One cannot divide one's life between an actual relationship to God and an inactual I-It relationship to the world--praying to God in truth and utilizing the world. Whoever knows the world as something to be utilized knows God in the same way.
Martin Buber
The motive that impels modern reason to know must be described as the desire to conquer and to dominate. For the Greek philosophers and the Fathers of the church, knowing meant something different; it meant knowing in wonder. By knowing or perceiving one participates in the the life of the other. Here knowing does not transform the counterpart into the property of the knower; the knower does not appropriate what he knows. On the contrary, he is transformed through sympathy, becoming a participant in what he perceives. Knowledge confers fellowship. That is why knowing, perception, only goes as far as love, sympathy and participation reach. Where the theological perception of God and his history is concerned, there will be a modern discovery of Trinitarian thinking when there is at the same time a fundamental change in modern reason--a change from lordship to fellowship, from conquest to participation, from production to receptivity.
Jurgen Moltmann
See how the perfection of one person requires the fellowship with another.
Richard of St. Victor
Posted by mike at April 26, 2004 09:23 AMok, jeep. i get the first and third but is the second in another language? and i'm not sure i agree with the first. can you expound/clarify?
Posted by: joy at April 26, 2004 03:47 PMWell, I haven't completely unpacked it yet. These are the three quotes at the beginning of a chapter called "Toward a Theology of Personhood." I think what he's getting at, in ten dollar words, is that our relationship to the world (both the physical and cultural) is screwed up. I particularly like to think of the last sentence of the quote--"-a change from lordship to fellowship, from conquest to participation, from production to receptivity."--in terms of marriage. Some of the people around me seem to think that a man possesses a woman, and that just ain't so. But maybe it's just that that topic is on my mind recently (and I just finished re-reading _That Hideous Strength_!) but I also will allow that maybe there is 'one interpretation and many applications.'
But yeah, it's dense. Like me. =)
Posted by: jeep at April 26, 2004 07:27 PM