Qualifications for this Thread:
- I regard the various sacred scriptures to be inspired works. Their purpose is to evoke experiences and to raise questions, rather than to be authoritative instruction manuals for settling differences of spiritual opinions.
- I am not a perennialist (ie. all religions lead to the same mountain top). I am a pluralist (Though all religions share common aspects, each religion makes a unique contribution to Man’s spiritual history).
- When I use the term ‘God’ or ‘gods’ or ‘goddess’ or ‘Lord’ or ‘Tao’, it’s merely a convenient placeholder. It stands in for the eternally nameless, divine will, fountainhead of manifestation, Providence. These too are mental constructs and gross approximations.
- SK = Soren Kierkegaard, (b.1813-d.1855), Danish philosopher.
“An architect builds a durable house with the aid of temporary scaffolding.” –St. Augustine
Civilizations are the impressive, complicated and bewildering scaffolding, machinamenta temporalia. The Leviathan (law, religion, social mores), as Hobbes put it, has been and still is a necessary framework. Augustine said that the house which eventually rises above it will be the City of God...