Salvation in History

"I think, therefore I am."   -- Rene Descartes, French philosophe

Not the least of accomplishments, the late Pope John Paul II was an artist, an actor, an able statesman for his Polish homeland, exhibiting both bold love for the people, and courage against their Communist oppressors; as well, he was a highly articulate Pastor, tending his flock as priest, bishop and later as Pope, the spiritual leader of the world's Roman Catholic Christians.

Despite his high scholarship and extensive intellectual abilities, it is sometimes less known that John Paul possessed a formidable intellect for the humanities, the sciences, mathematics and philosophy of all kinds. He had a great interest in astronomy. In one of his many works of literature and philosophy, Crossing the Threshold of Hope, John Paul chooses as his subject, salvation in history. Why does the Christian story of Jesus seem so complicated? Is God really so loving? What about other faith groups who look to their traditions for wholeness, peace, for salvation, for unity? John Paul II (JP II) muses that the answers are long, yet he endeavors to make them simple in this essay for those who are not philosophers, to better carry the message of salvation, as he sees it.

"To be redeemed in salvation, is a profound question." Many faiths' practice for spiritual redemption; it is not limited to Christians. Jews and Buddhists are two other faiths that come to mind. In history, salvation in the west finds its modern roots in the teaching of the Enlightenment thinkers of Europe. John Paul writes, "I put Descartes at the forefront, because he marks the beginning of a new era of European thought, and because this philosopher, who certainly is the greatest France has given the world, inaugurated a great shift in philosophy: 'I think, therefore I am'...the motto of modern rationalism."

"The objective truth of this thought is not as important as the fact that something exists in human consciousness." Descartes inaugurates the modern development of the sciences, including those humanistic sciences, ushering in the new, modern age of western thought.

The French Enlightenment ushered in the "cult of the goddess of reason." To those minds shaped by a naturalistic consciousness of the world, God is decidedly outside of the world. "God working through man turned out to be useless...to modern science, to modern knowledge...which examines the workings of the conscious, the unconsciousness. The Enlightenment, thus, put God, the redeemer to one side."

Consequently, man, divorced from traditions of faith, of spirit, is now expected to live by reason alone. The collected wisdom of the ages, ever present in traditional society is cast aside in favor of reason alone. The presence of a divine Creator, a loving intellect that knows the heart of his creation, that so loved the world, does not need God's love.

The modern world is self sufficient; thus this world must be the world that makes man happy. Yet in the world today, man continues to suffer in body and mind, in poverty and neglect, in loneliness and greed, this world suffers alienation, aimlessness, anxiety, poverty, and suffers alone. Science has not been its help.

"This world,' says JP II, 'in which knowledge is developed by man, which appears as progress and civilization, as a modern system of communication, in a structure of democratic freedoms without limits, is today a world in which man suffers." The world is not capable, despite its reason, to make man happy, to free him from his sufferings, his pain, his death; it cannot save man from evil, illness or catastrophes. Still, now today, the world needs, wants to be saved, to be redeemed and renewed.

Immortality is not part of the world; that is why the Christ speaks in the Gospels of God's love which expresses itself in the offering of his son, so that man may not perish, but have life, eternal. He came that man might be free in love, to lift him and embrace in a redeeming love. For love is always greater than any force of evil."

"The Easter story is the culmination of the story of the "return," of redemption possible and available to all humankind. The history of salvation "not only addresses the question of human history, but also confronts the problem of the meaning of man's existence. It is both a confrontation of history and metaphysics; the encounters between man and God in the world, the divine mysteries of souls constitutes the modern Church." --paraphrased.

Two + Two Equals Five

"Death is a dogma. It can't be debated or explored rationally. Those who do, don't seem to return to quantify it."  --Simply thinking

Relatively speaking, in the realm of mathematics, preciseness can be relied upon, science too. There is the "scientific" method; we all have been more or less indoctrinated with it from our school years. That in the world which is measurable, quantifiable can be sure; it can be said to be true. So there are absolutes in life.

