/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.22635595]

>Blessed are the poor in spirit: for their's is the kingdom of heaven
Did Jesus mean that the poor are blessed in spirit, or that those who are poor in spirit are blessed?

[Anonymous No.22635611]

>>22635595
Both. He was angling for the catch-all type religion.

[Anonymous No.22635650]

>>22635595
I love Jesus so much bros

[Anonymous No.22635934]

>>22635595
I think the poor are blessed in spirit. I think he is speaking of the necessity of humility. A poor person will drop to their knees and ask for help readily. They are long past the point of pride. However, someone of means will resist what they see as an act of degradation because it hurts their pride. Even if the person they are kneeling to and begging for help is God himself. Thus the poor are blessed in spirit and it is more likely that a camel shall thread the eye of a needle than a rich man enter heaven.

[Anonymous No.22635941]

>>22635595
He is saying that heaven is for retards.

[Anonymous No.22635994]

He meant that they're a big guy for you

[Anonymous No.22636015]

I've generally seen it this way:

The poor in spirit are less strong willed, less attached to their own spirit and will, and the things of this life, as well as the things of the self. Saint Paul talks about how "I must decrease," so that "Christ might increase."

In Luke, Christ tells to people that the Kingdom of Heaven won't be an observable thing we can point to. It will be within. Those who have built up a strong spirit of their own, who are "rich in spirit," must undergo much purgation before they are emptied out so that the Holy Spirit can dwell within them. The poor in spirit are those who, as vessels for the Spirit of God, are more empty. To be rich in spirit is to be rich in human spirit, the spirit of the "old man" that Saint Paul says we must cast off, that we might be born again as new men and live "in the fullness of God."

Jesus' big prayer to the Father in John says "let them be one in me as I am one in you."

The Gospel, the Good News, is that God has become man, creating a bridge between man and God, repairing the original separation caused by sin. The early parts of Romans talk about this, Christ as a new Adam. And this allows us "back towards Eden," into contemplation, mystical union with God. But such contemplation also requires that we leave behind our sinful nature.

This is an invitation to freedom, to be free from being lorded over by desire, instinct, and circumstance (Romans 7), and to be our authentic selves, doing what we were made for, union.

As Saint Athanasius puts it, borrowing from Saint Irenaus, "God became man that man might become God."

This can be taken the wrong way. Our ego, drives, desires, flesh, do not "become God." We must become "poor" in these, utterly destitute, for the union to be perfected, for the seed of baptism to blossom into the spiritual fruit of contemplation, charity, love, etc.

This union is always imperfect in this life, for now we see "through a mirror darkly."

Unfortunately, the Gospel is often reduced to "Christ came so that if you make a sincere plea for forgiveness God shall not torture you for all eternity, and this is all." Or "Christ came as a mechanism to save those who were elect, predestined for salvation since the foundation of the world."

These have truths in them but miss what is most wonderful in the Gospel. Christ himself doesn't give some simple narrative of salvation, but summarizes the Gospel as "turn to God and change the way you think and act, for the Kingdom of Heaven is near!" Matthew 4:17

Too much theology falls into Pelagianism, making Christianity an onerous code of obligations. Being a Christian is something you "get to be," not a list of obligations you "have to do." It is a grace, a gift for us to become more free, more authentic, closer to God.

But the element of freedom can also be totally lost when people focus on predestination and refuse to think the "choice" verbage throughout the Bible is "real." God's freedom is our freedom.

[Anonymous No.22636041]

>>22636015
Fears that man having any sovereignty will somehow violate God's sovereignty lead to a view where man must be a puppet. Man cannot do any good save for divine "acting through."

This comes from an idea of a God that is not truly infinite. Such a God is a powerful entity who nonetheless sits outside the world and is thus defined by it. God is necessarily defined by what God is not in such a case, God's action defined by human action.

But God's freedom is our freedom and we become more free as we go beyond ourselves. You see this recognition in philosophers of transcendence as well, Plato and Hegel.

Being poor in spirit means to be less defined by internal drives and desires and more ready to be defined by that which is from without, transcending the self.

Thus, the original Christian formulation is in some ways closer to panENtheism (not panthesism) than Enlightenment theism. But this is a mysterious, personal panentheism, not that of the logic chopping philosophers of religion today. God is, as Saint Augustine says, "in everything yet contained in nothing." As Saint Bonneventure says, "an effect is a sign of its cause," and so all the world is a sign of God (Romans 1).

Saint Aquinas has similar things to say.

The best place I have seen poverty of spirit and purgation explained is in Saint John of the Cross, who draws heavily on Job, Ecclesiastes, Jeremiah (his laments), and the Psalms to illustrate what is mean. That work (the late chapters deal with the "night of spirit," as opposed to sent) or those parts of the Bible are good illustrations. In the Psalms David talks about being made impoverished in eloquent ways.

We must come to God as beggars, for we have nothing to offer God. We are the work of God's hands, the clay that must be molded (Romans 9), we must be "broken with a rod of iron," and "dashed to pieces like pottery," (Psalm 2) before being remade. See also the metaphor uses in Jeremiah 18 of the potter's wheel.

[Anonymous No.22636064]

>>22636041
For those who will not continence Christianity, who will not read the Bible, I recommend Wallace's "Philosophical Mysticism in Plato and Hegel." This gets at the "life changing poverty," we can embrace. Or, another good starting point is Merton's "The Inner Experience," (pic related). Harmless' book "Mystics," is quite good too.

Apologies for rambling. I get excited about wanting to share this sort of thing, for it has given me a deeper joy than many other successes.

[Anonymous No.22636101]

>>22635994
/thread

[Anonymous No.22636840]

Psalm 34:18-21 KJVAAE
The Lord is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart: and saveth such as be of a contrite spirit. Many are the afflictions of the righteous: but the Lord delivereth him out of them all. He keepeth all his bones: not one of them is broken.
Evil shall slay the wicked: and they that hate the righteous shall be desolate.