how you give us significance.
how love engenders significance.
the significance of all living things.
and how this significance is given by the love of parents for their offspring
animals and humans alike.
being given significance engenders purpose and hope.
diversity.
every creature and every human is different.
right from the start our differences make us unique.
it is this diversity which gives us significance.
diversity is then another aspect of love.
diversity is not sufficiently understood as a central and perhaps essential aspect of the church.
yes Paul talks about hands and feet and other bits making up The Body but is therefore assuming that there be just one Body to make up. (I have probably mentioned this before.):
But why should diversity be the opposite of unity?
the Christian faith now takes many forms and this is always considered to be an aberration; that really we should be one big happy family but . . . .
just as it is natural (inevitable) for man to have different languages . . . .
(although this too is coloured with regret through the Babel story: a punishment for overreaching ourselves. (an aside: does the word babble stem from the Babel story I wonder?)
. . . wasn't it inevitable that, once people are reading the scriptures for themselves, (reformation stuff) groups are going to form different ideas and different emphases thus creating diversity?
Many countries have their own churches, and I have always railed against this myself because I loathe Nationalism so much but I think I have gone too far in this. Isn't gentle nationalism really simply a bid for a local unity? a recognition, then, of the Significance of the nation? A way for its peoples to understand that the nation is both unique and loved through it's uniqueness?
Rahner considers the Christian faith to be the correct faith - this is still the Catholic view I suppose - though at least he recognises that there can be salvation outside the church. I don't think he goes nearly far enough with this though.
I won't dig deeper here but I will just again mention (a) the severe limitations of language; the impossibility of getting anywhere near the actual truth with mere words - although this does not of course mean that language is not essential. Language acts as signposts towards the truth without which we could not even begin to travel but it can only take us so far.
Just as there should be diversity in the church - as an aspect of uniqueness and recognition of significance - so there is bound to be diversity in faiths because each place starts from a different point. We are all subject to the tiny accidents of history which change everything about us: the way we think, talk, act, understand, view the world, and each other, where we think we come from and where we think we are going . . . . . but all the faiths have so much in common too! Of course! because you are at work in all of them!
No two souls follow precisely the same path, and God never repeats himself in his creatures.
how love engenders significance.
the significance of all living things.
and how this significance is given by the love of parents for their offspring
animals and humans alike.
being given significance engenders purpose and hope.
diversity.
every creature and every human is different.
right from the start our differences make us unique.
it is this diversity which gives us significance.
diversity is then another aspect of love.
diversity is not sufficiently understood as a central and perhaps essential aspect of the church.
yes Paul talks about hands and feet and other bits making up The Body but is therefore assuming that there be just one Body to make up. (I have probably mentioned this before.):
But why should diversity be the opposite of unity?
the Christian faith now takes many forms and this is always considered to be an aberration; that really we should be one big happy family but . . . .
just as it is natural (inevitable) for man to have different languages . . . .
(although this too is coloured with regret through the Babel story: a punishment for overreaching ourselves. (an aside: does the word babble stem from the Babel story I wonder?)
. . . wasn't it inevitable that, once people are reading the scriptures for themselves, (reformation stuff) groups are going to form different ideas and different emphases thus creating diversity?
Many countries have their own churches, and I have always railed against this myself because I loathe Nationalism so much but I think I have gone too far in this. Isn't gentle nationalism really simply a bid for a local unity? a recognition, then, of the Significance of the nation? A way for its peoples to understand that the nation is both unique and loved through it's uniqueness?
Rahner considers the Christian faith to be the correct faith - this is still the Catholic view I suppose - though at least he recognises that there can be salvation outside the church. I don't think he goes nearly far enough with this though.
I won't dig deeper here but I will just again mention (a) the severe limitations of language; the impossibility of getting anywhere near the actual truth with mere words - although this does not of course mean that language is not essential. Language acts as signposts towards the truth without which we could not even begin to travel but it can only take us so far.
Just as there should be diversity in the church - as an aspect of uniqueness and recognition of significance - so there is bound to be diversity in faiths because each place starts from a different point. We are all subject to the tiny accidents of history which change everything about us: the way we think, talk, act, understand, view the world, and each other, where we think we come from and where we think we are going . . . . . but all the faiths have so much in common too! Of course! because you are at work in all of them!
No two souls follow precisely the same path, and God never repeats himself in his creatures.