Saturday, October 10, 2009

The Logos Seminar

The Logos Seminar is a group of people who wish to explore spirituality beyond the bounds of traditional Christianity. We know who we are and are secure in our understanding of the mainstream tenants of our faith, but we recognize that there's a rich world of spirit outside the orthodoxy that can enrich our personal search.

Our initial round-table literary discussions focus on the lost works of early Christianity, beginning with "The Gospel of Mary Magdalene." We're not here to discover what the Church has to teach us about these texts, but rather to read them and study them for ourselves. We'll discover together where the search leads.

6 comments:

  1. A good place to start seems to be a list of resources:

    www.blueletterbible.org (start by searching the term "Magdalene" and see what the official gospels tell about her).

    Miller, Robert J., Editor. The Complete Gospels: Annotated Scholar's Version (Paperback ISBN-10: 0944344496).

    Leloup, Jean-Yves. The Gospel of Mary Magdalene (Paperback ISBN-10: 0892819111)

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  2. Hello My Friend (and fellow Pilgrim). Glad to see you have started a blog. I will follow with eager anticipation.

    Emanda

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  3. I am currently reading a novel,THE EXPECTED ONE, by Kathleen McGowan. The dust cover says Book I of the Magdalene Line.

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  4. Logos has interested me because of John 1.1, where it is said "In the beginning was the Logos, and Logos was with God, and the Logos was God." Upon studying the word in Liddell/Scott Greek Lexicon, I discovered that it does not translate accurately as "Word," but rather is a large Greek philosophical concept that comes closer to meaning "Mind." It's a lot more complicated than that, of course, and you can access a pretty good lexicon in the blueletterbible that explains it in pretty good depth. The bottom line is that the image of God changes from a human form to a non-form-- that of an eternal and ever-active thinking and creative force.

    A lot of things fall into place with this shifted image. For example, consider Genesis 1, where the translation reads (rather awkwardly) "God created man in His image; in the image of God created He him; male and female created He them." Translate "elohim" as a plural word, and it reads "The gods created humans in their image; in the image of the divine ones created they them; male and female created they them."

    Shift from the male bodily form and start thinking of the image of the divine as "mind" and you've made the first step into reading things gnostically.

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  5. And they shift from person to person because each of us perceives and understands these things differently. "Mind" means something to you that it doesn't mean to those who define the term as the ability to function rationally. I'm not certain here, but I think this personal view of logos is included in a gnostic view.

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  6. In your blog you mentioned the Santa Claus Syndrome and how it correlates to the Christian experience. I would like to comment on that for a moment.

    When i was younger, Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny (as well as a host of others) were very real to me. Certain times of the year and events confirmed this "realness". As I grew older, I had parents and teachers who explained that while there may not be a specific person named "Santa Claus" but the spirit of the person and what he represents was very real. And it was my job to perpetuate this "realness" in my own spirit of giving and loving.

    It seems to me that this is exactly what the early writers of the Faith were trying to do...to tell the stories so that pictures could be painted in the reader (or listener) own head/heart. The spirit of the story would then be made real by the actions of the reader. This is how mythos transforms to logos. By my hearing the stories and making them real in my word, deed and thought.

    I am not concerned about where or not Santa is real, but I know that the spirit of Santa is very real when my 5 year old grandson opens a present and then has a smile from ear to ear, followed with a hug and a "Thank you, Opa". In this same vein, I approach our sacred writings, with a smile and a word of "Thanks" for touching my life and making it better.

    Grace & Peace.

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