Priest is an official minister or worship leader in the nation of Israel who represented the people before God and conducted various rituals to atone for their sins. This function was carried out by the father of a family - Job 1:5 - or the head of a tribe in the days before Moses and his brother Aaron. But with the appointment of Aaron by God as the first chief Priest, the priesthood was formally established. Aaron's descendants were established as the priestly line in Israel. They carried out their important duties from generation to generation as a special class devoted to God's service.
A chief priest of the Hebrew people, especially of the ancient Jewish Levitical priesthood traditionally traced from Aaron. Head/Chief priest, the great one from his brothers, and ruler of the house of God are literal translations of references to this officer. - Lev. 21:10; 2Chr. 19:11 - The chief priest was the supreme civil head of his people.
The Sacred Scripture/Holy Bible often speaks of priests and Levites as if these two offices were practically the same. - 1Chr. 23:2, 24:6,31 - Indeed, they were closely related, in that both priests and Levites sprang from a common ancestor. They traced the lineage back to Levi, head of one of the original twelve tribes of Israel. But these two offices were different, in that priests (a specific branch of Levites descended through Aaron) and Levites (all descendants of Levi in general) performed different duties.
Priests officiated at worship by offering various offerings on behalf of the nation and by leading the people to confess their sins. The Levites were assistants to the priests. They took care of the tabernacle and the Temple and performed other menial tasks, such as providing music, serving as door-keepers, and preparing sacrifices for offering by the priests. In their function of offering sacrifices at the altar, the priests acted as mediators between man and God, offering sacrifices so that sin might be forgiven. - Lev. 4:20,26,31 - Each sacrifices was demonstration that the penalty of sin is death - Ezek. 18:4,20 - and that there can be no forgiveness of sin without the shedding of Blood. - Heb. 9:22 -
The first priest mentioned in the Sacred Scripture/Holy Bible was Melchizedek, 'king of Salem' and 'the priest of God Most High.' - Gen. 14:18 - Next mentioned was Jethro, Moses' father-in-law and the priest of Midian, who joined Moses, Aaron and the elders of Israel for a sacrificial meal. - Ex. 18:1,12 - The true priesthood began many years before their time in the Garden of Eden. After Adam and Eve sinned against God, He made them tunics of skin and clothed them. Thus, the death of animals became a symbol of the removal of man's guilt. - Gen. 3:21 -
After the event, Abel sacrifice that pleased God. - Gen. 4:4 - Still later, Noah - Gen. 8:28 - Abraham - Gen. 12:7-8 - Isaac - Gen. 26:25 - Jacob - Gen. 35:1-7 - and Job - Job 1:5 - all acted as priests, offering sacrifices to God. In fact, each family in Israel killed the "Passover" lamb, offering it as sacrifice to God. But when God established Israel as His Chosen People at Mount Sinai after their deliverance from slavery in Egypt - Ex. 6:7, 19:5-6 - God established a formal priesthood through Aaron and his descendants. As descendants of Levi, they were to represent the nation of Israel in service to God at the tabernacle and altar. - Num. 8:9-18 -
The priesthood was given to Aaron and his descendants 'as a gift for service' - Num. 18:7 - and as 'an everlasting priesthood throughout their generations.' - Ex. 40:15 - Since the office was hereditary, the descendants of Aaron were obligated to accept the responsibility and meet the qualifications. No person with a physical defect or disqualifying disease could serve as a priest because bodily perfection was to symbolize the priest's spiritual wholeness and holiness of heart. Priest must not show grief for the dead - even his father or mother - by removing his headdress or letting his hair go unkempt. He must not tear his clothes in grief or go near a dead body. Leaving his duties unperformed because of a death would 'profane the sanctuary.' - Lev. 21:6-21 -
Aaron and his sons were consecrated for the priesthood in an elaborate seven day ceremony. - Ex. 29:30-37 - Their bodies were bathed to symbolize the purifying of their souls from sin. Then they were clothed in their priestly garments and anointed with oil as sacrifices were made on their behalf. The entire dedication procedure was an outward sign of their 'Sanctification' in God's total service. - Ex. 29:9 -
The clothes which the priests wore also carried great significance. Their white linen garments symbolized holiness and glory. They also wore a coat woven in one piece without a seam to indicate their spiritual integrity, wholeness, and righteousness. The four cornered cloth of the coat signified that the priest belonged to the kingdom of God. The cap, resembling an opening flower, symbolized the fresh, vigorous life of the one who wore it. The girdle, or sash, a belt which encircled the priest's body, was the priestly sign of service. It showed that the wearer was an office bearer and administrator in the kingdom of God. - Exodus chapter 39 -
The priests had several responsibilities as mediators between the sinful people and their holy God. They lit the incense and cleaned, trimmed, and lit the lamps. Ministering before God at the altar, the priests had to make sure the offerings of the people were correct and that the sacrificial rituals were carried out correctly. Otherwise, the people could not be cleansed of their sin until the priests had made atonement for the error. - Num. 18:1 -
As 'messengers of the Lord' - Mal. 2:7 - the priests were to teach the Law to the people of Israel. In addition to instructing in the Law year by year, they were also responsible for reading the Law at the Feast of Tabernacles every seventh year. - Deut. 31:9-13 - By their example, the priests also taught the people how to distinguish between holy and unholy, and between unclean and clean. - Lev.10:10 - Living in cities scattered throughout the nation of Israel, the priests were in a good position to fulfill this function. - Josh. chapter 21 - In addition, the priests served as judges, acting as a kind of supreme court for Israel. - Deut. 17:8-13 - In special cases, the chief or high priests declared the will or judgment of God throughout Urim and Thummin, the medium through which God sometimes communicated His divine will. - Ex. 28:30; Lev. 8:8; Deut. 33:8 -
A chief priest or high priest was consecrated (installed in office) by an elaborate seven day service at the tabernacle or Temple. - Ex. chapter 29; Lev. chapter 8 - He was cleansed by bathing, then dressed in the garments and symbols he must wear in his ministry and anointed with special oil. Sacrifices of sin offering, burnt offerings, and consecration offering were made for him; and he was anointed again with oil and blood of the sacrifice. Thus, "sanctified" to serve as a high priest and "consecrated" to offer sacrifice, he became the "holy one of the Lord." - Ex. 28:41, 29:9; Ps. 106:16 -
The high priest's special dress represented his function as mediator between God and man. Over the trousers, coat, girdle, and cap, worn by all priests, the high priest wore a special an 'Ephod' a two pieces apron reaching to his hips, made of royal colors (blue, purple/violet, and scarlet) and sewed with gold thread. By the two onyx stones bearing the names of the twelve tribes of Israel fastened to the shoulders of the ephod, he brought the whole nation before God in all his priestly acts. - Ex. 28:5-14 - The 'breastplate of judgment' made of the same material, was attached to the front of the ephod. - Ex. 28:15-30 - On its front were 12 precious stones engraved with the names of the 12 tribes. In its pocket, directly over his heart, were the Urim and Thummin, the medium through which God could communicate His will. By this the high priest was Israel's advocate before God and God's spokesman to them.
Over the breastplate he wore the blue 'robe of the ephod' - Ex. 28:31 - Around his hem were pomegranates, pointing to the divine law as sweet and delicious spiritual food. - Deut. 8:3 - and bells that would ring as he went "into the holy place before the Lord...that he may not die." - Ex. 28:35 - The bells announced God's gracious salvation for He had accepted the people in the person of their advocate, the high priest. On his forehead the high priest wore "the holy crown" of gold engraved with the words, "Holiness to the Lord." - Ex. 28:36-37 - Thus, he was represented as bearing 'the iniquity of the holy things' - Ex. 28:38 - which Israel offered to God and crowned mediator, making atonement for the nation so God might accept their gifts and show them favor.
All these garments stood for the "glory and beauty" - Ex. 28:40 - which God placed upon his priests, sanctifying them to minister in His name. - Ex. 28:3 -
The high priest held a leadership position in seeing that all responsibilities of the priests were carried out. - 2Chr. 19:11 - He could participate in all priestly ministry, but certain functions were given only to him. As he alone wore the Urim and the Thummim, Israel came to him to learn the will of God. - Deut. 33:8 - For this reason Joshua was to 'ask counsel' of Eleazar regarding the movements of the army in the conquest of the land of Canaan. - Num. 27:21 -
The high priest had to offer a sin offering for his own sins and the sin of the whole congregation. - Lev. 4:3-21 - At the death of the high priest freedom was granted to all who were confined to the Cities of Refuge for accidentally causing the death of another person. - Num. 35:28 - The most important responsibility of the high priest was to conduct the service on the "Day Of Atonement" the tenth day of the seventh month each year. On this day the high priest alone entered the Holy Place inside the veil before God. Having made sacrifice for himself and for the people, he brought the blood into the Holy of Holies and sprinkled it on the mercy seat, "God's throne." This he did to make atonement for himself and the people for all their sins committed during the year just ended. - Ex. 30;10; Lev. chapter 16 - It is with this particular service that the ministry of Jesus Christ as high priest is compared. - Heb. 9:1-28
When the land of Canaan was conquered and divided among the tribes of Israel, 13 cities with their surrounding land were allotted to the priests as residences for their families and pasture lands for their flocks. - Josh. 21:10-19 - Across the centuries, the priests increased to a numerous body. King David divided them into 24 groups. - 1Chr. 24:1-19 - Except for the great festivals when all the groups served at the tabernacle at the same time, each group of priests officiated for a week at a time on a rotating basis.
As long as the king and the people of Israel remained loyal to God and His Law, the priests were highly respected and exercised a healthy influence in the land. But the priests eventually sank to immorality, departed from God, and worshiped idols, along with the rest of the people. - Ezek. 22:26 -
In the final book of the Old testament, the prophet Malachi pointed to the neglect, corruption and false teaching of the priests. According to prophet Malachi, this was the reason why the people began to neglect the offerings and festivals of the Temple. They lost their respect for the persons who held the office, and finally the office itself. - Mal. 1:6, 2:7-9 - Thus, the Old Testament closes with the announcement that God in His judgment "will suddenly come to His temple...like a refiner's fire" to purify the priests. - Mal. 3:1-3 - God was determined to preserve His human priests until the appearance of His true Priest, Jesus Christ.
In the context of historical development, Eleazar succeeded Aaron - Num. 20:28 - and served at Shiloh where the tabernacle was erected after the conquest of Canaan by the Israelites. He was followed by his son Phinehas. - Num. :25:11-12; Josh. 24:33 - Eli, a descendant of Ithamar, the younger brother of Eleazar, held the office by the Lord's choice - 1Sam. 2:28 - at the end of the period of the judges, the change being explained and because of the sins of Eli's sons, Samuel appears to have succeeded Eli - 1Sam. 2:12-36, 7:5, 9-10, 17 -although he is not called a high priest, and did not regularly function at the tabernacle. Eli's sons cared for the tabernacle at Nob after the destruction of Shiloh. - 1Sam. chapter 21-22 - Abiathar, a descendant of Eli, escaped Saul's slaughter of the priests at Nob - 1Sam. 22:19-21 - taking the ephod with him and serving with David. - 1Sam. 23:9, 30:7 -
King David appointed Zadok, a descendant of Eleazar, to serve at the tabernacle at Gibeon - 1Chr. 16:39 - at the same time that he took the ark to Jerusalem. Zadok and Abimelech, the son of Abiathar, are listed as priests among David's officers. Zadok crowned Solomon - 1King 1:39 - and was appointed by him as high priest in the place of Abiathar when the latter was bannished for supporting Adonijah's claim to the throne. - 1King 2:26-27, 35 - This made him the high priest to minister in the Temple. His line of high priests served there until Babylonian Captivity. - 1Chr. 6:3-15 -
Mutual support and encouragement characterized the Davidic kings and high priests. David organized 24 groups of priests to serve by turn at the Temple, supervised by both Zadok and Abiathar. - 1Chr. 24:6, 31 - Solomon confirmed the appointments of his father. - 2Chr. 8:14-15 - Jehoshaphal organized priests , Levites, and chief men of Israel under the leadership of the high priest to go through the land teaching the people the law, encouraging them to faithful, reverent service. - 2Chr. chapter 19 - The high priest Jehoiada protected Joash from Athaliah's murder of the king's sons and organized his coronation and the destruction of Athaliah. - 2Chr. 22:10-23:21 -
King Hezekiah and king Josiah assisted the high priests in reform and restoration of the Temple and its worship after its desecration by Ahaz and Manasseh. - 2Chr. chapter 30,31,34,35 - Ezekiel announced that the sons of Zadok would be priests in the new Temple - Ezek. 44:15-16 - because they had not rejected God when Israel went astray. - 1King 12:31; 2Chr. 11:13-15, 13:9 -
After the Captivity, Joshua the high priest, of the sons of Zadok - Hag. 1:1 - and Zerubbabel of the house of David - the governor appointed by Cyrus - led the rebuilding of the Temple. As no further governors were appointed, the high priest became sole political and religious leader. Great care was taken by Ezra and Nehemiah to restore the Mosaic order in purity, but interference by unprincipled civil rulers took a sad toll on the purity and influence of the high priest. The Syrian, Antiochus IV, removed the Zadokite high priest and replaced him with a man from a non-priestly family.
In the revolt that followed and the consequent independence, the Hasmoneans, a family of ordinary priests, took political control. In 153 B.C. one of them, Jonathan, assumed the high priest's office, and later the royal title.
When Herod came to power under Rome in 37 B.C. he arbitrarily deposed and appointed high priests as he pleased, and did away with anointing them. During this period until the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in 70 A.D., five prominent families of high priests held power. Annas was the leader of one of these. His son-in-law Caiaphas, five of his sons, and a grandson held the office. Although Annas had been replaced by Caiaphas before the time of Jesus' ministry, his influence continued. - Luke 3;2; John 18:13,24 -
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Sunday, May 24, 2009
I have through years of reading, pondering, reflecting and contemplating, the 3 things that last; FAITH . HOPE . LOVE and I would like to made available my sharing from the many thinkers, authors, scholars and theologians whose ideas and thoughts I have borrowed. God be with them always. Amen!
I STILL HAVE MANY THINGS TO SAY TO YOU BUT THEY WOULD BE TOO MUCH FOR YOU NOW. BUT WHEN THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH COMES, HE WILL LEAD YOU TO THE COMPLETE TRUTH, SINCE HE WILL NOT BE SPEAKING AS FROM HIMSELF, BUT WILL SAY ONLY WHAT HE HAS LEARNT; AND HE WILL TELL YOU OF THE THINGS TO COME.
HE WILL GLORIFY ME, SINCE ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. EVERYTHING THE FATHER HAS IS MINE; THAT IS WHY I SAID: ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. - JOHN 16:12-15 -
Tuesday, July 30, 2013
Monday, July 29, 2013
Self-preservation is one of the first laws of nature, and it implies a legitimate self-love; for if we did not love ourselves, we could not continue to live. Our Divine Lord Jesus Christ reminded us to love our neighbors as we love ourselves. Self-love, knowing it cannot exist by itself anymore than the stomach can exist without food, extends itself in one direction by the acquiring of knowledge; and the more we know of the truth, the more of our personality is developed. The quest for perfection of the self reaches to the infinite. No one has ever said, "I know enough." That is why we hate to have secrets kept from us (men hate this just as much as women) We are incurably curious; we were made to know.
