Arquivo para a ‘Noosfera’ Categoria
Happy 2024 and blog line
It is difficult to make a positive assessment of 2023, we expected some positive reaction from humanity in the post-pandemic where many died as a result of the worsening of collateral diseases caused by the coronavirus, we expected more solidarity and respect for human life.
Ukraine will start the year with a day of mourning due to the massive attack carried out by Russia that killed 39 people and injured 159 others, most of them civilians, the UN declared the attack “unacceptable” and the United States admits direct intervention in war through its troops, this would in practice represent the beginning of a 3rd. World War.
In addition to this crisis, there is the scourge of war in the Gaza strip and tension between Venezuela and Guyana.
The year is not yet over and this month the blog broke its record number of hits with more than 32 thousand and the new line where we delve deeper into the issue of the noosphere, based on Teilhard Chardin who coined the term, also the crisis of thought (we see that the philosophy is also experiencing a crisis) and which is the origin of the current civilizational crisis and Cyberculture, with ethical and social aspects that are deepened in readings of both the emergence of new technologies (ChatGPT, Bard, Azure, etc.) that enter the Era of Generative AI, in the LLM (Large Language Model) model.
The complex scenario requires reading a few authors who detect the golden thread of the current crisis, the idealistic model that comes from the dualism of Ancient Greece (being is and non-being is not), the centralizing and monopolizing state model (even the liberal model that grows in some countries continues to dictate centralized theories and models) and whose crisis affects the social body, culture and even religion where there is no shortage of false prophets, soothsayers and apocalypticists, this appeal grows depending on the severity of the time.
We leave a breath of hope, of certainty that it is possible to emerge from a crisis with balance, responsibility and a dispassionate look at problems, passion for life yes, but not that of fanatics and saviors of the country who contribute little or nothing to humanitarian and responsible for the human future.
Chardin’s universal vision
For a certain time, Chardin’s vision of a universe formed from a divine intention, its evolution within a geosphere, then a biosphere and finally the current stage that is a noosphere (noon – spirit) was considered heretical, but at the time few were changing, many philosophers and theologians began to study him, his works were being published and acceptance by the church was being considered, to the point of even thinking about his beatification.
One can think in the current controversies, without serious doctrinal meaning in my opinion, that this is due to a certain heretical “modernization” of the church, but the most diverse theological thoughts within the church reflect on the validity of this vision that updates Christian thinking and gives a great opening to what modern man has discovered and continues to discover about human life on earth and the cosmos.
In a homily by Pope Benedict XVI, on July 24, 2009, in a homily in Aosta, Benedict XVI quotes Teilhard de Chardin, as a positive illumination: «The function of the priesthood is to consecrate the world so that it becomes a living host, so that the world becomes liturgy: that liturgy does not pass by the reality of the world, but that the world itself becomes a living host, becomes liturgy. This is the great vision that was later also that of Teilhard de Chardin: in the end, we will have a true cosmic liturgy in which the cosmos becomes a living host.”
And this is not a new doctrine, although Chardin brought it closer to Science, the Second Vatican Council in the Constitution Gaudium et Spes (nº 5), in fact, declares: «In short, the human race passes from a basically static notion of the order of things to a more dynamic and evolutionary conception: this gives rise to a huge new problem that requires new analyzes and new syntheses.”
And in the Catechism of the Catholic Church (n. 310), we read: «God freely wanted to create a world “in a state of progress” towards its ultimate perfection and Jesus will come in his glory, after wars, pestilences and other civilizational difficulties, to save him, says eschatology.
Thus, not only does original sin, the expulsion from paradise and the human future open up to a new perspective consistent with the doctrine, but it also clarifies controversial points historically, we would say due to the Copernican revolution, man and the world are neither geocentric nor heliocentric, at the center of the galaxy is a black hole, so we could say that it is noocentric,
GRONCHI, Priest Maurizio. In the thoughts of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. « J’étudie la matière et je trouve l’esprit. », L’Osservatore Romano, 29 December 2013.
