The living word versus the dried husk
The living word is the experience of the prophet's encounter with God. The dead, dried husk of that encounter is called "scripture."
In ancapistan, if you have no property, you have no rights
Ancaps often declare, "All rights are property rights." I was thinking about this the other day, in the context of running into libertarians online who insisted that libertarianism supports "the freedom of movement," and realized that this principle actually entails that people without property have no rights at all, let alone any right to "freedom of movement." Of course, immediately, any ancap readers still left here are going to say, "Wait a second! Everyone owns his own body! And so everyone at least has the right to not have his body interfered with." Well, that is true... except that in ancapistan, one has no right to any place to put that body, except if one owns property, or has the permission of at least one property owner to place that body on her land. So, if one is landless and penniless, one had sure better hope that there are kindly disposed property owners aligned in a corridor from wherever one happens to be to wherever the...
A dead husk is a little harsh. I have to believe the gospels contain at least dried seeds.
ReplyDeleteWhat else is culture, other than detritus?
ReplyDeleteWhat does the "living word" mean?
ReplyDeleteBy the way, are you familiar with the terms Shruti and Smriti in Hinduism? Smriti means "that which is told", so it's human-composed text based on information that came from a (possibly ineffable) mystical experience of talking to the gods. For instance, the gods didn't compose the Ramayana, but they showed Sage Valmiki the life of Rama, and based on that mystical experience he composed the Ramayana.
But we also believe in Shruti, or "that which is heard". That is when the gods just tell a sage (who's been meditating for several years) a sequence of Sanskrit sounds. That's how we believe the core of the Vedas (known as the Samhitas) came into being: they're a compilation of Sanskrit verses that sages directly heard from the gods. (And they were compiled by a guy named Vyasa who only included verses which a lot of people had independently heard.)
Do you not believe in the possibility of Shruti?
'What does the "living word" mean?'
Delete"The living word is the experience of the prophet's encounter with God."
But then... I thought I wrote that already!
"Do you not believe in the possibility of Shruti?"
I work just down the hall from Shruti, so of course I believe she is possible!
"But then... I thought I wrote that already!" I thought you were trying to say something about a term people should already know, just like you said something about scripture even if that's not the definition of the term scripture. So what's the definition of the term living word?
DeleteAnyway, could you actually answer my question about Shruti? Do you not believe in the possibility that the gods have ever communicated to Man using actual language?
"The living word is the experience of the prophet's encounter with God."
DeleteOf course there may be words involved!
Do you think it's possible for such an experience to consist solely of words in some cases?
DeleteIf it were just words, what would make anyone think there was anything divine involved, rather than it being a mere auditory hallucination?
DeleteWell, in the case of the Vedas, Vyasa took great pains to make sure these weren't hallucinations. For instance, he wouldn't include a verse unless a lot of sages had independently heard it (and he took great pains to make sure it really was independent). And he would only examine verses from sages who were masters of certain meditative techniques that suppress the output of the mind from one's conscious awareness, so that one would only be consciously aware of something if it came from something external.
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