We escape the limitations of the body in another direction by the expansion of our flesh in the procreation of other personalities. Love always tends to an incarnation. In order that human life might be preserved and continued, God implanted of two great appetites and pleasures in man. One is the pleasure of eating to preserve the corporal life of the individual, the other is the pleasure of marriage to preserve the life of race.
The third way of perfecting ourselves is through the ownership of things. Just as we are free on the inside because we can call our soul our own, so we want to be free on the outside by calling possessions our own. Personal or private ownership is natural to man; it is the economic guarantee of freedom, as the soul is its spiritual guarantee.
The Church teaches that the human person is constantly striving for perfection and is restless until it perfects its mind in knowledge, or generates its kind in marriage, or assures its economic security through things. Each of these urges and instincts and cravings is right and God-given. In each instance, the "I" is attempting to find another "I". Because the "I" loves itself, it also loves wisdom, it loves the flesh, and it loves property.
Where then does abnormality arise, if these pursuits are natural? How could they cause a psychosis or anxiety or a complex, any more than the eye does in seeing or the ear in hearing? If we were animals, these pursuits toward perfection would, indeed, never cause disturbance, for an animal's desire can be fully satisfied; but human being cannot. No animal is curious about chlorophyll when it sees a plant, not does a squirrel have an anxiety complex about whether there will be a shortage of nuts ten years hence. But man's impulses and passions are subject to his will. Not being mechanically ordered as means to the salvation of his soul, he can misuse his passions, make them ends in themselves, try to find the absolute in their relative.
Self-love which is good, can be preserved into self-adoration, in which one says, "I am my own law, my own truth, my own standard. Nobody can tell me anything. Whatever I call right is right; what I call wrong is wrong. Therefore, I am God." This is the sin of pride, the perversion of self-love into egotism. Such undue self-inflation is one of the principal causes of unhappiness; the more a balloon is inflated, the easier it is to puncture it. The egotist walks warily, in constant danger of having his false values destroyed.
The sex instinct, which is good, can also be perverted. In the days of pagan Rome some corrupt individuals attended banquets, gorged themselves with food, tickled their throats, disgorged the food, and then went back and ate more. This was wrong because, as reason told them, one eats to live and the pleasure must not be separated from its function. In like manner, when the fires of life are aroused deliberately, not to light new torches of life, but to scorch the flesh, there is the sin of lust. This is a perversion animals cannot commit because they cannot defunctionalize and artificially centralize their instincts.
Third, humankind's legitimate desire for self-expansion through ownership can be perverted into an inordinate passion for wealth, without regard for either its social use or the needs of the neighbor. This is the sin of avarice, in which a person does not possess a fortune, but a fortune possesses him.
Because the human will can pervert the good passions, instincts, cravings, and aspirations into pride, lust and avarice, the Church enjoins mortification - through prayer, which humbles the proud soul, through fasting, which harnesses the errant impulses of the body, and through alms, which detach us from inordinate love of things. In the higher realm, the Church allows some chosen souls to take the vow of obedience to atone for the proud, the vow of chastity to redeem the licentious, and the vow of poverty to compensate for the greedy. These vows are taken, not because enjoyment of the mind, the flesh, or property is wrong, but because some members of society abuse them and pervert them. These holy souls make up for other's excesses by bending backward, as it were, in their own use. Thus is the right order of goods preserved in God's universe.
In the light of the above, there is no more towering nonsense than to say that the Church is opposed to sex. She is no more opposed to sex as such than she is opposed to eating a dinner, to going to school, or to owning a house. Nature is not corrupt. As Aristotle said, "Nature never tells a lie." It is humanity's false use of nature that darkens the face of the world. Nor does the Church, like a monomaniac, believe that sex is the only instinct a human has or that all other instincts are to be interpreted in terms of sex. Rather, with a deeper understanding of human nature, she says that the craving for perfection is basic and that sex is only one of the three ways in which a relative perfection is achieved in this life.
Where, then, did the sex fanatics get the idea that the Church is the enemy of sex? They got it from their inability to make a distinction - a distinction between use and abuse. Because the Church condemns the abuse of nature, sex fanatics think that the Church condemns nature itself. This is untrue. Far from slighting the value of the human body, the Church dignifies it. It is surely nobler to say, with the Christian, that the body is a Temple of God than to say, with some modern minds, that man is merely a beast. As Saint Clement of Alexandria said, "He ought not to be ashamed to create."
There is no sin in the right use of the flesh; even without the Fall of Man, the human race would have been continued through procreation. And Saint Thomas tells us that there was more pleasure in marriage before the Fall than now, because of the greater harmony and peace in man's soul. Saint Augustine has said, "We should, therefore, wrong our Creator in imputing our voices to our flesh; the flesh is good but to leave the Creator and to live according to this created good is mischief."
The Church does, of course, speak of sin in the domain of sex, as it speaks of sin in the domain of property or of sin in the area of self-love. But the sin does not lie in the instinct or the passion itself. Our instincts and our passions are God-given; the sin lies in their perversion. Sin is not in hunger, but in gluttony. Sin is not in the seeking of economic security, but in avarice. Sin is not in drink, but in drunkenness. Sin is not in recreation, but in laziness. Sin is not in the love or the use of the flesh, but in lust, which is its perversion. Just as dirt is matter in the wrong place, so sex can be flesh in the wrong place.
An undue concentration upon a single one life's activities tends to make a person abnormal through lopsided interest. This is especially true of an excessive preoccupation with the carnal. It tends to make what is physical psychic, by tracing back everything to a single instinct. Sex in other ages was physical; it resulted in new life. Today, because it often thwarts life, it is also psychic. Sex is thought about as a medium of pleasure to such a degree that it has become an obsession. Just as a singer could go crazy by concentrating on his thorax instead of his song and an orchestra conductor could become a neurotic by concentrating on his baton instead of his score, so humans today can go crazy thinking about sex instead of about life.
For it is the isolation of the sex factor from the totality of human life, the habit of regarding it as identical to the passion an elephant might feel, the ignoring of the body-soul tension in the human, which causes so many abnormalities and mental disorders. False isolation of the part from its whole is a common trait in contemporary thought. A person's life nowadays is divided into many compartments that remain not united and not integrated.
A businessman's business has no connection with his life in the family - so little in fact that his wife (his "little wife") is kept ignorant of her husband's income. As there is no connection between a man's profession and the rest of his daily existence, neither is there a connection between his daily life and his religion. This chopping up of life into watertight compartments becomes more disastrous as occupation and work are related, less and less, to a strictly human ideal; mechanization plays a catastrophic role.
Serious effects result from this mechanization and the whole tendency to overspecialization in modern life. These two phenomena of our times are both related to the analytic habit of mind, imposed by the fashion of a predominantly scientific approach in the intellectual world. Everything is viewed in isolation by modern man, because this method is the legitimate procedure of science. But there are fields where a study of the unit torn from its context ceases to be adequate. The study of life itself has begun to suffer by an excessive use of analysis - hence the reaction of "holism" in psychology and biology.
The human sex drive is at no moment an instinct alone. Desire from its beginning is informed with spirit, and never is one experienced apart from the other. The psychic and the physical interplay. Just as the idealists, who deny the existence matter, sin against the flesh, so the sensualists and carnalists sin against the spirit. But to betray either aspect is to invite revenge. "Our body is a part of the universal order created and preserved by God. Rightly viewed, it is itself a self-contained universe entrusted to us as a limited but sacred property. The most substantial sin is that which we commit against ourselves and especially against our own body. The offense against our own body includes a sin against the Creator.
Sex instinct in a pig and love in a person are not the same, precisely because love is found in the will, not in the glands - and will does not exist in a pig. Sexual desire in a person is different from sex in a snake because in the human being, it promises something it cannot completely supply. For the spirit in a man anticipates, which a snake does not: man always wants something more than he has. The very fact that none of man's passions for knowledge, love, and security can be completely satisfied here below suggests that he might have been made for something else.
The existence of shame (which exists nowhere except in humans) again shows how this one instinct, above all others, involves soul. Shame draws a veil over the deepest mystery of life and preserves it from impatient use, holding it in check until it can serve life as a whole and can thus satisfy both body and soul. There would be no such disgust in man were it not that everyone of us feels the body to have a peculiar sanctity, not only because of its potency to continue the creative act of God, but also because of its possibility of becoming a veritable Temple of God.
The person is in search of the absolute, for example, perfect happiness. To use sex as a substitute for the absolute is a vain attempt to turn the copy into the original, to make the shadow become the substance, and the conditioned, the absolute. The infinite cravings of a soul cannot be satisfied by the flesh alone. Love, remember, is not in the instinct; it is in the will. If love were purely organic, no more significant than any other physical act, such as breathing or digesting, it would not sometimes be surrounded by feelings of disgust. But grown-up love is much more than these - it is not an echo of a child's forbidden fantasy, as some would tell us. Each soul feels a restlessness, a longing, an emptiness, a desire, which is a remembrance of something that has been lost - our Paradise.
We are all kings in exile. This emptiness can be filled only with Divine Love - nothing else! Having lost God (or having been robbed of Him by false teachers and sex charlatans) the person tries to fill up the void by promiscuous "love affairs." But love, both human and Divine, will fly from him who thinks it is merely physiological: Only he can love nobly who lives a noble life.
It is wrong to say that the deep spiritual love of the saints for God is a sublimation of the sex instinct - as some perverse minds have actually suggested. This is like saying that love of country is derived from the elephant's love of the herd. The idea that religion had its origin in the sex instinct is almost too silly to be refuted, for the greatest religious influences in history have been the most detached from sex. The more a person lives in the presence of God, the more he or she develops a reflex against the wrong use of sex, as automatic as the way an eye blinks when the dust blows.
On the other hand, the sex fanatics are not only non-religious persons, but usually anti-religious persons. It is curious to hear such people urge that we ought to repudiate Christian morality and develop a new ethics to suit the unethical lives of a few thousand individuals they have polled. Because statisticians can find 5,000 living carnal lives, it is suggested that their ideal shall be made the universal ideal. An equal number of cases of lockjaw could be found in the United States; one wonders if lockjaw should therefore be made a physical standard of health? Sins do not become virtues by being widely practiced. Right is still right if nobody is right, and wrong is wrong if everybody is wrong. Some have contended that sex aberrations are as common as the common cold; but nobody has so far asked us to consider the cold normal and desirable.
On the possible side, it is the Christian position that the sex instinct is the reflection of love in the spiritual order. The sun comes first, then its reflection in the pool. The voice is a sublimation of the echo, and neither is the belief in God a sublimation of a carnal instinct. All love and all perfection and all happiness are first in God, then in things. The closer creatures, such as angels and saints, come to God, the happier they are; the farther away they stay, the less they can reveal the works of Divinity.
There are five aspects of love by which the nature of man is uplifted and fulfilled: The love of man or woman for God; the love of man and woman for each other; the love of parents for children and of children for parents; the love of men and women for country or community; and the love of men and women for excellence in some creative activity, in art, in literature or philosophy. These are not five kinds or species of love which are given to ennoble men, but five aspects of love which is one, even when we think of it as flowing between God and man. In every little child lying in his mother's bosom, there is something of the Incarnation; the mystery of humanity becomes the revelation of Heaven; and in such incarnation of the Divine Love we can behold, born in every aspect of human love, the Word become Incarnate of Him in whose will is our peace.
Since the stress on sex is due to a forgetfulness of the true nature of man as body and spirit, it follows that the release from anxieties, tensions, and unhappiness (created by identifying man with a beast) is dependent upon a restoration of the meaning of love. Love includes the flesh; but sex, understood as animal instinct, does not include love. Human love always implies Perfect Love.
There is a double love in each of us - a love that is self-realizing and looks to our own good, and a love that is self-effacing and looks to the good of another. Both loves are included in the Divine Command, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." - Matt. 22:39 - The one love is self-assertive and possessive - it makes us eat, drink, and work to sustain our life. The other love is sacrificial or possessed and seeks not to be owned, not to have but to be had. The first takes water that it may live. The other shares or even gives up the water that the neighbor may live.
Each love is right and good and is meant to act as a brake on the other. If self were entirely neglected, one would not only lose all self-respect, but one would be consumed, as a moth in the flame. No one of us wants this; we do not long see our personalities extinguished or dissolved in some great Nirvana of unconsciousness. But selfless love is essential, too. If it is neglected, we have egotism, selfishness, conceit, snobbishness, and carnality.
To put this tension between the two loves into other words, there is in each heart a pull between the romance and the marriage, between the courtship and the union, the chase and the capture. Earthly love that is only the quest is incomplete; love that is only attainment is inert. If love is limited to possession, the beloved is absorbed and destroyed; if love is limited only to desire, it is a useless force that burns itself out. This failure of either search or satisfaction to satisfy causes the mystery and sometimes the pain of love.
As pursuit alone, love is death by hunger; as satisfaction alone, love is death by satiety and its own "too much." If love could reach no higher than earth, it would be like the pendulum of a clock alternating and ticking away between chase to capture, capture to chase, endlessly. But our hearts crave something more. We long for an escape from this weary iteration of pursuit to capture; we do not wish in love to emulate the hunter who starts for new prey only because he has already killed the old.
And there is an escape. It lies in the eternal moment that combines both search and finding. In Heaven we shall capture Eternal Love, but an infinity of chase will not be enough to sound its depths. This is the Love in which you at last may have yourself and lose yourself in one and the same eternal now. Here the tension of romance and marriage is reconciled in an eternal instant of joy, an instant that would break the heart were it not that Love is life.
Never to thirst would be inhuman, ever to thirst would be hell; but to drink and thirst in the same eternal now is to rise to the highest bliss of Love. This is the Love we "fall just short of in all love, the Beauty that leaves all other beauty pain, the unpossessed that makes possession vain." The closest we can come to such experience in our earthly imagination is to think of the most ecstatically happy moment of our lives - and then to live that moment eternally. This kind of love would be speechless and ineffable; there could be no adequate expression of its ecstasies. That is why the Love of God is called the Holy Spirit, the Holy Breath - something that is too deep for words.
It takes not two, but three to make perfect Love, whether it be in the flesh (husband, wife, and child) or in the spirit (lover, beloved, and love) or in Divine Nature (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) Sex is duality; Love is always triune.
It is this fullness of Love that every heart in the universe wants. Some suspect it not, because they have never lifted the blind of their dark hearts to let in the light of God; others have been robbed of the hope by those who cannot think of love in any other terms than the concourse of two monkeys; others draw back from it in foolish fear lest, having the Flames of Love Divine, they may lose the dying embers of their present perverted desires. But others see that, as the golden streaks across the waters of the lake are reflections of the moon above, so human love is but the crushed-out reflection of the Heart Divine. In God Alone is the consummation of all desires.