Original sin for Chardin
It was not the fact that Chardin reconciles the creationist view of the origin of the universe with the evolutionary view of the Big Bang, although also controversial, it was the original sin that gave rise to a view of distrust regarding Teilhard Chardin’s view of the noosphere.
In an article published on 06/05/2018 by Edward W. Schmidt, S.J., in America magazine, he wrote: “The discovery and publication of Teilhard’s work filled a gap with valuable documentation in the history of the scholar”, and spoke of the question of original sin.
His work caught the attention of the Jesuit Curia and the Holy Office (predecessor of the current Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith) and there he had to sign six declarations on points of his thought that the Holy Office understood as conflicting with the traditional teaching of the Church, since From the Council of Trent to the First Vatican Council, the declaration that Chardin signed said that “the entire human race has its origins from a proto-parent, Adam”, with difficulty he signed, but with the addendum “with faith alone”.
The Six Propositions were lost until 2007, when they were discovered by Jesuits in Rome who had access with authorization from Pope Benedict XVI. They also found a letter from Teilhard to the Superior General of the time, Wlodimir Ledochowski, in which the French Jesuit explained what he defended. on original sin, in Portuguese: “Note on some possible historical concepts of original sin”.
When the “monitum” (a kind of correction) was revoked in 2017, the Italian historian Alberto Melloni, professor at the University of Modena-Reggio Emilia and director of the John XXIII Foundation for Religious Sciences in Bologna wrote: “Today the Pontifical Council for Culture asks that the monitum on Chardin be revoked: a fair and easy request. On the contrary, it was less easy to revoke a mentality that deluded itself into exorcising with condemnations the risk of connecting and disconnecting faith and cultures, offering the gift of hope.”
Without going into the merits of Chardin’s propositions, there is a reference by Pope Benedict XVI, on the occasion of the feast of the Holy Trinity, to Chardin’s concepts: “In everything that exists, the “name” is printed, in a certain sense. of the Holy Trinity, since all being, down to the last particles, is being in relationship and in this way, Creative Love ultimately transpires” and further on it says that “the human being has in his own “genome”; a profound seal of the Trinity, of God-Love”.
The divine medium and the mass of the world
Complete 100 years since the Mass on the World by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955), he was a philosopher, paleontologist, Jesuit priest and French mystic, among his outstanding works are “The place of man in nature”, “The divine environment” and days celebrated 100 years of the Mass of the World.
In the scientific world, after graduating in Paleontology, at the Natural History Museum in Paris, he wrote his doctoral thesis: “The mammals of the French lower Eocene and their sites”, he was professor of geology at the Catholic Institute of Paris in 1920 during the period of his doctorate at the Sorbonne.
For Chardin, after the emergence of life in the period of cosmogenesis and geogenesis (formation of the universe), the biosphere is formed. ).
On one occasion when he was in the Ordos desert, in Mongolia, and had neither bread nor wine, he said that without being able to celebrate mass, he instead composed the Mass About the World, a mystical account in certain parts, but not far from the doctrine Christian, where he refers to the “Omega Point” and the “Cosmic Christ”, essential aspects of his thought.
There are excerpts from Laudato Si that recall this “mass”: “At the height of the mystery of the Incarnation, the Lord wants to reach our innermost being through a piece of matter. He does not do it from above, but from within, so that we can encounter Him in our own world. In the Eucharist, fullness is already achieved, being the vital center of the universe, a center overflowing with love and endless life. United with the incarnate Son, present in the Eucharist, the entire cosmos gives thanks to God. Indeed, the Eucharist is, in itself, an act of cosmic love’ (Laudato Si’, 236)
True joy
The word used for “joy”, in the original Greek, is χαρά (chara), which is related to the words χάρις (charis), which is usually translated as “grace”, and χάρισμα (charisma), which means both a gift of grace, without cost, as coming from grace.
