There’s a real challenge of balancing view with experience. It seems some basics are needed as proper “lenses” and without which you fall into error. Yet the epistemic problem remains of choosing these “lenses” (like nicene creed) in the first place. Perhaps even these “lenses” have to be delivered via contact with the Presence of God.
It is a hard balance, but I think my major point was not that there is not a need for instance to know what Christianity teaches as one's formal and final cause, or to have some basic convictions, but my criticism had more to do with the manner that fundamentalist Christianity wouldn't for instance even think to speak of final or formal causes or what is involved in the process of deification. Rather, there is a sense that a literal reading of the Bible--what was intended originally by the author--can produce a cohesive and all encompassing picture of the world and God. For instance, growing up, to struggle was to bring into question whether I really had been saved and to question the underlying presuppositions that my church had to accept de sure in order to believe what they believed and to see the world as they saw the world, was to question the Bible or to question simply what is the case. I think part of the confusion here to is that I use the phrase world picture in a very particular sense--the way Heidegger defines it. It is to see the world as a re-presentation of it manufactured by various fields of study, as a picture within which I myself picture myself as a re-presentation of my self. It is essentially to move toward me being the subjectum, the subject for whom all things and from whom all things gain their meaning in contrast to the earlier understanding of reality which was grounded in God and allowed at least theoretically for presence or givenness of being. As much as Heidegger speaks of now we only know being by means of its withdrawal, he does not see this as always having been the case. He might think that the pre-socratic world was ideal and allowed for being to presence itself to us without us predetermining the conditions of experience, etc... but he also knew full well that up until the middle ages Christianity allowed for meaning to be grounded in God and present itself to one from outside of one and not as simply re-presentation.
I'm not so sure about that. For instance, one 'lens' I mentioned above is the nicene creed. Is the creed disappearing in theosis? I'd say it's more a case that the doctrines of the creed allow one to have the real connection with God by avoiding beliefs that interfere with that connection. If the creed really does disappear in theosis, then are we saying that Christ wasn't really incarnated, that the trinity isn't real, that God isn't almighty etc? I understand that certain mystical experiences are nonconceptual, but I think we need to be cautious in how we understand nonconceptuality here. That is, nonconceptual experience doesn't negate by necessity all concepts/'lenses', but instead can be an encounter with that which precedes them. This doesn't negate the trinity, as much as illuminates and fills the conceptual container of the trinity with that which precedes the idea 'trinity'. It is a 'superabundance' of trinity'ness which exceeds the concept entirely, but not via naive negation (as in St. Dionysius as I read him at least).
There’s a real challenge of balancing view with experience. It seems some basics are needed as proper “lenses” and without which you fall into error. Yet the epistemic problem remains of choosing these “lenses” (like nicene creed) in the first place. Perhaps even these “lenses” have to be delivered via contact with the Presence of God.
It is a hard balance, but I think my major point was not that there is not a need for instance to know what Christianity teaches as one's formal and final cause, or to have some basic convictions, but my criticism had more to do with the manner that fundamentalist Christianity wouldn't for instance even think to speak of final or formal causes or what is involved in the process of deification. Rather, there is a sense that a literal reading of the Bible--what was intended originally by the author--can produce a cohesive and all encompassing picture of the world and God. For instance, growing up, to struggle was to bring into question whether I really had been saved and to question the underlying presuppositions that my church had to accept de sure in order to believe what they believed and to see the world as they saw the world, was to question the Bible or to question simply what is the case. I think part of the confusion here to is that I use the phrase world picture in a very particular sense--the way Heidegger defines it. It is to see the world as a re-presentation of it manufactured by various fields of study, as a picture within which I myself picture myself as a re-presentation of my self. It is essentially to move toward me being the subjectum, the subject for whom all things and from whom all things gain their meaning in contrast to the earlier understanding of reality which was grounded in God and allowed at least theoretically for presence or givenness of being. As much as Heidegger speaks of now we only know being by means of its withdrawal, he does not see this as always having been the case. He might think that the pre-socratic world was ideal and allowed for being to presence itself to us without us predetermining the conditions of experience, etc... but he also knew full well that up until the middle ages Christianity allowed for meaning to be grounded in God and present itself to one from outside of one and not as simply re-presentation.
The lenses disappear in theosis.
I'm not so sure about that. For instance, one 'lens' I mentioned above is the nicene creed. Is the creed disappearing in theosis? I'd say it's more a case that the doctrines of the creed allow one to have the real connection with God by avoiding beliefs that interfere with that connection. If the creed really does disappear in theosis, then are we saying that Christ wasn't really incarnated, that the trinity isn't real, that God isn't almighty etc? I understand that certain mystical experiences are nonconceptual, but I think we need to be cautious in how we understand nonconceptuality here. That is, nonconceptual experience doesn't negate by necessity all concepts/'lenses', but instead can be an encounter with that which precedes them. This doesn't negate the trinity, as much as illuminates and fills the conceptual container of the trinity with that which precedes the idea 'trinity'. It is a 'superabundance' of trinity'ness which exceeds the concept entirely, but not via naive negation (as in St. Dionysius as I read him at least).
In Theosis what you call lenses are no longer lenses, they are reality lived in.
The veils disappear in Theosis and everything is seen as it is, as fraught with God. if you want to see clearly, seek theosis.