I have now formed the idea that Angels can come in different sizes. I have never considered this before.
Creatures on earth with wings can range from an eagle with a vast wingspan to a tiny fly. If I already believe that God created angels, along with the birds and insects, then it is not a hard step to the believe that angels with wings could be really tall and awesome, as well as tiny and delicate! My conclusion from the data is:
I now believe in fairies! 🥰 🤣😂🤣
I’ve kept my thought processes simple! And logical! And rational!
The trip to Ireland to explore Celtic Christianity sounds like really good fun!
I truly believe (and have personally experienced) these encounters are real. I also believe we must place them in our cultural framework to describe them. Unfortunately, swimming as we do in a sea of secular materialistic reductionism, we simply dismiss them out of hand as figments of our imagination.
Thanks for this! James spoke of a "vacillation" between reducing explanations--in speaking both of consciousness and science generally--between reducing our understanding to what can be explained empirically and what seems to our native sensibilities to be true, but cannot be explained. And in his essay "The Will to Believe" he argued for the legitimate use of faith, in many instances, to settle questions that cannot otherwise be settled.
But for my part I prefer the example Augustine set in The Confessions. He was skeptical of any attempt to use religion to understand the world, because his theology was influenced a Platonic framework, which posits that God acts in eternity, which we will never understand this side of eternity. That sets up a "vacillation" that science cannot in principle settle, and therefore is the strongest possible example of a legitimate use of faith.
In The Confessions the famous conversion scene begins with Augustine in prayer seeking a sign from God, when a child begins singing a song that instructed him to "Read the book." He picked up the Bible next to him and openned it to a passage from Romans 13 that resonated so deeply with him that he wrote the first full autobiography known in world literature.
His Platonic understanding of theology prevented him from even trying to understand how God might have answered his prayer, but it did not prevent him from having faith that the prayer was answered. I am, in fact sad that the Church did not take Augustine's example to heart...
Though I don't think I'll ever be hip to magic eels, I'm sure your class will be fun and thought provoking!
'to be empirical is to believe in fairies' - or rather, to believe in the commonness of fairy encounters (which may or may not be with something that exists separate to human perception)
I have now formed the idea that Angels can come in different sizes. I have never considered this before.
Creatures on earth with wings can range from an eagle with a vast wingspan to a tiny fly. If I already believe that God created angels, along with the birds and insects, then it is not a hard step to the believe that angels with wings could be really tall and awesome, as well as tiny and delicate! My conclusion from the data is:
I now believe in fairies! 🥰 🤣😂🤣
I’ve kept my thought processes simple! And logical! And rational!
The trip to Ireland to explore Celtic Christianity sounds like really good fun!
I truly believe (and have personally experienced) these encounters are real. I also believe we must place them in our cultural framework to describe them. Unfortunately, swimming as we do in a sea of secular materialistic reductionism, we simply dismiss them out of hand as figments of our imagination.
Thanks for this! James spoke of a "vacillation" between reducing explanations--in speaking both of consciousness and science generally--between reducing our understanding to what can be explained empirically and what seems to our native sensibilities to be true, but cannot be explained. And in his essay "The Will to Believe" he argued for the legitimate use of faith, in many instances, to settle questions that cannot otherwise be settled.
But for my part I prefer the example Augustine set in The Confessions. He was skeptical of any attempt to use religion to understand the world, because his theology was influenced a Platonic framework, which posits that God acts in eternity, which we will never understand this side of eternity. That sets up a "vacillation" that science cannot in principle settle, and therefore is the strongest possible example of a legitimate use of faith.
In The Confessions the famous conversion scene begins with Augustine in prayer seeking a sign from God, when a child begins singing a song that instructed him to "Read the book." He picked up the Bible next to him and openned it to a passage from Romans 13 that resonated so deeply with him that he wrote the first full autobiography known in world literature.
His Platonic understanding of theology prevented him from even trying to understand how God might have answered his prayer, but it did not prevent him from having faith that the prayer was answered. I am, in fact sad that the Church did not take Augustine's example to heart...
Though I don't think I'll ever be hip to magic eels, I'm sure your class will be fun and thought provoking!
Excellent analysis. Thanks!
'to be empirical is to believe in fairies' - or rather, to believe in the commonness of fairy encounters (which may or may not be with something that exists separate to human perception)