Thus there is something of “grace” in joy that differentiates it from happiness, due to the distance in understanding this term with an unnatural and objective aspect, there are those who prefer happiness as something more “solid” in times of liquid reductionism consecrated by a certain type of thought and that has even entered religious environments and thus seek it and what is objective, solid and which comes from idealism and Eurocentric thought.
Joy, peace and true asceticism are only found in hearts that have found true and divine wisdom.
The appeal to earthly goods, human achievements and all types of fleeting happiness, increasingly common in the idealist narrative, has nothing to do with joy, and if there is happiness it is fleeting and will have a cost.
Christmas and the end of the year festivities can be part of this fleeting happiness or give space to the hearts and souls that have already found perennial and eternal joy: the divine in the midst of the human.
Smooth the paths
All of reality seems like a huge mess, and in fact it is without a meditative perspective (the vita contemplativa that we posted last week) and without a prophetic vision that goes beyond factual reality, which is almost always dualistic because it only sees through one aspect. guys.
There will be wars, revolutions, people against people, everything that overwhelms false prophets, soothsayers and bad biblical readers, announcers of themselves and not of divine reality.
Yes, the biblical reading is this Mt 24,7-8: “For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places; but all this is the beginning of sorrows” yes, but this “will not be the end” and the reading does not stop there: “many false prophets will arise and deceive many”.
Although we are experiencing a great civilizational crisis, the Bible speaks of the “great tribulation”, all of this is in reality a “straightening of the paths”, as John the Baptist did at the time of the coming of Jesus.
They asked him if he was the Messiah or Elijah (John 1:22-24): “They then asked: ‘Who are you after all?’ We have an answer for those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?’ Then John declared: “I am the voice that cries in the wilderness, ‘Make the way of the Lord plain’” as said the prophet Isaiah”, who prophesied that God would send light and joy through a child , and who would break the “yoke of his burden” (Isaiah 9:4) and would be called “Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace” (verse 6).
It is indeed a civilizational crisis, models of society in shock, dangers of wars in limits and proportions never imagined, but all of this is also “smoothing the paths of the Lord”, the coming of a New Civilization, not that of false prophecies, but the kingdom of peace.
Beware of false prophets, with promises of paradise that do not come true, they also feed on crises, cruelty and wars, but do not propose peace and justice, or they don’t build them.
The last prophet and his culture
John the Baptist was the son of Elizabeth, married to Zechariah and cousin of Mary, who upon receiving the sign from an angel that she would conceive goes to visit her, the biblical narrative hurriedly says, but also because the angel tells her that she is full of doubts: “her cousin, who was barren, conceived in old age” (Luke 1:36-40), a passage full of interpretations, but that’s for later.
Who John the Baptist was was better clarified in the Dead Sea Scrolls (see reference) found in the Dead Sea, very recently, but which biblical readers and exegetes completely ignore.
Many controversies arose from the Qumran manuscript, including that Jesus was actually an Essene, another that some fled to India and founded communities there with their principles, some of these manuscripts were inside clay jars and spoke about the life of Jesus Christ and talked about the importance of cures with alternative medicine and the importance of vegetarian culture.
The Essenes also defended unity and peace, as it was a period of division among the Jews, several had contact with Jesus and are present in biblical passages, and thus already had a different cult than the Sadducees and Pharisees.
The Sadducees were people from high society, members of priestly families, educated, rich and aristocrats; The Pharisees did not believe in life after death and therefore said nothing about their eschatological vision (of the beginning and end), becoming more concerned with Jewish rules and “laws”.
The zealots, others who joined Jesus, rejected paying tribute to the Roman empire, on the grounds that such an act was a betrayal against God, among Jesus’ apostles, Simon was a zealot and Judas, the traitor too, and also the late apostle Paul of Tarsus refers to himself as a religious zealot (Acts 22:3; Gal 1:14).
