{"id":16555,"date":"2018-03-21T09:07:11","date_gmt":"2018-03-21T13:07:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=16555"},"modified":"2018-03-21T09:33:45","modified_gmt":"2018-03-21T13:33:45","slug":"go-deep-in-one-place","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=16555","title":{"rendered":"Go Deep in One Place"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/OPFWlQtom_0\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"autoplay; encrypted-media\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong>Go Deep in One Place<\/strong><br \/>\nWednesday, March 21, 2018<\/p>\n<p>Franciscan philosopher-theologian John Duns Scotus\u2019 idea of \u201cthisness\u201d mirrors Jesus leaving the ninety-nine sheep and going after the one (Luke 15:4). And, just like Jesus, Duns Scotus holds that precious, irreplaceable \u201cone\u201d fully inside a \u201ccommonwealth\u201d or community, the Body of Christ. Duns Scotus does not teach individualism but incarnation. The universal incarnation always shows itself in the specific, the concrete, and the particular\u2014refusing to be an abstraction. Poet Christian Wiman puts it this way: \u201cIf nature abhors a vacuum, Christ abhors a vagueness. If God is love, Christ is love for this one person, this one place, this one time-bound and time-ravaged self.\u201d [1]<\/p>\n<p>The doctrine of haecceity is saying that we come to universal meaning deeply and rightly through the unique and ordinary, not the other way around, which is the great danger of all the ideologies (overarching and universal explanations) that have plagued our world in the last century. Everything in the universe is a holon and a fractal, where the part replicates the whole. Go deep in any one place and we will meet all places where the divine image is present.<\/p>\n<p>When we start with big universal ideas, at the level of concepts and -isms, we too-often stay there and argue about theory and generalizations. At that level, the mind is totally in charge. It is then easy to love humanity, but not any one person in particular. We defend principles of justice, but would not put ourselves out to live justly.<\/p>\n<p>This takes different forms on the Left and on the Right, to put it in political terms. Liberals are often devoted to political correctness and get authoritarian about process and semantics. Conservatives can be overly loyal to their validating group for its own sake and become authoritarian about its symbols, defining and defending the rules and rights of membership in that group. Both sides risk becoming \u201cword police\u201d and \u201csymbol protectors\u201d instead of actually changing the world\u2014or themselves\u2014by offering the healing energy of love.<\/p>\n<p>Sometimes neither group ever gets to concrete acts of charity, mercy, liberation, or service. We just argue about theory and proper definitions. I have done this myself. Duns Scotus offered us a meaningful and practical way to live compassionately by focusing on the now, the particular, the concrete, the individual. His entire philosophy makes love, and the will to love in a particular way, more important than intellect, understanding, or any theories about love or justice. As we say, the rubber must hit the road.<\/p>\n<p>Start with loving one situation or one person all the way through. That is the best\u2014and maybe the only\u2014first school for universal love.<\/p>\n<p>===================<\/p>\n<p><strong>Identified or Simply Interested?<\/strong><br \/>\nBy Oswald Chambers<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>I have been crucified with Christ\u2026 \u2014Galatians 2:20<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The inescapable spiritual need each of us has is the need to sign the death certificate of our sin nature. I must take my emotional opinions and intellectual beliefs and be willing to turn them into a moral verdict against the nature of sin; that is, against any claim I have to my right to myself. Paul said, \u201cI have been crucified with Christ\u2026.\u201d He did not say, \u201cI have made a determination to imitate Jesus Christ,\u201d or, \u201cI will really make an effort to follow Him\u201d \u2014but\u2014 \u201cI have been identified with Him in His death.\u201d Once I reach this moral decision and act on it, all that Christ accomplished for me on the Cross is accomplished in me. My unrestrained commitment of myself to God gives the Holy Spirit the opportunity to grant to me the holiness of Jesus Christ.<br \/>\n\u201c\u2026it is no longer I who live\u2026.\u201d My individuality remains, but my primary motivation for living and the nature that rules me are radically changed. I have the same human body, but the old satanic right to myself has been destroyed.<br \/>\n\u201c\u2026and the life which I now live in the flesh,\u201d not the life which I long to live or even pray that I live, but the life I now live in my mortal flesh\u2014 the life which others can see, \u201cI live by faith in the Son of God\u2026.\u201d This faith was not Paul\u2019s own faith in Jesus Christ, but the faith the Son God had given to him (see Ephesians 2:8). It is no longer a faith in faith, but a faith that transcends all imaginable limits\u2014 a faith that comes only from the Son of God.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Go Deep in One Place Wednesday, March 21, 2018 Franciscan philosopher-theologian John Duns Scotus\u2019 idea of \u201cthisness\u201d mirrors Jesus leaving the ninety-nine sheep and going after the one (Luke 15:4). And, just like Jesus, Duns Scotus holds that precious, irreplaceable \u201cone\u201d fully inside a \u201ccommonwealth\u201d or community, the Body of Christ. Duns Scotus does not [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16555"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16555"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16555\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16558,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16555\/revisions\/16558"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}