To the woman at the well who had five husbands and was living with a man who was not her husband, Our Lord Jesus said, "Whoever drinks of this water, shall thirst again" - John 4:13 - There are no human wells deep enough to quench the insatiable thirst of the human soul. But this desire can be satisfied: "He that shall drink of the water that I will give him, shall not thirst forever; but the water that I will give him, shall become in him a fountain of water, springing up into life everlasting." - John 4:13-14 - Religion ennobles love, and those who rob man of God spoil his nature. Only a Divine religion can protect the spiritual against the physical or prevent the animal in us from conquering the mind, making man more brutal than the brute.
How life changes its meaning when we see the love of the flesh as the reflection of the Eternal Light shot through the prism of time! They who would separate the earthly sound from the heavenly harp can have no music; they who believe that love is only the body's breath soon find love breathes its last and they made a covenant with death. But they who see in all earthly beauty the faint copy of Divine loveliness, they who see in fidelity to every vow, even when the other is untrue, a proof that God loves us who are so unlovable, they who, in the face of their trials, see that God's love ended in a cross, they who allow the river of their rapture to broaden out the blended channels of prayer and worship - these will, even on earth, learn that Love was made flesh and dwelled among us. Thus, Love becomes an ascension toward that blessed day when the limitless depths of our souls will be filled with the boundless giving, in one eternal now, where love is life's eternity and God is Love.
BY ARCHBISHOP FULTON J. SHEEN ( 1895 to 1979 )
Page 2
If you wish to donate. Thank You. God bless.
By bank transfer/cheque deposit:
Name: Alex Chan Kok Wah
Bank: Public Bank Berhad account no: 4076577113
Country: Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Sunday, May 24, 2009
I have through years of reading, pondering, reflecting and contemplating, the 3 things that last; FAITH . HOPE . LOVE and I would like to made available my sharing from the many thinkers, authors, scholars and theologians whose ideas and thoughts I have borrowed. God be with them always. Amen!
I STILL HAVE MANY THINGS TO SAY TO YOU BUT THEY WOULD BE TOO MUCH FOR YOU NOW. BUT WHEN THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH COMES, HE WILL LEAD YOU TO THE COMPLETE TRUTH, SINCE HE WILL NOT BE SPEAKING AS FROM HIMSELF, BUT WILL SAY ONLY WHAT HE HAS LEARNT; AND HE WILL TELL YOU OF THE THINGS TO COME.
HE WILL GLORIFY ME, SINCE ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. EVERYTHING THE FATHER HAS IS MINE; THAT IS WHY I SAID: ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. - JOHN 16:12-15 -
We escape the limitations of the body in another direction by the expansion of our flesh in the procreation of other personalities. Love always tends to an incarnation. In order that human life might be preserved and continued, God implanted of two great appetites and pleasures in man. One is the pleasure of eating to preserve the corporal life of the individual, the other is the pleasure of marriage to preserve the life of race.
The third way of perfecting ourselves is through the ownership of things. Just as we are free on the inside because we can call our soul our own, so we want to be free on the outside by calling possessions our own. Personal or private ownership is natural to man; it is the economic guarantee of freedom, as the soul is its spiritual guarantee.
The Church teaches that the human person is constantly striving for perfection and is restless until it perfects its mind in knowledge, or generates its kind in marriage, or assures its economic security through things. Each of these urges and instincts and cravings is right and God-given. In each instance, the "I" is attempting to find another "I". Because the "I" loves itself, it also loves wisdom, it loves the flesh, and it loves property.
Where then does abnormality arise, if these pursuits are natural? How could they cause a psychosis or anxiety or a complex, any more than the eye does in seeing or the ear in hearing? If we were animals, these pursuits toward perfection would, indeed, never cause disturbance, for an animal's desire can be fully satisfied; but human being cannot. No animal is curious about chlorophyll when it sees a plant, not does a squirrel have an anxiety complex about whether there will be a shortage of nuts ten years hence. But man's impulses and passions are subject to his will. Not being mechanically ordered as means to the salvation of his soul, he can misuse his passions, make them ends in themselves, try to find the absolute in their relative.
Self-love which is good, can be preserved into self-adoration, in which one says, "I am my own law, my own truth, my own standard. Nobody can tell me anything. Whatever I call right is right; what I call wrong is wrong. Therefore, I am God." This is the sin of pride, the perversion of self-love into egotism. Such undue self-inflation is one of the principal causes of unhappiness; the more a balloon is inflated, the easier it is to puncture it. The egotist walks warily, in constant danger of having his false values destroyed.
The sex instinct, which is good, can also be perverted. In the days of pagan Rome some corrupt individuals attended banquets, gorged themselves with food, tickled their throats, disgorged the food, and then went back and ate more. This was wrong because, as reason told them, one eats to live and the pleasure must not be separated from its function. In like manner, when the fires of life are aroused deliberately, not to light new torches of life, but to scorch the flesh, there is the sin of lust. This is a perversion animals cannot commit because they cannot defunctionalize and artificially centralize their instincts.
Third, humankind's legitimate desire for self-expansion through ownership can be perverted into an inordinate passion for wealth, without regard for either its social use or the needs of the neighbor. This is the sin of avarice, in which a person does not possess a fortune, but a fortune possesses him.
Because the human will can pervert the good passions, instincts, cravings, and aspirations into pride, lust and avarice, the Church enjoins mortification - through prayer, which humbles the proud soul, through fasting, which harnesses the errant impulses of the body, and through alms, which detach us from inordinate love of things. In the higher realm, the Church allows some chosen souls to take the vow of obedience to atone for the proud, the vow of chastity to redeem the licentious, and the vow of poverty to compensate for the greedy. These vows are taken, not because enjoyment of the mind, the flesh, or property is wrong, but because some members of society abuse them and pervert them. These holy souls make up for other's excesses by bending backward, as it were, in their own use. Thus is the right order of goods preserved in God's universe.
In the light of the above, there is no more towering nonsense than to say that the Church is opposed to sex. She is no more opposed to sex as such than she is opposed to eating a dinner, to going to school, or to owning a house. Nature is not corrupt. As Aristotle said, "Nature never tells a lie." It is humanity's false use of nature that darkens the face of the world. Nor does the Church, like a monomaniac, believe that sex is the only instinct a human has or that all other instincts are to be interpreted in terms of sex. Rather, with a deeper understanding of human nature, she says that the craving for perfection is basic and that sex is only one of the three ways in which a relative perfection is achieved in this life.
Where, then, did the sex fanatics get the idea that the Church is the enemy of sex? They got it from their inability to make a distinction - a distinction between use and abuse. Because the Church condemns the abuse of nature, sex fanatics think that the Church condemns nature itself. This is untrue. Far from slighting the value of the human body, the Church dignifies it. It is surely nobler to say, with the Christian, that the body is a Temple of God than to say, with some modern minds, that man is merely a beast. As Saint Clement of Alexandria said, "He ought not to be ashamed to create."
There is no sin in the right use of the flesh; even without the Fall of Man, the human race would have been continued through procreation. And Saint Thomas tells us that there was more pleasure in marriage before the Fall than now, because of the greater harmony and peace in man's soul. Saint Augustine has said, "We should, therefore, wrong our Creator in imputing our voices to our flesh; the flesh is good but to leave the Creator and to live according to this created good is mischief."
The Church does, of course, speak of sin in the domain of sex, as it speaks of sin in the domain of property or of sin in the area of self-love. But the sin does not lie in the instinct or the passion itself. Our instincts and our passions are God-given; the sin lies in their perversion. Sin is not in hunger, but in gluttony. Sin is not in the seeking of economic security, but in avarice. Sin is not in drink, but in drunkenness. Sin is not in recreation, but in laziness. Sin is not in the love or the use of the flesh, but in lust, which is its perversion. Just as dirt is matter in the wrong place, so sex can be flesh in the wrong place.
An undue concentration upon a single one life's activities tends to make a person abnormal through lopsided interest. This is especially true of an excessive preoccupation with the carnal. It tends to make what is physical psychic, by tracing back everything to a single instinct. Sex in other ages was physical; it resulted in new life. Today, because it often thwarts life, it is also psychic. Sex is thought about as a medium of pleasure to such a degree that it has become an obsession. Just as a singer could go crazy by concentrating on his thorax instead of his song and an orchestra conductor could become a neurotic by concentrating on his baton instead of his score, so humans today can go crazy thinking about sex instead of about life.
For it is the isolation of the sex factor from the totality of human life, the habit of regarding it as identical to the passion an elephant might feel, the ignoring of the body-soul tension in the human, which causes so many abnormalities and mental disorders. False isolation of the part from its whole is a common trait in contemporary thought. A person's life nowadays is divided into many compartments that remain not united and not integrated.
A businessman's business has no connection with his life in the family - so little in fact that his wife (his "little wife") is kept ignorant of her husband's income. As there is no connection between a man's profession and the rest of his daily existence, neither is there a connection between his daily life and his religion. This chopping up of life into watertight compartments becomes more disastrous as occupation and work are related, less and less, to a strictly human ideal; mechanization plays a catastrophic role.
Serious effects result from this mechanization and the whole tendency to overspecialization in modern life. These two phenomena of our times are both related to the analytic habit of mind, imposed by the fashion of a predominantly scientific approach in the intellectual world. Everything is viewed in isolation by modern man, because this method is the legitimate procedure of science. But there are fields where a study of the unit torn from its context ceases to be adequate. The study of life itself has begun to suffer by an excessive use of analysis - hence the reaction of "holism" in psychology and biology.
The human sex drive is at no moment an instinct alone. Desire from its beginning is informed with spirit, and never is one experienced apart from the other. The psychic and the physical interplay. Just as the idealists, who deny the existence matter, sin against the flesh, so the sensualists and carnalists sin against the spirit. But to betray either aspect is to invite revenge. "Our body is a part of the universal order created and preserved by God. Rightly viewed, it is itself a self-contained universe entrusted to us as a limited but sacred property. The most substantial sin is that which we commit against ourselves and especially against our own body. The offense against our own body includes a sin against the Creator.
Sex instinct in a pig and love in a person are not the same, precisely because love is found in the will, not in the glands - and will does not exist in a pig. Sexual desire in a person is different from sex in a snake because in the human being, it promises something it cannot completely supply. For the spirit in a man anticipates, which a snake does not: man always wants something more than he has. The very fact that none of man's passions for knowledge, love, and security can be completely satisfied here below suggests that he might have been made for something else.
The existence of shame (which exists nowhere except in humans) again shows how this one instinct, above all others, involves soul. Shame draws a veil over the deepest mystery of life and preserves it from impatient use, holding it in check until it can serve life as a whole and can thus satisfy both body and soul. There would be no such disgust in man were it not that everyone of us feels the body to have a peculiar sanctity, not only because of its potency to continue the creative act of God, but also because of its possibility of becoming a veritable Temple of God.
The person is in search of the absolute, for example, perfect happiness. To use sex as a substitute for the absolute is a vain attempt to turn the copy into the original, to make the shadow become the substance, and the conditioned, the absolute. The infinite cravings of a soul cannot be satisfied by the flesh alone. Love, remember, is not in the instinct; it is in the will. If love were purely organic, no more significant than any other physical act, such as breathing or digesting, it would not sometimes be surrounded by feelings of disgust. But grown-up love is much more than these - it is not an echo of a child's forbidden fantasy, as some would tell us. Each soul feels a restlessness, a longing, an emptiness, a desire, which is a remembrance of something that has been lost - our Paradise.
We are all kings in exile. This emptiness can be filled only with Divine Love - nothing else! Having lost God (or having been robbed of Him by false teachers and sex charlatans) the person tries to fill up the void by promiscuous "love affairs." But love, both human and Divine, will fly from him who thinks it is merely physiological: Only he can love nobly who lives a noble life.
It is wrong to say that the deep spiritual love of the saints for God is a sublimation of the sex instinct - as some perverse minds have actually suggested. This is like saying that love of country is derived from the elephant's love of the herd. The idea that religion had its origin in the sex instinct is almost too silly to be refuted, for the greatest religious influences in history have been the most detached from sex. The more a person lives in the presence of God, the more he or she develops a reflex against the wrong use of sex, as automatic as the way an eye blinks when the dust blows.
On the other hand, the sex fanatics are not only non-religious persons, but usually anti-religious persons. It is curious to hear such people urge that we ought to repudiate Christian morality and develop a new ethics to suit the unethical lives of a few thousand individuals they have polled. Because statisticians can find 5,000 living carnal lives, it is suggested that their ideal shall be made the universal ideal. An equal number of cases of lockjaw could be found in the United States; one wonders if lockjaw should therefore be made a physical standard of health? Sins do not become virtues by being widely practiced. Right is still right if nobody is right, and wrong is wrong if everybody is wrong. Some have contended that sex aberrations are as common as the common cold; but nobody has so far asked us to consider the cold normal and desirable.
On the possible side, it is the Christian position that the sex instinct is the reflection of love in the spiritual order. The sun comes first, then its reflection in the pool. The voice is a sublimation of the echo, and neither is the belief in God a sublimation of a carnal instinct. All love and all perfection and all happiness are first in God, then in things. The closer creatures, such as angels and saints, come to God, the happier they are; the farther away they stay, the less they can reveal the works of Divinity.
There are five aspects of love by which the nature of man is uplifted and fulfilled: The love of man or woman for God; the love of man and woman for each other; the love of parents for children and of children for parents; the love of men and women for country or community; and the love of men and women for excellence in some creative activity, in art, in literature or philosophy. These are not five kinds or species of love which are given to ennoble men, but five aspects of love which is one, even when we think of it as flowing between God and man. In every little child lying in his mother's bosom, there is something of the Incarnation; the mystery of humanity becomes the revelation of Heaven; and in such incarnation of the Divine Love we can behold, born in every aspect of human love, the Word become Incarnate of Him in whose will is our peace.
Since the stress on sex is due to a forgetfulness of the true nature of man as body and spirit, it follows that the release from anxieties, tensions, and unhappiness (created by identifying man with a beast) is dependent upon a restoration of the meaning of love. Love includes the flesh; but sex, understood as animal instinct, does not include love. Human love always implies Perfect Love.
There is a double love in each of us - a love that is self-realizing and looks to our own good, and a love that is self-effacing and looks to the good of another. Both loves are included in the Divine Command, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." - Matt. 22:39 - The one love is self-assertive and possessive - it makes us eat, drink, and work to sustain our life. The other love is sacrificial or possessed and seeks not to be owned, not to have but to be had. The first takes water that it may live. The other shares or even gives up the water that the neighbor may live.
Each love is right and good and is meant to act as a brake on the other. If self were entirely neglected, one would not only lose all self-respect, but one would be consumed, as a moth in the flame. No one of us wants this; we do not long see our personalities extinguished or dissolved in some great Nirvana of unconsciousness. But selfless love is essential, too. If it is neglected, we have egotism, selfishness, conceit, snobbishness, and carnality.
To put this tension between the two loves into other words, there is in each heart a pull between the romance and the marriage, between the courtship and the union, the chase and the capture. Earthly love that is only the quest is incomplete; love that is only attainment is inert. If love is limited to possession, the beloved is absorbed and destroyed; if love is limited only to desire, it is a useless force that burns itself out. This failure of either search or satisfaction to satisfy causes the mystery and sometimes the pain of love.
