{"id":83417,"date":"2020-03-08T16:36:07","date_gmt":"2020-03-08T22:36:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/?p=83417"},"modified":"2020-03-08T23:58:58","modified_gmt":"2020-03-09T05:58:58","slug":"a-democratic-salvation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/2020\/03\/a-democratic-salvation.html","title":{"rendered":"A democratic salvation"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Blake<\/a>
William Blake, \u201cJacob\u2019s Ladder\u201d (1804)
Wikimedia Commons public domain image<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

A recurring theme in the texts that we\u2019ve been reading in my Islamic philosophy class \u2014 particularly, I think, in the\u00a0Fa\u1e63l al-Maq\u0101l <\/em><\/i>(\u201cThe Decisive Treatise\u201d)\u00a0of Ibn Rushd and in Ibn \u1e6cufayl\u2019s \u1e24ayy ibn Yaq\u1e93\u0101<\/i>n\u00a0<\/em>(\u201cAlive, Son of Awake\u201d) \u2014 is the notion that the real theological and philosophical truth should be restricted only to the elite and that it should be carefully and deliberately withheld from people unqualified by their (presumably inferior) natures from being able to deal with it.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

I\u2019m afraid that intellectuals are often<\/em> prone to elevate themselves to the electi<\/em> and to look down upon the mere auditores<\/em>. \u00a0Consider this passage, from the Gospel of John:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

So the people were in two minds about him\u2014some of them wanted to arrest him, but so far no one laid hands on him.<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Then the officers returned to the Pharisees and chief priests, who said to them, \u201cWhy haven\u2019t you brought him?\u201d<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cNo man ever spoke like that!\u201d they replied.<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cHas he pulled the wool over your eyes, too?\u201d retorted the Pharisees. \u201cHave any of the authorities or any of the Pharisees believed in him? But this crowd, who know nothing about the Law, is damned anyway!\u201d \u00a0(7:43-49)<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

How does God spend his time? \u00a0According to Aristotle, he spends it like a philosopher \u2014 but contemplating the only thing in the universe worthy of his attention: himself. \u00a0According to some of the classical rabbis, he spends it like a rabbi, studying Torah.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

What about the masses? \u00a0Who cares?<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a dramatically undemocratic and elitist point of view, and one that is quite foreign to most Christian sensibilities and, in fairness, to mainstream Islam and probably to most Jews. \u00a0The Sermon on the Mount has absolutely nothing to say about intellectual attainments or cultural sophistication. \u00a0Neither Jesus nor Joseph Smith came from the academic aristocracy.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

One of my absolute favorite passages from \u00a0C. S. Lewis occurs in a sermon, entitled \u201cThe Weight of Glory,\u201d that he delivered in the Church of St Mary the Virgin, Oxford, on 8 June 1942:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which,if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree helping each other to one or the other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all of our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations \u2013 these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit \u2013 immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.\u201d<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 \u00a0 A recurring theme in the texts that we\u2019ve been reading in my Islamic philosophy class \u2014 particularly, I think, in the\u00a0Fa\u1e63l al-Maq\u0101l (\u201cThe Decisive Treatise\u201d)\u00a0of Ibn Rushd and in Ibn \u1e6cufayl\u2019s \u1e24ayy ibn Yaq\u1e93\u0101n\u00a0(\u201cAlive, Son of Awake\u201d) \u2014 is the notion that the real theological and philosophical truth should be restricted only to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1809,9006,9009,9003,1612,2905,55,6192,2442,1056,9012],"class_list":["post-83417","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-church-of-jesus-christ-of-latter-day-saints","tag-eqalitarian","tag-equal-opportunity","tag-equality","tag-heaven","tag-latter-day-saint","tag-mormonism","tag-plan-of-happiness","tag-plan-of-salvation","tag-salvation","tag-soteriology"],"yoast_head":"\nA democratic salvation<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"    A recurring theme in the texts that we've been reading in my Islamic philosophy class -- particularly, I think, in the\u00a0Fa\u1e63l al-Maq\u0101l ("The\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link 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