You can surf or search or use the labels to follow a thread of ideas. Imagine in some crazy way you are watching my thoughts evolve, seeing ideas become connected , or observing an amorphous cloud giving birth to sources of light and matter. Treat this place metaphorically as a place of unformed galaxies and planetary systems rather than merely as a diary.

Wednesday, January 30, 2008

meaning and being

So what is it to be? … To be God is to anticipate a future self by an inexhaustible interpretive relation to an other that God himself is; to be a creature is to anticipate a future self, by a finite interpretive relation to an other that the creature is not…. Being is interpretive relatedness across time; that is, to be is to rise from the dead. Such is the description of reality that coheres with trinitarian doctrine of God. —Robert W. Jenson, The Triune Identity: God according to the Gospel

This is ontology which is the study of being, what is core to existence. Jenson appears to be a new generation of speculative theologians and this quote, which I came across, is particularly fascinating. But what does it in fact mean? I was amazed to read the comments in the blog where I found it that many couldn't access its meaning. I think it says meaning, identity and being are intrinsically related and extrinsic in relationship. Is this clear as mud? Well rather than rewrite a perfectly good explanation by the blog writer Ben Myers -

As humans, as creatures, those things that we move our spirit upon are the things that become our story. We TAKE meaning from things-- the meaning that those things have is written into our body and soul, the change our life. (How different is my life because of the internet? Very.) We're asking those things to promise a future for us, a better one. Even to say "I just live for the now" is to let your spirit be moved by that idea, and to ask that idea to promise a future good story. When we die, story over.

God the Father, being creator, is different from us: that which his Spirit moves upon is GIVEN meaning. The Father's Spirit is poured out on the Son. When the Son dies, the Father's story-giving Spirit says, "No, the story's not done!" and thus the Resurrection.

If we let out spirit be moved to creaturely things, then we are writing into our story things that will eventually crumble into not-being.

If we make our spirits move only to Christ, then we have as our own story the story of him whose story does not end. We have let our spirits take their meaning from the God who gives all meaning, from the God who will-be. His resurrection story becomes ours. His will-be is our will-be.

To be is to be resurrected, because all other being is simply soon-not-being.
So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! 2 Cor 5:16-17