A Spirituality Named Compassion
1 journaler for this copy...
One can be initially quite enamored with Matthew Fox's book, "A Spirituality Named
Compassion," especially, if you are like me an INFJ personality type ala Myers-Briggs.
How could one not be against compassion and creativity? However, when one begins
to take a more critical look at the book, problems arise. For example, Fox asserts
that original sin does not exist, or at least is remarkable ameliorated, either by
the fact that it is mythical and non-existent in the first place, or secondly, that
by reason of Christ's salvific act and grace we don't experience it anymore. Now,
it is certainly true that one can have a difficult time figuring out Genesis, where
original sin is portrayed as "the knowledge of good and evil." I could never get this
How could we ever have freewil if somehow we couln't see the evil choices. Or,
giving the language a different gloss, wouln't we want to have knowledge of evil
so we could avoid it? Now, however, after having taught law school for 13 years,
and having practiced law for just under two years, I think original sin is best
defined cognitively as "Irrational Self Anti-Self Interest." That is it. For some
reason people in general, and quite frankly some people more than others, try
to pursue a warped sense of "self interest" which only damages themselves and
those around them. It's like the client who insists on pursuing an obviously
illegal course of action, which will produce less money, when he could do the
opposite. Yes, these people exist in the real world. Perhaps Mat Fox hasn't
met any of them. Additionally, I of course concure that creativity is a good
and wonderful thing. But you know, I am not sure that all creativity is good.
The German Speer creatively designed an awful lot of Nazi tanks during
World War II, and I for one don't give him credit for this. Similary, I don't give
much credit for "creative" postmodern" art which seems to express chaos and
nihilism more than anything else. In the Catholic tradition, Jesus is the Logos,
The Creative Word, or Creative Form, Divine Reason, and as such manifests
a way of being which is at bottom a limitation on creativity. Not just anything
goes for Jesus. He is not an absolutist, nor is he a relativist. One suspects that
he was teaching something like Aristotelian Thomism or Platonic Realism, more
than a millenium before Thomas Aquinas. Substance and Being as metaphysical
principles are limited by Form and Logos. Finally, I am not to happy with
Mat Fox for putting down the Cross. In the end I suppose, even after the second
coming, we will all still be having to make sacrifices of some type to get along
with each other, and if nothing else, perhaps reason itself will be a cross for
many of us. So, in the final analysis, I can neither recommend nor reject Fox's
book. There is alot to be learned there, but I am not quite sure it is what
he intends.
Compassion," especially, if you are like me an INFJ personality type ala Myers-Briggs.
How could one not be against compassion and creativity? However, when one begins
to take a more critical look at the book, problems arise. For example, Fox asserts
that original sin does not exist, or at least is remarkable ameliorated, either by
the fact that it is mythical and non-existent in the first place, or secondly, that
by reason of Christ's salvific act and grace we don't experience it anymore. Now,
it is certainly true that one can have a difficult time figuring out Genesis, where
original sin is portrayed as "the knowledge of good and evil." I could never get this
How could we ever have freewil if somehow we couln't see the evil choices. Or,
giving the language a different gloss, wouln't we want to have knowledge of evil
so we could avoid it? Now, however, after having taught law school for 13 years,
and having practiced law for just under two years, I think original sin is best
defined cognitively as "Irrational Self Anti-Self Interest." That is it. For some
reason people in general, and quite frankly some people more than others, try
to pursue a warped sense of "self interest" which only damages themselves and
those around them. It's like the client who insists on pursuing an obviously
illegal course of action, which will produce less money, when he could do the
opposite. Yes, these people exist in the real world. Perhaps Mat Fox hasn't
met any of them. Additionally, I of course concure that creativity is a good
and wonderful thing. But you know, I am not sure that all creativity is good.
The German Speer creatively designed an awful lot of Nazi tanks during
World War II, and I for one don't give him credit for this. Similary, I don't give
much credit for "creative" postmodern" art which seems to express chaos and
nihilism more than anything else. In the Catholic tradition, Jesus is the Logos,
The Creative Word, or Creative Form, Divine Reason, and as such manifests
a way of being which is at bottom a limitation on creativity. Not just anything
goes for Jesus. He is not an absolutist, nor is he a relativist. One suspects that
he was teaching something like Aristotelian Thomism or Platonic Realism, more
than a millenium before Thomas Aquinas. Substance and Being as metaphysical
principles are limited by Form and Logos. Finally, I am not to happy with
Mat Fox for putting down the Cross. In the end I suppose, even after the second
coming, we will all still be having to make sacrifices of some type to get along
with each other, and if nothing else, perhaps reason itself will be a cross for
many of us. So, in the final analysis, I can neither recommend nor reject Fox's
book. There is alot to be learned there, but I am not quite sure it is what
he intends.