By mathematical, demonstrable methods, because we can see actual objects, count them, the sum of two and two is known. It can be argued for a "truth." The rising and the setting of the sun, the seasons of the earth, they too can be argued for as "truth." Many readers will quickly, instinctively argue that two and two is four! Why? Because it's true!

What is truth? Is it my way or your way? Is truth what a powerful person says it is, or do I decide, choose my truths?
The Webster dictionary defines truth simply as: the state of being, the body of real things, events and facts. Its more archaic definition interestingly is: fidelity or constancy.

G.K. Chesterton who wrote on many philosophical subjects early in the last century reprises again in The Complete Thinker, the words and ideas of Chesterton edited by Dale Ahlquist. Alquist quotes Chesterton, “Thinking means connecting things.” He writes of Chesterton that 'he wants to know and to connect everything.'
 Instead today we, "want religion kept out of politics. We want it kept out of economics. Well, we want religion kept out of everything! But we have also separated meaning from art, and art from beauty. We have separated health from human dignity, and have separated the family from the home. We have separated the big questions from the little questions and neither is getting answered very well." Chesterton argues that it is today, 'the current failing of man to engage in thinking clearly.'

Things then aren't going very well for the "oneness" under this scenario, now are they? There is, instead, more and growing dichotomies, dualities and increasing egos to match. "You have yours and I have mine," is a prevalent mindset. When much of life is "relative," we, each of us, may fall into the notion that we are the dictators of ourselves, the centers of our own universes. Our feelings, transient as they may be, become the arbiters of existence in the worldly realm. If it feels good, makes us happy, well then--do it!

Without "natural law", the slippery slope that is life becomes entirely negotiable; there is no good or bad. So why isn't the sum of two and two five? How can anyone say that's wrong??

 "Every man has a different philosophy; this is my philosophy and it suits me" – the habit of saying this is mere ego. A universal philosophy is not constructed to fit a man; a universal philosophy is constructed to fit a universe. Each person can no more possess a private belief than one can possess the sun and moon privately." --Chesterton

*In other words,
John's truth is relative, while Bob's truth is absolute; therefore John accepts Bob's truth. Bob does not accept John's truth.
OR: It's true for everyone that nothing is true for everyone.
In logical/mathematical terms:
If A, then B.
If B, then not/negative A.
Therefore, if A, then not -A.
This form of argument is called a hypothetical syllogism, a statement of deductive logic which here proves false, because one cancels the other out, though many believe it in its simpler, verbal forms. To put it in mathematical symbols:
 x=y, y=z, therefore x=z.

Think about that.

*To review the truth or falseness of this type of statement, see the classic text on the subject, Copi's Logic.

Spiritual Energy

Love is the great union of the universe."  Theilhard de Chardin

There is no subject in the world which arouses greater curiosity than spiritual, or psychic energy. The energy that animates a body, that enlivens the soul; it lights the eyes and attracts life to itself. Spiritual energy is that which is absent in the corpse. Yet there is scant, scientific evidence that it even exists. Most have an awareness of this energy by their own, daily experience. It is often encountered in the simple, everydayness of life, and as well in the profound.

While science is largely unaware of its presence in the world, its realness, none more opaque scientifically, spawns the whole of Ethics which rests upon it. "The nature of this inner power is so intangible that the whole description of the universe in mechanical terms has had no need to take account... but has deliberate disregard of its reality," wrote Pierre Theilhard de Chardin in his work, The Phenomenon
of Man.
"The difficulties we still encounter in trying to hold together spirit and matter in a reasonable perspective are nowhere more harshly revealed... the building of a bridge between the two banks of our existence-- the physical and the moral-- if we wish the material and spiritual of our activities to be mutually enlivened. To connect the two energies, of the body and the soul in a coherent manner: science has ignored the question... [yet]we must advance."