As pursuit alone, love is death by hunger; as satisfaction alone, love is death by satiety and its own "too much." If love could reach no higher than earth, it would be like the pendulum of a clock alternating and ticking away between chase to capture, capture to chase, endlessly. But our hearts crave something more. We long for an escape from this weary iteration of pursuit to capture; we do not wish in love to emulate the hunter who starts for new prey only because he has already killed the old.
And there is an escape. It lies in the eternal moment that combines both search and finding. In Heaven we shall capture Eternal Love, but an infinity of chase will not be enough to sound its depths. This is the Love in which you at last may have yourself and lose yourself in one and the same eternal now. Here the tension of romance and marriage is reconciled in an eternal instant of joy, an instant that would break the heart were it not that Love is life.
Never to thirst would be inhuman, ever to thirst would be hell; but to drink and thirst in the same eternal now is to rise to the highest bliss of Love. This is the Love we "fall just short of in all love, the Beauty that leaves all other beauty pain, the unpossessed that makes possession vain." The closest we can come to such experience in our earthly imagination is to think of the most ecstatically happy moment of our lives - and then to live that moment eternally. This kind of love would be speechless and ineffable; there could be no adequate expression of its ecstasies. That is why the Love of God is called the Holy Spirit, the Holy Breath - something that is too deep for words.
It takes not two, but three to make perfect Love, whether it be in the flesh (husband, wife, and child) or in the spirit (lover, beloved, and love) or in Divine Nature (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) Sex is duality; Love is always triune.
It is this fullness of Love that every heart in the universe wants. Some suspect it not, because they have never lifted the blind of their dark hearts to let in the light of God; others have been robbed of the hope by those who cannot think of love in any other terms than the concourse of two monkeys; others draw back from it in foolish fear lest, having the Flames of Love Divine, they may lose the dying embers of their present perverted desires. But others see that, as the golden streaks across the waters of the lake are reflections of the moon above, so human love is but the crushed-out reflection of the Heart Divine. In God Alone is the consummation of all desires.
To the woman at the well who had five husbands and was living with a man who was not her husband, Our Lord Jesus said, "Whoever drinks of this water, shall thirst again" - John 4:13 - There are no human wells deep enough to quench the insatiable thirst of the human soul. But this desire can be satisfied: "He that shall drink of the water that I will give him, shall not thirst forever; but the water that I will give him, shall become in him a fountain of water, springing up into life everlasting." - John 4:13-14 - Religion ennobles love, and those who rob man of God spoil his nature. Only a Divine religion can protect the spiritual against the physical or prevent the animal in us from conquering the mind, making man more brutal than the brute.
How life changes its meaning when we see the love of the flesh as the reflection of the Eternal Light shot through the prism of time! They who would separate the earthly sound from the heavenly harp can have no music; they who believe that love is only the body's breath soon find love breathes its last and they made a covenant with death. But they who see in all earthly beauty the faint copy of Divine loveliness, they who see in fidelity to every vow, even when the other is untrue, a proof that God loves us who are so unlovable, they who, in the face of their trials, see that God's love ended in a cross, they who allow the river of their rapture to broaden out the blended channels of prayer and worship - these will, even on earth, learn that Love was made flesh and dwelled among us. Thus, Love becomes an ascension toward that blessed day when the limitless depths of our souls will be filled with the boundless giving, in one eternal now, where love is life's eternity and God is Love.
BY ARCHBISHOP FULTON J. SHEEN ( 1895 to 1979 )
Page 2
If you wish to donate. Thank You. God bless.
By bank transfer/cheque deposit:
Name: Alex Chan Kok Wah
Bank: Public Bank Berhad account no: 4076577113
Country: Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Sunday, May 24, 2009
I have through years of reading, pondering, reflecting and contemplating, the 3 things that last; FAITH . HOPE . LOVE and I would like to made available my sharing from the many thinkers, authors, scholars and theologians whose ideas and thoughts I have borrowed. God be with them always. Amen!
I STILL HAVE MANY THINGS TO SAY TO YOU BUT THEY WOULD BE TOO MUCH FOR YOU NOW. BUT WHEN THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH COMES, HE WILL LEAD YOU TO THE COMPLETE TRUTH, SINCE HE WILL NOT BE SPEAKING AS FROM HIMSELF, BUT WILL SAY ONLY WHAT HE HAS LEARNT; AND HE WILL TELL YOU OF THE THINGS TO COME.
HE WILL GLORIFY ME, SINCE ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. EVERYTHING THE FATHER HAS IS MINE; THAT IS WHY I SAID: ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. - JOHN 16:12-15 -
Thursday, July 25, 2013
Sex has become one of the most discussed subjects of modern times. The Victorians pretended that nothing else exists. Some critics place all the blame on Sigmund Freud. Emil Ludwig in his book, Dr. Freud, claims that the popularity of Freud is due to the fact that he made it possible for people to talk about sex under the guise of science.
...Freud's scientific label permits the nicest girl to discuss intimate sexual details with any man, the two stimulating each other erotically during the talk while wearing poker faces, and at the same time proving themselves learned and liberated. What a convenience in puritan America!
This is, of course, not the total explanation; Freudianism would never have become popular in a more normal civilization. Marx and Freud would not have written in the thirteenth century and would have had a trivial audience in the Elizabethan era; their plea now is due to the fact that the climate of the world is more favorable for such a philosophy. There had to be a materialist preparation for Sexism. Lewis Mumford rightly contends, "Despite the scope Freud gave theoretically to man's deepest subjective impulses, he looked to science alone to effect man's improvement.
Unconsciously, he accepted as final revelation of truth the ideology that was formulated in the eighteenth century; that of Locke,Hume, Diderot, Voltaire. Doctor Reinhold Niebuhr relates Freud to a reaction against optimism: "The romantic pessimism which culminates in Freud may be regarded as symbolic of the despair which modern man faces when his optimistic illusions are dispelled; for under the perpetual smile of modernity, there is a grimace of disillusion and cynicism." Thomas Mann makes Schopenhauer the source: "Schopenhauer, as psychologist of the will, is the father of all modern psychology. From him the line runs, by way of the psychological radicalism of Nietzsche, straight to Freud and the men who built up the psychology of the unconscious and applied it to mental science."
It is unhistorical and philosophically unsound to blame Freud for the current overemphasis: Instead of being the creator of the popularity of sex, he was rather its expression and its effect. Far from being the founder of an age, he was its postscript. There are some faithful disciples still writing who consider Freud's method and his philosophy as absolute truth; they bitterly and instantly resent any criticism, calling it "reactionary" or "obscurantist." But many others have already changed or abandoned fundamental Freudian ideas; among these are Karen Horney and Theodor Reik.
The reasons for the exaggerated interest in sex lie deep in our civilization:
To communicate with Mars, converse with spirits,
To report the behaviour of the sea monster,
Describe the horoscope, haruspicate or scry,
Observe disease in signatures, evokes
Biography from the wrinkles of the palm
And tragedy from fingers; release omens
By sortilege, or tea leaves, riddle the inevitable
With playing cards, fiddle with pentagrams
Or barbituric acids, or dissect
The recurrent image into pre-conscious terrors
To explore the womb, or tomb, or dreams; all these are usual
Pastimes and drugs, and features of the press:
And always will be, some especially
When there is distress of nations and preplexity.
The principle reason for sex deification is loss of belief in God. Once people lose God, they lose the purpose of life; and when the purpose of living is forgotten, the universe becomes meaningless. Man then tries to forget his emptiness in the intensity of a momentary experience. This effort sometimes goes so far that he makes someone else's flesh a god; there are idolatry and adoration, which eventually end in disillusion when the so-called "angel" is discovered to be only a fallen angel and one of no great attraction. Sometimes one's own flesh is made the god: Then one tends toward tyranny over the other person and, finally, toward cruelty.
There is no surer formula for discontent than to try to satisfy our cravings for the ocean of Infinite Love from the teacup of finite satisfactions. Nothing material, physical, or carnal can ever satisfy man completely; he has an immoral soul that needs an Eternal Love. "Not by bread alone does man live." Man need for Divine Love, once perverted, impels him to go on seeking Infinite Love in finite beings - never finding it, yet not able to end the search despite his disappointments. Then follow cynicism, boredom, ennui, and finally, despair. Having lost spiritual oxygen, such a person suffocates. Life ceases to mean anything precious to him, and he thinks of doing away with himself as his last and final act of rebellion against the Lord of Life. As E. I. Watkin observes of such moderns,
...Rationalism has robbed them of faith in God and spiritual love-life of union with Him. Being men, not calculating machines or vegetables, they must have life, concrete, intense, passionate. They therefore turn to sex, the biological image of spiritual life, its passion and union - but for what it really can give and has given in all ages, but for the content of that other and supreme love-life which it reflects.
They are, of course, disappointed, and they will continue to be disappointed. But their search is a judgment, a testimony and a summons. It is in the first place a judgment...Human ratiocination cannot attain the clear and complete system of truths on which alone a stable world-order of a purely rational description could be constructed. He [man] is devoured by the submarine monster of biological life lurking in his irrational instincts, the whale of sex. For, like the whale, sex should feed man's wants, not swallow him. But sea-monster may after all prove an instrument of his deliverance. In its belly, dark and confined, he learns, like the prophet, the impotence of his natural powers to satisfy the demands of his spirit, his need of divine illumination and grace. Thus the judgment of sex in its modern idolatry becomes a testimony to man's need of the life and love which God alone can bestow, a witness to the reality it prefigures and reflects.
A second reason for the cult of sex is a desire to escape from the responsibility of living and from the unbearable voice of an uneasy conscience. By concentration upon the unconscious, animal, primitive areas, guilt-ridden individuals feel that they no longer need to fret about the meaning of life. Once God has been denied, then everything becomes permissible to them. By denying the ethical in life, they have substituted license for liberty.
Those who are aware of the evidence brought forward by modern psychology for the large part played in man's opinions and conduct by the conscious or unconscious force of sexuality may well incline to the view that the will to overturn the social order is not due entirely to undiluted love of justice or even to the need of food and property among the hungry and dispossessed; a more or less open wish to get rid of social restrictions on sexual activity is a frequent and important factor.
That is why an age of carnal license is always an age of political anarchy. The foundations of social life are shaken at the very moment when the foundations of family life are destroyed. The rebellion of the masses against social order, which Marx advocated, is matched by the rebellion of the libido and the animal instincts, which the sexists advocate within the individual. Both systems deny responsibility - either because history is believed to be economically determined or because man is called biologically determined. Yet the very individuals who deny all human responsibility and freedom in theory freely blame their cooks for the burned bacon in the morning and say "Thank you" at night to the friend who praises their latest book, There Is No Freedom.
A third reason for overemphasis on sex is the modern denial of immortality. Once the Eternal is denied, the Now becomes all-important. When people believe in immortality, they not only seek the continuance of their spirit in eternity, but also the continuance of their flesh, through the creation of families that will survive them and meet the challenge death otherwise presents.
The denial of immortality thus gives death a double mastery, first over the person who denies survival, though he needs must die, and second by leading him to repudiate family life, which is now regarded as a mere hindrance to the pleasures of the brief hour of life. It is a historical fact that in times of disaster, epidemic, bombings, etc, some individuals who have no eternal values to sustain them, seeing the lease on life about to run out, plunge into orgies of debauchery; concentration on the perishable things of earth tends to dry up moral enthusiasm and to stimulate cravings for bestial satisfaction when such humans see their ends approaching. But such catastrophes are not needed: Whenever time on earth is seen as all-important, the elders talk about "the future which is in the hands of the young" everyone is afraid to speak of his age, and the subject of growing old is treated in a manner midway between an insult and a sneer.
Like beasts trapped, not in cages but in time, such humans become angry with time for passing: The hastening years diminish pleasure and cast a shadow one must try not to see. But since one cannot hope to escape it forever, the fear of death grows apace. It is no accident that the present civilization which has emphasized sex as no other age in the history of Christianity has emphasized it, lives in constant fear of death. Baudelaire rightly pictured modern love as sitting on a skull. When the flesh is given a moral value, it produces life; when sex frustrates morality, it ends in death.
A child who is given a ball and told that it is the only ball he will ever have in his life cannot enjoy it much because he is over fearful of losing it. Another child, told that if he is good he will be given another ball, one that will never wear out and will give him unending pleasure, need not be fearful of losing the first. So it is with the person who has only one world, in contrast to the one who believes otherwise. Even in the enjoyment of life the first person walks in fear of its end. His very pleasures are shadowed by death. But the one who believes in a future life, conditioned by morality, has the great advantage of being able to be happy in this world, as well as in the next.
The predilection for sex is characteristic of a profoundly naturalistic age. Even before psychoanalysis was conceived, one can observe notable signs of such a development. The naturalistic literary school of France - which became tremendously influential, starting with Flaubert, Guy de Maupassant, and Zola - emphasized sex. None of these writers was an "ïmmoralist" but they shared the idea that "nature" must be discussed openly and without restrictions. There is little licentiousness in their writing; but it happened that these works, intended to describe things human as they are, were welcomed by readers who sought quite another effect from them. The naturalistic school thus became, involuntarily, a preparation for a growing licentiousness. The success of psychoanalysis in America - not with the psychiatrists, but with the public - has the same source as the success of certain novelists of sex, like D. H. Lawrence.
A fourth reason for the overemphasize on sex is the denial of the rational soul and the equating of humans with animals. This connotes the complete abandonment of the ethical in human relations. Not the will but instinct now reigns supreme, as the standards of morality give way to the practices of the barnyard. The modern tragedy is not that human beings gave way more often to their passions now than in previous ages, but that, in leaving the right road, they deny that there is a right road. People rebelled against God in other ages, but they recognized it as rebellion. They sinned, but they knew that they sinned. They saw clearly they were on the wrong road; today people throw away the map.
The equation of man with the animal is a great fallacy; sex in man is not the same as sex in animals. An animal feels, but no animal loves. In the animal, there is no body-mind conflict; in man, there is. In the animal, sex is mechanical, a matter of stimulus and response. In man, it is linked with mystery and freedom. In the animal, it is only a release of tensions; in man, its occurrence is determined by no natural rhythm, but by the will. Sex can cause a loneliness and sadness in humans that it cannot cause in animals. The animal can satisfy its desire below; man cannot do this, and his tension comes from trying to substitute the chaff of sex for the bread of life. As Prinzhorn says, in speaking of Freudianism of a certain type, "It gives to people who are over intellectualized, out of touch with the living earth, in the grip of a debased sexuality, a false religion, which is admirably suited to their condition."
A totally neglected feature of the sex problem in man is the role that original sin has played in causing it, although it must be said to the credit of modern psychology that it has implicitly reaffirmed the fact under the name of "tension." Man's nature is not intrinsically corrupt, but it is weak; as a result, the emotions often gain supremacy over the reason. With profound penetration, Berdyaev writes,
There are two different types of enjoyment - one reminds us of original sin and always contains poison; the other reminds us of paradise. When a man is enjoying the gratification of sexual passion or the pleasure of eating he ought to feel the presence of poison and be reminded of original sin. That is the nature of every enjoyment connected with lust. It always testifies to the poverty and not to the richness of our nature. But when we experience the delight of breathing the sea or mountain air or the fragrance of woods and fields, we recall paradise; there is no lust in this.
