My mum threw through me a link in her social network bulletin 'The Lot of Rot', so I thought, as it's Sunday and her readership might be confounded by Tim Morton, I'd throw up this little bit I wrote a couple of years ago. It borrows from Paul Tillich(of all people!)'s 'ontology of Love' that love is the active power of life, and a drive toward re-union.
Trinity, spirit.
Trinity, spirit.
The spirit of a game is the thing that gives it its vital identity, its life, the thing that differentiates it from exercise, work, and from play. The spirit is the unifying theme, the meaning of. To bump your opponent off the ball in soccer is against the spirit of the game – to obstruct your opponent from reaching the ball is well within the spirit of Australian rules football. In the first case, the deft footwork required to play the beautiful game is drawn out. In the second, the fraternal bond of cooperation in a team is expressed in the freedom to help your man by obstructing his opponents. The spirit is the underlying value network, the weight and glory system, the expression of the large values in the small.
So to God the Father, and God the Son. The Son is the image of the father, and likens himself to the Father as he is continually shown how. The Son is the Father’s pride and joy, the image of self, the image of the Invisible God. For forgiveness, this pride and joy dies. We are like God in feeling this death when we forgive. Our wounded pride must be forgone, sacrificed, before the sinner is admitted to a new relationship. Note also, the relationship between the Father and Son, is that the Father initiates and underwrites the Son’s activities; so the whole human mind relates to the part we call our Self.
Let us imagine an infinite God, but a countably infinite God of an infinite number of finite parts[1]. Perhaps you might like to think of a brain that is infinite in some or all dimensions, a blank universe-filling field of neurons. How does such a mind unite? How is a single “I” attainable? Would not the smaller parts prefer to produce more manageable selves, to secede, go rogue, than lose their wholeness to become the infinitesimal? There must be some common drive to union inherent in the finite parts, some way to find useful connectedness with the other parts. I suggest we identify this drive to union or (re-union) with Love (borrowing from Paul Tillich’s definition in Love, Power and Justice.)
The Holy Spirit is the spirit of God; the Holy Spirit is a person who means Love. The Holy Spirit is the Mind of Christ (1 Cor 2).
Becoming a Christian is being persuaded that God is Love; that love is the right character of persons, in their infinitesimals, in their mind, and in the congregation. Becoming a Christian is being filled / transformed by the Holy Spirit. At the time it becomes evident that God is right, the brain begins to embody this idea of (re)union. Many existing structures will be picked up: love of friends and family. Many new structures will need to be constructed – forgiveness, love of enemies.
"Through" is a preposition. I think it's the verb "threw" that is needed here.
ReplyDeleteWraiths and rattlesnakes, you're right.
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