"The inner face of the world is manifest deep within" and we are most aware of through our concrete behaviors that the two energies do combine, but we cannot easily, or not at all, make out the method. It seems, according to de Chardin, that the method is made of both a dependence and an independence, thus a mutual inter-dependence arises as it occurs to us that the "soul" must be "a focal point of transformation" at which point all energy converges. However attractive it may be to suppose that there is a direct transformation, it becomes clear that in practice, in love, it is their mutual inter-dependence, as clear as their inter-relation arising, says de Chardin writing about the nature of spiritual energy and love.

His book, The Phenomenon of Man, deemed radical when it first appeared in 1940, was blacklisted by many contemporary theologians upon its arrival; today de Chardin now occupies an esteemed place in the world of theology. His ideas give rise to the idea of humanity as a unifying factor of the universe, and man its bearer.

Islam, In the Name of God, Most Gracious

"It would surely be illogical to maintain, for example, that the science of medicine has no reality, because man has sought and discovered it out of fear, fears of disease and death..." God and his Attributes by Sayyid M.M. Lari


The author of God and His Attributes is Sayyid Mujtaba Musavi Lari, son of Ayotollah Sayyid Ali Asghar Lari, a great religious scholar of Iran. Lari writes in this volume, translated from Farsi into English that "the best of them [regarding religion]... cannot transcend the sphere of logical speculation." Even so a response may be made that "even if we accept the original and fundamental motive for man's belief in a creator" to have been based in fear, this does not constitute belief in God to be mere whimsy in reality. 


Thus Lari writes in the opening paragraphs of his book, "If fear motivated man to seek a refuge, and if in the course of that search, he discovered a certain reality, God, is there any objection to be made? If fear is the cause for the discovery of a certain thing, can we say that it's imaginary and unreal because it was fear that first prompted man to seek it out?" He continues, "In all the affairs and occurrences of life, belief in a wise and powerful Lord is a real refuge and support... quite a different matter... from man's motive for searching it out."


It is the depths of man's being which impel him to seek God. Yet those who are caught up in "the webs of science may fall prey to doubt and confusion." Many men says Lari become imprisoned within themselves. They overly rely upon their intellect at the expense of their senses. Yet it is the intellect "which safeguards us from illusion." And so man's original nature sensing hazards, rushes to the help of the one who is in want. When, for example, a person is drowning and overwhelmed, pressed by hardships, brought down by illnesses or disease, then it is this very nature, original nature as Lari terms it, that is all compassionate, all encompassing. He seeks the aid of " one whose power is superior to all powers, and he understands its compassion and encompassing power in being. The all powerfulness of this Being can save him. "Because of his perception," writes Lari, "and with all his strength, he seeks the aid of the most sacred being to save him from danger," the one who can help him. And in the innermost core of his heart, he feels the power and strength of that being at work for his salvation.


Lari writes of an Islam, different than is sometimes portrayed as: warring and militant, unrepentant and strident. This Persian cleric writes in his books of a god, who while strident and possessing an eye for justice, is also a god of compassion and salvation.

The Enlightenment Triumphs: Esalen and America

"Esalen: America and the religion of no religion" --by Jeffrey J. Kripal

This article starts well back into history of ideas, for another look to at least the time of the 17th century in Europe. The impact of the Enlightenment, while not a de facto part of the major religions of the world has, in its own time, come into a major success. Success here is termed as the success of the insertion of an idea or ideas so powerful that they change the course of the development of human civilization.
For some of us in modern America who can trace our family and cultural ancestry back to the Europe of the Enlightenment, we will recognize that in the history of the West, and of the beginnings of America, these ideas proved crucial in the formation of the United States of America.

Indeed our Constitution and Bill of Rights hark directly back to Europe, in particular to France and England, as well as Germany. Read in their own context, these documents, for example, are masterpieces of Enlightened thought. And they are our very own, American. Read the US Constitution and Bill of Rights; note the assertions made in those documents as a manifesto of the 'enlightened' thinker.