We are comparing here pleasures that have a physiological character. But the same comparison may be drawn in the spiritual realm. When a man is enjoying the satisfaction of his greed or vanity he ought to feel the poison and be reminded of the original sin. But when he is enjoying a creative act that reveals truth or creates beauty or radiates love upon a fellow creature he recalls paradise.
Every delight connected with lust is poisoned and reminiscent of original sin. Every delight free from lust and connected with a love of objective values is a remembrance or a foretaste of paradise and frees us from the bonds of sin. The sublimation or transfiguration of passions means that a passion is purified from lust and that a free creative element enters into it. This is a point of fundamental importance for ethics. Man must strive first and foremost to free himself from slavery. Every state incompatible with spiritual freedom and hostile to it is evil. But every lust (concupiscentia ) is hostile to the freedom of the spirit and enslaves man.
Lust is both insatiable and bound to pall. It cannot be satisfied, for it is the bad infinity of craving. There exists a different kind of craving that also extends into infinity, for example, the hunger for absolute righteousness; those who hunger and thirst after righteousness are blessed because they are concerned with eternity and not with bad infinity. The divine reality that fills our life is the contrary of the boredom and emptiness born of the evil lust of life. Lust from its very nature is uncreative and opposed to creativeness. Creativeness is generous and sacrificial, it means giving one's powers, while lust wants everything for itself, is greedy, insatiable and vampirish. True love gives strength to the loved one, while love-lust vampirically absorbs another person's strength. Hence, there is opposition both between lust and freedom, and between lust and creativeness. Lust is a perverted and inwardly weakened passion. Power is a creative force, but there is such a thing as the lust of power; love is a sacrificial force, but there is also the lust of love.
Whatever be the primary reasons for the present overemphasis on sex, it must not be attributed to Freud himself. A distinction must in fairness be made between Freud and Freudianism, a kind of pan-Sexism that reduces everything to sex in a way that Freud himself never intended. Those who have carried his theories of analysis to the extreme of interpreting everything in terms of sex have been subject to considerable satire; the most interesting example appeared in G. K.'s Weekly, which translated life into terms of beer instead of sex. It reads:
It is now as established fact that all human motive and action is due to Beer; not merely among adults but also among children...
The whole life of a child (of either sex) is actuated by Beer. The first action of which a child is capable is a lusty yell; we have established that this is no less than a cry for Beer, or a any rate for some kind of drink. The next action of the child is to drink. If it does not drink beer it is because its system is not yet capable of drinking beer. But behind the relish of milk is the desire for beer. These we call the primary instincts. The secondary instincts are to be found in the love of popping corks, of yellow-brown colours, of frothy substances (like soap) and so on. The child instinctively calls his father Papa (which represents the popping of the cork) and his mother Mammy ( which gives the noise of the liquid being poured into a glass). All the gurgling noises of childhood go to prove the strength of the instinct...
Most of our knowledge is based upon dreams, which we have taken as the most reliable evidence scientifically possible. We know (by means too long and elaborate to tell here) that even very young children dream about beer; nay, more, that they dream about nothing else. When a child dreams of a boat upon a lake, what is it but a symbol of beer? Of a shower of rain, a river, a sea? Everything yellow or brown is beer. Everything frothy or sparkling is beer. Everything in something else is beer (a nut in its shell, for example, is obviously representative of beer in the bottle). Everything that moves is beer, particularly quick-moving, jerky things, which are reminiscent of "hops." In fact, we may say that the child cannot dreams of anything but beer. There is no dream possible but beer...
Here is an example. The patient was Miss X. She came to us in great trouble. "My nerves are all gone to pieces." she said, "I want you to help me." Professor Bosh questioned her, and kept her under observation. He discovered that before going to bed she was in the habit of brushing her hair. "The brush was an amber color, and was transparent. The patient would raise it slowly to her lips, pause and then proceed to brush her hair. This was quite unconscious. In reply to my questions it transpired that several years before she had been forbidden by the family doctor to drink anything alcoholic. She had been in the habit of taking a glass of ale every night at supper." Professor Bosh explained this to her, and at once convinced her of its truth. She submitted herself to treatment, and was soon perfectly well and strong.
Unlike the extreme Freudianism, Christianity is not so narrow minded as to make sex the most important instinct of life or to attribute mental disorders exclusively to its repression. If the repression of its errant and unlawful impulses is the cause of mental abnormalities, why is it that those who are most abandoned to carnal license are the most abnormal, while those who believe in religion and morality are the most normal? Using a more comprehensive and saner outlook on life, Christianity traces, not one, but several roots of mental disorders in the nonphysical and moral realm. There is sex, to be sure; but there are also six other possible causes - pride, covetousness, anger, envy, gluttony, and sloth.
In order to understand the proper role of the sex instinct, consider the true nature of man. Every human is looking for perfection - constantly trying to transcend himself, to get out of himself, in some way to expand himself, to escape his self-limitations. There is a kind of holy impatience in us all. The "I" the "Me" in each of us feels limited; it craves for expansiveness; it finds the earth too small, even the stars too close; the possessed makes us hungry where most it satisfies. We want to be perfect; but we are only in a process of realization. Not being able to find peace within ourselves, we seek to atone for our limitations by extending ourselves in one of three directions - through the mind, through the body, or through things.
Page 1
If you wish to donate. Thank You. God bless.
By bank transfer/cheque deposit:
Name: Alex Chan Kok Wah
Bank: Public Bank Berhad account no: 4076577113
Country: Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Sunday, May 24, 2009
I have through years of reading, pondering, reflecting and contemplating, the 3 things that last; FAITH . HOPE . LOVE and I would like to made available my sharing from the many thinkers, authors, scholars and theologians whose ideas and thoughts I have borrowed. God be with them always. Amen!
I STILL HAVE MANY THINGS TO SAY TO YOU BUT THEY WOULD BE TOO MUCH FOR YOU NOW. BUT WHEN THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH COMES, HE WILL LEAD YOU TO THE COMPLETE TRUTH, SINCE HE WILL NOT BE SPEAKING AS FROM HIMSELF, BUT WILL SAY ONLY WHAT HE HAS LEARNT; AND HE WILL TELL YOU OF THE THINGS TO COME.
...Freud's scientific label permits the nicest girl to discuss intimate sexual details with any man, the two stimulating each other erotically during the talk while wearing poker faces, and at the same time proving themselves learned and liberated. What a convenience in puritan America!
This is, of course, not the total explanation; Freudianism would never have become popular in a more normal civilization. Marx and Freud would not have written in the thirteenth century and would have had a trivial audience in the Elizabethan era; their plea now is due to the fact that the climate of the world is more favorable for such a philosophy. There had to be a materialist preparation for Sexism. Lewis Mumford rightly contends, "Despite the scope Freud gave theoretically to man's deepest subjective impulses, he looked to science alone to effect man's improvement.
Unconsciously, he accepted as final revelation of truth the ideology that was formulated in the eighteenth century; that of Locke,Hume, Diderot, Voltaire. Doctor Reinhold Niebuhr relates Freud to a reaction against optimism: "The romantic pessimism which culminates in Freud may be regarded as symbolic of the despair which modern man faces when his optimistic illusions are dispelled; for under the perpetual smile of modernity, there is a grimace of disillusion and cynicism." Thomas Mann makes Schopenhauer the source: "Schopenhauer, as psychologist of the will, is the father of all modern psychology. From him the line runs, by way of the psychological radicalism of Nietzsche, straight to Freud and the men who built up the psychology of the unconscious and applied it to mental science."
It is unhistorical and philosophically unsound to blame Freud for the current overemphasis: Instead of being the creator of the popularity of sex, he was rather its expression and its effect. Far from being the founder of an age, he was its postscript. There are some faithful disciples still writing who consider Freud's method and his philosophy as absolute truth; they bitterly and instantly resent any criticism, calling it "reactionary" or "obscurantist." But many others have already changed or abandoned fundamental Freudian ideas; among these are Karen Horney and Theodor Reik.
The reasons for the exaggerated interest in sex lie deep in our civilization:
To communicate with Mars, converse with spirits,
To report the behaviour of the sea monster,
Describe the horoscope, haruspicate or scry,
Observe disease in signatures, evokes
Biography from the wrinkles of the palm
And tragedy from fingers; release omens
By sortilege, or tea leaves, riddle the inevitable
With playing cards, fiddle with pentagrams
Or barbituric acids, or dissect
The recurrent image into pre-conscious terrors
To explore the womb, or tomb, or dreams; all these are usual
Pastimes and drugs, and features of the press:
And always will be, some especially
When there is distress of nations and preplexity.
The principle reason for sex deification is loss of belief in God. Once people lose God, they lose the purpose of life; and when the purpose of living is forgotten, the universe becomes meaningless. Man then tries to forget his emptiness in the intensity of a momentary experience. This effort sometimes goes so far that he makes someone else's flesh a god; there are idolatry and adoration, which eventually end in disillusion when the so-called "angel" is discovered to be only a fallen angel and one of no great attraction. Sometimes one's own flesh is made the god: Then one tends toward tyranny over the other person and, finally, toward cruelty.
There is no surer formula for discontent than to try to satisfy our cravings for the ocean of Infinite Love from the teacup of finite satisfactions. Nothing material, physical, or carnal can ever satisfy man completely; he has an immoral soul that needs an Eternal Love. "Not by bread alone does man live." Man need for Divine Love, once perverted, impels him to go on seeking Infinite Love in finite beings - never finding it, yet not able to end the search despite his disappointments. Then follow cynicism, boredom, ennui, and finally, despair. Having lost spiritual oxygen, such a person suffocates. Life ceases to mean anything precious to him, and he thinks of doing away with himself as his last and final act of rebellion against the Lord of Life. As E. I. Watkin observes of such moderns,
...Rationalism has robbed them of faith in God and spiritual love-life of union with Him. Being men, not calculating machines or vegetables, they must have life, concrete, intense, passionate. They therefore turn to sex, the biological image of spiritual life, its passion and union - but for what it really can give and has given in all ages, but for the content of that other and supreme love-life which it reflects.
They are, of course, disappointed, and they will continue to be disappointed. But their search is a judgment, a testimony and a summons. It is in the first place a judgment...Human ratiocination cannot attain the clear and complete system of truths on which alone a stable world-order of a purely rational description could be constructed. He [man] is devoured by the submarine monster of biological life lurking in his irrational instincts, the whale of sex. For, like the whale, sex should feed man's wants, not swallow him. But sea-monster may after all prove an instrument of his deliverance. In its belly, dark and confined, he learns, like the prophet, the impotence of his natural powers to satisfy the demands of his spirit, his need of divine illumination and grace. Thus the judgment of sex in its modern idolatry becomes a testimony to man's need of the life and love which God alone can bestow, a witness to the reality it prefigures and reflects.
A second reason for the cult of sex is a desire to escape from the responsibility of living and from the unbearable voice of an uneasy conscience. By concentration upon the unconscious, animal, primitive areas, guilt-ridden individuals feel that they no longer need to fret about the meaning of life. Once God has been denied, then everything becomes permissible to them. By denying the ethical in life, they have substituted license for liberty.
Those who are aware of the evidence brought forward by modern psychology for the large part played in man's opinions and conduct by the conscious or unconscious force of sexuality may well incline to the view that the will to overturn the social order is not due entirely to undiluted love of justice or even to the need of food and property among the hungry and dispossessed; a more or less open wish to get rid of social restrictions on sexual activity is a frequent and important factor.
That is why an age of carnal license is always an age of political anarchy. The foundations of social life are shaken at the very moment when the foundations of family life are destroyed. The rebellion of the masses against social order, which Marx advocated, is matched by the rebellion of the libido and the animal instincts, which the sexists advocate within the individual. Both systems deny responsibility - either because history is believed to be economically determined or because man is called biologically determined. Yet the very individuals who deny all human responsibility and freedom in theory freely blame their cooks for the burned bacon in the morning and say "Thank you" at night to the friend who praises their latest book, There Is No Freedom.
A third reason for overemphasis on sex is the modern denial of immortality. Once the Eternal is denied, the Now becomes all-important. When people believe in immortality, they not only seek the continuance of their spirit in eternity, but also the continuance of their flesh, through the creation of families that will survive them and meet the challenge death otherwise presents.
The denial of immortality thus gives death a double mastery, first over the person who denies survival, though he needs must die, and second by leading him to repudiate family life, which is now regarded as a mere hindrance to the pleasures of the brief hour of life. It is a historical fact that in times of disaster, epidemic, bombings, etc, some individuals who have no eternal values to sustain them, seeing the lease on life about to run out, plunge into orgies of debauchery; concentration on the perishable things of earth tends to dry up moral enthusiasm and to stimulate cravings for bestial satisfaction when such humans see their ends approaching. But such catastrophes are not needed: Whenever time on earth is seen as all-important, the elders talk about "the future which is in the hands of the young" everyone is afraid to speak of his age, and the subject of growing old is treated in a manner midway between an insult and a sneer.
Like beasts trapped, not in cages but in time, such humans become angry with time for passing: The hastening years diminish pleasure and cast a shadow one must try not to see. But since one cannot hope to escape it forever, the fear of death grows apace. It is no accident that the present civilization which has emphasized sex as no other age in the history of Christianity has emphasized it, lives in constant fear of death. Baudelaire rightly pictured modern love as sitting on a skull. When the flesh is given a moral value, it produces life; when sex frustrates morality, it ends in death.
A child who is given a ball and told that it is the only ball he will ever have in his life cannot enjoy it much because he is over fearful of losing it. Another child, told that if he is good he will be given another ball, one that will never wear out and will give him unending pleasure, need not be fearful of losing the first. So it is with the person who has only one world, in contrast to the one who believes otherwise. Even in the enjoyment of life the first person walks in fear of its end. His very pleasures are shadowed by death. But the one who believes in a future life, conditioned by morality, has the great advantage of being able to be happy in this world, as well as in the next.
The predilection for sex is characteristic of a profoundly naturalistic age. Even before psychoanalysis was conceived, one can observe notable signs of such a development. The naturalistic literary school of France - which became tremendously influential, starting with Flaubert, Guy de Maupassant, and Zola - emphasized sex. None of these writers was an "ïmmoralist" but they shared the idea that "nature" must be discussed openly and without restrictions. There is little licentiousness in their writing; but it happened that these works, intended to describe things human as they are, were welcomed by readers who sought quite another effect from them. The naturalistic school thus became, involuntarily, a preparation for a growing licentiousness. The success of psychoanalysis in America - not with the psychiatrists, but with the public - has the same source as the success of certain novelists of sex, like D. H. Lawrence.
