Truth paper outline and quotes

 Truth Paper - 8 pages - Chicago style Bibliography and Citation

Truth - it is unknowable, what is really out there. 

•  Quotes from Caputo about how God is truly unknowable
• Apophatic theology - we know what God is NOT and that's all we can really say given that God is indescribable. 
• On what cannot be said  pg 145
• models of god pg 23

Is God unknowable? 

• “Each faculty must remain within its natural operation, and cannot shift to that of a neighboring sense. The eye, for example, cannot operate on the data of audition; hearing cannot taste; touch cannot speak, and the tongue cannot function one that is visible or audible. Each sense remains within the bounds of its own faculty within the operation prescribed by nature. So too no created being can go outside of itself by rational contemplation. Whatever it sees, it identify must see itself; and even if it thinks it is seeing beyond itself, it does not in fact possess a nature which can achieve this (William Frank 2007, 149-150).”
• But I disagree. God may be indescribable in any way other than metaphor, which as many of the readings reminds us is medicore at best. There are ways to know and experience "God" even if we can't properly describe it.
• Music!! - sacred attunement pg xiii
• “…. tear ourselves away from this attachment to the non-existent and attach ourselves to real being [God]; then it ceases to have that existence in me any longer, and never will have it again completely… When I attach myself and cleave to what is truly being [God], I abide in that which will always was, is now and ever shall be. (147)”
• A theology that would unfold "in truth" does not confuse itself with "the truth" - on the myster pg 38

Is there a right answer? - no.

ALL theology is theory and opinion. There is no way to know what is actually out there until we leave our mortal bodies and experience it for ourselves. However while living this life we must be aware and open to the fact that we don't know

• The claim of absolute truth is the greatest single obstruction to theological honesty - keller on the mystery pg 8
• Sacred Attunement pg 2 quote - examine our beliefs
• sacred attunement pg 13 purple quote
• we must accept our limitations in what we can know - on what cannot be said.. there gatta be a few quotes for that.
• but our belief and fatih does shape the world we live in. We must accept our power and the influence we have (models of god pg 17) while also accepting the dependence we have on the very thing we have faith in.
• ". Comparing views implies commensurability and a metric for comparison, by means of which we can detect the proximity of views to one another, to the categorical requirements, and to competitor views outside the category. This metric is what I have called (in ln Our Own lmage) a "disintegrating metric" - Wildman Ultimate Reality 262 -- perhaps what can't be said about GOD and what can be said about God cover two areas of speech - but the truth of what GOD is falls between them in the unspoken?
• what if truth itself is a way, not an endpoint?What if the way and its truth deliver no totalizing absolute - nor deliver us to the indifferent dissolute? What if we have here to find a third way? - Keller on the msytery xiv
• trans-religious theology (lately also known as 'theology without walls") attempts to ask and answer theological questions without privileging particular religious traditions or bodies of purportedly authoritative revelation. In light ofthe view set forth here, it is to be expected that every religious tradition and indeed every spiritual journey is oriented to really ultimate reality regardless of how the object of ultimate concem is actually described in each case - Wildman ultimate reality 263

Overall outline: What do apophatic theologians, both classic and contemporary, say about what can and cannot be said in theology? What is the relationship between the via negativa and the via positiva, between apophatic negation and cataphatic affirmation, between mystical silence and theological speech, between divine ineffability and divine revelation?

1. Is God unknowable?
1. What is God?
1. Caputo's pantheism vs panentheism - the very ground we walk on.
2. Is God unknowable?
1. Yes
1. Models of God - page 37 
2. What cannot be said 150
2. No - How can we know it?
1. Music (Sacred attunement xiii)  and Poetry (cannot be said 236)
2. The tearing away of oneself... (113, 147, 149 Cannot be said)
1. Meditation and Plant Medicine 
2. Is God unsayable?
1. apophatic theology; the failure of language and the use of metaphor
1. Sacred attunement's definition - xi
2. on what cannot be said 111, 1121, 145
2. cataphatic theology and theopoetics.
1. Caputo definition of theopoetics
2. Talking about God does not come down to concepts, propositions, and arguments (the only remedies in their medical bag when the doctors of philosophy arrive on the scene). Talking about God ultimately comes down to other discursive resources—images and figures, metaphors and metonyms, symbols and allegories, parables and paradoxes, stories and striking sayings, songs and dance—in which we seek to express the grip the unconditional has upon us, by which we have been seized from a time out of mind - caputo pg 31
3. Whats the point?
1. Is there a right answer? -No & why. 
1. Multiple different faiths - and going on radical theology is possible that all or multiple of them are correct! 
1. Spirit as an element as opposed to a deity; how deities came about, the self as deity (models of god - pg 6 & 28) --- using God to make the gods.
2. Sacred Attunement pg 2
3. Models of God pg 7
4. ego death: 
5. “…tearing the soul away from its contrary, to which it was adhering, and uniting it with that true reality which is beyond all reason. (149)”
6. This to me sounds eerily similar to the Buddhist practice of non-attachment and on page 112 and 113 Franke writes that “for only silence can witness to the manifestation of God’s transcendence… God is manifest … in the..’small voice’ of silence.”
7. Types of Religions: https://socialsci.libretexts.org/Courses/Solano_Community_College/SOC_002%3A_Social_Issues_and_Problems/14%3A_Religion/14.02%3A_Types_of_Religions#:~:text=Judaism%2C%20Christianity%20and%20Islam%20are,belief%20that%20multiple%20gods%20exist.
2. So what is the point?
1. The role of religion (models of god pg 25, sacred attunement pg 5)
2. The role of mythology (the role of mythology: models of god pg 22)
3. Just because we don't know the right answer, and quite possibly may never know the right answer, doesn't mean we shouldn't keep trying to figure it out. - "the truth-process does not eliminate uncertainty or its chaos, it makes it visible, in order to release a livelier, more redemptive order" - you can' t force religion/faith/truth on others. "it must emerge" from within them. - on the mystery pg 14
4. 
   

