Catalytic and Emergent Substitutionary Atonement that Potentializes Spiritual Practice for Personal Effort in Transpersonal Psychosocial Development

brmckay greenpeaceRdale1844coop • 3 hours ago • edited "By Jesus´ birth, ...Aristotle´s peripatetic philospher school with some scientific potential had long since been reduced to neoplatonism. ...Buddha´s, Pantanjali´s, Lao Tzu´s, and like legacies had interesting roads to follow." Plotinus (c. 205 – c. 270) doesn't seem "reduced" to me. And Buddha, Patanjali, and LaoTsu represent heroic high points in human comprehension. (by my standards) Much like Christ, if you don't get distracted by Christians. (to paraphrase Gandiji) "Divine Love is amazing. Thank you, Jesus. Stay blessed in that protective and providential condition." "Divine Love" would clearly represent the Quality of first cause. Though I admit a literal reading of "mirrors" understates it. (relying on leaps of intuition and direct experience to fill the gap) • Reply • Share › − Avatar greenpeaceRdale1844coop brmckay • a few seconds ago Recognizing Plotinus as "reduced" requires more than opining on personal perceptions. Let me help clarify the meaning of reductionism, that is when we are talking about empirical sense-perceived phenomena and the knowledge domains developed from them, most extensively in Christian-based modern University scholarship. Thus, at that time, Aristotle´s empirical proto-scientific work was "reduced" in that neoplatonists subordinated his work to their neoplatonic musing. As a neoplatonist, he was limited by that system of metaphysical logic. Galen and some other odd-men-out appeared as more empirically scientific still in Roman times, but not in the Academy that was ended in 529. Plotinus no less was pagan as Christianity was spreading despite persecution, part of Christianity´s spreading for very substantive reasons. Rodney Stark studied it in depth most recently. You are able to appreciate a span of resources like Buddha, Pantanjali, and Lao Tzu, besides Plotinus, Aristotle, et al BECAUSE OF the existing development of modern University-based scholarship in the Western world, now globalized. Your perception of them as high points firstly involves that, and that system reflects what? Christians following the pivotal work of the monk Thomas of Aquinas and his reflecting on Aristotle and the nature of epistemology, in the same era as proto-modern scientific philosophers like Bishop Robert Grosseteste. Further essential steps include the renowned but undervalued efforts of Martin Luther to end Roman church autocracy, T Jefferson in leading the end of absolute monarchy with constitutional democracy and Civil Rights, the 1893 Chicago Parliament of World Religions as University-based Comparative Religious Studies was developing with the likes of Max Mueller, WR Smith, and R Otto. Your standards have some strong points, but you´re not honoring the water you´re swimming in, so to speak. When you cite Gandhi´s critique of "Christian hypocrisy," you have to examine your own interpretation of that. Is Gandhi´s comment a full and comprehensive scholarly analysis calling all of Christianity a hypocritical folly? That´s untenable, and unjustifiable. Gandhi wasn´t attacking all of Western civilization. Gandhi´s statement was addressing the common condition he encountered related to the basic conditions of British colonialism and greedy materialism, not least of all characterized by his other famous quote about there being enough for everyone´s need, but not their greed. You are clearly making a reductionist use of Gandhi´s phrase about "Christians being unlike Christ," and missing the larger substance of modernized loving integrity in Jesus´ legacy. Another angle would be appreciating how Gandhi´s law degree, reading of Thoreau and Ruskin, and written contact with Tolstoy related to his own non-violent satyagraha and renaming of the Untouchable Dalits as Harijan Children of God. That is a spirit of Civil Rights democracy, and it makes one additional refutation of any claim that Gandhi harbored an anti-Christian ideology. I would capitalize First Cause, not least of all in association with Divine Love. As a quality, it is merely divine love. First Cause, interestingly, is a philosophical and logical extrapolation using empirical methods in metaphysical induction and deduction. The qualities of the First Cause firstly would include its being timeless, spaceless, and immaterial, for starters. The reflection further that mechanicism doesn´t make sense in a timeless, and eternal, condition, making its Act of Creation of the physical Universe an act of intention and expression, and personal. The physical Universe itself is challenging, and the appearance of human tool-using cognition and social behavior and later fully symbolic cognition object-related and relationally underlie then one level of emergence. In that level, human spiritual-religious experience emerged in parallel strikingly in shamanism. The quality of expression of Divine Love has no comparison to what emerged with Jesus, with the Four Gospels recording material that now lends God´s full blessing for insight in the process and practice of Comparative Religious Studies. How does "mirrors" as a term relate to that? Buddha summed it up nicely with "Hate never ends with hate, only with the end of hate." That has a more salubrious quality than "an eye for an eye...." that Moses began to reorient with God´s top 10 Commandments. In the persistence of greed and anti-sociality called sin in standard OT Jewish life, the prophets expressed God´s perceptions in their coherence and developmental correspondence with events. Humans were mirroring each others bio-psychosocial tendencies to sin in their various ways, that Buddha nicely sums up as ignorance, greed, and hatred. Jesus´ full complement and range of healing and other miracles and teaching of loving principles then has its significance usually interpreted with limited insight around the concept of "substitutionary atonement." The clear meaning is better expressed as "catalytic emergent substitutionary atonement for potentialized spiritual development in spiritual practice." (Catalytic and Emergent Substitutionary Atonement that Potentializes Spiritual Practice for Personal Effort in Transpersonal Psychosocial Development) Anthony of the Desert represents a significant and undervalued development with his asceticism that prompted Christian monasticism. Jesus´ execution at the prompting of local religious leaders and by imperial government assumed the form and significance of religious theological sacrificing of animals. His subsequent Resurrection marked his mission and teaching messages for their special significance, and his post-Resurrection contact with his Disciples catalyzed them in promoting this new level of expression of God´s Divine Love embodied in the world. Mary Baker Eddy understood the concept that Jesus was reflecting that Love, and demonstrated its results. Thus, as the Disciples reflected that new mirroring, a new kind of Hall of Mirrors was being developed, making it recognizably emergent. The Buddha had sparked an important form for comparison and invigoration. Anthony of the Desert the ascetic by 300, inspired Pachomius after 318, who sparked modern Christian monasticism and its spiritual practice for spiritual development. That is the process that led to Thomas of Aquinas and Christian modern Universities and philosophical forms. Their deviation into materialistic development now requires the insight of Jesus as a catalytic and emergent influence that makes possible, i.e. "potentializes," new levels and forms of spiritual practice and personal growth to achieve what can perhaps best be called in modernity as "sustainable spirituality." That identifies a number of processes that I think address your reference to "leaps of intuition and direct experience."