Monday, September 4, 2017

Spiritual Relativism is Actually Just Another Form of Dogmatism

It has no meaning. That is the point! No LOGOS!

When people today say "I am spiritual but not religious" what they often mean is that they believe in religious experience but they are not ready to make truth claims based on that. That it is just a matter of feeling and opinion (Kant). That it is all, therefore, ultimately, the same.

"The man of today...feels repelled by Christianity's claim to absolute validity, which, in view of so many historical relativizations that are well known to him, seems to him little worthy of credence; and he feels much better understood and more attracted by the symbolism and spiritualism of someone like Radhakrishnan, who teaches the relativity of all religious expression that can be articulated and the ultimate validity of that spiritual experience alone which can never be adequately expressed, an experience that (though, indeed, coming in stages) is everywhere one and the same.

"As obvious as such a choice may appear, it depends on drawing a premature conclusion. For it is only in appearance that Radhakrishnan stands, in contrast to the partisan position of the Christian, for an openness to all religion that is above any partisanship; the truth is that, like the Christian, he takes as his starting point the doctrine of an absolute value, to be precise, the one that holds a key place in his religious system and that seems for Christianity (for any kind of genuine monotheism whatever) no less an arrogant assumption than does the absolute claim of the Christian for his own way. For he teaches the absolute value of imageless spiritual experience, to which all else is relative; the Christian denies that mystical experience has sole validity and teaches the absolute value of the divine call that has been made audible in Christ. To force upon him the absolute value of mysticism as the only element ultimately valid is no less arrogant an imposition than offering the absolute value of Christ to the non-Christian."

Truth and Tolerance, Joseph Ratzinger, San Francisco: Ignatius, 2004, 30-31

Jesus Christ alone is the LOGOS: meaning, in the flesh! και ο λογος σαρξ εγενετο! ΚΑΤΑ ΙΩΑΝΝΗΝ 1:14

"...[T]he biblical 'mysticism' is not a mysticism of images but of words and...its revelation is not contemplation by man but the world and the act of God. It is not primarily the discovery of some truth; rather, it is the activity of God himself making history. Its meaning is, not that divine reality becomes visible to man, but that it makes the person who receives the revelation into an actor in divine history." Truth and Tolerance, 42.

...The God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob...

Cf. The "I'm Spiritual but not Religious" Error.