The Transient and Permanent
Great quotes: “Christianity is not a
system of doctrines, but rather a method of attaining oneness with God.”
This was a sermon delivered at an ordination, so he was
talking to an audience for which a basic religious or theological speech may
have been boring or irrelevant.
Like Channing and Emerson, he “turned it on” Parker’s main points are
that:
1. “Absolute (Permanent) Religion” is like a Greek form, in
that it is changeless but basically unknowable.
2. We humans confuse the transient with the permanment. The permanent comes from God, the
transient comes from humans. This
confusion can lead to bad things such as a bewildering pluralism, the
perversion of the religious life, and anxiety.
3. Although,
done right, and not mistaken for the permanent, the transient can be
tremendously helpful in the religious life.
4. Once you
know this, you should be OK.
I love this talk and although I have a LOT of trouble with
the Greeks and their dualism, I find myself quoting him all the time. Christ is what he was whether we
believe this or that about what he was.
That Christianity, a moral adjustment is permanent. What we do with it is transient. It’s like a tradition. Every year, that tradition passes, but
every year that it passes, you the observer, observe it differently because
you’re different than you were last time.
No comments:
Post a Comment