the (h)uman bond.

“If the love whereby the Father loves the Son, and the Son the Father, reveals in an ineffable manner the union between both, what more fitting than that He, who is the Spirit, common to both, should be properly called love?” – Augustine

The third part of Hegel’s system is the Philosophy of Spirit. The word ‘Spirit’ (Geist in German) is used by Hegel in a very specific sense which is at the core of his philosophy. Spirit, for Hegel, always involves relation. An isolated individual might be a consciousness, but only in relating with others can the level of Spirit (higher than that of mere consciousness) be reached. This is the level which includes all the phenomena of art, religion, and society.

can we do something here. let’s assume some things. that one God is Logic. the Big idea. then there is nature. this is what we call reality, or what we can see, touch, hear, feel and taste. then there is spirit. that which is beyond it all. but the nature of the spirit is itself relational.

now let’s assume something beyond common christianity which interprets the trinity as three separate entities. the father, the son, and the holy spirit. three independent entities that rely upon the other. some of the ancient scholars referred to this relationship as the dance.

from there, what if we were to re-interpret our understanding of the holy spirit?

what if when God becomes Jesus in the flesh, which would Logic becoming the Word (John 1:1), the word is the concept or idea and the becoming flesh is the materialization of God. But beyond philosophical rhetoric, what if, for all intense purposes, God is consumed by flesh, God metaphorically dies as God, but is still fully God in the flesh, now named and known as Jesus. So, le’ts keep going. What if when Jesus dies on the cross, God also dies, although Jesus died physically, God is transfigurated now into the ‘Counselor’ that Jesus promises will arrive after his departure. Let’s assume that Holy Spirit then which is by Hegelian understanding relational, is now God. the human bond.

let’s replay this idea through some typical christian theology. so then if the above is true, then to blasphemy against the holy spirit is to blasphemy (in hebrew: to mock or reject) another human. let’s take it a step further, to make someone an ‘other’ is to scorn the holy spirit. war creates ‘other’s. socialized approaches to exclusive ethics (i.e., clubs, churches, and etc.), name-calling, media interpellation, and so on. anything that make someone an outsider, creates someone as an outsider, this is an at of blasphemy. to hurt humanity is to ultimately hurt god, the bond that holds humanity together.

so what of the mysterious, the healings, the limbs that return on, or the cancer that disappears. this too is part of the human bond. but this cannot simply be explained away as the holy spirit. this must be treated with the same awe and wonder that the mystics approached god with. this could be deemed simply nothing more tha ‘mystery’; the divine mysterium which is enhanced by the human bond. why? because typically these mystical acts happen when one human is interacting with another. it is a reparation of the human god, it is a repairing of the divine (tikkun olam) within.