Most of my Christian life, I've been what is usually labelled "an inclusivist". Lately I've been re-examining what that means -and Common Threads looked like it might be a helpful conversation partner, so to speak, for that. I've been finding the heft of the idea often labelled 'cosmic Christ' has been growing weightier in my thinking and the book's introduction seemed to promise a consideration of this and related matters while not simply capitulating to relativism or a saggy universalism that in effect dismisses the central Christian proclamation.
One of the commendation points had something that seemed to characterise my own thinking over the last few years: "suspect the Spirit has been working far outside what they were taught to see". Just so. And the question is, for me, what does that do to our theology and especially missiology?
This -from the blurb I saw- intrigued me enough to have a look at this book.
This is not a book that says all paths are equal. Rasmussen argues the opposite — that relativism dressed as tolerance dissolves meaning, that syncretism strips practices from the living context that gave them power, and that the Catholic sacramental vision is where the universal pattern stops being interior intuition and becomes historically embodied, communally lived, and edible. He puts the Eucharist at the center of the Venn diagram and says so candidly. Some of you will find that a bracing correction to the spiritual marketplace. Others will find it a claim worth arguing with in print. Both are honest reviews, and both are welcome. What makes it worth the argument is that Rasmussen isn't defending a position he inherited. He's reporting from a return
Disclaimer: I read this as an e-book offered as a review copy. The only condition was to publish on this blog a review within a month. There is no inducement to make the review good, bad, indifferent or anything else: all my own opinion for good or ill.
Ironically, the book introduction itself recommends it be read slowly, and used meditatively. This gave me the impression that it might take longer than 30 days to read it properly, as envisaged or intended. So this review may have to evolve after initial publication. While what is reviewed is only the earlier parts.
I loved the introductory chapter. It had so much in it I highlighted because I really liked and resonated with what was written.
At first this convergence created a crisis. How could I remain fully, faithfully Catholic and at the same time acknowledge the real presence of truth, holiness, and transformation outside the visible boundaries of the Church, or any of the many Christian- based denominations? ... Every authentic search for truth is already held within the Logos through whom all things were made, also known as the Source, the Universe, the Om, the Wiracocha (wellspring) and IntiTaiTai (the sun behind the sun). Every real movement toward love participates in the life of the Trinity in Catholicism: God, God in human form (Namaste), and the Holy Spirit (God Source in all of the forms both physical and non- physical).
The Incarnation of God through Jesus does not narrow the spiritual universe. It reveals its center.
For the Catholic who senses that the Holy Spirit has been at work far beyond what they were taught to see, and who longs for a vision large enough to hold both fidelity and openness.
This work does not attempt to erase differences between traditions. Those differences are real, and they matter. Nor does it pretend that every teaching is equally true?
... recognition of a pattern and common threads of teachings that repeatedly produces the same results in human lives across cultures: greater coherence between feelings and thoughts, power and integrity to ask for what you prefer and experience it, greater freedom from distortion and negative influences, greater capacity to love, and measurable protection from the forces that fragment the soul and seek to take from us all that we have; our power, our life force and will to live, our health, and our good relationships.
... for those who are no longer satisfied with inspirational language but rather want to understand the operational structure of transformation: what actually changes a human life and what does not.
Given that the format of the book invites a longer-time to reflect on what's being read, I thought I'd also go with that and so this is the story so far. I'll update as I go along.
Here's some things I liked once I got into the substance of the book.
Rasmussen writes: "This is not a comparison of systems. It is a mapping of convergence." -it was good to be reading something that is not just comparative religions but attempting to note and bring together the best and similar insights from different spiritual traditions. I think that this is a corollary of the Christian theology which he rightly grounds in the prologue of the fourth Gospel and summed up in a phrase I recall from my early Christian formation: all truth is God's truth. I'm not always convinced that the convergences are right, but I do think that a lot of them are -and you'd expect there to be convergences in Christ if God is at work drawing all people to Godsself. And, taking the wind out of the sails of a common conservative evangelical objection: "The Christian proclamation is not that humanity has discovered God. It is that God has given Himself."
I found this helpful in naming one of the tentative conclusions I'd reached myself: "The Christian proclamation ... it adds something that no philosophical system could have anticipated. The Absolute is not only infinite unity. The Absolute is living relationship." -It's the step beyond the philosophical God and plunges us straight into considering the basis for a robust Trinitarianism as written up by John Zizioulas as well as foregrounding that God is love.
A few sentences from chapter 2 have me reflecting further: "Creation is not only sacred. It is beloved. The same love that gives itself in the Eucharist gives itself in the existence of every creature. To care for the world is not a political option, it is a Eucharistic response." I warm to the juxtaposing of political response and Eucharistic. This feels like a helpful perspective for climate activists to hang onto.
More later ... sorry you'll have to come back in a week or two ...
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