Chaitanya Jyothi Museum Opening, 2000
RAMANAM
In the Name of The Father, and of The Son and of The Holy Spirit, Amen.
Countrymen,
ORBIS NON SUFFICIT
SOLUS DEUS SUFFICIT
To the Ulema Pretenders And The Khalifah Pretender,
Abdullah The Hashemite, Who Convenes Them
Grace to you and Peace from God the Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus the Christ, Who with their Holy Spirit dwells among us full of truth, consciousness and bliss!
I have the honor of conveying the response of The Church to your beguiling impertinence titled A Common Word Between Us and You.
The answer is in three parts.
Part One: Nuts.
Part Two: Shut up and behave yourself.
Part Three: Although your intent is war and not the following blessings of civilization, hear that the sole basis of religious dialogue, national comity and personal tolerance is the structure of Universal Reason known in The Church, through the Apologists, as Logos Theology and in the Veda, through Adi Shankaracharaya, as Adwaitha Philosophy.
Note On The Word Apologia: Commonly, English versions of the Greek word apologia misuse it. They make over the meaning of apologia to express remorse for some thought, word or deed. However, this is not what the word means. Apologia means something akin to the opposite of remorse and it signals the presence of robust confidence into the bargain.
Apologia is a compound word: apo + logos. Apo means standing away from something in the sense of standing present before it in order to address it. Logos is the Universal Reason which is both the Ground of Being (or, speaking symbolically, God) and the structure of reality as a whole and the human mind in particular.
It is the Logos-structure of both reality and the mind that makes reality available to cognition by the mind and all other cognitive faculties, including the senses and emotions. In classical philosophy this compatibility based on identity of the structure of being and the structure of the mind and the cognitive abilities generally (plant, animal and human) is called analogia entis.
Apologetic Theology is theology that stands before believer or unbeliever in any numbers and unconditionally discusses any question put forward from the basis of an appeal to Universal Reason, which is the universal structure of being and the full array of plant, animal and human cognitive abilities.
Apologetic Theology is “answering” theology. It presents answers and maintains unconditional discussion in the terms that are common to all regardless of “race, religion, national origin, [etc].”
Those terms are the categories and elements of Universal Reason. Essentially, the categories and elements of Logos (Universal Reason) are those assumptions everyone has of necessity (and usually unexamined) and that they must employ as the basis of any communication whatsoever.
In his speech at the University of Regensburg, Bavaria, Germany in September 2006, Pope Benedict XVI recalled a reference to this foundation of universal identity in Logos-structure by a Byzantine Emperor for a Persian interlocutor. The Pope’s purpose for his Christian and Muslim auditors was the same as the Emperor’s for his.
(From its theological tradition, Christianity tries to make itself understood whereas from its legal tradition Islam tries to make itself imposed.)
Chronology Of A Kairology
Introduction
Three things occasion a casus belli. Religion is not one of them. The three are: wealth, dominion and women.
The purpose of religion is to reunite that which is estranged and sublimate that which is ambiguous. The experience of reunion is salvation (Latin salus, health). The experience of sublimation is eternal life (Latin aevum, life force, Élan Vital [Aristotle, dynamis, potentiality] + German leib, body, form [Aristotle, energeia, actuality]).
All religions come from a single source, the Divine Life self-revealed throughout a myriad of times, climes and events. The root of life is God. The vital force of being which is life is the Divine Life. The root of being is Being Itself (Latin esse ipsum). The structure of being is the Tree of Life. The structure of being and the power of being are one and the same.
Existence is estranged from the experience of its essential unity with Being Itself, with the Life of God. Life works against itself, denies its root, attacks its nature and forbids its own fulfillment. Yet it also drives for its root, delights in its nature and anticipates its fulfillment: diligentibus Deum omnia cooperantur in bonum (Romans 8:28: For those who delight diligently in God, all activity is good and goes to good.)
Existence participates in ambiguity because it is estranged from its divine origin and nature. Life, whose essential nature is bliss, seeks the conditioned, it yearns for the tawdry, the fleeting, the unsatisfying. Yet it also demands its essential nature, it grasps for truth, it is eager for nobility and the elevation of taste and feeling: beatus vir qui non abiit in consilio impiorum et in via peccatorum non stetit et in cathedra pestilentiae non sedit sed in lege Domini voluntas eius et in lege eius meditabitur die ac nocte (Psalm 1: Happy is the man who does not associate with the impious or live among the evil-doers or take counsel or refreshment from mockers. Instead, he makes it the purpose of his being to fulfill God’s wish, and to discern God’s wish he delves ceaseless into the depths of his own heart and the abyss of his own being.)
