I am not entirely sure what I started here (as you could tell from my comment in the previous post). I started with asking the question regarding Jesus' intent in giving the Sermon on the Mount (or Matthew's . . . whatever). I do not want to lose sight of the fact that there is an establishing of authority here. And that from this Jesus is clarifying the authority of life and the authority of death. I assumed that this meant that part of the intent was to create a crisis between the two authorities/economies. From this I broadened the question to ask whether not natural/political occurences also speak of this crisis. I felt that this was most certainly the case for Isaiah and the Gospels too I should add have the natural and political order shake at the resurrection and apocalypse. So from here I hoped to move to the contemporary. Now I would like to keep in mind the stimulating conversation on demythologization over at The Fire and the Rose. Is the natural order any longer connected to the Word of God and further, to what is the Word of God connected? The social practices of the church? The sacramental practices of the church? The preaching and hearing of the Bible? The expressions of the Good, True and Beautiful in the world wherever they may be? Does all of reality carry the potential of hearing the Word? Is serenity as much a medium as crisis? In the discussion below I moved quickly to the extreme of the Holocaust. The other move I suppose is to 9/11. This event has significant markings of a prophetic/apocalyptic event. Punks and gangsters sang about 'dropping bombs'
but then some guys came along and dropped bombs not in strategic empirical move nor in random desperate move but in a symbolic move. An Abomination that causes Desolation. If we can assume that there is an overlay of the Economy of God and the Economy of the World then to what extent to these orders run parallel and to what extent do they rupture and hemorrhage? Would subscribing to a Bultmannian view of demythology mean that there is no overlay and they there is only surface or perhaps a palimpsest of interpretation and translation? This would mean that all of existence is interpreted within the kernel of truth that is Gospel, right? I can't really follow that path. But I suppose prophecy only becomes canonized after the event and perhaps after the community has discerned the event.
I understand that my thinking is not getting much clearer but I hope (at lest for my own sake) that continuing this monologue will help either develop my thinking or expose its absurdity. The question again is whether God acts in nature/social order with the purpose of creating crisis. My gut response is still to say yes, yes, yes. And then to say that this has nothing (necessarily) to do with condemning or justifying people's actions within that economy. It is only to say that there are multiple economies that at times run contrary to one another. Sometimes our actions create ruptures and other times we are caught in something larger than our personal actions. Does this make any sense?