Some define the Enlightenment period as: Enlightenment is a call for human lives to be directed by rational thought and science, rather than by faith, monarchy or superstition.
The Rationalists, as they are also called, held a strong belief in the power of human reason to change society and free persons for the pursuit of life, liberty and justice.
Individuals were not to be constrained by custom or arbitrary authority; in the world of Reason all was to be proved and solved by science and technology. Religion was to have little, if any, role.

The advent of the American Revolution and the French and English revolutions that followed solidified the presence of this new way of acting, thinking and being in the world.
In his recent book Esalen, by Jeffrey J. Kripal, professor of Religious Studies at Rice University, located in Houston, Texas, examines the early American ideas and attitudes that wrought a society which ultimately came to accept a belief, or a group of beliefs fashioned into a new "American mysticism," some nowadays call Esalen.

True to its heritage the "founders" of Esalen saw that the simple re-arrangement of existing religious bodies and institutions would not effect the great social changes they desired, nor would the universities as a social system, reap the rewards of increased scholarship. Thus writes Kripal, "the approach [of] Esalen as an American mystical tradition has changed the rules of the game." More specifically he writes that "the old rules had to go. Esalen thus chose to operate with modern democratic principles, individualistic values, celebration of science... secular notions of religion as primarily a private affair of personal choice, and creativity and socially liberal agendas... for the past 50 years, Esalen sets out to embody a religion of no religion"

Yet science and technology has not as yet solved human grief or suffering. Indeed a tromp through the 20th century reveals that increased science and technology have led to increased barbarism and killing on the most massive scale in all of human history. Science clearly cannot be the answer to what ails the human race. Curiously, in the thinking of some, "the religion of no religion," is the religion of all religions. Kripal goes on to explain. He says, "in this mystical humanism... one finds in the play of the divine, that, embracing all paths is an effective path." Like buckshot in the dark, one is bound to hit a target.

By refusing to identify with any single truth, and by preferring "a metaphorical or symbolic understanding of all religious language... [Esalen] inhabits a different existential religious position..." Thus a religion of no religion; a religion of all religion. The ideas joined together to form Esalen are without any single historical tradition, beyond Enlightenment; such a deconstructive, revisionist view of human civilization is powerful, even when not fully engaged.

Yet it is deeply American to want as the Constitution reads, a separation of Church and State-- so, "no one captures the flag." In political terms when this notion succeeds, it results in a democratic pluralism in which no one group stands before any other; in religious terms, in a sort of "metaphysical secret," since religion is a private matter per the mythology of Esalen. Thus saying that "we hold our dogmas lightly" is a form of "this same mystical secularism," writes Kripal. This is embodied in the person who holds himself as 'spiritual, but not religious.' Does this person know, or care anything about enlightenment?

Recalling that the drive for religious liberty, in large measure, propelled many American patriots forward, and while some would argue that over the course of the past 300 years, the democratic and egalitarian forms visioned by the American Founding Fathers to free the person from political domination, from tyranny, from monarchy, from state instituted religion, have by and large resulted in some quarters of America, in continuation of the religious notions and practice which preceded the Founding Fathers; in other quarters, it has enveloped a sort of dream, a utopian hope to counter what many presently experience as religion in America today.

Humanists seek pattern, beauty and meaning, wonder within themselves; science, meanwhile, pursues cause, and explanations in the world around the self. In extension of reason or Rationalist thought, faith then is not in their vocabulary. Esalen has dedicated itself, however to the fusing of the spiritual and the scientific, the rational and the wondrous. And yet Esalen seeks to, in the American way, fuse and celebrate the " fullest scope of human knowledge and experience, even and especially, if those mediating fusions were subversive to traditional science and traditional religion. Of course they often were." John Heideger, Esalen teacher, wrote, "all creation reveals meaningful interconnectedness."

Such paradoxes exert a profound understanding of history. In this mind, history is neither linear nor narrative; rather it is creative, re-visioning, some times mysterious, and truly unknowable, setting the stage for the teaching of the new way, the new American history according to Esalen. The American Mormon has done it, the Scientologists have roared onto the American scene along with the Seventh Day Adventist and the Christian Scientists, among others, so why not?
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