A fourth reason for the overemphasize on sex is the denial of the rational soul and the equating of humans with animals. This connotes the complete abandonment of the ethical in human relations. Not the will but instinct now reigns supreme, as the standards of morality give way to the practices of the barnyard. The modern tragedy is not that human beings gave way more often to their passions now than in previous ages, but that, in leaving the right road, they deny that there is a right road. People rebelled against God in other ages, but they recognized it as rebellion. They sinned, but they knew that they sinned. They saw clearly they were on the wrong road; today people throw away the map.
The equation of man with the animal is a great fallacy; sex in man is not the same as sex in animals. An animal feels, but no animal loves. In the animal, there is no body-mind conflict; in man, there is. In the animal, sex is mechanical, a matter of stimulus and response. In man, it is linked with mystery and freedom. In the animal, it is only a release of tensions; in man, its occurrence is determined by no natural rhythm, but by the will. Sex can cause a loneliness and sadness in humans that it cannot cause in animals. The animal can satisfy its desire below; man cannot do this, and his tension comes from trying to substitute the chaff of sex for the bread of life. As Prinzhorn says, in speaking of Freudianism of a certain type, "It gives to people who are over intellectualized, out of touch with the living earth, in the grip of a debased sexuality, a false religion, which is admirably suited to their condition."
A totally neglected feature of the sex problem in man is the role that original sin has played in causing it, although it must be said to the credit of modern psychology that it has implicitly reaffirmed the fact under the name of "tension." Man's nature is not intrinsically corrupt, but it is weak; as a result, the emotions often gain supremacy over the reason. With profound penetration, Berdyaev writes,
There are two different types of enjoyment - one reminds us of original sin and always contains poison; the other reminds us of paradise. When a man is enjoying the gratification of sexual passion or the pleasure of eating he ought to feel the presence of poison and be reminded of original sin. That is the nature of every enjoyment connected with lust. It always testifies to the poverty and not to the richness of our nature. But when we experience the delight of breathing the sea or mountain air or the fragrance of woods and fields, we recall paradise; there is no lust in this.
We are comparing here pleasures that have a physiological character. But the same comparison may be drawn in the spiritual realm. When a man is enjoying the satisfaction of his greed or vanity he ought to feel the poison and be reminded of the original sin. But when he is enjoying a creative act that reveals truth or creates beauty or radiates love upon a fellow creature he recalls paradise.
Every delight connected with lust is poisoned and reminiscent of original sin. Every delight free from lust and connected with a love of objective values is a remembrance or a foretaste of paradise and frees us from the bonds of sin. The sublimation or transfiguration of passions means that a passion is purified from lust and that a free creative element enters into it. This is a point of fundamental importance for ethics. Man must strive first and foremost to free himself from slavery. Every state incompatible with spiritual freedom and hostile to it is evil. But every lust (concupiscentia ) is hostile to the freedom of the spirit and enslaves man.
Lust is both insatiable and bound to pall. It cannot be satisfied, for it is the bad infinity of craving. There exists a different kind of craving that also extends into infinity, for example, the hunger for absolute righteousness; those who hunger and thirst after righteousness are blessed because they are concerned with eternity and not with bad infinity. The divine reality that fills our life is the contrary of the boredom and emptiness born of the evil lust of life. Lust from its very nature is uncreative and opposed to creativeness. Creativeness is generous and sacrificial, it means giving one's powers, while lust wants everything for itself, is greedy, insatiable and vampirish. True love gives strength to the loved one, while love-lust vampirically absorbs another person's strength. Hence, there is opposition both between lust and freedom, and between lust and creativeness. Lust is a perverted and inwardly weakened passion. Power is a creative force, but there is such a thing as the lust of power; love is a sacrificial force, but there is also the lust of love.
Whatever be the primary reasons for the present overemphasis on sex, it must not be attributed to Freud himself. A distinction must in fairness be made between Freud and Freudianism, a kind of pan-Sexism that reduces everything to sex in a way that Freud himself never intended. Those who have carried his theories of analysis to the extreme of interpreting everything in terms of sex have been subject to considerable satire; the most interesting example appeared in G. K.'s Weekly, which translated life into terms of beer instead of sex. It reads:
It is now as established fact that all human motive and action is due to Beer; not merely among adults but also among children...
The whole life of a child (of either sex) is actuated by Beer. The first action of which a child is capable is a lusty yell; we have established that this is no less than a cry for Beer, or a any rate for some kind of drink. The next action of the child is to drink. If it does not drink beer it is because its system is not yet capable of drinking beer. But behind the relish of milk is the desire for beer. These we call the primary instincts. The secondary instincts are to be found in the love of popping corks, of yellow-brown colours, of frothy substances (like soap) and so on. The child instinctively calls his father Papa (which represents the popping of the cork) and his mother Mammy ( which gives the noise of the liquid being poured into a glass). All the gurgling noises of childhood go to prove the strength of the instinct...
Most of our knowledge is based upon dreams, which we have taken as the most reliable evidence scientifically possible. We know (by means too long and elaborate to tell here) that even very young children dream about beer; nay, more, that they dream about nothing else. When a child dreams of a boat upon a lake, what is it but a symbol of beer? Of a shower of rain, a river, a sea? Everything yellow or brown is beer. Everything frothy or sparkling is beer. Everything in something else is beer (a nut in its shell, for example, is obviously representative of beer in the bottle). Everything that moves is beer, particularly quick-moving, jerky things, which are reminiscent of "hops." In fact, we may say that the child cannot dreams of anything but beer. There is no dream possible but beer...
Here is an example. The patient was Miss X. She came to us in great trouble. "My nerves are all gone to pieces." she said, "I want you to help me." Professor Bosh questioned her, and kept her under observation. He discovered that before going to bed she was in the habit of brushing her hair. "The brush was an amber color, and was transparent. The patient would raise it slowly to her lips, pause and then proceed to brush her hair. This was quite unconscious. In reply to my questions it transpired that several years before she had been forbidden by the family doctor to drink anything alcoholic. She had been in the habit of taking a glass of ale every night at supper." Professor Bosh explained this to her, and at once convinced her of its truth. She submitted herself to treatment, and was soon perfectly well and strong.
Unlike the extreme Freudianism, Christianity is not so narrow minded as to make sex the most important instinct of life or to attribute mental disorders exclusively to its repression. If the repression of its errant and unlawful impulses is the cause of mental abnormalities, why is it that those who are most abandoned to carnal license are the most abnormal, while those who believe in religion and morality are the most normal? Using a more comprehensive and saner outlook on life, Christianity traces, not one, but several roots of mental disorders in the nonphysical and moral realm. There is sex, to be sure; but there are also six other possible causes - pride, covetousness, anger, envy, gluttony, and sloth.
In order to understand the proper role of the sex instinct, consider the true nature of man. Every human is looking for perfection - constantly trying to transcend himself, to get out of himself, in some way to expand himself, to escape his self-limitations. There is a kind of holy impatience in us all. The "I" the "Me" in each of us feels limited; it craves for expansiveness; it finds the earth too small, even the stars too close; the possessed makes us hungry where most it satisfies. We want to be perfect; but we are only in a process of realization. Not being able to find peace within ourselves, we seek to atone for our limitations by extending ourselves in one of three directions - through the mind, through the body, or through things.
Page 1
If you wish to donate. Thank You. God bless.
By bank transfer/cheque deposit:
Name: Alex Chan Kok Wah
Bank: Public Bank Berhad account no: 4076577113
Country: Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Sunday, May 24, 2009
I have through years of reading, pondering, reflecting and contemplating, the 3 things that last; FAITH . HOPE . LOVE and I would like to made available my sharing from the many thinkers, authors, scholars and theologians whose ideas and thoughts I have borrowed. God be with them always. Amen!
I STILL HAVE MANY THINGS TO SAY TO YOU BUT THEY WOULD BE TOO MUCH FOR YOU NOW. BUT WHEN THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH COMES, HE WILL LEAD YOU TO THE COMPLETE TRUTH, SINCE HE WILL NOT BE SPEAKING AS FROM HIMSELF, BUT WILL SAY ONLY WHAT HE HAS LEARNT; AND HE WILL TELL YOU OF THE THINGS TO COME.
HE WILL GLORIFY ME, SINCE ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. EVERYTHING THE FATHER HAS IS MINE; THAT IS WHY I SAID: ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. - JOHN 16:12-15 -
Tuesday, July 9, 2013
The art of writing was practiced in the ancient world as early as 4000 B.C. This art developed through a number of stages before the use of a written alphabet emerged. Early writing was done in "Hieroglyphics" or the use of symbols and pictures to represent words. Archaeological discoveries of the last century or so have revolutionized our knowledge of ancient writing methods and the materials that were used.
Early inscriptions, although fragmentary and damaged, were discovered in temple ruins at Serabit in the Sinaitic Peninsula. These were dated at about 1500 B.C. The text was the work of laborers who had been employed to work an Egyptian turquoise mine. Many of the signs used in this writing shows a distinct resemblance to Egyptian picture writing. The sign are too few in number to serve as an alphabet.
Later excavations at 'Gezer' and 'Shechem' yielded "Potsherds" belonging to the same period or slightly earlier. Digging at Lachish produced inscriptions on a dagger blade. The writing had many of the same letters that were discovered at Serabit in the Sinai Peninsula. Four pieces of pottery found at Lachish, dated at about 1250 B.C. bore the same kind of writing. From Byblos ( Gebal ) on the coast north of Beirut came a number of inscriptions about kings who lived there from the thirteenth to the ninth centuries B.C.
All this evidence indicates that alphabetic writing with a recognizable continuous script, was in use in and near Palestine at about the same time that Egyptian hieroglyphics and Babylonian cuneiform were also being used.
A calender from the archaeological dig at Gezer is the oldest important Israelite document as well as the earliest completely intelligible text found on Palestinian soil. It presents a "farmer's almanac" of agricultural operations by months. This calender has been dated as early as the tenth century B.C. Another celebrated discovery was the 'Moabite Stone.' When it was found (1868) it was earliest known example of the Phoenicians alphabetic script. This small column of black basalt records the story of Mesha's war against the kings of Israel and Judah. It is the only surviving record of the ancient Moabites and their kingdoms.
The Siloam Inscription, carved on the tunnel connecting the Virgin's Spring with the Pool of Siloam in Jerusalem, comes from the reign of king Hezekiah of Judah ( about 700 B.C. Discovered in 1880, it describes the successful junction made when opposite ends of the work were joined.
Finally, there are the Lachish Letters discovered in 1935 and 1938. These were potsherds containing part of the military correspondence between the governor of Lachish and an officer of a Hebrew outpost when Babylon's army was overrunning the ancient world in 587-586 B.C.
The Canaanite or Old Semitic ( Phoenician ) alphabet was widely used among the countries between the Nile and the Euphrates Rivers. The model on which it was built probably came from Egypt. The Phoenicians exploited and perfected this alphabet, then carried it to Greece in their shipping and trading activities.
Several significant archaeological finds have yielded valuable information about ancient writing and how it developed.
Ras Shamra is a site on the coast of northwest Syria opposite Cyprus. The site was identified as the ancient city of Ugarit, a Phoenician city which served as a gateway of commerce between Asia and the Mediterranean lands as early as about 2000 B.C. Among its buildings was an extensive library of clay tablets of cuneiform writing. The building also included a writing school for scribes. The language of most of the texts found was similar to the Phoenician language.
Several items found at this site were dictionaries and lexicons, including some written in Sumerian-Babylon ( Akkadian ) and Hurrian ( Horite ) vocabularies. In that day Sumerian was used only by scholars; Babylonian was the diplomatic and commercial language. Inscriptions in Egyptian hieroglyphics, Hittite and Cypriot were also discovered. Commercial, medical, legal, diplomatic, and private documents were discovered, although the greatest part of the find consisted of religious writings.
The religious tablets were written in an alphabetic script of 29 or 30 letters. The words are written from left to right. This evidence shows the Ugaritic alphabet was invented by people who were aware of the Phoenician or a similar alphabetic system. They adapted this system into an alphabet of their own.
The Dead Sea Scrolls are the greatest archaeological discovery about the text of the Sacred Scripture/Holy Bible ever made. They have been dated at about two centuries before Christ. The find included two scrolls of prophet Isaiah, the Manual of Discipline of the Essene community, the prophet Habakkuk Commentary, The War Scroll, Thanksgiving Psalms, and two manuscripts of prophet Daniel. Nearby finds yielded a palimpsest written in Phoenician script, fragments of the Minor Prophets, phylacteries, and parts of two letters from the Jewish revolutionary Simon Bar Kochba. In addition a copper scroll and thousands of manuscript fragments were found. Their important includes a firsthand view of what a Hebrew scroll looked like at the beginning of the Christian era.
An entire library of papyrus Nag Hammadi Documents was accidentally discovered by peasants north of Luxor, Egypt, in 1946. These manuscripts were written in the Sahidic dialect of the Coptic language. The leather covers in which they were wrapped probably account for their excellent preservation. The find included 13 copies with nearly 1,00 pages. They have been dated in the third and fourth centuries A.D.
Originally produced by a sect known as the 'Gnostic' these manuscripts represent a wide variety of literature, including a number of otherwise unrecorded sayings of Jesus Christ. Many quotations are genuinely biblical. These writings shows familiarity with the New Testament, but they contain little of abiding spiritual or moral value. Their understanding of the person and work of Jesus Christ is not in agreement with the teaching of the New Testament.
A group of tablets discovered in 1974-1977 represents the royal archives in a civilization that flourised in northwestern Syria around 2500 B.C. Seventy-five percent of their contents deal with economic and administrative matters. This culture rivaled those of Egypt and Summer during the same period. The language was an early form of Canaanite belonging to the same linguistic branch as Hebrew. They used the characters of Sumerian but wrote in an old Phoenician language. This discovery has helped Old Testament scholars determine the meaning of certain words in the Hebrew texts of the Old Testament.
These tablets also show that the world of the 14th century B.C. was not primitive but highly urbanized, cosmopolitan, and literate. They also throw a great deal of light on the languages of both the Old Testament and New Testament. The language is closer to Hebrew than Phoenician or Ugaritic.
Study of all these ancient writings reinforces our confidence in the history and culture of the Old Testament. For example, the Eblaite tablets support the list of the five cities of the plain in Genesis 14 which had previously been questioned by some scholars.
Writing materials refers to an ancient surfaces, such as animal skins and stone, on which information was recorded in ancient times. The earliest writing materials were clay tablets or stone. - Ex. 32:16; Job 19:23-24 - An engraving tool or a chisel was used to write on stone, bricks, and tablets. - Is. 8:1 - A reed pen - 3John 13 - a metal pen or a brush-like tool was used to writ on softer materials. - Job 19:24; Jer. 17:1 -
The ink used was black, sometimes of metallic content. Usually it was made of soot, mixed with oil and gum of balsam. This permitted erasure by a water bearing sponge. Ink-horn were carried by scribes. Ink-well discovered at Qumran were of brass and earthenware.