This gives a more cultural and political context about Jesus and his apostles, it does not take anything away from their divinity, but it explains the controversies and contradictions with the more orthodox Jewish culture of the time.
Regarding this controversy, the Jewish academic Dr. Israel Knohl, president of the Biblical department at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and guest at the universities of Berkeley and Stanford, presents in his book: “The Messiah Before Jesus”, writes based on these parchments, the thesis that around the year of Jesus’ birth, a supposed messiah Menahem, the Essene, had died in circumstances similar to those of Jesus and this was known to Jesus.
Controversies aside, it does not weaken the biblical narratives of Jesus and John the Baptist, but it clarifies cultural and historical aspects better.
«The Weirdo Cult That Saved the Bible» (in english). Slate. Consulting in July of 2015.
Prophecies about the coming of Jesus
There were many prophecies about the coming of the messiah, although Isaiah’s is the most cited (Isaiah 7:14): “therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: Behold, the virgin will conceive, and will give birth to a son, and will call him his name Emmanuel.”
What does God mean with us, so is the first argument that Jesus was God”, but Zechariah’s eight visions are interesting for two reasons: that he spoke most about messianic prophecies and that his name is that of the father, the last and greatest of the prophets John the Baptist, Zechariah means “remembered by God”.
Thus the prophet Zechariah, who is not Elizabeth’s husband, among his various prophecies, predicted the coming of the Messiah to Jerusalem and the rejection by His people (Zechariah 9,11).
Bethlehem was a small village, the birthplace of King David, and the prophet Micah (5:2) who predicted the hometown of Jesus, was said to be from Bethlehem of Ephrath, from the clan of Judah (one of the 12 tribes of Israel born from the children of Israel, Jacob’s new name), said Micah: “But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, from you will come to me one who will be ruler over Israel. Its origins lie in the distant past, in ancient times.”
Yes, because a prophecy in the first biblical book, which states that from the Jewish people (Hebrews at the time of Abraham), nine people will be born, is in Genesis (12:2-3):
“I will make you a great people, and I will bless you. I will make your name famous, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless him, and I will curse those who curse him; and through you all the peoples of the earth will be blessed”, see that the prophecy goes beyond the Abrahamic peoples, although there are Jews and Christians who do so.
And finally the prophet made to David in Psalm 89:3-4: “I made a covenant with my chosen one, I swore to my servant David: “I will establish your lineage forever and I will establish your throne for all generations”.
Joseph, Mary’s husband, went to Bethlehem (prophesied by Micah) because he was from David’s lineage and his son should be registered there, so it is also a historical fact, as there was a sense when Jesus was born.
Someone who knows the Bible may ask and John the Baptist, yes he baptized Jesus and did not prophesy but announced (or if you prefer the greatest prophesy), after me will come one “who am not worthy even to untie his sandals” (John 1:27), well whoever untied his sandals slaves were to wash the feet and John the Baptist did not even consider himself worthy of this.
There are so many prophecies, and the fit is so divine and logical (the sense that Jesus told, for example), that the sign of his birth is divinely and humanly clear.
Blessed Duns Scotus
The wisdom and depth of the teachings of this 13th century Franciscan friar, however, took 9 centuries to be recognized and venerated by the Catholic Church. It was only during the Pontificate of John Paul II that he was beatified and recognized as a saint.
Pope Francis in a recent homily extolled the qualities of Scotus, stating: “There are great scholars, great specialists, great theologians, teachers of the faith, who have taught us many things. They penetrated the details of Sacred Scripture (…), but they could not see the mystery itself, the true core (…). The essentials remained hidden! (…)”.
Gifted with a brilliant intelligence and driven to speculation, this intelligence for which he earned the title of Doctor subtilis “Subtle Doctor”, Duns Scotus was directed to study philosophy and theology at the famous universities of Oxford and Paris and his work
Endowed with a brilliant intelligence and driven to speculation – this intelligence for which he earned the title of Doctor subtilis, “subtle Doctor” from tradition -, Duns Scotus was directed to the studies of philosophy and theology at the famous universities of Oxford, Cambridge and Paris , and thus his works received the titles of Opus Oxoniense (Oxford), Reportatio Cambrigensis (Cambridge), Reportata Parisiensia (Paris).