The Sound of Spirit

 Lecture: "The true theology according to apophatic theologians is silence"

The sound of Spirit

You are there in the silence, 
In the momentary pause between breaths and sobs,
When I feel alone in the moment
You are there around me nonetheless. 

You are there in the silence, 
In the milliseconds before the inspiration hits
Words flooding my mind like a river
You are there in the current. 

You are there in the silence, 
A voice without sound reminding me I am not alone
You pour into my ears on music notes
You speak directly to my heart. 

You are there in the silence, 
When words fail me and all I can do is open my heart
Letting hot water sting my eyes as I pray
Nothing but silence passes between us. 
You are there in the silence.

SPF Journal 2

Possible quotes

• ....the role of the spiritual emotions of awe and wonder, and transcendence in art and religion. Taking their energy and drive from SEEKING and PLAY systems, these spiritual emotions function to temper intense feelings of FEAR or GRIEF in the context of the neocortical imaginative elaboration of culture. The emotionally saturated state engendered in spiritual emotions is immanent  in our neuropsychology, but the ways in which we communicate our experiences in art are unique. (Asma and Gabriel, 20)
• Its worth Paying attention to whatever cultural products draw straightforwardly on sex to gain position, even and especially if women are the driving concept. (Tolentino, 85)
• The Ideal woman looks beautiful, happy, carefree and perfectly competent. Is she really? To look any particular way and to actually be that way are two separate concepts, and striving to look carefree and happy can interfere with your ability to do so. (Tolentino, 89)
• Its possible if we want it. What what do we want? What would you want - what desires, what desires, what forms of insubordination, would you be able to access in becoming an ideal woman, gratified and beloved, proof of the efficiency of a system that magnifies and diminishes you every day? (Tolentino, 94)
• I have so many highlighted in the "Uses of the Erotic" reading oh my gosh

At the end of Tolentino's "Always be Optimizing" she asks a very thought provoking question:

What what do we want? What would you want - what desires, what desires, what forms of         insubordination, would you be able to access in becoming an ideal woman, gratified and beloved, proof of the efficiency of a system that magnifies and diminishes you every day? (Tolentino, 94)

I believe that Audre Lorde actually provides the answer - or rather the exact same answer I would respond with: eroticism. "Our acts against oppression  become integral with self, motivated and empowered within (Lorde, 58)" and that "the erotic [is] a source of power and information... (Lourde 54)."

She defines the erotic a variety of ways:

• It is an internal sense of satisfaction to which once we have experienced it, we know we can aspire. For having experienced the fullness of this depth of feeling and recognized its power, in honor and self-respect we can require no less for ourselves. (page 54)
• The personification of love in all its aspects - born o Chaos, and personifying creative power and harmony. When I speak of the erotic, then, I speak of it as an assertion of the life force of women; ( page 55)
• The erotic is the nurturer or nursemaid of all our deepest knowledge (page 56)
• ...sharing deeply any pursuit with another person... whether physical, emotional, psychic, or intellectual, forms a bridge between the sharers... (page 56)

She goes on to explain in her essay how eroticisms is sensual and the connection made in sex is what makes it erotic - not the sex itself. In fact sex without deep connection and emotion is how she defines pornography, the opposite of eroticism. 

