1. Introduction to Religion
Humanities
March 6, 2013
Targeted Question #5

2. Soren Kierkegaard’s Stages
Aesthetic = whatever looks, feels good
Ethical = choices must be made
Religious = the choices which are made involve us in suffering, but the suffering may mean we’re authentically alive

3. Christianity...
Moves Us Beyond the Aesthetic & Ethical Lives... But We Have To Start There...
Concerns God’s Love (Decision) For The World and Our Love (Decision) for God
Admits The Hiddenness of God (Because God’s Not Empirical), And Wants Us To Seek That Essential Hidden Essence

4. The Content of Christian Life...
Love, But What Manner, Mode or Kind of Love?

5. Simone Weil
1909
1943

6. Absent? How Might God Be Absent?

7. Loving God By Loving... Other Things/People, but How?
By Loving... The Order & Beauty that May Crush Us
By Loving... Religious Practices

8. “The love of neighbor prepares us for an explicit love of God
“The love of neighbor prepares us for an explicit love of God. For as we increase our ability to see ourselves and others quite apart from the identity given to us by earthly circumstances, we are progressively made free to love without any hope of earthly reward...” (p. 113).

9. Self Things Work Idea of God Others
“How could we search for God, since he is above, in a dimension not open to us? We can only advance horizontally...” (Weil, p. 121)
Things
Work
Idea of God
Self
Others
It is only because God is present here below in our neighbors, in nature and in religious ceremonies that awe can reach him (Allen, p. 121)

10. Each man imagines he is situated in the center of the world
Each man imagines he is situated in the center of the world. The illusion of perspective places him at the center of space; an illusion of the same kind falsifies his idea of time; and yet another kindred illusion arranges the whole hierarchy of values around him... (p. 116).

11. Question #5 March 6

12. In what sense do Soren Kierkegaard and Simone Weil complement one another as to their reflections on the Love of God and the Love of Neighbor? Do you think they help to express the profound claims of Christianity, or do they confuse things even more?

13. Let’s Talk... How does the idea of De-Centering the Ego relate to an understanding of God?

14. Small Group Assigned Days
For Friday
Small Group Assigned Days
“Discussion” Quiz
Small Group Research