Many materials were used through-out the ancient world to receive writing - stone, ivory, leaves, bark, wood, metals, baked clay, wax, and potsherds. But the three main materials on which the text of the Sacred Scripture/Holy Bible was written were skins, papyrus, and vellum. Prepared skins were used to record state documents as early as 3000 B.C. The ancient Persians used leather as a writing material; so did the Assyrians in the eighth century B.C. Prophet Jeremiah's scroll, cut up by king Jehoiakim, was leather. - Jer. 36:23 -
Papyrus met the needs of the Greco-Roman world for nearly a thousand years. The Phoenicians used Egyptian papyrus in the tenth century B.C. It was easily obtained, relatively inexpensive, and durable. Unfortunately, it becomes brittle with age. The first papyrus document, an employee list, was not found until 1778. The bulk of papyrus discoveries took place near the turn of this century. Some papyrus finds in 'Codex' form are as much as 59 sheets before being folded.
Vellum ( parchment ) is a material prepared from the skin of cattle, sheep, goats, and sometimes deer. However, papyrus was the preferred material for books until vellum replaced it in the fourth century A.D. - 2Tim. 4:13 -
Christians Scriptures in Greek were written in capital letters, separately formed often without spaces between words. These were called uncial letters. The word uncial probably means "inch high" In the ninth century A.D. a new style known as miniscule or cursive, came into general use. The letters were smaller and often more quickly formed than the uncial characters. The Sacred Scripture/Holy Bible continued to be reproduced in this smaller script until the invention of printing.
Page 1
If you wish to donate. Thank You. God bless.
By bank transfer/cheque deposit:
Name: Alex Chan Kok Wah
Bank: Public Bank Berhad account no: 4076577113
Country: Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Sunday, May 24, 2009
I have through years of reading, pondering, reflecting and contemplating, the 3 things that last; FAITH . HOPE . LOVE and I would like to made available my sharing from the many thinkers, authors, scholars and theologians whose ideas and thoughts I have borrowed. God be with them always. Amen!
I STILL HAVE MANY THINGS TO SAY TO YOU BUT THEY WOULD BE TOO MUCH FOR YOU NOW. BUT WHEN THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH COMES, HE WILL LEAD YOU TO THE COMPLETE TRUTH, SINCE HE WILL NOT BE SPEAKING AS FROM HIMSELF, BUT WILL SAY ONLY WHAT HE HAS LEARNT; AND HE WILL TELL YOU OF THE THINGS TO COME.
HE WILL GLORIFY ME, SINCE ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. EVERYTHING THE FATHER HAS IS MINE; THAT IS WHY I SAID: ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. - JOHN 16:12-15 -
Early inscriptions, although fragmentary and damaged, were discovered in temple ruins at Serabit in the Sinaitic Peninsula. These were dated at about 1500 B.C. The text was the work of laborers who had been employed to work an Egyptian turquoise mine. Many of the signs used in this writing shows a distinct resemblance to Egyptian picture writing. The sign are too few in number to serve as an alphabet.
Later excavations at 'Gezer' and 'Shechem' yielded "Potsherds" belonging to the same period or slightly earlier. Digging at Lachish produced inscriptions on a dagger blade. The writing had many of the same letters that were discovered at Serabit in the Sinai Peninsula. Four pieces of pottery found at Lachish, dated at about 1250 B.C. bore the same kind of writing. From Byblos ( Gebal ) on the coast north of Beirut came a number of inscriptions about kings who lived there from the thirteenth to the ninth centuries B.C.
All this evidence indicates that alphabetic writing with a recognizable continuous script, was in use in and near Palestine at about the same time that Egyptian hieroglyphics and Babylonian cuneiform were also being used.
A calender from the archaeological dig at Gezer is the oldest important Israelite document as well as the earliest completely intelligible text found on Palestinian soil. It presents a "farmer's almanac" of agricultural operations by months. This calender has been dated as early as the tenth century B.C. Another celebrated discovery was the 'Moabite Stone.' When it was found (1868) it was earliest known example of the Phoenicians alphabetic script. This small column of black basalt records the story of Mesha's war against the kings of Israel and Judah. It is the only surviving record of the ancient Moabites and their kingdoms.
The Siloam Inscription, carved on the tunnel connecting the Virgin's Spring with the Pool of Siloam in Jerusalem, comes from the reign of king Hezekiah of Judah ( about 700 B.C. Discovered in 1880, it describes the successful junction made when opposite ends of the work were joined.
Finally, there are the Lachish Letters discovered in 1935 and 1938. These were potsherds containing part of the military correspondence between the governor of Lachish and an officer of a Hebrew outpost when Babylon's army was overrunning the ancient world in 587-586 B.C.
The Canaanite or Old Semitic ( Phoenician ) alphabet was widely used among the countries between the Nile and the Euphrates Rivers. The model on which it was built probably came from Egypt. The Phoenicians exploited and perfected this alphabet, then carried it to Greece in their shipping and trading activities.
Several significant archaeological finds have yielded valuable information about ancient writing and how it developed.
Ras Shamra is a site on the coast of northwest Syria opposite Cyprus. The site was identified as the ancient city of Ugarit, a Phoenician city which served as a gateway of commerce between Asia and the Mediterranean lands as early as about 2000 B.C. Among its buildings was an extensive library of clay tablets of cuneiform writing. The building also included a writing school for scribes. The language of most of the texts found was similar to the Phoenician language.
Several items found at this site were dictionaries and lexicons, including some written in Sumerian-Babylon ( Akkadian ) and Hurrian ( Horite ) vocabularies. In that day Sumerian was used only by scholars; Babylonian was the diplomatic and commercial language. Inscriptions in Egyptian hieroglyphics, Hittite and Cypriot were also discovered. Commercial, medical, legal, diplomatic, and private documents were discovered, although the greatest part of the find consisted of religious writings.
The religious tablets were written in an alphabetic script of 29 or 30 letters. The words are written from left to right. This evidence shows the Ugaritic alphabet was invented by people who were aware of the Phoenician or a similar alphabetic system. They adapted this system into an alphabet of their own.
The Dead Sea Scrolls are the greatest archaeological discovery about the text of the Sacred Scripture/Holy Bible ever made. They have been dated at about two centuries before Christ. The find included two scrolls of prophet Isaiah, the Manual of Discipline of the Essene community, the prophet Habakkuk Commentary, The War Scroll, Thanksgiving Psalms, and two manuscripts of prophet Daniel. Nearby finds yielded a palimpsest written in Phoenician script, fragments of the Minor Prophets, phylacteries, and parts of two letters from the Jewish revolutionary Simon Bar Kochba. In addition a copper scroll and thousands of manuscript fragments were found. Their important includes a firsthand view of what a Hebrew scroll looked like at the beginning of the Christian era.
An entire library of papyrus Nag Hammadi Documents was accidentally discovered by peasants north of Luxor, Egypt, in 1946. These manuscripts were written in the Sahidic dialect of the Coptic language. The leather covers in which they were wrapped probably account for their excellent preservation. The find included 13 copies with nearly 1,00 pages. They have been dated in the third and fourth centuries A.D.
Originally produced by a sect known as the 'Gnostic' these manuscripts represent a wide variety of literature, including a number of otherwise unrecorded sayings of Jesus Christ. Many quotations are genuinely biblical. These writings shows familiarity with the New Testament, but they contain little of abiding spiritual or moral value. Their understanding of the person and work of Jesus Christ is not in agreement with the teaching of the New Testament.
A group of tablets discovered in 1974-1977 represents the royal archives in a civilization that flourised in northwestern Syria around 2500 B.C. Seventy-five percent of their contents deal with economic and administrative matters. This culture rivaled those of Egypt and Summer during the same period. The language was an early form of Canaanite belonging to the same linguistic branch as Hebrew. They used the characters of Sumerian but wrote in an old Phoenician language. This discovery has helped Old Testament scholars determine the meaning of certain words in the Hebrew texts of the Old Testament.
These tablets also show that the world of the 14th century B.C. was not primitive but highly urbanized, cosmopolitan, and literate. They also throw a great deal of light on the languages of both the Old Testament and New Testament. The language is closer to Hebrew than Phoenician or Ugaritic.
Study of all these ancient writings reinforces our confidence in the history and culture of the Old Testament. For example, the Eblaite tablets support the list of the five cities of the plain in Genesis 14 which had previously been questioned by some scholars.
Writing materials refers to an ancient surfaces, such as animal skins and stone, on which information was recorded in ancient times. The earliest writing materials were clay tablets or stone. - Ex. 32:16; Job 19:23-24 - An engraving tool or a chisel was used to write on stone, bricks, and tablets. - Is. 8:1 - A reed pen - 3John 13 - a metal pen or a brush-like tool was used to writ on softer materials. - Job 19:24; Jer. 17:1 -
The ink used was black, sometimes of metallic content. Usually it was made of soot, mixed with oil and gum of balsam. This permitted erasure by a water bearing sponge. Ink-horn were carried by scribes. Ink-well discovered at Qumran were of brass and earthenware.
Many materials were used through-out the ancient world to receive writing - stone, ivory, leaves, bark, wood, metals, baked clay, wax, and potsherds. But the three main materials on which the text of the Sacred Scripture/Holy Bible was written were skins, papyrus, and vellum. Prepared skins were used to record state documents as early as 3000 B.C. The ancient Persians used leather as a writing material; so did the Assyrians in the eighth century B.C. Prophet Jeremiah's scroll, cut up by king Jehoiakim, was leather. - Jer. 36:23 -
Papyrus met the needs of the Greco-Roman world for nearly a thousand years. The Phoenicians used Egyptian papyrus in the tenth century B.C. It was easily obtained, relatively inexpensive, and durable. Unfortunately, it becomes brittle with age. The first papyrus document, an employee list, was not found until 1778. The bulk of papyrus discoveries took place near the turn of this century. Some papyrus finds in 'Codex' form are as much as 59 sheets before being folded.
Vellum ( parchment ) is a material prepared from the skin of cattle, sheep, goats, and sometimes deer. However, papyrus was the preferred material for books until vellum replaced it in the fourth century A.D. - 2Tim. 4:13 -
Christians Scriptures in Greek were written in capital letters, separately formed often without spaces between words. These were called uncial letters. The word uncial probably means "inch high" In the ninth century A.D. a new style known as miniscule or cursive, came into general use. The letters were smaller and often more quickly formed than the uncial characters. The Sacred Scripture/Holy Bible continued to be reproduced in this smaller script until the invention of printing.
Page 1
If you wish to donate. Thank You. God bless.
By bank transfer/cheque deposit:
Name: Alex Chan Kok Wah
Bank: Public Bank Berhad account no: 4076577113
Country: Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Sunday, May 24, 2009
I have through years of reading, pondering, reflecting and contemplating, the 3 things that last; FAITH . HOPE . LOVE and I would like to made available my sharing from the many thinkers, authors, scholars and theologians whose ideas and thoughts I have borrowed. God be with them always. Amen!
I STILL HAVE MANY THINGS TO SAY TO YOU BUT THEY WOULD BE TOO MUCH FOR YOU NOW. BUT WHEN THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH COMES, HE WILL LEAD YOU TO THE COMPLETE TRUTH, SINCE HE WILL NOT BE SPEAKING AS FROM HIMSELF, BUT WILL SAY ONLY WHAT HE HAS LEARNT; AND HE WILL TELL YOU OF THE THINGS TO COME.
HE WILL GLORIFY ME, SINCE ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. EVERYTHING THE FATHER HAS IS MINE; THAT IS WHY I SAID: ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. - JOHN 16:12-15 -
Monday, July 1, 2013
Although precedents survive from the beginning of the fourteenth century, it was during the fifteenth century that the rosary became established in the form in which it is most widely used today. Even the prayer the 'Hail Mary' was not used in its modern form until that time, having preciously consisted only of the scriptural greetings: 'Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb.' The name most strongly associated with the establishment and promotion of the modern rosary, that is, the sequence of 150 'Hail Mary' beads, with 15 intervening 'Our Fathers' and the corresponding pattern of three joyful, three sorrowful and three glorious mysteries for meditation, is that of the Dominician Alan de la Roche (Alanus de Rupe, 1428-1474)
It is from him that we first learn the story of Our Lady giving the rosary to Saint Dominic, and it may be that Alan wrote the story of the Virgin's milk in imitation of the similar story concerning Saint Bernard. Unfortunately, another point of dubious historical accuracy concerns the conversion of the Albigensians, since this came about not so much through the preaching of the friars as through military force. Yet Alan had struck a winner: through the promotion of the Dominicians, and later of the Jesuits, the modern rosary became hugely popular and quickly supplanted other techniques of bead meditation in the Catholic world.
At a later date, the rosary was associated with another conflict - also partly religious in character. In 1571, the extraordinary victory of European Christians over Ottoman Turks at the battle of Lepanto was attributed by Catholics to the power of the rosary, since large number of people had recited rosaries through the streets of Rome, in petition for the success of the European fleet, before the battle was fought. The feast of Our Lady of the Rosary is celebrated on the anniversary of the battle, 7th October.
An image that is sometimes found in Church wall-painting of the late Middle Ages is that which art historians term the Marian psychostasis. This shows Saint Michael holding the balances in which souls are weighed for their good and evil deeds on the Day of Judgement. In one pan of the scales is a soul being weighed and around the other pan there are devils trying to pull it down.
If the souls weighs more heavily, then that indicates that it is righteous, and therefore will be saved. But if the soul is sinful, then the devils will pull down their scale-pan and the souls will be damned. The Virgin Mary, however, is throwing weights, or, more often, a string of rosary beads, into the pan on the soul's side, thereby ensuring the soul's salvation. Thus the Virgin's intercession is associated directly with the rosary, and images of this kind may well have been promoted by rosary confraternities association of lat people who met to pray the rosary, and in particular to pray for the faithful departed.
Perhaps, the popularity of the modern rosary derives in part from the particular sequence of the mysteries. The first five concern a woman who gives birth for the salvation of the world; the second five concern a man, the son whom she has borne, who dies for the salvation of the world; and the third group concerns the reunion of man and woman in the accomplishment of that salvation. The balancing of man and woman and of birth and death, together with the reuniting of the man and the woman in their transcendence of birth and death, is a satisfying pattern.
Yet even since the general establishment of the modern rosary, people have explored other ways of using the beads - a sign that the tradition has remained vibrant. Rev, Fr, Francis Borgia, for example, the third general of the Society of Jesus, in 1613 wrote a set of meditations that begins with recollection of one's sins, and then moves on to meditation on the Immaculate Conception, before continuing with other mysteries of the lives of Our Lady and Our Lord.
Another variation in rosary meditation is that promoted by devotees of Our Lady of Fatima. This variation consists in the addition of the prayer 'O my Jesus' after the 'Glory be' at the end of each decade. Indeed, promotion of the rosary has come to be a mainstay of the devotions associated with modern Marian apparitions, and Medjugorje prayer groups, for example, make it an important feature of their meetings, again adding a distinctive touch of their own, in this case by reciting the prayers very slowly in order to allow more time for meditation.
Dolour rosaries, rosary rings (to wear on the finger) and bracelets, and strings of ten Pater Noster beads are again becoming widely available which suggests that bead meditation is currently alive and well.
