COFFEE BREAK 102

In her latest post, Presbyterian blogger Viola Larson has responded to my advocacy of the Perennial Philosophy as the common ground of all religions including Christianity.  My comment has been posted and here it is in its entirety:

I just wrote the following to my wonderful friend and colleague John Shuck:

Hi John.

Let me work for common ground. For some reason, it is important to me. Keep doing what you are doing.

Marcus Borg has it right. Those who take the Bible literally are OK unless they decide who is in and who is out. That's where he draws the line and I do too. But I am going to keep working on it because I do believe the main problem is language and not our core values. I do believe that even the early Christians knew what they were doing as they creatively worked with archetypes and symbols. But they did speak a different language in many ways and that makes it hard to embrace their doctrines. I do think we can and even must find common ground as Progressives allow the Church to have Literalists within our big tent and Conservatives allow people to receive the ancient creeds and scriptures as totally metaphor and sacrament (Borg's idea).

Thanks for all that you are doing.

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Viola,

There IS room in our big tent for John Shuck and me and you. We are all fighting for an authentic Christianity. I respect your right, even duty, to promote the beliefs and values you hold dear. I do believe there is far more common ground than you are willing to acknowledge at this time.

I embrace the human and divine Jesus as Lord and Savior. I am comfortable with that language. I also am comfortable with the belief of Orthodox Christianity through the ages that the Trinity is a Mystery. It simply can not be explained adequately with words. We do our best but sooner or later all of our attempts to explain the ways of God become incomplete and even possibly wrong due to our human limits which are indeed profound. Yes, we are sinners relying totally on the grace of God.

I appreciate your devotion to Jesus Christ and even your particular path. I will probably never be able to convince you of the validity of the Perennial Philosophy as the common ground of all religions. But I can ask you over and over again to allow me to "work on my salvation in fear and trembling" on a path which seems heretical to you but not to me, to allow me to be a member of the flock even if I differ a lot from you in my understanding of the cosmos and the way God works among us.

Please remember that Calvin was dealing with a political and cultural reality far different than our own. He lived in a world where Europeans considered all the rest of humanity savages and primitives. He lived in a world where even he could burn a "heretic" at the stake.

Working for the "peace, unity and purity" of the church is hard work. It takes huge doses of "energy, intelligence, imagination and love."

Thanks for your blogging. I love blogging. There's some common ground. Right?

You are a fantastic and wonderful person. God made you that way.

Love + John A Wilde + Whitesboro NY + The John A Wilde Blog"The spirit of liberty is the spirit of not being too sure you are right.” – Judge Learned Hand