What the Light Isn't

When we talk about our different conceptions of the Divine, we tend to speak in positive terms. That is to say, we talk about what we can say the Divine, Light, God or whatever you want to call it is, what characteristics it has. This is understandable. This is how we usually think about things in life, and if we try to list everything any given thing isn't it tends to take a lot more time than describing what it is.

However, in the case of the Light, perhaps we should talk about that more. That's why I'm going to try doing so – talking about what I think the Spirit is not, as I conceive it and in my experience. This is actually a tool, a theological approach, that is as old as organised Christianity. Apophatic theology, or theology of denial, also known by the Latin expression via negativa (“negative way”, perhaps better thought of as “route of negative expression”, was applied by some of the Church Fathers based on an intellectual tradition that long predates Christianity. It reached its non-Christian philosophical peak among Pagan Neo-Platonism, a school that flourished for over a century in Roman (and later Byzantine) Greece – until Justinian cracked down on Pagan thought as well as Pagan religion.

The Personalness of Morality

Ethics and morality are odd things. Sometimes it's clear that an ethical belief is something we hold to be universal – that there can be no question that something is wrong. Sometimes it's clear that it's a personal thing – that we hold for ourselves that that thing is completely wrong, but do not expect others to share that belief.

This isn't just a matter of different beliefs fitting different categories, though. It's also a matter of different people or ethical systems having different views of relativism. Very few people would extend moral relativism to murder or slavery in the modern context (though there are those who do), but many people (though far from all) are ready to see ethical beliefs about drugs, alcohol or sex as matters of personal morality.

The Great Lord and His Sons

There was once a great lord. His realm was peaceful and prosperous. He had five sons, and he gave thought to how they should be raised.

He had not been raised to rule himself, as he had elder brothers. They had all died before their father, so the rule had fallen to him. So it was in his mind to raise them all to know what it is good for lords to know. He saw that it would be best for his realm if any one of them could take up the rule of the realm, govern rightly and judge fairly.

Yet his aunt had married the lord of another realm, and had had many sons. They had all wished to take the place of the lord their father when he died, and so had schemed and plotted and killed, and in the end gone to war on one another. All had died, in assassination or in war, and the last at the hands of his people when he claimed rule over a land broken by war. The lord of that realm now was the the great lord's aunt's grandson, and the power in the hands of courtiers ruling in his name. So it was that the great lord saw that it would be best for his realm, and for his family, if none of his sons should greatly desire to succeed him.

Judging Acts of Love

The “physical act of love”, howsoever it manifests and between whoever engages in it, should be judged on only 4 things:

• Does it flow from open honesty and common interest?
• Is it freely chosen by those involved, and mutually consented to, with all capable of true consent?
• Does it improve the well-being of all involved, providing a positive experience – or at least an honest attempt at one?
• Does it promote love?