Religions are started, maintained, fulfilled and become distorted in the dialectical process comprising the responses of individuals and groups to a self-revelation of the Divine Life, of God. Religions become distorted because the dialectical character of their Sitz im Leben – German: setting in the whole of life; the being there of a thing; Heidegger’s Dasein in the abyss of its ontic root; the full congregation of consequences of being thrown into existence (Heidegger) by Being Itself (God) — compels them to participate in the general conditions of existence, specifically estrangement and ambiguity.
With this participation comes the potential of distortion of the character and purpose of religion and the not infrequent actuality of such distortions operating not as anti-religion but in the beguilement of religion: The devil hath power to assume a pleasing shape.
I know my course. The spirit that I have seen
May be the devil: and the devil hath power
To assume a pleasing shape; yea, and perhaps
Out of my weakness and my melancholy,
As he is very potent with such spirits,
Abuses me to damn me: I’ll have grounds
More relative than this: the play’s the thing
Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king.
William Shakespeare, Hamlet Prince of Denmark, Act II, Scene ii
Just so with religions, or what sometimes passes for them.
All distortions of religion bear witness to their own religious illegitimacy in two pieces of evidence:
• They demand submission to a body of law or a structure of belief.
• They denounce the legitimacy of legitimate religions.
Throughout history, revelations (Latin revelare, to pull back the veil) of the common source of religions are made by a concrete presence of the Divine Life. These revelations, which are Divine self-revelations, along with the responses to them by individuals and groups, are tangible events of history. They are historical content. They are kairoi occurring in chronoi.
(Kairoi: Greek: time as auspicious constellations of events uniting power and meaning; historical tipping points governed by the inner telos [Greek: aim, purpose, intent of movement] of history to drive forwards [self-generation] and upwards [self-transcendence]; in the singular: kairos. Chronoi: Greek: time as duration, the ticking clock, a sequence of events in history as ordinarily understood and expected; in the singular, chronos.)
The following chronology of kairoi focuses on the steady revelation and response of the common source of religions since the 19th Century. These kairoi may be described as holy events (events standing inside rather than outside the intense presence of the Divine Life; contrast “holy” [German, heilig, whole, able with power to live happily] with “profane” [Latin, profanum, standing before the door to the sanctuary, outside the intense presence of the Divine Life and therefore bereft of power to live happily]) expositing a steady theme of reality: that all religions subsist in the one God whose own legitimacy, or better aseity, is theirs (” … because it is perfectly obvious, that the endowments which we possess cannot possibly be from ourselves; nay, that our very being is nothing else than subsistence in God alone.” John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book 1, Chapter 1, Section 1). This reality is the Urgrund (German, the original and ultimate base or foundation, the ground of being or Being Itself [Latin, esse ipsum]) of religion, the universal religion, the religion beyond religion or what Paul Tillich in his final lecture calls The Religion of the Concrete Spirit. (Dietrich Bonhoeffer somewhat awkwardly expresses this theme with his phrase religionsloses Christentum [“religionless Christianity”]). It is a New Reality, a New Being, to those who were not expecting it or the kairos it prepared to repose its manifestation.
The Chronology
Sai Baba of Shirdi (aka Shirdi Sai Baba, 1840? – 1918) reestablishes the principle of the unity of God which gives efficacy to all religions.
Baha’u’llah (1817 – 1892) announces the presence of new being, a new dispensation of Grace, a new and governing way of doing things, a newly expressed form and newly formed expression of the decisive force in world history, the unity of God in the common source of all religions. Decisive features of the new being are faith in the One God and living by the Principle of Consultation.
Edward Wilmot Blyden declares that Islam unifies and fulfills Africans whereas Christianity demoralizes them because Christians trade in slaves whereas Mohammedans [sic] either do not or, if they do, offer conversion to Islam as an alternative to enslavement. W. E. B. Du Bois, Frantz Fanon and Blyden together define or imply the Moslem core and world-hegemonistic intention of Pan-Africanism.
Swami Vivekananda (1863 – 1902), the great disciple of Ramakrishna Paramahamsa (1836 – 1886), announces the divine decision to drive the demons of sectarianism, bigotry and fanaticism from possession of “this beautiful Earth.”