Among his mystical works are studies on the incarnation, in Reportata Parisiense he wrote: “To think that God would have renounced this work if Adam had not sinned would be totally irrational. I say, therefore, that the fall was not the cause of Christ’s predestination, and that, even if no one had fallen, neither angel nor man, in this hypothesis Christ would still have been predestined in the same way” (in III Sent, d 7.4).
Duns Scotus, still aware that, in reality, because of original sin, Christ redeemed us with his Passion, Death and Resurrection, reaffirms that the Incarnation is the greatest and most beautiful work in the entire history of salvation and that this is not conditioned by no contingent fact, but is God’s original idea of finally uniting all created things with Himself in the person and flesh of the Son.
Pope Paul VI also declared this vision of the incarnation affirmed in Scotus: “strongly “Christocentric”, it opens us to contemplation, stupor and gratitude: Christ is the center of history and the cosmos, he is the One who gives meaning, dignity and value to our lives.” (homily of November 19, 1970).
Not only the role of Christ in the history of salvation, but also that of Mary is the object of reflection in Doctor subtilis. At the time of Duns Scotus, most theologians opposed an objection, which seemed insurmountable, to the doctrine according to which Mary Most Holy was exempt from original sin from the first moment of her conception: the dogma of the Immaculate conception of Mary, defended by Scotus centuries before the Catholic Church declared it.
Scotus was so convinced of this dogma that he was buried in the church of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary (photo), in Cologne, Germany, where he died on November 8, 1308.
Duns Scotto and moderate realism
Duns Scotus is the most typical thought of moderate realism, as it linked the question of language as part of the essence of being (as the question is presented today) to the existence of universals, but he knew that he also admitted nominalism in part.
He was a philosopher and theologian from the 13th century, his main theological thesis is that God exists through the question: “whether there is among beings an infinite being currently existing” (Ordinatio I, part 1, qq. 1-2) and for him universals how “truth” and “goodness” really exist.
Duns Scotus supported a universal foundation in things (some philosophers will call it quiddity) that was stronger than those supported by Thomas Aquinas, and the entity proper to common nature that serves as the basis for individuation (so there are horses and there is the “ horse” particular to a breed, color, etc.) as well as to the universality that it adds, leaving it as if untouched (the specific horse remains a universal “horse”).
The argument that separates the “contemplative” from the “active” is in this origin of thought, the idea that the Universal is outside the intellect with the same way of being that is in the intellect and was what the scholastics called “naive realists”, returning to Plato, there are two worlds: the sensible world and the world of ideas (eidos, different of modern concept).
Even though eidos may be different from post-Kantian idealism, there remains within this thought a conception of the world “of ideas” different from the real world, that is, a radical nominalism whose Aristotelian categories were transformed into “concepts”.
Plato’s fundamental idea, and don’t be alarmed, is at the basis of modern thought, is that the truth is out there and not inside man, where he sees it through a process of meditation or contemplation, as Arendt (and others) have already argued. interpreters of philosophy) see the cave myth differently, argued Byung-Chul.
It is not this type of “parreheia” (opening of the Truth) that Duns Scotus speaks of, and Augustine of Hippo also spoke of, but rather that truth that dwells within every man.
It is in the fifth argument that Scotus uses Augustine: “If we both see that what you say is true, and if we both see that what I say is true, where, I ask, do we see it? Neither I, without a doubt, see it in you, nor you in me, but we both see it in the immutable Truth that is above our intelligence.”
Something similar is said by Socrates: “the truth is not with men, but among men”.
Scotus, John Duns. (1973) Text Selection. In: Os Pensadores (Braziliam Collection). São Paulo: Abril Cultural.