Tag Archives: Karl Barth

(Beyond Merely) Talking About God

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Today we conclude our discussion on the difficulty of talking about God. After noting in part 1 that attempts to speak about God were hard, and that our language about God was often rather weird, last week, in part 2, we explored two approaches to talking about God that seemed to have promise: analogy and apophasis. (If you haven’t read parts 1 and 2 yet, I recommend you do before continuing!)

At the end of part 2, we found ourselves in a strange place: we found we could talk about God through analogical statements and also through apophatic (negative) statements, though each have their limits. But this results in a strange situation: we can say both that, for example, “God is a mother” (so long as we mean this analogically!) and also “God is not a mother”. But how can this be? In saying this, are we in violation of the law of non-contradiction?

As I said at the outset of part 1: talking about God is weird, and talking about God is hard. To see how it could be the case that God both is and is not a mother (or anything else), let’s employ some more analogy.

Click here to keep reading on my substack: https://phenomenologyeastandwest.substack.com/p/beyond-merely-talking-about-god

Dualism vs. Dualism vs. Dualism vs. Dualism

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Has anyone ever extolled the virtues of non-dualism to you? Many westerners who are interested in “Eastern” spirituality and mysticism tend to think that non-dualism is the key to unlock spirituality for us mundane Westerners. Anyone interested in Vedanta philosophy, in particular, will surely spend a lot of time considering non-dualism. Richard Rohr, undoubtedly one of the most popular Christian contemplative writers, speaks constantly about non-dualism. Why, even YouTube anarchists are getting in on the action. Non-dualism is interesting and trendy—but what, exactly, is it?

As we will see, that’s both a great question for anyone interested in phenomenology (I’m hoping that’s you!), but it’s also a complicated question. Indeed, I don’t think we can answer this question without first answering a related but distinct one: before we figure out what non-dualism is, surely we first need to figure out what dualism itself is.

Again, though, things get complicated quickly: there is no one thing called dualism. Today, I want to outline the three four common meanings of dualism, and explore how they are both related but also distinct. Only then will we be able to come back and figure out what non-dualism might be.

Click here or on the image below to keep reading on my new SubStack.