Against these announcements of a New Reality, a new expression of Divine Will governing the dimensions of life, and also to force faithful practice from their co-religionists to the Holy War (jihad) doctrine of the Quran, the Hadith and the unchanging consensus of all Muslim schools of thought, the Muslim Brotherhood (and here) and their confederates declare a campaign by all means needed for world-wide Muslim religious, cultural and moral hegemony. The governing doctrine is enunciated by their founder and “Supreme Guide” Hasan al-Banna (1906 – 1949):
It is the nature of Islam to dominate, not to be dominated, to impose its law on all nations and to extend its power to the entire planet.
The guiding creed is:
Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. Qur’an is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.
Arab and other governments dominated by Muslims do not dispute the Muslim Brotherhood’s (and here) claim that the nature of Islam is planetary supremacy. They do dispute the Brotherhood’s claim to comprise the religious, cultural and moral vanguard of Islam. A great many Arab and other Muslims join the Muslim Brotherhood (and here) or sympathize with its goal and activities. Most Muslims approve or support the Brotherhood. (Tariq Ramadan is al-Banna’s grandson and active heir of both him and Sayyd Qutb. The Muslim Brotherhood (and here) operates in nearly all countries through a skein of subversive and violent associations that have secured standing in most universities and government agencies of the Western nations.)
Sathya Sai Baba (1926 – 2011) announces that He is Shirdi Sai Baba come again and that a series of three Avathars of Lord Shiva is occurring: Shirdi Sai Baba as Shiva alone, Sathya Sai Baba as Siva and Shakthi, the Divine Consort and Mother, together and Prema Sai Baba as Shakthi alone. The advent of the second and third Career of the series occurs eight years following the sleep (mahasamadhi) of the previous Career.
The Rev. Dr. Paul Tillich presents The Significance of the History of Religions for the Systematic Theologian, the last lecture of his life and his last appearance in public. He reaches into the language of ontological theology and develops the phrase “Religion of the Concrete Spirit” to express the premonition of a new manifestation, however fragmentary, of theonomy (Greek theos [God] + nomos [Law], the condition in which all religious, cultural and moral creativity points beyond itself and beyond time to eternity and the bliss of unambiguous life, the Holy, God; the last time [kairos] theonomy prevailed in the orbit of the Latin Church was the High Middle Ages; memory and perception of that occasion drive the fascination with it in romantic philosophies, including the political romanticism of utopians ranging from Communists and Fascists to the New Harmonists on the Wabash in Indiana). Paulus sensed the presence of Sathya Sai Baba.
Sathya Sai Baba announces His Reality and the restoration of Sanathana Dharma, the Ancient, Universal and Eternal Religion.
Sathya Sai Baba describes the reality of this Avathar and the nature of His Mission.
Sathya Sai Baba explains the meaning of the Words Sai and Baba while talking about the road to Him and describing His Truth.
04 November 1979
Ruhollah Musawi Khomeini (1902 – 1989) coins and promulgates the phrase “America cannot do a damn thing.,” inscribes “Death to America” on all official buildings and vehicles and orders the United States Flag painted at the entrances to all airports, railway stations, ministries, factories, schools, hotels and bazaars in order that it may be continuously trodden under foot.
Sathya Sai Baba exposits the basic truth of all religions: the Unity of God and the equal basis of all religions in that Unity. God is one and only one.
Osama bin Laden (and here) (1957 – 2011) issues Declaration Of War Against The Americans Occupying The Land Of The Two Holy Places. bin Laden is a Boomer! And here.
Osama bin Laden (and here) issues Letter To The American People.
King Abdullah (1962 – ) of Jordan, acting the part of Caliph (Khalifah), convenes representatives of all Muslim juridical schools (Ulema) and by them, among other things, declares illegitimate (1) edicts issued by persons not authorized (by a juridical school) to issue them and (2) calls by illegitimate edict issuers to kill Muslims. Neither The Amman Message of 2004 nor the Three Points of the Amman Message of 2005 disputes the Muslim Brotherhood’s claim that the nature of Islam is planetary hegemony. (Presupposed by this claim is the concept and symbol Muslim Ummah. Its correlate in the Christian orbit is the concept and symbol Corpus Christianum; this essay discusses the status of Corpus Christianum and the status of Muslim Ummah.)
