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Feringer Notes - CIRCULATION OF THOUGHT - 1954 28 of 65
The same fact can strike us in four ways, as a curiosity, as presenting hard work for us, as a need
for education, or as a new enthusiasm and inspiration.
"What I owe you, is to tell you that your own life must bestride all four of these dimensions."
(p.18)
4.Primary Dimensions of Thought
The life in the community involves three basic dimensions: theology (unifying our thought),
philosophy (ordering our thought), and sociology (acting on our thought). These questions in
antiquity were represented by plurality, many gods, many worlds, and many peoples.TODAY
(and since 1100) we accept the notion that there is one god (or none), one world (that is, one
science for describing it) and one humankind. (p.18,19)
The latter (one mankind) is not commonly resolved yet, but we in this country tend to believe
that the characteristics of all people are the same.
The "believer" says there is one God and he looks down on me, the Atheist says, "I look down on
god, I create god from my rationalism."
WE WILL NEVER HAVE A SCIENCE OF SOCIETY UNLESS WE CAN SAY ONE GOD,
ONE WORLD, ONE HUMANKIND. p.20
5.Anselm founded the science of theology, reached, not by faith alone, but also by logic.
(p.22,23) Abelard wrote the first book on theology.The revolutionary idea was that knowledge of
God could be achieved outside the "faith."
The ancient gods of humanity were inventions of mankind.
Anselm started the new theology by saying that one living God of Christianity was so much alive
that He always was greater than any concept of God developed by any of the believers so far; that
the first statement of God, or about God in theology therefore had to be: God is greater than your
concept of God. (p.25)
He concluded this because all people who came to confessionwere sinners and needed absolution
in order to remain functional in the community.The argument is:
that if a man has the courage to be -- that is, to accept his own follies and weaknesses -- he will
find that he can be forgiven, but he has to accept them.He cannot say, "I am faultless." And he
cannot say, "God is narrow."He has to admit the two paradoxes of the Anselmian theology: that
your sins are as scarlet red, and that God is greater than all mind can register about His judicial,
so to speak, capacity, and His mercy." (p.26)
6.In other words, the beginning point of this logic is that God is a dynamic being which is always
greater than your ability to understand experience.