Spinoza Pantheism Defined

Religious teaching relies on both-and no matter where one looks. Paradox is its native language.Logic says either-or. It doesn't recognize paradox. It sees contradictions. But what do we encounter in great religions?Motion yet stillness. Stillness yet movement. I am in you. You are in me. God yet human. Human yet god. Three yet one. One yet three. Eternal yet mortal. Mortal yet eternal. Happiness when grieving. Wealth in poverty. Wisdom in ignorance. Strength in weakness. Action in non-action.Both-and recognizes something characteristic about how we describe the indescribable. We employ symbols more than logic. Symbols are both-and.___

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

Thank you for illustrating my point.What appears as contradiction to reason ('common sense') can still be true, as you acknowledge.It is in this fertile ground, beyond the playing field of strict logic, where paradox and other symbolic forms of communication convey truth by other means. I'm well acquainted with Clive Staples. A cultured scholar. An avid reader of world literature that excelled his own literary output. A student of metaphorical as well as logical modes of thought. A devout Anglican, baptized as an infant. A solid supporter of science, including evolutionary theory. A caring provider for divorcée Joy Davidman and her children. A bereaved lover who was honest and raw in his grief.A good man. You do well to admire him.___Edited by Archer Opterix, : HTML.Edited by Archer Opterix, : typo.

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

I appreciate your taking the time to share all this, anglagard. I confess I'm not fresh enough on my Spinoza to take any issue with details of your definition. For me your post serves as a re-introduction to a reliable friend.Your description is especially welcome because, as you note, a lot of bad information makes the rounds about 'pantheism.' Among fundamentalists I hear the term used most often as a catch-all--along with 'new age' and 'secular humanism'--for just about any thought they don't perceive as one of theirs.In response to your last question, I'd say you live in accordance with a philosophy as opposed to a religion or atheism. My comfort with that terminology comes mainly from the way it already describes the two main streams in Taoist practice. One speaks of 'philosophical' and 'religious' Taoism. Religion entails personal images of deity and organized public rituals of petition. (It does not entail adherents' taking the lore literally.) Philosophy just refers to a belief that guides one's personal path and helps govern choices.Have you posted a faith statement here? I would welcome a chance to read one from you.___

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

My apologies to Admin and the author of the OP. Please be patient with a momentary aside on the subject of logical and symbolic modes of thought. OK, let me make sure I understand your position.Your allusion is to the Sermon on the Mount:

Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the road is easy that leads to destruction, and there are many who take it.
For the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life, and there are few who find it.

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Mt 7.13 NRSV

You say the narrow gate is the gate of reason. We enter this gate through the application of logic. We walk this path when we observe the law of non-contradiction that says A cannot equal non-A.You say the wide road is the road of symbolism. We enter this broad gate through the application of metaphor. We walk this easy road when we indulge mental images that assign more than one meaning to a single thing and let a variety of non-synonymous ideas co-exist.If we take the narrow road of Either-Or thinking, the application of logic will lead us to the right answers.If we take the broad road of Both-And thinking, the blind guide of symbolism will lead us across a dry, thirsty wilderness of spiritually barren desert, down a torrential river of onrushing groundless fantasies, over a roaring waterfall of worldly belief systems, and adrift helplessly on sea of undifferentiated metaphor--a vast ocean of relativity in which anything may mean everything and everything means nothing.Have I represented your view correctly?___Edited by Archer Opterix, : HTML.

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

Then please explain, plainly and in your own words, how your system coheres. In a new thread.Up to now you have steadfastly opposed 'both-and' ways of thinking. To do that is to oppose symbolic modes of thought entirely, because all metaphors work on a 'both-and' basis.Now you say 'both-and' thinking is fine as long as it shows valid 'either-or' thinking.This is a self-contradiction according to the 'either-or' system of negation you say you hold supreme.A new thread on the subject of 'Rob's philosophy' will give you the space and place to explain things. The subject of this thread is Spinoza's philosophy. That's not a subject you are addressing. You are off topic here.____Edited by Archer Opterix, : clarity.Edited by Archer Opterix, : HTML.Edited by Archer Opterix, : brev.Edited by Archer Opterix, : typo.

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

quote:

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Empty yourself of everything.
Let the mind become still.
Watch with your whole being as all things around you rise and fall.
They multiply and flourish and return to the source.
Returning to the source brings stillness. This is the way of nature.
The way of nature is constant.

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quote:

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Knowing constancy is insight.
Not knowing constancy leads to disaster.
Knowing constancy the mind is open.
Keep an open mind and you will be openhearted.
Being openhearted you will act royally.
Being royal you will attain the divine.
Being divine you will be at one with the Tao.
Being at one with the Tao is eternal.
And though the body dies the Tao will never pass away.

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Tao Te Ching, 16

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

Maybe the common idea is that you have the ephemeral and the eternal. One prepares for immortality by keeping the ephemeral in perspective and sowing to the eternal.How 'personal' is that? Good question.__Edited by Archer Opterix, : clarity.

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

Spinoza definitely comes at it as a logician, yes. It's telling that Lao Tzu strikes our ears as poetry, though. For its day it isn't. The sentences are ruthlessly concise. It's a philosophical treatise.That seems to be the way it goes with the genre. Images from earlier times, especially in pre-scientific texts, strike modern readers as more 'artistic' than the images that stand closer to us in time. The concepts of one generation become the metaphors of the next. As concepts are metaphors, ultimately, I guess the shift is built in.(Will today's talk of black holes and strange attractors fall on the ears of future generations as poetic? Will people read Hawking's prose and say 'Wow. Scientific language was so much more artistic in those days'?)I'm noticing parallels between Spinoza's thought and the ideas of Ralph Waldo Emerson as well. (Here's another writer who didn't think he was being poetic, either. The noble, rolling sentences in his essays are looking more and more like period art as time passes.) How much is kown about the influence of Spinoza's thought on the American Transcendentalists?__Edited by Archer Opterix, : clarity.

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

I'm a little concerned about the easy equation I've seen now on several threads between 'pantheism' and 'religous tolerance.' They are almost being used as synonyms for one another. Pantheism is a belief. One can be accepting of other religions, though, while holding any of a variety of beliefs.To say a given belief system is 'exclusive' does not mean one must view other belief systems as 'illusions.' All religions present us with pictures. But the task of picturing something that is beyond our perception is literally to try to picture the unpicturable.Wise people in every religious tradition have recognized this situaiton and reminded others of it. Where is the house we would build?Illusions come in when one takes a necessarily limited and inadequate picture of a reality for the reality. It's a hazard common to all belief systems. When we know at the outset that we are discussing things that are unlimited relative to us and certainly beyond our powers of perception and comprehension, then that is necessarily something we have to keep in mind all along. No picture can hope to get it all.___

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ArcherAll species are transitional.