I could easily write multiple pages on this alone, its spiritual significance, my own journey that I learned this with at the guidance of Lilith, and the importance of this lesson being one repeated multiple times in a woman's life because, as Tolentino and Lourde reiterated our society seeks to trap us into the "ideal woman" and it is easy to fall into it - including forgetting our eroticism. However to make what would be a very enjoyable, albeit lengthy paper, short I will skip to the next quote that I feel help connect this essay to our class and the focus on the body, emotions, and self in the power of becoming.

"...we [society] have attempted to separate the spiritual and the erotic, thereby reducing the spiritual to a world of flattened affect, a world of the ascetic who aspire to feel nothing. But nothing is farthest from the truth...For the bridge that connects them [different areas of life] is formed by the erotic - the sensual- those physical, emotional, and psychic expressions of what is deepest and strongest and richest within each of us, being shared: the passion of live, in its deepest meanings. (page 56)"

 This is a very key thing for me, in that sensuality (and as an extension, sexuality) is a very core aspect of spirituality. Lourde makes a comparison later in the reading about how there is no difference in writing a poem than making love to a woman she loves - what she is getting at is that at its core eroticism is a deep love and sense of joy for life. The same, I believe, can be said for the human experience of connecting with the divine. Eroticism, at is core, is one of the things that truly makes us human. 

To me, eroticism is very hard to find when society makes a point to separate you from it, and it is hard to fine alone. Lourde even specifies in the 4th definition above that is occurs when shared with another person. But that deep energy, the power that arises from it, how can one say that it is not of the divine? 

Should the opportunity ever arise I would love to elaborate on this topic even more in connection to how this divinity is accessed and used in spiritual practices (tantric buddhism, sex magic through witcraft or secular "manifestation", etc). 

Plans for the Semester 1

Comprehensive calendar of assignments, readings, & papers. 

Does not include the SPF Projects:

• Spiritual autobiography & Spiritual practice presentation

..... I .... want.... to .... cry.....

***If possible I need to Sign up For spiritual Autobiography Group 4 so I can do it for reading week. 

• Spiritual Personal Formation
• Invitation to Theology

For the first section of the classes until the first break/Reading Week

Tuesday 9/17

• Class
• Finished reading Caputo Lessons 4-6

Thursday 9/19

• Class 
• Do the 5 paragraphs paper - module 2

Friday 9/20

• 20's Gala for Work
• Start theology paper - module 2

Saturday 9/21

• Finish Theology paper
• Read all 3 SPF readings & Complete Journal 2 - module 2

Sunday9/22

• Hiking
• Clean house
• On What Cannot Be Said: Preface, 6, 11,12,13, 15, 16 - module 2
• Theology Lecture 2 - module 2

Monday 9/23

• GYM
• Niebuhr, “Mystery and Meaning” (14 pgs) - module 2
• SPF video (25 mins) - module 2
• SPF lecture 2 - module 2

Tuesday 9/24

• Class 
• On What Cannot Be Said Chapters 17, 18, 20  - module 2
• Start planning Spiritual Practice outline 
• Start planning autobiography outline 
• Brigid and Aine
• Lilith
• Lucifer

Wednesday 9/25

• GYM
• Game Night/D&D
• On What Cannot Be Said Chapters 22, 25, 26, 27 - Module 2 
• Fishbane Chapter 1 (1-45) - Module 3 start

Thursday 9/26

• Class
• Friedman Introduction in Failure of Nerve, 1-28 - Module 3
• Chapter 2 in Failure of Nerve, 51-94 - Module 3
• “Hive of Nerves” in My Bright Abyss, 85-102 - module 3
• Journal 3 SPF - Module 3

Friday 9/27

• SPF Autobiography pitches to sus out which paper to write; --> Surrendering into the Void
• Play with poetry vs Prose
• Involve Music? 
• Tale of the untold her -- Lilith 
•  Lucifer?
• Brigid & Aine?
• 
  
• FUCK SCHOOL I NEED TO RECHARGE

Saturday 9/28

• McFague, Models of God, Preface and Chapters 1 - Module 3

Sunday 9/29

• 
  
• Theology Video before bed.30 min. - module 3
• McFague, Models of God, Preface and Chapters 1- Module 3
• Discussion Board 3 - Module 3
• SPF Lecture 3 - 1hr

Monday 9/30 . 

