From the Wikipedia entry on the divine: "In the ancient world, divinity was not limited to a single deity or abstract ideal but was recognized in multiple forms: as a radiant attribute possessed by gods, as a vital force cushioning nature, and even as a quality glimpsed in extraordinary humans, laws, or acts."
The divine suggests itself but seldom speaks; it is hidden to us.
The faithful want answers, and the ponderous, precise questions.
Fortunately for a follower of Iblis, his narrative can adjust itself to different views of the motives of Iblis, whether creed, fealty, or blood. In addition, the same narrative is compatible with a variety of views of the nature of divinity, whether as a deity, the providence of laws governing nature, or highest ideals of a caste.
Fortunately for a follower of Iblis, his narrative can adjust itself to different views of the motives of Iblis, whether creed, fealty, or blood. In addition, the same narrative is compatible with a variety of views of the nature of divinity, whether as a deity, the providence of laws governing nature, or highest ideals of a caste.
"Vere tu es Deus absconditus."
"Truly, you are the hidden God."
"I was a hidden treasure; I loved to be known. Hence I created the world so that I would be known."
[The narrator of the above review]: "The Knight wants to know, not just believe, that God exists. He fears the silence of God means God isn't there and his life, lived mostly in crusade, is therefore meaningless."
I think we hunger for the divine, even many of us who do not believe in it. And given the many ways divinity can be concealed, there are many forms of hunger.
This page is a collection of quotes and links; I will continue adding to it. The aim is to provoke the brain into painful fits of thought. In rebelling against convention and traditional religion, we have mistaken triumph for freedom from reflecting on some of the most meaningful and stubbornly tenacious of issues.
The believer should not fear release from his belief, and the skeptic should not think his return as a betrayal of his skepticism.
Looking at God but pointing at Adam, Iblis hints: "Do you want me to hurt him?" This kind of pain, though, is the agony of compulsory memory, and it is one of the blackest lights of Iblis, because it illumines the dankest of our depths.
"Truly, you are the hidden God."
- From the Nova Vulgata text of the Catholic Churchکنت کنزاً مخفیاً فأحببت أن أعرف فخلقت الخلق لکی أعرف
"I was a hidden treasure; I loved to be known. Hence I created the world so that I would be known."
- The Hadith of the Hidden Treasure [a hadith qudsi]"The words of Scripture suffice; in the face of mystery, I’m content to stay silent."
- The Ballad of Midnight and McRaeBelow are extracts from a promising review of No Country for Old Men:
[The narrator of the above review]: "The Knight wants to know, not just believe, that God exists. He fears the silence of God means God isn't there and his life, lived mostly in crusade, is therefore meaningless."
The Knight tells Death: "I want God to reach out His hand, show His face, speak to me."
Death, rather than crushing the Knight with dismissal, responds by saying: "But he is silent."
1. A world in which the divine exists but is deliberately hidden and silent.
2. A world in which the divine exists but has somehow been muted.
2. A world in which the divine exists but has somehow been muted.
3. A world in which the divine exists, but something has stolen his voice. This is what I suggest for the Cristoarabic text, The Book of the Rolls; Iblis possesses the divine, making his face monstrous and his voice terrifying, to cow Adam.
I think we hunger for the divine, even many of us who do not believe in it. And given the many ways divinity can be concealed, there are many forms of hunger.
The introduction of the divine into our midst seems to resolve things. In the same way our ancestors used to invoke particulate gods to explain things like storms or thunder, plagues, or fortuitous harvests, we evoke the divine to remind ourselves of what is meaningful and manifest symptoms of what is aspirational.
In this way, this primal hunger is groundwater for surface level streams of belief. It is there as an untouchable but knowable well for our convictions.
The believer should not fear release from his belief, and the skeptic should not think his return as a betrayal of his skepticism.
Looking at God but pointing at Adam, Iblis hints: "Do you want me to hurt him?" This kind of pain, though, is the agony of compulsory memory, and it is one of the blackest lights of Iblis, because it illumines the dankest of our depths.
