The Christian imagination is anti-Gnostic. The Judeo-Christian imagination is not a flight from physical reality. . . . It refuses to separate salvation from creation, the life of the spirit from its inception in the flesh. . . . In the world to come, nothing good from this one will be lost, only transformed.
A Christian imagination does not see the world as a prison from which the soul must escape, but as the stage of humanity's interaction with its God. This world makes sense. God made it with a plan . . . ; it is the imagination's rule to delight in this plan. It sees reality not as a horror to abolish but as an ongoing revelation to orchestrate in praise, as an unfolding mystery in which we have a role.
Janine Langan, "The Christian Imagination"
Showing posts with label Gnosticism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gnosticism. Show all posts
7/29/12
The organized church [has made] peace with a destructive economy and [has divorced] itself from economic issues because it is economically compelled to do so. . . . No wonder so many sermons are devoted exclusively to "spiritual" subjects. If one is living by the tithes of history's most destructive economy, then the disembodiment of the soul becomes the chief of worldly conveniences.
There are many manifestations of this tacit allegiance between the organized churches and the "economy." . . . [One is] the phrase "full-time Christian service," which the churches of my experience have used exclusively to refer to the ministry, thereby at once making the devoted life a religious specialty or career and removing the possibility of other callings Thus a . . . preacher is a "full-time Christian servant," whereas a . . . farmer, . . . so far as the religious specialists are concerned, must serve "the economy" in his work or in his failure and serve God in his spare time. The professional class is likewise free to serve itself in its work and to serve God by giving the church its ten percent. The churches in this way excerpt sanctity from the human economy and its work just as Cartesian science has excerpted it from the material creation.
Wendell Berry, "God and Country," from What Are People For?
There are many manifestations of this tacit allegiance between the organized churches and the "economy." . . . [One is] the phrase "full-time Christian service," which the churches of my experience have used exclusively to refer to the ministry, thereby at once making the devoted life a religious specialty or career and removing the possibility of other callings Thus a . . . preacher is a "full-time Christian servant," whereas a . . . farmer, . . . so far as the religious specialists are concerned, must serve "the economy" in his work or in his failure and serve God in his spare time. The professional class is likewise free to serve itself in its work and to serve God by giving the church its ten percent. The churches in this way excerpt sanctity from the human economy and its work just as Cartesian science has excerpted it from the material creation.
Wendell Berry, "God and Country," from What Are People For?
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