• Gym

• McFague, “A Meditation on Exodus 33:23b”* - Module 3

• McFague, “Metaphorical Theology”* - module 3
• Write outline for TRUTH paper. its more extensive than previously thought.
• Outline for Autobiography

• Spiritual Practice Presentation DUE

Tuesday 10/1

• Class
• Friedman - Chapter 4(132-157) - Module 4
• SPF Journal #4

Wednesday 10/2

• Gym
• Darts
• McFague, Models of God, Chapter 3 - Module 3
• Keller, On the Mystery, Prologue and Chapters 1 - Module 4

Thursday 10/3

• Class
• Morrison “Recitatif” in Schwehn and Bass, 353-370 - Module 4
• Friedman - Chapter 5 (158-186) - Module 4
• Friedman Chapter 7 (204-226) - Module 4
•  Keller, On the Mystery - Chapter 2 - Module 4
• Discussion Board 4 - Module 4

Friday 10/4

• Gym
• Wells “Rethinking Service” in Schwehn and Bass, 374-387 - Module 4
• Keller, On the Mystery, Chapters 4&5 - Module 4
• Start SPF Autobiography 

Saturday 10/5

• SPF Autobiography paper 

Sunday 10/6

• SPF Lecture 4
• SPF FINISH AUTOBIOGRAPHY PAPE

Monday 10/7

• Gym
• Baldwin The Fire Next Time, 47-75 - Module 5
• AUTOBIOGRAPHY DUE
• Wildman, God Is, All - Module 5 - I read 3 out of the 9. These were ROUGH.
• Discussion Board - Module 5

Tuesday 10/8

• Class
• Lindner “The Perils and Possibilities of Multiplicity” - Module 5
• Baldwin  The Fire Next Time, 76-106 - Module 5
• Wildman, “Really Ultimate Reality”* - Module 5

Wednesday 10/9

• Gym
• SPF Mid term outline
• SPF Journal  - Module 5
• Wildman, God Is, All - Module 5 -- read at least 2 more.

Thursday 10/10

• Class
• Eli Wiesel Night Opening & 1-65 - Module 6

Friday 10/11

• Gym
• D&D 

Saturday 10/12

• SPF Midterm - multi dimensional  - finish
• Wildman, God Is, All - Module 5 -- read at least 2 more.

Sunday 10/13

• SPF MIDTERM DUE. (Multidimensional)
• 
  

Monday 10/14

• Gym
• 2 personal chapters
• SPF Lecture 5

Tuesday 10/15  

• Class

Wednesday 10/16

• Gym
• Darts
• Discussion Board - Module 6 

Thursday 10/17

• Class
• Work on Theology Mid term - truth
• SPF Module 6 readings
• SPF Journal  - Module 6

Friday 10/18

• Gym
• Work on Theology Mid term - truth 
• Eli Wiesel Night 65-115 - Module 6

Saturday 10/19

•  Finish Theology midterm - truth
• Meet Michael?

Sunday 10/20

• THEOLOGY MIDTERM DUE - truth
• Theology Lecture 3 - Module 6
• Theology Video - 1 hr - Module 7 

Monday 10/21

• Gym
• SPF Lecture 6
• 2 autobiographic chapters

Tuesday 10/22

• Class
• Plaskow, “Facing the Ambiguity of God”* - Module 7

Wednesday 10/23

• Gym 
• D&D/Game night

Thursday 10/24

• Class
• Discussion Board - Module 7
• Rubenstein, After Auschwitz, Chapters 1* - Module 7 

Friday 10/25

• Gym
• 
  

Saturday 10/26

• Medieval times 

Sunday 10/27 

• rest

Monday 10/28

• Gym
• 2 autobiographic chapters
• Rubenstein, After Auschwitz, Chapters 8, 9 * - Module 7

Tuesday 10/29

• No Class
• SPF Readings Module 7
• SPF Journal - Module 7
• SPF Lecture 7
• 
  

Wednesday 10/30

• Darts
• Cohn-Sherbok, Holocaust Theology: A Reader, Introduction and Chapter 1 - Module 6
• Rubenstein, After Auschwitz, Chapters 13, 16* - Module 7

Thursday 10/31

• No Class
• Panic clean and get apartment ready for roommate.  

Friday 11/1

• Gym
• Had to go pick up Roommate from their airport... lost 7 hours. :(

Saturday 11/2

• Samhain Ritual
• Cohn-Sherbok, Holocaust Theology: A Reader, Chapters 3-4, 6, - Module 8 
• Cohn-Sherbok, Holocaust Theology: A Reader, Chapters 9-13 - Module 8
• Discussion Board - Module 8

Sunday 11/3

• Work on Goodness Paper 

Monday 11/4

• GYM
• 2 autobiographical chapters
• SPF Readings  - Module 8
• SPF Journal 8 

Tuesday 11/5

• Class

• Election night....

Wednesday 11/6

• GYM
• D&D

Thursday 11/7

• Class
• sick. rest. 

Friday 11/8

• Sick. selpt.

Saturday 11/9

• SICK SICK

Sunday 11/10

• WROTE GOODNESS PAPER

Monday 11/11

• Driver “Ritualizing: The Animals Do it and So Do We” (PDF on Canvas) - module 9
• 2 autobiographical chapters
• SPF Lecture 8

Tuesday 11/12

• Class
• Deep dived into personal spiritual matters....

