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The Pleromatics Project
After Thought
Whatever the value to the reader, writing over time about coherence and meaning can become valuable to the writer, as a personal journal of the life quest. That became especially evident as I developed the Chronological Index of this Scriptorium collection, reminding me of the various states of mind and thought as each piece was written.
It is now over a decade since the writing of Spirit and Cosmos. During that period of further reflection and meditation, a persistent question has come prominently to the fore: What is the value of “doing theology” at all, for theology is necessarily about that which is beyond full human understanding. It is always speculative, and seems to tend toward arrogance. Our global ego-vessel is now fastened by a thin frayed line to its anchor in the ground of being, there, under the psychic sea. There is a Gordian knot in the rope. Such a knot severely reduces the holding power of an anchor rode, and this knot is now hard-set by the tensions of centuries of storm.
One hopes that theological writing could help untangle the knot that theology has made, by helping sort out the line’s many-colored fibers, including the fibers of anti-theism and nontheism. We cannot merely slice away the knot, however, at least not before we rig some other hold upon the anchor. Perhaps theology could help do that, but all of the holding elements must pull in the same direction.
As I look over Spirit and Cosmos now, its style often seems too confident and too assertive about matters which humans cannot fully know. I hope the reader will excuse that. Exuberant optimism often comes with the initial glimpse of the cosmic whole. For understanding, one hopes in silence, sitting within the beauty of the vision.
db, February
2005
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