Pope Benedict XVI (1927 – ) addresses a gathering at his Alma Mater, the University of Regensburg, in which he declares the doctrine of Universal Reason (aka Logos Theology) the basis for religious dialogue.
MAJ Stephen C. Coughlin, USAR, graduating at the National Defense Intelligence College, produces a thesis in fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Master of Science of Strategic Intelligence. MAJ Coughlin demonstrates that (1) obligatory campaign for Muslim global supremacy is ancient and unanimous doctrine in all Moslem juridical schools, (2) that doctrine is the driver of world-wide beguilement and violence in the name of Islam and therefore (3) all Muslim juridical schools support world-wide beguilement and violence as may be successful in furtherance of global Muslim hegemony.
King Abdullah of Jordan, again acting as Caliph, reconvenes representatives of all Muslim juridical schools and by them answers the offer by Pope Gregory XVI of Universal Reason as the basis for religious dialogue. However, rather than addressing Gregory, this convocation issues an “invitation” to “Christian leaders” (thus belittling the Pope), soliciting their agreement on commonalities between Christianity and Islam not on the basis of Universal Reason — which would include all religions — but on the basis of tawhid, the doctrine of Islamic monotheism — which rejects association between religions. (In other words, “moderate Muslims” [e.g., King Abdullah and his Ulema] and “radical Moslems” [e.g., Muslim Brotherhood/Hamas/Al Qaeda/Hizbellah and their Ulema] agree on agenda: Khalifah and Ulema rule the world. They disagree on who are the legitimate executors of that agenda. That personal argument over the name and fame of competing tribal and juridical tyrants is the difference between “moderate Muslims” and “radical Muslims.”)
Four academic executives at Yale University draft and induce over 300 additional academic and ecclesial executives to sign a statement, Loving God and Neighbor Together, welcoming A Common Word Between Us And You and implying that commonalities can and should be agreed.
The Rev. Dr. Mark Durie “unpacks” the language and doctrine of A Common Word Between Us And You, showing that, so far from being a loving invitation to tea and sympathy, it asserts a requirement that Christians convert to Islam in pursuance of the goal of planet-wide Muslim supremacy. The “invitation” is a punctilious Muslim legal requirement (give the enemy a chance to surrender and keep their life through conversion or dhimmitude [radically inferior, pejorative, abused social status and conditions] before the onset of jihad) preceding a declaration and conduct of war (jihad) for Muslim hegemony.
The Rev. Dr. Mark Durie “unpacks” the language and doctrine of Loving God and Neighbor Together, showing it dissembles the incompatibility of doctrines it advances with those embedded in the “invitation” it answers.
The Rev. David R. Graham (1943 – ) conveys the answer of The Church to the authors of A Common Word Between Us And You and Loving God and Neighbor Together. Nothing has staying-power in the world which is not from and so does not exhibit the characteristics of this new reality, this new constellation of revelation and salvation that Shirdi Sai Baba, Baha’u’llah, Sathya Sai Baba, Paul Tillich and Benedict XVI speak.
The Rev. Dr. Mark Durie recounts online activity in fatwas (juridical edicts; not case decisions or even expressed opinions, but rather, diktats) and comment on fatwas related to apostasy from Islam (ridda). The activity was on the website altafsir.com, which is maintained by the Royal Aal al-Bayt Institute for Islamic Thought of Jordan. Aal al-Bayt also publishes The Amman Message and A Common Word Between Us And You.
Lochinvar
Sir Walter Scott
O young Lochinvar is come out of the west,
Through all the wide Border his steed was the best;
And save his good broadsword he weapons had none,
He rode all unarm’d, and he rode all alone.
So faithful in love, and so dauntless in war,
There never was knight like the young Lochinvar.
He staid not for brake, and he stopp’d not for stone,
He swam the Eske river where ford there was none;
But ere he alighted at Netherby gate,
The bride had consented, the gallant came late:
For a laggard in love, and a dastard in war,
Was to wed the fair Ellen of brave Lochinvar.
So boldly he enter’d the Netherby Hall,
Among bride’s-men, and kinsmen, and brothers and all:
Then spoke the bride’s father, his hand on his sword,
(For the poor craven bridegroom said never a word,)
“O come ye in peace here, or come ye in war,
Or to dance at our bridal, young Lord Lochinvar?”
“I long woo’d your daughter, my suit you denied; —
Love swells like the Solway, but ebbs like its tide —
And now I am come, with this lost love of mine,
To lead but one measure, drink one cup of wine.