Number tend to acquire a certain significance of their own. The modern rosary has three sets of mysteries - three being the number of the Blessed Trinity - and five mysteries in each set - five being noted supremely as the number of Our Lord's precious wounds, although it is also a 'natural; number in the sense that it is the number of fingers on a human hand. In the fourteenth-century poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Sir Gawain is solemnly equipped to set out on his mission to meet the Green Knight in the Green Chapel at New Year. On his shield is painted a gold pentacle on a red ground. The pentacle is the five-pointed star made of a single continuous line.
The author explains the symbolism of the pentacle at some length. It was devised by king Solomon and is called 'the endless knot.' This should certainly be read not just as a description of its physical appearance, but as indicating that it is a symbol of eternity - that which has no point of beginning or end: and one might understand the ring of rosary beads in a similar manner. Among the several points signified by the five points of the pentacle, the author of the medieval poem mentions Gawain's trust in the five wounds of Christ and the five Joys of Our Lady, both of which occur in different ways in rosary meditation. The image of Our Lady is painted on the inside of Gawain's shield, so that he might look upon it to give him heart. This constant reminder or evocation of Mar's presence again has a certain correspondence to the repetition of the 'Hail Mary' in rosary recitation.
The symbol of the rose is another aspect of bead meditation that has been handed down from the Middle Ages. The Tibetan rosary is called a mala which means 'garland' and likewise, the word 'rosary' means 'rose garland' or 'rose garden'. The nursery rhyme 'Ring-a-ring-a-roses' may have its ancestry in a song about the rosary. The rose is a very rich symbol, and doubtless its full significance can be grasped only through meditation rather than explanation. The following, therefore, are merely pointers for further reflection.
When you look at a rose window, such as that in Durham Cathedral or in the Gothic cathedrals of France, you see layers and layers of stained-glass petals radiating around a central image. If you start at the outermost lights, you will usually find saints closer to the Lord - are the saints or angels represented the successive layers. When you come to the centre, there is usually an image of Christ or the Virgin and Child. In the East Rose or Laon Cathedral, the central image is of the Virgin and Child enthroned, with the Virgin holding up a rose in her right hand. When the Virgin in Majesty holds a flower in her right hand, this is usually taken to be a rod of Jesse (Isaiah 11:1) understood typologically: she herself is the shoot, and Christ is the flower.
Yet when we look through the layers of rose petals and come at the heart of the flower to the Virgin and Child raising a rose to our gaze, we might sense that something even more mysteries is at work here. It is as though the rose that she holds up to the viewer is an initiatory or revelatory symbol which they will comprehend only when they have attained a sufficient degree of spiritual maturity and understanding.
In Catholic tradition, Mary herself is the Mystic Rose par excellence. She is the noblest flower at whose centre is contained the most precious jewel in the universe, Christ himself. As it says in the English carol:
There is no rose of such virtue
As is the rose that bare Jesus.
Alleluia.
For in that rose contained was
Heaven and earth in little space:
Res miranda.
Because the Blessed Virgin received the Word of God in her womb, because she was the rose who bore God at the very centre of her being, it is possible for each human person to receive that Word and be transformed by it, and so come to recognize God at the heart of all created things. This is the work which rosary meditation is designed to help the meditator accomplish.
The number of different prayers used in the standard Catholic rosary, together with the number of different subjects for meditation, mean that, whatever method is used, it is an exceptionally complicated technique. There are some people who prefer to repeat one prayer only and to focus on one subject for meditation.This subject may be one no the standard mysteries, or some other scriptural or sacred scene, or it may be more akin to that striving towards God which is described most famously in the Cloud of Unknowing. An individual devotee may try different forms of meditation to discover what is most helpful.
Some of the early books of rosary meditations consist of a series of pictures of the mysteries, with the intention that the reader look at the image while passing the beads through the fingers and reciting the prayers. For many people, this is probably a very helpful means of meditation, and in the 1940s Maisie Ward produced a book containing a sequence of prints of paintings by Fra Angelico for this purpose. But rosarians can compile their own collection of favourite images for meditation.
Another method of rosary meditation is to imagine the scene and the drama of each mystery in detail. This is helpful for those who have the kind of visual imagination that can conjure up such a 'stage set' and many Ignatian meditators will fall into this category. For others, it is more helpful to focus on a single image, word or sensation which draws them into the particular mystery.
Of course, even among devout Catholics with a great devotion to the Virgin Mary, there are those for whom bead meditation has little to offer. Having said this, one should not ignore the fact that, for most people, to become at all expert in the technique of rosary meditation demands a good deal of practice. It is like learning a new language or cultivating a new friendship: you really have to devote time and effort to it.
And what about the beads themselves? Some people feel drawn to beads that are very simple - perhaps made of wood. Others like beads that sparkle or look precious (or, indeed, really are precious!) One can find beads carved or moulded in the shape of stylized roses, or made from crushed rose petals which retain their scent. Traditionally, you should not buy your own rosary, but should be given it or find it. For the devout person, a rosary is not only a lovely thing to receive, but also to give. When Cretan craftsmen of 3000 BC made their beads of precious stoned and gold, those who used the beads must have understood that the beauty of the material world gave them an inkling of heaven. And so it remains with the modern rosary and its mysteries.
BY SARAH JANE BOSS
Page 2
By bank transfer/cheque deposit:
Name: Alex Chan Kok Wah
Bank: Public Bank Berhad account no: 4076577113
Country: Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Sunday, May 24, 2009
I have through years of reading, pondering, reflecting and contemplating, the 3 things that last; FAITH . HOPE . LOVE and I would like to made available my sharing from the many thinkers, authors, scholars and theologians whose ideas and thoughts I have borrowed. God be with them always. Amen!
I STILL HAVE MANY THINGS TO SAY TO YOU BUT THEY WOULD BE TOO MUCH FOR YOU NOW. BUT WHEN THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH COMES, HE WILL LEAD YOU TO THE COMPLETE TRUTH, SINCE HE WILL NOT BE SPEAKING AS FROM HIMSELF, BUT WILL SAY ONLY WHAT HE HAS LEARNT; AND HE WILL TELL YOU OF THE THINGS TO COME.
It is from him that we first learn the story of Our Lady giving the rosary to Saint Dominic, and it may be that Alan wrote the story of the Virgin's milk in imitation of the similar story concerning Saint Bernard. Unfortunately, another point of dubious historical accuracy concerns the conversion of the Albigensians, since this came about not so much through the preaching of the friars as through military force. Yet Alan had struck a winner: through the promotion of the Dominicians, and later of the Jesuits, the modern rosary became hugely popular and quickly supplanted other techniques of bead meditation in the Catholic world.
At a later date, the rosary was associated with another conflict - also partly religious in character. In 1571, the extraordinary victory of European Christians over Ottoman Turks at the battle of Lepanto was attributed by Catholics to the power of the rosary, since large number of people had recited rosaries through the streets of Rome, in petition for the success of the European fleet, before the battle was fought. The feast of Our Lady of the Rosary is celebrated on the anniversary of the battle, 7th October.
An image that is sometimes found in Church wall-painting of the late Middle Ages is that which art historians term the Marian psychostasis. This shows Saint Michael holding the balances in which souls are weighed for their good and evil deeds on the Day of Judgement. In one pan of the scales is a soul being weighed and around the other pan there are devils trying to pull it down.
If the souls weighs more heavily, then that indicates that it is righteous, and therefore will be saved. But if the soul is sinful, then the devils will pull down their scale-pan and the souls will be damned. The Virgin Mary, however, is throwing weights, or, more often, a string of rosary beads, into the pan on the soul's side, thereby ensuring the soul's salvation. Thus the Virgin's intercession is associated directly with the rosary, and images of this kind may well have been promoted by rosary confraternities association of lat people who met to pray the rosary, and in particular to pray for the faithful departed.
Perhaps, the popularity of the modern rosary derives in part from the particular sequence of the mysteries. The first five concern a woman who gives birth for the salvation of the world; the second five concern a man, the son whom she has borne, who dies for the salvation of the world; and the third group concerns the reunion of man and woman in the accomplishment of that salvation. The balancing of man and woman and of birth and death, together with the reuniting of the man and the woman in their transcendence of birth and death, is a satisfying pattern.
Yet even since the general establishment of the modern rosary, people have explored other ways of using the beads - a sign that the tradition has remained vibrant. Rev, Fr, Francis Borgia, for example, the third general of the Society of Jesus, in 1613 wrote a set of meditations that begins with recollection of one's sins, and then moves on to meditation on the Immaculate Conception, before continuing with other mysteries of the lives of Our Lady and Our Lord.
Another variation in rosary meditation is that promoted by devotees of Our Lady of Fatima. This variation consists in the addition of the prayer 'O my Jesus' after the 'Glory be' at the end of each decade. Indeed, promotion of the rosary has come to be a mainstay of the devotions associated with modern Marian apparitions, and Medjugorje prayer groups, for example, make it an important feature of their meetings, again adding a distinctive touch of their own, in this case by reciting the prayers very slowly in order to allow more time for meditation.
Dolour rosaries, rosary rings (to wear on the finger) and bracelets, and strings of ten Pater Noster beads are again becoming widely available which suggests that bead meditation is currently alive and well.
Number tend to acquire a certain significance of their own. The modern rosary has three sets of mysteries - three being the number of the Blessed Trinity - and five mysteries in each set - five being noted supremely as the number of Our Lord's precious wounds, although it is also a 'natural; number in the sense that it is the number of fingers on a human hand. In the fourteenth-century poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Sir Gawain is solemnly equipped to set out on his mission to meet the Green Knight in the Green Chapel at New Year. On his shield is painted a gold pentacle on a red ground. The pentacle is the five-pointed star made of a single continuous line.
The author explains the symbolism of the pentacle at some length. It was devised by king Solomon and is called 'the endless knot.' This should certainly be read not just as a description of its physical appearance, but as indicating that it is a symbol of eternity - that which has no point of beginning or end: and one might understand the ring of rosary beads in a similar manner. Among the several points signified by the five points of the pentacle, the author of the medieval poem mentions Gawain's trust in the five wounds of Christ and the five Joys of Our Lady, both of which occur in different ways in rosary meditation. The image of Our Lady is painted on the inside of Gawain's shield, so that he might look upon it to give him heart. This constant reminder or evocation of Mar's presence again has a certain correspondence to the repetition of the 'Hail Mary' in rosary recitation.
The symbol of the rose is another aspect of bead meditation that has been handed down from the Middle Ages. The Tibetan rosary is called a mala which means 'garland' and likewise, the word 'rosary' means 'rose garland' or 'rose garden'. The nursery rhyme 'Ring-a-ring-a-roses' may have its ancestry in a song about the rosary. The rose is a very rich symbol, and doubtless its full significance can be grasped only through meditation rather than explanation. The following, therefore, are merely pointers for further reflection.
When you look at a rose window, such as that in Durham Cathedral or in the Gothic cathedrals of France, you see layers and layers of stained-glass petals radiating around a central image. If you start at the outermost lights, you will usually find saints closer to the Lord - are the saints or angels represented the successive layers. When you come to the centre, there is usually an image of Christ or the Virgin and Child. In the East Rose or Laon Cathedral, the central image is of the Virgin and Child enthroned, with the Virgin holding up a rose in her right hand. When the Virgin in Majesty holds a flower in her right hand, this is usually taken to be a rod of Jesse (Isaiah 11:1) understood typologically: she herself is the shoot, and Christ is the flower.
Yet when we look through the layers of rose petals and come at the heart of the flower to the Virgin and Child raising a rose to our gaze, we might sense that something even more mysteries is at work here. It is as though the rose that she holds up to the viewer is an initiatory or revelatory symbol which they will comprehend only when they have attained a sufficient degree of spiritual maturity and understanding.
In Catholic tradition, Mary herself is the Mystic Rose par excellence. She is the noblest flower at whose centre is contained the most precious jewel in the universe, Christ himself. As it says in the English carol:
There is no rose of such virtue
As is the rose that bare Jesus.
Alleluia.
For in that rose contained was
Heaven and earth in little space:
Res miranda.
Because the Blessed Virgin received the Word of God in her womb, because she was the rose who bore God at the very centre of her being, it is possible for each human person to receive that Word and be transformed by it, and so come to recognize God at the heart of all created things. This is the work which rosary meditation is designed to help the meditator accomplish.
The number of different prayers used in the standard Catholic rosary, together with the number of different subjects for meditation, mean that, whatever method is used, it is an exceptionally complicated technique. There are some people who prefer to repeat one prayer only and to focus on one subject for meditation.This subject may be one no the standard mysteries, or some other scriptural or sacred scene, or it may be more akin to that striving towards God which is described most famously in the Cloud of Unknowing. An individual devotee may try different forms of meditation to discover what is most helpful.
Some of the early books of rosary meditations consist of a series of pictures of the mysteries, with the intention that the reader look at the image while passing the beads through the fingers and reciting the prayers. For many people, this is probably a very helpful means of meditation, and in the 1940s Maisie Ward produced a book containing a sequence of prints of paintings by Fra Angelico for this purpose. But rosarians can compile their own collection of favourite images for meditation.
Another method of rosary meditation is to imagine the scene and the drama of each mystery in detail. This is helpful for those who have the kind of visual imagination that can conjure up such a 'stage set' and many Ignatian meditators will fall into this category. For others, it is more helpful to focus on a single image, word or sensation which draws them into the particular mystery.
Of course, even among devout Catholics with a great devotion to the Virgin Mary, there are those for whom bead meditation has little to offer. Having said this, one should not ignore the fact that, for most people, to become at all expert in the technique of rosary meditation demands a good deal of practice. It is like learning a new language or cultivating a new friendship: you really have to devote time and effort to it.
And what about the beads themselves? Some people feel drawn to beads that are very simple - perhaps made of wood. Others like beads that sparkle or look precious (or, indeed, really are precious!) One can find beads carved or moulded in the shape of stylized roses, or made from crushed rose petals which retain their scent. Traditionally, you should not buy your own rosary, but should be given it or find it. For the devout person, a rosary is not only a lovely thing to receive, but also to give. When Cretan craftsmen of 3000 BC made their beads of precious stoned and gold, those who used the beads must have understood that the beauty of the material world gave them an inkling of heaven. And so it remains with the modern rosary and its mysteries.
BY SARAH JANE BOSS
Page 2
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Sunday, May 24, 2009
I have through years of reading, pondering, reflecting and contemplating, the 3 things that last; FAITH . HOPE . LOVE and I would like to made available my sharing from the many thinkers, authors, scholars and theologians whose ideas and thoughts I have borrowed. God be with them always. Amen!
I STILL HAVE MANY THINGS TO SAY TO YOU BUT THEY WOULD BE TOO MUCH FOR YOU NOW. BUT WHEN THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH COMES, HE WILL LEAD YOU TO THE COMPLETE TRUTH, SINCE HE WILL NOT BE SPEAKING AS FROM HIMSELF, BUT WILL SAY ONLY WHAT HE HAS LEARNT; AND HE WILL TELL YOU OF THE THINGS TO COME.
HE WILL GLORIFY ME, SINCE ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. EVERYTHING THE FATHER HAS IS MINE; THAT IS WHY I SAID: ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. - JOHN 16:12-15 -
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