Comments on: “I believe in order to understand”

By: samuel cruz

samuel cruz — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 18:33:06 +0000

I wonder if the religious experiences of the marginalized, whose spirituallity is one of the body/heart rather than the spoken or written word, have acquiesced to the pressure to explain through words their mystical experiences so as to be more readily accepted by the dominant religious/theological episteme of the day/culture?

By: Paul Knitter

Paul Knitter — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 16:48:02 +0000

Sam, I understand — and I wish I could feel more deeply — the truth of what you are saying about Pentecostals. I think Pentecostals might be called “mystics with words.” We usually talk about mystical experience as the movement into the depth of religious experience that calls us beyond words. Pentecostals have such experiences and are called to words. We academic-types aren’t used to that, maybe because we’ve lost touch with how words can be mystical.

By: Makito

Makito — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 07:41:27 +0000

The term “To believe,” when it is used in religious context, has bad connotations nowadays at least for non-religious people. It is probably because we, religious people, have distorted this term. I am glad that you offer us here something that absolutely deserves to be heard by non-religious people. “Trust,” “Commitment,” and, “Relationship,” are much better substitutes for that term, as you may suggest. Borrowing from your way to put, I would say with you, we trust something not by brain but by heart, or by our whole being. One may disagree on what I trust, but what I trust always requires, at least, respect from others because what I trust constitutes who I am. So….I respect what people of other faiths trust.

By: samuel cruz

samuel cruz — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 23:30:23 +0000

The words and thoughts of these great thinkers are so similar to those spoken by so many Latin@ Penteocstals I have been privileged to encounter. How sad that they are so often misunderstood as irrational believers with little sophistication of matters of faith and theology.