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Arquivo para June, 2019

The reduction of the divine to human environment

28 Jun

It is possible to deny the existence of God, the argument of the evidence is naive, being neither logical as some modern rationalists wanted, nor human as some German idealists wanted and nor ontological as presented by Saint Anselm.

There is a truth that comes from Socrates that says that it is not with men, but among men, this means that it is both ontological and complex at the same time, and one can not deny the historical existence of Jesus, whether by his historical birth at a time when sense was obligatory, for this was born in Bethlehem, and the record of his death and crucifixion which is told by historians of the time, including Josephus and by Jewish historiography.

But what Nietzsche, born in a family of Lutheran religious has seen beyond his time, is a philosophical and historical evidence of the death of God, through his human epiphany through the historical figure of Jesus, at least to Christianity, while God can be thought of innumerable eschatologies present in almost every culture so as not to be exhaustive, for even the so-called barbarian peoples had some form of divinity.

But the cry of Nietzsche’s madman is the realization of the construction of idealist and positivist philosophy that he wished to take as a single discourse on reality, Thomas Aquinas and other medievals were realistic as a philosophical current, now has a dark sunset.

From this isolationist, individualistic and separatist philosophy of the world three forms of collective heresies follow: a merely human God, a purely divine God, and a total absence of the third divine person: the Holy Spirit, for whom there is no forgiveness.

This sin is not the mere denial of God, but its concrete negation is the negation of the Other. Teilhard Chardin says about the inclusion of the Other that this is the “divine medium”, the typical mystique of our time, which can also be expressed as “where two or more are in my name” (Mt 18:20), which is a “and you who say that I am” (Mt 16:15), which follows several passages of the relationship with the World and with God.

One can say that there are two reductions: the merely human and the merely divine, but the main reduction is the ignorance of a third reduction which is that of the action of the Holy Spirit. In the reduction of the divine, Jesus in miracles almost always asked for a description or made allusion to the faith of the healed, the gifted or just the wonder of contact like the blind Bartimaeus, the prophet Ana, Simeon, the paralytics, lepers or the woman to whom he directs word.

True eschatology sees not only principle or end, but both in relation to the daily life of human life, Teilhard Chardin makes reflection in the book The divine medium (1957): “the slowly accumulated tension between Humanity and God will reach the limits fixed by the possibilities of the world, and then it will be the end … that we should expect not as a catastrophe but as a ‘surrender’ to the world to which we must collaborate with all our Christian forces without fear of the world, because their spells could no longer hurt those to whom he has become, beyond himself, the Body of him who is the One who comes.”

Like the evangelist Luke (Luke 9:20), Matthew also repeats Jesus’ question to the disciples, Mt 16:15: “But who do you say that I am?”

CHARDIN, T. O meio divino (The Divine medium: Essay of inner life). Lisbon: 1957. (in portuguese).

 
 

God did not die, we killed him.

27 Jun

 

It is a bad reading of Nietzsche’s idea that God died, what happens in the reading of “The gaia science” (Nietszche, 2017), first that speaks of science, according to which Gaia in the Greek sense refers to Mother Earth and finally , the madman “began to shout incessantly: 
“I seek God. ” Let’s see his own text, although the translation may have imperfections: “crazy man. “They did not hear of this crazy man who lit a lantern in the morning and ran to the market, and he began to shout ceaselessly,” I’m looking for God! I seek God! “? “And as there were many of those who did not believe in God, he aroused a great laugh. So he’s lost? One of them asked. Did he lose himself as a child? Another said. Are you hiding? Is he afraid of us? Did you board a ship? You emigrated? They shouted and laughed at each other.
The madman threw himself between them and pierced them with his gaze. “Where did God go?” He shouted, “I’ll tell you! We killed them – you and me. We are all his killers! But how did we do it? How did we manage to drink the sea entirely? Who gave us the sponge to erase the horizon? What have we done to unleash the land of your sun? Where does she move now? Where do we move to? Away from all the suns? Do not we continually fall?
Back, to the sides, to the front, in all directions? Are there still ‘above’ and ‘below’? Do not we wander like that through an infinite nothingness? Do not we feel the breath of the vacuum? Has not he become colder? Does not darkness everlast? Do not we have to light lanterns in the morning? Did we not hear the noise of the gravediggers bury God? Do not we smell divine putrefaction? – the gods rot too! God is dead! God is still dead!
And we killed them! How can we console ourselves, murderers among the murderers? The strongest and most sacred the world had ever possessed bleed whole under our daggers – who will cleanse us this blood? With what water could we wash? What atoning rites, what sacred games will we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this act too great for us? Should not we ourselves become gods, to at least seem worthy of it?
There has never been a greater act – and whoever comes after us will belong, because of that act, to a story higher than the whole story until then! “At that moment he silenced the mad man, and again looked at his listeners: they too were silent looking amazed at him. “I come too soon,” he said then, “is not yet my time. This enormous event is on the way, it still walks: it has not yet reached the ears of men.
Sparkle and thunder need time, the light of the stars needs time, the acts, even after they was done, need time to be seen and heard. This act is still more distant to them than the furthest constellation – and yet they have committed! – It is also told the same day the mad man broke into several churches, and in each one intoned his Requiem aeternaum deo. Taken out and interrogated, he merely replied, “What are these churches, if not the mausoleums and tombs of God?”

In the next post, I suggest some interpretations, including a Christian one, now make yours.

NIETZSCHE, F. A gaia ciência. Aforismo 125, LeBooks, 2017. (in portuguese, ebook).