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symbioidlj(apologies in advance for my non-gender-neutral terminology)
I've been thinking about the Western tradition of rule.
The old concept was that man is God's regent, and we have been delegated authority by God over the earth. The rules of mankind are eternal laws dictated from on high.
This goes back to Babylon(about which I've been reading a bit lately), and has continued through Judaism, Xianity and Islam, and into today.
The concept that the Christ is the Logos of the Greeks, the ideal "word", which is the law or code of the cosmos and it's structure, and thus the order upon which man is to base his law upon. Or the Decalogue(10 words/10 commandments) as the foundation of law... Or in Islam, the Shariah, Islamic Law, based upon the Koranic doctrines.
During the renaissance, Alchemy was strong. Esoteric Hermeticism. "As above, so below." This, also, shows the idea that man is reflection of god. Fractal order... It's also the idea behind astrology.
But I then thought about our modern foundation. Secularism supposedly removes God as a divine source of law. But of course, the western "secular" tradition talks of "Natural Law" as the origin of law.
We've moved beyond "natural law" and deism as the foundation of the cosmos, and into Evolutionary doctrine and atheism. We've also gone into the concept of chaos and quantum theory and the arising of order out of chaos(systems theory). But to look at our modern "rationalist" mindset, which rejects god as the source of law, we then look to the universe itself as the underlying order. The enlightenment and reason then look to natural law, the code behind the universe, the mathematical precepts as the divine logos upon which to base our laws.
And thus, we have never really rejected monotheism as the foundation of our laws, or rather the ideal of the laws of man being reflective of divine law, we have just removed our thought from a personal deity(deities) to a deistic deity, and now to an atheity.
Why can't I write my thoughts as I think them. This doesn't sound nearly as profound as I was thinking of it last night.
*sigh*
I've been thinking about the Western tradition of rule.
The old concept was that man is God's regent, and we have been delegated authority by God over the earth. The rules of mankind are eternal laws dictated from on high.
This goes back to Babylon(about which I've been reading a bit lately), and has continued through Judaism, Xianity and Islam, and into today.
The concept that the Christ is the Logos of the Greeks, the ideal "word", which is the law or code of the cosmos and it's structure, and thus the order upon which man is to base his law upon. Or the Decalogue(10 words/10 commandments) as the foundation of law... Or in Islam, the Shariah, Islamic Law, based upon the Koranic doctrines.
During the renaissance, Alchemy was strong. Esoteric Hermeticism. "As above, so below." This, also, shows the idea that man is reflection of god. Fractal order... It's also the idea behind astrology.
But I then thought about our modern foundation. Secularism supposedly removes God as a divine source of law. But of course, the western "secular" tradition talks of "Natural Law" as the origin of law.
We've moved beyond "natural law" and deism as the foundation of the cosmos, and into Evolutionary doctrine and atheism. We've also gone into the concept of chaos and quantum theory and the arising of order out of chaos(systems theory). But to look at our modern "rationalist" mindset, which rejects god as the source of law, we then look to the universe itself as the underlying order. The enlightenment and reason then look to natural law, the code behind the universe, the mathematical precepts as the divine logos upon which to base our laws.
And thus, we have never really rejected monotheism as the foundation of our laws, or rather the ideal of the laws of man being reflective of divine law, we have just removed our thought from a personal deity(deities) to a deistic deity, and now to an atheity.
Why can't I write my thoughts as I think them. This doesn't sound nearly as profound as I was thinking of it last night.
*sigh*
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Date: 2004-02-26 02:06 pm (UTC)