The Nature and Gift of the Holy Spirit

In the courtyard - The Cloisters New York City

Sophia

Wisdom as the Divine Spark

While the belief component of Mormonism isn’t quite as ridged as some may think in terms of gospel speculation, it does have its limits.  This is where I will be making an especially radical departure from my inherited tradition.

Given my allegorical view of all knowledge and belief, I make even less of a distinction between philosophy and religion than most.  Although, for clarity, I will concede religion is always a philosophy but philosophy is not always always a religion.

Philosophy or philo-sophia quite literally means the “love of wisdom.”  Early gnostic Christians used the term sophia or “wisdom” to refer to the Holy Spirit.  I espouse this use since it clarifies the Holy Spirit’s function as testifier, revealer, and comforter.    

Instead of being an actual personage of spirit and member of a Godhead or trinity, I believe the Holy Spirit to be a force; much like the other identifiable forces in the universe, like gravity.  It is the human recognition of the Light of God.  That is to say, it is the portion of God’s presence we are capable of perceiving.    

The Holy Spirit is the manifestation of God’s power and quite literally birthed the physical multiverse.  Every quantum point of creation is permeated with it, resonates to it, and is defined by it.  If the Priesthood was the energy source, the Sophia would be the shock wave that ripped the material realm from the spiritual at the moment of creation.  Intentional God given fluctuations and perturbations in its energy gave structure and form to everything we see today.

To differentiate this view of the Holy Spirit as creative force, while still acknowledging the roles of testifier, revealer, and comforter from the traditional Godhead concept, I also adopt the gnostic custom of using the feminine pronoun... which also reads better when using the term sophia... but there is no intention of applying gender to this force.

As part of the physical universe, we too resonate to the Sophia.  She is the omnipresent aftermath to creation.  She is woven into the very fabric of creation itself and can not be gifted, bestowed or denied.  She just is... waiting to have her presence felt in those quiet moments of contemplation.   In short, she is the divine spark of life itself... now and for eternity.

A Pluralist’s View of Science and Religion

New York Museum of Natural History - Manhattan

The General Relativity of Truth

The universe is a very strange place and getting stranger the more we learn about it.  Many of the greatest minds of our day are working diligently to craft a universal theory of everything encompassing the smallest of the small to the largest of the large.

There have been some astounding breakthroughs in the the fields of quantum cosmology and theoretical nuclear physics that have challenged many of the old views.  To this end, our mathematical geniuses are proving many of our established models of how things work to be, well, wrong!

The complexities being uncovered at Fermilab, CERN, and other research institutions around the globe promise unparalleled advancements in all scientific disciplines.  But for every question answered, many more new ones are left unanswered.

In addition to reexamining or, probably better said, “re-imagining” the universal governing forces of gravity, electromagnetism, the “strong” force and the “weak” force, these down in the trenches scientists are also inadvertently challenging some very fundamental philosophies like free will and the linear nature of existence.  So astounding the implications, the human mind struggles to even grasp its significance.

In evolutionary speak, it is an immutable fact our puny primate brain, that evolved in some unknown patch of jungle, on an insignificant rock, orbiting a teeny pale yellow star, spinning out in some blackened void, in a tiny far flung galaxy, in an unassuming corner of an ever expanding universe, will never be up to the task of EVER understanding the true nature and grandeur of the universe on all its infinite levels... no matter how much time or instruction is given.

If you think more in creationist terms, consider this:  The difference between God’s intellect, as omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent, and our intellect as regular human beings, who can find even an episode of Seinfeld confusing, should be astronomically greater than the difference between our intellect and say the intellect of a typical autotrophic organism like green algae.  Try explaining what we know of the cosmos to that!  What does that say about what God probably got us to understand about what He knows about the universe?

I don’t know about you but it has me thinking that everything we believe we know about the gospel might somehow be a really, really, really, to near infinity really dumbed down version of what actually is going on.  And maybe, “truth” isn’t as exacting and universal as we like to think it is.  Religion must then be considered an allegorical overlay to the incomprehensible universe as seen from a mystical perspective.

By that token, given the very specific and limited environmental conditions under which the human nervous system evolved through which we perceive and experience the universe and the fact all scientific understanding is derived from these same limited senses, it is reasonable to conclude science too is an allegorical overlay to an incomprehensible physical multiverse.

I know that’s a mouthful but consider the platonic allegory of the cave.  By design, we see, feel, smell, taste, and reason from one acutely defined perspective.  We could never hope of experiencing the universe in its proper and complete reference.  Like someone only experiencing shadows on a cave wall, we can never fathom or comprehend the true meaning or context of what we were experiencing.

Now, I know this is an issue of control.  Everyone wants to be right.  There is a lot of comfort in being right.  Atheists seek guidance from science.  The religious seek guidance from philosophy.   Both claim a “higher” truth when in reality, they’re just working different sides of the same street.  Honestly, that’s not a bad situation in be in.  Same problem, different lines of investigation; we should come up with some interesting theories.

It is from the realization that all perspectives are firmly based in the allegorical and not factual that I view life and the universe.  This blog will explore my views using concepts and vocabularies best suited for mystics and theologians only because that is its purpose and focus but I firmly believe spiritual concepts have direct corollaries to scientific ones and vice versa.  To speak to one does not negate the belief in the other.  Both are just a play of conceptual semantics.  It is critically important to remember this when reading my thoughts here.

“The only real wisdom is knowing 

you know nothing.” ~ Socrates