not the best idea - it gets confusing. And if God is essentially unknowable in His essence... what good are my 5 senses for anything but, as Solomon says, the enjoyment of life, a.k.a. seeking pleasure?
Kierkegaard apparently had the definitive response to Kant, which is: faith! Well.. okay so far.. but then he said that faith has no ground other than in itself otherwise it wouldn't be faith, which I think is just so much horse hockey. But what do I know?
So anyway, here I thought I had an original idea. So much for that notion. Solomon's right again: "there's nothing new under the sun." Hm. Least of all my puny ideas. :)
1 comment:
Some of us take the path that says you can only ever really know *yourself*, and thereby perhaps gain insight into God's nature. It's called the mystic path - all religions have mystics, and interestingly enough, they all say the same thing - To know God/achieve enlightenment, know yourself.
Hopefully you won't skip class the day the lecture is on mysticism. ;)
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