{"id":2036,"date":"2022-05-16T14:17:27","date_gmt":"2022-05-16T14:17:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2022\/05\/16\/a-false-religious-humility\/"},"modified":"2022-05-16T14:17:27","modified_gmt":"2022-05-16T14:17:27","slug":"a-false-religious-humility","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2022\/05\/16\/a-false-religious-humility\/","title":{"rendered":"A False Religious Humility?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I wonder about the self-abasing humility of those at the extreme forward edge of the religious sensibility as personified by Simone Weil and others and as expressed in such locutions as "I am nothing" that one finds sprinkled about in devotional literature.   How could I be nothing given my divine origin? Is the creature nothing at all? That makes no sense. If the creature is nothing at all, then there is no creature and God is not creator.<\/span><\/p>\n

From our inauspicious  debut in copulative slime to our end in ashes and dust, we are nothing much, but real nonetheless. The Weilian extreme with its false humility is best avoided, but better than the insane arrogance of a Russell or a Sartre.<\/span><\/p>\n

To be arrogant is to arrogate to oneself attributes one does not possess. And so the mortal man puffs himself up as if he were an immortal god.  Russell and Sartre and Co. make idols of their petty, rebellious  egos. They've  got the direction right, but not the way to it. Theosis<\/em> is indeed the goal, but it cannot be attained on one's own, by one's own power. Genesis<\/em> has it that man alone is made in the image and likeness of God. I take that to mean that man alone is a spiritual animal, a personal<\/em> animal.  Man alone has a higher origin and higher destiny, a destiny that Eastern Orthodox Christianity describes as theosis<\/em> or deification.  The goal is to become god-like, a goal unattainable without  God and the divine initiative. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I wonder about the self-abasing humility of those at the extreme forward edge of the religious sensibility as personified by Simone Weil and others and as expressed in such locutions as "I am nothing" that one finds sprinkled about in devotional literature.   How could I be nothing given my divine origin? Is the creature nothing … Continue reading “A False Religious Humility?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[139,179],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2036","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-religion","category-weil-simone"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2036","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2036"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2036\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}