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Posted by rat on 3/18/2010, 7:09 am
173.79.216.x
Martin Luther: "All have sinned and are justified freely, without their own works and merits."
I think we can find some "apophatic value" in this, maybe even a lot. The sin part is not too useful to me. I cannot sense anything that I could coherently characterize as "sin." Sin from one perspective might we goodness from another.
"Justified" is useful, I take it to mean "worthy." It is my sense that a person can realize her/himself to be worthy, without having to have done anything good. (And in fact I cannot find anything to characterize as coherently "good." It might be good from one point of view, and not another.)
“without their own works and merits” is quite significant.
If a person has the realization that she/he is unconditionally worthy, she/he will experience mystical ecstasy. As a side-effect, she will treat the rest of us very nicely. But if she thinks she needs to be good, in order to be a worthy being, she will not (according to this model) realize mystical ecstasy. The irony: She treats us worse when she thinks that to be worthy, she has to treat us well.
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"The Tao is basically utterly open. Utter openeness has no substance. It ends in endlessness, begins in beginninglessnes".
-Li Daoqun
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