There are maidens in Scotland more lovely by far,
That would gladly be bride to the young Lochinvar.”
The bride kiss’d the goblet: the knight took it up,
He quaff’d off the wine, and he threw down the cup.
She look’d down to blush, and she look’d up to sigh,
With a smile on her lips and a tear in her eye.
He took her soft hand, ere her mother could bar, —
“Now tread we a measure!” said young Lochinvar.
So stately his form, and so lovely her face,
That never a hall such a gailiard did grace;
While her mother did fret, and her father did fume
And the bridegroom stood dangling his bonnet and plume;
And the bride-maidens whisper’d, “’twere better by far
To have match’d our fair cousin with young Lochinvar.”
One touch to her hand, and one word in her ear,
When they reach’d the hall-door, and the charger stood near;
So light to the croupe the fair lady he swung,
So light to the saddle before her he sprung!
“She is won! we are gone, over bank, bush, and scaur;
They’ll have fleet steeds that follow,” quoth young Lochinvar.
There was mounting ‘mong Graemes of the Netherby clan;
Forsters, Fenwicks, and Musgraves, they rode and they ran:
There was racing and chasing on Cannobie Lee,
But the lost bride of Netherby ne’er did they see.
So daring in love, and so dauntless in war,
Have ye e’er heard of gallant like young Lochinvar?
If . . .
Rudyard Kipling
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream – and not make dreams your master;
If you can think – and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings – nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And – which is more – you’ll be a Man, my son!
The Day Thou Gavest, Lord, Is Ended
John Ellerton, 1870
Tune: St. Clement by Clement C. Scholefield, 1874
The day though gavest, Lord, is ended,
The darkness falls at they behest;
To thee our morning hymns ascended,
Thy praise shall sanctify our rest.
We thank thee that thy Church, unsleeping
While earth rolls onward into light,
Through all the world her watch is keeping,
And rests not now by day or night.
As o’er each continent and island
The dawn leads on another day,
The voice of prayer is never silent,
Nor dies the strain of praise away.
The sun that bids us rest is waking
Our brethren ‘neath the western sky,
And hour by hour fresh lips are making
Thy wondrous doings heard on high.
So be it, Lord; thy throne shall never,
Like earth’s proud empires, pass away:
Thy kingdom stands and grows forever,
Till all thy creatures own thy sway.
Update 1: Honoring COL Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg and the others.
Update 2: Why The American Church Should Go Off The Grid.
Update 3: Reality has caught up with King Abdullah of Jordan, at least superficially.
Update 4: Why ISIS Is Irrational: The Asharite/Mutazilite Conflict
Update 5: France’s Catholic Revolution
Update 6: The Muslim Brotherhood In America: A Course In 10 Parts
Update 7: Archbishop of Canterbury get it right about Islam and law in Latin Culture. Also here.
Update 8: The Rev. Dr. Mark Durie: Ishmael Is Not The Father Of The Arabs
Update 9:
kevinstroup
Not believing in religion is not the same as not believing in God. You can be spiritual without being religious.
David R. Graham to kevinstroup
Well, Tillich is famous for saying that Christianity is the world’s great anti-religion religion. I add Hinduism to that description, but that will be a bridge too far for many at this time.
Dragblacker to David R. Graham
I’m not sure I follow. Does it mean that Christianity and Hinduism have elements in them that lead some people to eschew religion entirely?
David R. Graham to Dragblacker
Yes, that is what it means. It also is in Hebrew Prophetism. Religion is a means, not an end, much less the end. Like all means, it is fraught with danger because it can lead either Godward or Godaway because there are right ways to be religious and wrong ways. In fact, far more wrong ways than right ways. Far, far more. Religion is very dangerous in the absence of experienced and skilled guidance. Religion (Latin re + ligare) means binding up that which has become unbound. Once a body is repaired, its ligaments (ligare) grown or tied back together, it has no need for the doctor who or the procedures which repaired it.
Lawman45 to David R. Graham
Tillich is correct. Christianity, shorn of the Elmer Gantrys of the world, is a great handbook to living in a large society. Just remember that the substance is correct but all the rest is B.S. And, as I learned at Notre Dame, the “Priests”, the “Rabbis”, and the “Ministers” are just ordinary folk who live life free off of the insecurities of others.
AUM NAMAH SHIVAYA