Salve bene mi Iohanes
Valerius Claudius Iohanes wrote:Can there be a Universalism or Ekumenism
Short answer, contrary to our Valerius Scerio, is yes. For any who hold faith in the spiritual there can only be one ultimate, universal, mystical, sublime, spiritual reality, no matter how we may arrive there along the path of our life journey.
Valerius Claudius Iohanes wrote: Can the world come to a Pax Ecumenicalis without doing violence to those same individual faiths and understandings? How would it work? Or would it simply be undesirable?
You said you were raised Episcopalian Christian. I was raised in a polytheistic tradition. I never think of myself as pagan really - not a term we considered ourselves - but certainly outside the Judeo-Christian-Muslim traditions. I did spend about 18 months at a Roman Catholic school under the protection of a priest; that is, not as a Catholic and one protected from overzealous nuns who had insisted on trying to beat their religion into me. Every day began with a Franciscan nun praying, "God curse all heretics, pagans, and Jesuits." In reply to your question, coming from my background, how do you suppose someone like John Hagee appears to me when he preaches that "Tolerance is a sin" and says that "We are in a cultural war," specifically refering to the Episcopalians as the enemy of his congregation? Or, forget Baptists condemning Episcopalians, there was that Franciscan condemning Jesuits. Christianity is itself so exclusionary and divisive that it fractures into competing sects. That same exclusiveness is at the root of your question. You did not ask if it is possible for Shi'ite and Sunni to live side by side in harmony, but rather whether there is ONE something that all could agree to.
You say that you have always been in awe of Christ. Well, I have no problem with Jesus and the teachings that had been put into the mouth of his figure. The myths about Jesus as a messiah or as a christus just follows themes that had long been in that part of the world, and the stories of miracle working was nothing new or exclusive to Christianity either. As Celsus asked, why should we accept that our stories are only myths and that your myths should be borne as though historically true. The Jews will accept that Jesus was a rabbi. The Muslims accept that Jesus was a prophet of Allah. But even Christians, in the early centuries, could not agree on the nature of Jesus as a Christ or what that meant. You are not speaking the same language as John Hagee. I for one cannot tell if you follow the same religion as he. But then further, you are not speaking the same language as Judaism or Islam and yet all three are from the same general religious tradition. Then you wish to enter a dialogue with those of us who came from entirely different traditions, who perceive the universe in a very different way?
This brings to mind a meeting I once attended, at a Unitarian church, between Lakota Sioux and wiccans who called themselves "pagans" but who none the less still thought as Christians. Well, not quite fair, as a couple of the wiccans did understand the Lakota's perception. And then you said:
Valerius Claudius Iohanes wrote: Sometimes it seems that there are two poles in religion - the revealed TRUTH pole and the pole of elusive NUMINOUSNESS....
In truth there is no such dichotomy, but once again you are speaking in the language of your religious tradition, of a "revealed" truth, with whatever implications that has in your tradition and would not in other traditions.
I say that the answer to your question is that it is possible for everyone to come to some understanding, for we are all led eventually into the same reality. And where you ask how such could ever possibly work, I would have to conclude that it would first require that we begin by examining our common notions and from what axioms we each proceed in our individual traditions. More importantly, if you understand the difference between belief and faith, if we can have mutual respect of one another's faith, as we have always tried to promote in this sodalitas, then it is possible for people of faith to hold dialogue on their common experiences for it is really there that all the distinctions really break down - the distinctions being only the inadequate attempts of humans to explain an experiential presence of the divine.
Vale et vade in Deos, mi amice