Wednesday 11/13

• Wiman “Varieties of Quiet” in My Bright Abyss, 117-144 - Module 9
• Fishbane Chapter 2, 46-107 - Module 9 
• SPF Journal 9

Thursday 11/14

• Class

• Bednarowski, “Theological Creativity and the Powerful Persistence of Religious Symbols”* (12)

• Tillich, “Art and Ultimate Reality”* - Module 9 (15)

Friday 11/15

• SPF paper 
• Napped
• Game night

Saturday 11/16

• Theology Video 1.5 hour

• Thatamanil, “Constructive Theology as Theopoetics”* - Module 9 (23)

• Discussion 9 

Sunday 11/17

• THEOLOGY PAPER DUE (Goodness)
• Dean, Coming To: A Theology of Beauty, Chapter 4* - Module 9 (24)

• Dean, “Liberal Realism: T.S. Eliot and the Ambiguity of God”* - Module 9 (22)

• Loomer, “S-I-Z-E is the Measure”* - Module 9 (6)

Monday 11/18

• SPF PAPER DUE (Religious Horizons)
• 2 autobiographical chapters
• SPF Lecture 10

Tuesday 11/19

• Class
• Coakley “Deepening Practices” (PDF on Canvas) - Module 10
• Start planning Final Project?

Wednesday 11/20

• Cone, The Spirituals and the Blue Chapters 1 - Module 10
• Driver “Ritual’s Social Gifts” (PDF on Canvas) - Module 10
• Fishbane Chapter 3, 108-155 - Module 10
• Journal 10

Thursday 11/21

• Class
• Cone, The Spirituals and the Blue Chapters 2& 3 - Module 10

Friday 11/22

• Cone, The Spirituals and the Blue Chapters 4 & 5 - Module 10
• Lourde - Poetry is not a Luxury,” in Sister Outsider, 24-27 - Module 11
• lourde - “The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action”, in Sister Outsider, 28-32

Saturday 11/23

• Cone, The Spirituals and the Blue Chapters 6 & Reflection - Module 10
• Discussion 10

Sunday  11/24

• Alexander, Saving Beauty, Chapter 1 - Module 11
• SPF Lecture 11

Monday 11/25

•  Alexander, Saving Beauty, Chapter 2 - Module 11
• 2 autobiographical chapters

Tuesday 11/26

• Class
• Weiman - “Preface,” in My Bright Abyss, ix-x - Module 11
• Weiman “Sorrow’s Flower,” 15-32 - Module 11
• Weiman “Tender Interiors,” 33-39 - Module 11

Wednesday 11/27

• Alexander, Saving Beauty, Chapter 3 - Module 11

Thursday 11/28

• No Class
• Thanksgiving! 

Friday 11/29

• Alexander, Saving Beauty, Chapter 4 - Module 11
• Discussion 11
• Weiman “God’s Truth is Life,” 39-63 - Module 11

Saturday 11/30

• Weiman “O Thou Mastering Light,” 63-81- Module 11
• Weiman “Dear Oblivion,” 81-85 - Module 11
• Weiman“God is Not Beyond,” 103-116 - Module 11
• SPF Jounal 11

Sunday 12/1

• SPF Final Project 
• SPF Lecture 12

Monday 12/2

• SPF Final Project 
• Wiman  “Mortify Our Wolves,”in My Bright Abyss, 145-162 - Module 11
• Wiman “A Million Little Oblivions,” 163-178 - Module 11
• 2 autobiographical chapters

Tuesday 12/3

• SPF Final Project 
• Lorde - “The Uses of Anger: Women Responding to Racism,” in Sister Outsider, 115-125
• Lorde - “Eye to Eye: Black Women, Hatred, and Anger,” 138-169 - Module 12

Wednesday 12/4

• SPF Final Project 
• Tolstoy - “The Death of Ivan Ilych” in Schwehn and Bass, 570-618 - Module 12
• Jounral 12

Thursday 12/5

• yay my bday
• Class
• SPF Final FINISH

Friday 12/6

• surprise .... no school

Saturday 12/7

• Surprise...... no school

Sunday 12/8

• surprise... No school

Monday 12/9

• SPF FINAL DUE (Integrative Project)
• Theology Lecture 12

• 2 autobiographical chapters

Tuesday 12/10

• Last SPF Class - no more assignments! 

