The mix of glory and dependence that is humanity

Main idea. At the core of our identity, we are the bearer of God's image and a people wholly dependent on him. This mix of glory and dependence is worth our gratitude and humility before him.

Dependence. Lately, I have been thinking about human contingency, God's glory, and the need for gratitude and humility. At the same time, I've been listening through Metaphysics by Aristotle, capturing the barest bits of possible comprehension in a mind map. I'm not at all sure I get it (it is my first time), but it is stimulating some interesting connections. While I am left with a pile of questions and confusions to be clarified over subsequent readings, there are connections across the current topics. The idea of something only being what it is rather than two opposites at once or some strange admixture seems to have things to say about the essence of humanity as wholly dependent on God while at the same time created as the bearer of his image.

Needing to remember. Reality persists despite us, and we need the perspective of the other to see truth more clearly. Despite ample resources and capacities supplied by God, we find it all too easy to forget our dependence on him and our need for one another.

That's all I have for now: a theological-philosophical puzzle left on the table annoyingly incomplete.

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(C) Laura Springer

Musings of a peripatetic wannabe-sage by Laura Springer is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License..