I was unable to resist the temptation to pass by the bookshop of the Gregorian University after meeting a friend who’s now teaching in this renowned University. By this “happy fault,” I chanced on a very interesting book – Women who Hear Voices by Sidney Callahan. The author is a committed Catholic and trained psychologist who explores the relationship of the human mind and religious experience, especially women’s religious experience.
Midway in this interesting read, the Author says of God, and to this I agree: “Once the incarnation is accepted as God’s entrance into embodied history, a new unified approach is necessary. With more sophistication about the way ancient philosophies influenced early Christianity, theologians can see that much of the tradition was constricted by ancient Greek understandings that perfection required immutability and unchanging self-sufficiency. But for us, God’s perfection and creativity is manifest in creative change and the ever new. “Behold I make all things new.” God as a fountain of creativity is bringing a new creation into being through time and history into the future.”
I myself have been toying with the image of God as both eternal movement and still point. I mean, that is how I experience God – evolving, yet foundational. I hope I am not proclaiming a heresy here. Here is how Ms. Callahan affirms my insight. She says, “Creation can now be understood as open and evolving in freedom. Just as truth is not a lumpen deposit, neither is the dynamic universe, which is in process of becoming. God works in cocreative ways with human beings and within nature. Chance and necessity have both been created by God and operate in creation as God’s ways to bring about novelty and freedom. Freedom and chance are necessary for creatures to have the autonomy to make choices, to create and to voluntarily seek to become friends and adorers of God.”
Now, what has all this to do with “women who hear voices?”
Midway in this interesting read, the Author says of God, and to this I agree: “Once the incarnation is accepted as God’s entrance into embodied history, a new unified approach is necessary. With more sophistication about the way ancient philosophies influenced early Christianity, theologians can see that much of the tradition was constricted by ancient Greek understandings that perfection required immutability and unchanging self-sufficiency. But for us, God’s perfection and creativity is manifest in creative change and the ever new. “Behold I make all things new.” God as a fountain of creativity is bringing a new creation into being through time and history into the future.”
I myself have been toying with the image of God as both eternal movement and still point. I mean, that is how I experience God – evolving, yet foundational. I hope I am not proclaiming a heresy here. Here is how Ms. Callahan affirms my insight. She says, “Creation can now be understood as open and evolving in freedom. Just as truth is not a lumpen deposit, neither is the dynamic universe, which is in process of becoming. God works in cocreative ways with human beings and within nature. Chance and necessity have both been created by God and operate in creation as God’s ways to bring about novelty and freedom. Freedom and chance are necessary for creatures to have the autonomy to make choices, to create and to voluntarily seek to become friends and adorers of God.”
Now, what has all this to do with “women who hear voices?”
I need to get on with my reading...