Wednesday 12/11

• 
  

Thursday 12/12

• Last SPF Class
• Theology Final

Friday 12/13

• Theology Final 

Saturday 12/14

• Theology final finish 

Sunday 12/15

• THEOLOGY FINAL DUE (Beauty)

DONE WITH THE SEMESTER

Weekly Reading Assignment 1 - Intro to Thelogy - Caputo lessons 1-6 notes and questions

Structure: 

1. A significant quote: Cite one passage from the assigned reading and briefly explain why it stuck out to you.
2. A pressing question: Formulate one thoughtful question about the reading. What is the question that you would ask the author if she/he/they were visiting our class? 

Possible Quotes to use:

Lesson 1

• My wager is that others have an analogous story to tell, whatever their beginnings may be. Beginnings are embedded deep in our bowels, our bones, our very being. The end is in the beginning, not as a destiny or deterministic fate, but as a set of possibilities whose outcomes can come as a surprise. Beginnings are like a keyboard on which we are invited to pick out a tune. (pg xi)
•  to talk you out of thinking of God as a Supreme Being (theism), who I claim does not exist, and to think instead of God as the “ground of being” (panentheism), which is a better bet. (pg xi)
• This is an interesting concept; panthiesm is monism - similarly to what I call "spirit" or Otto calls the numen.
• But if I were now asked “Who is God?,” safely out of the reach of my priests and nuns, I would say that God—that one, the God a lot of us grew up with, not just Catholics or Christians; the one that is out there in general circulation; the star of stage and screen; the Supreme Being, who sees all, knows all, can do all, who is watching every move we make and is coming to get us if we do not behave ourselves and to whom we turn when things take a turn for the worse—does not exist. The most important thing we can say about God is that that God, God, does not exist (pg 4) & A lot of the time the people who are really listening to the Spirit do not believe in God at all and are allergic to the word religion (pg 13).
• how then would you explain when someone has a direct experience with a god? To see them? Feel them? Hear them? Is this proposing that the true answer to what is really out there - is an athiestic "spiritual but not religious" outlook? "The Universe" as opposed to "God"? Why can it not be both?
• The problem is not precisely theism but doctrinaire theism, a theism that closes itself off to what is really going on in theism, and the same thing goes for doctrinaire atheism or doctrinaire anything. Radical is opposed to doctrinaire as open is to closed, as ecstatic is to static. Happily, we do not have to choose between raging Christian nationalists and sneering rationalists who reduce religion to poison. The one is a gas-filled room, the other a lit match. What I am proposing—a genuinely radical theology—is neither. Without it, I do not think religion has a future, or even deserves to have one, and reason will reduce itself to something less than it really is (ph 14).
• We were told that Jesus picked Peter to be the rock-solid foundation upon which he would build his church (Matt. 16:18)But I agree with the scholars who say that is the later Church putting words in his mouth and authorizing itself. That is the founder being founded by the followers after the fact. (pg 9)
• This is a very good point. How can we trust that a holy text that has been translated more than once (running the risk of a game of telephon) can be believed? How can we trust that man, in his selfishness and need for control, did not corrupt the very scriptures that many take to heart? In my anthropology undergraduate we explored the purpose of religion in society; while it did exist to comfort people and answer hard questions about the unknown, the primary purpose (according to that class) was to be a means of control and power over the people. We can see this happening in our everyday lives, both in a micro and macro level. These teachings that have such strong influence stem from words written by men that claim to be written from God/Spirit/The Divine; yet how can we trust them to be honest and true to the original - knowing that kings have manipulated and cut out parts specifically for self gain? Why should there be trust in "the church" to not have the same human drives as mortal kings in shaping how scritures are to be interpreted? These are questions I posed growing up in the christian church that never recieved satisfactory answers (at least not from people who supported the bible as an objective work of non-fiction). So if religion/the teaching of scripture/the word of God has "fallen into the wrong hands" (pg 14) - how can we in good faith continue to teach from it as truth?

