Mercurial > hg > rsof
changeset 209:59f4ab0279f7
End of part I
author | Henry S. Thompson <ht@inf.ed.ac.uk> |
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date | Thu, 24 Jun 2021 22:32:33 +0100 |
parents | b1f88292d482 |
children | 89a7691c3868 |
files | HeavenOnEarth/notes.txt |
diffstat | 1 files changed, 57 insertions(+), 1 deletions(-) [+] |
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--- a/HeavenOnEarth/notes.txt Thu Jun 17 22:42:15 2021 +0100 +++ b/HeavenOnEarth/notes.txt Thu Jun 24 22:32:33 2021 +0100 @@ -286,4 +286,60 @@ life, but Which of the developments are distortions, which are truly spirit-led -Pause at [38:05] +-----Discussion------- +SM: Wrt the focus being on the person, it's because the _problem_ is with +humanity, the Fall, (ref. Nayler and the Eastern church) + +TPA: We are not separate from Creation, and when things go wrong it has +_cosmic_ significance: if the image of God is lost in us, that's a +fundamental problem. + +BPD: What happens to Heaven on Earth as the pressure builds? + +TPA: That leads to serious questions about how Jesus is understood. +By John, Jesus has been considerably elevated ("my Lord and my God"). +The earliest Christianity as "living the Spirit-led life" is somehow +overshadowed by the role of faith in Jesus -> you will have eternal +life. The conflict makes the focus be on preservation rather than +growth. Keeping, protecting, holding the community. + +SM: We need to be ordered in order to survive. Parallel with early +Friends. Accommodating to the world is precisely what compromises the +vision. "They were possessed of the Spirit, and lost it" vs. "They +were crazy, and then settled down" Early Christians, and early +Friends. + +TPA: The tension is there, in the NT, between the focus being on +living the Spirit-led life, or being extraordinarily devoted to Jesus. +"If you start only with Jesus's divinity, that's a fixed point: it +[the NT] doesn't reveal its truth". + +BPD: So is the problem that they didn't have, as it were, Fox and +Fell, to take things in hand and lead them forward? + +TPA: Hmm. The network is there, there are links between the +communities, Paul is travelling, others are too. And there are things +that are shared/persist, e.g. Jesus, and the life in the Spirit, but +dealing with the world is less systematic, the problem [of outside +pressure] becomes more acute. This leads towards hierarchy and an +authority structure, centred on Rome by the end of the 1st century. +You have the Bishop of Rome writing to the community in Corinth in +95CE. + +SM: Parallel with the shift of power from Swarthmore Hall to London, +with the male Elders in the Second-Day Morning Meeting controlling +what can be published in the Quaker name. You see the need to control +the public image. + +TPA, responding to BPD: You see this in how Jesus goes about his work: +It's not [Gnostic] "we know and you don't", rather "the only way you +can come to this is by seeing it yourself", "there's no bit of +teaching that is going to do this [for you]", difficult, being really +creative: Parables are _not neat_, they're provocative. + +SM: [In a group where] two or three people had had significant +transformative spiritual experiences, and they felt that it isolated +them from their communities, where no-one else had had that... + +[Brilliant, speaking with the prophetic voice, post from Linda + Garrett: https://moodle.woodbrooke.org.uk/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=14564]