For the past three weeks, we've been looking at the three elements of a multi-perspectival, Integral approach to knowing God. We might think of such a model as being like an atlas. It isn't a map of its own, but is a map of maps, a framework that tries to put all the different maps … Continue reading Being, Following, and Seeing Christ: Putting the Pieces Together
The most recent post in this series, which introduced the third-person perspective of God — meeting God in the awe- and wonder-inspiring web of life — used the prologue of the Gospel according to John as its jumping off point. We saw how over the centuries, Christian mystics and theologians have developed the idea of … Continue reading The Lilies of the Field: Jesus and the Third-Person Perspective of God
Over the past two weeks, we've explored what it means to know God in the second-person, that is relationally and personally, and in the first-person, that is to know and experience God within. This week, we round out this framework with the third-person knowledge of God, which can perhaps best be articulated in the words … Continue reading Everywhere Present and Filling All Things: Knowing God in Third-Person
I've been thinking a lot lately about Teddy Roosevelt's famous quote about "the man in the arena," which has been repopularized over the past decade by Brene Brown's use of it in Daring Greatly. It goes: "It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or … Continue reading The Arena
The most recent post in this series on knowing God explored the first-person perspective of God, which is an experience of God within us so intimate that everything else — our ego, desires, thoughts, feelings — falls away. It also demonstrated that despite the discomfort many contemporary Christians have with the language of first-person encounter … Continue reading “The Father and I are One”: Jesus and the First-Person Knowledge of God