Lesson 2

• The first, whom I am going to call the bridge-builders, think we must build a bridge from the world to God and hope that the world can provide enough support to hold up the bridge. The second, whom I am going to call the ground-diggers, think that we do not have to build a bridge because God is the very ground on which we already stand, but that we have to do a little digging (thinking) to see that. The bridge-builders are taking Acts 17 as a construction site while the ground-diggers treat it as an archeological site. The bridge-builders think the ground-diggers are digging themselves into a hole because God is on high. The ground-diggers think the bridge-builders are building a bridge to nowhere, for God is already here; they take themselves to be unearthing hidden treasures, on the bet that, if you dig deep enough, you will hit theological soil (pg16). 
• I am Genuinley curious where you would place those that fall in between/stand in both veins of thought? That God/Spirit/The Divine is both a sentient force that takes we give personified form to and the very essence that creates life all around. From what I can gather (and I may be totally misunderstanding) both Theologians he brings up directly after this quote  - Aquias and Augustine - do in fact dabble in both digging and building. Must one be one or the other? He follows this by saying "If we have to “find God,” and we do, that is not because God is an “alien being”  but because we are alienated from God and do not realize that God is that in which we already live and move and have our being. The bridge-builders think we have to find some way to attain the truth. The ground-diggers think we are already in the truth, that God is truth, and that the task is to unearth its truth." I think I am struggling with the whole this vs that; personification vs monism, a sentient force vs universal truth; I don't think I can properly grasp how they are mutually exclusive. Is he saying they are mutually exclusive or am I misunderstanding him? Or is he saying that "God" is the same as Rudolph Otto's "Numen" and that how it is experienced is irrelevant (for this disucssion), but the nature of it is in what is being questioned? If that is the case, then how can one be considered more correct or accurate than another - or is he going beyond the individual experience and only looking at the borader picture? To which I would follow up and ask that how can one only focus on the forrest and not the trees in this sort of thinking, as a connection with the divine is very individualistic? 
• Spoke with my professor - I will reword this but this is the winner. I'll still include my notes from the reading and any following questions I have just to have them. 
• The Unconditional Is More Primordial than God. Here is where you have to bear with me and not be scared off by a bit of academic language. To sort this out, Tillich says that God is unconditional, but the unconditional is not God. That is an enigma in need of an explanation, and there is one. The unconditional is the condition of everything else, but nothing is the condition of it. It is that than which we cannot think (epistemology), and we cannot want (axiology), and there cannot be (ontology) anything prior. So, the next question is, where is the unconditional to be found? Tillich’s answer is that God is unconditional, which is how God is God, but the unconditional itself cannot be identified with or restricted to God
• I get what hes saying... The unconditional is like the Numen. It predates the notion of "God" and thus cannot be limited to it. 
• Only a Symbol. The next step is this. If we say in theology that God is the unconditional, then we are saying “God” is a symbol, a figure, in which the unconditional is mediated, imaginatively constructed. Unprethinkability does not mean we cannot think about the unconditional, but that our thinking of it will always take place in symbols that mediate it to us. Then the task will be not to find a way get beyond the symbols—for that would leave us bereft of any access at all—but to come up with symbols worthy of the unconditional and to avoid unworthy ones.
• See I agree with him but I am unsure if he views the "symbols" as any lesser than the unconditional itself. Are WE symbols of the unconditional? We are no more or less alive in our existence than the gods. 
• We use the power of our imagination to construct images, analogies, similes, symbols, metaphors, and personifications, to tell stories, to compose song and dance— but (as you can tell by now, but is a really big word in radical theology) all this comes in response tosomething prior to us, something primordial, more elemental, by which we have been seized, something that has us before we have it. Remember, the unconditional is the prius, the prior, the a priori. Of course we project. We compose dance and songs, but our songs are less of our own composition than they are the music the world is playing on us. The world supplies the music, for which we supply the words. Projection is the projection of the other in me , by which I have been previously taken hold. (pg 24)

Lesson 3

• I remember growing up thinking that pantheism— what I thought was pantheism—was just crazy. Everything is God. The world is God.... Pantheism does not mean that the broken lawn mower in the garage is God, or that boozy old Uncle Harry is God. It means that things have a depth dimension, that they express the power of being, which is divine, that everything ( pan ) does, all creatures great and small, just so long as we are paying attention , and for the religious sensibility it is that depth dimension which is divine ( theios ). (pg33&34)
• yes. exactly. and this version of "God" is not a being, its a force. A force that makes up the gods. 
• it does not take long before physicists who do not “believe in God” begin musing over the “mystery” of the cosmos, as in mysterium tremendum et fascinans , the famous description of the mystery we call God proposed by Rudolf Otto (1869–1937). That does not mean that radical theology is rocket science, but it does mean that rocket science is theological. (35)
• religion can be found anywhere —just as Paul said to the Athenians—in a sunflower or a soup kitchen, in science or a work of art, or even in an old hat....Religion in this sense is not a particular part of the culture, Tillich said; it is the depth dimension in any part of the culture you choose (37)
• I get what he is saying. With Pantheism he is speaking my language... but I still do not know why it has to be one or the other. why can they not coincide? 

