1. Introduction to Religion
Humanities
February 22, 2013
Review of Wednesday
Allen: Pascal, S.K., Simone Weil

2. Is Atheism A Religion?

3. Creed?
Ethical Code?
Community?
Ultimate Concern?

4. The very fact of its being, and of our own, is a mystery absolute, and the only miracle worthy of the name. --Sam Harris

5. The Order of the Body What Bible Calls “The Flesh”
Desires... Wishes...
Acquisition of Power
External Appearances

6. The Order of the Mind Reason, Intellect & Genius... How & What
The Way of Objectivity
May Show Us That We Are Incomprehensible to Ourselves

7. The Order of the Heart
Greatness (of this Level) Not Accessible to the Body or the Mind
The Way of Subjectivity
Sensitivity to the Supernatural, Beyond the Sensual, Beyond the Empirical
Divine Wisdom

8. Soren Kierkegaard
Born May 5, 1813 to Michael & Ane (The Maid, Michael’s 2nd Wife)
Michael cursed God; felt “cursed” -- depressed
Engagement to Regine Olson; Broken Off
Writes Fear & Trembling in 1843
This Present Age in 1846

9. Christianity...
Moves Us Beyond the Aesthetic & Ethical Lives... But We Have To Start There...
Concerns God’s Love (Decision) For The World and Our Love (Decision) for God
Admits The Hiddenness of God (Because God’s Not Empirical), And Wants Us To Seek That Essential Hidden Essence

10. Is Becoming A Genuine (Christian) Person of Faith Easy
Is Becoming A Genuine (Christian) Person of Faith Easy? And if Not, What’s Necessary?
Caveat: We’re Not Trying to Endorse Christianity.
We’re Trying to Track With Kierkegaard’s Religion.

11. What Gets In The Way The Culture That’s Antagonistic
The Culture That Seems Helpful & Friendly
The Person and/or Church That Imagines “God” Can Be Domesticated...

12. Stages (Not Seasons) Aesthetic = whatever looks, feels good
Ethical = choices must be made
Religious = the choices which are made involve us in suffering, but the suffering may mean we’re authentically alive

13. Religious A
Leap
Ethical
Aesthetic
Religious B

14. Self Doubt... Ethical Aesthetic Discerning Right & Wrong Good & Evil
Soren Kiekegaard’s book
Either/Or

15. Small Groups
Find Quotes from Pages 61-68, Which Describe The Ethical Life
How might the Ethical Life be the “Threshold” to Authentic Faith and Not Its Main Living Room?

16. The Content of Christian Life...
Love, But What Manner, Mode or Kind of Love?

17. Simone Weil
1909
1943

18. Absent? How Might God Be Absent?

19. Implicit? What’s wrong with loving God Explicity?

20. Quotable... The Absence of God First Form of Implicit Love
Second Form of Implicit Love
Third Form of Implicit Love

21. Creation’s Indifference

22. How May Nature’s Indifference Become Spiritually Significant?

23. For Weil... God Creates By Self-Renunciation God is Concealed (Hidden)
God’s Absence From Creation Makes Us Desire God All The More

25. Loving God By Loving Other Things/People, but How?
By Loving The Order & Beauty that May Crush Us
By Loving Religious Practices

26. “The love of neighbor prepares us for an explicit love of God
“The love of neighbor prepares us for an explicit love of God. For as we increase our ability to see ourselves and others quite apart from the identity given to us by earthly circumstances, we are progressively made free to love without any hope of earthly reward...” (p. 113).

28. “Each man imagines he is situated in the center of the world
“Each man imagines he is situated in the center of the world. The illusion of perspective places him at the center of space; an illusion of the same kind falsifies his idea of time; and yet another kindred illusion arranges the whole hierarchy of values around him...” (p. 116).

29. Things
Idea of God
Self
Work
Others

30. Self Things Work Idea of God Others
“How could we search for God, since he is above, in a dimension not open to us? We can only advance horizontally...” (Weil, p. 121)
Things
Work
Idea of God
Self
Others
It is only because God is present here below in our neighbors, in nature and in religious ceremonies that awe can reach him (Allen, p. 121)

31. Three Outsiders? Blaise Pascal: 3 Orders...
Soren Kierkegaard: 3 Stages...
Simone Weil: 3 Forms of Implicit Love...

32. For Monday
Targeted Question #1
Sikhism & Jainism
Small Group Research