Comments on: James Cameron, Alexis de Tocqueville, and the nature of nature

By: Work in Progress

Work in Progress — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 17:02:06 +0000

"Christian" pantheism is an oxymoron. You have chosen to create a religion and a god to your liking, not the one revealed in the Bible.

This, my friend, is called "idolatry".

Picking and choosing an "interpretation" (e.g. Maximus the Confessor) external to the actual authors of the Holy Scriptures because you like it is the oldest sin in the world. We all want to be god. We all want to exalt ourselves and proclaim that we are gods (or a portion of a god).

Here is the revelation provided to us in the Bible. "You (we) are not god or even a small portion of god."

God is the Potter we are the clay.

God is God!

El Shaddai!

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 16:24:21 +0000

Heather -

Thought, I might have been the only one interested in that peculiar Douthat piece. I have a little different take on it though. I think he completely missed the point Cameron was making.

To my mind, the essential tension in the movie is about gender. The Sgt Rock mercenary character embodies the idea of the threatened patriarchy unmoored from any balancing efforts of the feminine, and hell bent of killing off the perceived threat to it's traditional power.

As such it's a reflection on contemporary politics and the way every issue of national significance seems to quickly devolve into a contest to define the opponent as un-manly.

What Douthat defines as pantheistic - is really about bringing the feminine - traditionally associated with matter generally, and the earth in particular - back into balance with the male.

While he is essentially correct that Christian church evolved in opposition to this balance and as a tool to support the patriarchal authority and privilege of the priest class as the source all legitimate interpretation of devine will, I still think the larger conflict turns on more basic issues of gender.

Would love to visit with you about this when you have a chance.

Murph

By: Joy

Joy — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 02:30:23 +0000

I wish more theologians were "spastic" in the way you are, Heather, rather than spastic in the way that, say, a colon is. But I digress.

I hadn't seen the Douthat piece (I stopped reading him once he left The Atlantic), but I love the Angier article (hell, I'd read her version of ingredients on a cereal box.)

What I'm trying to say is that I love this here thing you wrote, Heather. It made me wonder if you saw this article by one of Pam's professors at EDS:

http://w.religiondispatches.org/blog/mediaculture/2168/avatar:_a_subversive_reading_of_the_bible/

Being the sole member of the obscure sect known as "Pantheistic Whyheads," it made my day, nay, my whole year, to read this sentence: "We Americans, it seems, are born to pantheism as the sparks fly upward." I'm so lucky to know you (and that cutie husband of yourn.)

xoxoxo Joy Howard