Comment

Comment by Claudia Mercedes Mazzucco on February 28, 2013 at 11:52am

Question: Is the self and its development largely encapsulaped in language?

Christian philosopher and theologian, Paul Tillich explains, “without language there are no universals; without universals no transcending of nature and no relation to it as nature. But language is communal, not individual. The section of reality in which one participates immediately is the community to which one belongs. Through it and only through it participation in the world as a whole and in all its parts is mediated.”

The crucial importance that language has for Tillich is also shared by the Rabbis. They demonstrate to what extent language participates in the very essence of reality because “God spoke and the world came into being.” Languages reflect within their structures a particular mythical way of creating the perceived world, so symbols and pictures fit together as one.

Comment by Claudia Mercedes Mazzucco on February 14, 2013 at 2:15pm

One of the greatest difficulties that a person with autism confronts when trying to imagine the God of the Old Testament is that when God revealed himself to Moses, he revealed himself as one who was recognized by being continuously present, and by being known by that presence alone. (Exodus 3:14)

In the Exodus narrative, Moses leads his people to follow a God who would never become past tense. It is the same bush which is burning without being consumed. The Israelite people were eminently aware of God's hand in history. They saw Yahweh acting in plagues, storms, battles, prophets, and kings, as David Delaney said in Law and Nature. In Psalm 135 (136) the Israelites reflect on their past and praise and thank God for His actions in it.

As Simon Baron-Cohen has it, "Sometimes I meet people with autism who are religious, but their motivation is driven more by the rules (the system) in theology rather than the anthropomorphizing." The attraction of being motivated by the rules in order to practice religion is that a rule can keep on repeating itself. There is finality in Temple’s image of God: millions of interacting particles twisting together into a confusing mass without divine sovereignty and purpose.

The theme of divine sovereignty and purpose permeates the Gospels’ narratives. What is affirmed about Jesus Christ is set within the context of an ongoing activity of God, whereby the past does not remain past, but is continuously becoming present.

Grandin imagines God as the finality of a past event. Thus God is more a principle than a person. He/it provides order but isn't much concerned with human affairs. When Jesus declared that the kingdom of God had come, there was a double thrust in that declaration. The event of the coming was past tense. But the Kingdom of God itself was present continuous tense. The whole of Jesus’s kingdom can be viewed as an ongoing work.

Comment by Adriana on February 6, 2013 at 5:47pm

It depends on how one defines thinking and feeling. But in principle, no. It's a complicated issue, neurologically speaking, since all humans feel emotions. 

Comment by Claudia Mercedes Mazzucco on February 6, 2013 at 5:38pm

Adriana, do you think that we need to feel in order to think?

Comment by Adriana on February 6, 2013 at 4:58pm

For me, it's the opposite. I can completely understand the feelings but I don't understand the theology. 

Comment by Claudia Mercedes Mazzucco on February 6, 2013 at 4:47pm

Sandra has experienced herself as completely excluded from this dimension of Christian experience. It shows in her work. Not even Richard Dawkins seems to me as completely exclude from Christianity as she is.

Comment by Claudia Mercedes Mazzucco on February 6, 2013 at 4:45pm

I must confess that I lack empathy toward modern Catholic theologians. Autism has prevented me to understand “how humanly destructive and spiritually traumatic” as Sandra Schneiders says, “this experience of ecclesial rejection has been for female Catholics.”
Sandra is a Sister of the Immaculate Heart of Mary and professor of New Testament Studies and Christian Spirituality at the Jesuit School of Theology of Santa Clara University in Berkeley, California.
That feeling – those feelings of rejection – when they are brought into a theological treatise, I daresay, make most of the text indecipherable for me. “That’s Theology!” most of you will say. But, of course, it is not. The text is not in itself indecipherable. The feelings are.

Comment by Claudia Mercedes Mazzucco on February 6, 2013 at 3:50pm

“It is easier to understand oneself without God than with God. The dilemma of Christianity is that it taught man how to be responsible for his actions in this world, and for this world itself. Now man has declared God not responsible and not relevant to human self-knowledge. The existence of God, no longer questioned, has become useless to man’s predicament and its resolution. This, then, is the irony of the cultural tradition of Christianity: it has bequeathed us the idea of the death of God.”

~ Gabriel Vahanian (1927–2012) ~

Comment by Adriana on February 5, 2013 at 3:08pm

Thanks for sharing, Claudia. How is the word "god" misused, in your opinion?

Comment by Claudia Mercedes Mazzucco on February 5, 2013 at 2:04pm

Adriana, It is a struggle (How do I feel about God) and I cannot fully resolve that struggle. I do not feel, however, closer to Temple Grandin's very poetic description of what "god" is to her. She comprehends God solely as an idea, and not as a reality. I wish to reject the word God as a legitimate usage, because it is so misused.

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