Lesson 4

• Their proof is simple: without a Supreme Being, there is no one to whom we can pray, and, if there is no prayer, there is no religion in any serious sense, just the show, just the semblance (43)
• Depends on your definition of prayer. My definition is petitioning Spirit for something, communicating with it - usually in the form of talking to the gods, but also in witchcraft, in song, in dance, in art and poetry. Prayer is an offering of your energy and emotions. You don't have to be a theist to give an offering of your emotions. 
• But neutral also sounds horrible because it makes God sound like an impersonal “it,” which is less than a person, whereas for theists God is ultrapersonal and in Christianity, three times over, although Buddhists would have no trouble with it (“it”). So this puts the Abrahamicbiblical tradition in a bit of a bind. We lack a proper pronoun for God who is neither he nor she nor it . Once again, blame the bridge-builders.
• Once again.... he loses me. I start agreeing and then he says some BS like this. It does not have to be mutually exclusive.... it can be it, he, she, all.....
• Praying is not trying to get something but letting it get us, letting go of what is preventing it from getting us, leaving ourselves exposed. Praying does not mean drawing attention to what we want to have. Praying is paying attention to what already has us. (51)
• I really like this actually. 

Lesson 5.... ugh. 

• Just so, religion is not merely a matter of individual acts of piety directed at particular religious objects—representations of which were all over our house when I was growing up. That is religiosity, not what Hegel and Schelling meant by religion. Nor is it a list of do’s and don’ts ultimately issuing from on high. That is pietism, not religion. The myths and symbols of religion are not meant as representations of entities in the real but invisible world. That is superstition, not religion. From the point of view of the individual, these imaginative figures of art and religion are expressions—in word and song, image and narrative— of our elemental bond with the ground of our being, of our consciousness of unity with God. (pg 69)
• In this sense.... I am superstitious, not religious. 
• One way to sum all this up is simply to say that, in radical theology, the invidious distinction between supernatural faith and natural reason is demystified by being replaced by the more peaceful distinction between the poetic and the prosaic . That breaks the grip of supernaturalism without falling into naturalism. Revelation happens as a poetics, a theopoetics, which resonates with the depths, preconsciously, preconceptually, prepropositionally, in song and story and symbols, not in syllogisms. Art, religion, and philosophy (the realm of absolute Spirit)—that means a poetic, a theopoetic, and a careful hermeneutic, and we need them all. They are all stages of the same thing, three different formations of one and the same Spirit, the same content taking shape in three different forms.(pg 75-76)
• To an extent I agree here.

Lesson 6

• By calling pre-Christian religion “mythological,” they obscured its revelatory power, and by calling Christian religion “Revelation,” they obscured its mythological status. (88)
• interesting. I am actually finding myself agreeing with him in this chapter
• Hegel rankorders art, religion, and philosophy, the sensuousness of art at the bottom, the conceptual thinking of philosophy at the top, religion in the middle, more conceptual than art, more sensuous than philosophy, mediating between them.(90)
• I will fight this man. 
• Religion is a sensuous symbol for which we lack the supersensuous concept, a figure we cannot finally figure out, which thought cannot ultimately transcend. This does not leave us without a clue; it leaves with only clues, hints, symbols, icons, traces, fingers pointing at the moon and the stars, wondering what is what, affirming an existence whose essence ever eludes us...It does not leave us without a prayer; it leaves us with only prayers. It does not leaves us lost for words but only lost for a Final Word... What remains are the stories , endlessly reinterpreted, endlessly recontextualized, endlessly reverberating with the power of being in ways which leave us not speechless but unable to say what is going on in any final way, not silencing but multiplying our discourses, forcing us to move back and forth between the prosaic and the poetic in search of an interpretation.(91&92)
• As Tillich said, the only nonsymbolic thing we can say about the unconditional is that everything we say about the unconditional is a symbol.(93)
• Finally something I can say that I 100% agree with. 
• We seek the unconditional, Novalis said, but everywhere we turn, we run into conditions. (93)

Definitions of Religion

• Religion is a sensuous symbol for which we lack the supersensuous concept, a figure we cannot finally figure out, which thought cannot ultimately transcend. This does not leave us without a clue; it leaves with only clues, hints, symbols, icons, traces, fingers pointing at the moon and the stars, wondering what is what, affirming an existence whose essence ever eludes us. - Caputo, what to believe - pg 90
•  "Religion is that which grows out of, and gives expression to, experience of the holy in its various aspects." - Rudolf Otto
•  "Religion is the state of being grasped by an ultimate concern, a concern which qualifies all other concerns as preliminary and which itself contains the answer to the question of the meaning of life." - Paul Tillich
• "Religions, then, are systems of meaning embodied in a pattern of life, a community of faith, and a worldview that articulate a view of the sacred and of what ultimately matters." - Schmidt, et al. 

https://web.pdx.edu/~tothm/religion/Definitions.htm#:~:text=%22Religion%20is%20the%20belief%20in,holy%20in%20its%20various%20aspects.%22

• From Personal Spiritual Formation class:
• "A Way for communities of people to gain access to, empowerment by, and orientation from something they they believe to be or experience as ultimately real and ultimately important, related to but not separate from other domains of existence.